Summary:  This was my 2010 SJS for Devonshire. Joe lies dying of injuries 19^th century medicine could never cure while Adam, given a cryptic clue from an ancient fraternal feud, searches for help 100+ years in the future.

Note: lots of shirtless Joe, pantsless Joe, tight-shirt Joe, tight-pants Joe, and drafty hospital gown Joe…but, in spite of the SJS and JPM, this is also an Adam story …with references scattered throughout to other pertinent Bonanza actors’ roles. And one more note: this story began as a Bonanza–Trapper John MD crossover, but somehow gained life on its own as Burt Reynolds and Sally Field from Smokey and the Bandit barged into the tale…I can only say, oops.

The photo, “Blender Joe,” was kindly provided by its creator, Wrenny.

Rating:  T  (31,050 words)

A Stitch in Time

“Pa, I’ll be fine.”

            It was the last thing Joe had said to him, his voice edged with irritation as he’d hurriedly fastened his gun belt and plucked his hat from the sideboard. He’d been eager to leave; even more so than usual thanks to the hovering attention of a concerned father.

Yet Ben couldn’t shake the nagging feeling in his gut he’d felt from the moment he had awakened that morning. A feeling that something was off, or wrong, or something was going to happen, and that it would surely involve his youngest.

The morning passed without incident, and soon logic reared its head and effectively stifled the nervousness to a mere hum, easily ignored as Ben busied himself with his daily tasks. There was nothing to worry about, after all. Joe was just going into town for the mail; something he’d done a hundred times before. Nothing to worry about.

Yet a father’s instinct is a stubborn thing, and Ben found himself surrendering to the feeling of unease as the day progressed. Adam later came upon him pacing the floor and glancing anxiously at the clock. He didn’t need to be told why his father was so agitated.

“How late is he?” Adam asked quietly.

“Late,” Ben replied. “He should have been back two, three hours ago.”

“Pa, he’ll be fine,” Adam admonished. “Joe’s not a little kid anymore. You’ve got to stop doing this to yourself.”

Ben forced a smile. “I know. Old habits die hard, don’t they?”

Adam sighed. “I think I’ll head out and see if Hoss needs any help in the barn,” he said, clearly in a hurry to rid himself of the company of an over-anxious parent.

Ben picked up the newspaper and tried to concentrate on the words in front of him. Adam was right, of course he was right. It was perfectly fine for a parent to worry, but not so fine to be consumed by it. Ben knew he could go on and on listing the numerous perils that could befall his son—both real and imagined—and he couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurd direction of his thoughts. He’d have to tell Joe later how silly he’d been.

            His amusement, however, was abruptly extinguished at the sound of the slamming door, and Adam’s urgent voice on its heels.

“Pa! PA! Come quick!”

Adam turned and bolted back outside, where Hoss had caught Cochise and was dragging his limp brother from the saddle.

“Adam…where’s Adam,” Joe whispered desperately. “Tell him he was right all along…when I was 13…he was right….”

And then his puffy black eyes shut again.

            *

            The time was one well remembered by the whole house; even Hop Sing could recall horrifying stories from that era. Adam had returned from college after a longer-than-expected absence—a bout of influenza that turned into pneumonia caused him to miss a whole semester—to find Little Joe no longer the adorable six-year-old he had left behind, but a gawky, skinny eleven-year-old hovering on adolescence. His ears were too big for the rest of him, so he had taken to wearing his hair long—a habit that never changed—and he had a desperate need to prove to everyone that he wasn’t a baby anymore. Adam, in turn, had a passel of new ideas and nobody to listen when he talked. The feuds that began that year between Adam and his father, and Adam and Little Joe, would last for years, with only brief occasional bouts of peace.

With Ben and Adam the feud was the simple, unending one every parent faced—a child growing up, growing independent, and inducing change, which the parent resisted because after all, children can’t ever know more than their parents—right?

But with Joe, things were more complicated. It began with Adam’s arrival on the stage coach, and his attempt to hug the little brother he thought he remembered—only to find out it was a town kid of eight years—and the lanky, big-eared kid in the trousers that were fast becoming too short and the shirt that showed bony wrists, the kid Adam had written off as a helper at the livery stable, muttering, “I’m Joe, and don’t ever call me Little.”

Little Joe’s first act to prove he wasn’t so little anymore was to take all Adam’s pants to the Chinese laundry in Virginia City and have the hems shortened by some six inches. When that did not achieve the desired response, he “borrowed” a few of Adam’s favorite books and fed them to the pigs. Later he carefully scraped up an anthill and placed it in Adam’s boots. Then some other mildly exotic animals—garter snakes, a few toads, a scorpion or two—appeared in Adam’s bed. The final blow was when he put a burr under the saddle of the girl Adam was courting. At that, Adam silently declared war. He only played one practical joke, if it could be called that, but while Joe’s reign of terror had been overt and occasionally brutal, Adam’s single retaliation was cruel and humiliating enough to make Little Joe ashamed to show his face in Virginia City for months* and landed Adam with the punishment of “relocating” the outhouse. Twice.

One day not long after Joe turned thirteen, he found Adam up above Lake Tahoe reading a book. Not that it was unusual to find Adam at the lake—or at the lake reading a book. But that day had stuck in both their heads for a while, because it was the first genuinely friendly exchange they had had since Adam’s return. Yet, while Adam only remembered the day for that reason, apparently it was significant to Little Joe for another reason. And before long, Joe’s life would depend on that reason…if Adam could only figure out what it was.

            *

Ten Years Earlier:

            “So what’re you readin’ now?”

Adam sighed. “If you really care, I’m readin’ L’An 2440, rêve s’il en fut jamais.”

“What? Sounds French. Something about a year of a dream?”

“Yeah…I guess the literal translation is The Year 2440: a Dream if Ever There Was.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“It’s a utopian vision of the future, postulating the more optimistic possibilities inherent in fourth-dimensional travel.”

Joe plunked himself down in the grass. “There you go again, Mr. College. You know people would like you better if you just talked English like the rest of us, ’stead of soundin’ like you got a dictionary up your derriere.”

“Okay.” Adam’s jaw worked a little, but his reply was carefully measured. “It’s a novel by a fellow named Louis Mercier in the 1700s. In the novel, the hero is in France in the year 2440, and finds the country changed for the better.”

“Shoot, I hope so. If they can’t get things right in 700 years they ain’t ever gonna get ’em right. Miss Jones said there’s been three civil wars in France in less than a hundred years.”

Adam looked sharply at him. “You must have been paying attention that day. Don’t look at me like that; it was supposed to be a compliment. That’s something very few people know about France.”

Continuing to glare at his brother—but feeling a warmth in his heart in spite of it—Joe asked, “So how did this guy get to 2440, anyway?”

“He takes advantage of temporal displacement—sorry. I mean he travels through time.”

Joe snorted.

“Hey, some people—even some scientists—believe time travel is possible. Don’t discount a theory just because it sounds crazy at first pass. They’re building railroads all over this country right now, but just a few decades ago people were sayin’ steam engines would never work.”

“But they do work!”

“Sure, I know that and you know that. But they’ve been around a little more than sixty years now. Before they existed, when people were trying to make one that would work, everybody else thought they were crazy.” Adam warmed to the topic—the possibility of someone actually listening to him was a rare one. “Joe, suppose they came up with something even better than a steam engine. Suppose instead of water, someone could build an engine that ran on something else—maybe oil, or electricity…”

“Wait a minute. Electricity is lightning.”

“That’s just one form of it. Shoot, there’s electricity inside our own bodies. An Italian scientist proved that; the electricity in our bodies makes our muscles work. There’s other things that can create electricity, and one day we may figure out how to create it ourselves. Think about living in that kind of world. If we could harness all the power this old world has to offer, what kind of lives would we lead? Suppose a train could go fifty miles in an hour? We could get to Salt Lake City in twelve hours flat!” Adam couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so passionate about something—until he looked at his audience.

Little Joe was looking out over the lake, his eyes cloudy. “Don’t know that I like the idea of having electricity inside my body.”

Adam sighed. “You’d miss it if it wasn’t there. You’d lie around like a lump all day.”

“Well, ’ccordin’ to you, that’s all I do anyhow,” Joe said, but he grinned as he said it. “So you’ve got some kind of world in your head where people can travel at fifty miles an hour and make electricity any time they want to…and what would they do with it once they made it?”

“I dunno,” Adam murmured. “Maybe make heat in winter. Maybe make things cold in the summer. Maybe…I dunno, make light when it’s dark. Or maybe make things move. If electricity makes our muscles move, it could make other things move too. Maybe it could even distort time around so that we could travel through it—and visit the future.”

Joe’s grin got bigger as he looked at Adam. “You’re plumb crazy, older brother.”

“Oh yeah? Water can carry electricity. Suppose we went out to…oh, I dunno, maybe Jumbo Falls…one day. We’re playin’ under the water and freezing our butts off…and then we walk out the other side of the falls and, boom, what if, just like that, we’re in the future?”

“You mean 2440?”

“Naw, that might be a little too drastic. Maybe a hundred years or so. There shouldn’t be too many big changes by then, right?”

“I dunno, older brother—seems to me things can change pretty fast. You just said that less than a hundred years ago we didn’t have steam engines and didn’t know what electricity was.”

“Still, I reckon a hundred years oughtta be safe. So we come out on the other side of that, and we take a look at how things look in the future. See if things have changed for the better. And then we come home. Now that would be fun.”

“Oh, I’ll take you up on that, Adam.”

A few days later they’d gone up to Jumbo Falls. They didn’t find any openings in time, but they did play under the waterfall, and freeze their butts off, and lay a foundation for better relations. The issue of time travel never came up again, and Little Joe was always the first one to laugh if Adam mentioned his utopian vision of the future.

            *

            Adam went for Doc Martin and returned with him in record time, but the news was bad. Looking at Joe’s chest, which was covered by a pale purplish bruise, Paul shook his head. “There’s so many things wrong with this boy I’d need a sheet of paper a yard long just to list ’em. Fixing them—well, that’s up to the Almighty, but it’s just not possible in the here and now.”

“What are you saying?” Ben’s voice quavered slightly, but still sounded threatening.

“He’s got four broken ribs—bad enough, but fixable. I’m thinkin’ one of them must have shifted when he was ridin’ back here, though, and it’s pushing up against his lung, impeding his breathing. If it shifts even a fraction more, it’ll punch a hole right through the lung and there’s not a thing that can be done about that. Besides that, his liver’s lacerated, and he’s bleeding inside. It’s a slow bleed, but it’ll bleed out all the same.”

“But can’t you sew up whatever is bleeding?”

“Look at his chest! It’s as if he went chest-first into a fence or something. He’s bleeding inside from at least one place, maybe more, but I can’t look in there to see what’s broke. His liver’s busted up; I can tell from palpating it. But I can’t fix it. Given time, if everything else was all right, it might fix itself; livers sometimes do. But there’s more than that busted inside. And even if I could figure out where he’s bleeding from, you can’t just open up a man’s insides and go pokin’ around inside them like you’re cleaning a fish. A bleed like that, he might last two days, and he’ll be in pain every minute of it. Best bet’s to put him under morphine and hold his hand…and start planning the funeral.”

“No!” Ben roared. “I don’t accept that. You—”

“Ben, I’m sorry. He’s dying, and there’s not a thing I can do.”

“Pa,” Joe murmured feebly. “Get Adam. I have to talk to him.” He tried to take a deep breath—and cried out as the sharp pain assaulted his chest again.

“I’m here.” Adam pushed his way around Hoss. “Joe, what is it?”

“You…were right…when I was thirteen…you were right.”

“I was a jackass. I’m sorry about all that, Joe. Truly.”

Little Joe grabbed Adam’s hand and gripped it painfully. “No. Tempr…tempor…”

“I know. I lost my temper. I’m sorry.”

“No, Adam!” Joe took a ragged breath. “Temp’r’l dissss…disp….”

Adam’s eyes widened. “Temporal displacement?”

“’s true, Ad’m…it works. Go to Six Trees…find the bandit…he’ll take you…find the trapper…tell him it’s bandit’s fault…please, you have to. My only chance…memorial….” His head lolled sideways. Ben gasped and all but collapsed on him, crying out his name.

“Get off him, Pa—you’ll kill him yourself!” Adam cried sternly, but his own eyes were wet. He turned away and stumbled from the room, ready to do what Joe wanted, if he could only figure out what it was.

            *

            Six Trees. Years ago, he had named the place himself, thinking it sounded very exotic and Indian-like. It was exactly as the name implied—a stand of six pines. Six little thirty-foot Coulter pines too scrawny to cut down, that dumped huge cones on the ground each year. The family used it as a landmark when they started cutting in that section—twelve paces west of Six Trees, and such. But for Adam, it had never been anything more than a landmark and a nice name.

He pulled Sport up in front of the stand and looked at the trees. Why had Joe begged him to come here? Didn’t he know he was dying and the family needed to be together?

Dismounting, he ground-tied Sport and went to the trees. Nothing new. Nothing different. Nothing special—a thrumming vibration hit him; a wave of dizziness assaulted him—he dropped to the ground and lay motionless among the pines.

            *

            Paul offered to stay, but he made it plain that all anyone could do was watch. “Ben, there’s no hope.” At that Ben’s fist grew a mind of its own and Hoss had to hold him back from striking the doctor. Paul wisely mumbled something then about helping the patients he actually could still help, and he headed for the door. Since then Hoss and his father had just sat looking at Little Joe.

You would have thought nothing in the world was wrong. Hoss almost said it aloud. Joe lay motionless on his bed, his normally tanned face white and his ruddy cheeks pallid. But he was grinning as he looked into the worried blue eyes of his brother, the desperate brown eyes of his father.

“It was such fun,” he said faintly.

“Don’t try to talk, Joseph. Just rest.”

“Resting is for old people.” Joe laughed softly. “Pa, I cleared that jump with a foot to spare. You…shoulda seen Bandit’s face. I wish you coulda seen…Pa…Adam….”

“Please, Joe. Save your strength.” Ben turned back toward the door. “Where’s Adam? Why in the world did he leave?”

“Don’t worry,” Joe said softly. “Adam went for help. He won’t…let me down.”

            *

            Oh Lord, Adam thought as he sat up. It was dark. How long had he been out here? He’d failed. Joe was dead for sure. He ran back to Sport—but the horse was gone. Wait a minute—where had that cabin come from? It hadn’t been there that afternoon—but nobody could build a house that fast—had he really missed it? And what in God’s name was that black, four-wheeled contraption sitting in front of it? No matter. He ran to the house and pounded on the door, apparently interrupting a loud argument inside. A moment later, a tiny, dark-haired woman with a wide, humorous mouth and huge brown eyes answered. She was pretty, thought the detached part of his brain, and promptly discarded the fact as irrelevant.

“Have you seen my horse?” he demanded.

Her eyebrows rose.

“Who’s at the door, Baby?” called a male voice.

“Must be one of your idiot buddies, Beau,” she called back. “I’ve never seen him before, and he looks crazy to me.”

The man who joined her a moment later was almost Adam’s height, rugged-looking and solid, with brown hair, brown eyes, and a mustache that could do double duty as a screen door.

“Do I know you?” the man asked.

“I’ll save you some time,” Adam said flatly. “I don’t even care why you’ve built a house on my property. I’m just looking for my horse.”

The couple looked at him in some confusion, and that was when Adam realized that the light emanating from above the door was a steady, bright white glow, not the flickering, smoky yellow of an oil lamp. He couldn’t help staring at it for a minute, but it hurt his eyes. Squinting, he looked back at the man, who was now sporting a ridiculous grin.

“You gotta be some relation to Lightnin’ Joe Cartwright,” the man said.

“Joe Cartwright is my brother.” Lightning? Huh.

“Well, you better come inside then. Is he feelin’ better? Who are you anyhow, Adam or Hoss? I reckon you must be Adam. He said Hoss was pretty big.”

“How do you know my brother?” Adam asked, following him inside and staring around at the strange room. “And were you with him when he was hurt? He sent me to find a bandit.”

The man laughed. “You found him. I’m Bandit.”

“You’re the bandit that did that to Joe—” all logic fled and Adam’s already-clenched fist made close acquaintance with the mustache. The man called Bandit grunted and fell onto an overstuffed chair, and the tiny woman suddenly got a lot bigger as she pointed a shotgun at Adam’s middle.

“Cartwright or no, you better have a good reason for that,” she said grimly.

His reply was in the flat monotone he always resorted to when he had the choice of a flat monotone or a hysterical scream. “My brother’s dying.”

“Whoa, whoa!” said the Bandit. “He said he was okay. He just took my dirt bike over a couple a’ jumps and got a little banged up when he dropped her. What do you mean ‘dying’? He said it was fun, and he stood up and walked off!”

“He’s dying!” Adam repeated forcefully. “The doctor said there’s nothing to be done. My brother sent me here to find a bandit and a trapper.”

“Trapper?” repeated the man.

“He said bandit and trapper, and something about a memorial. That’s all I know.”

“Trapper! At San Francisco Memorial,” the woman exclaimed. She dropped the shotgun and ran over to a table, where a blue, two-piece object resided. She separated the two pieces, putting one piece to her ear and punching a series of numbered buttons on the other.

“Who are you and what’s going on?” Adam asked softly, feeling more helpless than he’d ever felt in his life.

“We’re friends of Joe,” the Bandit said. “Known him for four years, since the day we rented this place. My name’s Beau Darville, and she’s Carrie. And she’s calling your Trapper pal, but it’ll take him a while to get here. Man alive, ole Joe did come off pretty hard now that I think about it. Bike landed on top of him. But he jumped right back up again. And he sure was happy about makin’ those jumps. He loves that stuff. A real daredevil, your brother.”

“I got him!” the woman called. “Mr. Cartwright, come over here and tell Trapper how bad Joe’s hurt.”

“Tell who?”

“Just come here.” Carrie held up the blue object, a long, vaguely banana-shaped thing with a sort of cup at each end. “Put this part up to your ear and listen; speak into this part here. Trapper’s on the other end. Talk to him.”

Still uncertain if perhaps someone was trying to play a joke, he held the thing up to his face. Immediately a demanding, somewhat tinny-sounding voice hit his ear.

“I’m Trapper. Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Um…” he took the thing away from his ear and held the bottom part next to his mouth, shouting into it, “The doctor says Joe’s liver is lassa…lacerated, and he’s bleeding inside but he doesn’t know from where. He said it was a slow bleed but that he couldn’t make it stop, and that Joe was going to die…and Joe said tell you it’s Bandit’s doing.”

“Okay,” the voice bellowed back. “I’m on my way up with a chopper. Bring Joe and tell Frog to meet me at the helipad.” There was a clicking sound, followed by a metallic buzzing noise.

“Trapper…is coming with a…chopper…and he wants…a frog at the lily pad?” Adam announced in extreme bewilderment.

Beau snorted merrily. “That old coward. I’ll go get him myself.”

