Summary:  Did Marie have a secret that she kept from Ben?

Rated: T  Word Count:  69500

 

The Price of Truth

Chapter 1 – 11

The ornate study was filled with thick pungent cigar smoke, swirling to the high ceiling through the golden lamplight. Outside the open window came the buzz of nighttime insects. The three men present sat silent for the moment, each lost in thought.

“Yes, I agree. We needed those finances, gentlemen. Without them, the South and we ourselves are lost. The best we could have probably hoped for was that Nevada not petition for statehood. But from what the papers are all reporting, the convention has declared itself and will be asking that abomination of a Yankee Congress for admission,” the heavyset man, his face flush with the heat, drawled.

“There is a way we can recoup some of our losses,” the slight man in the gray suit suggested and felt the other two men turn and look in his direction as he stood by the window.

“And just how would that be, Daniel?” asked the third man, an older gentleman, not as well dressed as his compatriots.

“Well, it would take a bit of, shall we call it ‘ground work’? But it is doable, I assure you. Judge Gordon, your family has been here in New Orleans for many, many years, is that not correct?” the man in gray asked, knowing the answer before he asked it.

“My family goes back to the days before the Louisiana Purchase, Daniel. But I don’t understand what that has to do with our predicament.”

Daniel blew a smoke ring toward the ceiling then sat down in the gold brocade chair. He picked up the brandy snifter and swirled the brandy just once. “I imagine my little scheme can get us in the neighborhood of at least half a million dollars, gentlemen. How does that sound to you?”

The other two men in the room looked at one another then back at Daniel, their eyes asking the question “how?”

Daniel took a sip of his brandy and smiled a malevolent smile. “We may have lost Nevada, but there is a huge plum just waiting for the taking there. We just need to be bold about how we take it, gentlemen.”

“Stop talking in riddles, man!” the heavyset man leaned forward.

“All right, I will. But I must have your word of honor, sirs, that none of this goes beyond this room.” As he watched, the other two nodded briefly. He continued. “The great mines of Nevada are belching forth more and more silver for Mr. Lincoln every day. But those mines have a weak spot. To go as deep as they need to follow the veins, they need timber. And the greatest stand of timber on the Comstock belongs to one man. If he decided to not to sell to the mines, they would be forced to shut down operations at the very least. And that one man has a very vulnerable spot. We can control that man, gentlemen, all the way from here.”

Judge Gordon narrowed his eyes. “How?” he asked derisively.

“The man had a southern wife. One whose past we can exploit.”

“You said ‘had’. How does that help us?”

“The dead can neither deny nor confirm certain allegations.”

“And who, pray tell, is this dead woman, that we should be concerned about her?”

“Her name was Marie Del Vyre D’Marginy but her last husband was one Ben Cartwright. And he owns the Ponderosa Ranch, just outside of Virginia City.” So, long into the night, there in the elegant study in the palatial plantation outside of New Orleans, the three men made their plans.

 

 

Chapter Two

 

“Well, here ya go, little brother. Think you can stay out of trouble all the way up here?” Hoss Cartwright chuckled as he dismounted in the tiny line shack yard high in the mountains overlooking Lake Tahoe. A slight breeze stirred the early summer air and carried the sound of his voice over the clearing. “Don’t know what you did to set Pa off like that but it must have been a good ‘un!” Again he chuckled.

The object of his mirth swung slowly down off his horse with a sigh. “Just drop it, Hoss, okay?” Joe moaned as his feet hit the ground.

“Aw come on…you can tell ol’ Hoss. ‘Fess up! What did ya do, boy?”

“Just why do you want to know?” Joe asked bitterly, with a great deal of emphasis on the “you.”

“I wanna know so’s I don’t do it and get sent up here for a month!”

Joe grimaced at his bigger brother and proceeded to tug the pack mule toward the tiny cabin door. “Just take care of the horses, would you?” he called over his shoulder.

Hoss chuckled again. All that long day as they had ridden toward the furthest out line camp, he had bedeviled his brother with questions. He had so enjoyed that his brother was obviously miserable. Again and again he had prodded him with the fact that their father had “banned” Joseph to the furthest corner of the ranch. Of course the more he prodded, the tighter-lipped Joe became.

“Better let him be, Hoss,” Adam counseled as he pulled Sport’s head around and prepared to tie him to the corral rail. “That boy is touchier than the meanest ol’ bear up here.” He then dropped the level of his voice and commented “Five bucks says it has something to do with the mayor’s daughter and the dance Saturday night. Saw Pa talking with the mayor yesterday after church.”

Hoss’ face squirmed in thought. “Naw, can’t be, ‘cause Joe had her home in time Saturday night.”

Adam gave his brother a long thoughtful look. “Do you know that for a fact?” he asked.

“No. But just what in the devil could he have done for Pa to get that mad with him? You saw the look on Pa’s face last night. He don’t never get that mad ‘lessen he got good reason.”

“Face it, Hoss, sometimes Joe just being Joe is good reason enough. But as much as I would love to know, I don’t think Joe is going to say word one about it. Come on, let’s get these supplies unloaded. The sooner we can be out of here and away from his ugly mood, the better I’ll feel.”

Sobering momentarily, Hoss agreed.

 

As the sun set over the far mountains, the three brothers shared a simple dinner of beans and coffee in the confines of the small summer line shack. By unspoken mutual consent, they didn’t speak of what had brought them this far into the wilderness that was part of their home. Tired from the long ride, they finally rolled into their blankets and slept. With the coming of dawn, the two older brothers would ride back down the mountains, leaving seventeen-year-old Joe to watch over the cattle grazing in the high meadows. As much as he had fought to be considered an adult by his protective family, Joe wasn’t really sure he was ready to take on the responsibility of the line camp on his own. He had done it before but always with a brother. Now, he was to be on his own and the quiet there in the high mountains seemed very loud to him that evening.

 

Far from his sons, Ben Cartwright had sat working at his desk most of the day. Several times he had considered riding after them but then decided against it. He had lost his temper with Joseph the evening before and was now regretting it. The boy didn’t deserve to be sent off like that but Ben felt that it had truly been the best for him: get him away from the temptation of the young lady for a while and let things cool down. Besides, someone had to have the first go around up at the summer pasture and Joseph was old enough. At least that was the line of reasoning Ben kept giving himself that afternoon. But a large piece of him still thought of the young man as his baby and as such fought with the other part that knew he had to turn him loose sometime.

The sound of the carriage intruded on his thoughts and he laid his pen aside, realizing that he hadn’t done anything with it for a good half hour. He went over to the open door and walked out, a puzzled expression on his face. He didn’t recognize the two gentlemen stepping down from the surrey.

“Afternoon, gentlemen,” he called and having extended his hand to them, warmly greeted them.

 

“What can I do for you?”

Both men were well dressed, one in a gray suit and the other in dark brown.

Looking about him, the slender man in gray asked if this were the Ponderosa.

“Yes. My name is Ben Cartwright.” The man in brown shook his hand as well.

“See, Charles, I told you we took the right road. Mr. Cartwright, my name is Dansen. Daniel Dansen.”

“Well, I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Dansen.”

“That surprises me, suh.” For the first time, Ben heard the heavy Southern accent Dansen spoke with.

“Why should it?” Ben asked, shaking his head slightly.

“The name means nothing to you?” Dansen gave Ben a condescending look. “Well, perhaps your wife will be happy to fill you in once she knows we are here. Come along, Charles.” With that, he started to brush by Ben, headed for the beckoning doorway.

All pretense of hospitality dropped from Ben and he reached out, grabbed Dansen’s shoulder and spun him around.

The look on Dansen’s face was one of disgust. “Take your hand off me or I will have Charles remove your hand,” he commanded haughtily.

 

“Just what is this all about?” Ben hissed but took his hand off of Dansen anyway.

“She’s never told you, has she? The little minx has kept her dirty little secret all these years, hasn’t she?” Dansen chuckled then slapped Ben’s arm with his gloves. “Your wife, Mister Cartwright, Marie Del Vyre D’Marginy, belongs to me. And I have come to take her back to New Orleans.”

His voice tight with anger, Ben pulled himself to his full height over Dansen and let the man feel his wrath. “Mister Dansen, or whoever you are, you will do no such thing. My wife belongs to no one. Marie is dead and has been for a number of years. Now I suggest you get right back into that surrey and get off my ranch now.”

Dansen gave him a derisive snort and let his eyes slide up and down, judging the man before him.

 

“If I do that, Mister Cartwright, you will be accompanying me. For as much as I truly am saddened to hear of little Marie’s passing, there is a matter concerning certain stolen property that would need to be addressed as well. Now we can do that here or perhaps you would like to do it in front of a judge in Virginia City?”

“You need to start making sense, Mister Dansen.”

“Certainly.” He turned on his heels and walked into the massive home behind him like he owned it.

Ben stood stunned in the yard, unable to move for several long moments.

Once inside the house, Dansen performed a quick cursory glance around the large open area, noting the richness of the furnishings. He stopped and dropped his bowler hat on the table behind the settee then proceeded on over to the desk in Ben’s study. By that time, Ben had charged into the house and was preparing to bodily throw the interloper from the house if need be.

“How long did you know your wife before you married her, Mister Cartwright?”

“Long enough,” came his clipped reply. He found his hands turning into hard fists as the man in gray continued his perusal of the room.

“Obviously not. Where did you meet Marie? Was it not in Edward D’Arcy’s gambling establishment? And it never occurred to you to ask what such a lovely young woman was doing in such a place?”

“It belonged to her cousin. She was there–“

Dansen held up his hand. “Please, suh, next you are going to tell me that dear Marie was as pure as the driven snow. And that she was there just to be a pretty little thing and entice the men to gamble.”

Ben couldn’t find his voice he was so angry.

Dansen continued. “The truth is, Mister Cartwright, her cousin had lost his gambling parlor to my father in a game of baccarat. The building, everything. But that wasn’t enough to cover his debts to my father so Edward gave him the very last thing he had to give: Marie. Yes, Mister Cartwright, Edward sold Marie to my father. And because no one dared to cause my father dismay, shall we say, everyone left little beautiful Marie alone. Everyone but himself. He set her up in that quaint little house of hers. He gave her the jewels and the clothing she adorned herself with. All so that when he wanted her, he could have her. I myself -”

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!” Ben shouted finally. “HOW DARE YOU SPEAK OF MY WIFE LIKE THAT? GET OUT AND NEVER COME BACK DO YOU HEAR ME?”

“Now, now, Mister Cartwright. Temper, temper. All I want is what is duly mine. With my father’s recent passing, I have inherited all of his most prized possessions. And that most certainly included your wife.” Dansen continued to stroll about the great room, absently slapping his gloves into one palm.

“Well, Mister Dansen, I am afraid you are going to have to return to New Orleans empty handed.”

As the slender man in gray completed his circuit of the room, he stopped and reclaimed his bowler. “No, not empty handed at all. Tell me, Mister Cartwright. Did you bring the fair Marie back to this house, straight from New Orleans?”

“What difference does that make? Get out now or I will bodily throw you out. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

Dansen smiled and once again studied his adversary at close range. Charles had moved closer as if to protect the smaller man but Dansen waved him away casually.

“Very well, Mister Cartwright. I shall leave. But I will not be leaving your fine territory empty handed. Good day, suh.”

“Just what do you mean by that?” Ben demanded as the Southern brushed by him.

Dansen paused, lifted his chin a fraction of an inch and smiled enigmatically again. “Just what I said, suh,” he said coldly then “Come along Charles. We have something we need to attend to. You will be hearing from us again, Mister Cartwright.”

Ben remained where he was, listening to the surrey depart from the front yard. His mind whirled in a maze of confusion, fear and anger. All he could think clearly of at that moment in time were Marie’s dancing green eyes and how they had captivated him from the very beginning.

Finally, he crossed to the open door and slammed it closed with enough force to rattle the dishes in Hop Sing’s kitchen. He pulled his watch from his pocket and noted the time. There wasn’t enough time to get into town before John Nestor’s office closed for the day. No, he would have to go first thing in the morning. John was an old friend and competent attorney and could tell Ben how to go about putting an end to Daniel Dansen and his pack of lies. That was first and foremost. No, Ben thought, closing the watch and returning it to his pocket, first and foremost is to keep this madness from reaching Joseph.

 

Chapter Three

 

“…But, Ben…Getting any information out of the South right now is all but impossible. If you hadn’t heard, there is a war going on. And it is with the South.” John Nestor exclaimed, laying his glasses down on his desk that morning. He watched his friend Ben Cartwright pace the office like a caged animal, waiting for an opening to break loose and run rampant through the streets.

“I know that! So what you are saying is that it is his word against mine? That there is no way I can go about shutting up this vile little man?” The anger in Ben’s voice was hard to miss.

“I would worry about something else entirely.” When Ben stopped pacing and turned toward him, the lawyer continued. “Until it is overturned by Congress, there is still the Fugitive Slave Law to be considered.”

“Marie was NOT a slave! Not only that, the poor woman has been dead a dozen years,” Ben reiterated loudly.

“You are right in thinking that the Law can’t harm Marie but there is a clause within the Fugitive Slave Law about -” he paused before he delved on, knowing the pain was just beginning for his friend, ” – about other property the ‘fugitive’ might have taken with them.”

“If it will shut Dansen up, I will give him all of the jewelry, the clothes, everything Marie left New Orleans with.” Ben returned to his pacing, now allowing one fist to continue slamming and burrowing into the other palm repeatedly. He so dearly wanted it to be Dansen’s face instead.

“Everything she had?” John asked softly.

Ben’s head snapped around and his eyes bore into the man behind the desk. “What is that supposed to infer? That she had stolen something of great value that I knew nothing about at the time?”

The lawyer sighed and stood up. Walking to the front of the desk, he leaned back against it and jammed his hands into his vest pockets, wishing for all the world that he didn’t have to say the next words. But he had to. Ben had to know the full extent of the Law. And just what he would be battling to keep.

“You and Marie were married in New Orleans, right? And you left shortly thereafter to come back here.” When Ben simply nodded, he continued. “That was in the fall of the year. And Little Joe was born the following spring, right?”

As Ben realized the full impact of what John was implying, he felt as though he had been punched hard. He felt the color drain from his face and his heart hammer in his chest. “If what you are implying is that Joseph is not my son….”

“Slow down, Ben. Let’s look at this logically, and unfortunately, that is the way the courts would look at it. I am going to have to ask you some hard questions and I need straight honest answers. That is the only way I can help you go up against this madman. All right?”

Seeking a chair, Ben nodded. “Provided that the attorney-client privilege-”

“Trust me. Nothing will get beyond these walls that doesn’t need to be heard. Now, tell me. Is there any possibility that there is some truth in what this Dansen fellow says about Marie being used as payment for a debt? And think with your head, not your heart.”

“Besides the fact she was a free white woman! How could she have been sold into slavery?” Ben shot to his feet, beginning to pace the floor again, running his hand back through his hair.

“Ben, think! Could she have been of mixed blood?”

“NO!” Ben roared and immediately regretted his outburst.

But John hadn’t changed his thoughtful expression. “And how do you know this? You don’t, do you? All you have to go on is her word. But there was some problem in New Orleans with her before you met her, wasn’t there? Her first husband’s family thought she wasn’t good enough for him. That was it, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, but she explained all of that.” Ben said softly, slipping back into his chair.

” ‘She explained’,” John repeated, feeling an enormous sorrow flow over him. Like others, he had known the lovely and gracious Marie Cartwright. He had been in the Territory just a short while when Ben had returned from a trip, bearing with him the most beautiful woman many had ever laid eyes on. Like other men, John Nestor had been smiled at and felt envy that she belonged to another. He had danced with her more than once and been entranced too by the lilting French accent as she spoke. And like others, been devastated when she had died suddenly. Now as he fought to save the memory of her for her husband, and himself, he had to take her from the pedestal, the ivory tower many had placed her in, and get her dirty.

“And how did she explain the house she lived in? The clothes she wore? The jewelry?” he asked.

“I always assumed that she had inherited those things from her parents when they died.” Once again Ben saw the elegant riding habit she had worn when first he had seen her. “I never asked, John.”

“The same parents who died when she was young? Placed her in a convent school there in New Orleans? Ben, the inconsistencies are enormous here. Even if we remove the possibility of a mixed heritage for Marie, the fact of the house and her things are harder yet to explain away. She was working in her cousin’s gambling house when you met her.”

“Yes,” Ben sighed, growing tired of this close a scrutiny into his love. “But she was there as a hostess. Nothing more!”

“Easy, now. I am trying to help you here. And consider that I am your friend. Mister Dansen isn’t and this is liable to get uglier before it gets better. Now where was I?”

“Marie was a hostess at her cousin’s establishment. I never saw her do anything other than encourage men to gamble. She may have poured them drinks but other than that, she did nothing else. So if you are inferring that she was a – a-,” Ben floundered hopelessly, unable to even give voice to the word he knew others had previously associated with his wife.

“Say it, Ben. A prostitute. You say you never saw her do anything to that end but that in and of itself gives credence to what Dansen said. He said that his father had such power that no one dared use her but he himself. Who was his father? Do you recall a family there in New Orleans of that name at the time?”

Ben shook his head ‘no’.

“Okay, we can use that information to our good. Now, let’s get back to a more pressing issue. If we take Dansen’s word as gospel that he has a claim to Marie, understand that by the Fugitive Slave Law, he is entitled to everything she had when she left New Orleans. Ben, could Marie have been pregnant when she left there?”

He had said it so swiftly, Ben almost missed it. He stared for a long moment at the floor before he answered. “No, she wasn’t. Joseph was born in May. Premature, Paul Martin said, by about six weeks. That means she would have gotten pregnant some time during our voyage back home.”

“What makes you think that? Let me play the Devil’s advocate here a moment. Let’s consider this: that Little Joe wasn’t premature at all. That he was a full-term baby.”

“John, you saw him right after he was born! You were there when he was christened, for God’s sake! He was such a tiny thing, it couldn’t have been any thing else but a premature birth!”

“I saw a small baby, Ben, yes. But I also saw a small mother and you, yourself have to admit that he is so much like Marie that it could be that he was-”

“What does all this mean? What are you trying to get at, John?” Ben erupted, coming to his feet again.

“That if Marie was pregnant when she left New Orleans, under the Fugitive Slave Law, Daniel Dansen can take Little Joe back with him. In chains, if need be. Even though he is your son, he was conceived while his mother was still in bondage and is therefore the property of her master. So when I say that Dansen can take everything that belonged to Marie, I am including Joe.”

“So what do we do now?” Ben asked, his voice shaking as he considered what the lawyer had just said. His memory of seeing human slaves sold there in the central market of New Orleans years before now taking on an ominous and more personal nuance.

“The first thing we do is keep Little Joe as far away from Dansen as possible. It just might be that Dansen has no idea about him and will be satisfied with just the return of Marie’s jewelry. I am going to assume that you will do that?”

“But wouldn’t that give his claim some validity?” asked Ben.

“Which would you rather he have, Ben? Marie’s necklaces, earrings and the like or Little Joe?”

 

Chapter Four

 

Adam rubbed his palm over his two days’ worth of stubble and sighed, thinking what a pleasure a hot bath, clean clothes and a shave would be. To make matters worse, a kink had taken up residence in the small of his back even though his horse rode easily. As he and Hoss paused at the small stream to let the horses drink before they pushed on, he wondered again what their little brother had done to make their father banish him to that far out line shack.

“I still say it had to do with the mayor’s daughter,” he said, throwing a long leg over the saddle horn and taking a long pull on his canteen.

Hoss scratched his head and pulled his white hat back upright. “Now that is what I said two days ago and you said that it weren’t that. Make up your mind, will ya?”

“I have. My mind is made up. I think we should have said something to Pa about this before we let Joe get away without any chores for a month. With him up there, and us down here, you know that means we have to do his chores too, don’t ya?”

“Fine, then, Big Brother. You go tell Pa how to be a good parent. You do that and I will bet you my last dollar that you will replace Little Joe up at that line shack in a month. That is after you finish all your chores and his!” The big man chuckled as he swung back into the saddle.

“You know a month up there, all alone, sounds real appealing. No one to pester me. I could read when and where I wanted. I could eat when I wanted to. Oh, just the thought of the peace and quiet.” As he spoke the vision his words evoked in him made him sigh and he closed his eyes.

“Adam Cartwright, you do beat all. How you could take a scolding and turn it into a blessing sometimes is beyond me!”

“But every cloud has a silver lining, Hoss. You know that.” Adam’s little smile made Hoss chuckle again.

“Yeah, but the rest of us get rained on by your silver lined cloud. So don’t you go getting Pa all riled. One of us in hot water is about all I can stand at a time.” Hoss settled himself into the saddle and picked up the reins. Clucking to his horse, he rode down into the stream, destined for the opposite bank. “On second thought, you go ahead,” he called over his shoulder, not looking back. “That way I can be the good son!”

Adam followed his brother’s lead and urged Sport across the water. When he came up even with Hoss, he reached over and smacked the bigger man’s shoulder playfully. “Yeah, with Little Joe not around, it makes it hard for Pa to tell the difference between us. Come on, even I can smell Hop Sing’s cooking.”

 

When they clattered into the yard an hour later, they were still in high spirits. Tired, dusty from the trail, but still glad to be home, they pulled their horses into the barn. Neither brother was surprised to hear their father come into the barn to greet them. It was just his way. They were surprised by the drawn and tired look to his face.

“Welcome home, boys!” he greeted but it resounded with a forced cheerfulness that was hard to miss.

“Glad to be home, Pa.” Hoss sniffed the air once, then turned to Adam and held out his hand, saying, “Pay up.”

“When we get in the house,” moaned Adam, swinging the saddle off Sport.

“I bet him a mile back that we were having roast pork,” explained Hoss, his smile lighting up the barn’s shadowy interior, “And my nose ain’t never wrong.”

Ben smiled, knowing that was their intention. “Let one of the hands take care of the horses. Something has come up I need to talk to you boys about.” He gestured toward the house with a nod of his head.

Instantly, both Hoss and Adam lost the comfortable feeling coming home had generated.

“Tell me that it ain’t got nuthin’ to do with Little Joe,” Hoss almost pleaded but the look on his father’s face said that it did.

Any other time, the soft curse from Adam would have received a rebuke from their father. This time, it not only went unpunished, both brothers were shocked to hear it repeated by Ben as he turned and went toward the house. They said nothing but traded looks with raised eyebrows.

 

An hour later and Hoss was confused, Adam concerned and Ben angry. Again.

“So are you just going to pay off this Dansen or what?” Adam asked then drained his coffee cup. He looked across to where Hoss sat on the sofa, hunched over, appearing to almost be in physical pain. His father continued to pace in front of the cold fireplace.

“I don’t think I have another choice in the matter. John is right. Getting any information out of the South right now is nigh onto impossible so it would be my word against his in a court of law. And I don’t want it to go that far.”

“Pa,” Adam pleaded, “I want it over with too but this is blackmail!”

“It’s only blackmail if there is truth in what this fella says. And from what I heard, it ain’t nuthin’ but a pack of lies,” contended Hoss, speaking up for the first time.

“I prefer to think of it not as blackmail but as something else,” Ben admitted.

“If you go ahead and give him what he came after, what is to stop him from coming back again and again? It isn’t about reclaiming what he thinks is his, Pa, it’s about money! And I would wager a lot of it!” Adam insisted, putting his cup down for he was afraid he would have thrown it otherwise.

“Of course it’s about money. How much? I have no idea but whatever it is I will pay it. Just to get that man out of the territory before he-”

“Before he finds out just how much he can get,” Hoss finished for his father. “He don’t know about Little Joe, does he?”

“Apparently not. Or at least he didn’t when he came out here day before yesterday. And I want to keep it that way. That is why I will give him what he wants just as fast as I can.”

“I cannot believe what I am hearing. Pa, you are talking about paying this man off. This man who has got no proof to back up what he says. I never thought I would see the day when the Cartwrights laid down and took a whipping! Over a pack of lies! Unless,” Adam hesitated, knowing that what he would say next could very well cause his father’s wrath to fall directly on him alone for even thinking it, “unless, there is some truth in what he claims about Marie.”

“And I cannot believe what I just heard from you, young man. You knew Marie. Do you think she was the sort of woman who would have taken to becoming a man’s possession lying down? Hardly!” Ben’s last word was shouted.

           

 She became yours easy enough, Adam thought but wisely did not say it. “Let me play the Devil’s advocate here a minute. Pa, you yourself admitted that you hadn’t known her very long when you asked her to marry you. Well, that is a two-edged sword. She hadn’t known you long either but yet she willingly throws over an apparently easy lifestyle to marry you and come out here to the wilds of Nevada. Why? Maybe she saw it as a way of escaping an ugly situation. I’m not saying she liked her life there, but maybe she thought she could start over again fresh out here. Where no one knew her past.”

“THAT IS ENOUGH OUT OF YOU, YOUNG MAN!” Ben thundered, his countenance as black as any summer storm cloud.

“Yeah, back off, Adam,” Hoss warned then continued, “It don’t matter what she was before Pa married her. It only matters what she was when she was here with us. And I remember Marie as the best momma a young fella could have. She had a kind heart about her and she loved us. All of us. Now, I don’t care to see her name and reputation dragged through the mud any more than anyone else but I don’t like the idea of paying this Dansen dude for his story neither. Pa, there has to be another way. Can’t we get someone in New Orleans to check up on this fella?”

“I suggested the same thing to John Nestor and he is looking into that possibility but getting any information back is going to take more than just money and it is something we have a limited amount of: Time. How long before Dansen finds out about Joe? How long before he realizes the stakes are much higher than he anticipated?”

“It doesn’t matter how long before Dansen finds out him, Pa. If he is half as devious as he sounds, he’s been asking around Virginia City and found out that you have three sons. All we have to do is make sure that Dansen can’t find Joe,” Adam reasoned, settling back into his chair.

“No, what I am more worried about is what your brother is capable of doing when he finds out about all of this.” Wearily, Ben sank into his chair and folded his hands together, almost as if he were praying.

“That we can take care of real easy, what with Joe up to the far line shack for a month. At the end of the month, one of us rides up there and tells him he has to stay there for another month. That you haven’t cooled off yet enough for him to come home,” Adam suggested.

“I can’t see Joe takin’ that real easy.”

“Nor can I, Hoss. But the alternative could see your brother in the chains of slavery. Or worse,” Ben sighed.

There is nothing worse, Hoss thought. “Okay, end of the month I’ll go up there with him. But in the meantime, we don’t give this Dansen the time of day. Much less a penny.”

Ben nodded, suddenly believing that this nightmare would end. Looking back, he would come to realize that it was just starting.

 

 

Chapter Five

 

When they stepped through the doors of the Bucket of Blood Saloon, it was like the two Cartwright brothers had stepped into a void. All talk and noise ceased. Adam felt as though every eye in the place was turned on them. He ventured a sideways glance at Hoss and saw his own raised eyebrow expression mirrored there. Moving up to the bar, he asked for a whiskey and Hoss a beer, both of which Bruno, the bartender, quickly set up for them then moved to the other end of the bar, mopping the surface furiously.

“Makes for a real cold day in here, don’t it?” Hoss commented and Adam simply grunted his affirmative reply.

“Well, finally,” came the slow drawl of the man also standing at the bar just down from them. “I am going to assume that you are the Cartwright brothers.”

“Just who wants to know?” Adam tried to sound casual but had already decided that he knew who the man in the grey suit was: Daniel Dansen.

“My name is Dansen and I have come a long way to your fair township here in search of some property that belongs to me. Property your father stole. Please pass the message along that even though the original is gone, I will have, shall we call it restitution?”

Hoss began to move toward the slender adversary but Adam stopped him with a hand to his arm and a softly spoken “no.”

“You have no proof of any such claim, Mister Dansen and let me warn you that any further such accusations and I may not be able to control my brother here,” he warned.

Dansen stood his ground, appraising the two men before him with a practiced eye. He pushed back from the bar and came to stand behind the two brothers. He let his eyes flick up and down both before he spoke again.

“Oh, but I have proof. Tell me, where is he? Where are you hiding him?”

Adam turned to face him, quelling all expression on his features.

Dansen continued. “I have talked to a number of people in this fair town and they were only too happy to tell me what I already surmised. If I can’t have Marie back, I will take what was hers. So tell me. Where is Marie’s son?I know that neither one of you fit the description I have been given. Would that he were the size of this fellow here.” His eyes roamed over Hoss as he licked his lips slowly. “That would make him quite a prize on the open market. But probably too hard to control. Shame. Would have to use the whip on him and that sort of marking drops the price. No, I’ve been told he’s called Little Joe and that certainly would never have been attached to someone of your size. Now you, on the other hand,” Dansen turned slightly to study Adam frankly, “possibly could be him but there again, I was told that he has just celebrated his seventeenth birthday. And you, my friend, are considerably older than seventeen. Now if it were me in your father’s shoes, I would certainly keep this ill conceived spawn out of sight. Especially in light of what his mother was. Could damage the good family name.”

Adam had to firmly grasp Hoss’ arm to keep him in check. “Mister Dansen, let me make a suggestion to you. Walk out that door and keep on going until you reach the dung heap you crawled out of or I will turn my brother loose on you and there will not be enough left of you to spread your filthy lies.”

“Oh I will walk out that door, gentlemen, but let me assure you of two things. They are not lies. And I will have what I came for. Good day.” He touched his hat brim with a long forefinger and with the hulking Charles trailing at his heels, left.

Once again, the two Cartwrights found themselves in a pool of silence. They turned back to the bar as one.

“Adam,” Hoss said softly, “I suggest we don’t say nothin’ to Pa about this.”

“Good idea.” He lifted his whiskey and knocked it back in one motion. “And I suggest that one of us gets up to that line shack before the month is out.”

“Like tomorrow?”

“Like tomorrow. Bruno, give me another whiskey down here.”

As he poured, Bruno’s curiosity got the better of him. “So? Is what that fella says true?”

“Whatever it is that man is saying, it ain’t the truth,” Hoss grumbled.

“What is he saying exactly, Bruno?” queried Adam.

“That Joe’s mother was a woman of color. That she was his daddy’s mistress down in Naw ‘Leans before your father stole her. Kidnaped her and dragged her up here.”

“Bruno,” Adam sighed and poured himself another shot of whiskey before he continued. “You never knew Marie and you are just repeating what that trash has said so I am going to let you slide this time. But let me convince you of some facts.” He raised his voice so that all in the saloon could hear him. “One: Marie had long silky blonde hair and green eyes, so she was hardly a ‘woman of color’ as you so delicately put it. Two: she was no one’s mistress. Or anything else of the like in New Orleans. Three: my father never stole anyone or any thing in his life. Nor did he kidnap Marie and force her to come here with him. They came here as man and wife, legally married. Now that I have set you straight, if I ever hear such garbage out of you, or anyone else in this saloon for that matter, I will personally take you out and horsewhip you to within an inch of your life. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

Bruno stepped back until he was against the back of the bar and out of Adam’s long reach. “Perfectly. I meant no disrespect, Adam, I surely didn’t.”

“Good. Come on, Hoss. All of a sudden I have the urge for some clean air.”

 

Once out on the broad walkway, the two brothers turned to head toward the office of the family lawyer, John Nestor. They had promised their father to meet him there once they had finished loading the supplies. The trip to the saloon had been an unplanned for diversion and Adam was wishing they’d never had the idea in the first place.