“You will not! He hates that Pontiac,” the girl retorted. “I’ll get the Jeep and drive him.”

“I will get him,” Beau said, and the way he said it made the girl retreat in sullen fury. “Come with me, Adam Cartwright, any buddy of Lightin’ Joe is a buddy of mine.”

Adam immediately followed him—right out to that sleek, black, four-wheeled contraption in the front yard. Beau opened it up—“Door handle’s right here; hop in.”

No one could have “hopped” into the thing; long-legged fellows like Adam and Beau more or less poured themselves in. But inside, the seats were padded and comfortable. Beau slipped a metal key into a slot, turned it—and a low, rumbling growl commenced. He pulled a knob, and two bright, steady light beams set the area ahead of them to glowing.

“What is this?” Adam asked.

“Nothin’ special…just a ’79 Trans-Am,” Beau replied—and winked at him. Suddenly the growl became a roar and the Trans-Am hurtled forward into the dark night, going from zero to ninety in mere seconds, and Adam Cartwright, with no memory of doing any of it, was howling at the top of his lungs, his arms locked back on the seat and his booted feet pressed hard against the dashboard.

“Man, your brother did the same thing first time he rode in this baby,” Beau remarked. Adam looked out the window, watching the darkened shadows of the trees as they flew by, and suddenly the knowledge flooded into him. Joe had sent him into the future. Joe knew about this time period, had known for years, had been visiting for a long time, had friends here—and had never told a soul until now.

“What year is this?” Adam asked faintly. “Is it 2440?”

“Huh? Naw, it’s just 1980.”

“How fast are we going?” he asked, his voice weak.

“’Bout a hunnerd and ten. That’s miles per hour. But don’t worry. This ole gal will do 140 without breakin’ a sweat the way I got ’er tricked out. And we’ll be at the helipad in fifteen minutes flat.”

“What’s a lily—I mean, a helipad?”

“A place where helicopters land. Trapper’s comin’ in from San Francisco.”

“That’s a week away! Little Joe doesn’t have a week!”

“Um, Cartwright, in case you forgot, I don’t drive the speed limit. And Trapper’s helicopter oughtta be here inside an hour, maybe an hour and a half, tops.”

“What’s a helicopter?”

“Lord, I forgot, Joe was always askin’ questions at first, too. A helicopter is a thing that flies people around, like an airplane—’cept I don’t imagine you know what an airplane is either. They’re both things that fly and carry people, just like this here car is a thing that runs over the road and carries people.”

“Car? You said it was a Trans-Am.”

“There’s more ’n one kind of car. Trans-Ams are the fast kind. Frog’s got an old Jeep. Not too fast, but it does great in mud puddles.”

“Who’s Frog? The trapper said the frog was supposed to—”

“Don’t get your panties in a wad,” Beau advised. “My girl Carrie is nicknamed Frog. And before you ask, I named her that. Trapper calls her that, too.”

“And what kind of bandit are you?”

Beau snorted. “I ain’t really a bandit, not exactly. That’s just my handle on the CB radio. My nickname. Whatever you wanna call it. For fun and profit I do a little bootleggin’ and other kinds of what they call contraband transport. Whenever the smokeys—and that means the sheriffs and other assorted law enforcement personnel—are lookin’ for somebody haulin’ beer and stuff, it’s usually me. That’s how I’m a bandit. But it’s hardly highway robbery.”

“Then is the trapper really a trapper?”

“Nope. He’s a way-too-rich doctor who makes his livin’ cuttin’ people up and sewin’ ’em back together. His family owns that cabin I rent, that’s how we know each other. As for me and him, we ain’t got that much use for each other. He’s a good enough sort when he wants to be, but he’s way too much of a stickler for followin’ the rules. He also don’t like my car. Or my drivin’—which is why he wanted Frog to pick him up, although just between you and me, I think he’s got a soft spot for my Frog, too, and I don’t share my girls.”

“Um…she’s not your wife?”

“Huh. That’ll be the day. The Bandit does not limit his attentions that way. We just live together. What are you lookin’ at? Never heard of ‘cohabitation’?”

“Sure. Just never heard of braggin’ about it.”

“Well, it’s a whole new world, pal. Your brother Joe never seemed to have any qualms over my livin’ arrangements, and I don’t reckon it’s your business either.”

“Mister, you can live with one woman or twenty for all I care, and you can brag all you want if it makes you feel like a man. I’m just here because my brother sent me here to get this ‘Trapper,’ and he’s convinced that Trapper can fix him up. You’re just transportation.”

“You’re as big a stick-in-the-mud as Joe says,” Beau replied with an eye-roll, and they did not speak again until they arrived at the helipad.

            *

            John T. McIntyre, MD, Chief of Surgery at San Francisco Memorial Hospital, packed his medical bag with a few extra goodies. He had never known exactly what the catalyst would be…but he had known for years that it was coming. He’d known ever since he met that cute, crazy woman named Carrie. He’d rented the cabin to her boyfriend, wondering why, since the fellow was about the most egotistical, irresponsible showoff he’d ever met, but when he met Carrie—not that he had ever called her Carrie, not that he ever would call her Carrie—he’d known he had to do it. He’d known then that he was getting involved in an irreversible chain of events. That knowledge had only been reinforced when he met “Lightnin’ Joe” Cartwright a short time later. “Lightnin’ Joe,” indeed.

And he wondered about Adam Cartwright. He actually found the notion of meeting the man a frightening one. Not that anyone would ever know—Trapper liked to play things close to the vest. He never showed those kinds of emotions readily if he could help it. He picked up the phone and sent Gloria Brancusi for two units of saline solution and another two of A-positive blood along with a cooler. He pulled out his top right desk drawer. Then he took one long look at the photo on his desk before laying it face-down at the back of the drawer. He locked the desk, picked up his bag and the cooler, and headed out.

            *

            Joe was sleeping—not peacefully, at all. He constantly twitched, and his breaths came in short, painful gasps.

Ben looked at his pocket watch. Adam had been gone almost half an hour. Who were the bandit and the trapper, and how did Joe and Adam know them? Why was Joe depending on Adam to bring these strangers here to save his life?

Joe’s eyes fluttered open. “Adam…back?”

“Not yet, son. Hang on. He’ll get here quick as he can.”

“Doesn’t matter, Pa…time ain’t relevant. You’ll see. It’ll be…okayyyy….”

Hoss scrubbed at his eyes with one sleeve. “He’s comforting us. It oughtta be th’ other way around.”

            *

            Mutely terrified at the still-whirling blades of the helicopter buzzing way too close to his head, Adam hunkered down as they approached the thing. In the sparse light of the helipad, one tall figure jumped from metal-and-glass bubble and conferred briefly with the other person inside—the driver, Adam assumed, and briefly wondered, in spite of his fear, what it would be like to ride inside that thing.

“Where is he?” the tall stranger demanded, not sparing a glance at either Adam or Beau as they all ran back to the car.

“He’s at the Ponderosa—he’s in 1865,” Adam shouted over the noise of the helicopter.

“I can’t do anything for him back there!” the man snapped. “I thought you were bringing him here!”

Beau flopped back into the driver’s seat as Adam poured himself into the non-existent back bench, and Trapper got in last.

“Wait a minute, I thought he said you could fix him!” Adam cried.

The Trans-Am roared to life again and surged back into the darkness.

“I can’t guarantee that—I need to see what’s wrong with him first. Sounds like some severe internal injuries. But for that he’ll need surgery, and I have to do that here, with proper medical facilities. And Darville, you steer this thing properly or I’ll hit you in the head and do it myself!”

Beau muttered something under his breath and with a squeal, the car veered to the right and continued to pick up speed.

“We can’t bring him here—he’ll die if he’s moved,” Adam protested. “Whatever you’re going to do to him has to be done back there.”

“And I’m telling you it can’t be done back there. Look, I’ll go with you back to your time and back to your house. But only long enough to pick him up and bring him back here. The kind of surgery he’s going to need can’t be performed in your time period.”

“How’ll we get him back here without killing him?”

“I’ll take care of that,” the stranger said brusquely, and it occurred to Adam that he’d been talking to the fellow some ten minutes without even an introduction, with only the barest of glances at each other—and that neither of them cared. Not only that, but this fellow got right to the point and didn’t mince words.

He liked this guy. He wondered, though, what his father would think about it all, and was pretty sure it wouldn’t be good.

            *

            Beau had the Trans-Am screaming, and the gauge behind the wheel had a red needle pointing to 130 as he drove, but he was too busy arguing with Trapper to notice. Adam, however, couldn’t keep his eyes off that red needle, now climbing to the 135 mark.

Beau was all for driving right to Six Trees, but Trapper was insistent on using the Jeep—and on having the Frog do the driving. While Adam sat in petrified silence as the preferred alternative to screaming, the other two men shouted at each other, Beau using language Adam had never even heard, and Trapper responding in more traditional obscenities, although still some of them were fairly creative. They tore into the yard in front of the cabin, Beau applying the brake and the steering wheel in such a manner that the car made a half-circle while shrieking to a stop. Trapper seemed not to notice; he bolted from the car before the engine was cut off and bellowed for Frog. Adam slithered with much difficulty out of the car as Carrie appeared, holding a set of keys in one hand and a cylindrical object that poured forth a single beam of bright light in the other.

“I’ll drive,” Beau announced.

“You will not,” Carrie retorted.

“You’re not even going, Darville,” Trapper said. “I won’t have you endangering the patient with your insane driving.”

“Hey!”

“Beau, I’ll bean you with this flashlight if you even try,” Carrie said, and at that, Beau swore and went inside. Carrie led the other two men out to another car, a large, boxy mechanism with a cloth top and metal rails on the side that reminded Adam somehow of the covered wagons in which he had spent so many childhood years. Carrie and Trapper got into the front seats, and Adam scrambled up behind; then Carrie started the car and once again they were off.

            *

            It took two minutes to drive into the stand of trees, but instead of crashing into them as Adam had expected, the Jeep seemed to become weightless. Adam shook his head dizzily, and suddenly they emerged from the stand to shoot past Sport, who reared and screamed in terror and bolted from view.

“Which way?” Trapper demanded, looking briefly back toward Adam, but before Adam could reply Carrie said “Don’t worry; I know how to get there.” And she did. The ride that had taken Adam half an hour took exactly nine minutes in the Jeep. Carrie pulled the Jeep behind the barn. “I’ll wait for you here,” she said. “Hurry.”

“I know you have another brother and a father,” Trapper said as they ran toward the house. “Who’ll put up the biggest fight about us taking Joe?”

“My father,” Adam replied without hesitation.

“And how likely is he to refuse to let me take him with me?”

“Oh, he’s very likely to refuse. Unless he can come along.”

“How likely is it that he’d survive a ride in a jeep and a helicopter?”

Adam thought back to his own terror in the car rides, and seeing the helicopter’s arrival…he certainly couldn’t imagine his father in one, and shrugged wordlessly.

“I don’t suppose you have anything like a stretcher,” the doctor said.

“I could rig one up…”

“Send your brother to do it. I can’t operate here. If I had even a rudimentary x-ray machine or a manual respirator—but I just don’t have the equipment to do it here. So your father’s going to have to come with us, or let your brother go. Otherwise the whole mission is a waste and Joe’s going to die. Do you trust me?”

For the first time, Adam looked right into the eyes of the man called Trapper. There was something familiar about the man, something Adam couldn’t quite put his finger on…and then he realized the man reminded him a little of Abel Stoddard. Now that was odd. And there was something else…something about his eyes….

“Yes,” Adam found himself saying. “I trust you. Joe trusts you; that will have to be good enough for all of us.”

He opened the door. “Pa!” he called, running up the stairs, “I’m back and I’ve got Trapper!”

Ben appeared at the doorway of Joe’s room. “Took you long enough. Adam, he’s in terrible pain but he wouldn’t let Paul sedate him. He’s been calling for you.” His face paled then, as he looked beyond Adam to the older man. “Um…do I know you?”

Trapper extended a hand as he reached the top of the stairs. “My name’s John McIntyre, and no, I don’t believe we’ve met, sir. I do, however, know your son Joe. I understand he’s been in an accident. Joe asked for me because I’m an excellent surgeon. I’d like to see him now,” Trapper said, and pushed past Ben Cartwright without further ado.

“You’re here,” Joe said faintly as Adam dropped to his knees beside the bed. “I knew you’d make it. And…hey, Trapp. Always told you…I’d put your medical…skills…to the test.”

“Keep still,” Trapper said quietly, putting his bag, along with a blue-and-white box, on the chair next to the bed, and Hoss looked outraged at the maddening lack of emotion in the man’s voice.

“Mister,” Hoss began in warning tones, but Adam put a hand on Hoss’s arm and whispered, “At least one of us needs to keep calm, Hoss, and it might as well be the surgeon.”

The man called Trapper looked into Joe’s eyes with something he referred to as a penlight, and then touched a couple of spots on Joe’s belly—both of which made Joe cry out—while Ben and Hoss became more upset. Adam pulled Hoss back as Trapper turned to Ben.

“Listen, Hoss,” Adam said hurriedly. “If Joe trusts this doctor more than he trusts Paul Martin, don’t you think that deserves consideration?”

“I dunno,” Hoss said. “All I know is, Joe’s hurtin’ somethin’ awful, we’ve been told he’s dyin’, and I ain’t heard this stranger say he can fix him either. If this fella can help, why ain’t he doing something?”

“Give him time, Hoss. You know Joe doesn’t like doctors—so if he trusts this one, there must be something to the man. Let’s see what he says before you give up,” Adam replied. “Listen, come out in the hall with me for a minute.” He dragged Hoss into the hallway. “You need to fix up a stretcher.”

“Why? You ain’t even heard what the doc has to say yet!”

“When I described the injuries, Trapper said the only way to save Joe’s life is to operate. He can’t do that here; he has to do it—um—at his office. He has a thing back of the barn—remember that self-propelled wagon you told me about? He’s got one and goes pretty fast and real smooth, but Joe’s gonna have to lie flat in it. Please, Hoss, trust me—go rig up a stretcher. You’ll see the wagon in back of the barn. We didn’t want to scare the horses by bringin’ it up front.”

Hoss nodded slowly and trotted down the stairs, and Adam, sighing in relief, went back into Joe’s room.

“He has a punctured lung, a lacerated liver, I’m pretty sure his spleen is shot, and there’s a bleeder somewhere deep that will empty him out soon,” Trapper was saying.

“We know all that!” Ben cut in. “I thought you could help!”

“I think I can,” Trapper replied. “There are no guarantees, sir. But I honestly believe I can help your son. The problem is that he’ll need surgery—and if it’s what I think it is, he’ll be in surgery several hours at a minimum, and he’ll need blood transfusions as well. Will you allow me to operate on him?”

“Only if you can do it here.”

From his medical bag Trapper withdrew the smallest syringe Ben had ever seen. “No; it will have to be at the nearest hospital with proper facilities.”

“There’s no hospital in Virginia City; besides—ow! what the devil—I don’t trust hospitals; every time I’ve read about one it was a death trap…it….” Ben Cartwright’s voice trailed off and his eyes glazed over, and Trapper caught him as he started to fall.

“What happened to him?” Adam demanded, rushing to the bed.

“Mr. Cartwright,” Trapper said, “I need you slide your brother over so I can put your father on the bed. We have to take Joe to the hospital for surgery.”

“But Pa—”

“Adam,” Joe whispered—he could no longer talk—“please do as he says. Even if it sounds crazy. He’s the only shot I’ve got at living right now. Please.”

Adam slid Joe across the bed as gently as he could. “Adam, you’ll like where we’re going,” Joe whispered. “Cars are so great…my pal Bandit has a car that’ll do a hundred miles an hour….”

“I saw it; it was wonderful,” Adam reassured him. Then he turned back to the doctor. “I don’t like this. What’d you do to my father?”

“Just gave him a little cocktail to help him relax,” Trapper replied, depositing Ben Cartwright on the bed. “When he wakes up in about four or five hours, he won’t remember much of what happened. And, he’ll probably be drowsy for a while after he wakes. But he’ll be perfectly all right, I promise. The problem now is Joe. Go and get the car.”

With that, he opened the blue-and-white box and removed two clear bags made of some clear, slippery-looking material. The first appeared to be full of water, but the second was full of…Adam gasped. “Is that blood?”

“Yeah. Go get the car, and help your brother with that stretcher—and get back here as soon as you can.”

As Adam bolted from the room, the last thing he heard was Joe whispering, “Trapp, you better pull me through. If I die without Pa around, he’ll be awful mad at you.”

            *

            Adam and Hoss carried Joe downstairs on the stretcher; Trapper walked next to them, holding up the bag of blood that he had somehow connected to Joe’s arm. Both Adam and Hoss looked a little sick each time they glimpsed the stuff, but Joe didn’t seem to mind at all.

Carrie, seeing no ranch hands in the yard, had pulled the Jeep right up to the house, so Adam and Hoss, following Trapper’s instructions, laid the stretcher flat across the back of the jeep, and Trapper climbed in to sit by Joe’s side, holding the bag of blood up high.

Hoss looked at Trapper. “You sure my Pa’s gonna be all right,” he said quietly, but there was no doubt as to his meaning.

“He’ll be a little foggy about what happened, and he’ll need you to stay with him for a few hours after he comes to,” Trapper said. “But listen, if things go well, we’ll bring Joe back before your father wakes up, anyway.”

“You can operate that fast?” Adam blurted without thinking—and then shut up quickly as those oddly familiar eyes fixed on him.

“Frog,” Trapper said, and Carrie needed no further instruction. She started the Jeep and they lurched forward, leaving Hoss, the Ponderosa, and 1865 behind.

            *

            A moment of eternity later they burst back into 1980, plunged past the cabin Carrie and Beau inhabited, and shot down the road toward the local hospital, where Trapper had already informed them he’d be arriving shortly.

Adam was again hanging onto the seat, but at least this time he found he was able to look around and check on Joe. Trapper was sitting like a statue next to Joe, holding those two clear bags in place as if Joe’s life depended on it, and Adam had a feeling it probably did.

The wheels on the car made an odd squealing noise then, and they turned onto another road. This one was brightly lit by a series of poles, each radiating that steady stream of white light so common to this time. The road up ahead seemed to be even brighter, though, and he squinted to see a large white sign proclaiming “South Tahoe Trauma Center.” The Jeep squealed again and turned into a driveway, following a sign pointing to the emergency entrance.

Before they had even reached a full stop, Trapper vaulted from the machine, barking orders at orderlies. In no time they had Joe loaded onto a gurney and were wheeling him into the hospital. Adam had already dismounted from the Jeep, but now he looked hesitantly back at Carrie.

“Go on,” she urged. “Don’t wait for me; I have to park this thing. I’ll be right back.” With an encouraging smile, she pulled away, and Adam rushed after the gurney.

Joe’s gurney was disappearing into a set of double doors and Trapper with it, when an orderly stopped Adam. “Wait there, please. We’ll send someone out to see you shortly.”

“That’s my brother,” Adam retorted. “I need to stay with him.”

“You need to wait out here, sir. He’s going right into surgery. Only doctors can go in there.”

Trapper reappeared then, holding a clipboard. “You need to sign this,” he ordered.

Adam looked at him. “That’s my brother in there. Neither of us has time for games. You need to operate, and I need to be there.”

Trapper shook his head gently. “That’s not the way it works here. I’m sorry. Families of the patients stay in the waiting room. I’ll come and talk to you as soon as the operation’s over. And you really need to sign this.”

Adam looked at the paper. It was full of legal terms. “We have a lawyer who usually goes over this sort of thing with us.”

“And by the time you go back to 1865, convince him this is a real document from 1980, and get him to explain these papers, your brother will be dead and I’ll be senile from old age. This is called a consent form. The patient, or his next of kin, signs to give his consent to the surgery we’re going to do. The other form is a release of liability for the hospital. It means you won’t sue us if anything goes wrong.”

“Sue you?” Adam muttered, signing both pages. “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard.”

“You’d be surprised,” Trapper replied quietly, with a smile. Suddenly he gripped Adam’s arm. “Try not to worry. They have a great trauma team here; I’ve worked with them before. Hey, I already appointed myself chief surgeon for your brother. I won’t let him die before his time.”

As Adam wondered what that meant, Trapper disappeared again.

            *

            More than a little dazed, Adam turned aimlessly to look around the room, and saw Carrie rushing in. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Joe’s in surgery,” he replied numbly, still looking around. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do now.”

“Come with me.” She took his hand, and led him to the hospital cafeteria where she bought two cups of coffee and two slices of cheesecake. Adam at first started to object to her paying for anything for him, but then he saw what she was using for money, and it looked nothing like the Union greenbacks and railroad scrip that he had in his wallet. He meekly submitted to being dependent for the time being, and wondered again how on earth Joe had found this place.

As they sat down at a table, she grinned at him. “You look a lot like Joe did the first time he arrived here.”

“Like a pole-axed steer?”

“Like a cat that stuck its tail in a light socket.”

“Um…I don’t know what that means.”

“I didn’t figure you would. It’s okay. Joe was always asking us what we meant too, when he first got here.”

“Can you tell me about that?” he asked. “I guess you can tell I just found out.”

“I’m a little surprised he told you at all. He used to say he’d rather die than let you know. Something about an argument you two had back when he was a kid. By the way, Adam, don’t go thinking this is normal. Time travel is an aberration, and we’re as clueless as you and Joe. Trapper and Beau and I know about it only because we were all there the first time Joe showed up. It was almost four years ago. Beau and I had only been together about a month. We were looking for a nice place to rent in the summer, because Beau takes a lot of western jobs in summer time. Trapper met us with the rental agent, since he owns several cabins in this area, and while he was showing us around the place, Joe just…I don’t know how else to say it…materialized, in some trees right in front of us. He was dizzy and a little sick to his stomach, but when he saw me in my hot pants, he just grinned and said everything was fine.”

“Hot…pants?”

“Um…just something girls wear in the summer. Shows a lot of leg.” She grinned and slapped one leg, and that was when he realized the pants (women wore pants?) she was wearing were a bit tight.

“All right….”

She shrugged. “The poor rental agent went ker-flooey. Nuts. Off his rocker.” She made a strange curlicue gesture above her head, and he nodded to show that he understood. He thought he did, anyway.

“I don’t think that poor man ever did recover. He retired after that day, and I’m pretty certain Trapper’s been upset about the whole thing ever since then. He nearly wouldn’t rent us the house, but then he gave me this funny look and said he supposed he’d have to. Still don’t know what he meant by that. And Trapper was trying to see if Joe was hurt when the kid introduced himself, and I thought the poor man had seen a ghost. We took Joe to the cabin—the same one where we live now, and where you found us—and cleaned him up and talked a while. What a story he told!” She giggled, and leaned forward confidentially. “He said it was 1858, that Nevada wasn’t a state yet—and wanted to know what the dickens we were doing on his property. He got all feisty with Beau and wanted to pick a fight.”

“Well, that sounds right,” Adam sighed.

“It took a while for us to believe him, although Trapper didn’t have as much problem with it as Beau did—and for Joe to believe us. Then he said his know-it-all brother told him once that time travel was possible. Sound familiar?”

“I’m guilty. But it’s not as if I invented the theory—or the means. I don’t know how it works.”

“None of us knows, although to tell you the truth, I think I’m the only one who tried to find out.” Carrie shrugged. “I went to the library in Carson City and went through a stack of material on time travel and physics and all kinds of related stuff. Beau never cared. And as for Trapper…well, you know, he doesn’t talk much to us, but whenever Joe insists on going to San Francisco, Trapper’s the one to take him, even though Beau always volunteered. I have the feeling Trapper doesn’t trust Beau. Not that I blame him.”

That raised more questions than it answered, but Adam found himself unable to ask any of them.

“Anyhow, none of the research I did helped. There’s not much out there about naturally-occurring, spontaneous time portals, although that’s what your ‘Six Trees’ seems to be. We can’t even figure out how much time passes on each side of the dividing line. Sometimes when Joe came here it had been a short time for him and a long time for us; sometimes the opposite was true. He’s been here more than a dozen times in the last four years, and he’d probably come more often if he thought he could get away with it. He even helped Beau run a load of wolverines down from Canada to the Sierra Nevada a couple years ago!”**

“Why?”

She laughed. “ ‘Why’ is not a question Beau asks when cash is involved. Joe helps him for the fun of it, although I think Beau’s split the profits with him and Cletus a couple of times. Cletus, should you want to know, is a truck driver. He’s Beau’s best friend, although I don’t know how they stand each other. Cletus has been married to his high school sweetheart for nearly twelve years. It’s always a banner time if Beau’s with the same girl longer than twelve days.”

“But I thought you’ve been with him four years.”

“Off and on. More off lately. We’ve split up time and again, but he always wheedles me into coming back.” She finished the last of her cheesecake and looked at him. “You interrupted the fight of the century when you showed up. I was about to leave, for real this time. Adam—if I can call you that—I know you haven’t known me long, and you’ve got better things on your mind than me, but I’m a little mad at you. What with this emergency, you took all the wind out of my sails; besides, it’s too late to go anywhere now, anyway. So I’ll have to go back there tonight, I guess. And if I do, now that he’s calmed down, Beau’ll probably want me back. I don’t want to go back, but he’ll start kissing me and I’ll just turn to mush again—”

“Excuse me.” Adam stood up and walked away. He knew he was being rude, but there were some things men just didn’t need to hear.

The long, low room was lined with windows on one side, and he went directly to them and leaned against the sill to look out at the dark night and the row of street lights illuminating it. Like the gas lamps lining the streets in San Francisco…but not gas-operated. He wondered if they were powered by electricity. And if the lights in the hospital were electrical. And if the Trans-Am and the Jeep he had ridden were electrical.

Funny, to think that Joe knew so much about this time period, had been here so often—even took part in the same crazy money-making schemes here that he did at home, although here he seemed to think he was still more invulnerable than he thought he was at home. Well, he could ask Joe about electricity, and cars, and such—the things he had wanted to ask Carrie, if she hadn’t been so intent on saying pointless and embarrassing things. He nodded. “I’ll ask Joe.” And then he felt cold, more from inside than from the little vents in the wall that blew cold air at him. If he lives.

            *

            There was a large black-and-white clock on the wall; incredibly ugly but utilitarian, Adam supposed. It had read 10:15 when he had first entered the waiting room. Now it read 3:25, and nobody had come to tell him how Joe was doing. It had never taken Paul this long to do a surgery—although come to think of it, Paul had never opened a man’s insides and done repair work deep inside them. He’d said it couldn’t be done.

He walked up to the information desk again. “Is there any word on my brother?” There was no need to identify his brother; Adam was already famous for his constant hounding.

“No, Mr. Cartwright. I’m sorry.”

They all wore white dresses that made him gasp in shock the first time he saw—the dress came barely to the knee. But then there were women here who weren’t nurses and who wore dresses that covered even less. And there were other women who, like Carrie, wore trousers that outlined every curve. Then, when he thought it couldn’t get any stranger, he saw a woman in blue jeans that had been cut so short they actually showed a part of her bottom. “Hot pants,” Carrie had provided on hearing his shocked gasp. He shook his head, thinking, No wonder Joe comes here so often.

            “Is it common for operations to take so long?” he asked the nurse.

“It depends on how much damage there is to repair, and where it’s located,” the nurse replied. “Some operations can take a long time.”

Sighing, he walked back to the waiting room. Medicine must have changed a lot in 115 years. Well, why not? Fashion had. Transportation certainly had. Horses were apparently extinct. He hadn’t seen any outside, there were no pictures of them in any of the vivid, colorful magazines, and no one talked about them. There were none shown on the box called a television that blared from one corner of the room, showing men with strangely cut suits and women with shockingly few coverings. Where he came from horses were a major topic of conversation. Here, people talked about their cars. He had listened to them doing so for five hours. Oh, but that wasn’t the only topic of conversation. It seemed that every woman in the place had to sit within hearing range while chattering with her friends about the foibles of men—and darned if there weren’t groups of men standing around, openly discussing women. It seemed that every topic known as “taboo” to Adam Cartwright was guaranteed gossip fodder for this time period. But just ask one person how the overhead lights work, and they look at you like you’re drunk. He was desperate for an explanation of the unexplainable; he was half-mad to know the names of all the strange things he was seeing; his engineer’s brain was demanding to know how the lights and television and LCD digital wrist watches and telephones and air conditioning and vending machines worked. Every new thing he saw required an explanation and there was no one to provide it.

For five hours his brother had been in that operating room, but no one regarded that as unusual. For five hours Joe Cartwright had been fighting for his life, and his longtime protector Adam was powerless to do a thing about it. It was up to a bunch of strangers. And that was darn near intolerable.

Five hours. That was an impossibly long time for surgery. It was also a long time to hold two cups of coffee inside, but he’d been doing that, mainly because he had no idea how to get rid of them. Carrie probably would have told him—Lord knew she didn’t seem to mind talking about anything, from problems with her man to the development of musical theater—but it was hardly a question he could ask, even if everyone else around here talked openly about their bodily functions. Carrie, however, was not as scatterbrained as she had first seemed.

“Your back teeth must be floating,” she said at length. “There’s a gent’s room down the hall on the right.”

“A…gent’s room?”

“Yeah. Indoor plumbing’s all the rage these days. Go take a look. Joe says you’re a smart guy; I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

Another mystery. A couple of places in Boston had had indoor toilets, and Adam had read about them—but never seen one. Fortunately when he went in, there was another fellow already there, providing an unwitting demonstration. After the fellow had gone and Adam had gotten rid of the coffee, though, he finally saw the ability to gain the answer to at least one question, and so it was that Trapper walked in almost half an hour later to find him methodically taking apart the innards of a commode tank.

“Carrie said you’d be in here. Didn’t expect you’d make a day trip of it, though,” Trapper observed with a small smile through his beard, and Adam, sleeves rolled up to the shoulder, both arms elbow-deep in the tank, with a large rubber ball in one hand and short metal chain in the other, his mouth open like a trout in embarrassed surprise at the doctor’s arrival, wished he could sink into the floor and die.

Trapper, however, merely crossed his arms and began talking about Joe. “Surgery was rough. His heart stopped once on the operating table, but it’s okay, we got it going again. The spleen was about to rupture; we had to remove it. We were able to repair the liver, too. And we were able to find the bleeder. He needed five pints of blood, counting the one I put on him at your house. His lungs are a little bruised, but okay—the badly broken rib was putting pressure on it, but we’ve wired the rib down. The other ribs were cracked, not broken.”

“He’s going to live?”

“The next few hours are crucial. If his liver starts functioning again, he should be out of danger, barring any unforeseen complications. I can’t make guarantees just yet, but I think he’ll be fine.”

Adam sighed and leaned back against the toilet tank, sending the lid crashing to the floor where it shattered into a thousand pieces. Helplessly, Adam pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Shall I put that on your bill?” Trapper asked sweetly.

“By all means, if I can come up with a currency that’s acceptable here.” Adam hastily replaced the chain and the rubber ball. “If you’ll tell me where to get a broom, I’ll clean up the mess. Sorry…I just got curious.”

“Don’t they all,” came the enigmatic reply. “We have people to fix that. Come on out.”

“When can I take my brother home?”

“Home?” Trapper just looked at him. “No time soon. I’m sorry, but he’ll need to stay here for at least a couple of days, until I’m satisfied that he’s stable. Then I’d like to move him to my own hospital so I can keep an eye on him. He needs to stay with me at least until the stitches come out, and that’s going to take some time.”

“But in San Francisco? How would you get him there?”

“Helicopter, I imagine. Anyway, we’ll need to keep him at least 10 days. Maybe two weeks.”

“Weeks? But my father—”

“Likely won’t know a thing about it. We’ve never figured out the way time runs on the two sides of the portal, but one thing your brother told us is that whenever he returns home, he finds he was seldom gone long enough to be missed.”

“Well,” Adam said with a trace of defiance, “I’ll need to stay with him.”

“Of course. At a minimum, you’ll be a comforting presence, and if things don’t improve as they should, we’ll need to keep you around as next of kin in case more surgery is indicated.”

“Can I see him?”

“Not yet. He’ll be in recovery for a while. You might as well get some sleep. By the time you wake up, we’ll have moved him to Intensive Care, and you can probably see him then. If anything changes for the worse, I’ll have you notified.”

Adam nodded weakly, but by the time he had thought to ask where he was supposed to go during this time, Trapper had walked away.

            *

            “Mr. Cartwright?” Adam looked up blearily from the couch to see a nurse’s knees. He sat up quickly, so he could look somewhere else. Some of these nurses had killer knees. “Your brother is awake again, if you’d like to see him.” He jumped up and sped down the now-familiar corridor.

For two days he had been in the hospital. He slept on the couch in the waiting room. Carrie had left some money with him (how in heck did Joe get money while he was here?) and he purchased a couple of light meals—and lots of coffee. Coffee was everywhere—the cafeteria, the vending machines, the nurses’ station. It was somehow a relief to note that some things hadn’t changed. God knew just about everything else had.

In the 48 hours he had been in the hospital, Adam’s vocabulary and knowledge had undergone a remarkable increase. He had read every magazine in the waiting room, even the silly ones about women’s fashions. He now knew about something called the E.R.A., and he knew that men from his century were looked down on as “imperialists” and “chauvinists.” It made him wonder what he’d done wrong, but there was far too much else to learn to dwell on something that couldn’t be changed. The two men running for president were the incumbent, a charming but apparently incompetent fellow from Georgia, and a former actor—an actor?—from California.

He talked for hours with nurses, other doctors, even a cleaning person. He now knew about “IV’s” or intra-venous lines, and the “trees” they hung on. He knew that “saline solutions” had more applications than simply being used in chemistry classes at Harvard. He had learned about blood types and found that Joe had A-positive blood. He knew that cars ran on refined oil, and most other things ran on electricity, including the box in the waiting room that turned out to be a “television” playing things called “movies.” He understood that electricity was transmitted over power lines and through the wiring of a building, and from there into the machinery that was monitoring his brother’s “vital signs.” Periodically, a series of numbers spewed out on a small piece of paper for the doctors to read, and the numbers told the doctors more about Joe’s progress than the simple act of touching. So the doctors read the numbers, and Adam put a gentle hand on his brother’s forehead.

Joe grinned up at Adam. “Did I miss the cattle drive?”

Adam just shook his head. “You couldn’t be that lucky. How do you feel?”

“Like I was hit by a truck.” Joe snickered. “Bet you don’t know what a truck is.”

“In fact, I do,” Adam replied. “There was a movie about them a little while ago. It was called ‘Convoy,’ and it didn’t make much sense to me. But then, according to Carrie, the movie wasn’t very realistic anyway. She seems to know a lot about trucks.”

“Livin’ with Bandit, she has to.” Joe’s voice faded and he went back to sleep.

“Is he on morphine?” Adam asked the nurse.

“Demerol,” she replied. At his puzzled look, she shrugged. “It’s better than morphine. It’ll keep the pain away.”

The next time Joe awoke, the Demerol had apparently worn off, and a nurse was there fiddling with the IV when Adam came in.

“Adam…my guts really hurt.”

“They should. Those doctors had to cut through ’em to get at all the stuff you broke in there. You know, you’re not as bullet-proof as you think.”

“Yeah…starting to get that idea. Aw, but Adam, you shoulda seen me take that jump.”

“Yeah, I have some questions about that jump. And other things. They’ll wait until you’re better, but brother, you owe me some answers.”

But Joe had already gone to sleep again.

Trapper breezed back in then, to examine the numbers on the printed sheet. Adam wondered where he’d been: he looked as crisp and fresh as if he’d walked out of the Magic Lasso, the Turkish bath house in Carson City, while Adam was rumpled, in desperate need of a bath, and each look in the mirror was maddening when he realized how much he needed a shave. “He’s looking good,” Trapper announced after examining Joe. “If he keeps improving, tomorrow afternoon we’ll fly him out to San Francisco.”

“Fly,” Adam whispered. Collecting himself as best he could, he said, “I’ll be coming along, right?”

“Sure.” For the first time in their brief acquaintance, Trapper gave him a full-fledged grin, and Adam wondered at the familiar feel of it. “Maybe I’ll let you drive.”

            *

            Seeing the better part of Lake Tahoe from the air had been exhilarating, but a little scary.

It wasn’t the height that frightened him, or even the sudden ups and downs. That was a little unnerving, but not terrifying. With this thing, it was the noise of the blade overhead that worried him. Well were these things called “choppers.”

Apparently Trapper could tell he was scared, even though he thought he was doing a pretty good job hiding it, for the doctor started telling him all kinds of irrelevant things. “It’s called a Sikorsky S-76. They only came out three years ago, and we could never have afforded it, but someone caught Dr. Riverside’s father at the right moment and he donated it to us. Big—it’ll carry twelve passengers even if they’re lying down and strapped in like your brother. Pretty nice, if you ask me. In Korea we had to make do with a Bell-47 that could only take two guys at a time.”

Vaguely Adam recalled that Korea was a country in Asia, and wondered what Trapper had been doing there as the doctor continued to extol the virtues of helicopters and air travel.

“How does it work?” he asked finally.

“Beats me,” Trapper replied with a grin. “I can change the oil in my car, but I’m hardly a qualified engineer or mechanic. I remember once a pilot told me that helicopters shouldn’t be able to fly. Supposedly they work on the same principles that enable a bumblebee to fly—since bumblebees aren’t supposed to be able to fly either.”

“How many moving parts are in these engines?” he asked then, and Trapper looked oddly at him.

“A few thousand, I imagine. But if you’re thinking of all the things that could go wrong with ’em, they’re made by Rolls Royce, and those people are committed to quality.”