“Adam, that was some speech you gave in there,” Hoss commented.

“Yeah, sure was. Wish I believed half of what I said.”

Hoss’ massive hand clamped down on his brother’s black clad arm ferociously, pulling him to a stop. “I thought we had discussed that back at the house. You listen to me, Adam Cartwright. If I ever hear a word of doubt again from you about her, it will be you on the receivin’ end of that whippin’ you were about to hand out in there. You understand me plain?”

“Easy, Hoss. Look at it from a different point of view. What do we really know for sure about Marie’s past? She never spoke of it that I recall. For all we know for sure -”

The hand on his arm closed down tighter, making Adam twist slightly.

“What we know for sure is that she made our Pa a happy man. And that she gave us a little brother before she died. She was your mother as well as mine, ‘member? Anything beyond that, I don’t care to hear ’bout. From you or anybody else. Because it don’t matter. Now unless you want to discuss it further in the alley over there, I suggest we get on down to that lawyer’s office.”

Adam considered that Marie Cartwright needed no greater defender than her stepson. However, the more he logically thought about her and what they hadn’t known about her, the more uncomfortable he became. There was no one he could talk to about it. No one.

 

Ben was already speaking with John Nestor when Adam and Hoss arrived. He noted Adam was rubbing his forearm and that Hoss’ look would have curdled milk, he appeared so angry. But his attention was quickly drawn back to what the lawyer was saying.

“I have arranged for an intermediary, Ben. He is with the British Consul in San Francisco. He’ll go to New Orleans and take a look at whatever documentation we can scrounge up a hint of. Like the deed to Marie’s house you said she lived in there. If the deed is in her name, it shows several things. First she had the resources to maintain her lifestyle appropriately and was not the chattel of this Dansen’s father. Maybe he can unearth something about her parents as well. Most of all, I hope he can find no trace whatsoever of her cousin’s handing the gambling casino over as forfeiture to debt. All we need to have happen is that there is a turnover in that property just before you were there and all of this can blow up in our faces.”

“John, explain something to me, if you would?” asked Adam and he moved away from Hoss as he spoke. “If Marie were a free woman, how could she have been sold to cover her cousin’s losses? That part makes no sense to me.”

“It’s called indentured service. And it is how many of our forefathers came to this country. A person sells his -or her- services for a set length of time in exchange for – well, most of the time, passage to this country. Usually it was seven years. But here we are talking about covering a debt that may have been larger than boat fare.”

“But it has been longer than seven years!” Hoss pointed out vehemently.

“Yes, it has,” Nestor agreed then continued, “but if that were the case, Marie’s marrying your father and leaving with him caused the debt to go unpaid because her services were discontinued. As a result, without payment, Dansen’s father could have continued the indenture time longer. The contract would have said something to the effect that the servitude would continue until the debt was paid in full. And unfortunately, this sort of servitude can be passed to heirs. On both sides. That means, Ben, that he could force Joseph into the same situation until the debt is satisfied. I have asked Mister Dansen to produce those same papers so I can look them over.”

“What if he can’t produce those papers?” Ben asked.

“Then he can claim anything he wants. He just can’t do anything about them. At least for now.”

“What does that mean? ‘At least for now’?” Adam cautiously asked.

“It means that if the Confederacy wins this abominable war and becomes another country, your Mister Dansen stands a very good chance of making your father and brother go to New Orleans to clear up this matter. To defend themselves and your brother’s right to freedom. I dare say that once your brother steps foot into Confederate territory, he will become a slave. Property of Mister Daniel Dansen until your father can prove otherwise. Or pay off the debt.”

Ben found his knees giving way beneath him, unable to support him further and he sank into the chair Adam propelled him to. “And if the Union wins? What then? We make Dansen prove his side?”

“No, Ben. Then it becomes a moot point as slavery of any sort was abolished in the United States by the Emancipation Proclamation of Mister Lincoln. Dansen can still try to make life miserable for you but that’s about all. But for your peace of mind, I suggest we go ahead and use my British contact.”

“But how long will that take, John? As I recall, the fastest way to New Orleans would still be through the Panamanian isthmus. And that takes a good month. A month to get there, say a month to gather the evidence we need and then a month back. That takes us into the fall,” Ben figured aloud and knew there was no way he could keep Joseph safe that long. And ignorant of this storm of horrible things said about his mother. No way.

“It is our only hope.” The lawyer took a deep breath and let it go slowly, suddenly finding his desktop more interesting than the expressions on the three faces before him.

“What if we take Dansen out and crack him open like a walnut?” Hoss suggested. He also knew the likelihood of keeping an impetuous brother under lock and key and hidden that long.

“No!” Ben’s admonition rifled through the room. “You will stay as far away from that man as you can. Do you both understand me? Both of you!”

“As much as I agree with you, Hoss, your father is right. Both of you need to stay away from Dansen. And you too, Ben. You let me deal with him. That’s what you pay me for, isn’t it? Now I suggest that the three of you return to your ranch. Leave Dansen to me.”

 

The late afternoon sun streaked across the hardwood floor, making shards of bright light contrasting with the dark patina of the flooring. John Nestor studied it as he thought about the audience he had just had. The threat had been made and received clearly. He had a choice to make: to expose himself or the plot at hand. Always a cautious man, he had told his visitor he would think about it and give them an answer in the morning. In reality, his mind was made up before the visitor had left the room. John Nestor would do as he was told. The road to the political hierarchy, he told himself, was paved with such decisions. He took the letter he had written, addressed to an individual in the British Consul in California, and standing in a darkened corner, shredded it into an ashtray. The match he lit made a brief flash of orange light as it started the paper burning. Nestor watched it for a moment then turned back to his desk. As he sat down, he vowed to himself that he would never again place himself in such a position. Then he laughed at himself. Gambling gave him such pleasure, whether he won or lost. He would just be more cautious next time.

Chapter Six

 

 

The same late afternoon sunshine filtered through the tall ponderosa pines there in the far north reaches of the ranch that shared its name with the trees. Beneath those trees, Joe Cartwright stretched and yawned. Maybe this being sent up here alone wasn’t so bad after all, he thought then yawned again. That afternoon he had taken off and done absolutely nothing and it secretly pleased him that he had.

 

“Wonder how long I can keep this up?” he said aloud to no one there. He had even left his horse down in the small corral by the line shack, climbing the hill behind the shack for a view of the Lake that was unsurpassed by none he knew of. Joe laughed at himself. “Talking to myself only after three days! After a month, I should be a raving lunatic!” He took note of the angle of the sun. “Well, as long as you are talking to yourself, Joe Cartwright, why don’t you just invite yourself down the hill to have some supper with yourself? Good idea. Self, join me for supper? Why, thank you, I would enjoy that tremendously!” He pantomimed a two-sided conversation, looking from right to left, playing both parts. “Oh God, who am I kidding? This is going to be miserable.” Groaning, he stood and went back down the hill to the line shack.

 

He chopped wood for the stove then went in and fixed himself a dinner of beans and bacon. Checking over the other supplies, he decided a can of peaches would have to do as dessert and he opened it. He decided he would wash the dishes properly so he heated water while he sat watching the moon rise across the distant mountaintops. Once his water was hot enough, he cleaned up and turned in as the first stars made their appearance in the velvety black sky.

 

The next morning he awoke at dawn. Still stretching and yawning, he made his way out to the corral where he fed and watered Cochise, telling the horse that today they had to check the herd. He went back to the cabin where his coffee sat waiting for him. He looked into the broken mirror hanging on the wall and decided that he didn’t need to shave and that the cows didn’t care how he looked. Munching on a cold biscuit he returned to the corral and saddled his horse. By the time the front of the cabin was bathed in morning light, Joe was on his way to the herd.

 

He found the herd of his father’s favored white-faced cattle right where he had seen them two days earlier. He figured that with the thick rich grass and the clear spring that ran through the meadow, they weren’t likely to roam far and he was right. But he slowly circled the herd, looking for signs of predators, illness or injury. There was none.

 

“Good,” he said aloud, reaching down and patting the pinto’s neck before him. “Got just enough time to ride back to the shack and grab our afternoon nap. Got to keep a schedule, Adam says. Hah! Well, all right, our schedule will be to do what we want when we want to do it. How’s that?”

 

Cochise stretched his neck and the black and white mane flipped back and forth as he shook.

 

“Hey, you agreeing with Adam now? Can’t believe it! Sold out by my own horse. Next thing you know, you’ll be asking me to read you poetry!”

 

The horse turned his head to study the man on its back. He snorted just once, then turned his attention back to the cattle before them.

 

“Well, I ain’t gonna do it. And singing is out of the question as well.”

 

The pinto dropped his head and proceeded to scratch his nose on the inside of one foreleg. Then the horse turned back to study the man again but this time curled his lip back, showing large even white teeth.

 

“I tell you I ain’t gonna do it!”

 

Reaching back, Cochise grabbed the closest boot toe between those white teeth and gave it a little jerk before turning it loose. He went back to watching the herd.

 

“Not only that, but you have got to give up your morning coffee. Hop Sing only packed enough for me, so you do without!”

 

The pinto groaned.

 

 

Six days into his “exile” as Joe now thought of it and already he could have sworn he was seeing things. As he was finishing up his chores that evening, he thought he saw Hoss’ white hat through the trees. He stood on the stoop and looked out across the small clearing into the gathering dusk, half expecting to see the flash of a deer’s white tail. Instead he saw what he originally thought he had: his brother’s hat. Tossing the towel he had been drying his plate with back into the shack, he gave a hoop and holler and bounded out to meet Hoss.

 

“Well lookee who come visitin’!” he teased and jumping up, tried to snag Hoss’ white hat from his head. He missed, of course but that didn’t stop him from nearly knocking Hoss from the saddle.

 

“Dadburnit, Little Joe. You just settle down now. You act like you been up here a month of Sundays.” But once Hoss had swung down from his horse, he gave his little brother a fierce bear hug. He could never stay angry with Joe for more than a gnat’s sigh anyway.

 

“Well, I might as well of! Let me guess. Pa has simmered down and sent you up here to trade places with me.” Joe’s grin was a sight to behold.

 

“Not exactly,” Hoss said and pulled Chub toward the corral.

 

“Okay then,” Joe bounced alongside his brother like a puppy, a happy puppy, “You’re taking pity on me and come up to spend time with your adorable little brother.”

 

Hoss sighed deeply. Securing his horse’s reins, he began to unpack his bedroll and saddlebags. These he handed to his brother then undid the cinch and pulled the saddle from the big horse. “Not exactly, little brother.”

 

“Just what does that mean? That ‘not exactly’?” Joe twisted his head slightly to one side, looking up at his brother’s stern visage.

 

“It means just that. Not exactly. Say, you got any supper left over? I am hungry enough I could eat your cooking. Tell you what, you take care of my horse here and I’ll go raid your pantry then we’ll talk some.” Hoss lumbered off, leaving Joe still in the dark. Literally and figuratively.

 

Once Hoss had as close to his fill as he ever did and his horse was taken care of, Joe was about to burst from anticipation. Sitting in the pale moonlight, Hoss wondered about telling him everything that had happened in his absence. Rattling around in his head were his father’s last words on the subject which all boiled down to one word: Don’t. Adam had thought and expressed just the opposite opinion. That Joe should know about the threat to himself. Maybe he didn’t need to know all the particulars but he needed to know that there was danger out there. So Hoss was of two minds as to what he should say to his brother. Finally he came to the decision he would later regret.

“Little brother, Pa is still mighty upset ’bout some things. And whether you like it or not, what with you being right in the middle of ’em, you’re best left right up here on the side of this mountain.” Hoss did his best to tell the truth, as much as he dared.

 

Joe stood up from the porch stoop and walked into the small yard area. He tucked his thumbs into the back of his belt and looked into the night sky. Pa is still mad at me, he thought sadly. How can he? I told him I didn’t do anything to that girl. That it was her doin’s. She was the one pushing herself on me. I was trying to get away from her.

 

“So I have to stay up here is what you are sayin’?” Joe said over his shoulder, not bothering to turn and look at Hoss.

 

Hoss crossed his arms over his chest before he answered, “Yup, ‘fraid so. But it is for your own good. You gotta believe me on that count. Pa ain’t doin’ it ’cause he’s really mad at ya. He’s doin’ it cause he loves you is all.”

 

How many times have I heard that logic? the younger man thought.

 

“Joe? You hear me? I’m gonna stay up here with ya for a while then Adam will come up but you got to stay put.”

 

“Oh great! Not only do I get sent into exile up here but I also get keepers!” Joe complained roughly into the night air.

 

Hoss flinched at not just the words but the tone Joe used as well. He longed to tell him why but his father’s fear that he would lash out and do some thing to Dansen seemed very real just then. “Wish you wouldn’t look at it that way, Shortshanks.”

 

Joe turned on his heels and strode back to the cabin door, still angry. He went into the one room, pulled off his boots and rolled into his blankets.

 

“Joe?” Hoss called softly and heard the bunk’s rope suspension groan as the only reply. “Don’t be like that.”

 

“Just go home in the morning Hoss. I don’t need a babysitter up here. I can take care of myself.”

 

“Never said you couldn’t. But there is more to it than just that.”

 

“Just go home in the morning,” Joe repeated.

 

Hoss studied the dark interior of the shack. As he stretched out on the opposite bunk, he opened his mouth twice to tell his brother everything but twice he closed it without saying a word. Finally, he called out “Good night” but got no reply.

 

The next morning found Hoss alone in the shack when he awoke. Cochise was gone. Studying the fresh prints in the heavy dew, Hoss could see that Joe had headed off toward where the herd was grazing. He figured he would be back before too long, looking for breakfast so he set about fixing some. But when Joe had failed to materialize in an hour or so, Hoss became worried. So saddling his horse, he headed out for where he knew he’d gone.

 

As he rode, Hoss kept his eyes on the trail but it looked just like what he thought it would: Joe was headed out to check the cattle. Hoss was nearly giddy with relief when he spotted his brother’s familiar black and white pinto standing in the tree line overlooking the meadow. He had been so afraid that Joe would do something stupid he never gave a thought to what he himself had done until it was too late.

 

As he angled Chub toward the other horse, he caught the glint of sunlight on metal just before he heard the crack of a shot fired. Something burned across his shoulder and Hoss instinctively turned in that same direction. The second shot buried itself in his wide chest and he fell from the back of his horse, unconscious before he hit the ground.

 

Joe heard the first shot and looked up from the calf he was helping just in time to see the second shot find its mark and his brother fall. Instantly, he was on his horse and headed in that direction. He pulled Cochise to a sliding stop and ran to Hoss. He tried to roll Hoss onto his back but the big man was heavy.

 

The sound of a hammer being pulled back right at his ear stopped Joe cold.

“Whatever it is you’re after, just take it and go. The horses are worth more than any cash both of us got on us. Just take ’em and go,” Joe said, his voice sounding bolder than he would have thought possible. Beneath his hands, he could feel the rise and fall of the big man’s chest so he knew his brother was alive.

 

“All right, I will,” a voice with a strong Southern drawl said behind his head.

 

Joe started to turn to look at the source of the voice but the butt of the gun caught him at the temple and he crumbled to the ground beside Hoss.

 

 

 

Chapter Seven

 

Rising from his knees there beside the grave marker, Ben Cartwright’s thoughts were far from the view of the turquoise water of Lake Tahoe. The birdsong in the trees and the chitterings of a squirrel high overhead sprinkled the mountain air with the sounds of life, but he found himself along the dark docks of New Orleans, walking once again with a woman long dead but still very much alive in his heart. Tenderly, he brushed his hand across the cold marble stone, longing instead for the feel of soft skin, warm beneath his fingers. He touched the engraving with the same compassion as he said a single word. “Marie,” and within that sound was heartbreak…and desire.

 

With the recent events of the past week causing such turmoil in his life, Ben had felt as though his beloved Marie was being torn from him again. He had tossed sleeplessly through the nights, haunted by memories made old and ugly with hate. When he had slept, it was as though he could feel her beside him and he would awaken each morning, clutching a pillow still damp with tears. When such emotions had bothered him in the past, he had usually found an excuse to be with their son. It was as though touching Joseph made Marie come back alive for him and he would catch himself doing it time and time again.

 

But to touch Joseph now, Ben knew, would lead Dansen to his son. It would lead that son into a world he knew nothing about. So Ben had held himself in check even though his soul longed to rush up the mountainside and grab his son into his protective embrace once more. No, instead he had to be satisfied with sending Hoss. But when Hoss had ridden away the other morning, the feeling of dread had continued in Ben’s heart, building in intensity until this morning he had decided to come here. To Marie’s grave.

 

Once again he let his hand smooth over the delicate engravings. Her name, the date of her birth, the fact that she was his loving wife but never the date of her death. Over that line on the stone, heavy moss had grown and Ben irrationally felt that if that line could be erased from it that his Marie would once again live. He wondered how long that would take and knew there were never going to be enough years.

 

The shout from the treeline brought him back to reality and he spun quickly toward the sound. Again he heard Adam’s shout of “Pa!” then caught sight of the big chestnut and its rider.

 

Adam spurred the animal down the slope toward where his father still stood. Although the family usually gave ample respect to this point of land jutting into the Lake, Adam felt this was not the time for such. He pulled Sport to a halt just as his father reached up and grabbed at the reins.

 

“What’s wrong?”

 

“It’s Hoss, Pa. Chub pulled into the yard half an hour ago, wild-eyed and lathered,” Adam panted as he told his father.

 

Ben crossed to his own horse and mounted without speaking.

 

“I’ve sent men on ahead, searching the trail he said he was gonna take.”

 

“Anything on the saddle?” Ben questioned.

 

“His bedroll and saddlebags were gone so he must have made it to the line shack. But there was no blood or anything like that on the saddle or the horse. But Chub wouldn’t have left Hoss unless he was driven away.”

 

“Any sign of Cochise?”

 

Adam shook his head as Sport danced wildly.”Pa, you go back home. I’ll head up the mountain. When I catch up with the other searchers, I’ll send word back.” But he spoke to his father’s back as Ben had whirled the buckskin around, headed for the mountain and, hopefully, he prayed, two sons.

 

Ben didn’t recognize the cowboy who rode over to them and told them that Hoss had been found. He didn’t remember the wild ride to the lush meadow in the gathering darkness. Later he couldn’t recall the stream of orders he had so brusquely given to all present. All he could remember was the sight of his big son, sprawled in the grass, blood covering his mighty chest and how it sounded as Hoss struggled to breathe and talk at the same time.

 

“Hush, son.” Ben fought back the emotions that threatened to rob him of coherent thought. “Just stay still. We’re gonna get you to the line shack then we’re gonna get a doctor up here. You’re going to be all right but you’ve got to stay still.”

 

“Pa,” Hoss whispered and reached for his father’s hand, “I’m sorry. I led ’em here. I’m sorry.” Ben tightened his grip on the huge hand grasping his and told Hoss again to be still. He didn’t need to be told what had happened here or even why it had happened. He knew. Slowly the strength faded from the hand and Ben saw his mighty son give in to unconsciousness. The pain and anguish left Hoss’ face only to take its place on his father’s.

 

Ben felt a strong hand slide across his shoulders and come to rest as a welcome presence. Adam crouched beside his father. He reached out and laid his hand on Hoss to reaffirm that his bigger little brother still lived, despite the hole in his chest. Once again, he put his arm around his father’s shoulders and pulled him to his feet.

 

“We’ve got a travois rigged and we’re gonna take him up to the line shack. I’ve sent riders after Paul Martin. And Roy Coffee. It’s gonna be all right, Pa. The fact that he is still alive is a good sign. You know that. We get him stabilized and then get him home and he’ll be up and around in no time at all.”

 

“The line shack,” Ben repeated, dully, “Has anyone checked the line shack for Joe?”

 

“I did. Just a little while ago,” Adam’s voice whispered in the darkness, so low that only his father standing next to him could hear. “Joe wasn’t there, Pa. Cochise was but not Joe.” As he spoke the last words, Adam could feel his father begin to sag just a bit and easily held him up, not caring what the other men around them thought.

 

By daybreak the next morning, the little line shack was crowded. Longtime Ponderosa hands had slept in the yard and the surrounding area, waiting for word of the big man they all liked. As Adam stood on the stoop that morning, they gathered around him expectantly. He looked into the cup of coffee he held in his hand then to the far mountaintops now touched by the first rays of what promised to be another glorious sunrise. Although the beauty of it often touched him, it left him cold that morning. Behind him he could hear the small movements of the doctor and his father.

 

“Adam, you just give us the word and we’ll hunt the animal down that did this to Hoss,” one of the men offered.

 

“I wish I could, Pete, but I can’t. Hoss has to come around enough to tell us who shot him.”

 

Another man swore aloud. “We don’t need Hoss to tell us who it was. We all know it was that Southern fella whose been makin’ the trouble.”

Adam swallowed hard. Like the men before him, he was sure that Dansen was behind this but he also knew that Dansen held a valuable bargaining chip: his brother. While he longed to race down the mountains into Virginia City, find Dansen and smash his face to pulp, Adam knew it would be forfeiting Joe’s life to do so.

 

“No, you think you know. The first man who rides out of here looking for that Dansen fella may as well just go crawl into one of my jail cells. That’s where I’ll put ya.” Roy Coffee admonished the gathering as he rode slowly into the clearing. “I been keeping an eye on him and as much as I hate to say it, the man ain’t left Virginia City for three days. Adam, how is Hoss?”

 

“About as well as can be expected if you are shot in the chest and left to die, Roy.” The eldest Cartwright brother’s grim words fell on the lawman’s ears with an edge like brittle ice. Adam turned his attention back to the hands before him. “I want two of you to go back down to the house and get a wagon rigged up so we can get Hoss back down there. I want two more of you into Virginia City to watch our illustrious Mister Dansen. You watch him only. If he leaves town, you follow him but no one makes a move to harm him. Understand? I want you, Pete and you, Doug, to stay up here and guard my father and Hoss. The rest of you, I want combing these hills for any sign of Little Joe. We have to assume that Dansen had someone kidnap him but Joe wouldn’t go without a fight so look for signs of that.”

 

“That’s enough of that Adam Cartwright!” shouted the sheriff. “You let the law handle this!”

 

With one long arm, Adam pointed back the way the lawman had ridden in. “There’s a problem there, Roy. Your jurisdiction ended five miles back that way. You may be the law in Story County but not here.”

 

“And you are?”

 

“Damn right! As long as I have one brother fighting to live and another one missing, I am the law here.”

 

Roy smoothed his gray mustache with one thumbnail, taking gauge of the man dressed in black who stood before the tiny shack. He had known Adam Cartwright for most of the man’s life and knew that just like his father, Adam could be a hard man to deal with when it came to the family. Usually, Adam’s head ruled his heart and he could be counted on to think through his actions. But this wasn’t one of those times, Roy decided. He reached to his chest and pulled the badge from where it was pinned to his vest. He hefted it in his hand, pondering his next move then dropped it into his inside shirt pocket.

“Okay then, I’ll ride with the search team.”

 

 

Chapter Eight

 

He returned slowly to the living. The only light came to him when he moved his head and then only with stabs of pain. He could feel a rough wood floor against his cheek as he lay on his side. His arms were pulled behind his back and his hands tied there. When he tried to pull at the bindings, another binding tightened at his throat, cutting off his air supply. He next tried to straighten his cramped legs, only to have the same thing happen again. From somewhere at his back there was a faint cool breeze but it was not enough to stop him from sweating. But what bothered him more than anything else was the fact that he could hear nothing. There was no sound what so ever. He tried calling out and found the gag stuffed down his throat to effectively stop that from happening. Fighting his own panic, he forced himself to relax. And slowly, ever so slowly, Joseph Cartwright slept.

 

When he awoke, it was to the feeling of hands grasping his arms and hauling him upright. The blindfold which had covered his eyes was yanked away. The flooding bright lamplight and intense headache caused by the head wound brought hot acidic vomit to his throat. The binding at his throat began choking him at the same time. Suddenly the gag was removed from his mouth and he was thrown bodily to the floor. Unable to break his own fall, he landed heavily on one shoulder. He struggled to his knees and leaning over, let the nausea take over. Once his stomach was empty, Joe was able to concentrate on his surroundings. Within his line of slightly blurred vision was a pair of black boots that shifted impatiently.

 

A hand reached down and grabbed at the back of his head, clutching cruelly for purchase in his thick hair. Again he was pulled to his feet. He swayed precariously but the hand in his hair yanked hard and he fought to stay upright.

 

The man standing before him was a stranger to Joe as was the man beside him, holding him up. The man in front of him was well dressed in a fashionable dove gray suit with a white shirt and silvery gray cravat and waistcoat. He was of slender build and had an almost handsome face with dark brown hair and eyes. Those eyes flicked over Joe, seeming to judge and appraise as they went.

 

The second man was a big man. Not as big as Hoss but nearly. Looking at him from the corner of his eye, Joe could see in his flattened features the face of a man who had spent his life taking a beating, perhaps in the professional fighting ring.

 

“I told you just to bring him here, not to damage him,” the man in gray spoke, a sneer in his voice as well as on his face. “Damaged goods don’t sell well, Charles, you know that.”

 

Joe decided that the big man’s name was Charles and was obviously controlled by the gray man.

 

“Who the Hell are you?” Joe asked and surprised himself at the strength and determination he heard in his own voice.

 

“Don’t let that concern yourself. The fact that I know who you are is all that matters. Cut him loose, Charles.” Joe felt the bindings on his hands being cut away. Once his hands were free, Joe made a desperate lunge for freedom, only to have Charles pin his arms behind him and contain him effortlessly.

 

“Hold him,” the other demanded and while Charles did as he was asked, the man in gray proceeded to strip the clothes from Joe, ripping and tearing at the cloth with ease.

 

“Get him cleaned up. He stinks. And should you need to correct his behavior, please do it in a manner that will not scar him excessively. I need him alive. Remember that.” The man in gray left the room, closing the single door behind him, leaving Joe and the hulking Charles in a pool of yellow light from an overhead lantern.

 

Charles shoved Joe to the ground. “You gonna make trouble?” he asked.

 

Joe smiled grimly and rose to a crouch. “Ask my family. They can tell you trouble is my middle name,” and he lunged for the door. Charles grabbed him by the shoulder and tossed him like a child would a doll over into a far corner.

 

“You make trouble, you gonna pay for it,” Charles warned and Joe heard the slur in Charles’ voice.

 

“Oh, but your boss man said you weren’t to hurt me. Remember?” Again Joe aimed for the door. This time, Charles let him get to the door and pinned him to the rough surface with his own bulk, pressing Joe’s naked body into the wood.

 

“No,” Charles warned into Joe’s ear, “He said to do it so you wouldn’t scar a whole lot. And I know how to do that real easy.” He rammed his knee between Joe’s legs and up into his crotch. Joe would have collapsed to the floor but he was still pinned to the door by the now laughing Charles. “Now are you gonna behave?”

 

Fighting back the waves of agony that assailed him, Joe looked back at the brute who held him.”Go to Hell,” he hissed between clenched teeth.

 

Once again, Charles raised his knee, this time with enough force that Joe’s body was jerked upwards. “That type of language isn’t nice.” Again, Charles kneed him.

 

With the third assault, Joe lost consciousness.

 

 

It was the sound of humming that brought Joe back to reality. That and the feel of someone touching him. When he finally convinced his eyes to open, he found himself again tied but this time with his hands over his head as he stood in the center of the shadowy room, his bare feet just touching the floor, his mouth gagged again. In the thin light from the lantern, he could see Charles moving about, carrying two buckets. It was Charles who was humming.

 

As he watched, Charles took a piece of sacking and dunked it into the first bucket of water. Horrified at what he perceived the monster’s intentions to be, Joe tried to twist away but Charles easily stopped all movement with just a touch to Joe’s privates.

 

“He told me to clean you up and I intend to do just that. Now you stand still.” With that warning, Charles returned to his humming and much as he would have rubbed down a hot horse, he used the wet cloth on Joe’s body. Then he rinsed the cloth and picked up a bar of harsh yellow soap. Once he had a good lather worked up, he again returned to Joe and washed him, still humming.

Joe didn’t know which feeling was stronger; the revulsion at being violated repeatedly by the other man’s touching and uncaring hands or the humility and embarrassment brought by the same actions. He thought of how many times in his life he had dealt with his beloved horse the same way, rubbing, petting, currying, using a wet sack to cool the animal after a hot day. Even humming as he did so. He closed his eyes and willed it to stop but it didn’t.

 

Once Charles had the soap rinsed away, he proceeded to use a towel to dry his charge, paying careful attention to the young man’s thick hair. When he had him dried completely, he stepped back to view his work and nodded with apparent appreciation.

 

“Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” he chuckled and smiled but Joe still stood with his eyes closed and never saw it.

 

He’s done now. It’s finished. Oh God, this is a nightmare! Joe thought. He felt the cloth holding the gag in place being removed and prayed for the gag to be pulled as well. Maybe I can reason with him. But the gag remained. Instead he felt Charles big hands glide over his face, first with a cloth then with just his bare hands. Then Charles was rubbing down his arms and across his chest. When his captor moved behind him, Joe opened his eyes.

 

“I’m almost finished and then we can take you to see Mister Dansen and show him how pretty you look.” Once more Joe felt the monster’s hands rubbing his back and down across his buttocks, smoothing oil into his skin as he went. Joe forced himself to keep his eyes open when Charles returned to stand in front of him. Revulsion rose him as Charles poured oil into his hands and began in on his chest, rubbing and kneading down his sides and across his smooth belly.

 

When the monster came to Joe’s genitals, he looked first into the younger man’s eyes. “Ah good, you remember how to behave now, don’t you?” he whispered and his eyes took on a near maniacal glint. “I don’t like having to hurt you but I will if I have to. You know that now, don’t you?” He waited for the response, a single nod. “Good, we have an understanding then.” Joe felt himself handled almost gently by the man.

 

Finally Charles gave the young man’s legs a good going over and stepped back again to survey his handiwork. He had prepared many a slave for sale this same way. The fact that there was no auction block and no sale today didn’t seem to enter into his thought processes. Mister Dansen had told him what to do and if Mister Dansen wanted it done, that was fine with him. He walked behind the young man again, looking for any possible flaw in his work on the young buck. Then the one problem hit him that he didn’t normally have to deal with. Most of the black bucks he had to prepare for viewing had their hair nearly shorn off it was so short. He stepped around to face his project, putting his hands up and holding back away from the face the heavy thick hair. No, it wouldn’t do to cut this one’s hair. He used his thick blunt fingers to smooth the hair back. Then again he surveyed his handiwork.

 

“Yes, this will do nicely. You should bring a handsome price. Don’t know who Mister Dansen has in mind to show you to. Maybe some rich widow who needs a capable stud for her stable, so to speak. You’re too lightweight for fieldwork so I imagine he may have you in mind for more of a different line of work. Funny, it’s usually the high yellow girls he gets for that.”

“No, Charles, this one will have but one bidder,” Dansen spoke up from where he stood, leaning against the open doorway. Behind him, all Joe could see was a wall painted a faint blue. But there was daylight shining on it. He filed away the sight, knowing that if the chance ever came, it might help lead him to freedom.

 

Languidly, the man came into the room and Charles stepped away from his charge. Dansen, his face an unreadable mask, stopped a little more than an arm’s length from Joe. His eyes narrowed slightly as they moved slowly over the man hanging before him.