“I have no idea what is possible to go wrong with engines like these,” Adam shrugged, and grinned mischievously. “I just wondered how long it would take to pull one apart.”

“Oh, I bet you’d love that,” Trapper said. “All you engineers are just alike.”

“Joe told you about my engineering training?”

Trapper coughed. “Uh huh. My father was an engineer too. He thought I’d be one and was astonished that I went into medicine instead.”

“Well, for Joe’s sake I’m glad you did.”

“That’s San Francisco in the distance,” Trapper said, as if desperate to change the subject.

The hills and the estuary were unmistakable, but as built-up as it had been in the 1860s, there was no comparison to the 1980s. There were buildings reaching right into the clouds. And what the devil was that red thing threading across the strait?

“There’s a bridge!” Adam gasped. “Impossible. Everybody knows that. It’s impossible to put a bridge there; the currents in the straits are—”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Trapper chuckled. “It’s been there since I was a kid of 17. My father was one of the engineers on the…um…it’s called the Golden Gate Bridge, and it’s the second-longest suspension bridge in the United States.”

“The second-longest!” Adam breathed, staring at it. “Who built it? How did he overcome the wind and current problems? And where’s the longest?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll see plenty of this bridge.” He didn’t answer the other questions as the helicopter began a rapid descent, setting down on a big red cross-mark atop the roof of a building. Trapper vaulted out with ease. Adam climbed out more slowly, shaking his head as he realized Trapper probably spent as much time working with “choppers” as he and Joe spent working with horses.

He hadn’t really been outside in daylight in this time period yet; even this morning they had left in the gray hour before dawn. Now that the sun was up he could see people driving into the hospital parking area and steering their cars into little rectangular slots. A corral without a fence, he thought. A couple of orderlies had emerged from the hospital and were taking Joe out, strapping him onto a new gurney—and of course they wouldn’t let him help—and taking him inside.

Joe was installed in a room on the fourth floor just across from the nurse’s station—he’d like that once he was awake, Adam thought, even as he marveled anew at how big and clean a hospital could be. He had been in a hospital once—in this same town—and it was filthy, its wards crowded with people in anguish, for most of whom no help existed. How had things changed so much?

He suspected that question couldn’t be answered, so he just turned to Trapper and asked what would happen to Joe now. “More tests,” Trapper shrugged. “I want to make certain he stood the trip all right. Mostly just blood tests, nothing to you need to worry about.”

“Then what?”

“Then we let him relax for a while, and we also get some rest. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been up for most of the last three days and I’m bushed. As for you—I do mean this in the nicest possible way, but you’re starting to smell a little ripe.”

“Sorry, but I didn’t want to be far from Joe, so I stayed in the waiting room. There was no bathtub in the ‘gents’ room…besides, paper towels and liquid soap don’t make for the best sponge baths—and it’s not as if I could take my clothes off.”

“I guess a hotel was out of the question, at that,” Trapper said thoughtfully. “I’m sorry. I’m used to traveling on short notice, and since your brother was weighing pretty heavily on my mind, I probably wasn’t thinking too clearly about your situation.”

“Where would I go?” Adam asked doubtfully. He produced his wallet. “Do you know of any place that would convert this stuff to the kind of money you use?”

“Sorry; no. Funny, your brother never had a problem with money when he was here.”

“Joe’s always been pretty resourceful where dollars are concerned. He’s like an alchemist.”

Trapper laughed out loud at that. “You’re right. Well, it doesn’t matter. I always let him bunk in with me when he was in town. Why don’t you do the same?”

“What would your wife have to say about that?”

“Not much. We’re divorced. Tell you what; you tough it out for a few hours more and I’ll come and get you when it’s time to go.”

“Are you sure it’ll be all right to leave him?”

“You haven’t noticed all the different ways we monitor the patients? If anything, however insignificant, changes, my staff will notify me.”

“I noticed those little printed pages, but I don’t really understand what they’re for. All those other machines must mean something to you and the nurses, but I had a hard time understanding them, even when the nurses tried to explain.”

“Well, you don’t have to understand how the machine works. My staff understands just fine.”

“You know, Doc Martin back home doesn’t even have a nurse. How many people work for one doctor here?”

“In my case, a lot. I’m chief of surgery.”

“Oh.” Adam thought that over. “Well, I guess you would have a lot of people, then. And you have a, um, telephone at your house.”

“Yup. Trust me, even if I’m not near a phone they’ll be able to reach me. I wear a pager—and don’t ask right now, I’ll explain it on the way home. Right now go find something to do…something non-destructive, if you please. The administrator here gets pretty fussy if he sees unlicensed people taking apart the plumbing.”

            *

            The car Trapper drove was not like the Jeep or the Trans-Am; it was a large, comfortable coupe that he called a Dodge Mirada. Trapper drove on the road, unlike Carrie who drove her Jeep mostly on trails; and he drove at sedate speeds. The number of other cars on the roads—and the wide variety of shapes, sizes, and conditions of them—was unbelievable to Adam, who kept turning to look at them as they passed. For all that 40-50 mph still seemed fast to Adam, the other drivers didn’t seem to think so, and they zoomed by with their horns blaring. The Mirada was a strange car; it felt nice, and the engine was fairly quiet, but it made a periodic coughing noise that resulted in the car hesitating and then jumping ahead suddenly. “Carburetor,” Trapper muttered when Adam asked why the car did this. “I knew I should’ve gone for the 318 with fuel injection, but nooooo. I let Gonzo talk me into a 360 with a carb, and it’s been like this for a month now.” What that meant, Adam had no idea, but he filed away the numbers and technical terms, hoping to find a dictionary.

Trapper seemed friendly enough, and answered questions readily and frankly, but Adam noticed there was a distinct air of distraction about the man, and he wondered why.

“I couldn’t say how the McIntyres ended up with the Tahoe property,” Trapper shrugged in answer to one question. “I’ve never done any genealogy research, but you can probably assume that when your father died, a lot of the Ponderosa land was sold.”

Of all the things he had seen and heard in 1980, somehow that offhand statement threw Adam more than anything else. “MY FATHER DIED?” he cried. “You said he would just sleep for a few hours! What the—”

“It’s 1980,” Trapper reminded him reproachfully. “I hate to tell you this, but all of us being mortal, the greater likelihood is that you and all your brothers are dead too. If you were born in 1830, did you really expect to find yourself alive at age 150?”

It was a sobering, disturbing thought, and somehow, not something he had considered before. “Sorry. I, uh, forgot. But what about us? There’s no way my brothers and I would have sold the ranch, not as hard as we worked to build it. Surely at least one of us must have gotten married and had some children to leave it to.”

“All I know is, the Ponderosa doesn’t exist in this time, so we’re left with knowing that some of the land was donated for a state park, and the rest of it was sold. How my family came to own some of the land…” Trapper shrugged. “I really can’t say. My father was always the one for investments. I’m not.”

“Can I talk to your father?”

“He’s been dead nearly 20 years. My mother went into real estate then…maybe she could tell you something. I can ask.” With that, Trapper pulled the car up in front of a row of tall, narrow houses and hit a button on the car’s sun visor; a door under the house lifted, and Trapper pulled the car into a semi-dark, low-ceilinged room. “Here we are.”

Adam stared at a pitchfork hanging on one wall. “Is this a barn?”

“Garage,” Trapper replied. “Sorry; no horses here.”

“When did they die out?” Adam asked as the two got out of the car. He jumped as the garage door clamped itself down with a loud noise.

“I gotta get that thing fixed,” Trapper muttered. “Horses? They didn’t die. We just don’t use ’em much anymore. If you had a choice of riding for a week or driving for a few hours, which would you pick?”

Walking into the foyer, Trapper flipped a switch and the lights came on; he looked back to see Adam grinning broadly, staring directly into the light. Trapper shook his head and went into the living room where he flipped another switch. Two more lights flared to life; then one made a popping noise and went dark.

“Nuts,” Trapper murmured. He disappeared into the kitchen and returned with two items, which he handed to Adam. “Change the light bulb, will you?” And with that he all but ran from the room.

“Thanks a lot for your high appraisal of my intelligence,” Adam muttered. Why did everyone take for granted that he would know what to do? He wouldn’t take someone to 1865 and tell them to grease a wagon axle or brand a calf. Well, maybe I would if it was this doctor. He sighed and examined the two items he’d been given. One was a screwdriver. The other was, apparently, a light bulb. Adam looked up at the fixture where the two lights resided; one still streaming a white glow, the other dark and useless. He thought back to what he had learned the last two days. If electricity really ran through the wires and spilled out of sockets, he didn’t think it would be a good idea to work on this thing with the current on, so he went to the switch Trapper had thrown and pushed it down. The other light went off. Good.  He pulled a chair under the fixture, climbed on it and took a look at the structure of the thing. There was a covering, held in place by four screws. Okay. He took out the screws and laid the covering down on the floor, then mounted the chair again. The light bulb itself didn’t appear to have any screws holding in place. Hmmm. He pulled it tentatively. Nothing. He twisted it a little. Nothing. He twisted it the other direction—and it loosened. Soon it was in his hand and the other bulb screwed into place. Carefully, he replaced the cover, and then went to flip the switch again. Both bulbs lit.

Trapper, meanwhile, had been frantically inspecting the guest room to be certain there was nothing there that shouldn’t be. He had to move a couple of albums and of course get the photo off the desk; he put them in his room, went back out to the hall—gasped, rushed halfway down the stairs to remove another photo from the wall; then sighed in relief, and returned to descend the stairs. Adam Cartwright was standing under the light fixture, beaming himself. It was hard to tell which was brighter: the lights, or Adam’s stubbly face. He was grinning like a kid with his first bicycle. Come to think of it, Trapper thought painfully, JT had exactly that same expression when he’d bought the kid his first motorcycle.

He cleared his throat, and calmly said, “Thanks.”

Adam’s face was suddenly bland as a cold cup of potato salad. “Oh. Sure. It was easy.” He handed over the screwdriver and the bad bulb.

Trapper chuckled. “Come on, I’ll show you your room. I think we’re about the same height; I’ve got some clothes you can wear. They might be a little loose on you, but you’re not here for a fashion show. And you really need a shower and shave.”

“A shower?”

“I’ll show you that too, although anybody that can replace a light bulb can probably figure out a shower. You’re not gonna take my house apart, now, are you?” he asked as they went up the stairs.

“I’ll try to resist the temptation,” Adam said with a grin. “You know, I like those candlesticks on the mantle. Hey, they’re silver, aren’t they? Does Virginia City still produce most of the country’s silver?”

“The candlesticks belonged to my great-grandmother. Virginia City, I couldn’t say.” Trapper cleared his throat again. “Let’s get you into that shower before the neighbors complain.”

            *

            There were advantages to a shower. It wasn’t as relaxing as a bathtub, but then in a bathtub you ended up sitting in dirty water, and in a shower the dirt went down the drain. And in the end a shower was rather refreshing. I don’t feel tired at all now, Adam thought as he pulled on a pair of shorts and sat down on the bed. Sixteen hours later he woke in the same bed, wondering where the dickens he was.

The room was twice the size of his back home—and he’d always thought he had a good-sized room. A little table with two chairs sat in one corner; a large desk backed up against the wall, and the wall was decorated with tasteful prints and paintings. He wondered briefly about the empty hooks, but then the smells of coffee and bacon wafted up to him, and the comforting thought hit him that some things really were as constant as the Northern Star. He looked down at the foot of the bed, where the other clothes were still laid out.

Trapper laughed as he walked in the kitchen. “Hello, Sleeping Beauty. I thought you ranchers were up with the dawn. It’s almost 7 a.m.”

“Sorry. Guess I was more tired than I knew.”

“If it helps any, I zonked out, too.”

“Zonked…?”

“Cratered. Crashed and burned. Succumbed to the arms of Morpheus. In other words, I slept, and perchance, I dreamt.  Have some coffee. It’s instant, but it’s not too bad. Non-dairy creamer and artificial sweetener are on the counter.”

Thankfully, he pointed to the items in question, and Adam quickly figured out he wanted nothing to do with any of them. Shaking his head, he picked up a carton labeled “fresh-squeezed” orange juice instead. Nice. Oranges didn’t end up at the Ponderosa very often.

Two slices of toast bounced out of a metal box while Trapper was opening the glass door on another box and removing a plate of bacon. “Perfect timing,” Trapper announced. “Hey, butter those, wouldya?”

“How long did it take to cook all this?” Adam asked as he obediently buttered the toast.

“Seven minutes,” Trapper replied. “The trick is to microwave the bacon while you’re scrambling the eggs. And devil take any of the nutritionists who say microwaved bacon is carcinogenic. Ernie will have a fit when she hears about our scandalous breakfast. Be sure and describe it to her in detail, okay?”

“Huh? Who? What?”

A radio informed them as they ate that the Soviet Union was threatening a boycott of the 1984 Olympics—that Iran was allowing the mother of one hostage to visit her son and that other parents were applying for permission—that the Hyde Amendment for federal abortion funding was being protested by both the ACLU and a bunch of church groups—that postage rates were about to be raised again, from 15 to 18 cents—and that “Love Stinks” had reached number 38 on the Pop Charts. It gave them ample things to discuss, since Adam had spent the last few days wondering what and where the Soviet Union and Iran were, and what the dickens the Supreme Court had to do with miscarriages.

They were still “discussing” all that when they arrived at the hospital.

            *

            Adam handed over the little breathing contraption Joe was supposed to play with. It was made of plastic—another new term he had learned—and housed three small blue balls in separate tubes. The idea of the machine was to make Joe breathe in, taking breaths deep enough to move the three balls to the tops of their respective chambers. “Joe, time for breathing exercises.”

“Don’t wanna,” Joe mumbled. “I want Pa, Adam. Why didn’t he come?”

“Joe, you know where we are. More important, you know when we are. I always thought I was a pretty progressive kind of fellow, but I’m having a hard enough time coping with all this. Do you really think Pa could?”

“Maybe not.” A sigh. “Is Bandit here?”

“No; he’s back in Nevada.” Adam pushed the breathing exerciser into Joe’s hands. “Come on. They told me you’ll get pneumonia if you don’t do this. Breathe.”

“It’s hot,” Joe complained, but he obediently sucked in a gulp of air and crossed his eyes, watching the three balls rise halfway to the tops of their chambers.

“Try again,” Adam commanded.

“No. Hurts. I’m sore all over, Adam.”

“All right.” Adam looked his brother in the eye. “Would you rather breathe into this thing or explain to me what you’ve been doing in this time and place for the last four years, where you got the money to do it, why you never saw fit to tell me about it, and always laughed like I was an idiot if I ever mentioned that old book about time travel?”

“I’ll breathe,” Joe said sullenly, and took another gulp of air.

“Mr. Cartwright,” Lisa called from the door, and both brothers turned to look. “Sorry—I mean, Mr. Adam Cartwright. You have a phone call. Since this room doesn’t have a phone, you can take it at the nurses’ station.”

Wondering who in the world would be calling him, Adam got up. “I’ll be right back,” he told Joe. “Lisa—can you stick around and make sure he does his breathing exercise?”

“Oh, even if I have to hog tie him, sir,” Lisa said politely, but Adam had no doubt she meant what she said. Three of the nurses had apparently taken Joe as their sole property—Lisa the day nurse, Cori the evening nurse, and Jenny who worked the “graveyard shift”—and all three hovered around Joe like a combination anxious mother hen and Venus on the half-shell, constantly finding excuses to undo his pajama top and check the dressing.

Adam picked up the telephone receiver and, resisting the impulse to shout into it, said “Hello?” the way other people did.

“Adam? It’s Carrie. I’m in San Francisco. I was wondering if you’d mind if I came to see you and Joe?”

He fought down the impulse to ask if Beau Darville was along—he really didn’t like that fellow—and simply said, “Sure, come ahead.”

“Oh, thanks, great. See you shortly.”

She arrived so soon after that Joe sweetly remarked she must have called from the downstairs lobby. “Where’s Bandit?” he asked eagerly.

“He didn’t come. He and Cletus have some new project they’re working on, and I didn’t want to be around it. I swear, Joe, they’re gonna get themselves killed one day.”

“Sure,” Joe said cheerfully. “Ain’t that what the Bandit always says? ‘Live fast, die young, leave a good-lookin’ corpse’?”

“Joe…” Adam muttered.

“Don’t worry—Carrie’s heard lots worse.”

“Honey, I’ve said lots worse,” Carrie laughed, and Adam stared at her, eyebrows raised.

“Hey, is it just me, or is the room hot?” Joe asked suddenly.

“I think the room’s hot,” Carrie said with certainty, and Adam, thinking it over, thought it wasn’t so much hot as stuffy. Carrie went over to the row of vents along the wall. “There’s no air blowing.” She adjusted the controls on the panel, but nothing happened. “Well, that’s the limit of my air conditioning knowledge,” she laughed merrily, and went out to the nurses’ station. A few minutes later she returned. “The air conditioning unit’s down. Facilities department is working on it but it’ll be at least eight hours before they get it fixed. Darn you tough, longsuffering cowboy types. Every other room on the floor’s already complained. They’d run out of fans by the time I spoke up.”

“Well, how about you fine folk go and find me one,” Joe sighed. “It’s hard enough to breathe even without the room being so darn stuffy.”

“I’ll go,” Carrie said cheerfully.

“Adam, why don’t you help her?” Joe said. “I’m going to take a nap.”

“After you breathe into this thing for me, once more,” Adam commanded.

On the way out they were stopped by Trapper’s bellowed, “Frog! Where are you off to when you only just got here?”

“Hey, Trapp!” She ran over to hug the doctor, who smiled in a peculiar fashion and patted her hair. “We’re going out to get a fan for Joe.”

“Yes, the nurses told me everyone’s working up a sweat. I wouldn’t know; I’m usually in motion so much I’m hot anyway. What do you think? He seemed in good spirits this morning.”

Adam and Carrie just looked at him. “Who?”

Trapper pointed to Joe’s door. “Who else?”

Carrie sighed. “It gets confusing when you never call people by name.”

Oddly discomfited, the doctor cleared his throat and looked at the floor. “Sorry. I meant, ah, Joe, of course.”

“He’s doing well,” Adam put in. “Are you sure I can’t take him home now? I’m sure Pa’s worried by now, and the fresh air would do as well as this environment any day.”

Trapper looked sternly at him. “Who’s the doctor?”

Adam sighed. “Never mind.”

“Do me a favor—take my car,” Trapper said, absent-mindedly handing Carrie a key. “You can top it off on the way back.”

“Will do, sir,” Carrie said with a mock salute. She leaned toward Adam as they walked out, and muttered, “He thinks I’m his secretary.”

“Then why’d you agree to do it?”

“Because he’s the nicest man in the world, and a good friend,” she replied simply. “Last time I was in town was another time when I’d broken up with Beau. I called Trapper up and told him, he came and picked me up and took me to dinner. Then took me to a music store and bought all kinds of tapes for me.”

“Tapes?”

“Like records. Oh, wait, you don’t know those either. Let me think. You know how the television shows movies and stuff. When somebody sings, you can store the sound onto a tape or a record and play it back later. So now you can go to a music store and buy all kinds of music. Opera, musical soundtracks, jazz, country and western, folk—all kinds of music.”

“What’s jazz?”

“Oh Lord, Adam, we don’t have all day here. I’ll play you some later. Anyhow, Trapper knows how to make a gal feel better when she’s low, so if he wants me to gas up his car, or if he wants to call me Frog, it’s okay by me.”

“He does call you Frog. I wonder why? He must know it’s not—”

“When he says it, it’s because I’m little and cute.” She grinned. “And I am little and cute, so I don’t mind. It’s when Beau calls me that that I get irked. And Joe calls me that because I get irked and he’s full of spit and vinegar.”

“Well, I’ll give him a little ‘necessary talk’ when we get back, and he won’t call you that anymore.” They got into the car. “Why were you named ‘Frog,’ anyway?”

Carrie blushed darkly and started the car. “We’ll go to K-Mart.”

“What’s K-Mart?”

“It’s a…whatchamacallit—it’s a general store. A mercantile. Whatever those places are where you buy whatever you need.”

The car coughed a few times and sputtered as they pulled out of the parking lot. “Doggone carburetor,” she muttered. “Tried to tell him to get fuel injection, but noooooo. Carbs are cheaper. And a Carter double-barrel, at that…might as well have bought a couple of straws and a wooden crate, it’d suck up about as much air.”

“How much do you know about cars?” he asked as they sped down the road, occasionally hesitating to cough.

“More than I ever wanted to. Beau made me help re-build that darn Trans-Am. He was a cheapskate and bought it with a standard 180 horsepower engine, and by the time we got done with it, it was 210 horsepower with a top speed of 175 miles an hour.”

“You’re saying it’s as powerful as 210 horses?”

“Yup.”

“Dear Lord.” And not another word did he say until they arrived at K-Mart.

The two hospitals he’d seen had seemed pretty busy to Adam, but they were all one color, and things were neatly tucked away, categorized, and labeled. Walking into K-Mart, he was assaulted by a million things he didn’t recognize, of all shapes, sizes and colors; people everywhere were rushing toward the flashing blue lights that intermittently popped up throughout the store. It was like a human stampede, and while he was determined to protect the tiny Carrie from the horde, she ended up guiding him through it to the relative safety of the household appliances section.

“Haven’t seen a mob like that since the last time a posse tried to lynch me,” Adam gasped. “What’s got everybody so riled up?”

“There’s a sale—” Carrie looked around—“over on Aisle 9. Automotive.”

“Does that mean stuff for cars?”

“Yeah—oh, Adam,” Carrie laughed. “You can’t buy a carburetor at K-Mart. But I know what you’re after—we’ll talk about that later. Come on, here’s the fans. Can you reach the big one on the top shelf?”

            *

            The blue light special was over by the time they ventured to the automotive section, but they did find what they were looking for—a book on automotive maintenance.

“You sure about this?” Carrie asked. “A carb replacement is not like changing a tire. We’re talking hours of hard work.”

“I’m used to hard work,” Adam replied. “And this book seems pretty clear about what to do and what tools to use. Besides, didn’t you say you’re an expert mechanic?”

“Not exactly, but hanging around Beau I did learn a lot.”

“Do I have to hear more about the great Beauregard Darville? I’m sure he walks on wat—”

“Hey, all I said was that he taught me a lot about cars.” She made a face. “And that love really does stink.”

“If he taught you about cars with as much accuracy as he taught you about love, I have no desire to do this mechanical work with your assistance. I’ll figure it out myself.”

“You probably could—but you need some specialized tools, too, and for those you’re going to have to depend on me. Listening to me gripe about Beau is a small price to pay for that. What I really want to know is, why do you want to do this?”

“Are you kidding? Trapper saved Joe’s life. Not only that, but he’s paying the hospital bill. How can I ever repay something like that? I can’t imagine the Ponderosa without Joe—I can’t imagine my father living on without Joe. We may not see eye to eye, but Trapper is saving my whole family. Least I can do for him is try to make his life a little easier.”

When they returned, Adam carrying the fan—and insisting on setting it up himself—Carrie pulled Trapper off to one side and nodded. “Well, your car’s topped off. He made me go to a self-service station, though. Said paying a dollar and a quarter per gallon was silly if we could do it ourselves and save a dime a gallon. So, here’s your change, and you saved a whole dollar, courtesy of your pal over there.”

“He’s somethin’ else,” Trapper chuckled softly, looking toward Adam, who was excitedly plugging in the fan and explaining to Joe how he and Carrie had fought off the other shoppers.

Carrie followed Trapper’s gaze. “Yeah,” she said. “Wish I knew what.”

“What on earth are you watching?” Adam asked, looking up at the television.

“Oh, somethin’ called ‘God’s Little Acre,” Joe replied offhandedly. “It’s about some weird farmer who thinks there’s gold on his land. He’s got a couple of good-lookin’ daughters, though.”

“Little…that reminds me.” Adam leaned closer to Joe and dropped his voice so even Joe had difficulty hearing him. “Why did you tell these people your name was ‘Lightning’ Joe?”

Joe rolled his eyes. “Come on, Adam. I was 17 the first time I came here. Nobody that old wants to be called ‘little,’ but it was like a reflex—when they asked my name, I said ‘Lit….’ From there I just thought real fast and told ’em it was ‘Lightning Joe.’ Nobody knew different and I had a great new name.”

Adam snorted. “Rapscallion. There’s a reason Pa wants you locked in your room til you’re 30.”

“Right now that doesn’t sound too bad, older brother. Whenever I’ve been here before I’ve been too busy havin’ fun to miss anybody, and I knew I wouldn’t be gone long enough for you to miss me. But now…well, I’m feeling kinda lost and lonely. I’m glad you’re here, Adam, but I feel bad leavin’ Pa with him not knowing what was going on.”

“Pa’s going to sleep until we get home, maybe even after. You know time flows at different speeds on each side of the portal,” Adam said lamely; it sounded crazy to him, even if Joe said it had always been the case before.

Joe shook his head and turned back to the television. “Just watch the movie. That albino kid is a pretty interesting character. Wish he played a bigger part. Something familiar about him.”

“So how long will you be in town, Carrie?” Trapper asked as Adam, like Joe, became absorbed in the movie.

“I dunno, Trapp…let’s go outside. I don’t want to bother the ‘boys.’ ” They went out to the hallway, where Carrie lifted troubled eyes to her landlord and mentor. “I’ve left Beau.”

“Hmmm. That’s a tune you’ve played before.”

“I know, I know—but I mean it this time. I think. Anyhow, can you put me up for a while? I’m a little strapped for cash. I have some stuff with me that I can sell if I have to, but I’d like to wait until I have to.”

“Well, there’s a problem,” Trapper said thoughtfully. “Our pal in there is in my spare room, and I’m not sure how he’d feel about your being there without a chaperone. You know about Victorian men.”

“Not really. Joe’s not too fussy. Why would Adam be?”

“Maybe because he and his brother are two different people. We’ve already had one large argument in a very short time.” Trapper thought for a minute, and then grinned. “Tell you what—come on anyway. It’ll be worth the argument just to see the look on his face.”

            *

            After the movie—and over Joe’s protestations that they had to stay and see The Lady in Cement (“I’m tellin’ ya Adam, there’s a guy in it who looks just like Hoss”), Carrie and Adam went to Trapper’s office and found him getting ready to leave. “I think I’ll take you two out to dinner,” he announced. “Frog, get your stuff out of the Jeep.” He turned to Adam as Carrie went for her “stuff.” “She’ll be staying at my house for the next few days.” He looked intently at Adam. “Do you mind?”

The response was surprising. “Of course not—she’ll take my room. I can sleep on the sofa.”

“Not necessary. There’s a little attic on the third floor with a spare bed. She can sleep there.”

“I’ll take the attic, then.”

“You wouldn’t fit on that bed. Even your brother wouldn’t. It’s a child’s bed, about five and a half feet long. She can fit on it; you can’t. And quit being so determined to be a gentleman. Women nowadays are not impressed by it; in fact, some of them don’t even like it.”

Stung, Adam got quiet very fast, and Carrie returned a moment later with a backpack, a suitcase, and a guitar. Adam took them and put them in the trunk, then joined them in the car.

Dinner was excellent, and Trapper was in a fine humor, telling a joke Adam barely understood about a do-it-yourself splenectomy, when Carrie surprised them both. “So what were you two arguing about this morning?”

The two men exchanged glances for a moment; then Adam smiled and reached for his wineglass. “I preferred to think of it as a spirited debate.”

“So that’s how you are when you’re spirited,” Trapper commented with a smile of his own, turning back to Carrie. “We were discussing the abortion-capital punishment issue.”

“Oh, that.” She sighed. “You guys pick some depressing topics of discussion.”

Adam cocked an eyebrow at her. “I thought women could vote now. Aren’t these topics you need to know about, with all the wrangling going on over both?”

“I know about them. I just think they’re depressing, so I don’t think much about them. I already know my own beliefs, anyway. Where do you two come down?”

The two exchanged another glance. Then Trapper grinned. “He thinks capital punishment is fine and dandy, and abortion isn’t. I told him it was the classic fisherman’s mentality—throw the little fish back until they get bigger.”

“And I simply said I’d prefer not to execute someone unless he actually committed a capital crime,” Adam replied with dignity. “John Stuart Mill said the best way to show respect for the right to life is to adopt a rule that ‘he who violates that right in another, forfeits it for himself,’ and that’s what I believe.”

“So you don’t think a woman has the right to choose when it’s her own body?” Carrie asked.

“I think if it’s your finger or your kidney, then it’s part of your own body and if you want to cut it off, that’s your choice. If it’s not part of your own body but a separate life with its own soul and its own destiny, then it’s not part of your body. It’s just temporarily inhabiting your body. Give it nine months, and it’ll leave. I also believe that the best time for a woman to choose what to do with her body is before she gives herself to any man who comes along. And as for doctors, I always heard that the first part of the Hippocratic Oath was to do no harm. You tell me how forcing a woman to have a miscarriage is not harmful.”

“Typical judgmental Victorian,” Trapper chuckled, and Carrie, blushing, downed her entire wine glass, and reached for the bottle just as Trapper’s pager went off.

“Joe?” Adam asked urgently.

Trapper ignored him and bolted from the table to a payphone nearby.

            *

            It wasn’t Joe, Trapper said, but a school bus loaded with kids returning from a field trip had overturned and the hospital was recalling most of its people. Adam jumped up, ready to return as well—“I can help unload the ambulances.”

“No, you can’t,” Trapper replied, tossing his wallet and house key on the table. “I appreciate the offer, but for this I need trained medical personnel, not well-meaning amateurs. Carrie, give them the card for our dinner—and I hope you remember the way to my house. You can drive home; I’ve got a cab waiting for me already.”

Carrie was in the middle of pouring herself the last of the bottle, and did not reply; Trapper didn’t wait.

Adam cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Miss Carrie, but you might want to go easy on that if you’re going to be driving.”

“He said we’d get along great on a desert island,” she muttered, chugging the wine.

“Huh?”

“Beau. Four years ago. He wasn’t just any old guy that came along, Mister Know-it-all.”

“I don’t know what you…oh. I wasn’t talking about you. I was talking about women who were in a family way.”

“He rescued me from an idiot sheriff’s son.” She picked up Trapper’s half-full glass and drained it. “I fell for him the minute he pulled up by the side of the road. I always wanted to be rescued, since I was a little girl. He was romantic, and funny, and charming, and he drove like a bat outta hell. And he named me Frog right after we met ’cause he said he wanted to jump me.”

“Um, please Miss Carrie, you need to stay sober if you’re going to drive us home. And you really shouldn’t be telling me—”

“Quit callin’ me Miss Carrie! It sounds like abortions, and you don’t like that, remember? And I’ll tellya something else: we were gonna get married! He said so!”

Adam reached over and took the glass from her. She slapped his hand, but he finally got it—only to find it nearly empty—and by then she had grabbed his glass. “Girls aren’t as dumb as you think, Mr. Stick-in-the-Mud. I can get drunk just as well as you can.”

“Oh, that’s a great way to prove your intelligence,” Adam retorted. “I’m smart enough not to get drunk right now. I don’t want you drunk either. And if you can get drunk from two-thirds of a bottle of wine that’s only thirteen percent alcohol, you have no business drinking.” He called over the waiter and handed him the credit card. He had watched Trapper pay this way a couple of times, but he still felt a little lost when he was given the ticket to sign. Should he use his name, or Trapper’s? Come to think of it, what was Trapper’s real name again? Right, it was on the card: John T. McIntyre. John. A strong, simple name. Maybe “T” was for Trapper. Never mind—he signed it so messily as to make it practically illegible, and gave it back to the waiter.

“Doctors and their handwriting,” the waiter mumbled as he walked away. “No wonder nobody trusts them.”

“Carrie, let’s go home.”

“Ain’t finished my dinner, cowboy. You oughtta be able to tell that.”

He stood, grabbed her by one arm, and snapped, “If you wanted it, you should’ve been eating, not drinking. Come on.”

“I can drink just as much as a man any day,” Carrie announced, bumping into a waiter. Adam towed her outside.

“I don’t think you should drive,” he announced. “Do taxicabs take credit cards?”

“I dunno. Do androids dream of electric sheep? Don’t be a dummy. You drive.”

“I don’t know how!”

“You’ve been watching us do it for a whole week.”

“It’s been six days, and four days were spent not leaving the hospital, Carrie. I don’t know how to drive.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter. You c’n learn. Y’oughtta see some of the morons on the road. They all learned to drive, however badly. You could be just another moron. C’mon, big strong macho man. Take me home ’n’ then you can ravish me like all the other fellas ’cause I’m such a wanton strumpet.”

“I’ll take you home, at least,” Adam snapped, opening the car door and practically pushing her in the passenger side. His hands were shaking at the prospect of driving this car, and he had no idea whether it was fear or excitement or just plain anger at this maddening woman.

Trapper had explained the basics of driving already, just as he’d explained the toaster and microwave in the house. And Carrie was right: Adam had watched everything everyone did, whether driving, getting food in the cafeteria, using vending machines, and even using toilets, since he’d been there. He had certainly paid special attention to the people driving. He could do it. All he had to do was keep the car in its lane, keep the speed slower than the signs indicated, and watch the traffic lights. Green meant go, red meant stop, yellow meant speed up.

            *

            “License and registration, sir,” said the police officer. He was on a motorcycle—something Adam had only seen a couple of times before—and it was even more interesting than a car. But why had he stopped them, and what did the officer mean? Ah—he remembered registrations. Trapper had explained to him about license plates and how each car was registered and had a plate…he pulled the registration from the glove compartment and handed it over.

“I still need your license, sir.”

Adam looked at him in confusion. “Isn’t it on the plate on the back of the car?” Trapper hadn’t said anything about other licenses.

“Sir, bein’ a wise guy is not the way to get on my good side.”

“Give him the wallet,” Carrie muttered. Hastily, Adam complied, and the policeman made a great show of removing a plastic card and throwing the rest of the wallet back to Adam, mumbling, “I hope that wasn’t a bribery attempt.”

“I never bribed anybody in my life!” Adam replied indignantly.

The officer shined the flashlight on the card, and then stuck it in Adam’s face. “A doctor, huh. Nice rug. And you do look younger without the beard. So where were you goin’ in such a hurry that you had to run a red light to get there?”

“The light was yellow!”

“Maybe when you started that Dale Earnhardt run it was, but this ain’t Bristol and you ain’t runnin’ for the Winston Cup. Now sir, if you had a good reason for pullin’ that silly stunt, I’ll let you off with just a warning, but get smart with me and you’ll find out doctors can end up in jail too.”

Carrie groaned loudly. “I’m gonna be sick…”

“She’s sick,” Adam repeated as Carrie opened her door and threw up on the ground beside the car. Then something Trapper had said came back to him. “She needs a, um, splenectomy.”

“Okay, you’re a doctor with a sick patient. Where ya going? Hospital’s in the other direction.”

“Home. I have to get her to the house—”

“I can’t afford the hospital,” Carrie groaned. “It’s a do-it-yourself splenectomy.”

“Medical costs are sky-high and rising every year. More and more people are relying on home surgery,” Adam said. “Surely you’ve heard about it.”

“Of course I have. Look, don’t run any more red lights, okay? Here’s your stuff—you can go.”

            *

            Carrie threw up twice more on the way home, but Adam was able to get the car stopped so she could do it outside. “Never could hold my likker,” she muttered the last time—just before they reached the house. She was shaking all over. Then she passed out. Carefully Adam deposited her into the car, shut the door, and pushed the button to open the garage door. Inside, he pulled her out of the car, slung her over one shoulder—she weighed next to nothing—and climbed the stairs to the attic.

He’d been thinking the same thing ever since the policeman had left them: he thought I was Trapper. Why? We don’t look anything alike…do we?

            The attic was so dusty he had a sneezing fit when he opened the door. Apparently the near-surgical cleanliness of the rest of the house was not observed in this forgotten little room. Well, she couldn’t sleep up here. He returned to the room that had been his and put her on the bed, removing her shoes and pulling the spread over her. Crazy girl. He had a feeling he’d known her sometime before; he just couldn’t remember when. Or maybe she reminded him of all the other poor dumb girls he’d met, the ones who’d chosen the wrong fellow to become enamored of. She didn’t really believe the Bandit intended to marry her, did she? It was burned into his own brain, one of the first things Beau Darville had said: “The Bandit does not limit his attentions that way.” The meaning was pretty darn clear to him.

Still, it was a shame—she was a smart girl most of the time, funny, with a great way of cutting through the frills and getting to the point. Cute, too. He sighed, and caught a quick view of himself in the mirror as he turned. Pausing, he took a second look. “I don’t look a thing like John McIntyre.” He turned out the light, then tiredly descended the stairs and sacked out on the couch.

           *

            By the time Carrie staggered down the stairs, clutching her head, at eight a.m., Adam was buried in the other purchase they had made at K-Mart the day before: Haynes Repair Manual, Dodge Mirada. “I made plenty of coffee,” he said without looking at her. She flopped on the chair opposite him and sighed.

“I’ve never had the ability—or the blessing—most people have to forget the stupid things they do when they’re drunk,” she began in a voice as small as she was. “I was a jackass last night. I know it through and through, and I’m sorry.”

“I was wondering if you could help me understand this carburetion process,” he said. “I hate to admit I’m out of my depth, but this whole four-stroke internal combustion engine is a little beyond me. Very different from steam.”

“Liar,” she replied with a weak smile. “Steam is a four-stroke process too; it’s just that the steps are different. With steam it’s admission, expansion, exhaust, compression. With Trapper’s car it’s intake, compression, ignition, exhaust. That’s all. Suck, squeeze, bang, blow.”

“What?”