 

“Did he give you much trouble?” Dansen asked and Charles shrugged his shoulders slightly. The slender man walked behind Joe, closer now and was pleased when the young man tried to turn as well. There was a fine line to be walked here with this one. To break his spirit completely would ruin all of his carefully laid plans. No, but it would be so easy to do. He had to be careful. Dansen finished his circuit and came to stand before Joe again, closer. With one gloved hand, he stroked the handsome face before him, finally letting his hand come to rest at the back of Joe’s neck. He watched the green eyes, saw the fear so evident there, but also the revulsion at being seen and handled in such a manner.

 

“Don’t like that, do you, boy?” he said softly and continued when the eyes closed, “Well, get used to it. For the time being, you belong to me. Only me. You will eat when I tell you that you can. Sleep when I say you can. The only time you will be allowed the human courtesy of wearing clothing is when I allow it. And then only what I give you to wear. You will not speak unless I give you permission to speak, and then you will not look at me but at the floor. Do you understand, boy?”

 

The green eyes snapped open and the fear once there was replaced with a look of defiance.

 

Dansen chuckled at the sight. “Don’t think you can defy me, boy. I have ways of breaking such as the likes of you.” As though to prove his point, the hand at Joe’s neck tightened and easily pushed Joe’s head forward and down.

 

“Do you want me to chain him, sir?” Charles asked as he watched his cohort handle his charge.

 

The hand remained where it was, grasping Joe’s neck like a bird of prey would hold its victim. Gradually, the force decreased and the Southerner was pleased to see that the head stayed lowered. “Good boy,” he whispered and took the hand away, allowing it to come to rest on a trembling shoulder. “No, I don’t think chains are necessary, Charles. What I do want,” but as he turned to address the man, Joe’s legs shot out and kicked Dansen from his feet, throwing him to the rough floor. Twice Joe was able to connect before Charles could intervene and pull Dansen away.

 

Slowly, Dansen got to his feet, brushing himself off, the smug look gone from his face. “On second thought, chain him. Hands and feet. Short links. And collar him as well. Make sure he is secure then come and see me. I have an errand for you.”

 

Although Joe fought it at every step, even to the point where Charles was forced to slap him brutally across the face, Joe lost the battle. Exhausted and breathing heavily, he finally lay on his belly, his arms stretched above his head, his hands manacled and chained. Charles had kneeled across his legs then restrained them. Now as the man straddled his back, Joe felt the collar snapping closed around his neck, the rough metal edge cutting into the side of his throat, then he chained Joe’s hands down to the leg irons, leaving him nearly bent double.

 

With one hand holding the short length of chain attached to the collar, Charles pulled him to his feet. He dragged him to a dark corner of the room and using a heavy lock, chained him to the end of an iron bed.

 

The hulking man squatted before Joe. “Thought you had learned what happens when you make trouble. You made me look bad in front of Mister Dansen and I don’t like that. Now I have to go away for a while but when I come back, I’m gonna learn you some manners. Even if we have to do it the hard way. You understand me?”

 

Joe glared at the monster, wishing the gag wasn’t there, wanting to use the chains that bound him against his captor. For a long moment, he felt strong, empowered. Then Charles stood and simply walked away from him, leaving the room and closing the door behind him. Joe was left in the dark room, chained hand and foot, naked, alone and completely confused by all that had happened.

 

 

Chapter Nine

 

“Easy, son, just stay still, now.” Hoss heard his father’s deep voice come to him across the darkness. He longed to move and relieve the pressure on his chest, the one that made breathing hard and painful. He was thirsty and longed for a drink of cool water but couldn’t find his voice to ask for it. He felt hands touching his face, cooling to him. Once again he stirred and heard his father admonish him. Then he drifted back into the darkness, comfortable with the thought that if his father was there, everything would be all right. Pa will take care of me.

 

“His fever is rising, Ben. As much as I hate the idea, I think we need to get him back down to the Ponderosa. We need to get more fluids into him. I need medications that are in my office,” Paul Martin explained.

 

Ben looked up from where he sat next to the narrow cot that could barely contain the bulk of his middle child. “But wouldn’t that be risky? I mean his wound -” he stammered, afraid.

 

“He’s about as stable as I can get him. Like I said, I don’t like the idea but I think we have to move him. For another thing, if his fever goes much higher, I am going to need ice to cool him down. Got any up here? Didn’t think so but I know the icehouse on the Ponderosa has plenty.”

 

Adam stopped in the doorway, listening to the doctor. It had been two long days since they had found Hoss. During those two days, his father had not left the small shack, much less his brother’s bedside. Adam had spent those two days scouring the countryside for sign of Little Joe but had come up worse than empty. It was as though the earth had swallowed his brother. Once again, the war within him began, two sides, one against the other. One side wanting to rush down the mountains and into town, find Dansen and force the truth from the little man. The other side wanted to stay and care for his brother Hoss and his father, to protect those close at hand. Adam heaved a heavy sigh, tired of the fight but knowing it had to continue. Now, what he had heard Paul suggesting would allow him to have it both ways. But ever the cautious, he wondered if it were the right thing to do.

 

“We could relay the ice up here, Paul. Would that help?” Adam asked. Even as he moved on into the small shack, he saw the relief flood his father’s face. Every time he had returned, he had seen the same expressions cross his father’s face: worry, sadness, relief.

 

“And how much of a block of ice would make it all the way up here? Probably less than half. No, I think Hoss is stable enough to take home, despite his fever,” Paul repeated, noting the lines of fatigue on Adam’s face. He gestured out the door, clearly telling Adam he wanted to talk to him outside.

 

Out in the yard, Adam turned slowly to face the physician. “What is it, Paul?”

 

“I’m serious when I say this, Adam. I am as concerned about your father as much as I am Hoss. He hasn’t slept more than an hour since this business started. Hoss is strong enough to make the trip but if your father…” The doctor let his voice trail off into the evening darkness. In truth, he was just as worried that Adam also would become a patient, victim of the same shooter as Hoss. Or that Adam would find his youngest brother dead somewhere and his renowned restraint would break.

 

“All right, I’ll have the men harness the team and fix the wagon first thing in the morning.” Adam turned and looked beyond the doctor into the shack where a lantern now burned brightly.

 

“I want you with us, Adam.”

 

“Paul is right, boy,” Roy Coffee’s voice came from the deepening shadows. “You need to be with your Pa and Hoss. Much as I hate to admit it, there just isn’t anything up here in these hills to give us a clue to where Joe is. I think I need to get back to town and talk to that Dansen fella. That is if he is still in town.”

 

“I am not giving up-” Adam started but the sheriff’s hand on his arm stopped him.

 

“None of us are talking about giving up on finding Joe, Adam. All I am saying is that this is the wrong way of going about it. In three days time, Joe could have been taken just about anywhere. Reno, maybe. Even Placerville or Angels Camp, for that matter. Let’s get down the mountains and let me send off some wires.”

 

Adam ran his hand over his face, feeling the rough stubble of a three-day growth of beard. More than the bristles, he felt the tiredness weighing on him, the weight of being the oldest son. Still thinking of Roy’s words, he watched his father moving in the light, wringing a wet cloth and placing it on Hoss’ brow then leaning forward, as if in pain. “Time” his father had said back when he had told them of the whole ordeal’s beginnings. Time was what we have in limited supply, Adam repeated to himself. Time has become my enemy. “All right,” he conceded, “I’ll go as well.” Because that is where I will find Dansen.

 

In the small hours of the morning, when the owl still hunted and the coyote roamed at will, Hoss Cartwright regained consciousness. Seated at his side as he knew he would be, Hoss found his father asleep. Across the room, rolled into a blanket, he could see Adam’s form. The only person in the room to see that he had woke up was Doc Martin. The doctor had quietly eased to Hoss’ side and, bending over him, took his wrist in hand to feel his patient’s pulse, then smiled at him.

 

“Shh,” the doctor whispered then laid a hand on Hoss’ forehead. He smiled again. “How about a little water?” he asked and didn’t wait for a reply before giving the big man a few sips.

 

Once again, Hoss scanned the room. It didn’t take words for Paul Martin to know just what Hoss was looking for. “Shh,” he warned again. “No, son, he isn’t here.” Then he wished he hadn’t said those words for the agony was plain on the giant’s gentle face. “Adam has been looking for him,” he whispered.

 

“Adam’ll find ‘im,” Hoss struggled to say then found the whole effort too much and he closed his eyes, letting sleep reclaim him.

 

That is faith, the doctor thought, then pulled the blanket higher over Hoss’ chest and the bandages there.

 

 

The ride in the back of the wagon, cushioned though it was, was still rough and when the wagon finally pulled into the yard, Hoss felt a good deal weaker than what he let on. Several times during the trip, Paul Martin had them stop while he checked on his patient. Each and every time, Hoss had contended that he was all right and that they should continue. Ultimately, Paul had slipped him a hefty dose of painkiller in some water and Hoss had drifted off into a sedated haze. During the entire time, Ben had ridden in the back of the wagon with him, sometimes talking with him but mostly just being there. Adam had ridden close alongside for he noticed that when he got out of Hoss’ view, Hoss would become agitated. After Paul had medicated his brother, Adam still stayed close though he couldn’t explain why, even to himself.

 

After the struggle to get Hoss upstairs and into his own bed was over, Paul suggested that Ben rest himself. Adam would take care of everything, he’d insisted. The doctor thought more than once about sedating the elder Cartwright as well but once Hoss was home, Ben seemed a bit more reasonable.

 

When Adam came down the steps, he was not surprised to see Hop Sing beckoning to him from the kitchen doorway.

 

 

“What’s up?” he asked, afraid of what the little cook would reply.

 

“Yesterday. Hop Sing in kitchen when man come. He say give this to Mista Ben. That he no take what not belong to him.” Hop Sing gave Adam the bag he held.

 

Adam opened the bag. In it were the clothes he knew Joe had been wearing, his boots, his jacket, his gunbelt. Everything. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he closed his eyes and dumped the things out onto the dining room table. He sorted through them quickly. The shirt and pants were torn but there was only a tiny bit of blood and that on the collar of Joe’s green jacket. He removed the pearl handled revolver from the holster and smelled the barrel. It had not been fired since Joe had cleaned it last. He checked the soles of the boots, hoping for a tell-tale sign of some sort, but the soles were clean. No mud, just scuff marks on the outside at the back of the heels. Adam picked up Joe’s tan hat and was holding it in his hands, lost in thought, when he realized he was not alone. His father stood beside him, one hand clutching the jacket collar, his face pale.

 

“I’m on my way, Pa. Don’t try to stop me.”

 

“Just promise me that you will let the law deal with Dansen. That you will bring Joseph home.”

 

“I’ll bring Joe home, Pa, that I will promise you but if Dansen has hurt him-”

 

Ben erupted. “NO!” he shouted, making the rafters tremble, “Do not give that monster another one of my sons! Do you understand me? If you do anything, anything at all to him, he wins. Don’t go to his level, Adam. Just bring Joe back. Then let the law deal with Dansen. He is not worth your life or that of either one of your brothers.”

 

“Pa, stand there and tell me that if Dansen were in this room right now, you wouldn’t beat him to a pulp. You can’t, can you?”

 

“Yes, I can. Because I want Joseph back and Dansen knows where he is. If I raise a hand against that man, I could lose a son. And if you raise a hand to him, I could lose two sons. That is a risk I am not willing to take.”

 

“But it is one I am prepared to take, Pa. Not for just myself but for Joe as well. I repeat, don’t try to stop me.”

 

Adam turned on his heels, headed for the door and a fresh horse to take him to Virginia City. The last thing he heard was his father shouting his name as he closed the front door behind him.

 

 

Chapter Ten

 

The lights of the International House blazed, making the interior glow as though it were some bright jewel. As Adam Cartwright stepped into the lobby from the darkness, he winced in the sudden brightness. At the desk, he asked for Dansen’s room number, half-afraid that he would be told by the little mousy clerk that the man had checked out already. He quickly headed up the stairs when told the number, heedless of the clerk’s stare. He knew he looked a sight, unshaven and unkempt, but he had bigger concerns at the moment. He knew that Roy Coffee would hear about him being in town and would quickly put two and two together. Roy was good at coming up with ‘four’ as an answer.

Daniel Dansen was not surprised in the least by the furious pounding on the door to his suite. After all, the trusty Charles had spotted the eldest Cartwright son dismounting outside the hotel just moments ago and had relayed the information to him. So as Charles opened the door, all Adam would see was a very relaxed Dansen, reclining on the sofa in the suite’s parlor.

 

Adam pushed Charles aside and quickly crossed to the closed door to the bedroom. He shoved the door open but found the room empty. It was the same with the other bedroom. Adam slammed the door closed and strode with long angry steps to yank the slight Dansen from his place on the sofa.

 

“Where is he?” Adam hissed into the little man’s face, one fist knotting the fabric of Dansen’s shirt into a ball, the other fist curling, white knuckled, under Dansen’s nose.

 

The little laugh Dansen gave the man in black only served to infuriate his adversary more. He reached up and gripped the black clad arm, digging his fingers into the solid flesh.

 

“You are truly ignorant, you know that, don’t you?” he taunted Adam. “The most treasured of property is rarely left out in the open. My father knew that. But he continued to let Marie have her way. Even let her ride throughout the city unescorted, flaunting herself. He delighted in the fact that many a man would look at her and want her but only he could have her. Now I am not so casual about my property. That little gem of mine is well hidden.”

 

“He is not ‘property’. He is my brother and you have kidnaped him,” Adam seethed, longing to smash his fist into smug face before him.

 

“Oh, but he is property. And mine. So I couldn’t have kidnaped him. He is not here, as you can see plainly.”

 

“Where is he?” Adam repeated, coming closer and closer to losing his temper completely.

 

But all Daniel Dansen did was smile.

 

“Turn him loose, Adam,” Roy Coffee called from the doorway. When Adam hadn’t moved, he repeated the order.

 

“This bastard has Joe, Roy! He took Joe’s things out to the house yesterday. Told Hop Sing to tell us that he didn’t take what wasn’t his! He’s admitted that he has him! All I have to do is beat it out of him so I would appreciate it if you would find somewhere else to be for the next half hour or so.”

 

“That so, Mister Dansen? You take Joe Cartwright?” the grizzled lawman asked, coming into the room, his gun pulled.

 

Again Dansen smiled smugly and said nothing.

 

“Okay then, I am going to arrest you on the charge of suspicion of kidnaping of Joe Cartwright and the attempted murder of Hoss Cartwright.”

“And I will sue the county for false imprisonment, sheriff. You can’t call it kidnaping when it is your own property you are taking. As for an attempted murder, why you yourself know that I haven’t left Virginia City in some time. Even while you were away. Talk to your deputy- Clem, I believe his name is- and he will tell you the same thing.”

 

“You keep calling my brother ‘property’ Dansen, like he’s a horse or a dog. He’s not! He’s a man, just like you. You have no proof to back up the lies you have been spreading-“Adam had begun to shake the man held in his grasp.

 

“But I do have the proof! Sheriff, make this monster turn me loose immediately!”

 

Roy Coffee considered the scene before him. The man within himself found Dansen reprehensible. Not just personally but for all the things the man stood for, primary of which was slavery. For that part alone, Roy was tempted to just let Adam Cartwright have the man to do with as he pleased. But Roy Coffee stood for more than just that. He represented the law, even in this lawless territory. So he couldn’t, and wouldn’t, allow Adam the pleasure of giving Dansen the beating even Roy thought he richly deserved.

 

“Adam,” he said and moved on into the room to lay a hand on the arm holding Dansen nearly off the ground. “Turn him loose, boy.”

 

With a flick of his hand, Adam did as the sheriff requested and watched with an ill concealed glee as Dansen backed away from him, straightening his shirt as he did so. Adam took two steps toward him, towering and menacing.

 

“Sheriff, you seem to be a fair-minded man. Please have this man removed at once from my presence. I have turned over to his family’s legal counsel all the proof needed to reclaim what belongs to me. So I will not be intimidated in this way.”

 

“That so? Well then, Mister Dansen, let me make a suggestion. You don’t leave town. You don’t budge from this room, you or your buddy Charles here. Better yet, let’s take you into protective custody and put you in one of my jail cells.”

 

“Absolutely not! I am a free man as is Charles. I will not be dealt with in this manner.” Dansen hotly replied.

 

“My brother is a free man as well. Where is he?” Adam took another step toward the little man even though Charles was moving to place himself between them.

 

“Your brother is mine to do with as I please. The law stands with me in this matter. Sheriff, once again I implore you. Take this menace from my presence.” Dansen repeated his request.

 

“Mister Dansen, I don’t approve of slavery. Of any sort. I only care about what the law says is right. You keep saying that you have proof that Joseph Cartwright is some sort of slave that belongs to you. I don’t rightly see how that could be seeings as he was born right here in the territory of Nevada. You also claim that you have given this here proof of yours to the Cartwrights’ lawyer. Now then, if what you say is true, you got no cause to hold Joseph Cartwright out of sight. Could be the best thing for all concerned was if you would turn the boy over to me. I’ll lock him up in my jail until we can get a judge to help us sort this all out.”

 

Dansen turned away from the piercing gray eyes of the grizzled sheriff, suddenly realizing that the man was not the fool he had earlier taken him to be. His plan, so carefully laid out, could easily come apart at the seams should the truth be found out here and now. No, his best solution was to do what came best to him: bluff.

 

“Yes, that would be an equitable solution sheriff but for one small detail. You see, once my property was rightfully returned to me, I, in turn, sent it back to New Orleans, where it belongs. Doubtlessly, as we speak, Mister Cartwright, your brother is in San Francisco, being herded up the gangplank of one of my ships, bound for home. My home, sir, my home.”

 

It took Roy Coffee and Charles both to pull Adam Cartwright from the senseless body of Daniel Dansen.

 

 

Chapter Eleven

 

It was stupid. I shouldn’t have done it but I did anyway. It felt good to hit that little man’s face. To wipe that smug sanctimonious smile off it. Joe, wherever you are right now, that one was for you. And Hoss, I let him have a few for you too. But, you know he never even raised a hand to defend himself. I suppose that is why Roy locked me up. But the night in jail was worth it…. Why does this road seem so long this morning? The poets write about the journey home is often the longest short road or the shortest long road. I know how that is this morning. How can I tell Pa I failed and still look myself in the mirror every morning to shave? There is only one way to fix any of this: Go to New Orleans and bring Joe back home. By whatever means necessary. Buy him. Steal him if I have to… just get him home. Pa will have a fit when I tell him but he will just have to understand…. I don’t care about the War going on. I don’t care if I have to ride through the fires of Hell. Suddenly this War has taken on a whole new and different meaning for me. It isn’t to free the slaves, to allow the South the right to govern their own affairs; its about freeing my brother. A kid who knows and cares even less about politics and states’ rights. It is about his rights as a man. A free man…Dansen kept calling him “his property”. Well Mister Dansen, if that boy is anyone’s “property”, he is ours, Pa’s, Hoss’…mine. And I will fight with everything I have just to get him back from you.

 

As he rode that long short road home, Adam’s thoughts continued in the same track. By the time he had reached the yard to the Ponderosa, he had a speech prepared in his head to give to his father. He had anticipated every argument he thought his father could muster and had a counterpoint for it. But what he got from his father, he hadn’t even considered.

 

“Adam,” his father had said softly, standing in front of the cold fireplace that summer morning, a cup of coffee in his hand. “I can’t ask you -” He had paused and looked away, nearly breaking Adam’s heart. “I can’t ask you to risk your life for that of your brother. It would be foolhardy to go to New Orleans. We both know that. What I can ask you to do is stay here. Take care of Hoss. I’ll go.”

Adam crossed the room in long strides and stopped his father from heading for the stairs. “No, going there now is a younger man’s job, Pa. Don’t argue with me about it ’cause I won’t listen. If you decide to go, well then Hoss will have to take care of himself because I am going. And you wouldn’t be asking me to risk my life for Joe. I’m offering it because the truth is worth it.”

 

“Whose truth, son? You say that Dansen has given his proof to John Nestor and you haven’t even seen it. This is what so scares me about all of this, Adam. The man may be right! I didn’t know Marie that well before we married. Yes, I knew I loved her but about her situation, I knew very little. I always thought that some day I would get up the nerve to hear the truth about her life from her. But I never did. I guess that is why I have always been so very defensive about her. Half of me is still afraid that the rumors about her were true.”

 

To say that Adam Cartwright was stunned to hear his own father say those words would have been an understatement. He shook his head and looked away from his father’s face. When he found his voice again, the raw emotion made it a harsh whisper as he hung onto his father’s arm.

 

“Pa,” he said, his eyes burning into the floor at their feet. “Just answer me one question. She loved you, didn’t she? She didn’t use you?”

 

“Yes, I believe she did love me. With all her heart and soul, she loved me. The same way I did her.”

 

He faced his father, allowing his father to see determination there. “Then something Hoss said is right. He said that she made you happy and that nothing else mattered. So whatever truth Dansen has, it doesn’t matter. We have the real truth in our hearts.”

 

“But we still have the problem of Dansen to deal with, one way or the other, Adam. I still think I should be the one to go. I know New Orleans. I knew some of the same people Marie knew. I can get into places that perhaps you as a stranger couldn’t.” Ben reasoned, still gnawing over the same bone of contention.

 

“That may be, Pa. But the War has changed things down there. Some of those people who knew you and Marie may not be so willing to open their doors to you as a Northerner.”
Ben snorted and looked at his Northern-born son. This was the same son that the missing one would often refer to as the Yankee granite head! “And you think that you can do better? How?”

 

“I don’t know,” Adam admitted, rubbing his hand over the back of his neck.

 

Ben pursed his lips in thought then said, “You need a plan, Adam.”

 

Adam almost smiled.

 

 

“Well, Ben, I have examined the documents Dansen gave me,” John Nestor said that afternoon. He had taken the initiative and ridden out to the Ponderosa, a copy of those papers that sealed a fate tucked into his saddlebags. They now lay spread out across the dining room table.

“And?” Ben asked cautiously, picking up one sheet of paper to read. But he found it to be a fruitless exercise. He couldn’t make himself read the words there.

 

“It was just as I had explained in the office the other day. Marie had been bound over to Dansen’s father as payment on a debt by her cousin. The house she lived in belonged to a William Dansen, apparently Daniel’s father. He has a copy of the deed there as well. I am sorry, Ben but everything in his story pans out,” the attorney explained, gesturing at the papers before them.

 

Adam had picked up one of the more damning papers and held it delicately between his long fingers, almost as though it would burn him. While he listened with half an ear to what the lawyer and his father were saying, he studied the paper before him. Words there caught at him. Words like ‘until paid in full,’ and ‘sole and discretionary use of her person’. The black lines that made up the writing seemed like long black snakes, coiling across the white parchment, striking out at the heart of the reader. Cold, Adam thought, the wording is so cold and meticulous. Like they aren’t even discussing a human being at all. But the words that hurt most of all were the ones there in the center of the page and they had leapt out at Adam. ‘… agree that the debt is to be carried into perpetuity until satisfied’. Those were the words that sealed Joe’s fate. Strange that Marie’s legacy to her son is a debt, he considered.

 

“What if we approach Dansen with an offer to pay this off?” Ben asked

 

“I suggested that to Mister Dansen but he says there is no arrangement mentioned in these documents for an early pay off. And he is right; there isn’t. Although it stipulates an amount of $75,000, the payment is to be made in ‘services’ over a number of years. Eight to be exact and from the dates on these documents, Marie had belonged to Dansen a little over two years when she married you and left New Orleans.”

 

Adam cleared his throat. “Doesn’t this all seem a little too pat, John? A little too finessed?”

 

John Nestor tucked his thumbs into his vest pockets and gave the appearance of studying the question carefully. In reality, he was going over the answer he had formed in his head earlier in the day while in his office with Dansen. “We will need to be careful of the oldest boy, Adam. He is a long ways from being a ‘country bumpkin’. He’s shrewd. An intelligent and thinking man. Adam, even though he may love his brother, is not going to let that distract him. It will his father, but not Adam,” Nestor had explained to Dansen while the man in gray had paced his office much like Ben Cartwright had days before.

 

“No, Adam, that doesn’t surprise me in the least. Oh, I thought about it but then realized that if Dansen were meticulous enough to find Marie after all these years, he certainly wouldn’t come all the way to Virginia City without having all his t’s crossed and his i’s dotted.”

 

“But you saw the original documents there in your office and you are sure they are authentic?” Adam pushed, picking up another scrap of paper from the table. It was a copy of the deed to the house his father had thought belonged to Marie before their marriage.

 

“Yes, Adam.” Nestor sighed as he spoke, hoping for the right inflection to show sorrow. “I had these copies made while Mister Dansen waited. He has the originals in his possession and I doubt if you could get your hands on them.”

 

“All right then. How do we fight this?” Ben queried.

 

“Well, one thing you do is stay away from Dansen.” The lawyer gave Adam a pointed look. “Like we discussed the other day, I have sent a letter to a friend in the British Consul in San Francisco, asking for them to arrange for a little looking into the matter. I have yet to hear back from him but I am sure that it will be done.”

 

“We can’t wait that long! Dansen took Joe and has him headed for New Orleans right now! If we wait for your friend’s reply and all, Joe could be in Louisiana by then!” Adam exploded, throwing down the paper, scattering the others.

 

“I understand your impatience, Adam, but we have to do this within the bounds of the law. The worst thing you could do right now for Joe is to go tearing out of here, headed for New Orleans and God knows what!” Nestor soothed.

 

But Adam was beyond listening to reason at that point. “The longer we dally around here, waiting for the law to do something, John, the longer Dansen has my brother in his evil little clutches.”

 

The attorney repeated his understanding of what Adam felt but inside, he felt the dread of dealing with Adam Cartwright lift. He had apparently been wrong in his assessment, as he had given it to Dansen. Adam Cartwright was losing his cool perspective, his calm rationality apparently blown to the four winds. But there again, that might make him a more feared enemy. John Nestor decided that his best bet was to deal with Ben and he turned back to face the older man, effectively silencing the son.

 

“Ben, I will do everything I can to speed things up but you have to promise me that you will let me handle things.”

 

Mutely, Ben nodded, running his hand through his hair and not daring to look at the foot of the table where Adam sat.

 

Appeased, the lawyer gathered his papers and shoved them back into his portfolio. Picking up his hat, he nodded just once to Adam who sat as still as a marble statue. The coldness radiating from the man made the other feel as though the summer day had turned to winter.

 

“I’m going back to my office and study these documents some more. Maybe there is something I missed that can get this annulled. I’ll be talking with you later, Ben.”

 

For long moments after they had heard the horse leave the yard, Ben and Adam sat at the opposite ends of the table, staring at each other. Finally Adam arose and headed across the main room.

“Just a minute, young man,” Ben’s voice rang out and Adam, pulling himself to a stop, turned to face his father.

 

Ben had remained where he was seated, his hands splayed out on the table as though they were anchors to hold him in place.

 

“You promised John, Pa. Not me. I have every intention of getting to New Orleans just as fast as I can. The longer Dansen has him, the further away he can get Joe from us,” Adam hissed, one fist burrowing into the palm of his other hand.

 

“I know that, son. But-”

 

“I am not going to listen to another argument, Pa. I’m going upstairs to pack and tomorrow morning I will be on the stage to San Francisco.”

 

“I wasn’t going to stop you but there is something you and I need to do in town tomorrow morning before you leave. Go get packed.”

 

 

“Are you sure about this Pa? This is an awful gamble you’re taking,” Adam asked again, just before he leaned over the paper on Judge Thompson’s desk to sign his own name the next morning.

 

“I’m inclined to ask the same question myself, Ben. As well as why you didn’t have John Nestor draw this up and witness it for you.” Judge Thompson leaned back in his chair. He was an imposing man, large framed with a full white beard and silver white hair. Known throughout the territory as a fair man and able judge, he was also a close friend of the two men who stood before him.

 

“Let’s just say I want this to stay between us for the time being. Not that John would say anything about it but I just don’t want to saddle John with any more than he has now.” Ben explained, watching as Adam bent and signed his name to the bottom of the document.

 

“You mean that business with the Southerner? I’ve heard about it, Ben, and from what I’ve heard, it sickens me. But I still don’t understand this.” The judge gestured to the paper.

 

“Let’s just say it’s a little insurance,” Ben said simply and leaning down, signed his name with his precise copperplate script.

 

The judge shook his head as though in wonder then pulled the single sheet of paper toward him and picking up the quill Ben had just used, dipped it in ink and witnessed the two signatures there.

 

“I would appreciate it, Judge, if you would hold that for a little while. There isn’t a law that states when it has to be recorded, is there?” Ben asked, nervous now, his hat heavy in his hand.

 

“No, Ben, no time limit. I’ll keep it until I hear otherwise. I don’t understand why you are doing this but it is your right to handle it as you will.”

“Thank you, Judge. Well, come on, Adam. The stage leaves in fifteen minutes.”

 

Judge Thompson sat for a long time looking at the paper he held after they had left his chambers. He certainly hoped Ben knew what he was doing. Not that the Judge didn’t trust Adam to handle things the same way his father did. Far from it! But if the rest of Virginia City knew what he now knew, lots of folks would think old Ben Cartwright had gone around the bend.

 

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly before he turned around to his safe and opened it. Again he shook his head then slipped the paper between two others there and closed the door, giving the combination knob a spin. Maybe Ben was not all right in the head. After all, he had just signed the deed to the entire Ponderosa Ranch over to Adam.

 

As father and son stood on the broad wooden walk outside the stage depot, both fidgeted, saying nothing that meant anything but an unvoiced plea for the stage to come quickly and end the tension. Finally, both fell silent. Adam couldn’t help but look across the street and up to the window he knew to be into Dansen’s hotel room. At one point he thought he saw the lace curtain move but he couldn’t be certain. He briefly closed his eyes and bit down on his lip. He wasn’t surprised to feel his father’s hand slip up his back and come to rest at the back of his neck in a gesture he had seen him use on Joe to calm him hundreds of times. Now Adam wondered to himself, was it to calm him or to calm his father? Both, he decided.

“Why?” Adam asked, turning to his father.

“Because I don’t want your heritage lost because of my foolishness. With the Ponderosa in your hands, it is safe for you boys.”

“What do you mean? Your foolishness?” Adam asked sharply.

“I’m going to have a talk with Dansen. I’m going to try and convince him to give up his claim on Joe. If needs be, I will give him anything he wants. Anything,” Ben put extra emphasis on the last word.

“And you think he wants the Ponderosa?” whispered Adam, aware that they were standing on a very public street with other people around.

“It is a very real possibility. But I can’t give him what I don’t have, can I?”

For the first time in a long while, Adam Cartwright smiled. He had always had good reasons to respect his father but Ben had just added another to the list. “Nice trick, Pa.”

“I’m not looking at it like that, Adam. Just like what I said in Judge Thompson’s. It’s insurance. I have no right to jeopardize your future so it is in your hands completely. If you get down to New Orleans and have to barter for your brother’s freedom, you now have the wealth of the Ponderosa behind you in full and without reserve. It is also your decision to make completely. I trust you to act competently. Not like me right now, too emotional to make sense.”

Before Adam could reply, the cry of “Stage coming in!” came from down the street and within moments the stage pulled up in a dust cloud. There was suddenly a great deal of commotion as passengers got off the stage and luggage was tossed from on top to the ground. In the hubbub, Adam was separated from his father. Then just as quickly, they were alone again.

“Take care of yourself, son,” entreated Ben, giving Adam his hand then stepped back and allowed Adam to step into the stage.

“I will, Pa. Take care of Hoss. And don’t worry, I’ll bring Joe back. You just keep an eye on Dansen. I don’t trust the man.”

Ben’s only reply was a clipped nod of his head and then the stage, and his eldest son, was gone. He stood there on the boardwalk for a while, watching the blood-red stage disappear down the street and around the corner. Finally, he tugged at his hat brim and turned to where Buck and Sport stood tied to the hitching rail. Gathering Sport’s reins into his free hand, Ben mounted up and headed Buck down the street the opposite direction Adam had left.

Across the street, two stories up from the sidewalk, at the corner window of the International House, the lace curtain dropped back into position.

---

Chapter 12 –

There within the darkened room, he had no clues to give him the passage of time. He had grown hungry and cold but forced both sensations from him, willing himself to feel nothing. He had slept then awaken then slept again, all the while still chained and gagged. He had tested the chains while awake, and slipping under the bed frame, had sought for a way to dismantle the iron bar that the chain wrapped around. There was none that he could see. For hours, it seemed like to him, he simply stayed there, his mind and body numb. He tried going back over what he knew to find a clue as to what was happening and why. But there wasn’t enough information there and he gradually quit trying to understand the reason and tried to focus on what was uppermost in his mind: escape.

 

Once again, he had dropped off to sleep when he suddenly felt himself being pulled from under the bed, his bare flesh scraping across the rough wood flooring. A hand slapped his face. He heard the clink of keys in the lock and felt the chains fall from his hands.

 

“Have you got him up yet?” came the whine from the dark that Joe associated with the man in gray.

 

Two massive hands encircled his biceps and Joe was pulled roughly to his feet. “Thought you could hide from me, did ya?” Charles snorted softly to his charge. He relished the shiver that went through the slight body he held. “Remember me, don’t cha?” he hissed and felt the shiver again.

 

Across the room, a match struck, making a pinpoint of brilliant orange light before it became the soft glow of lamplight. Charles pulled a resisting Joe to the center of the room and using the length of chain dangling from the overhead beam, shackled him. Once confined, the man in gray stepped closer to Joe. In his hand he carried a black and silver walking cane, elegant in design, meant more for show than purpose, Joe thought.

 

“Ah, yes. I see you have slept well. That’s good because I want your complete attention to your lessons today. Couldn’t have you drifting off to sleep in mid-class like you used to in school, I’ve heard.” The man Joe remembered Charles having referred to as Mister Dansen chuckled and used the tip of the cane to turn Joe’s face first to one side then the other. “Oh, go ahead and give me that look. Shows me you have spirit and I like spirit in my slaves.”

 

At the word “slaves”, Joe’s head jerked around to face the man who had spoken it, confusion, hatred and fear in his eyes. Unable to speak because of the gag, Joe was screaming in his own imagination but it was as though the others had heard him.

 

“Oh yes, you are my slave, young man. You belong to me and me only. Although I imagine you want to how this came about, that is a lesson for another day. Today’s lesson is on obedience.”

 

Dansen walked behind Joe and Joe tried to turn his body to watch the man but the restraining chains would not allow him. He felt the tip of the cane run down his spine, barely touching his flesh.

 

“Do you recall when I was here earlier and you foolishly tried to strike me? That was wrong. That is not obedience. You were punished, weren’t you? Brutally, to your way of thinking, I suppose. You didn’t care for it, did you?”

 

Joe closed his eyes and remained motionless but his mind propelled him back and only within the confines of his imagination, he felt the sickening jar of Charles’ knee into his groin. The sharp sting he felt at the back of one knee though was real.

 

“I asked you a question and I want an answer. You didn’t care for your punishment, did you? The answer is ‘no’. Just shake your head is all you need do. Must I teach you everything?” Dansen reached from behind Joe and grabbed a handful of the boy’s thick hair and gave it a vicious shake. “Like that!”

 

“Open your eyes, boy,” Charles growled in front of Joe.

 

Adamantly, Joe kept them tightly closed. Once again, he felt the stinging blow to the back of one leg. He opened his eyes just in time to see Dansen come to a halt before him.

 

“Do you realize,” the oily voice of Dansen oozed, “That there are over twenty places on the human body that can cause exquisite pain? Would you like me to demonstrate this fact? No. It’s better that you don’t know when – and where – to expect it. But we have gotten off the lesson for the day. Obedience, it was. But maybe that is too big a lesson for a feeble-brained slave to grasp all in one day. Let’s take it in smaller steps that even your puny little ability can understand. Step one: when you are asked a question, you will respond with either a ‘yes sir’ or ‘no sir’. Do you understand?”

 

Joe raised his head and stared at the man before him, his eyes like cold fire, showing his continued defiance. If he hadn’t been gagged, he would have told Dansen to go to Hell in no uncertain terms.

 

“Tsk, tsk. You are a hard case, aren’t you? You are going to force my hand, I see. Charles, where do you think? The armpits? The knees?”

 

In the thin lamplight, Joe saw Charles smile. “How about the feet? You aren’t taking him any place soon. I know how to do it without crippling him permanently.”

 

“Excellent point, Charles! But let’s try the lesson one more time.”

 

Keeping his eyes glued to the face before him, Dansen reached up and removed the gag. “Now then, what do you say when you are asked a question?” he whispered.

 

His voice barely above a croak, Joe replied “Go to Hell, bastard.”

 

Dansen’s eyes narrowed sharply as he again appraised the boy hanging in chains before him. “Stupid. Just like your brother. Stupid. Charles, ten blows to the right foot.”

 

The hated gag was crammed back into his mouth with the first strike. Charles, behind him, had lifted his foot and proceeded with Dansen’s cane and blessing to administer the requested ten blows to the sole of Joe’s bare instep. Each blow sent a wave of pain up his leg. When the count was over, Charles dropped the foot and handed Dansen back his cane.

 

As soon as his foot touched the floor, white-hot agony rolled up Joe’s leg and into his back. He couldn’t bear to put weight on the foot so he shifted to his left.

 

“Now then, slave, what do you say when you are asked a question?” Dansen pulled the gag.

 

Joe swallowed just once and tried to get control over his ragged breathing. Every part of his being, the empty belly, the cold skin and the now aching right foot, cried for him to just give Dansen the answer he wanted. It was on his lips to answer the way he had before when he felt Charles pick up his right foot again. Licking his dry lips and looking down to avoid making eye contact with his tormentor, Joe whispered “Yes sir.”

 

Dansen reached out and patted the cheek of the boy. “That’s better. I think that is enough for today. Charles, leave him like this for a while. Then I want him fed and watered. Not too much feed, you understand. With his forced inactivity, I don’t want him getting too much. I think we want to keep him lean. But gag him. I don’t think he has learned the value of silence yet.”

 

Once Dansen had gone, Charles stood in front of Joe, his hands on his hips and let his eyes rake over the naked body before him. The lines are good, but he is too light weight, he mused and without thinking of what he was doing, reached out and stroked the side of the face before him. Still lost in thought, he pulled the restraint and gag from Joe’s mouth.

 

For the first time in what felt like days, Joe could close his aching jaws and swallow. He would have cried out for help but he knew that it would only get him beaten. Dansen and Charles had taught him a lesson after all but Joe viewed the lesson as one in survival, not obedience.

 

“Can I have a drink?” Joe whispered, his voice hoarse and dry.

 

The sound brought Charles back to the present and his head snapped up, his eyes blazing. With one huge open palmed hand, he smacked Joe’s face and Joe felt as though his head were about to snap off with the blow.

 

“Say it right,” Charles demanded.

 

How long can a body go without water? How long have I been here? If I give in now, does he win and I lose? Or do I win another little while of living? Joe wondered then slowly dropped his eyes and asked, “May I have some water, please, sir?”

 

Charles stepped away and returned with a dipper full of water. He held the edge of the cup to Joe’s waiting mouth and allowed the boy to drink, keeping one hand cupped around the back of his head, ready to grasp and punish should Joe make any untoward move. Twice he let the cup empty then said “No more. You’ll be sick if I give you all you want. I’m gonna take my hand away and you’re gonna stay just like you are: head down and still. You hear me, boy?”

 

Licking the last of the few precious drops from his lips, Joe considered defiance again but decided it would not get him what he wanted: freedom. He made up his mind to slowly give in to them while looking for a way out of his predicament. Don’t do it too fast or they will see the trap. Slow and easy. “Yes, sir,” Joe whispered. “Can I have something to eat?”

 

Again, Charles assessed the chained boy before him. Mister Dansen had said to feed him but had specified no time for it. He would have to leave the room and go to get the food. That meant he would have to gag the boy again. For some perverse reason, now that the boy had started using the more obedient inflection, Charles was loath to silence him.

 

“I have to put the gag back on ya,” he explained, as though talking to a child, all the while running his hand across Joe’s shoulder and down his arm. “Mister Dansen said I had to keep you gagged but you can’t eat with it in your mouth. And I don’t have a muzzle here. Down where we’re from, a slave you want to keep quiet, you either cut his tongue out or you put a muzzle on him. Iffen you cut the tongue out, a buyer checking him over sees that and knows he’s a tough one to handle, so’s we don’t do that much. Mostly, we use the muzzle. A leather strap that holds the jaw closed. ‘Course you have trouble eatin’ with that on too so we just pull your front teeth out. Got to watch a slave wearin’ the strap while he eats ‘cause too big a piece go in his mouth and he chokes on it. Seen one old man do that a-purpose, I did. He said he would rather die than go back to Georgia. And he did. Die, I mean.”

 

Joe listened horrified to what Charles was saying. He broke out into a cold sweat, afraid of what the next thing Charles would do. “I’ll stay quiet, sir. Please, I’ve got to eat something. I won’t make any trouble, I swear it. Please, sir,” Joe pleaded, all the while looking at the floor and praying the man would not touch him again.

 

“I can’t take that chance, boy. Here, open up,” he commanded and with his fingers laced cruelly into Joe’s hair, he pulled back sharply and rammed the gag home. “I’ll be back in a while.”

 

The door closing again plunged the room into dark shadows. Joe stood, chained and gagged in the darkness and fought the rise of panic. He struggled to think coherently and figure out what was going on. The word Dansen had used repeatedly was “slave.” How can he think I am his slave? I’m a free man, born right here in free Nevada, of free white parents! I don’t understand. At the thought of his father, Joe’s world crashed in on him. Where was Pa? And Hoss? Was Hoss…dead? The gunshot wound in his chest looked bad, yes, but if he got help soon he might still be okay. Why weren’t they coming for him? Or had Dansen gotten to all of them?

 

Without pretense of humility now, Joe hung his head and cried.

 

 

Chapter 13

 

Once inside his hotel room, the door closed firmly, Dansen tugged off his gloves and laid them with his hat and coat on the settee. With a deep-throated growl, he yanked at the restraining cravat and collar. Should anyone have seen his sharp and decisive movements, they would have known immediately of his agitated state. He shoved a trembling hand back through his graying hair and went to pour himself a glass of whiskey.

 

His plan, so carefully laid out months ago in the ornate parlor of Judge Gordon in faraway Louisiana, was falling apart in front of his very eyes. He slammed his fist into his palm as he thought of all the things that had gone wrong. First, it had never been his intention to shoot anyone. That fool Charles had hired the wrong men for the job of following the biggest Cartwright son. They had taken one look at the big man and panicked, thinking with their guns instead of their heads.

 

The next mistake he laid solely at his own feet. He had never intended to tell Adam Cartwright anything about his brother’s whereabouts. He had lost his own nerve when the man had come into this very room and threatened him. It had never been in the plan to take the boy to New Orleans. A few well-placed remarks insinuating that option was all he had meant to do. Now he felt constrained for some reason to do just that, even though he had seen the oldest Cartwright brother leave on the stage that morning. It didn’t take a fool to know where the man was headed. What he hadn’t understood was that Ben Cartwright had not been to see him to bargain for his son’s life, which was what Dansen truly wanted. Patience, he counseled himself, patience. There was no need to do anything but wait. The biggest obstacles were now basically out of the way with Hoss laid up and Adam gone on a fool’s errand. Perhaps his plan would succeed after all. All he had to do was control Charles when it came to the young man they had secreted in servants’ quarters in the basement of this very hotel.

“And myself,” Dansen whispered then tossed back the whiskey, now in a more pensive mood. “He would bring a pretty penny on the block. But there is no money in the South now for the purchase of anything but working stock. One look at the lines on that boy and no one would bid a dime for him as labor. But maybe that could work to my advantage.”

 

He poured himself another glass of amber fire and sat down in one of the overstuffed chairs there to think what his next move would be. If he continued with his plan as it had originally been laid out, the boy would remain here. Tormented and threatened to be sure, so that when the time came to show the boy to his father, the father would cave in all the more quickly when he saw what had happened to his darling baby boy. However, with Cartwright not having made a move, Dansen thought he would have to make the next move. That he loathed to do. It would make him appear weak and that he had to avoid at any cost at this stage in the game.

 

His other option was to go ahead and get the boy out of the area. Did it need to be to Louisiana? Not necessarily. But that was where Dansen knew people and places to hide the young fellow. He would have preferred New Orleans to be exact but New Orleans was held by the cursed Yankees in a stranglehold and had been for nearly the entire war. Instead, he would have to take Joe to the outlying parishes and hold him there. But that also would pose a problem: how would he get word to the other players in the game, namely Adam Cartwright and, through him, to his father?

 

“No,” Dansen mused, a small smile ghosting about his lips as he held the whiskey up to catch the light. “The boy stays here. I’ll not risk moving him unless I absolutely have to. But I need to get old man Cartwright’s attention. How can I do that?”

 

And for that problem, he had no answer except for what he had thought earlier: patience.

 

After the stage had left, Ben Cartwright had headed out of town. As he rode in the shimmering noonday heat, he felt cold. He wondered if he had done the right thing in allowing Adam to go. True, he had not voiced opposition to the trip ultimately but his heart told him differently. It was foolish to let Adam go and he knew it but he also knew that Adam was the most leveled headed of them at times like this. What was needed right now was that calm cool logical way of thinking through problems that Adam had. He consoled himself with the thought that if anyone could find Joe and return him to the arms of his loving family, it would be Adam. But it still tore at him that his sons were in a danger that was all his own doing. But you couldn’t undo what was already done, he chastised himself as Buck picked his way down the rutted road. But had that really been his downfall: loving a woman so much that he blinded himself to the possible truth? With his heels pressed a little harder to the horse’s sides, Ben urged him on. There were no answers to be found in the bright afternoon sunlight.

 

 

Chapter 15

 

Dansen pulled his carriage to a halt. When the dust settled about him he took out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his face. He flipped the linen then looked at it, annoyed because the filth remained on its creamy surface. “Damn Cartwright,” he muttered, flipping and shaking the handkerchief again. Yet the dirt remained.

He looked back over his shoulder but saw only the towering trees, the bright sky and high clouds and the ribbon of road he had just driven down. He shook his head and willed there to be a rider following him – old man Cartwright, shouting that he had changed his mind and that he would give him… but the road remained empty.

“I don’t understand,” he muttered, stuffing the soiled linen into his pocket. “I told him what I wanted and he just stood there like some pillar of granite. It doesn’t make sense. Those people I talked to said he loved his sons and would do just about anything for them.” Dansen snorted. “Anything but give up his profits, I see!”

With a flick of the reins he started the horse moving once more but now at a walk. At that rate, he thought that he might have it all figured out by the time he got back to Virginia City. After all, he had thought he had it all figured out on the way to the Ponderosa. Maybe the old man had been surprised by what he asked for; not the ranch itself for Dansen had no desire to raise cattle; not the considerable money it was rumored that the Cartwrights had although it had been tempting. No, all he had asked for was the timber – and not even that in reality. Just stop cutting and delivering logs to the mills. That was the sum total of what he’d told Cartwright he wanted for the return of his son. That was all!

 

The old man, his silver head bent and his shoulders slumped, had said no.

He’d tried to argue that surely the boy was worth more than all these damned trees and the ranch.

Cartwright had simply stared at the floor and said no.

Finally he’d accused the man of not loving his son and that had brought the leonine head up and made the dark eyes blaze fury. Yet the only word he said was no.

“I won’t be back to negotiate, Cartwright!” he’d informed him then stomped out of the ranch house, got into his buggy and drove off at a furious pace.

He could not have imagined the scene he’d left.

 

 

Roy Coffee pressed a glass of brandy into Ben’s hand and ordered him to drink it. Watching his friend’s hands shake, he wondered if he would be able to.

“You can’t for the life of me understand how hard that was to do, Roy.” Ben’s voice was merely a strained whisper. He lifted the glass and swallowed the brandy in one motion, afraid that he would not be able to if he hesitated. “I was prepared, you know, even though we’d agreed otherwise.”

“I know, Ben, I know.” Roy patted Ben’s shoulder as he took away the glass and set it on the table. “But you did the right thing.”

“Did I?” Ben spat and suddenly found strength in movement. “You warned me that once he had whatever it was he wanted that he would come back for more. Roy, I would have given him -”

Coffee patted the air as though that would soothe the father even if he knew differently. “I know. You would have given him anything but what would he have done then? Do you think he would have stood there and told you where Joe is? No!”

“What makes you so sure?”

“That takes something he hasn’t got – that no kidnapper has! Honor! He’d take your money, your ranch, everything you have and in the end he’d kill Joe-” if he hasn’t already and that would destroy you, he finished by thinking.

Ben held his tongue, not telling Roy that even if he had signed over the ranch to Dansen that any court in the land would find it invalid since, technically, he no longer owned the Ponderosa. Adam did. For that split second of time, he remembered handing the pen to his son and urging him to sign the deed and how hesitant Adam had been. If he’d been in the room that afternoon, Ben wasn’t sure but what he wouldn’t demand its return.

“But all he asked was that you stop cutting timber, Pa,” Hoss pointed out. Seated in the blue chair, it was all he could do to sit upright but he’d been determined to be in on this conversation. Was it the painkillers still coursing through him that made the Southern’s request confusing? “Why?”

“Who gets most of our timber?” Without waiting for an answer, Ben’s fingers ticked off the names of the most productive mines on the Comstock Lode. “Yellow Jacket. Ophir. Kentuck. Hale and Norcross. Consolidated Virginia. Crown Point.”

Hoss shook his head slowly, confused. “I don’t understand.”

The sheriff did. “You stop sending them timber and within two, three days at most, they have to shut down because they can’t go no further without squaresets. And what happens after that becomes chaos.” He sank to the settee as the impact struck him hard. “Miners out of work. The money drying up quicker than spit on hot rock. The mine owners pounding down your father’s door, demanding he resume cutting.”

“Or worse yet, timber thieves moving in and cutting down anything standing. Man or tree.” Hoss nodded that he understood his father’s whispered horrors.

“That river of silver would stop. And because we’ve been using that river to float us into statehood….” Roy couldn’t continue.

“Roy? With what you heard, can you arrest Dansen?” Ben asked.

“I’ll need to talk with the District Attorney but I think so. I know he said he wouldn’t negotiate, Ben, but I’m betting that he’ll be back. It’s hard waiting like this, I know, but we agreed that this was the right way to handle this situation. You’re not changing your mind are you?”

His heart squeezed tight at the very thought of what his son might be enduring but he chastised himself silently. Joe was as tough as they come. And with only a parent’s certainty did Ben feel that he was still alive.

“You say you have men watching Dansen twenty-fours a day, right?” The sheriff nodded. “Then I haven’t changed my mind, no.” I just pray that I am not making a mistake. Oh God, if I am, please forgive me, Joseph.

Chapter Sixteen

 

“So what are we gonna do?” Charles asked just before he took a long deep drink of the whiskey from the bottle Dansen had on his side board.

“We? What are we going to do?” There was a sneer in Dansen’s echo as he took away the glass Charles was preparing to fill again. “I am going to stay right here in Virginia City. You, however, are going to take our little prize away.”

“Back to -?”

“No!” The single word was sharp and showed keenly the pressure Dansen felt. “You’ll take him some place. I don’t know where. I haven’t thought of that yet. But back home – or close to home. Maybe the judge’s. The damn Yankees. So hard to get around their damnable blockades.”

“Maybe we should just take him out in the country. Got to be someplace where we could hide his body.”

Again Dansen exploded with “No!” Chewing on the side of his thumb, he began to pace nervously. “I don’t want him killed. He has no value dead, you fool.”

While the other man paced, Charles retrieved the whiskey and poured himself another drink. In the overheated room, he began to sweat. A rivulet traced down his spine like finger and brought to mind the time he’d spent with his charge that afternoon. In all his days in preparing human flesh for sale, he’d met every type imaginable. There were those that fought the chains and were whipped unmercifully into either submission or death. Then there were those that were noisily belligerent up until the first clink of the chain and they fell silent, submissive. Men or women, either one, he’d stripped naked, humiliated, dominated. He’d left them bleeding and begging or silent and dead – it didn’t matter to him. After all, they would most likely meet up with worse once they were sold. Yet this young man was different.

“I said,” Dansen repeated, this time snagging Charles’ attention as he hissed right into his face. “I said I want him ready to travel by the end of the week. Get him out of this God-cursed town, out of these damned mountains somehow. Get him down into California without someone seeing him and it will be a miracle.”

Charles shrugged and finished the last of his drink as he pushed Dansen away from him. “I can get him out of here without anyone seeing him. But the sheriff is watching me – and you – like a hawk. How are you gonna deal with that?”

“Simple. I am not going. Only you are, Charles. Now go see to your charge.”

With a shrug, Charles left the room, glad to be away from the tension Dansen always brought with him. Out in the late afternoon sunshine, he slipped over to the Sazerac. There, for two bits’ worth of beer, he made a beef sandwich, slipping extra slices of the meat into his coat pocket. A crusty slice of bread followed it. Early on, Dansen had warned him about how much food to take to their sale piece and where it could come from. The restaurant would have been a natural or so would have room service but the quantity would have questions being asked that neither man wanted to answer. So, Charles had begun a curious game of the petty theft of foodstuffs. Crackers from the general store’s barrel. Like today, morsels from the free sandwich board at the many saloons. Wherever and whenever, but he was reaching the end of his imagination. Soon, he knew he would be forced to scrounge meals from the garbage barrels. And this, he thought with an ugly sneer, was beneath him. Dansen had only so much sway over him.

 

 

In the semi-darkness, Joe shivered. The day and time were passed his comprehension now. At first, striving to maintain his sanity, he tried to figure out what hour it was by the meals that Charles brought. There was only one problem. Too many times, he thought, his stomach had gone empty for too long, throwing off his figuring. Finally, beaten, hungry and exhausted with the whole shame of it, he’d quit thinking. Only when Charles stood before him did he allow himself to think at all.

Now, once again as he cowered under the metal frame of the bed, he heard the heavy footsteps that said his tormenter had returned. Roughly the chain that secured him was yanked on and he was pulled from his sanctuary. This time, however, there was no demand for him to stand. Instead, the same ominous tread walked around him. He counted the steps, fighting the urge to follow them with his eyes. Rather he hunched his shoulders and kept his face to the floor, feeling the length of chain that bound his hands turn his belly flesh cold as he lay on it.

Then it came. With force, the kick connected with his side, forcing him to roll and curl up. Again, a kick but this time to a shoulder that took him to the end of his chain and left him panting in fear, staring into the shadowed ceiling. Charles dropped down astraddle of him, those dreaded boots planted across his thighs, scrapping his skin. He ripped off the gag and tossed it aside then leaned down so that his face was in Joe’s.

“Your master isn’t happy with you. What shall we do about it, huh?”

Even with the gag gone, his tongue was swollen so that he couldn’t speak. Charles sneered and slapped him twice, bringing blood to his mouth. Joe coughed as it trickled down his throat and tried to turn his face away but Charles grabbed his hair and held him effortlessly. Unable to understand what he saw on the other man’s face, Joe stayed silent, biting back a plea for leniency.

Whatever was that held Charles was gone in a moment and he rose swiftly to his feet, bringing his naked charge with him. With quick decisive moves, he unlocked the chains that held Joe’s hands down then raised them once more to the overhead beam. Joe would have cried out in pain if he’d been able to. Instead the sound was more like a whimper. This Charles misunderstood and he stopped and stepped back.

With narrowed eyes, he studied his charge. Since taking the young man more than a week ago, the change that had come over him was marked. Even though he’d done his best to avoid them, there were bruises on the young flesh. There were the welts that Dansen’s cane had left on his buttocks and legs. When he stood as he did now, all his weight was on his left foot, telling Charles that pain lingered in the other. Most notable were his eyes. Before they had snapped bright and sharp with defiance. Now they were dulled as if he had been drugged.

“Too easy,” Charles muttered. “Or is he sick?” Ignoring any possibility of being found out, he lit the lantern and brought it closer so that Joe stood at the edge of its circle. Again Charles studied him then moved closer. He ran his hands over the chilled flesh, seeking a place where it might have broken open and become inflamed and feverish. As though turning a statue on a stand, he slowly rotated the body hanging before him around. When he was finished with this painfully minute and demeaning inspection, he shook his head.

From a bucket, he scooped a dipper full of water and held it while Joe drank from it, his eyes closed. Joe felt the slice of beef touch his lips and he opened his mouth to accept it. The hand that fed him rested on his shoulder as he chewed and swallowed. Again there came a slice of meat and he ate from the hand that had beaten him, slapped him and degraded him. The last thing he was given was a slice of dry bread. It came a bite at time and it was only when he’d finished it did he think of biting that hand. Now, as he opened his eyes he couldn’t bear to meet Charles’ gaze.

Because he knew he’d been beaten into submission, not by the cane or the slaps but by the humiliation of being fed by another human’s hand.

“Hope you enjoyed that, boy, because it’s the last you’ll have for a while. Because your father won’t bow his mighty head and come and plead and barter for your life, you’re going to be taking a little trip.”

Before Joe could form the questions of where and why and when, Charles had him gagged once more but this time, instead of putting him on the floor, he ran another length of chain over the beam and secured it to the collar around his neck. The manacles were pulled down and again, he was bound so that he could not raise his hands.

“I’ll be back,” Charles promised.

 

 

 

Chapter Seventeen

 

In April of 1862, the Union Navy under Flag Officer David G Farragut took the Civil War to New Orleans. The fighting was short-lived and by May 1st, the Union Army held the city, dealing the infant Confederacy a near-mortal blow. In a week the Army had also captured Baton Rouge but New Orleans would serve as the Union’s base of operations. The War would ebb and flow in Louisiana with more than twenty battles fought on its soil until Lee surrendered in 1865 but nowhere was the impact more grievous than in the Crescent City. The Union commander, General Benjamin Butler, struggled in this still pro-South and pro-slavery city, going so far as to condemn any gathering for any purpose to be in violation of his General Orders. Any woman who resisted his soldiers or harassed them in kind were deemed to be harlots plying their trade and were so treated. Foodstuffs from the surrounding parishes destined for the Union occupying forces were often deliberately tainted, lost and outright stolen. There were two currencies of trade: gold and human life. While slavery was abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Louisiana slave market in New Orleans virtually closed, it did not stop the practice. It merely drove it underground and out into the neighboring parishes.

It was into this strange and near-chaotic world that Adam Cartwright stepped that September afternoon of 1863. Anyone that might have known him in Nevada would be hard pressed now to recognize him. He’d taken the intervening time since he’d left the Ponderosa to grow a full beard, luxuriant black. His normal clothing style that would pin the Westerner tag on him was gone. Instead, now he wore broadcloth suits, black, charcoal gray or navy blue. His ruffled shirts, stark white in color, were covered by brightly hued vests of silken brocade. Gone was his familiar low-crowned black hat. Now he wore a more dandified version. All in all, looking at him as he stepped off the river boat onto the Broad Street Dock, one would take him for a Northern businessman, come to trade with the dreaded Yankee army. The card he presented at the desk of the hotel on Rue du Panay Street said that his name was Adam Stoddard from Boston.

The bellboy found his bags heavy as he trudged up the curving staircase to Room 214 but upon dropping them in the room, was pleased to find himself the recipient of fifty cents hard currency for his troubles. Adam knew the luggage was heavy because he himself had lugged them around as he’d traveled circuitously to get to New Orleans. In the bottom of each of the three bags, carefully concealed in all but hidden compartments were twenty dollar gold pieces. His finely tailored jackets hung well because of the gold stitched into their hems and should someone have looked inside a pair of his soft leather boots they would have found heels hollowed out and filled tightly with coin. In all, Adam carried a little more than ten thousand dollars that was not in his wallet. There, Union paper currency would have counted up to about another three thousand.

He had come prepared to buy information – and his brother- if need be.

His first stop the next morning after foregoing breakfast was the address his father had given him the night before he’d left Virginia City. Instead of hiring a cab, he’d decided to walk what he thought would be a short distance. That, he found was a mistake. Street urchins of every color and sex came up to him, offering him help should he need it, women who would do anything he asked, the location of a card game – all manner of services seemed available but he brushed each one off.

Because he’d heard his father tell the story of how he’d met his third wife – nearly run down in the street by this beautiful woman on horseback – Adam found the house across from the convent his father had described. Like nearly all New Orleans houses, there was an ornate metal fence that encompassed a garden that stretched to the street, hiding the front doorway. A balcony extended across the front of the house at the second floor level. On that balcony that fine September morning sat two men – soldiers dressed in blue uniforms.

Lifting the gate latch, Adam stepped into the wild tangle that had been a well-kept garden a little more than a year ago. The floral scent hit him physically. Now he knew why his step mother had tried her best to grow flowers in the wilds of Nevada and cried when they withered and died in the summer dry-heat. He paused at the doorway. It was open a crack and from within he could hear the strains of a piano being poorly played. He put his hand to the brass lion’s head that was the door knocker and was about to drop it when a young black woman pulled the door open completely.

“Yas, sir?” she asked, suspiciously squinting up at him.

“I’m looking for an old friend of my father’s. His name was Yves St. Larouche. This was the address my father gave me. Is he in?” Not a word he’d said was a lie -yet.

A young soldier stepped into the shadowy foyer, the brass buttons on his uniform jacket undone. He looked down a long patrician nose at Adam before he ordered the girl back into the kitchen.

“Old Man St. Larouche made a gift of this house when General Butler came to town. It’s now the billet for the senior officers of Battalion F. Who are you?”

Adam quickly pulled his fake business card out and presented it, repeating his story of looking for an old family friend. The soldier – a lieutenant Adam saw by his epaulets- studied the card for several long moments.

“What’s a man from Boston doing down here looking for a reb?” sneered the younger man and Adam was tempted to teach him better manners.

“There was a time when a great deal of commerce came in and out of this city. And much of it went north to places like Philadelphia, New York and Boston.”

The lieutenant flipped the card with one finger and turned a judgmental eye to the well-dressed man before him. “That was then. This is now. Now I’m gonna ask you one more time and I want a decent answer. What are you lookin’ for this old bastard for?”

 

“Hennessey!” a voice ripped out from an adjoining room and the lieutenant jerked at it.