“You want a simple way to remember—that’s it. Suck—intake. The piston’s close to the top of the chamber, the intake opens, and the exhaust closes; a mixture of air and gas comes into the chamber, a vacuum’s created. Squeeze—compression. The intake closes, the piston keeps going up, squeezing the air and fuel mixture together so hard that it ignites—bang. That pushes the piston down hard, and that’s where the power comes from. Then all the used-up air and fuel blows out through the exhaust valve and the process starts over again. How mean and nasty was I last night, exactly?”

“Not so bad.” He grinned. “You helped me avoid that ticket, whatever it would have meant. Thank you. And thanks for the mnemonic, as well.”

“Beau never intended to marry me, did he?”

“We should not be discussing that, Carrie. I met Beau a week ago. You’ve known him for four years. You’d know him better than I would.”

“I can’t figure it out. I really thought he…what’s wrong with me, Adam? I know I’m not beautiful, but everybody thinks I’m cute. Are my boobs not big enough?”

He listened and took it all in…and he sucked back a reply and squeezed his lips shut, until he slapped the book down on the coffee table with a bang, and blew. “Carrie, why should he marry you? From the story you told me, you gave him what he wanted within a couple of hours of meeting him, and have never stopped. You put up with his flings with other women, and every time he comes back there you are waiting to give him what he wants without more than a feeble attempt to make him feel guilty. Guilty for what? You’re no more or less special than any of the other women he’s been with.”

She stared at him, open-mouthed. “That’s the way it is here. We had the sexual revolution nearly twenty years ago. Women don’t have to get married anymore.”

“Revolution or no, you said you want to get married. If that’s not true, if you’re really a modern woman, then you have nothing to complain about. But if you do want to get married, you’re going about it all wrong. If you want to get married, you either find a man who believes the same way you do, or you keep yourself for a fellow who’s willing to marry you in order to have you.”

Carrie laughed bitterly. “It doesn’t work that way. If you don’t give a fellow what he wants, he’ll get it somewhere else, and then you’re home alone all the time.”

“If that’s all the fellow wants from you, he’s not worth having, and you’re better off home alone,” Adam snapped. “Seems to me that nowadays women can vote, can be in any profession they want, can be with as many men as they want whether they marry or not, can get rid of a baby if it’s an inconvenience—you have all the recognition that women in my time used to fight for, but you’re not a bit happier. Women now seem to spend all their time wondering what’s wrong with them and then attempting to fix it by buying more stuff. Showy clothes, makeup, all kinds of hair nonsense. Men might notice that, but that’s not what they care about. You and I must have watched fifty television programs in that hospital in Nevada, but the only one you liked was the one about that farmer and his wife. Little House on the Prairie. Everybody loves that show, even Trapper—but it was set sometime around my time. You know, when women were still—what is it they say? Slaves to men? Why do you like that show so much, if you don’t want a life like that?”

“I just want to mean something to somebody,” Carrie whispered.

“When a woman has to be wooed and fought for and won over by hard work, she does mean something. When she dangles herself out the window and says ‘come get it,’ the men do come and get it. Of course. Men are not stupid either, Carrie. They always did and always will take anything women offer, as long as it’s free. But the women like that don’t mean anything to them. I’ve been with that sort of woman myself, Carrie, and I can’t even recall their names. The women who mattered were the ones who made me work for their attention.” He chuckled. “I ended up not being able to keep them, either. But I remembered them—because they mattered.”

Carrie looked down. “I don’t matter to Beau. But I don’t think anything else matters much to him either. You know, I thought Joe was hurt worse than he let on when he fell. His whole midsection went into the handlebars; it must’ve hurt like hell. But Beau laughed at him and Joe laughed right along with him. I should have said something. Beau didn’t care—and Joe was his friend. I’m sorry if talking like this embarrassed you, Adam. But it helped me. Thanks.”

She got up and went to the telephone. A few minutes later she was back, smiling. “I’ve got a bay reserved at Benson’s, and Larry just happens to have an Edelbrock four-barrel carburetor that he’ll let me have for a song. Come on, let’s go.”

            *

            Trapper had been up all night, going from one case directly to another. It was early morning before the last of the school bus victims was comfortable, and there was no point in going home. He took a two-hour nap in the doctors’ lounge before starting his rounds. Between business, in Trapper’s case, and dozing, in Joe’s case, nobody really noticed Adam’s absence until almost three in the afternoon—but repeated calls to Trapper’s house yielded no results.

By the time Cori the evening nurse clocked in, Joe was nearly frantic, and absolutely refusing to breathe into his machine for anybody. Well, another good way to prevent post-op pneumonia was to get the patient up and walking around, something no one had attempted yet, so she dared the unthinkable and suggested to Joe that they search the hospital for Adam and Carrie.

It was about seven p.m., on Joe’s third determined trip down the hall with one arm around Cori’s shoulders and his other hand gripping his IV “tree” for dear life, when Adam and Carrie stepped off the elevator, covered with black grease, and laughing like mad.

“Where the dickens have you two been?” Joe demanded, and burst into a coughing fit that nearly put him on the floor. Fortunately, Cori was one of the strong types, and she all but dragged him back to his room, an appropriately chastened Adam and Carrie following close behind.

Cori gave the two truants a righteously angry glare as she tucked Joe back into bed, and made a big show of punching up his pillows, staring at the shirkers the entire time. Then she settled her charge back and with a last proprietary pat of his hand, she stamped out.

“I’m gonna see if I can find a soap strong enough to get some of this gunk off,” Carrie announced, and followed Cori.

“We’ve been working on Trapper’s car,” Adam explained. “It hasn’t been running right—”

“Carb problem, I know,” Joe said. “It was like that last time I was here.”

“When was that?” Adam asked.

“You mean before I got hurt? About three months ago, 1865 time. Five weeks ago, 1980 time.” Joe turned hopeful eyes on his brother. “Trapp says I have to be here another week, Adam. Any chance you could bring Pa in for a visit? I miss him….”

“Absolutely not,” Adam replied. “Joe, in the very short time I’ve been here, I’ve been more scared, more times, than I ever was when we were back at home. Even the two times I was on the gallows with a rope around my neck I wasn’t as scared as I’ve been here. Cars that go 140 miles in an hour, roads with six lanes of solid traffic…our father is a strong man, Joe, but he shouldn’t be asked to deal with the severity of your injuries AND the unholy terror of riding in a helicopter.”

“You’re right.” He sighed noisily, and winced when it hurt. “Well, it’ll teach me to go getting hurt when I’m here.”

“That’s another whole issue, Joe. Do you think you should keep coming here? I got a long lecture from your friendly doctor about how if you die in this time period—or get injuries, or a disease, and go back to our time period and die as a result, it could change history. I have no idea what part any of us could play in history, but it would look pretty strange, wouldn’t it? ‘Here lies Joe Cartwright, born 1842, died 1980 in a car wreck’?”

“I’ll be more careful.”

“And that brings up another subject. For four years you’ve been coming here and having a high old time. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Aw, Adam, I wanted to! I swear I wanted to tell you so bad sometimes the wanting was like a physical pain. But I couldn’t.”

“Why? Just because I said time travel was possible?”

“Do you really have that low of an opinion of me, Adam?”

“All I know is that’s what you told your friends. Tell me a different story.”

“Adam…” Joe looked up, pleadingly. “I could stay here and have fun, but then I would go right home again and it didn’t matter to me that the Ponderosa doesn’t have electricity or anything but a hand pump for plumbing. I knew it would matter to you, with that brain of yours. I didn’t tell you because I was afraid that once you saw this place, you’d never want to go home.”

“Joe, do you really think that little of me? This place has engineering marvels, sure. I’d love to get a close look at that Golden Gate Bridge, at a minimum. I’d love to see that space shuttle, the Columbia, before it goes up next year. I spent the whole day working under a car with a pretty girl and I had a great time. This is a great place to visit…but I couldn’t live here.”

“You couldn’t?”

Adam shook his head. “Meals cooked in a couple of minutes with a microwave oven; cars that go 140 miles an hour…people live too fast here. When we pulled out of the garage yesterday morning, I asked Trapper what kind of flowers he had, and he didn’t even know he had flowers. He pays some guy to take care of his yard and never looks at it. Joe, people here stay clean and comfortable, but they’re no happier than we were. Women have equal rights, but they’ve lost their sense of self.  This century has seen two world wars, and now there’s a thirty-year-old standoff between our country and some conglomeration of Russian countries because they’re both afraid the other side will annihilate them. And they might do it, too, with the weapons they’ve developed.”

Unnoticed, Carrie came back in as Adam sighed.

“No, Joe, I could never live my life in this place. Right now I feel like a child with a new toy, but things haven’t stopped since I got here. I’d give a lot just to go home and breathe some clean air.”

Carrie stepped back out to the hall again just as Trapper approached. “How’s my star patient, and what made you deign to visit?” he asked with a grin.

“He seems fine,” she replied, smiling up at him. “Sorry we were out a while, but we’ve been working on your car. Think you could drive mine for a while? There’s some more work you need done.”

“Hey, what are you up to? I didn’t say anything about working on my car.”

“No, but it needed it, Trapp. It wasn’t pulling in any air. Adam and I worked on it with a couple of guys from Benson’s today and it’s a little better now, but we’ll have it smooth as whipped cream if you’ll give us a few more days.”

“Like whipped cream, eh?” He waggled his eyebrows—as she’d known he would. “Well, I guess I can’t turn down a simile like that. Sure, keep the car. And how about Mr. Victorian; how’s he doing?”

“Oh, he’s…as big a stick-in-the-mud as Beau said he is, but you know, Trapp, I’m starting to think that if the things he believes are really Victorian, maybe that’s what I am at heart, and I wonder what the hell I’ve been doing with myself these last few years.”

“Let’s see…you’re a Victorian born about fifty years after the death of Victoria, is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t know. I just know that we had a long talk this morning, and all of a sudden a lot of what he said started making sense.” She gave him a pale attempt at a smile. “Wish I’d figured that out ten years ago, when I could’ve done something about it.”

“You know better than that, Frog,” he said gently. “If you want to change, it doesn’t matter how old you are. I’ll be sixty in a couple of months and I’m still changing.”

She just looked at him for a minute. “If you call me ‘Carrie,’ I might believe you.”

“Can’t do that,” he replied with a sad shake of his head. “But it’s still true.”

He went in to check on his patient then, and she sat down on a chair in the hallway and sighed.

The gray-haired janitor was mopping the floor nearby, and he looked up at her suddenly and grinned. Funny, for all the gray mop of curly hair, he didn’t look at all old if you really looked at him—in fact, in some strange way he resembled Joe Cartwright.

“You look like you know a wonderful secret,” she said.

“I know lots of wonderful secrets, Miss,” he replied with a twinkle in his eye. “Makes it hard sometimes to just keep quiet and worry about my mop.”

“Don’t worry about that with me,” Carrie said. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Jonathan.” He wrung out the mop. “Jonathan Smith. What’s yours, Miss?”

“Carrie Evans. What would you say, Mr. Smith, if I were to tell you that after four years, I suddenly realized, like a lightning bolt out of the blue, that the man I thought I loved was a liar and a cheat?”

“I’d say lightning is very illuminating…Carrie. Keep looking at the light, and there’s no telling what else you’ll discover.”

            *

            The next day Adam and Carrie were back at Benson’s Garage working like mad on Trapper’s car when the phone rang. It was Trapper, calling for Adam. All he said was “You’d better get down here.”

They borrowed a car from Larry, as the Mirada was lying in pieces, and rushed to the hospital. Joe was flushed and his eyes dull. He had thrown his up his breakfast and refused his lunch. Now his temperature was up to 99.8. “I had a couple of blood tests done, and his white cell count is way up,” Trapper told Adam.

“What does that mean?” Adam suddenly had the uncomfortable feeling that instead of learning how cars worked, he should have spent the entire time he’d been there stealing and reading twentieth century medical texts.

“It could mean a couple of different things. It could be an infection from the original surgery I did, but I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s more likely to be his appendix. Watch this.”

He pressed down on Joe’s lower abdomen. Joe whimpered—but it was when Trapper let go that he howled.

“Dead giveaway,” Trapper murmured.

“But you’ve already cut him open in two different places,” Adam said. “Are you saying you’re going to open him up again?”

“If his appendix is as badly inflamed as I think it is I’m going to have to…” and then he put his bearded chin in his hand and thought for a moment. “I’d like to do a laparoscopy just to confirm, and if that’s what it is, then, yes, but it would be a very small incision, down low.” He turned back to Joe. “Will you consent?”

“Why don’t you just chop off my head and get the whole thing over with?” Joe asked with a pained smile. “Yeah, go ahead and take another piece out of me. I’ll never miss it.”

As they prepped him for surgery, Adam went out to the hall and sat down, head in his hands. A gray-haired janitor had emerged from one room, replacing his push-broom in his cart, and started to walk by Adam—then he stopped suddenly and looked down. “Things are never as bad as you think they are,” he said with a smile.

“Oh yeah,” Adam muttered with barely a glance at the fellow. “Remind me of that when I’m telling my Pa that my kid brother died while I was working on a car a century in the…never mind.”

“Your thinking is always negative,” the janitor said. “Your brother’s not going to die.”

“So did they give you a medical degree at janitor school along with your mop?” Adam retorted with some spite.

“No sir, but it wouldn’t matter if they had—you don’t even trust the doctor. Trapper John McIntyre is a great surgeon. This hospital’s lucky to have him. He really cares about what he does. And he especially cares about your brother and you.”

Adam looked up and frowned, and unbidden, the janitor sat down next to him. “Your problem is that you have no faith. Not in the doctor, and not in God. You like to be a fellow who’s in charge, and you can’t take control of this situation. It’s completely out of your hands. So now you have a great opportunity to learn to trust.”

“Well,” Carrie observed, sitting down on Adam’s other side, “he does have you pegged, Adam, so you might as well listen.”

“That was all I had to say,” the janitor shrugged, smiling.

“Just trust the doctor and God,” Adam said softly. “Even though the doctor’s hiding something from me, and even though I’ve got nothing to prove God cares about this situation.”

“We all hide things from each other,” replied the janitor. “Sometimes it’s best, too. Would you really want your brother to know some of the things you learned about his mother?”

“What? How did…” he just stared, then, and the janitor shrugged.

“We’re all time travelers, Mr. Cartwright. Most people do it at the rate of one second per second, but for some people, sometimes, things are different. God moves in mysterious ways.”

“Well, I don’t understand those ways.”

The janitor rose to his feet. “If you did, they wouldn’t be mysterious, would they? Your brother’s going to be fine, and you’re both going to go home all right.”

“How did he…” Adam turned to Carrie as the janitor pushed his cart around a corner and disappeared from view.

“I don’t know, but you should have heard what he told me last night,” Carrie shrugged. “He actually made me see some things I’d known before, but never thought about. So maybe he’s one of God’s mysterious ways.”

“He’s one mystery I’m going to solve.” Adam balled up his fists and charged around the corner, but there was no sign of his adversary. He returned to the nurses’ station. “Where’s that janitor?” he asked Lisa.

“What janitor?”

“His name’s Jonathan Smith,” Carrie supplied. “He told me so.”

Lisa looked at them, open-mouthed. “We don’t have any male janitors on this floor, and yesterday when I helped Arnie QC the payroll, there was nobody named Jonathan Smith working here.”

            *

            Wherever the guy came from and wherever he went, Adam had to admit the fellow was right. The day after Little Joe—or as he preferred in this century, Lightin’ Joe—had his surgery, he was so much better Adam was tempted to just take him home. Joe, however, urged Adam to go back and finish the job on Trapper’s car. “You owe him now more than ever, older brother,” he reminded him with a grin that night. “Besides, the nurses here take excellent care of me.” And Jenny, who was carefully inspecting the new stitches, just smiled, assuring him that shortly the hair “down there” would grow back to cover that whole area, and no one would ever know he’d been cut open. As for the other two incisions, there would be a little scarring, but not enough to matter, she emphasized with a knowing nod.

They went back to work on the car then with renewed vigor, and Carrie suggested another—and somewhat unexpected—method of making the car run better. Adam was all for it until Larry’s pal Fireshot Jimmy, the welder, became involved.

“I really don’t know about this, Carrie,” he said in stricken tones, looking at the cut-out section of the car’s hood. “I’m not sure Trapper’ll go for it.”

“This is not about Trapper,” Carrie said grimly. “This is about Dodge. That company built a crappy car. We are righting a wrong here. When we’re done with this car, it’ll run circles around any other Dodge Mirada ever built, because we’re going to do the job they should’ve done to start with. Do you know Richard Petty turned down the chance to race this car even though Iaccoca begged him to? You know why? Because it was crap. We are going to build a car that will make Richard Petty sorry he walked away. We’re going to build a car that matters.”

Something about that rant sounded familiar, and Adam grabbed her by the arms. “Carrie, it’s not about the car, either. And you already matter. To…a lot of people.”

“Huh.” She stalked away.

Three days before Joe was supposed to be released, Carrie and Adam, both tired beyond belief, brought the car back to the hospital and parked behind the Titanic. Adam couldn’t help wondering whether Trapper would be pleased or dismayed at the job they and Larry and his other two part-time employee-enthusiasts had done, but there was at least no question now of whether the car would have a problem keeping up on the highway. They left it in the parking lot and put the key in Trapper’s office, then Carrie went to take a nap on the waiting room couch while Adam paid Joe a visit.

“Problem is, I’m not sure he’ll even recognize the car,” he chuckled after describing all that had been done. “I barely recognize it myself.”

“You didn’t repaint it, did you?”

“No; there’s only one external change, but it’s a pretty big one.”

“Well, look, one thing I’ve figured out about Trapper is he’s a very careful, logical kind of guy. There are people here who get attached to their cars the same way we get attached to our horses, but he’s not one of them. If it improves the car’s efficiency, I’m sure he’ll be happy. Now settle in—there’s a great movie on about a teenage werewolf.”

As things happened, Trapper had already gone home for the night, and when he drove in—still using Carrie’s Jeep—the next morning, he parked in his usual spot in front of the Titanic and never saw his car. That night, the last before Joe was supposed to be released, Adam decided to stay again and watch the late movie with him. The night nurse, Jenny, had been pretty lenient—she even came in and watched movies with Joe when she could—and she tolerated Adam’s company well enough (unlike Cori the evening nurse, who still blamed Adam for Joe’s worry-fit the day Adam and Carrie had shown up late). Among the channels the hospital received was WTBS, a little no-count satellite station from Georgia—“Beau’s home state,” Carrie muttered distractedly—that showed a lot of old movies and television shows. Adam and Joe were comfortably settling in to watch the late-night offering, an old Randolph Scott piece called “Ride Lonesome.” Adam and Joe particularly liked Westerns, although not for the expected reason that they brought memories of home. They usually laughed all the way through them, pointing out times when a character shot more bullets than his gun could hold, or when a movie set in the 1860s showed weaponry that was too modern for them to recognize. In short: all the inaccuracies made Westerns as funny as comedies.