Keeping a steely glare on him, Adam pushed by him into what had been a study before. Even as he stepped into the room fully, a pain hit him deep in his being. The mahogany paneling had been scarred by what he thought were deep saber cuts. The furniture slashed and stained by God knew what. Worst of all, the books that had been someone’s pride and joy were being used as firewood, stacked beside the sooty marble hearth.

“My name is Gustafson. Captain Gustafson. I overheard you in the hallway.” The speaker, a florid faced man with straggling oily blonde hair that hung past his shoulders, sat behind a massive desk. Besides the piles of papers placed haphazardly on its scarred surface there was a crystal decanter that Adam knew was worth two months’ wages in far off Nevada. The damp spots on the desktop said that the decanter had recently been emptied.

Again, Adam produced a card but the captain didn’t bother with it. Instead he dropped it into an open drawer. “Do you know where I might find Mister St. Larouche?”

Gustafson scratched his chin and once more gave Adam the once over. “Well, you certainly don’t sound like a southern so you can’t be no spy. Besides, who would think that old coot was some spy or something?” He snorted then called out, “Prissy!”

The young black girl who’s answered the door appeared as if by magic. The captain demanded, “Tell this here fella where your old master is. Go on, tell him.”

“He was not my master. I am a free woman of color!” Her hands found her hips and her chin lifted in defiance that Adam couldn’t fathom. Then it hit him. In a city full of possible rebels and recently freed ex-slaves, a free person of color would want their previous status known – just in case things went the other way and the Yankees left as quickly as they’d come. He smiled faintly and nodded his understanding.

“He was my father’s friend and because of all the troubles down here, my father asked me to check in on the old rascal. Wanted to know if he was still drinking that horrible rum concoction.”

She laughed lustily and came over to stand before him. Facing Adam, the captain couldn’t see the warning in her eyes as she said, “The last I saw him, he was.” She made a motion as if to spit to the side and put a hand to Adam’s chest. “It is probably what is keeping him alive!” He felt something slip into his vest front from her palm. “But I have no idea where he is.”

“So there you have it, Stoddard.” The lieutenant eased up beside him and went to touch the girl but she swatted his hand away contemptuously. “The old buzzard is probably rotting in some booze shack somewhere in the bayou country.”

With a tilt of his head, Adam never took his eyes off the girl as he left the room with its tarnished luxuries. Standing on the street, he fought the urge to look back at it. No, he wanted to remember the house the way Marie had spoken of it a long time ago: warm, pleasant and full of love.

He waited until he was three blocks away before he fished the note out of his vest front. In a childish scrawl he found one word.

“Pearls”.

 

He gazed about him, as though just saying the word would make it appear. Instead, all he saw was the detritus of a city’s imprisoned life. Above the normal sounds of wagon wheels rumbling over cobblestones came the soldiers’ orders to halt. They were across the street and had stopped a young woman of obvious means. Adam watched, not hearing their words but clearly understanding what was going on. One of the soldiers was a young man of about twenty, his companion a little older. It was the young one who grasped the woman’s breast in his dirty hand, soiling the white linen. Before he could stop himself, Adam was moving, headed across the street to help the woman.

A rifle slammed across his chest and brought Adam back to his senses. His eyes met those of the older soldier. The man shook his head slowly, a wad of chewing tobacco making his jaw bulge out on one side. He spit, the ugly brown glob barely missing Adam’s shoe. Then, pushing him back, the soldier warned him that he wanted nothing to do with the situation.

When Adam looked over the other’s shoulder, he saw that the woman and the younger man were gone.

“Iffen she’s yours, mister, best not let her walk the streets alone. General Butler says we can use ’em like any other whore.” He giggled when he finished.

“She wasn’t harassing you. She was just walking down the street.” Adam tried to get by him but the rifle continually blocked his way.

“She was breathin’ and looking mighty pretty for a Reb. That’s plenty. She yours?”

“No!” Adam shouted. “Who’s your commanding officer? I intend to report this.”

“I wouldn’t, if I were you,” came a third voice. This one came from behind Adam and he turned to see who spoke. It was a well-dressed man in a somber gray suit with a jade green vest, and a planter’s style hat – all of obvious wealth. His face was pock-marked yet what grabbed Adam’s attention was his eyes – eyes so pale a blue in color that it seemed unnatural. As he lit a thin cheroot those same eyes roamed over Adam, taking in every aspect of him as well.

“Let them be or you’ll just be causing yourself grief, mister.” The new man flicked his spent match into the overflowing gutter. “You’re new to New Orleans.” When he said the name of the city, the deep south flowed richly in his voice – Na-lens.

Adam turned back to once again demand information from the soldier with the rifle but the man was gone. He followed what he assumed was the path that the other had taken but found no evidence of either the woman or her two harassers. A glance over his shoulder showed him that the well-dressed Southerner had also disappeared. He scratched his head, confused. It left him more ill-at-ease than before. And more determined to watch his back closer.

 

“Pearls,” Adam muttered as he leaned against a building in the shade it gave from the afternoon sun. He had wandered for most of the afternoon, taking in the ambience and sharpening both his knowledge of the streets and his street-smarts. Because there was nothing he could do about the smell wafting up from the river and the docks, he did his best to ignore it. Just the same way as he had an easy dozen incidents he’d witnessed of the Union soldiers ‘occupying’ the once beautiful city. The heat shimmered on the flat still water, making it appear to be moving and standing still at the same time. He absentmindedly slapped at the fly buzzing around his face. “Pearls.”

 

“You want to go to Pearls?” a young voice asked at his side, drawing him away from his meandering useless thoughts.

“Do you know Pearls?” he asked and looked down at the dark young face looking up at him. The boy couldn’t have been more than ten years old yet his eyes were older still. Seen too much, Adam thought.

“Ever’body knows Pearls!” he crowed and a soldier passing by turned at the sound and scowled.

“You can take me there?” asked Adam, surprised at his sudden good fortune.

“For two bits, I can.” The hand that stuck out from the ragged sleeve had thin, long fingers and a scar across its pale palm. “In advance.”

Adam dug into his vest pocket and found a nickle. “This now and the rest when I get to Pearls. Deal?”

An old man’s scowl crossed the boy’s face but he accepted the coin anyway. “Deal, I guess, but I warn you, you don’t pay and I go to screamin’ my head off. Callin’ you Massa and sayin’ that you be tryin’ to take me back. Got that?”

“Not that I intend to welch on the deal but just what would all the noise get you?” Adam swung into step with the barefooted child and they headed further up the street then turned into an alley.

“The bluecoats don’t take kindly to massas coming into the city and takin’ back their prop-tee. Unnerstand?”

Adam nodded that he did then asked the boy his name.

“Joseph,” he crowed and turned a bright smile up to the tall man. “And don’t you go makin’ it short ner nuthin’, ya hear? Gots to say the whole she-bang or it ain’t m’name.”

“I hear you,” came the soft reply and the boy looked again into the man’s face and saw sorrow there for half a heartbeat.

Using back alleys full of filth and decay, Joseph led the well-dressed man on a merry expedition, until they came to a brick building with two white doors that sat flush with the street’s gutter. Over the doorway hung a discrete sign announcing it to belong to “Pearl.”

He fished out the rest of the boy’s fare before he went to knock on the door. But Joseph interceded and simply opened the door for him then asked if he wanted him to hang around. After all, he suggested, once a man took the edge off, he might need a guide to a place to feed the other hunger. Adam chuckled and gave the boy the rest of the small change he carried openly. No, he said firmly. Joseph had done well enough for one day.

The woman who met Adam as he stepped inside was an older woman, nearing fifty was his guess. Her gown was a bright garish pink color with a neckline that scooped low. If it hadn’t been for the lace edging, Adam was sure her bosom would have escaped. Yet what held his attention was the large single pearl that hung from a silver chain about her sagging throat.

“Let me guess,” he started, trying to gain some levity. “You must be Pearl.”

“My gracious,” she purred as she linked arms with him and, putting aside his hat on a sideboard, walked into a shadowy room. “You are a smart one, my love. Ladies love the smart ones, you know.”

He took in the atmosphere quickly. Around the room, in various levels of dress and undress were a half dozen women. The divans they were seated on were covered in rich red fabrics. The carpet at his feet Adam judged to be worth more than he’d earned last year on the Ponderosa. But the only fixtures that drew his full attention were the ones that were breathing.

“And let me also guess that Pearl’s is the best whore house in New Orleans.”

A feminine giggle danced about and around the room.

The woman playfully slapped at his shoulder as she gazed up at him. “We don’t call it that any more.”

A petite young blonde wearing a bold purple colored wrapper over her corset and not much else advanced languidly. With manicured nails easily a half inch long she toyed with the edge of his vest. “This is a pleasure palace and I’d be glad to show you a whole lot of pleasure, mister,” she purred.

Fighting the primal urge that the two women’s proximity brought on him, Adam took the blonde’s hand away from his chest and patted it between his own hands. “And this pleasure palace has the cream of the crop when it comes to the ladies, I see. But, as much as I would love to spend some time getting to know both of you lovelies, I am here looking for an old family friend. A gentleman. Yves St. Larouche. I understand that he spends a good deal of time here?”

The younger woman disengaged her hand and her face took on a decidedly repugnant expression. It was clearly on her mind to make a comment but whether it was about him or the man he sought, Adam had no chance to decide. The older woman, Pearl, stepped before him and looked up at him, her eyes narrowing as she judged him.

“An old family friend, huh?” She said something over her shoulder and one of the girls disappeared. “Then you are aware that the War has not been too kind to people like him. The Yankees came, took his lands. Took his house and without even a by-your-leave put the old boy out on the street. Where were you and your old family friendship then?”

The air had gotten decidedly chilly, Adam concluded, despite the warm hand pressed against his arm. Now, he thought, now I need to get real creative. He reached into his breast pocket and produced his business card which she took, glanced at and handed it to one of the others.

“Well, Mister Stoddard. Mister Yankee Stoddard?” she challenged and stressed the new first name she had derisively christened him with.

“While you may think whatever you like, madame, the War has also not been kind to those of us who did a great deal of business with the South. We are watched carefully and all of our dealings are now suspect. The North fear spies just as much as the Confederates do.”

The one who had taken his business card returned but, Adam noted, from a different door. Without consulting Pearl, she handed the card back to Adam and told him that St. Larouche was not in the house today. Maybe another day?

Pearl drew herself up and with a sweep of her skirt, backed away. A fan that had dangled by a silken cord from her wrist flicked open as a gesture of dismissal. Her head tilted slightly. “Our regular hours begin at nine, Mister Stoddard. Nine in the evening. Perhaps if you return then one of our ladies…” She let the words trail off into the shadows and looked in the same direction.

Adam tipped his hat and chuckled shortly. “My step-mother told me once that a whore house in New Orleans that was closed for business part of the day was a very successful one. Most of them, she said, were willing to take a man’s money any time. Day or night.” He wondered if Pearl could see through the lie he’d just told. Marie had never spoken of such a crass topic to him. “Marie was from an old New Orleans family. D’Vrys was her maiden name.”

The change that came over the madame was startling. It was as though Adam had tossed a bucket of cold water on her and it washed away the thick powder and rouge, leaving her eyes wide open. For the first time, Adam noticed that they were an unusual violet color. The breath she sucked in was audible

 

and he knew he’d hit a nerve.

“I knew a woman by that name but it was many years ago. She married poorly the first time.” Pearl’s voice had lost its commanding tone. Now her words were whispered softly.

“But she married again – and that time for love. I know because she married my father.” Like her, Adam whispered, all mocking and humor gone from him.

One of the floor-to-ceiling tapestries moved and an old man stepped from behind it. He was the epitome of an elderly Southern gentleman with flowing white hair and a plentiful mustache that ended well below his chin. He used a cane to hobble the few steps into the room but it didn’t seem as if he truly needed it as he stood remarkable straight backed and shoulders squared in his pale gray suit.

“The man she married was named Cartwright. How is it that your name is Stoddard?” the old man demanded and for emphasis and drama punched at the floor with his cane.

“Monsieur St. Larouche, I presume?” Adam took a step back from Pearl and bowed respectfully. He couldn’t help the smile that came and played on his lips.

“Answer me!” came Larouche’s swift demand and with it, Adam noticed that two men had entered the room but held to the shadows, waiting.

“I lied.” As he admitted his deception, he reached into his jacket pocket but never finished the motion. The two men that had hugged the shadows were upon him, knocking him to the floor and pinning him there. The old man and Pearl had prudently backed away from the tangled thrashing of legs and arms.

“Hold him!” ordered the old man’s voice and they did. Efficiently and expertly, Adam was pinned to the floor, the tip of the cane pressed against his throat, holding him. The men hanging onto his arms and legs weren’t needed since he could feel the now exposed blade against his Adam’s apple. It nicked his flesh when he thoughtlessly swallowed.

The hand that delved into his jacket pocket belonged to the woman. When she straightened up she pushed hard against his stomach with the heel of her hand, forcing the air from his lungs. For extra measure, she planted one dainty foot – encased in a shoe with an extremely narrow heel- at the same spot.

Larouche took the small book she’d handed him and, turning his back on the tableau of pending violence, stepped to the patch of sunlight that came through the stained-glass door window. His hand shook as he opened the fly-leaf. For long moments he stared at the words there then, without looking back, ordered Adam released.

Cautiously, Adam came to his feet, brushing his clothing back into shape.”Where did you get this?” Larouche demanded softly, his back still turned so Adam couldn’t see his face.

“I told you – her-, ” Adam spat, gesturing to Pearl. ” Marie D’Vrys was my step-mother.”

The cane rapped the floor twice. “I did not ask you that. Where did you get this? Answer me at once or my men will slit your throat and dump you into the river.”

“It belonged to her. It’s her prayer book, for God’s sake!”

Once more the cane slapped at the floor and as it commanded, cold steel touched Adam’s throat. “For the last time – where did you get this?”

Adam’s thoughts skittered about like a dog’s paws seeking purchase on a waxed floor, slamming into a confused jumble when they could find no logic doorway. “My father, Ben Cartwright, married Marie here in New Orleans then took her back with him to our ranch in Nevada. She gave birth to a son – my brother.”

The old man lifted the cane as though to strike the floor once more and Adam felt the sharp edge move slowly across his throat. He wanted to scream that there was nothing – yet everything! – to be told. What was it he wanted to hear? What could have been so important about her prayer book that just having it could cost him his life?

“She died when she fell from her horse and broke her neck. She’s buried overlooking Lake Tahoe. I think my father still mourns her because when I asked for something of hers to prove my story down here, he…he…” Adam’s words came gasping, rasping from his throat, fighting both the fear in his heart that they would be his last and the sadness he recalled in his father as he handed over the little book.

The cane raised but did not slam back onto the floor. Instead the holder turned and nodded his silvery white head. The arms holding Adam and the blade at his neck dropped away. Slowly, cautiously, Adam touched it, sure that his hand was going to come away bloody. A glimpse down when he finished the motion showed him nothing but when he looked back up, the eyes he met were Pearl’s.

And they were brimming with tears.

“You mean that?” she whispered, her hands together at her breast as though holding her heart. “Marie is dead?” She turned to St. Larouche. “Did you know this?” When he nodded slowly, she breathed out, “and you never told me? As close as a sister as I was to her and you never told me?”

Chapter 18

 

“What do you mean you lost ’em? How?” Ben Cartwright’s voice rattled the rack of rifles clear across the room but Roy Coffee didn’t bat an eyelash. In truth, he had been expecting just such an outburst that morning.

“I told you, Ben. I’ve had deputies on him thicker than fleas on a hound but somehow, last night what with the fire, the storm and all, Dansen just got away.”

“That fella that worked for him too?” Hoss’ voice was at least ten decibels lower yet it carried well across the great room to where Roy stood just inside the door, hat in hand.

“‘Fraid so, ” the sheriff admitted but then quickly went on. “I’ve sent telegrams to ever’ town within fifty miles, Ben, advisin’ the sheriffs that those two yahoos are to be arrested. Don’t know still if we can make the kidnaping charge stick yet but I’ll think of something we can hold ’em for.”

“You’ll think of something?” Ben repeated the lawman’s words sarcastically. His thumb hit his chest several times as he continued. “Well, let me tell you something! I can think of a lot of charges to bring against him!”

“And while you got him and his henchman locked up, where’s Joe?” Roy tried placating the father but knew he wasn’t going to get through to him. “Tell me that, Ben!”

“I’ll beat it out of him if I have to!”

“Please, Ben, I know right now this doesn’t look good but we’ll find Dansen and Charles and they’ll have to have Joe with them. Just give the law a little more time.”

Struggling to keep his temper controlled, Ben had turned his back to the gray-haired sheriff and was strapping on his gunbelt. He’d heard all that he wanted to hear so when he turned around and faced Roy once more, it was all he could do to remain civil. “I listened to the law. I gave the law every chance to get my son back and so far it hasn’t worked. Instead, he may be farther away now than he was a week ago. No, Roy, I am not going to give the law a little more time. For all I know, I may have given the law my son’s life.”

Roy had no choice left but to leave and he did so sadly, nodding to Hop Sing and Hoss. For his oldest friend, he let a last single plea for time and restraint show in his eyes. Yet Ben had turned away from him.

“Hop Sing, pack me up enough food for two or three days,” Ben demanded and Hop Sing disappeared into the kitchen. That left him now muttering to himself in the great room, tying his holster down.

Hoss, hunched over in pain, seated in the blue chair, watching his father. With each decisive move, Hoss saw a mistake in the making. How to get through to him, to stop him? Or should he even try? Finally, as his father reached for his hat, Hoss couldn’t wait any longer. He didn’t try looking at Ben but stared into the fire, shifting his mighty shoulders to ease the cramping pain in his back. “You gonna ride out here toward where?” he asked. “Southeast toward Carson or west toward Sacramento?”

“Sacramento. If Dansen was determined to get back to New Orleans he would be taking a ship out of San Francisco.” Ben settled his hat on his head and turned to Hoss.

Hoss nodded abstractly. “Goin’ north to catch ’em or down through Placerville? Either way takes about the same amount of time to get to Sacramento. Or maybe they’ll drop down to Stockton and catch a delta packet over to ‘Frisco.” He took a ragged breath before he went on, still not looking in his father’s direction. “Any way he goes he’ll get to Frisco a day or so ahead of you. Ships still leavin’ from there headed for Panama ever’ day like they used to in the gold rush days?” He didn’t expect an answer and didn’t wait for one either. “Then he’s out on the ocean. How you gonna find him then, Pa?” With one hand Hoss lined out a twisting course. “You done sent Adam to New Orleans. You think Dansen won’t head there? That’s home for him so why wouldn’t he go there?” Only then did Hoss look at his father’s clouded face, knowing he was making him hear what he had to say. “No, Dansen’s headed right into whatever trap Adam can lay for him. Maybe the law has let us down some but I’d bet my last breath that Adam won’t. Yep, I got faith in my brother. Too bad you don’t.”

With that final accusation made, Hoss stood up slowly, favoring his right side. Ben rushed forward as if to help him as he turned towards the stairs but Hoss brushed his hand away.

“You said you were headed to Sacramento. Better hurry, Pa,” wheezed Hoss, grabbing hold of the bannister with one hand and pulling himself up the first stair step. “Hop Sing’ll bring your grub out to you in the barn. Go on. I can make it up these stairs on my own.” Another grasp of the railing and another step but still Ben trailed behind his son. “Go on, Pa. You got to be the law now.” Grasp – drag a foot up the step and lever his body up- groan softly. “I’ll be all right.”

“I know you will. So will I. You win. I ‘ll let the law do its job but you can’t possibly understand the pain this is bringing me, son. This waiting, this not knowing.”

On the landing, Hoss turned and smiled tightly for his father. “I do understand, Pa. It’s hurting me just as much but like I said, I got faith in Adam. He’ll bird-dog that bastard until he coughs Joe up then he’ll grab Joe and skedaddle on home. They may do their fair share of fussin’ with one another, Adam and Joe do, but when it comes right down to it, either one of them would lay down their own life for the other. And you know that, Pa.”

“That’s part of the problem, son. I know it too well,” and it means I could lose both of them Ben’s heart finished then he continued up the stairs to help this son at least make it back to bed.

 

 

Chapter 19

 

Darkness, yet he tried to keep his eye on a pinprick of light that came and went. Uneven, jerky motions. It slammed his body against something hard, shoving different pain into his conscience. Muffled curses. Slurred words that he could barely hear, much less comprehend. This was different, Joe knew but could not make his fogged senses sort out what was different about it. Laying on his side in the new darkness, he managed at one point to scrape the gag from his mouth. He found that it didn’t help as his dry, parched throat and swollen tongue would not allow him to cry out. Only whimper, his body too desiccated to even form tears.

Then, quite suddenly, the motion stopped and he looked over this shoulder for his pin prick of light but it wasn’t there. Sound filled his ears as wood screamed against wood and his tiny piece of the world began to shutter, buckle and moan. Then silence came again, riding through the stench of fear.

It was as though he was looking through the wrong end of his father’s spyglass. A darker shadow against a cloudless night sky reached for him, the arms telescoping down impossibly long yet the hands filled his vision. Charles. He knew those hands by now. They had alternately beaten and caressed him, overwhelming him with revulsion. The same hands that had given him food and water had withheld it until he was sure he would die. Then and only then did they give him water – water with a strange taste to it. And darkness had fallen around him, not to return.

Until now.

Without regard for his naked flesh, Joe was pulled by the chains that still circled and entrapped his hands, feet and throat. Rough wood scraped against him then he suddenly found cold dirt soothing his hot skin. As though he were an infant seeking to nurse, he turned his face into it and inhaled its scent into his lungs. His mind screamed that he knew this smell for it belonged to what had become his other mother – the Ponderosa. That curious flavor-mixture of dry, rocky soil, pine needles, icy snow and warm sunshine flooded him -nourished him – with hope. This nightmare that he had been captured in was about to be over.

“Take him down to the water and wash him off,” came a familiar voice – not Charles’.

Unable to stand on his own, his chains used as handles, Joe was hauled down a slight slope and thrust into water. Sure that he was in familiar territory, he imagined that it was Lake Tahoe. It was cold as Tahoe usually was but it was pushing him, telling him that it was running hard in one direction. He refused to believe it and allowed his body to sink to the stony bed as it numbed all the hurting places on his body. Wasn’t this sanctuary for his battered body, flayed mind and exhausted soul? He knew that at any minute, he would be able to see light; hear his father’s voice calling to him and feel….

The chains were used to pull him back to the surface of the water. “I told you to watch it! The weight of the chains alone could drown -”

Again he was let back down into the cold water but this time, with tension on the chains he was pulled against the flow. At last he was wrenched up again and brought to lay face down on a rocky bank.

“Get up,” Charles ordered, his words hissing right in Joe’s ear.

I can do this, Joe told himself and brought one knee under him as he pushed with his hands against the earth, fighting the urge to just fall back into this mother’s embrace. He struggled, the chains heavier than they had ever been. His soaked hair fell over his face, running tiny cold riverlets down his chest and back. Again Charles demanded that he rise, and, seeming unsatisfied with Joe’s slow progress, grabbed the collar around his neck and brought him up, weakly choking.

Weaving from both his physical condition as well as the weight of the restraining chains, Joseph Cartwright stood. A lantern carried by a gray-gloved hand came down the slope and was placed at his feet.

“Well, at least he smells a little better now,” sneered the man Joe knew as Charles’ ‘master’. “I guess it will have to do until we get to better facilities. Dress him, Charles. Can’t take him into towns naked now, can we? When you are finished, burn the box, please. Just the sight of it distresses me greatly.” Joe heard a curious sniffing sound then saw a flash of white and the shadow in the darkness moved away.

Again, Joe watched as though he were far away and right there at the same time as the chains were unlocked and fell into the light’s puddle. As they fell from his hands, his arms rose and he nearly lost his balance and fell. Only Charles’ grip on the neck collar kept him standing. In the end, the chains lay like coiled serpents in the rocks but that collar remained.

Oddly enough, the clothes Charles dressed Joe in – he had to do it since the boy had no strength and had seemingly lost all capacity for rational thought and behavior- were fine ones. Indeed, he thought they were better than the ones on his own back, yet he did as he was asked. The clothes were a bit large on the boy’s thin frame but they would do. In the lantern light, with the moon now rising in the east, Charles decided that he looked all right. Or as close to all right as the boy would get under the circumstances.

“Bring him over here. Let me talk to him.” Joe found himself propelled toward the voice. He sat on a rock and as the moon slipped from behind a cloud, watched it silver the other man – the master. He wanted to look away but the man’s gloved finger on his chin brought his eyes back to look at him. When the grunts behind him told him that Charles was awkwardly moving something heavy he couldn’t turn for the finger still lay against his jawline and now the flicker of flames showed in the gray eyes as a fire was lit behind Joe.

“You have learned your lessons rather well, boy. Now we need to test them. Do you want something to eat?”

At the mere sound of the word food, Joe’s body began to tremble yet he forced himself to look down and with a thick tongue replied, “Yes, Master.”

“Something to drink?” The finger that had held his attention became a hand spreading over his cheek, gently rising to his forehead and brushing his hair back.

Again, Joe answered as he had been taught.

“Good.” A sandwich was put into Joe’s hands and he was told he could eat it. “But we have to come to an agreement, you and I.” Joe fought the urge to wolf down the skimpy meal, and the urge to look up into the man’s face. “You are going to do as you are told when you are told. You will not speak to anyone but Charles and me. You will conduct yourself in a mannerly way. All this because your life depends on it. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master” were the humiliating words he answered with for he seemed incapable of stopping himself from doing so.

“Good.” Again came the hand that touched his face, his shoulder, drifted down his arm, then rested atop his thigh. “We are going to take a boat ride. Have you ever been on a boat? A ship? No, don’t answer me, boy, just listen. On that ship, you will stay in our cabin. The captain and crew have been told that you are my brother and that you are deathly ill and that I am taking you back to New Orleans. To our loving family.” Dansen, the Master, chuckled at his own irony. “Since your own family here has no use for you anymore. At any rate, should you do something that displeases me…well, let’s just say that the crew would not find it odd to be burying you at sea. Do you understand what I am saying, boy?”

The hand that had merely rested on Joe’s thigh now became a talon, the fingers digging into the wasted muscle of that thigh. Instinct drove his body to pull from the touch but he was too weak. The Master’s hand relaxed and he laughed softly at Joe’s feeble attempt to flee.

“Remember what I’ve told you, boy. You belong to me now. Once the truth came out about your mother, your father was forced to deny you. One of your brothers, the oldest one – Adam was his name, right? He left town he was so ashamed. Has most likely changed his name so the taint won’t damage him too much. But your father? Ruined man, I tell you, and ready to rid himself of you. So, you see? I am your only hope.”

“No,” Joe whispered, the man’s words like shards of glass being pounded into his chest, his body.

Rapier quick, the gloved hand was knotted into Joe’s hair and it pulled his face up and around so that he had no choice but to look into Dansen’s eyes. Those eyes, such a pale grey color, were lit now by the rising flames behind Joe and it was as though he were looking into the very soul of the Devil. Once again, Dansen chastised him, shaking his body, spittle flinging from his lips as he again demanded that Joe show proper respect. Yet Joe was too weak, too frail, too tired to resist and the other man found little pleasure in his taunting. He turned him loose and used his handkerchief to wipe the imagined grime from his gloved hands.

Dansen stood and with his foot, pushed the young man from him, watching with ill-disguised glee as he simply fell to his side in the dirt. For a moment, he stood astraddle of him, mesmerized by the flames the gilded the scene then he knelt, one knee pinning Joe to the dirt. He took a deep breath and slapped his face, the sound like a gun-shot. Joe’s head snapped to face the flames not five feet away.

“You see that? You displease me and next time we won’t take you out of one just like it. Do you understand me?”

With no other choice but to look, Joe saw what Charles was burning and knew at gut-level that it was where he had spent – how many days? Or could he even count days spent in a coffin?

“Answer me!” Dansen screamed.

“Yes, Master,” Joe replied by rote for he knew no other reply would be tolerated.

Satisfied, Dansen rose and stood towering over him, glaring down at him with those cold eyes. Joe had no choice but to meet those eyes and felt cold fear wash over him. Not because of the eyes but because he had seen the response of Dansen’s body to it all. Joe closed his mind to what he had seen and felt the man move away from him. Only then did he breathe and some small part of him wondered what had caused it. The power he wielded over him? The violence unleashed? Or was it the man’s twisted perversion? Joe had no way of knowing and vowed to himself that he would not bring it back because no matter what, he feared it.

For Daniel Dansen had been sexually aroused by the encounter.

 

And Joe had been completely and wholly at the man’s mercy.

Chapter 20

 

From Larouche and the woman known as Pearl, Adam had learned much and very little at the same time. He had sat with them in a quiet and elegantly furnished little room overlooking the Mississippi River. They had spoken in slow languid tones about Marie Del Vyre D’Marginy Cartwright, life in New Orleans before the War had come and plantation living. Pearl had questioned him closely about Marie’s life after she had left the big city so abruptly. The old man had only one question and it had hung in the air for several moments before Adam could answer it truthfully.

He toyed with the wine glass, giving it his apparent attention, marking how the late sun slanting through the side windows made highlights in it. Finally Larouche put his hand on his arm and Adam raised his face to theirs.

“Yes,” he answered. “For the most part I believe she was happy. She loved Pa, all of us. The long, hard Nevada winters bothered her some but I think she learned to adjust.”

Pearl’s hand had crept over onto her compatriot’s arm as she had waited for Adam’s answer. He saw it tighten and then relax with his response. The old man seemed at first not to notice it there but finally gave it a reassuring little pat that spoke volumes to the woman.

“I guess that says it all, doesn’t it?” Adam asked and let his eyes sweep across the other two. Pearl dropped her head, almost seeking to bury it in Larouche’s shoulder.

“Please forgive us this interrogation, Monsieur Cartwright – or should I continue to refer to you as Stoddard?”

“Stoddard is fine. It was my mother’s name and as fast as I had to make things happen it was either that or Smith.” He tried for a wry grin. It left as quickly as he was able to produce it. “Maybe just call me Adam? I can remember to answer to that.”

“Fine, Adam.” The old man’s smooth, French-inflected voice seemed in sharp juxtaposition to the steady staccato-tempo of whatever it was that Pearl spoke. “Now, why have you come to New Orleans and sought us out? You say Marie is dead so it cannot be about her.”

“Oh, but it is. Very much so. Do either of you know a man by the name of Daniel Dansen?” Roughly, Adam outlined the whole problem. They were sure that Dansen had returned Joe to New Orleans and was holding somewhere. “But what he intends to do with him, I have no idea.”

“Does this man know you on sight?” asked Larouche, fingering his mustache.

Adam gave the tablecloth a rueful smile. “Very much so, I am afraid. Let me say that I got very up close and personal with him at one time. That’s why the name change. And why I decided to grow this.” He stroked his own beard. “Thought that way I could at least get within shooting distance.”

The others conferred with one another in Pearl’s rapid fire language before she rose and left the room when they finished. For the next few moments, Larouche and Adam sat silently until Adam could stand it no longer.

“Forgive me, Monsieur St. Larouche. Your French I can understand fairly well. Marie gave me the sharp side of her tongue a time or two so I had her teach me basic conversational French. Stood me in good stead when I went to college. But Pearl’s -”

“Is not true French. Leave it at that, Adam. And please, call me Yves. What did your father tell you about my relationship with Marie?”

“Not much. He said that you would have the answer when no one else would about Marie so I took that to mean that you were related to her in some way?” He was fishing with that last and both knew it.

“She had no living relative in New Orleans. I was one of her protectors. Yes, that would be the word for it.”

“But Dansen said, and my father confirmed, that she had a cousin here. She was in his gaming parlor when she and my father met officially for the first time.”

Larouche made a dismissing sound and his hand underscored it. “That buffoon!” he spat.

Pearl returned to the room at that instant and resumed her place beside Larouche. “Carlotta will be here as soon as she has finished entertaining the mayor. She would know about…” She paused and then purposely looked away before she finished by hissing “him.”

“What did a woman like Marie need protecting from here in New Orleans?” Adam picked up on the word Larouche had used and pressed forward. “As far as I ever heard, the business with the D’Marginy family was pretty much old news by the time my father came here. Wasn’t it?”

The other two traded swift half-secreted glances before Pearl answered that it was bit too hastily to be completely believed. Growing in Adam’s mind was the thought that these two were hiding something about Marie. That they knew a lie had been told to someone, somewhere and some time ago about her. And that he had to know what it was about in order to secure his brother’s freedom.

“Listen,” he said and let command enter his tone. “I don’t care what Marie was before she married my father. I don’t care what she did to survive. I don’t care who she consorted with. That’s old history to me but I need to know it in order to form a plan to free my brother from Dansen.”

“You believe that Dansen has your brother?” Pearl asked. “In payment for a debt he says was owed to his father?”

“Yes.”

They conferred briefly, softly. Adam tried to catch words or translate phrases. He failed.

“He had a brute of a man with him by the name of Charles. Dressed well but he had thug written all over him. Maybe Charles isn’t his real name. Maybe he was hired from somewhere other than here. San Francisco is full of cut-throats for hire and Dansen would have come through there – assuming he took the quickest route to Nevada – through Panama.”

A discreet tap at the door and a young woman stepped into the room. In the fading afternoon light, her skin glowed a burnished old gold color. Her thick dark hair flowed in tight ringlets over her shoulders and framed her oval face. The radiant white that she wore made Adam think of the statues he had seen of Greek goddesses, forming to every body curve, concealing and revealing at the same time.

“You wanted to know about Dansen?” she asked and startled Adam with the sound of her voice. It was what he always thought of when someone said Southern yet it had a courser texture underlying it. “You see any bruises?” She thrust her arms forward as though showing him something of great importance.

“Carlotta? My name is Adam. I’m looking for Dansen. What can you tell me about him?”

Again, there was a silent by-play between Larouche and Pearl before Pearl nodded to the lovely young woman. It was clear that she was being given permission to speak freely.

“He’s a bastard. Likes to rough things up before he gets down to business. Know what I mean? If he didn’t pay so well, there’d be no way in Hell I’d do what he wants all the time. And he has got an appetite like a stud stallion with a whole herd of mares that need servicing now. Once ain’t never enough to satisfy him.” She finished with a huff and crossed her arms as though protecting her breasts.

“No, what I meant was -”

“I know what you meant, mister, but if a woman knows a man that way, that’s the way the man is. And Dansen’s one angry bastard all the time now. Guess it’s ’cause he gots to pay for it now when he used to get it for free. And yessir, he’s a bastard through and through. Judge Gordon’s niece weren’t never married and she never said who the father of her baby be but we knew down in the quarters.”

“Lottie, you sure we’re talking about the same Daniel Dansen? He’s related to Judge Gordon?” Pearl asked. It was clear that she disbelieved at least part of the prostitute’s story.

“Can’t be but one bastard with that name!” She puckered her face and narrowed her glance to Adam. “He hurt your woman? He ain’t been around here for some time and with him needin’ sex so frequent and regular, he has to be gettin’ it somewheres.”

Adam shook his head. “No, I believe he’s kidnaped my brother and brought him here to New Orleans.”

Now it was Carlotta’s turn to shake her head. “Like I said, he ain’t been around here for a while. And that don’t sound like the man I know. He ain’t into boys, if you know what I mean. Women, preferably us mulattos – pretty ones- that he can use hard -yes. But not boys.”

Before Adam could fully exhale and release his unfounded fear, she continued. “Now that trash he got workin’ for him – Charles- yessir! He likes boys. Young and pretty ones. Down in the quarters, with a sale comin’ up, all the boys feared Charles.”

“I don’t understand.” Adam leaned forward, his mind reeling with what Carlotta was saying.

It was Larouche who came to Adam’s aid. “Charles- now I can place him- is what is often referred to here in the South as a decapant.” Seeing Adam searching for an English translation, he supplied it. “It means literally a cleaner. What he does is take damaged goods and refreshes them. Disciplines them if necessary so that they are more tractable, agreeable. All in order to get a better price.”

“Better…price?”

“In the case of a decapant, the goods are human, monsieur. Live humans.”

“But that isn’t legal!”

“Tell me something, Adam. If a sultan in Persia says that it is a criminal offense to scratch your nose at night, does that mean we should shoot you for doing it here? No, of course not. The laws of one country do not necessarily apply in another. Just because your Yankee President Lincoln stands up and issues this Emancipation Proclamation does not mean that we cannot hold slaves.”

He couldn’t help himself. Adam blurted out “My brother isn’t a slave! My father – his father- is a free man. Joe was born free in the Territory of Nevada.”

The golden woman Carlotta softly stepped forward and laid her soft little hands on Adam’s arm.

 

“My father was a free man, too. Son of the old master. He wasn’t in Nevada. He was right here on a plantation not five miles from where we stand. But until the Yankees came, I was a slave. Down here, Mister, it doesn’t matter where you were born or who your father is. Slave is slave.”

“But Marie was a free woman.” He didn’t mean to, but Adam shouted the words. The mulatto girl flinched and backed away.

Still seated at the table in the dimming light, Adam saw St. Larouche and Pearl look away….

 

Now, out on the street, he hunched his shoulders and tugged his hat down before he turned to walk up the street toward the gas streetlight at the corner. Following his outburst, Carlotta had returned to her clientele and Larouche and Pearl would say no more, leaving him still in the dark. Unceremoniously, he had been shown the door, smiled at graciously by Pearl then told they would ask around about Dansen.

The mist that gathered around him stank of delta muck at low tide – thick and fetid. For a man of the far West, the stench was enough to make him ill and he stopped under the hissing streetlight and wiped his mouth and nose. It did no good as the smell remained. He shook his head at the uselessness of both the motion he’d just made and the whole afternoon. He’d learned very little about his step mother from the source his father had given him. However, he’d learned a fair amount about the man – no, the men- who held his brother and he decided that in the morning, he would continue searching for information on them.

Half way down the next block, Adam realized that he was being followed. When he paused, so had the footsteps behind him. When he hurried his step, so had they. Fearing a mugging, he took advantage of the first lighted doorway he came to and ducked into it – a jeweler’s shop that was just closing up for the night.

The rotund little man spoke to Adam in the patois of New Orleans then repeated himself in heavily accented English. “Can I help you, sir?”

Adam thought fast, glancing at the glass enclosed cases while also keeping an eye out for whoever had been following him. “A watch. I need a watch.” Still no one passed the door, telling Adam that he was most likely being paranoid. Or that they were waiting for him to come out.

“I have an excellent collection, monsieur. What with the times being what they are….” he left the implication dangling that many had fallen on hard times and henceforth selling items of worth. He did hold up by its gold chain a handsome pocket watch. The enclosing face was etched glass with a strange marking on it. Adam took it into his hand. It was heavy, heavier than he thought it should be.

“Allow me,” the little man said with a smile and took the liberty of pushing the winding stem down, opening the watch. The mother-of-pearl clockface was slightly yellowed with age but even that seemed appropriate. “I have cleaned the workings myself and have found that it keeps time well enough.”

“Well enough?” Adam asked sharply, confused by the words.

“It is old, monsieur. Here, the markings on the back. It was made in France before the turn of the century. Even then, it was a fine piece of workmanship. Now? It may lose a minute or so every few days. A small problem, n’est-ce pas?” He pointed out the engravings on the watch’s back.

Again, Adam took it in hand but this time walked toward the door as he admired it. He turned it in his hands, appearing to be studying it when all the while he was actually looking out into the street’s foggy darkness. Across the street, tucked into the doorway directly opposite, he saw a flash of movement- pale movement. He snapped the watch closed and returned to the anxious shop keeper. “I’ll take it. Also, do you have a small pistol, a derringer perhaps? I have been foolish and left mine – well, I was indiscreet, shall we say, with a lady this afternoon and when her husband returned-”

“Say no more. I understand completely but, pardon me, but you must be new to the City, oui? We are not allowed to sell arms, pistols, or the like. You would not want poor Henri to run afoul of the soldiers, now would you?”

Adam drew himself up to his full height and looked down his nose at the little jeweler. “No, of course not, Henri. It seems a true crime that you can’t sell the derringer that you have strapped to your forearm. Shop protection, I gather? To keep people….say people like me…from walking out without paying for little trinkets like this watch?” He almost smiled when the threat registered in Henri’s face.

“I have some pieces,” he whispered hoarsely.

In the end, Adam left the closing jeweler’s with the watch and a small two-shot derringer, complete with a small velvet wallet of ammunition for it. He was unsure of his accuracy with such small artillery but, he hoped two things: one that he would not have to use it; two that if he did have to use it, his assailant would be close enough that there would be no chance of missing. So, armed with it and the knowledge of where his ‘shadow’ would be coming from, Adam walked the final ten blocks to his hotel. Throughout the time it took to stroll that distance, his following friend came no closer than half a block. He made no move to catch him. Simply to follow. When Adam at last reached his hotel, he turned quickly enough that he caught a better glimpse of his shadow.

He wasn’t entirely sure but sure enough that when he saw the man again in daylight, he would approach him directly and ask him what he had been doing. The man Adam thought he’d seen was not one of Larouche’s henchmen – he was too thin and moved too quickly to be Larouche himself. The light-colored suit the man wore said that he wasn’t a soldier. No, it was the faint glow from the end of a cheroot that marked the man for Adam.

The man who had stopped him from making a fool of himself over a soldier’s mishandling of a young woman earlier in the day.

But why had he followed Adam?

Chapter 21

 

“Coffee. Black, please. And toast. That’s all, thank you.” Adam flipped the snowy white napkin open and laid it across his lap. The waiter disappeared only to return a moment later with a silver coffee service and two gleaming porcelain cups and saucers. Adam thought perhaps it was a language problem but before he could correct the situation and inform the waiter that he was dining alone, he was joined at his table by another man – the man from the day before. His shadow from last night.

“I usually dine alone but, this morning, I saw you come in and thought perhaps I should make an exception this morning.” The stranger said politely as he seated himself across from Adam. “Allow me to introduce myself, Monsieur Stoddard. I am Jacques Peasha.” He extended his hand but Adam pointedly ignored it.

Bluntly, Adam asked “How is it that you know my name?”

Peasha smiled only with his lips, his ice blue eyes riveted on his breakfast table companion with a guardedness lurking in their coolness. “I make it a habit to know all of the Yankees who come into my fair city. Especially those who claim they are from one part of the country when they are not.”

Caution rose in Adam. He lifted his cup and studied the Southerner over its rim. Despite the pocked face, the man was handsome. Classic lines of mouth, chin and jaw gave him the look of a sculpturer’s Greek god model. Still, there was nothing of the sort when one looked into Peasha’s eyes. There was an overwhelming coldness about them that had nothing to do with their pale, icy color. In fact, it was all Adam could not to shiver when they touched him.

“I’ve traveled a good bit but rest assured, I was born in Boston.” Adam prayed that the part-lie would hold the man.

Peasha reared back in his chair and laughed loudly as though he had just been told the funniest joke he had ever heard in his life. He slapped the table, making the silverware and the china dance. The other few breakfasting at that early hour looked up at the sound then went back to their meal.

“I have no doubt that you were born in Boston, Stoddard, and you’re right, you have been other places. But Boston was a long time ago.”

Taking a sip of coffee, Adam allowed one brow to raise for a moment. He let his face fall neutral as the waiter placed his ordered toast before him. Peasha shooed the man away as though he were a pesky fly.

“It’s in your walk. In the way you take the stairs two at a time. The way you touch your hat brim – as though there should be more of it because your fingers seem to close too quickly on thin air and you must reach a little farther for it. When you stand, you have to consciously make your right hand fall away from where I am sure a gunbelt usually rides.”

Adam paused for a beat or two then continued buttering his toast. “So?”

“Yet you have the studied mannerisms of someone raised in what we think of as New England social circles: stiffly proper, the correctness of your language. Right down to how you lay your knife across the plate after you’ve used it.”

“Anything else?” Adam bit off the words the same way he did the corner of his toast – as though he were biting into a grizzly and had only one chance of chewing it.

“Your clothing. It’s new and you aren’t exactly comfortable in it – especially in our Louisiana heat and humidity.” Peasha reached across the table and snagged a slice of toast off Adam’s plate. “I can see that you have gone to a great deal of trouble to make the Yankees believe your story of being a merchant, come down to New Orleans to trade. There is only one problem with it. The first day you are here, you don’t go about business, unless your business is whores. Now, granted, even Boston needs a few ladies of the night but I am sure that you couldn’t export any of Pearl’s girls and have them go willingly. So all that leaves me in a quandary. Who are you really? Where did you really come from and what do you really want here in New Orleans?”

“And you, as a civic-minded individual are going to follow me like you did last night – all of yesterday, too, I presume- until you have your answers? Good luck, Monsieur Peasha. May you find today particularly boring.” Adam stood to go, dropping a few coins on the table to pay for his meal as he did so. To his surprise, Peasha did likewise but with a smile on his face.

Out on the street, Adam paused to get his bearings. Peasha joined him, pulling out one of his thin cheroots and lighting it as he waited for Adam to make up his mind where he was off to.

“It’s too early to be visiting Pearl’s, you know,” he drawled and smiled at Adam’s frown.

“I thought maybe I would do some business.” He emphasized the last word of his sentence, hoping that it would deter the man’s interest. Adam, now mindful of how he walked, crossed the street and headed aimlessly away from the hotel. His shadow followed, clearly intent on keeping up with him.

“Good! But you’re headed the wrong way to talk with Butler. His office is that way.” Peasha jerked his thumb over his shoulder as he matched Adam stride for stride. “You know, it might be a bit easier on both of us if you just tell me what you are really here for.”

Adam jerked to a stop and turned to the Southerner, gathering his lapels in both fists and dragging him into the alley they had been about to cross. He shoved Peasha against the ivy-covered brick wall, making sure his feet were nearly off the ground. With his face close to his opponent, Adam let his eyes bore into the other’s. He hoped it did a better job of relaying his frustration than his words had.

“Just who are you and what do you want with me?” Adam demanded and for good measure, shoved the man hard against the wall.

It didn’t faze him. His cheroot stuck between his teeth dropped ash between them. “I told you over breakfast – thanks for the repast, by the way – that my name is Jacques Peasha.”

Once more, Adam slammed him against the wall. “What do you want with me? Why are you following me?”

Peasha raised his hand to the side and took his cheroot from his lips and blew smoke into the air above their heads. “You said it yourself, Stoddard. I am a concerned, civic-minded individual. That’s why. Now if you will be so kind as to release me, we can be about our way. General Butler must be dying to meet you. You do have an appointment, don’t you? That’s the only way -”

Adam’s fist silenced the rest of what he would have said. He left Monsieur Jacques Peasha, civic-minded individual, in an undignified heap in an alley full of garbage. At least he’ll want to go home and clean up before he’s seen in public again, thought Adam as he dusted his hands off and straightened his own jacket before stepping back onto the sidewalk.

 

Out in the morning sunshine, he resumed his walk, mindful now of what Peasha had said about his walk and how he physically presented himself. The urge was strong to brush his hand over the place where he had tucked the little two-shot derringer. He’d spent time that morning putting it in various pockets and places about his body and studying himself in the mirror. Did it show when it was placed in this pocket? Could he reach it faster if it were tucked into his waistband? He’d finally placed it in his vest pocket where his jacket would cover it and left his jacket unbuttoned. Now he wondered where Peasha had his hidden away

Still, what concerned him most of all were the many questions Larouche and Pearl had left unanswered the day before. Those same questions had kept Adam tossing and turning until nearly dawn. It seemed that they had told him something important about Marie but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Did it have to do with the comment from Carlotta about what made a slave a slave – not the father’s blood but the mother’s? And Larouche’s comment concerning being one of Marie’s protectors – what did she need protecting from? Or, more likely, from whom did she need protecting? How many protectors were there and who were they? Questions, questions, questions. In the end, with the new day approaching from the east, it all came down to one simple fact: Marie’d had a secret. One she had never told his father, Adam was sure.

And men like Yves St. Larouche were still keeping it.

As he strolled the awakening street, he let his mind wander back to what he knew for certain. He made a list in his mind, fearful of ever putting it down on paper. One – Marie had been married before. Adam knew this because he’d known Jean Marginy himself. Jean was a very likeable fellow – at least to twelve-year-old Adam he had. He’d been on the Ponderosa for only a short while when a rattler had lunged at Ben in a cow-gather camp and Jean had knocked Adam’s father away, taking the poisonous strike himself. Before he’d died, he’d begged Ben to go to New Orleans and find his wife, to tell her that he forgave her, that he knew it was all a lie, and, finally, that he was dead. It had always been assumed that the lie he’d found out about concerned the man he’d supposedly found in her bed, cuckolding him. Maybe now, Adam thought, it was really about something else.

Two- Marie had come from an old Louisiana family; her parents were dead. She had spent her formative years in a convent in New Orleans. Adam smiled at the memory of watching her try to cook and hearing her lambasting everything and everyone because of her poor ability. The words she had used she certainly hadn’t learned from nuns. Her French was elegant, even while swearing, not the guttural version he’d heard — from Pearl! And she’d claimed to have been as close as a sister to Marie yet her language was anything but—

Adam’s thoughts skidded to a halt. Standing now in the midst of a crowd of obviously working class people, he listened to them speaking. Like with Pearl, he caught and understood a word here and there but the whole of it seemed like a badly butchered and hackneyed French. This was not the French Marie had taught him. It was not the language she purred and sang to his baby brother while rocking him to sleep. He closed his eyes and listened closer to the words around him, ignoring the bodies bumping his. There was a different tempo, a different flow to this language. It wasn’t the same lilt and gliding words of his step-mother’s. Yet it was Pearl’s.

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly and again walked with the flow of pedestrians. He let it take him wherever it led. Down to the docks with their fetid smell of dead fish at low tide, across the city to the houses jammed together like so many pine needles on a branch where night waste flowed in the open sewers. Oppressed now by his surroundings and his tangled thoughts, he sought something of home. He found it. A patch of green with tall trees and a high fence surrounding the thick walls of a church. Adam shoved aside the thoughts of the city and his step-mother and settled himself on shaded bench. His new-bought watch showed him it was almost noon. Even as he sat there, nuns in flowing black habits passed him and went into the church to pray.

Maybe that’s what I should be doing – praying. None of this is finding Joe. Carlotta yesterday said that she hadn’t seen Dansen in a while but that doesn’t mean he isn’t in Louisiana. They mentioned a Judge Gordon. Said Dansen was related to him – an uncle? Where is he? If I find him, do I find Dansen? Better yet, do I find Joe?

            

His stomach growled and he remembered that all he’d had for breakfast was coffee and toast. A true meal, he decided, might help him think clearer. He stood up and straightened his jacket, touching the concealed derringer as unobtrusively as possible. It gave him a momentary feeling of having some control over his life and he welcomed it and allowed it to carry him onto the street. Because of it, he didn’t notice the young woman who had been watching him from the shadowy entrance of the church. When he left, she followed him, her parasol over her shoulder, and a giving the world a faint smile that didn’t make it to her eyes.

Chapter 22

 

The darkness ground into him, pressing him harder into the rough flooring. He let himself go with it. Above him a small round porthole let in just enough light to make him miss the sun. Sometimes, a spray of saltwater hit the wall opposite the porthole and ran down the planked wall but the wood soaked up the fine spray before it got to the floor. He shrugged his thin blanket higher on his shoulder and tucked his chin to his chest. The blanket smelled of sweat, saltwater and something vaguely human but unpleasant. Joe didn’t care. It was all he had to cover himself and he welcomed it.

Every once in a while, he would hear men’s voices. They spoke a strange English full of words cut in half. They were shouted words too, mostly, but because he was too short to see out of the window, he couldn’t tell what the shouting was about. Something to do with sailing this ship, he’d decided and let it go at that.

The ship. He tried to not think about it but yet it was all that kept him from certain death. By his count of sunsets through the high porthole, he knew he’d been on board for three days – four if he counted the night they had come on board just before it set sail. It was not a passenger ship but hauled some sort of freight. His best guess from what little he knew about ships was that it was a coal ship. He didn’t have to guess that it was sailing empty because it seemed to be tossed about quite a bit. Joe’s innate sense of direction told him they were sailing south. He didn’t care where. He’d given up on caring.

On the other side of the door at his back, Joe heard movement. From the heavy tread he knew it was Charles. He heard something tin hit the floor then heard water splashing. Another faint noise then Charles was pulling the door open and Joe’s small room flooded with light.

“Come on, boy,” Charles ordered gruffly and Joe immediately came to his feet, wrapping the greasy blanket around his shoulders then he stepped into the larger cabin room.

The room wasn’t large yet when he compared it to the room he’d been confined in since coming on board, it was spacious. Two beds hugged the solid wall and a table and two chairs sat before a potbellied stove that warmed the room. Overhead, twin lanterns swung in time to today’s gentle roll of the ship with the ocean. What he’d heard was a large tin tub that sat off to one side, now half full of water.

“The captain wants us to have dinner with him tonight. All of us. Master said since we’re passing you off as a brother, he thought you might be conspicuous if you didn’t show. So…” He pointed to the tub. Joe didn’t move. Charles gestured with an angry finger and Joe did as he was asked.

Barely able to get his body into the tub, he did his best to clean the last week’s grim from his skin. He had only the bar of yellow soap and his hands but he did as best as he was able, keeping a cautious eye on Charles. Even with the slick soap on his hand, he could feel the raised welts on the backs of his thighs that were courtesy of Charles when Joe had been slow to obey a command. The bruises on his arms had come from the Master when he’d thought Joe was standing too close to the hotel window. The swelling was nearly gone from his right thumb now and he could use that hand better. That had come when he dared speak before he was spoken to, the thumb pulled and twisted until he was sure Charles would pull it off his hand.

Charles. Since that night when Joe had been pulled from the casket, dressed and told his fate, Charles had become different – crueler, less patient. The slightest infraction of the rules would get Joe beaten, manhandled and belittled. Neither man used his name, calling him only “boy”, and he, of course, never dared use their names. Curiously, he had fallen mute and only in the last day had he allowed himself to even think. Now as he washed himself then stood and reached for the rest of the bucket of water to slosh over his body, he dared to think. Dinner with the captain of this ship…what would happen if I told him I was being kidnapped? Simple, Joe. Either Charles or the Master would haul my ass out on deck and I would go sailing all right – right over the side. I can swim but how far is it to land? And what would I find if I got that far? No, that ain’t the smart thing to do right now. Just go along until…until what? You heard them that last night in San Francisco.

            

It had been that last night on land that had so thoroughly crushed him. For three days they had stayed cooped up in a third rate boarding house. Every few hours, one of the others would go out and return. Sometimes it was obviously for food but the other times made Joe wonder until he overheard them – the last night there. It had been Charles’ turn and he’d returned after being gone about forty-five minutes.

           

 “Still nothing.” He hung his hat and jacket on the nail by the door. “The ship sails at high-tide. Do we let this one go and hope we can get passage?”

Dansen had jerked to his feet before he answered. “No! We’ve given Cartwright enough time to answer. You hear me, boy? Your father has decided to let you go with us. No wanting you back. He knows about your mother now and he wants nothing to do with you. So you’re mine to do with as I see fit. You hear me, boy? Mine!”

            

The words had been hard to hear yet seemed to make sense to Joe. He wanted to tell himself that his father was coming to rescue him but where was his father? He had no sure count of days but he’d heard Dansen telling Charles the exact words to use in the telegram: Reply if you ever want to see your son. Same deal. Surely, his father could have found them by backtracking the telegram! Little did he know the elaborate plans Dansen had put into place, telegraphers paid well to forward this message to another town and wait for a reply to be sent back the same way. A convoluted path it would take, passing through the hands of nine men going and coming. Yet the answer had not come.

 

Even as he was put into the rowboat there on the dark pier, Joe kept a keen eye out, seeking the shadows for an ambush he was certain his father would lead. Until he had been shoved onto the ship’s wallowing deck and forced down into the small dark room, he watched, prayed and in the end, cried. No father with white hair to demand his release; no burly brother Hoss to crush Dansen’s smug face, no Adam slipping silently up to measure out judgment. And as the anchor was weighed and the sails took the evening breeze, leaving all hope behind on an empty dock…..

            

Joe heard the whistle of the cane the moment it connected with the back of his right knee. Bruised there before, Joe yelped in pain and fell from the tub, spilling the water. Again it came down, this time connecting with his shoulders. A third time hit him across the buttocks with the demand that he get up and clean up the mess he had made. He did. Pain had taught him promptness however it was the look on Charles’ face as he did so that worried Joe. Yes, Charles had become a different man.

 

 

 

Chapter 23

 

It was with the same hope that his son had watched the dock in far away San Francisco that Ben Cartwright had kept watch on the stage depot. It was the fourth night and more than a dozen stages had come and gone and not on one of them had there been a curly-haired, green-eyed sprite for Ben to take into his arms and welcome home. Roy Coffee had kept him company off and on. As the days had turned into nights and stretched into more days, the sheriff had been more persistent.

“Ben, I’m telling you, that man never intended to return Joe. He’ll get what he wants and Joe’ll get -” Roy hadn’t the heart to finish his statement when Ben’s sad brown eyes looked up at him. “Just wish you hadn’t replied to that telegram.”

“To be exactly truthful, I didn’t. Hoss was the only one home when that lad came out with Dansen’s demand. Hoss answered the telegram. Wisely, I thought too!”

When we see Joe alive, all timber cutting and deliveries will cease. Will wait for a week then deal is off. Ben couldn’t have crafted any plainer reply. Three days remained of that week and the last stage into Virginia City until mid-morning on the fifth day had left an hour ago.

“Well?” the sheriff nudged Ben’s shoulder. “I asked if you’d heard anything from Adam?”

“Nothing but then I didn’t expect to.”

Paul Martin settled on the bench on the other side of Ben and stretched his legs out with a sigh. “Hoss is mending pretty good. Got that Cartwright stubbornness about staying in bed, though. You know, Roy, I threatened him with everything short of starvation and he still wants to be up and around. Yep, if you could bottle that stubbornness, I’m positive the Union Army would pay you well for it, Ben. Tell me something. Not a one of you’re from Missouri but you’re all as hardheaded as Missouri mules. How come?”

Ben recognized the banter as just that: banter. Here he sat with two of his oldest friends, them doing their best to cheer him up. Couldn’t they understand that until all of his sons were home, he wouldn’t find anything in the world to be happy about? He didn’t care if Roy was upset because he’d given into Dansen’s demands. He wanted his sons home. Yes, it was a good thing that Hoss was healing. Maybe once he was far enough along, Ben would go looking, hunting, tracking…and when he found the men who had done this to his family… his sons…one shot and nearly killed…one off to war-torn Louisiana in a half-cocked fit of logic…and his youngest, caught up by demons and suffering only God knew what….

“Ben?” Paul Martin’s voice was barely above a whisper. He pulled at the rancher’s arm and they stood together. “Come on over to the office, Ben. I’ve got some whiskey that needs drinking and I don’t like to drink alone. Come on.” A gentle tug was all it took and the three old friends went down the steps and across the street.

As the doctor turned up the lamp and Roy found three glasses, Ben had turned his back to them, pretending to study the street. They poured three glasses of amber friendship but did not disturb him. In the reflection in the window, they could see the silent tears running down his tired haggard face and would give him the right.

Paul raised his glass to Roy’s and softly toasted “To Cartwright stubbornness. That’s the only thing that’ll get them through this.”

The gray-haired lawman glanced once at Ben’s back, catching again his reflection in the window. “Amen to that,” was his whispered response.

 

The telegrapher down in Bakersfield had dutifully passed on the Dansen missive but when the reply came back, he was in too much of a hurry to get home to his wife’s pot roast. “That’ll wait till mornin’,” he’d said. But the next morning he forgot and the oddly worded message that could have brought father and sons back together was never sent until after the ship had sailed. The messenger boy in San Francisco was disappointed that no one was at the boarding house – there would be no tip for a job well done.

Twenty-one words that spoke of a family’s love and devotion no matter what the cost never reached their destination.

Twenty-one words that meant hope and freedom were lost to the waste basket of the San Francisco telegraph office.

Twenty-one words.

 

Chapter 24

 

He stepped down the gangplank, his knees swaying as much as it did, making him grasp the handrails in fear. Behind him, he could hear Charles laughing to himself and in front of him, the Master walked assuredly. Joe could neither laugh nor walk with such confidence. He’d heard the two men again and again discuss New Orleans and had taken that to be their destination. The small packet they had engaged to take them from the Gulf of Mexico side of the Isthmus had stopped at a number of ports in Mexico then Texas before it ever entered the delta Joe knew led to New Orleans. He may have been a young boy at the time but the sight of it had thrilled him as he’d stood beside his father, eager for adventure in the city that had given birth to his mother. This trip, however, wasn’t destined to end in the city but at a plantation landing north of it. Yet, curiously enough, there was anticipation – of a sort – to this arrival.

Charles prodded him forward. At the foot of the gangplank stood an enclosed carriage. From it a large portly man had stepped down and was embracing the Master, pounding him on the back in welcome. He merely nodded at Charles then resumed his animated talk with the Master in a language that Joe couldn’t understand. Finally, the two turned to him and the large man spoke directly to him. It had the tone of an order but Joe had no idea what he had been ordered to do. Charles’ bark for him to stop and stand up straight did the translating he needed.

Using rapid fire words, the two approached him, pointing with their canes at him. The new man used his to lift Joe’s hair and tap the hated collar he still wore. More words, commands.

“Take off your shirt.” When he proved too slow to comply, Charles helped, ripping the once fine fabric from his body violently, nearly throwing Joe to the ground.

The others walked around him, touching, pointing with their long black canes, as they spoke together. At his back, he heard the big man at first suck in his breath then hiss in obvious displeasure. That displeasure was directed at Dansen most clearly.

“It was necessary!” Dansen finally spat. “The boy was incorrigible! High spirited. We had to break him to control him. If the plan had gone as planned-”

“But it didn’t! Instead what have you done? Spent thousands of dollars we didn’t have to lose and brought us back this–this–boy! How do you expect to recoup our losses? With these damaged goods?”

The explanation was lost on Joe for it returned to the language he didn’t understand. His mind swayed, seesawing violently until he forced himself to turn his head and try not to listen. He knew they were discussing his fate but he’d lost interest in living. Surviving was becoming hard enough.

The handle of the cane curved under his chin and lifted his head. Its cold menace stayed on his flesh as the man said “Two weeks. Do you understand? You have two weeks.” But these words were not directed at Joe but at Charles and the Master. “At the end of those weeks, we will either take our profit from him… or from your deaths. Do I make myself clear?”