True to form, they were laughing within ten minutes of the movie’s opening as one character called Boone lamented that the westbound stage was coming in from Santa Cruz. That one had both men in stitches for reasons that neither Carrie nor Jenny could fathom, until Trapper, who had just come in to announce that he was going home—and in his own car—pointed out that Santa Cruz was on the coast, so the westbound stage would drop into the ocean. “Unless it swung up a little and went to Table Rock,” he concluded.

“Why would a stagecoach go to Table Rock?” Joe giggled. “There’s nothin’ there!”

Adam looked almost apologetic. “It’s a rock in an ocean of rocks. Or at least it was when we were last there. There’s not even any good roads or trails nearby.”

“How is it you two know so much about Westerns, anyway?” Jenny asked.

“They’re film critics,” Trapper cut in. “They’ve probably been to every location out there, right fellas?”

“Of course,” Adam agreed graciously.

The phone out at the nurse’s station rang, and Jenny jumped to get it. A few minutes she was back. “Joe, I told the man it was too late to call, but he won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. Will you talk to him?”

“Okay,” Joe said, looking confused, and he put on his robe—a grave disappointment to most of the nurses, who found themselves for a change enjoying the drafty hospital gowns—and went out to the phone.

“Hey, Lightnin’ Joe—are you all better yet?”

Joe grinned involuntarily. “Hey, Bandit, how are you?”

“Broke as usual, but hopin’ for better. Got a minute for a sad story?”

“Always, good buddy. C’mon back,” he chuckled.

“Okay…there’s this guy in New York City. He’s trying to get a game show on the air and just pitched it today. The big shots like it and they say, go ahead, start taping. And just like that, one of the shortest turnaround times ever, he’s going to start the thing on Monday. Problem is, he’s got lots of contestants but no prizes to hand out. The big shots like handing out supplies of Rice-a-Roni, you know, the San Francisco Treat. Or sometimes Ghirardelli chocolates. No matter, they’re both owned by Golden Grain, so if you play your cards right you can get ’em from the same warehouse.”

“Whoa, whoa, Bandit, do I detect a truck in this story?”

“Let me finish, then say no. So this guy calls me up because he’s broke and can’t afford to fly the stuff out there, and meanwhile, I owe him some money.”

“How much?”

“Fifteen grand. It was a heck of a poker game, Joe. Anyhow, he’s got my marker and I’ve got no cash. Now, if he paid a regular trucking line to haul this stuff, it’d be an easy 28, 29 grand—we’re talking 2900 miles after all, with a full load. He can get me to do it for what I owe him and another ten, so he’s callin’ in my marker.”

“Sounds good for you, though.”

“Yeah, except that he needs it unloaded and in his warehouse in New York City in—let me check my watch—57 hours.”

“So?”

“So in case you ain’t noticed this country still has a nation-wide double-nickel speed limit. At that rate it’s a 54-hour drive from Gay Bay to the Big Apple, even if I could maintain that rate through Des Moines, and around Chicago, and through Gary, Indiana, and Toledo, and all those other little local puddles, through daytime and dark time with barely a pause at the choke’n’puke for cup of mud!”

“Well, I reckon you’re gonna have to go a little faster than 55, then,” Joe said reluctantly, seeing the trap begin to close.

“Aha, therein lies the rub, as yer high-falootin’ brother would say. I need a chase car. Bad. And seein’ as how me and Carrie broke up on account a’ you, I thought you might be willin’ to help me out.”

“I thought you and Carrie broke up because of that blonde in Cheyenne.”

“Aw, c’mon, Joe, she knows that didn’t mean nothin’. She was mad on account of I let you ride my bike and you got hurt, and now she’s left me and last time I talked to her she said she wouldn’t have me back if I was the Sheik of Araby and had the jewels to prove it.”

Joe sighed. He’d always had a hard time turning the Bandit down, even when he didn’t pull the sad puppy-eyes routine.

“C’mon, Joe, you know it’ll be even more fun than when we brought them wolverines down from Canada.”

“I can’t go the whole way, Beau.”

“You don’t have to. Just as far as Salt Lake City would work. Cletus is meeting me there and he’ll chase the rest of the way. Will ya help?”

“When and where should I meet you?” he asked.

“How about downstairs in fifteen minutes?”

“Wow,” Joe said weakly. “No time like the present, huh. I’ll be there.”

He hung up and went back to his room, where Adam and Trapper were now leaning forward, counting shots as Randolph Scott and friends raced away from the pursuing Mescalero.

Jenny followed him back in, apparently thinking he was going to settle back into his bed. “I think that fellow in the green shirt looks like you.”

“Who, me?” Adam said.

“No—like Dr. McIntyre. A little younger of course.”

“And a lot lighter,” Trapper sighed. “And with a lot more hair on top of his head and a lot less on his chin. Sure, we’d be identical, except for that.”

“Hah,” Adam snorted. “Some police guy a few nights ago thought you were me, Trapper. Or I was you. One or the other.”

“What were you doing with the police?”

“Oh…nothing.”

“I’m gonna stretch my legs a little,” Joe announced.

“Want me to come along?” Adam asked, sitting up.

“Nah, I’ll be back in a little while…just got a cramp in my calf.”

He headed back out to the hall, with Jenny in pursuit, but Trapper stopped him at the door. “Don’t go far and don’t go fast. Just because you’re not on an IV now doesn’t mean you’re well. Remember, you’ve got three cuts in your belly. You’ll get an information sheet in the morning before I send you home, but seriously—you take it easy. No driving, no horseback riding, for at least two weeks. And no sex.”

“Got it, Doc,” Joe said with a grin, and waved.

“No s….” Adam gulped. “Did that mean what I think it meant?”

“Probably,” Trapper said, unperturbed. “Get over it, Grandpa.”

“Grandpa?” Adam stared at him.

Trapper rolled his eyes. “A figure of speech. Nothing more.”

“You’re too old to be his grandfather, anyway,” Carrie said sleepily. “When are we going back to the house?”

“The movie’s only halfway over,” Adam protested. “And Joe’ll be back any minute. Besides, I want to find out if they get that kid to Santa Cruz. I used to have a friend who looked just like that kid.”

“What happened to him?”

“Aw, he came to a bad end in Mexico.”

            *

            “Mr. Cartwright, that’s the doctors’ lounge—” Jenny protested, looking around.

“I know, sweety, I just need to rest for a sec. They won’t mind; everybody knows I’m friends with Trapper, right? Hey, can you do me a favor, and ask my brother to write down all the modifications he made to Trapper’s car? I’m sure Trapper will want to know, and since we’re leaving in the morning he probably won’t have time to tell him.”

“Can’t I do that when we get back to the room?”

“No, Jenny, I want to just relax for a minute longer. Please do this for me.”

Doubtfully, Jenny went back out. Joe allowed her 30 seconds before peeking out the door and sneaking into the doctors’ locker room. If he remembered right, he and Gonzo Gates were almost the same height…

           *

            “Dr. McIntyre, may I speak to you for a minute?” It was Jenny, and her voice was even softer than usual.

Trapper got up and left Adam and Carrie alone with “Ride Lonesome.”

“Carrie,” Adam said, and she jerked her head up—apparently she’d been nodding off—to look at him. He smiled. “Look, since we’ll be leaving in the morning, and you probably won’t even be up then, can I just say how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me?”

“Huh?” She shook her head and focused. “You mean with the car? Shoot, that was more fun than playin’ strip nine-ball.”

Adam wondered what that meant, but decided it might be wiser to let it go. “You helped me navigate my way through the 20^th century; you reassured me numerous times when I was about to panic—”

“You never looked panicky to me.”

“Well….” A chuckle. “My brothers say I’m like a duck when there’s a crisis.” *&

“You’re like a what?”

“A duck. All calm and placid on the surface, but paddling up a storm underneath. So, whether I looked it or not, there were a couple of times…and you were a great encouragement.”

“Well,” she said, “You can always paddle in my pool.”

“Cut it out. I’m serious. Do you think Trapper will like what we did to the car?”

“He’s unpredictable. He’s what I call an uncomfortable maverick. That is, he knows he has to play by the rules—but he hates it, and chafes. He’ll love that the car runs so well now. He’ll grin like a kid. But he’ll be embarrassed to have anyone else see it. That’s my guess. Heck, we should’ve gone all out and painted flames on the sides while we were at it…Adam?”

“Yes?”

“Whether he likes the car or not, working on it with you was the most fun I’ve had in years. You’re not such a bad guy, when you’re not telling people how to behave.”

“Well, you’re not such a bad girl, when you’re behaving properly and working hard.”

“Except for one thing, Adam. In your day, a woman doing that kind of work would have been improper as anything.”

The look on his face as that sank in was priceless. “You know, I have to admit—that never occurred to me. You were natural at it. I’d be quite honored to spend a couple hours under a car with you any time.”

She couldn’t help grinning. “I’m sure you meant that as a compliment…but don’t ever say something like that when anyone else is around. It might be taken wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” he said awkwardly. “Yes, it was meant as a compliment. One thing I don’t believe I’ll ever figure out in this time period is the difference in the way people talk to each other, and what’s acceptable and what isn’t.”

“Well…if you don’t come back again, you won’t have to worry about it.”

“Who said I won’t come back?”

“You told Joe you could never live here.”

“True, but I did say I enjoyed visiting. I’d very much like to come back again.” He smiled into her eyes. “Any chance, if I came back again, of having your expert navigational assistance?”

She considered. “I’ll think about it.”

“And,” he went on, “Not having my brother’s financial abilities, I’ll need you to help me figure out where to get some money, too. I can’t keep having you pay my way.”

“Shoot,” Carrie said. “All Joe ever did was go into your bank account.”

“What?”

“One of the first things he did first time he was here was to go into Virginia City—and he said there was still an active account under the name of Adam Cartwright at the bank there. Trapper was never real clear on just who Adam Cartwright is, but he’s almost certainly a descendant of your family.”

“Really.” The wheels in his head began to turn…but not for long, as Trapper burst into the room.

“The security guard saw your brother getting into a black Trans-Am about 15 minutes ago. He’s gone.”

            *

            “Beau!” Carrie half-wailed, half-swore.

“Of course it was Beau,” Adam muttered. “I knew I should’ve hit him harder when we met.”

“But what does he have going?” Trapper mused. “He wouldn’t yank him out of the hospital just for a joy ride.”

Both men looked at Carrie. “It has to be that Golden Grain bet,” she groaned. “He and Cletus had something set up to pick up a load from the Golden Grain warehouse and take it to New York. Cletus was coming out from Atlanta to drive chase, and Beau was driving the rig. I can only think the timetable must have gotten moved up so that Beau couldn’t wait for Cletus, and he’s got to go full-throttle. But most likely they’re still going to meet somewhere, and Joe’s just pinch-hitting until then.”

“I’ll pinch and hit him,” Adam growled. “Right after I show him what ‘throttle’ really means—”

Trapper waved an impatient hand. “Let’s keep this productive, mighty Neanderthal. Violence never solved anything. Carrie, what does a chase car do?”

“On an uneventful trip, nothing. The chase car usually drives anywhere from five car lengths apart to five miles apart from the rig. To stay closer lets the smokies—cops—know there’s an association; to get farther apart makes it difficult if the car has to go back to the truck. Mainly the car’s just there to run interference. For example, if the truck is speeding and gets pulled over, the chase car acts as a decoy and gets the cop to chase him instead. It’s all geared toward keeping the truck moving, hopefully over the speed limit, without getting caught. The two stay in contact by Citizens’ Band radio in case they need each other.”

“Then the best bet is to call the police,” Trapper said.

Carrie shook her head. “I’d rather not. In the first place, Beau’s nearly broke, and although I’m not going back to him—ever—I don’t want to see him lose his livelihood. He’ll lose his truck if he doesn’t make this run.”

“But we don’t have a car that could chase that hopped-up Trans-Am.”

“Um…actually, we do now,” Adam cut in.

“That’s true,” Carrie seconded. “Trapp, your car would really give that Pontiac a run for its money the way we fixed it up.”

“Are you kidding? My car is slow, and built to stay that way—”

“You haven’t seen it lately,” Adam cut in. “Trust me. We’ve taken the horsepower up almost twice its original strength, and for torque, you won’t believe the way that thing will jump when you put the pedal to the metal.”

Trapper stared at him. “Who the hell are you and what did you do with Adam Cartwright?”

Adam only grinned.

“Well,” Trapper said thoughtfully, “Guess it’s time to live dangerously.”

They must have made a great sight, Carrie thought—the two tall, grim men who looked more alike than either would admit, striding down the hall, and the small, brown-haired, brown-eyed girl running after them like mad. She’d just about need roller skates to really keep up. But once they got to the parking lot, Trapper didn’t know where his car was parked, so he had to follow them. They rounded the Titanic, and there sat the Dodge Mirada in serene splendor….

“What the…” and then he descended into a series of unintelligible words that were probably best left unintelligible. “What did you do to my car? It’s…a fershlugginer hot rod!”

“Well, really, Trapp.” Carrie was panting a little from the long run. “We had to cut through the hood once we put that custom intake manifold in. There wasn’t room for it with the hood down.”

“I’ll drive!” Adam called out.

“You will NOT!” Trapper retorted. “You don’t even have a license!”

“I used yours last time. Everybody seems to think we look alike except us.”

“Last time? Last time? How much driving have you done in the 15 days you’ve been here?”

“If you’re going to drive, then drive—grandson,” Adam replied cryptically, and got in on the passenger side. Carrie scooted into the back seat.

Trapper settled into the driver’s seat, put the key in, and was rewarded soon after by a low growl unlike anything he’d ever expected to hear from this car. He pulled the gear shift to “Drive”—and nearly mowed down the station wagon parked across from him.

“You have to keep a real light foot,” Adam said helpfully, and got a wordless glare in return.

A minute later they shot out of the parking lot toward the entrance ramp for I-80.

            *

            “Lightning” Joe Cartwright was questioning his own sanity as the black Trans-Am cruised sedately down Highway 50 at a mere 40 mph. His stitches hurt; the Trans-Am did not have power steering, and cutting corners in it felt like roping an angry steer. And to make matters worse, he’d never taken into account the fact that Gonzo Gates was downright skinny compared to himself. Joe had always thought he was thin, but manual labor—fence-fixing, hole-digging, bronc-busting, calf-branding, bull-castrating—all these things built up one’s chest, arms, and legs in a way no casual jogging and occasional bench-pressing could. It wasn’t that Joe Cartwright was fat; in fact he seemed merely wiry compared to Hoss’s mountainous bulk and Adam’s lean, flat solidity, but compared to Gonzo Gates he might as well have been an Olympic weight-lifter. The pants he’d stolen, in addition to being two inches too long in the inseam, were about three inches too tight at the waist, and as for the shirt—he’d suffered with it long enough to escape the hospital, but his biceps were far too bulky for those skinny sleeves, and the buttons gapped to the extent it was easier just to take the darn thing off. That had been fine as long as he was driving at night, but now the sun was coming up, and he was driving right into it, its rays pointing directly at the two uncovered sets of stitches; meanwhile the third set, under the too-tight pants, was itching mercilessly. He also had just enough money to get three more tanks of gas, meaning he didn’t have enough money for meals or even coffee.

Now he would have thought the quickest way to Salt Lake would be I-80; for that matter, it would be the quickest way to get all the way to New York. That was what the atlas said. But instead Bandit had him taking a network of back roads going through the southwestern Nevada desert. When he’d asked why, Bandit had mumbled something about owing money to a guy named Apelino in Reno who had “connections.” Well, Bandit’s truck was rather hard to miss, so Joe guessed it made sense to avoid that area, but he still didn’t care for southwestern Nevada.

Supposedly either Beau or Cletus would give him bus fare from Salt Lake City to Carson City, and from there he reckoned he could hitchhike back to Six Trees. Maybe he’d get home ahead of Adam, and he was pretty sure Pa would prevent Adam from bestowing the beating he’d be so anxious to provide. Problem with Adam was, he just didn’t understand things like friends and obligations and loyal—naw, he understood all that just fine. What he didn’t understand was that sometimes you just had to do things your own way, even if your own way was different from the accepted way, or what doctors told you to do. Especially what doctors told you to do. Especially when the doctor in question was Trapper.

Trapper. Just what it was about the man that bothered him, he’d never understood. Maybe it was just that he couldn’t figure him out. In his own way, he was just as enigmatic as Adam, and yet somehow he reminded Joe of his father, as well. Or maybe just that every time he’d been in the guy’s house, Trapper had found something stupid to keep him occupied outside, and when he came in there were pictures missing from the wall. There was once a time when he thought they were priceless works of art and maybe Trapper didn’t trust him not to be a high class art thief, but now his suspicions were simpler. It had never occurred to him until he woke up looking at them side by side—and apparently it never had occurred to Adam at all—but when he’d seen the two of them together he could almost see Adam looking like that in another 30 years or so. After all, Adam’s maternal grandfather had been bald too, and everybody knew that baldness usually came from the mother’s side of the family. (Trapper said that was an old wives’ tale, but Joe had always figured so many old wives wouldn’t be telling the same tale if there wasn’t some truth to it.)

Placerville. He grinned. Familiar territory. Now if that old road that he and his folks used to take was still there, he could shave off 15 miles and meet Bandit on the road again—and there it was. It was just a dirt road, but the Trans-Am didn’t care. He grinned. He’d put one over on Adam and Trapper and now Bandit too. He turned the car down the road.

Twenty miles later he felt a little niggling of doubt when the road dead-ended onto another, north-south road. Now that hadn’t been there 115 years ago. He turned south…only to turn again on yet another dirt road a few miles later.

An hour later he was questioning the wisdom of that right turn at Placerville. None of this terrain seemed familiar, and instead of cutting straight across he was heading southeast. And the desert was big.

            *

            At Reno, they’d stopped. Trapper swore. “This is crazy. We’ve been doing 130 miles an hour since we left the city limits. We could’ve passed him and gone back and picked him up if he was really doing what you call ‘normal chase car speed.’ So where is he?”

“One way to find out,” Carrie said. “Pull in at the choke ’n’ puke—er, diner ahead.”

“Why?” Adam asked.

“Coffee,” Trapper said flatly. “I’m beat.”

“You can get coffee,” Carrie said. “You could also take a nap and let one of us drive. But the main reason to stop here is so I can use my persuasive charm and get one of these truckers to let me use his radio.”

They stopped, and within moments Carrie had gone right up to the biggest, meanest trucker in the diner. Within another moment or two she was in the cab of his truck talking on his radio, and from the look on the guy’s face, he would gladly have driven her anywhere she wanted to go.

“Breaker 1-9, this is the Frog callin’ from the very first City of Sin. Lookin’ for the Bandit or for Lightnin’ Joe, whichever one comes back first.”

A minute later the response came: “Hey, Frog! What’er you doin’ on the line? This here’s the Bandit, come on.”