Dansen gave a curt nod. What else can he do, Joe reckoned and wondered what he could to make sure the Master and Charles got what was coming to them. Easy enough, he thought. Die but then I don’t get to see them meet the wrong end of this guy. And I so want to see that happen. All I have to do is live a minute longer than them and I’ll win.

           

 Resolution in the form a half- conceived plan of revolt began to spread through him, born from the weakness of desperation yet feeding upon it.

By nightfall, Joe was settled in a small cabin at the edge of a swampy area. There was no door so the constant whine of mosquitos along with their demand for his blood drove him to once again seek any shelter he could find. This time, with no blanket available, he had used what precious little water they had given him and mixed it with the dirt from the floor. The mud he smeared on his arms, his chest, his face and having no other way to do, rolled in it to cover what he could of his back. Even though the mud found its way under the collar he was bolted to the wall with and irritated the already sensitive skin it gave him some relief. It was a trick he’d seen their porters use while crossing the swamp and insect-ridden Isthmus and was delighted that it worked – after a fashion. He slept, exhausted.

 

It was the touch of large, fleshy hands that awoke him. He had been dreaming that he was back home on the Ponderosa and Hoss was trying to get him up but the bed felt too good, the linens too cool and inviting. As his sleep-fogged senses fought to remain in that cloying pull, he was forced to open his eyes. He expected to see the shadowy interior of the damp cabin he’d been chained in the night before; instead he found it transformed. High over him a fan swung in lazy circles, stirring the air. When he took a deep breath, a cotton sheet moved across his chest and a pillow slip whispered in his ear. The cautious breath he took brought him smells he remembered – lilacs and the over-powering sweetness of honeysuckle.

“Y’alls lays still now, hear me?” The voice was deep, mellow and if he tried hard, Joe could almost make himself believe that it was his father. No, there beside him and with the hand that had awoken him sat a large woman. Her dark coloring was a dusky brown – like coffee with just a touch of cream, Joe thought – and she wore a snowy white cloth wrapped around her head. Her round face was turned to the side but he saw it split with a broad grin from her. When she turned it toward him he saw that one of her eyes had a milky caul over it and it startled him.

“I said for ya’ll to lay still. Ain’t gonna hurt you none.”

“Where am I?” whispered Joe. Surely he was here because his father had come for him, had found him and taken him…or was it still part of the dream and in a moment he would wake up and find himself back in that cold dank cabin with Charles ready to beat him once more?

“You in bed. Been there for nigh on to two days – fightin’ a fever. I thinks you’re past it now. Sit up and let’s see iffen you can hold sum-thin’ in you belly.” As she ordered him, he did, sliding back and up to rest against the ornate headboard. He made a grab to keep the sheet over him since he found himself bereft of a nightshirt or any covering other than the clean smelling linen.

She laughed and told him that it didn’t mind. She’d seen far more than that in the last day or so and the brow over her good eye raised, mocking and teasing. Her name, she explained was Hannah, and she’d spent all her life here on Belle Fleur Plantation, all sixty some years. As he cautiously sipped at the coffee she gave him, she went on. She was the one the Master called upon in certain times to fix things – people, she whispered and nodded her head – that needed fixing and caring for.

“And you need a heap of fixin’, boy. Lordy, but you are a mess-” She was about to go on when the door to the room crashed open and the Master, dogged by Charles, came into the room. Immediately Hannah’s demeanor changed from light and friendly to more like that of a whipped dog. She stood up and backed away from the bed, her hands crossed before her and her head down.

With a flick of his ever-present cane, the coffee went flying. “Get up!” came the barked order from Charles and when Joe found himself slow to react, Charles helped him, taking him by the arm and dragging him to floor, forcing him to kneel before the Master.

“You are slow, boy. Try as I might, everything I have tried to teach you seems to go in one ear and out the other.” As though in disbelieving shock, the Master shook his head, his tongue clucking in disappointment. “Well, I will give you one last chance. You have ten days, boy, ten days to show me that you can behave like you’re suppose to. Please me and you’ll live. Otherwise…” He let the last word dangle in the air, letting it hang over Joe’s head as a clear threat. Then he turned sharply on his heels and left.

When Joe raised his eyes, he found Charles towering over him and the expression on his face was approaching rage. Charles lashed out his booted foot and caught Joe along one flank, knocking him to the floor. Before Joe could recover, he’d planted that boot on his arm, pinning him to the floor.

“You heard him. Ten days. You understand? Don’t speak to me. Just nod your head!”

Even as he nodded his head, Joe recalled the words of the big man they had met getting off the packet at the landing. He’d told them – not Joe- that they had two weeks. As Charles huffed away, Joe tried not to smile. Yes, all I have to do is outlive you by a minute and I’ve won.

            

Hannah only moved when the door closed. She helped him back onto the bed then returned to the sideboard for another cup of coffee for him. His soft laugh must have startled her for the china rattled.

“I don’ think I’d be laughin’, boy, iffen I was you. Mister Charles and Mister Daniel can be mighty nasty men when they gets their dander up.”

“What are they gonna do to me that they haven’t already?” There was no fear in his words, no uncertainty.

“Oh, there’s plenty theys can be doin’ to ya,” Hannah straightened the sheet across his legs. Her big hands shook just a little, the only release of fear she showed him. The rest of it stayed bottled up in her throat, making her warnings come out in a harsh whisper.

“No,” Joe softly whispered. Before him rose up the specter of his brother Hoss as he’d last seen him, blood staining his shirt. Echoing in his ears were Dansen’s words that his father hadn’t cared enough to come for him now that he knew the truth. Joe could only assume that the truth Dansen had referred to had to be that Joe had somehow let Hoss die and his father couldn’t – wouldn’t- forgive him. It all seemed so true since he found himself now far from home with no hope of escape other than death. No, Dansen had done all the damage he could possibly do. “He may as well just go ahead and kill me right now because I intend to make his next ten days a living Hell.”

Hannah’s “Hush!” smacked him but he only smiled at her. “There’s a whole lot more than can do to you, boy!”

He interrupted and lightly told her that his name was Joe. “And there is nothing more he can take from me other than my life. That I’m gonna hang on to until I see him breathin’ his last in utter fear.”

Again she warned him to hush. “You must still be feverish with this foolish talk of you’rn. You just think -”

“Hannah, they killed my brother and let my father blame me. They’ve brought me here – wherever here is. They have beaten me, starved me, kept me in a damn casket for God’s sake! They have stripped me naked and handled me like I was a piece of meat hanging in a butcher shop. There isn’t anything left they can do to me to hurt me.”

“Oh, but there is, Mister Joe,” she murmured as her hands knotted into fists. “They gonna sell you. Highest bidder gonna take you home and do with you what they want to.”

“Now who’s talking foolish and out of their head with fever? Sell me? That’s what they do with-” He stopped before he could say the word “slaves”. Even though he had been raised in far removed Nevada, the issue of slavery had reared its head there and the Cartwrights had found it repugnant. His father and Adam had stood before the statehood convention and argued against the possibility of Nevada coming into the Union as a slave state. But he wasn’t in Nevada; he knew that. So slavery was a fact of life for people of Hannah’s color, especially here in the south. He still couldn’t bring himself to denigrate her because of her color.

“What you think you are? You ain’t no free man, even though your skin be white. Master says you bein’ readied for sale, you bein’ readied for sale! I ain’t never been sold but I seen them that has – both comin’ and goin’. Been to a sale once with Mistress Eleanor – she was Mister Daniel’s momma and the Master’s sister. I seen what they do there. You just think Mister Charles and Mister Daniel done all to you that they could. You wrong.”

He didn’t ask her to tell him about it. She just did, tears streaming down her face that she tried to wipe away with a corner of her apron but they just kept coming. “It weren’t a big sale. A small sale of prime stock for only a couple of invited and interested folks. Held down towards Na’ Leans many a year ago now. It was a right nice day. Not too warm and not too chilly. Sunshiny. The first one on the block was a fine lookin’ girl. Maybe twelve year old. She was bein’ sold for the first time. You could tell by the scared look on her face. Next up was a field buck. He was a brute of a fella, all bunchy muscles. You could see the whip markings on his back and they kept him chained up good so you could figure that he was bein’ sold because he was just too hard to handle. I forget who was next but that don’t matter. What’s stuck in my head is the last one. A fine lookin’ young man, he was, but not built for workin’ the fields. A house boy, maybe, you thought from the size of ‘im. Oh, you could just see the smarts in the boy. They had chains on him, too, but there weren’t no marks on him. The sale man, he’d had them take the shirt off him, proving it, and I remember how the sunlight seemed to bounce right off his skin. That didn’t seem to matter to them that was buyin’. Folks was cautious bidding, afraid maybe of what they might be gettin’.”

“Then the sale man he had that boy strip naked right there in front of all them fine ladies and all. I’ll never forget what he did to that ‘un. Showed off his manhood and talked about him being good stud material. Mistress Eleanor, she was getting excited, watchin’ it all; breathin’ fast and shallow; her hanky flutterin’ ’bout her throat and her lickin’ her lips. It made me sick. All the other fine ladies, I saw ’em, they was –well, you know what they was gettin’ and thinkin’. Try as hard as he could, the sale man couldn’t get the bid goin’. Guess all them masters saw they’d have trouble keepin’ their womenfolk out of the quarters iffen they bought him.” Unexpectedly she laughed then sobered, wiped her face with her apron tail and sat still.

When she’d been still for almost a minute, Joe urged her to go on.

“The sale man, he tried ever’thing he could think of. Showed the boy’s teeth to prove he was comin’ into his prime age-wise. Used his cane to stroke the boy’s shaft so they could see that it would work easy nuff. He moved him all over that platform. Back. Front. Finally he got one bid. Man down front bought him for a hundred dollars. Just like that.” Her fingers snapped. “He was sold for a hundred dollars. The man what bought him? There was talk about that man. How he’d go into the quarters at night and have his way. Not with the girls. Shucks, a master that don’t have the girls is as easy to find as hen’s teeth. No, that man he wanted the boys down there. He’d do – oh, Lordy, I can’t even talk about what he’d do with them boys but it was a fact and one that he’d not deny either so you know the gossip, the whispers, were true.”

“He took that boy away. Next I heard, the boy was livin’ in Na’ Leans. The man what bought him was rentin’ him out just like them ladies what ain’t ladies. Weren’t long ‘fore I heard that he was dead. Threw himself in front of a freight wagon one afternoon when they was out walkin’. Rumor said he was smilin’ when he did it. I wouldn’t know ’cause the box was nailed shut when it got here and they wouldn’t let me open it ‘fore they buried him.”

“He was your son, wasn’t he?” softly, the question barely stirring the air, Joe asked.

Hannah nodded one time then looked away, no longer trying to wipe away the tears. “His name was Samuel. He weren’t but eighteen years old. The Master had caught Mistress Eleanor playin’ with him in the Library one afternoon. He told me that it weren’t his fault; that Mistress Eleanor had ordered him to touch her. He said that she forced herself on him lots of times. How she’d catch him when no one else was around and she’d satisfied her carnal needs with him. Two months after they brought him home, Mistress Eleanor she finally tells the Master that she’s wit’ child. They married her off quick to some poor lil’ piss-ant of a man the Master found in the bayou country. When her time come due, they tell everyone that the baby was borned early.”

“But it was Samuel’s child, you think?”

A curious smile lit up her face and she turned it to face him. “You don’t know how I wish it were. I midwifed Mistress Eleanor and I wanted a black baby to come poppin’ out of her in the worst way. No, not because it would have been my grand-baby but because it would have been black slidin’ out from between them pale white thighs and damning her for what she’d done to my son! But Mister Daniel, there ain’t anything of my Samuel in him I can see. And Mistress Eleanor held her peace until she died of the fever years later. Never said who the father really was. The truth would’ve shamed the family, oh yes, but not like as if the baby had been…” Her see-sawing emotions finally caught up with her and she buried her face in her apron.

Her story had touched him, shuttering away his own recent experiences in a dark cubbyhole of his mind. He touched her hands and felt the tear-soaked apron she covered her face with. “I’m sorry.” He let his words caress her but she only shook her head, denying the apology he gave. “For what happened to your son, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. He gone now. Long time ago, he gone past someone hurtin’ him.” Her hands finally dropped the apron from her face and she tried a brave smile but still the tears flowed.

“No,” Joe explained, his fingertips brushing at her cheeks. “I’m sorry that his mother had to watch what happened and couldn’t do anything to help him.”

She lifted her chin and her trembling lips tightened then stopped quivering. “So, you see, there’s worse they can do to you and they will — ‘lessen you take hold of yourself.”

“No,” Joe said a second time. “My mother’s been dead a long time and my father – he’s a long ways away and he doesn’t care any more.”

“That ain’t true and you know it!” Hannah’s parental indignation rose despite herself. “Just ’cause your daddy ain’t here don’t mean he don’t love you and don’t want to see all this happenin’! No momma, even if she be dead a hundred years, would want to see her child hurtin’ and dyin’.”

“So where does that leave me, Hannah? I do what I’m told and I wind up like your son – sold – or worse. I fight them and I wind up dead. I don’t have any other options, do I?”

“What if you was to just…disappear? Been known to happen down here, y’know.”

His sly smile matched hers until he said “only if you go with me,” then her’s dissolved in tears.

 

---

Chapter 25 – End

The Ursuline nuns who had come to New Orleans in 1727 brought with them their Order’s belief that all women should be educated. By the turn of the next century, they were well on their way to fulfilling that goal. They educated any class woman, free and white or black and slave. It didn’t matter as long as they were Catholic or would be baptized into the faith. The baptismal rolls of the Church of Saint Louis were filled with their names and the halls of the five convents in and around New Orleans filled with their voices. They operated boarding schools for the elite of class, charging well for the aristocratic plantation owners to send their daughters there for an education far better than could be obtained anywhere else, including Europe. The funds garnered helped pay for the day schools they ran for the lower classes, giving them the same educational possibilities as their well-to-do cousins.

Adam Cartwright stood outside of the walls of one the boarding-school convents and rang the bell hanging there. It was a long shot, he knew, but Marie had said that she’d been educated in New Orleans in a convent. Which one, she’d never said but the odds were good that it was one of the Ursulines’. What he hoped to learn by finding the one she’d gone to, he had no idea but that afternoon, he had no other place to start looking for her past. He’d considered going to the D’Marginy plantation just south of the city but then re-thought it. They’d had nothing to do with her once her husband had left so why would they give him anything but decades old hate-saturated gossip?

“Yes?” a pleasant voice asked and startled him from his wandering thoughts. Looking up at him was a round cherubic face blessed by bright eyes, the whole encircled by a white wimple.

“I was wondering if I might talk with one of the sisters?” he asked and whisked off his hat.

“Yes?” The bright eyes blinked and dimples punctuated her cheeks. When he hadn’t spoken again for several moments she said, “I’m one of the sisters. You can talk with me, if you’d like.”

Adam blushed self-consciously and smiled back at her. “I guess I meant to say that I need to speak to one of the older sisters. Maybe your Mother Superior?”

“And this would be about…?”

“An old pupil,” was all he could think to say but it seemed sufficient for she opened the unlocked wrought iron gate and gestured for him to follow her.

Inside the old building with its thick walls and slit windows, it was cool. Only his boots rang out with each step on the slate floor; hers were silent as she glided just in front of him, her hands hidden in the sleeves of her black habit and her head slightly bent. They met two other sisters and his escort stopped them and asked them something in a voice too soft for him to hear. They gestured and Adam and the cherub-nun nodded and continued on. They stopped before a massive wooden door but she didn’t pause to knock – only lifted the latch and went inside.<

Behind the cluttered desk, Adam could barely see the top of a head. The hair was flaming red in color and curled about in riotous confusion. It bounced rapidly and a squeal of joy filled the room.

“This is not the sort of thing a young lady puts in her pocket,” a stern voice explained and the red head stopped bouncing. It was joined by another, this one covered by a wimple. A hand, roughened and scarred, came from the back side of the desk and, hitting the top of the desk, brought forth one of the tallest women Adam had ever laid eyes on. In her other hand was a squirming frog. “Here, Mary Catherine, take this poor creature and set it free in the garden. And take this young lady to the Library. Let her read about frogs, not play with them. And do make sure her hands are clean. I don’t need to be chastised by the Sister Librarian again.”

The first nun took both the amphibian and the young girl with the bouncy red curls by the hand and chuckling, left the room.

“Now then,” the sister said and pressed her hands down the front of her habit. “What can I do for you, Mister —?”

“Toad,” Adam said smiling and watching the departing trio.

“Mister Toad. What can I help you with?”

“No, no. That’s a toad, not a frog. That is if it was found in the garden. Frogs are water creatures.” Adam explained quickly, chuckling at the wide-eyed woman across the desk from him. He rolled his hat in his hands a few times and stifled another chuckle.

“Thank you for the enlightenment. I will remember it from now on. Now, assuming that your name is not Mister Toad…”

“Cartwright. My name is Adam Cartwright.” Too late he remembered that he was using a different name but the words were out and there was no taking them back. Instead, he mentally grimaced and went on with his explanation. “My step-mother was from New Orleans and I have reason to believe that she attended one of your convent schools.”

“Ask her which one.”

“I can’t. She’s been gone a number of years.”

“Why do you seek this knowledge now?” She settled herself in a hard-backed chair and gestured for Adam to be seated as well.

The chair felt much like the one he often pulled up in front of his father’s desk when he needed to explain something unpleasant to him. Adam reflected that the same butterflies were dancing in his stomach and wondered if they’d made the trip from Nevada with him or were these just southern cousins? Either way, they were there. He took a deep breath and decided on the truth. When he finished his story, he sat back, the chair ominously creaking to fill the silence.

“I see,” said the woman. “And you are here, hoping to find some clue as to what your step-mother’s past has to do with all of this.” She paused and stared at the ceiling for what seemed an eternity to Adam before she went on. “I was a young novice when Marie D’Vrys was here. A bright child, full of promise. By the time I took my vows, she was gone.”

Adam leaned forward anxiously. “Then you knew her?”

The nun shook her head thoughtfully. “I did not say that. Go to the Library, Mister Cartwright.”

He had to chuckle. Just like the toad-catching young lady had been sent to the Library in dismal, so was he? “I didn’t realize that asking questions about Marie would get me into trouble.”

She cocked her head, puzzled, then she smiled while laughing delightedly. “No, we do not use the Library as a form of punishment, Mister Cartwright. We believe in knowledge, not just of the Holy Word, but in all things. When I told you to go to the Library it is because one of the oldest of our sisters is the Librarian. If any of us would know something about your step-mother it would be Sister Theresa.”

Only after the door was closed behind him did it dawn on Adam that she’d never given her name. He followed the directions she had given him and found himself shortly in between the tall shelves of books that covered the walls of a large room and were rowed so closely together he feared he would knock them off the shelves as he made his way through. Only once did he catch a glimpse of red hair but it was through the books and it appeared that she was deep in study.

The mother superior had been right. The librarian sister was an old woman by anyone’s standard. Her eyes were squinted nearly closed despite her thick-lens glasses as she glared at Adam across her book. He’d found her in the only patch of sunlight in the room before a large open window that gave entrance into an expanse of a flower garden. He had done the unpardonable. He’d interrupted her reading.

“Your Mother Superior told me that you could help me. She said you might remember a student here many years ago. Marie D’Vrys.”

Sister Theresa made a face. “Over there,” she grumbled and pointed into a far corner.

“Over there?” Adam turned to see what she had pointed at but saw only wooden file cabinets overflowing with papers. “What about over there?”

She squinted up at him and puckered her lips. “You can read, can’t you? Don’t tell me you can’t because I don’t have the time to read for you.”

Adam backed away, explaining as he did that he could read and would take care of this on his own. In truth, he was more perplexed than ever when he got to the files. Consternation turned to curiosity when he found dates marked on the drawers. From his inner pocket he drew Marie’s prayer book out and turned to the first page. It gave her date of birth: September 22, 1817. He added five years to that and looked for the drawer for 1822. For the next half hour he sorted through the many pieces of paper there, searching for her name in the first division which he took to be the first grade. It wasn’t there.

“Maybe she didn’t come here until she was older,” he muttered to himself and went to the drawer for 1824. “She would have been seven then.”

“What do know about her?” queried a watery whisper beside him. If the mother superior had been the tallest woman he’d ever met, the creature beside him was the shortest. If not for her habit, he would have taken her for a child but one look into her wrinkled face changed his mind. “I am Sister Constancia. I have taught many a young lady here the fine art of needlework. Almost as many as Sister Theresa has taught to read. Maybe if you tell me something about this student you are looking for, I can help you.”

“Her name was Marie Del Vyre. According to her prayer book, she was born in 1817 here in New Orleans.”

“Go on. Names mean very little to me nowadays. The mind wanders and I have little energy to go chasing after it. What else do you know of her?”

“She was my step-mother. Her parents – I know her father’s name was François because when she was pregnant with my brother, she wanted to name him after her father. My father intervened but my brother still got nailed with Joseph Francis Cartwright.”

“Let me guess. He learned to fight because of it?” She giggled softly when Adam agreed then she urged him to go on.

“She never mentioned any brothers or sisters so she was an only child, I presume. Her parents died when she was young and several older gentlemen- her godfathers maybe- took care of her. I am assuming that it was one of them who placed her in your care for schooling but I don’t know which one or even their names. She had blonde hair and green eyes – quite a lovely woman. Very spirited. Loved flowers and riding horses. That’s about it. Any of that help?”

“Did she do anything with her hands at night? I mean did she knit? Tat? Perhaps some needlepoint? That I would remember but then again, besides the Church, that has been my life.”

“I remember that she liked to knit socks.” Adam laughed, recalling the teasing his father had handed out to her as she’d sat hour after hour making socks for the family. After all, by that time, the Ponderosa was beginning to show how profitable it would one day become and they could afford to buy whatever it was they needed. Ben had pointed a finger at her, told her that if they could afford to import mirrors and a grandfather clock, they could certainly afford to buy socks. Marie had smiled but not looked up, agreed with him…and kept on knitting.

“Socks,” the old nun repeated and put a gnarled finger to her chin. “Socks. And you say she had blonde hair? Green eyes? A bit of a rebel?”

“That I couldn’t say, Sister. She was my step-mother and not into rebellion much when I knew her.”

Sister Constancia shook her head at a memory and scowled. “No, she married well, as I recall. Took the fancy of one the D’Marginy’s.”

“That’s her! Before she married my father, she was married to Jean D’Marginy. When he died, she married my father, Ben Cartwright. But that was long after she’d left the school here. You remember her now?”

A sudden guarded look came to her face and she looked away. Her fumbling fingers found her rosary. With it clutched in her hand she shook his arm. “Whatever you are looking for, it isn’t there. The bells will soon ring for Mass. You must leave, now. I must leave now.”

“Wait a minute, Sister. You know something about her. Tell me. Whatever you know can’t hurt her now. She died more than a dozen years ago. Please, tell me what you know about her!”

But she would say no more, her words now those of the prayers of the rosary. Drained and excited at the same time, he let her go.

“You are looking in the wrong year.” The gravelly voice belonged to Sister Theresa as she stalked across the room and opened the drawer marked 1827. “Look in the first division.”

Adam did as he was told. “But by then she was ten years old. First division means first year of school, right?”

“No. It means the first year that she was with us.” She would say no more until Adam found a single scrap of paper with Marie D’Vrys’ name written across the top.

“There were lies told about her. Lies she came to believe,” Sister Theresa whispered. “Lies she took with her when she left us. Lies that she lived with because she had no choice. She and the others.”

“The others? I ran across a lady – a woman- who said she’d been as close to Marie as a sister. Her name is Pearl. Do you know her?”

“Ah, yes. Knew the three of them well. We called them the Fifty-sixth Beads.” Even though she fought it, a smile danced briefly on her face but she covered it with her hand.

“Fifty-sixth beads?”

“You are clearly not Catholic, Monsieur Cartwright. There are fifty-five beads on the rosary. We run them through our fingers as we pray. The Lord’s Prayer, the Ave Maria and meditate upon the life of our Lord. I don’t recall who said it first but it proved true in the long run. We needed another bead on our rosaries to remind us to pray for those girls. Be it for patience to teach them, forbearance to withstand their playfulness or to beg our Lady of Sorrows to watch over them. When they left us, they knew of this, of course, and had their own rosaries made with fifty-seven beads so that they would remember to pray for one another.”

“I remember Marie’s. Plain wooden beads but next to the cross pendant there was a tiny blue stone on one side and a white one on the other. Now I understand. The white one was for Pearl, wasn’t it? But who was the blue one? Her? No, the look on your face says someone else. There were three of them. Three girls. I know about Pearl but who was the other one?”

“Come, Monsieur Cartwright. It is time for Mass.”

“No, thank you. I’m not of your faith.”

“Come to Mass and learn something.”

Adam shook her hand off. She shrugged and left just as a distant bell tolled. He followed her out of the Library and down a short hallway. Again she asked him to join her at Mass but he again begged off. She bowed and went on her way, leaving him standing there alone. He was about to turn and find his way out when he heard his name called. It was the mother superior.

“Did you find what you needed in the Library?” she asked, pausing her long strides.

“Yes and no. Sister Constancia -”

“Sister Constancia’s mind is gone. She barely remembers what day it is, much less something that happened years ago. Please forgive her.”

“For she knows not what she do?” Adam smiled as he played with the words.

“Something like that,” the other smiled, glanced down then back up. “Are you joining us at Mass?”

“No, thank you. If you can just point me to the door, I’ll be on my way.”

 

“Surely.” With a long arm, she pointed out the way, her rosary around her palm.

Adam was sure that he would talk with her again, even as she hurried away in the fading afternoon shadows. He wanted to whistle a happy tune as he walked out into the garden and found the gate because of what he’d seen.

The rosary Mother Superior carried had two extra beads that were actually stones on either side of the crucifix: one white and one green. One pearl and one emerald. Pearl for the one who carried that name. The emerald for the other’s green eyes – Marie’s eyes. That made the mother superior the blue stone on Marie’s. A blue sapphire for her blue eyes. The last of the trio.

Chapter 26

Adam pulled the hotel door open before the second knock. He was sure that on the other side would be the nun. He was a bit surprised when he found Peasha there, leaning against the jamb.

“Eager, are we?” the southerner teased as he strolled by Adam into the room. “But then that wasn’t me you were waiting for, was it? Never mind, don’t bother to answer that.”

“What are you after?” The door slammed closed behind Adam. He stayed there, one hand still on the knob, the other at his side, searching for his missing holstered Colt. Only Peasha’s whirling back to face him stopped his hand in its fruitless search.

“I am after the truth, Stoddard. Just the simple truth.”

Funny, Adam thought, so am I. Wonder if he’s getting any closer to his than I am mine.

            

“Well, the truth, Mister Peasha, is that I was just dressing to go out. Dinner, you see?” To give credence to his lie, Adam picked up his suit jacket from where it had been over the back of the chair. Every instinct fought him to keep him from reaching into the pocket to reassure himself that the two-shot derringer was still there.

Peasha smiled, showing even white teeth. “Good! I know an excellent little place down on -”

“Dinner alone, Mister Peasha. Now if you will excuse me?” Adam opened the door and swept his hand outward, telling Peasha he was no longer wanted where he was.

“But it would be rude of me not to show you the better side of our fair city. After all , you have been so busy today with business.” The last word was emphasized, the syllables cleanly spoken. “You must tell me about your business, Stoddard. For the life of me, I cannot fathom what a convent, a socially elite boarding school and a whore house would all have in common that you could possibly sell them.” He fell into step beside Adam, tucking his thumbs into the pockets of his vest and sweeping back his tailored jacket.

Adam ignored him, using his greater stride length to pull ahead slightly but Peasha hurried, anxious to keep up. Down the wide circular staircase and into the fetid night air they went. Adam turned to his left, away from his shadow and began to make his way down the street. Where he was going he had no idea but as long as it was away from Peasha….

 

A hand grabbed his arm and with its sudden force, whirled Adam into an alley way next to the hotel. At the same instant, he felt his coat pocket being relieved of the derringer and its small bores pressed into his side.

It was Peasha.

“I grow weary of this little game, whoever you are. No, don’t give me that Stoddard business because I know it isn’t your name. This afternoon, I had a tail on you that called it out twice and you never heard it, didn’t react to it. Funny thing with a name. You pick your own up in crowd far faster than you would someone else’s. You didn’t.”

“What does it matter to you what my name is or isn’t?”

The derringer shifted location, now pressing against the side of Adam’s throat. “Concerned citizen, remember? I want to know what a liar is doing here, going about some very odd business.”

“Business that is my own and of no concern of yours,” Adam spat only to have the gun bores press harder into his flesh.

“Oh, but it is, I suspect. You came into town and immediately you find the most expensive whore house in that town. You say that you do business down here all the time but I can’t find a single person who knows you – right down to the bellhop you overtipped. Trust me, a big spender is always remembered. You’ve yet to tell me what sort of business you are in which in and of itself tells me that it is either illegal or nonexistent. Which is it?”

“None of yours.”

Peasha’s eyes narrowed and he pushed Adam harder into the wall behind. “I took the liberty of checking your room while you were out visiting the good Ursuline Sisters. Your tailor is an exceptional man. Not only does he sew handsomely but he manages to deliver it to you in Boston from San Francisco. Do you pay him well? You should because you have plenty to pay him with hidden away in your luggage–luggage which is fairly new. Funny thing about those gold coins, they were all minted in San Francisco. Do you see the same pattern emerging that I do? ”

Adam only swallowed hard and kept his eyes locked onto Peasha’s.

“Why are you here? Give me the truth or there will be an unfortunate occurrence and a rich Yankee will be found dead – a result of some nefarious footpad, intent on robbing the man, no doubt. Now, one last time. Who are you and why are you here?”

The glitter in the other man’s eyes was hard to miss and Adam was sure that the derringer wouldn’t miss either. Still…

“Why should I tell you if all you are is a concerned citizen?”

“Concealed in my boot is identification that says I am Army Intelligence, that’s why.”

“You’re a spy,” Adam said bluntly, forgetting who held the gun. Peasha merely inclined his head in answer. “But for which side? Have to be for the Confederates. No reason in a city held by the Union for an agent to be operating clandestinely. Or is there? Maybe your drawl is just a little too pronounced, a little too studied?”

The sound of the little derringer going off right next to his ear sounded much more like a cannon exploding there. Adam would have flinched and moved from the sound but Peasha’s forearm was crushing him against the building and his arms were pinned to his sides.

“What the hell…my name is Adam Cartwright. I’m from Nevada. A short time ago a gentleman came to Virginia City making all sorts of claims about my dead step-mother. Claimed she belonged to him as part of a debt he was owed. He took my youngest brother in payment for that debt.”

“And you came here. Why?”

“To clear her name. To get my brother back is he was indeed brought here captive.”

The arm holding him relaxed and the derringer pulled away from his head. Peasha, cautious as a snake, took a step back but every muscle was clearly tensed and ready for action. Adam did what he could to relax every nuance and fiber about himself, praying the other man took it for relief that he’d told the truth.

“Do you believe it? That she was chattel, I mean?”

“I don’t know what to believe. I’ve come to believe that there are people in this city that know something about her that my father didn’t know when he married her. And that they are still protecting that information even though they know that she’s dead. None of it makes sense and I am beginning to feel like a dog chasing his own tail. Now I’ve got you clinging like a burr to that tail and I don’t like it!” Forgetting himself, Adam shoved Peasha back a step. The derringer came up quickly between them and halted Adam in his tracks.