“Bandit, where’s Joe?”

“Wouldn’t I like to know that myself. Froggy darlin’. He went south on me. Too far south. Ain’t heard from him since we passed through Pigsville.”

“What’re you doin’ that far south?”

“There’s some people’s faces up where you are that I didn’t want to see. Now Joe’s up ’n’ disappeared on me. Ain’t got a clue where he is, but he’s got my car and 30 bucks, and he better show up quick or he ain’t gettin’ paid.”

“You wouldn’t lie to a girl again now, would you, honey?”

“Never in my life, Froggy dear.”

Trapper bought three coffees; Adam filled the gas tank. And then they turned back toward Placerville.

            *

            The car had run out of gas in the middle of nowhere, and he had talked himself hoarse on the CB radio, but somehow he had done the impossible. Bandit had told him he could never go out of range, but he had. After a couple of hours, the car’s battery had died. So he was walking eastward in hopes of getting somewhere, but all he saw was more desert. In a few more hours, it would be dark, and if he didn’t find a place soon, it was going to get very cold.

            *

            In Placerville, just to be safe, they filled up the car’s gas tank and then turned south. “If he was in Placerville, there’s every chance that he looked for one of the old trails we used to take—if they’re still in use, they’d save him some mileage,” Adam suggested, and having no better ideas to try, they tried it.

            *

            “Pa,” Joe whispered one last time, and fell, face-first, into the sand.

            *

            “There’s the car!” Carrie shouted, and Trapper, snoring in the back seat, stirred to life. Adam hit the ground before Carrie had put the brakes on and ran over to it, but the driver door was open, and tracks led deep into the desert.

“It’s out of fuel—and the battery’s dead,” he called out. “We’ll have to go slow now—Carrie, do you see the tracks?”

“I’ve got ’em in my headlights. Let’s go.”

“He’ll be dehydrated, dizzy…probably had a heat stroke by now,” Trapper said grimly.

            *

            He was long past dehydration. He wouldn’t even take water when Apollo found him. But when he saw Adama, he murmured, “Pa?” just before passing out again.

Adama put one hand alongside his face. “Poor lad. He looks just like Zac; remember, Apollo?”

“I remember,” Apollo said softly. “I’ll take him to the infirmary. They should be able to help him. Father, should we wipe his mind? After all, he has seen us.”

“He’s one of the ones we’re protecting,” Adama replied. “Besides, he thinks I am someone named ‘Pa.’ As long as he thinks that, he will be a friend.”

            *

            “Halt! You are on ground owned by the United States government. We are authorized to use any and all means up to and including deadly force to prohibit your entrance on this installation. Identify yourself and state your business here!”

The three looked at each other and back to the flashlight in the distance.

Adam shouted, “I’m Adam Cartwright. We’re looking for my brother, Joe Cartwright!”

Trapper followed up, “My name’s John McIntyre. We’re looking for a patient escaped from San Francisco Memorial Hospital. Have you seen anyone else out here?”

“Get your hands up, now!” retorted the voice, and suddenly they were surrounded by people in desert fatigues, carrying M-16’s.

“Where are we?” Carrie wondered aloud.

“I do believe we’re in No Man’s Land,” Trapper said dryly. “Right outside Nellis Air Force Base.”

“There is no Nellis Air Force Base,” the voice said as all three were searched, handcuffed, and blindfolded.

            *

            “He was severely dehydrated,” the doctor told Adama. “And bearing terrible scars from recent operations, or perhaps torture.”

The boy had his eyes open again and was staring hopefully at Adama. “Pa? I was lost….”

“You’re all right, boy,” Adama said, touching the boy’s cheek, and was surprised when the boy grabbed his hand.

“I messed up, Pa. Adam’s probably out there looking for me…please, I don’t want him to go through what I went through….”

Adama sent him a calming reflection, and he quieted while Adama read his thoughts. “His name is Joseph Cartwright, and he comes from a place called the Ponderosa.”

“One of the places where the humans go to eat cattle and ice cream?” Apollo asked.

Adama shrugged. “Apparently. I saw many cattle in his mind. He also has a brother here. Adam Cartwright. There are others in his family, but apparently not here.”

“Can you locate the brother?”

“I think so—they seem to have a strong sense of family. Rare among the humans we’ve encountered here so far. Let me contemplate a moment. I think I can find him….”

A few minutes later Adama wrote down a set of coordinates. Apollo shook his head. “That’s on the military installation.”

“Yes; he was looking for Joseph with two of his friends, and they were taken into custody. Can you get them out?”

“Of course, I’ll prepare the shuttles—but it’s only going to start the rumors flying about us again.”

“Do it. This youngster needs to go home. He has a very nice-looking father who seems quite fond of him.”

            *

            Two hours later, Trapper, Adam, Carrie, and Joe awakened in the Dodge Mirada, next to the non-functional Trans-Am.

“And I thought that mickey I slipped your old man was strong stuff,” Trapper muttered to Adam, turning on the interior light and shaking his head to get the cobwebs out.

“What happened to us?” Carrie demanded.

Adam ignored them. “Joe? Joe, are you okay?”

“Adam? Boy, am I glad to see you. Pa found you, Adam. He found me, too. He always finds us.”

Trapper got out of the car and staggered back to examine his patient. “Son of a…his stitches are gone. His scars are gone! What kind of medicine are they practicing in there?”

“Trapper,” Adam said a little hoarsely, “I think we need to go home. Now.”

            *

            As the sun came up they were heading northwest toward Lake Tahoe and six scrawny little Coulter pines. Adam was driving. Trapper had fallen asleep, Joe was still mumbling that he had seen Pa, and Carrie didn’t seem to mind that Adam was unlicensed.

“What do you suppose happened?” she asked.

“Beats me,” Adam replied. “Trapper told me he knocked out my father with something he called a cocktail, made from a new drug called versed and an old drug called valium. He said it would relax Pa and make him forget the stuff that happened…and he also said that whatever we were given was stronger. I’m guessing that whatever government installation that was had Joe there and didn’t want any of us to see any of their secrets, so they drugged us and dumped us back at the car.” He turned to look at her for a moment. “It may be a while before I can get up the nerve to come back here.”

“I don’t blame you,” she chuckled.

“But I’d still like to. Preferably without anyone else to worry myself to death over. If Joe can take little vacations here, I don’t know why I can’t.”

“You know,” Carrie said thoughtfully, “Joe brought me to the Ponderosa once. That’s how I knew how to find your house. It was not long after I met him. He brought me to your house, only nobody was there but Hop Sing. He fixed us lunch, and then Joe took me into town. I remember seeing one of the silver shops…there were some pretty candlesticks in the window that I was admiring…I want to think I saw you in town, loading a wagon, but I’m not sure. Anyway, he took me back, and Beau was there, and I walked right back into the place I’d wanted to get away from. This is the first time in the last four years I can honestly say that if I saw Beau right now, I could tell him ‘no’ without difficulty.”

“I’m glad to hear it. You’re better off without him.”

“Adam, I’m not fishing, honest, but…you said, a few days ago…well, did you mean it? That some things are worth waiting for?”

“The best things always are,” he nodded, and winked at her.

            *

            “I need to talk to you,” Trapper said, taking Adam by the arm and dragging him away from Joe and Carrie as they walked from the cabin toward the six trees.

“You know, my mother named me ‘Adam’. I’d be mightily obliged if you’d use that name. Or even Cartwright, if you don’t think we know each other well enough for first names.”

Trapper smiled sadly. “You and Frog are so fussy about names.”

“Only with people who won’t use them. Why is it, Trapper? You use people’s names at the hospital. You use names with your ex-wife and your kids. What’s wrong with Joe and Carrie and me?”

He swallowed and looked away. “I very much enjoyed meeting you…and your brother…but please listen. This is important. I’ve tried, over the last four years, to dissuade your brother from coming forward in time to this place. I knew it was wrong on a lot of levels—but he doesn’t like to listen. His last two trips here nearly cost him his life. If you die in your own time period, of injuries received in your own time period, there’s nothing to be done about that; it was meant to be—but if you die here, or if you die of injuries received here, it might change the flow of history where you are. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.” Adam suddenly had the uncomfortable feeling that he knew where the conversation was going, and he didn’t much care for it.

“I don’t think you should come back. Either of you. Ever. If the temptation is too strong, maybe we should try to destroy the portal.”

“Just like that,” Adam said flatly. “I discover this whole new world, this world my brother’s been visiting for four years, and suddenly I can’t come back. I’m the responsible one, you know.”

Trapper cleared his throat. “No matter. Him either. I’m sorry you don’t feel it’s fair, but who knows how much damage has already been caused by your presence here? Who knows how much you’ll do if you attempt to implement any of the things you’ve learned here? The United States of 1865 is not ready for cars and toasters and—”

“I had no intention of introducing any of those items, either,” Adam retorted. “I think we saw pretty well what happens when you take a car on an unpaved, unmarked road. As for toasters, they tend not to work without electricity. The only innovation I’m in danger of ‘implementing’ is a water closet—the plans for which exist in my own time. And I wasn’t intending to broadcast any information.”

“Listen to yourself. You just said ‘broadcast.’ Does that word even exist in your time?”

Adam paled a little, but remained determined, as Trapper went on, “The longest your brother ever stayed here that I know of—while he was conscious—was four days. You’ve been here a little more than three weeks. You’ve absorbed all kinds of knowledge that you can’t impart. There’s a phenomenon known as the ‘ripple effect’ that says, like skipping a stone on water, changing one little aspect of history will lead to more, and bigger, changes, until you’ve affected the entire pool, or in this case, time stream.”

Adam just looked at him. “Do you have any idea what you’re asking?”

“Yes,” Trapper said steadily. “I also know who I’m asking. I wouldn’t ask it of a lesser man.”

“Sycophant,” Adam snorted.

“Jackass,” Trapper replied equably, and Adam turned and walked away, hands in his pockets, to stand alone among the trees for several minutes. Finally he returned to Trapper.

“Since we don’t know how the time portal works…maybe we’d better destroy it on both sides,” Adam said finally. “It’ll take me a while, but I’ll get some dynamite…I’ll do it.”

“So will I. Thank you.”

“Joe, you ready to go home? Joe?”

“He left already,” Carrie said. “While you two were talking politics or whatever you’re always arguing about. You look so much alike, I’d think you’d get along better.”

“We look nothing alike,” Adam stated. “Carrie…slight change of plans. I’ve decided…this world moves too fast for me. I won’t be coming back.”

“What?”

He grinned crookedly. “Sorry. But it doesn’t make what I said less true. Don’t ever sell yourself short, Carrie. You’re all right. It’s too bad you were born in this time instead of…well…” He shook his head, kissed her cheek, nodded briefly to Trapper, and walked away without a backwards glance. A minute later, he vanished in the pines.

Carrie sniffed. Then again.

“Don’t cry,” Trapper said irritably, handing over a handkerchief.

“I’m not crying, dammit!” she retorted, and burst into sobs. He put his arm around her and took her back to the car. Shortly after that, they returned to Beau’s Pontiac and, filling it from Trapper’s gas can, Carrie told him she’d be taking it to Utah for Beau’s sake. At the expression of doubt on his face, she flipped her middle finger at him and slammed the car door.

People’s irritable expressions could be contagious. In two hours flat Trapper was back in San Francisco. Arnie would have a fit, Trapper reflected as he parked the car, but still, some cars were worth the trouble.

            *

            It took nearly an hour but Joe ran every step of the way, and burst into the ranch house to find Hoss sitting by their father, who apparently had not moved since Trapper had deposited him there. “Joe?” Hoss looked his brother up and down. “It’s only been a few hours, how did you get well so fast…what in the world…?” He bounded up from his chair to give Joe a Hoss-style bear hug. Joe just grinned and pinched his cheek. Then: “Pa?” He knelt by the bed. “Hey, Pa? Pa, come back. I saw you in the desert, Pa…you brought me and Adam back together….”

Ben Cartwright opened his eyes. “Joe? Joe? Hoss, get the car! Get the doctor! Hoss…Joe?”

“I’m back, Pa. And I’m fine.”

He sat up, bewildered. “But I thought you were….”

“Doc Martin always did scare easy, Pa. Did you have a good nap?”

“What happened?”

“You made me well. Trapper got me started, Pa, but I saw you in the desert, and when you put your hand on my head I started getting well so fast I didn’t even have a scar left to tell the tale.”

Ben laughed and grabbed Joe, holding him tight. “Oh, son, you look good.”

            *

            Adam emerged in 1865 and began walking aimlessly. Eventually he found Sport grazing near the trees. Funny to think of a horse as transportation instead of a four-stroke internal combustion engine that ran at a hundred miles an hour. Suddenly, Sport was his best friend. He put his arms around the big gelding’s neck and sighed.

            *

             In San Francisco, Carrie moved out of Trapper’s house, got a job and rented her own place. Trapper put all his old photos back on the walls and circled a date on his calendar. He had the construction crew—or in this case, the destruction crew—booked. He just wanted to be sure he was there to see.

Ernie came into his office one day, a confused frown in place. “There’s a fellow here to see you. Adam Cartwright. But….”

For a minute he nearly panicked, reaching quickly for the picture on his desk. Then he sighed as she went on, “But it’s not the same one who was visiting you last month.”

He waved a careless hand. “Okay.”

A few minutes later a wiry kid with brown curly hair walked in. “Hiya, Coz!” They hugged briefly, and the kid sat down.

“Summer hiatus from Berkeley already?” Trapper asked.

“Starts tomorrow,” Adam Cartwright said. “Listen, I don’t mean to be a pain, Cousin John, but somebody’s been in my bank account again. It was only $40, but you know me; Dad’s always been a tightwad, fussing about taking money for granted and all…and since he doesn’t believe me when I tell him I don’t have homework, there’s no way he’ll believe that convoluted tale you expect me to accept.”

Trapper opened his wallet, smiling, and handed out two twenties. “Well, you shouldn’t have any problem. I’ve been assured by your namesake that there won’t be any more breaches.”

“You really met him?”

“I really did.”

“What’s he like?”

“Oh…logical…mechanically inclined…opinionated as anything….”

“Unlike you of course.”

“Of course. I’m not opinionated at all. He was…a bit angry…rather judgmental…stubborn….”

“Again, unlike anyone we know.”

“Of course.” Trapper smiled.

“Did you tell him?”

“Tell him what?”

“Point taken. Well…any message for Dad?”

“Tell the senator he’ll have my vote if he decides to run again.”

“Ah, yes, I can see the posters now: Joseph Cartwright IV, a Man for the Times. Are you coming to the barbecue at the end of the month? Joey should be home from MIT by then.”

“Sorry—can’t. I’m having some trees taken down at the lake. Maybe I’ll come over later. But give your folks my best.”

            *

            The young visitor had just been gone a few minutes when Ernie came in again, rolling her eyes. “Carrie Evans is here. Why don’t you just put in a revolving door?”

Trapper grinned, carefully putting the photo in his desk drawer. “Why don’t you be a good scrub nurse and let her in without all the editorializing?”

“I’ll forego the editorializing if you’ll drink your juice properly.”

“In that case, editorialize away. But let the girl in anyhow.”

Carrie looked terrible.

“Job not going well?” Trapper asked.

She shrugged. “Job’s fine. The problem is me. Trapper, I need some advice.”

“If it’s about Beau, you already know what I’ll say.”

“Oh, horse puckies, Trapp! Beau came looking for me already, last week. I told him I wouldn’t have him if he was the last meatball on a plate of spaghetti and I was starving for protein. He’s got his truck and his livelihood; he doesn’t need me and I don’t need or want him.”

“Well then, my lady, in that case, how may I be of assistance?”

“You could call me by name, for one thing.”

“Frog.”

Carrie sighed exaggeratedly. “Trapper, is it possible to fall in love with somebody you only knew three weeks?”

“I once fell in love with a lady I’d known three days.”

“Did it work out?”

“No.”

“Oh.” She looked at her fingernails.  “Trapper…I love Adam.”

“You barely knew him.”

“Yeah, but…I think I did know him once. Almost like it was in a past life, or something—and don’t laugh at me.”

“Me? We’ve already agreed, Horatio, that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.”

“I actually did read Shakespeare, you know. I only look dumb. Why did you tell Adam not to come back?”

“Because he and his brother were risking the time stream. It was the responsible thing to do. Fortunately, he understood that.”

“So…what would happen if I went back there?”

“I don’t know. I only look like Merlin the wizard.”

“Okay, wiseguy. What do you think? Do you think he’d take me? I’m not exactly entitled to a white dress wedding.”

Trapper shrugged. “Ever been with a man in the 19^th century?”

“No.”

“Presto. Instant purity.”

“Trapper…you know those candlesticks at your house? I saw some once in Virginia City that looked just like them.”

“Mine say ‘Made in Hong Kong’ on the bottom.” He winked.

“When are you destroying the portal?”

“I’ve got a wrecking crew coming on the 29^th.”

She jumped up. “I’m going to do it, Trapper. I’m going back in time. If he won’t have me…well…I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it. But I’ve got nothing here, and I’m going crazy doing nothing when I ought to at least ask.”

“In his century, men do the asking. There’s no ERA, remember. No women forever in blue jeans, no voting, no—”

“And in this century, there’s no Adam Cartwright. Except for your something-something-something once-removed cousin college boy—you never told me how you’re related to that family, anyway—and I’m sorry, he’s a nice kid, but he doesn’t count.”

“Sounds like your mind’s made up,” Trapper tried his best to look nonchalant.

“It is. I guess I really just came to say goodbye. Besides, you’re the one who used to say I didn’t belong here. I wish I had some guarantee…but I guess in life there aren’t any. Still, Adam said there are second chances…and that some things are worth waiting for. I guess that means they’re worth trying for, too. What do you think?”

“I think I’ll miss you,” he said quietly, and gave her a brave smile. “Thanks for the hot rod.”

“You’re a good friend.” She kissed his cheek, then handed him a small photo. “This is for you, Trapper. Think of me sometime.”

He took the picture silently.

“Bye, Trapp.”

“Bye, Frog.”

She turned and walked out of his office. He sank back into his chair, laced his fingers together behind his head, and bit his lip. Finally, satisfied she wasn’t coming back, he looked at the photo she’d given him, and pulled the other photo out of his desk. She hadn’t changed that much, not really.

1923: Four Generations. L-R: Adam Cartwright and wife Caroline Evans Cartwright. Evan Cartwright and wife Rebecca Morgan Cartwright. John T. McIntyre Sr. and wife Morgan Cartwright McIntyre. John T. (Johnny) McIntyre, Jr., age 3.

            He stuck Carrie’s photo in the corner of the old picture and grinned. “Oedipus, Shmedipus, Great Grandma—you were a hottie.”

 

* See “The Sound and the Fury”

** In the past decade, wolverines have been spotted as far south as Lake Tahoe. Now we know how they got there, don’t we, gentle reader?

*& See “Aim True” by southplains. (Used with permission from the author)