“The man who you believe took your brother, he got a name?”

“Daniel Dansen. Had an ugly mutt with him that was named Charles. Ring any bells with Army Intelligence?”

To Adam’s surprise, Peasha smiled and handed him back his little gun. “I knew it,” he said and his cheeks twitched as he spoke. “We’re after the same thing, Cartwright. For different reasons, maybe, but with the same goal. I want Dansen, his father Judge Gordon and all their lovely little cronies.”

“Well you’ll have to go to Virginia City Nevada. International House. That’s where I left him. I’m sure by now our local law has figured a charge to hold him on. Give the sheriff my best when you see him.”

“Why? Dansen is back here. Came in to Belle Fleur Plantation ’bout ten days ago. Word has it that Charles was with him. Same word says he brought home a travel souvenir. Want to describe this missing brother of yours?”

“Seventeen. Slim build. Dark curly hair. Green eyes.” The words came rushing out and he was unable to stop them. “Left handed. Sassy at times. Thinks he’s a lady’s man. Smart little cuss that can charm the hide off –”

“Whoa there, Cartwright! Can’t tell about that last bit. My sources aren’t that good! But traveling with them was a younger man, scrawny with long dark hair.”

Adam was set to go and made the move to leave but Peasha stopped him. “Not tonight. Belle Fleur Plantation is across Union lines and we could get ourselves shot running around up there in the dark. Besides, from what I hear, your brother was taken into the big house so the odds are good that he’s in no immediate danger. No, before we go up there, we need a plan. Am I to gather that Dansen would know you on sight?”

“I assume that he would have a clear memory of at least my fists.”

Again, Peasha chuckled and this time threw his arm over Adam’s shoulder in the symbolism of comradery known around the world. “See? You tell me the truth and things begin to happen. Now, we’re gonna go have some dinner, some drinks too, and you’re gonna tell me how the nuns and the whorehouse all fit into this. You did bring your money with you, didn’t you? Because tailing you all day has worked up my appetite something fierce.”

Even though he seemed eager to leave the shadowy alleyway, Peasha paused and turned back just as they reached the street. “You don’t mind if Marguerite joins us, do you? She makes very pleasant dinner conversation, I assure you.”

True to his word, behind the two men in the alleyway was the young woman Adam had first tried to save from the Union soldiers’ roughing up. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again, Adam assured himself, since it was now clear that she was more than capable of handling a like situation. The Colt 45 pistol in her hands and trained on him told him so.

“If she’ll promise to put away the armament, I’d be more than willing to pay for her dinner and listen to her conversation.” The gun lowered slowly as she came forward into the light. Yes, it was the same woman. Adam turned his attention to his new-found compatriot but found his attention on the woman. She took Peasha’s offered arm and didn’t wait for Adam to offer his.

Adam noted that the gun was gone. Disappeared in fact. Almost like it had never been there in the first place. “So tell me, Miss Marguerite, where does a lady hide her .45?”

 

 

 

Chapter 27

 

“I don’t understand either but it don’t matter none. We do what he tells us to do,” Hannah said over her shoulder as she wrung the neck of the last chicken. At her broad flat feet a pile of bloody feathers swirled like freshly fallen snow.

“Well, something’s up if he’s having us fry up all of the chickens,” Joe responded, taking the limp body from her and beginning to add to the pile of feathers. “We may have waited too long, Hannah.”

She whirled on him, her finger across her lips. “Shush now!” she hissed then looked around her as though one of the masters, as she called them, would appear. The chicken house was silent – almost too silent for Joe’s liking.

“There’s nobody within hearing range, Hannah.” He spoke the truth. Earlier in the day, Charles had taken him from the plantation room he’d been in for the last week and told him to help the others. Ted, the old hump-backed majordomo, would tell him what to do and should he not obey promptly…Joe had wanted to wave the man away, saying he knew just exactly would happen since lately he’d heard the threat of a caning more than once. Curiously, even though he’d provoked and irked them as much of the time as he was able, they had merely raised it menacingly.

“What’s going on down there?” he asked and gestured with his chin through the open henhouse door to the building down the slope toward the river. That building was a fairly large one and reminded Joe of the barns at home yet he’d not seen a horse or other livestock near it. Now, Ted and one of the other slaves – a half-wit they called “Child” were airing it out, moving something wooden within it and making a muted racket.

“That’s bad news down there in the makin’,” was all Hannah would say at first then, gathering up the naked, headless fowl by the feet, went on. “That’s the sale barn, Joe. Word has it that Master gonna sell us all soon.”

 

“Me, I could understand. But the rest of you? Why?” Joe stood up and took half of the dead chickens from her as they left the henhouse and started toward the kitchen at the back of the plantation mansion.

“Thomas, the Judge’s manservant, said that the Yankees are getting too close and Master wants to get away now while he can.”

Joe shrugged and followed her, enjoying the feeling of the cool morning grass on his bare feet. “Probably true but do you really think he’s gonna -”

“Yes! Now stop talkin’ ’bout it. You talk ’bout somethin’ and it makes it happen, don”t you know?”

 

She took a few more steps then stopped and turned to him, her face full of sorrow and despair. “Give me them chickens and you get a move on. Fast as you are on them feet, you can be ta Na ‘Leans before they know you’re missin’.”

He shook his head, passing her. “We’ve had this discussion before, Hannah. I am not leaving here without you. And Ted. And Child. And Thomas. And – what’s the cook’s name again? Oh, yeah, Rachel. We either all go together or I don’t leave at all. Remember? ”

“I remember but you don’t understand. If what Thomas says be true, we’s all leavin’ here, all right, but the odds is that it won’t be together. You, you gots a chance. I’se too fat to run, Ted’s too crippled up. Child don’t have any idea in that addled head of his…. No, Joe, I’m beggin’ you right here and right now to head off through them trees yonder. I can cover for you for a while.”

The temptation was there; Joe felt the pull of it. Instead of listening to it, he shoved it aside. “I also remember what Charles said he’d do you if something happened to me.”

“He meant if you didn’t get your feet back under you. That you did, Joe, but now you gots to use ’em and get away from here,” Hannah pleaded, stamping her foot.

They were almost to the door of the kitchen and could hear Dansen’s voice ordering Rachel to do something that she most likely had no intention of doing. The scrawny woman had a maddening way about her that Joe had come to recognize as the same as Hop Sing’s when he felt he was being taken advantage of. He wondered if it was something common to all cooks.

With a warning look from Hannah to mind his manners, Joe followed the woman into the kitchen. Just like at the Ponderosa, the smells hit him first – chicken frying, bread baking and something sweet that he couldn’t put his mental finger on. In the midst of this stood Dansen, trying to tower over the black cook, reminding him of Hoss trying to boss Hop Sing around. Indeed, Rachel stood the same way, feet planted shoulder-wide, fists – one with a spoon clutched tight- rammed into her hips and leaning forward as though the demands Dansen had just made were whispered, not shouted. The flood of memories hit Joe physically and he laid the dead chickens on the work table and slipped out the back door. He stopped by the well and pressed his suddenly fevered brow to the cool stones. Heat rose behind his eyes, threatening tears. His stomach heaved in time with the shallow breaths he took.

Hannah’s hand came to rest gently on his back, her fleshy palm a spot of warmth he was tempted to lean into. “Hey now. What’s this here all ’bout?” she crooned but Joe only shook his head, refusing to look up at her. “It finally come to you, didn’t it? That you gonna be sold ‘way.” Again his head shook, his arms wrapped around it, hiding his face where tears were now dampening the stones. “Told you. You gots to run away now. Don’t worry none about the rest of us. I hates to say it but it’s like we was born knowin’ this was gonna happen to us one day. But not you. Come on, Joe. Head out now while the masters is all busy.”

“You don’t understand. Hannah, where would I go? If I ran – and I don’t intend to leave here without the rest of you- if I ran, where would I go? What would I do when I got there?”

“The where be simple. You head south. To Na’ Leans. There’s freedom there.”

“New Orleans. And where do you think Dansen and Charles would look first? New Orleans.”

“You go talk to the soldiers, Joe. Tell them all that you’s told me. They’ll help you!” To underscore her determination, she took pulled him upright and faced him, shaking his arms to make him understand when her words failed.

“I go to New Orleans and talk to the soldiers. Tell them that a man kidnaped me from Nevada.” He wrenched himself free. He gathered her round face in his hands so he could look into her one good eye. “I do that and they’ll arrest me for desertion, Hannah. They are not going to believe a word of it. It’s too farfetched. Too wild to be the truth.”

She clasped her hands over his and held them to her face. For a moment, she mouthed silent words, chewing on them. Finally, she brought their joined hands down and held them to her massive breasts. “Then you tell me. If we all run away together, where we gonna go? What we gonna do when we get there? Don’t answer me. I can see it in your eyes that you don’t know.”

They heard the whistling sound before they felt it. The coil of a whip wrapped around them both and the force sent them both to the ground. As the tip left, the sting of pain caught them, making them jerk in fear. Joe rolled away, the grass suddenly alive around him as again and again the whip struck out, searching for a target. When it found him again, Joe’s instincts took over and he grabbed at it, letting it wrap around his arm. Still with the deadly tip clutched in his hand, he used the pull to bring him to his feet then jerked sharply. Charles looked surprised – and somehow pleased- yet he kept control of the whip. It slid down Joe’s arm, cutting an angry path and brought blood to his hand. That blood, that sudden welling of pain, made it hard to hold the slim end and Charles was able to wrench it free.

The man smiled with a feral gleam in his eyes when he saw the blood rolling down Joe’s arm. He slowly coiled the long black snake of a whip into his hands, his eyes only leaving Joe’s to check on Hannah. She lay almost at his feet with her body hunched tightly into a ball, leaving her back exposed. It was tempting but he would have to back away from the boy. One look now at him told Charles it might be a mistake but he took the chance. One, two, three steps back and he raised his arm and let the lash fall across her. The boy did as he expected him to – a guttural cry of ‘no’ then launched himself at him.

It was no surprise to Charles that Joe brought his hands up as if to circle his neck, to choke him. In all his years of dealing with slaves, he knew that was the first place they went for. He was waiting and delivered a savage blow to the boy’s exposed belly, doubling him over. Next, a chop to the kidneys and the boy was at his feet. Charles wasn’t finished. A kick to the ribs; the boy rolled with the impact. With him now curling to instinctively protect vital organs, Charles had a clear shot and used it. Twice the whip connected with a sickening pop and slash across the back, the shoulders, drawing down across the buttocks. Only the second time brought blood and it half-angered him that the force –

As he’d pulled his arm back for another strike, it was caught and held. Charles recognized the grip at once and let his arm fall useless to his side.

“I told you, you imbecile! You mark him and we won’t get a nickel for him much less what the Judge wants!” Spittle formed at the corners of his mouth and flecked over Charles’ cheek as Dansen seethed.

“It’s always been policy to beat the slaves we catch talking about running. I heard these two planning to run off to New Orleans.”

Dansen put his face right into Charles’. “I don’t care what has been. I only care about now. Do you understand that? Put him in chains. And see to his wounds. At the very least, make sure they aren’t bleeding. Put Hannah to helping Thomas in the house. She’s too old and fat to make a break for it. Him?” and Dansen paused, his eyes darting to where Joe lay face down in the grass.”Take him down to the pit. Show him what he’s expected to do. Remember, no marks on him if you know what’s good for you.”

The pit was aptly named. Inside the barn-like structure, four successive banks rose horse-shoe shaped around the deep depression in the floor. The wooden thumping Joe’d heard earlier in the day had been the others placing low-backed benches – they almost looked like church pews- on those banks. At one of the open ends, stood a podium with three short steps leading to it. On the other side and at the level of the pit floor, a table and chair sat waiting. Over it all hung a primitive chandelier of kerosene lanterns. They were lit now even though it was just mid-afternoon. The huge doors on either end of the structure just didn’t let in enough light and as Charles pushed his reluctant charge into the center of the pit, Joe found no shadows lurking.

“Now listen carefully, boy, because I am only going to go through this once. You hear? When I bring you in here tonight -”

Joe didn’t have to be told what he’d see. His vivid imagination already placed men on the benches. They would be well-dressed men of means. Maybe, like Hannah had described to him before, there would be women in the audience. They would be there to see –

“- you stand still unless I tell you to move -”

–a white boy sold. He lifted his hands and the chains he again wore rattled in the stillness. Would the people there that night be able to hear them? He turned his attention to the open end of the pit where Charles stood directing him. Would they see the welts on his back and figure he was too much trouble to have around?

“The man up there in the box will tell the folks about you -”

–a boy from Nevada who’d been taken against his will. Someone that had no family left to care about him. Only an old colored woman who had been beaten that day the same as he had. He’d been taken away even as she still remained cowering in the sunshine and grass. Where was she? Had they -?

“If and only if I tell you do you look up. You don’t say a word, you hear me?”

Again his thoughts put people there. He didn’t care what Charles told him. He would look up and look into their faces. They would see his defiance as if it were written in letters a foot high. A perverse part of him hoped that he would be presented naked. That way, he could shock them with the treatment he’d received at Charles’ hand both that day and in the weeks before. The bruises had faded to a motley yellowish tinge but he knew under the right light, they’d be visible. He almost wished that Dansen hadn’t stopped Charles earlier. Let him pile on the abuse. As Dansen had said, it would drive down the price… and hasten their own deaths? Without meaning to Joe smiled at the thought.

“Then you’ll go back to your pen and wait for your new master. You be a good, docile little boy and maybe some lady will buy you for herself. Get herself a new manservant.” Charles chuckled as if he’d made a sly joke. “I’ve seen the list of the folks invited here tonight. Oh, they’re a lot, they are. Couple of whore-house madams. A captain who needs men for his ships. Even a few dandies with more money than they know what to do with.” Once more he chuckled. “Me personally, I hope its one of the madams who buys you. Would like to see you made to earn your keep by giving the gents -”

The chains pulled at his arms. They grew heavier with each passing heartbeat. Joe turned to look at Charles and they bumped his thighs and rattled ominously. Still, because he’d worn them before, there was a certain comfort in them being there. Like the iron collar still around his neck. Why hadn’t Charles run the chain through the collar like he had before? It didn’t matter. He was bound. Why hadn’t he put the leg irons on as well? Because he knew Joe wouldn’t run without Hannah? Or because he wanted him to try anyway? Joe tried to square his shoulders against their weight and failed.

“I said come on!” Charles roared and to emphasize his demand, grabbed up the dangling chain and pulled Joe from the pit.

But he couldn’t pull him from the darkness Joe found himself returned to. Thrust into one of the iron cages beneath the risers, Joe knew with clear certainty that he would die that night. Rather than be sold for whatever purpose, he would rather die. How, he had no idea. Perhaps by making a break for freedom, enticing Charles’ anger again? As Charles attached his chains to the beam overhead, Joe wondered if he could choke himself, hang himself, with those loved and hated chains. However he did it, he let his mind settle on one thing: Charles would die first.

And Joe wanted to see him do it.

 

Chapter 28

 

Adam had no choice. He had to either answer the door or see it ripped from its hinges by the banging on it. It didn’t help matters that Peasha was shouting his name in the hallway, demanding entrance. When Adam finally got to the door and opened it, Peasha found himself wrenched into the room.

“You know something? For a spy you are a noisy son-of-a-bitch.”

Peasha took in the room with one sweeping look. On the small table papers were spread, the pen and inkstand giving credence to how Adam had spent the early afternoon. Peasha shook his head and gave him a rueful smile. “Writing a letter home?”

Before Adam could intercept the Southerner, he was picking up the paper and reading what he’d written. That afternoon, Adam had finally broken down and done what he’s sworn he wouldn’t because he felt it was too potentially dangerous. He’d committed to paper everything he knew as facts about his step mother. Now, Peasha was reading it, his lips curling in sarcasm.

“What did you hope to learn by this little exercise?” Peasha slapped the page then wadded it into a tight ball. “That your step mother was all Dansen said she was or that she wasn’t it? Couldn’t make up your mind?”

Adam hissed that it was none of Peasha’s business. “I needed to know.”

“Then why don’t you go ask the source? Seems to me that you’ve gone about this all wrong, Cartwright.” The wad of paper arched across the room into the low-burning fire in the hearth. “You say you want to save your brother but instead of going and facing his captor you spend your time trying to resurrect a dead woman. Give it up, man! You can’t change her past but you can your brother’s future.”

“What do you know about her?” Adam’s eyes narrowed but Peasha paid him no mind. With a wave of his hand he dismissed Adam’s question but he asked it again.

Instead of answering Adam, he grabbed up the other man’s jacket from the back of the chair it had spread across. “Get dressed, Cartwright. We’ve got a job to do this evening and I need you along.”

“What for? I’m not -”

“You are. Now shut up and get out the door!”

At the curb, Marguerite waited in a closed carriage drawn by two handsome bays. Adam thought he recognized the driver as one of the men who had held him to the floor at Pearl’s. He couldn’t be sure for Peasha shoved him roughly into the carriage before he could be certain. He wasn’t even settled when the other man rapped twice on the roof and the carriage moved out smartly.

“Now listen to me and don’t ask questions. You’ve got an important role to play tonight, Cartwright and I don’t want you messing things up.”

Although he was tempted to do otherwise, Adam kept his mouth closed.

“Word has it that the Judge is closing up shop tonight and headed for Texas. I can’t let that happen, do you understand? He knows too much. Has too much influence. I’ve got to stop him. Tonight.”

Adam’d had his attention on Peasha and once more didn’t see where Marguerite had pulled her long barreled Colt from. She handed it to him with a faint smile. He took it with a nod of his head. It was warm, silken and familiar to his touch. He slipped it into his waist band and covered it with his jacket.

“So what do you want of me?” he finally asked when the silence had drawn out too long.

“You and Marguerite are going to his sale tonight.” Peasha popped a small derringer into his own hand from a concealed arm-rig and checked its load. Next he checked a sheaved knife strapped to the outside of his right leg. Marguerite handed him a double-barreled shotgun that he cracked open, jammed two shells into, then took the other shells she was handed him. These went into his jacket pocket. “Hopefully my sources are right and one of the items you’ll be very interested in purchasing.”

Adam barked, “Slow down a second! Are you telling me that my brother is-”

“Is part and parcel of the Judge’s goods. You’re the only one who can identify him and that’s all you have to do. Others will do their part. You just nod when you see him. Don’t shout out, for God’s sake. You do that and Dansen’ll know for sure and all hell will break loose. That happens and people tend to die real fast -in this case, your brother most likely first.”

“When you say others will do their part, what do you mean?”

 

Peasha gave his full attention to the woman.”Does it strike you that our new-found friend here is a bit on the slow side?” He ignored Adam’s growl and went on. “In order for this to all work out, your brother has to be sold, Cartwright. And he will be – but to one of our people. That puts the noose around the Judge’s neck.”

“You’ll see,” Marguerite spoke up, taking Adam’s arm in a friendly way. “It doesn’t matter which side he’s on. Profiting from the sale of a free person is against the law. He has no legal claim to your brother.”

“But-”

Her finger crossed his lips to silence him. “Even if there had been a claim against the woman, it was to Dansen’s father. Daniel had no right to do what he did but he did it in another country – not in our Confederate States so we can’t nail his hide – or the Judge’s for that matter- to the barn door for it.”

“No extradition, you see,” Peasha added. “But our constitution gives certain rights to free men and Dansen – and the Judge- are walking all over them in the case of your brother. For that, we get to seize assets and, trust me, we can use those assets. But first we need him to do just what he wants to do.”

“And all I’m supposed to do is sit quietly by while my brother is sold off like some prize bull? I can’t do it.”

“You have to, Cartwright. Marguerite will help you. There will be others that have your brother’s welfare at heart.”

“What if he sees me?”

She playfully tugged at his full beard. “Even with this? And will he be expecting to see you? I think not. Besides, there’s a certain behavior required of those being sold. I doubt if he’ll look up. It would be disrespectful.”

Adam shook his head and captured her gloved hand in his. “You don’t understand, my dear. Disrespectful is often Joseph’s middle name, it seems. He’s rather headstrong and more than a little on the wild side of things.”

“If Jacques’ reports have even a tiny smidgeon of truth to them, he doesn’t any more.”

 

 

The carriage rolled to a stop in the twilight. Adam peeked out the side window. They were on a road, winding along the top of a levee. On one side, dark tree-shapes twisted in the shadows while on the other, a strip of sinuous dark water flowed sluggishly. To his surprise, Peasha got out. A tap to the side and they went on, leaving him behind.

“Jacques will join us later. You just do what I tell you. Okay, Sugar?” Marguerite’s languid drawl deepened and she wrapped both her hands around Adam’s bicep.

“My name isn’t Sugar,” Adam purred.

“It is tonight.” She paused then lifted her lips and kissed his cheek. “Sugar.”

The carriage turned and in a few more moments, came into a bright blaze of lights at the front of a pillared white mansion. When it finally came to a stop, the door was opened and Marguerite was handed down. Adam followed reluctantly but again she wrapped herself around his arm. Up the steps they went together. At the top, a burly man dressed in black livery asked for their names.

 

“Why, Martin, you know me! Marguerite Morgan! And this handsome young man is Adam Stoddard. He’s from Boston or Philadelphia or some such place. He and my daddy are going to be doing business soon. Lots of business, if you catch my drift.” As she spoke, Marguerite changed from the no-nonsense woman of the Colt 45 to a coquet well versed in what it took to snare a man’s attention. Adam smothered a smile. He doubted if Martin had even looked at his face, so intent was he on Miss Morgan’s charms centered between her navel and throat. “Come on, Sugar. There’s folks I want you to meet.”

The room they entered could only be described as a ballroom yet it was not filled with dancers but tables. Along one wall a buffet had been set up, the tables groaning with foodstuffs. Following Marguerite’s example, Adam loaded his plate with fried chicken and something that vaguely looked like a salad. She picked and chose items for her plate as well as his, keeping his attention on her while her’s flitted about the room behind him.

“When I introduce you, you bow to the gentlemen and kiss the ladies’ hand. You understand?” she whispered as they made their way to table in the corner. “You also sit with your back to the room.”

“I do have some manners, Sweetheart!” Adam muttered into her ear, deciding that two could play the name game. In response, she glanced over her shoulder and smiled wickedly at him then winked.

Introductions were not necessary but she performed them gracefully. Yves St. Larouche clicked his old heels together and smiled with a faintly bored expression. Adam kissed Pearl’s extended hand, his eyes dancing over the older woman. Yes, again tonight she was wearing the large single tear-drop pearl on its golden chain about her throat but her dress was more flamboyant than the gown he’d first seen her in. Clearly she was here in her role as the madam of New Orleans most prestigious whore-house. Pleasure palace, Adam reminded himself silently. He wondered if Carlotta, Dansen’s favorite punching bag, was also in attendance. He decided not to look.

For roughly half an hour, they ate and talked as though they had just met. Every once in a while, Marguerite would touch him, leaning into him provocatively. He saw Dansen twice but the man was on the far side of the room and made no move to come toward them. The other man was different. He was older, heavier and his jollity seemed forced. Pearl had whispered that he was Judge Gordon, their host. When he came to their table, his heavy hand rested on Adam’s shoulder as he told them not to get but to finish their supper. He spoke to St Larouche in guarded tones. To Pearl, his manner was down right lascivious.

“I’m afraid I don’t have any ladies for you tonight, m’dear,” he explained, puffing on his thin cigar. “That is unless you are looking for a cook, maybe.”

“You know, dear Judge, that my clientele’s tastes are rather varied. I have been thinking about adding a little side light to things. Offering a light supper, say?”

“Feeding all the mens’ appetites, huh?” he laughed just a bit too loud for it to be real humor.”Well in that case, I might have something for you after all but you’d better have brought your pocketbook.”

“No credit tonight, Judge?” Pearl asked demurely. “Or maybe we could arrange for an even exchange?”

He shook his head and forced another laugh. “Cash only, you vixen. I know you! You’d raise your prices just for me so you’d recoup faster! No, cash only. And plenty of it. They won’t go cheap.”

Another slap on Adam’s shoulder and the man was thankfully gone.

“How much did Dansen say Marie owed him?” Larouche whispered across the table.

“He never said but for him to make a trip like that…to do what he did, it had to be plenty. Why?”

“Because that’s the amount the bidding is liable to start at for your brother. Pearl?”

The older woman held up four fingers. Marguerite held up two.

Larouche grimaced. “With the four thousand I have, that makes ten thousand dollars, Mister Cartwright. We may not have enough, even with the market depressed as it is.”

“I have ten thousand back in my hotel room.” That raised brows around the table but no one reminded him of the obvious. The Judge had specified cash.

From the hallway, a bell chimed and as one, everyone in the room stood and headed for the side doors. There was a lighted gravel path they all followed, laughing aloud as if they were drunken revelers on a night about town. Adam couldn’t join in. His stomach twisted and knotted anew with every step he took. Could it be that he would get this close to saving his brother only to lose him to a higher bidder? Unconscious of the move he made, his hand reached for the hidden Colt in his waistband. Marguerite felt the move and again wrapped herself around his arm, aborting the motion.

The walk ended in a large open building. Even though the night was turning cool, the big doors on both ends were open. Light spilled out as if welcoming the revelers yet as they took their places on the hard wooden benches, Adam saw that they sat in shadowy darkness. He took it all in slowly, fearfully. At the raised podium stood a man in a dark suit but Adam couldn’t see his face; just his hands and the gavel he held in one. At the table across from him sat another man sharpening the nib of his pen, a sheaf of papers before him.

A hush finally fell over the gathering. Adam looked around him and saw that the faces were not party-faces now but full of deadly earnest. That is what he could see of them where he sat with Marguerite on the next-to-the last row up. In front of them and to one side, St Larouche, with Pearl on his arm, sat talking in low tones to another older man.

The gavel striking the podium sounded more like a gun-shot. The words didn’t; Adam felt them just as deadly.

“Settle down, good people. Tonight’s sale is about to start. Bidding will be silent; there are numbered paddles in the seat backs for you to place your bets. My men around the room will point at you when you bid. All sales tonight are cash only, hard currency preferred. No credit and no markers, please. Also, all sales are final. You are expected to take your purchases with you tonight. Everyone understand?”

“Then we begin. The first up is a young buck. Early twenties. Has all his teeth and has a strong back.”

Into the center of the lighted circle was pushed a young colored boy. He stumbled and fell into the sawdust but quickly stood. He glanced once over his shoulder, a fearful expression on his face then he assumed the stance he’d been taught: feet spread slightly apart, hands down before him, chains dangling freely, his head bowed.

“Oh God,” breathed Marguerite, “that’s Child. That boy’s addled in the brain. Has been since he was born. Oh please, Lord, give him to someone kind and understanding.”

It didn’t escape Adam’s attention that she made the sign of a cross then let her hand fall trembling to the numbered paddle on her lap.

Bidding was slow, starting at a hundred dollars. The auctioneer had to drive hard, upping the bid request in ten dollar increments until finally reaching two hundred and ten dollars. There was no flash of paddles as he struck the podium once, twice then pronounced the boy sold. One of the auctioneer’s assistants stepped into the gathering, took something from a well-dressed man then went down to the table. From what Adam could see, there was a faint glitter of gold that disappeared into a drawer. In the deathly silence that followed, he imagined he could hear the pen scratching all the way up there. With the paper in hand, the assistant returned and handed it over to the man.

“Next, please!”

“That wasn’t so bad,” Adam sighed. He glanced at Marguerite but her face was half-hidden by her fan.

“That was a kindness, Sugar. Everybody here knows the Judge and his people. They know Child and know that the boy ain’t got a mean streak in him. That he can be taught new things. They just come hard to him sometimes.”

“Still, that wasn’t so bad.”

In response, she merely shook her head. As the next bidding round began, she lowered her fan and Adam thought her eyes were too bright. Tears? he wondered. He settled back to watch with a sigh. For all the abolitionist pamphlets and articles that he’d read about the degradation surrounding the sale of slaves, this just didn’t compare. Yes, they were human beings and they deserved a say in their own lives but this process had none of the debasing qualities he thought would be present.

The older woman presented was heavy-set. Her head was wrapped in a white cloth and she struggled with the chains that bound not only her hands but her feet as well. At a command from the auctioneer, she turned slowly about, her thick ankles dragging the chains in the sawdust. A shouted demand that Adam didn’t understand came from the audience. Into the light came a man he recognized: Charles. He forced her hands down from her face, speaking to her. She shook her head and it angered him. Charles glanced over to the auctioneer, clearly seeking direction.

The gavel pointed into the audience. “Really? This is just an old woman. You sure?” When he heard a yes, the gavel pointed back to the center. “You heard the man.”

Charles cocked his head but the old woman again shook her head. He shrugged his shoulders then walked behind her. Grabbing her collar, he ripped the back of her shirtwaist dress down to her waist. A collective gasp went around. Charles used the butt of the whip he carried and turned her to face them, forcing her hands down to her sides, baring her pendulous breasts. From the shaking of her shoulders, it was clear that she was crying.

The bidding began slowly, reluctantly almost. The auctioneer did his best but the amount never rose above fifty dollars.

 

“Why?” Adam whispered. Frustrated awe tainted his understanding of why she’d sold at such a low price.

“They saw the whip mark on her arm. That man who bought Hannah will kill her within a year, to be sure. Now tell me, Sugar, what if that was your grandmother down there? Would you still say that it wasn’t so bad? No, don’t answer me.”

Slave by slave, the horror of it crept into Adam. They tried to make the old man hunched over by his years – they tried to make him stand straight. When it was clear that he couldn’t, the whip lashed out beside him, frightening him. His white trousers grew wet as he soiled himself. The crowd laughed. There was a skinny young girl the auctioneer said was ready for breeding. The man who bought her had her brought to him in the stands and he ripped her sack dress away. He thrust his hand between her legs.

“She’s already been used! I want my money back!” he shouted and shoved her away. She fell naked to the sawdust floor.

On and on it went, sickening Adam. His stomach hurt and his head pounded. He longed to hide his face, to leave the building and what he’d seen and heard. It wouldn’t work, he knew; it would stay with him forever. But it wasn’t over.

“Last one!” cried the auctioneer and the gavel snapped all of their attentions. “Now then, the owner has put a bottom limit on this one of ten thousand dollars. Bid don’t go that high or higher and the piece will be pulled. You all understand? Okay then. He’s a white buck, owned in full for debts unpaid. Approximate age of seventeen you get to keep him until he’s worked off the debt you’re assuming. Bring him out.”

Adam wanted to turn away, to not look. He knew it was Joe just by what had been said. He fought himself until Marguerite nudged him.

“Is it him?”

He looked down into the pool of light. He didn’t have to see the face to know it was his brother but he longed to. Or did he? The hair, dark unruly curls that Pa fought with his brother about keeping cut short, spilled over the collar of the coarse white shirt and tumbled forward to hide his face. The back and shoulders were slumped, not ramrod straight in haughty pride. Adam tried to find his brother there but was on the verge of shaking his head no when he noticed the man’s hands. The other slaves presented had let the chains hang free. This one held the links in his fists. Then slowly, defiantly, the head rose, the back straightened and Adam found himself looking into his brother’s eyes, glassy with rage.

It was the most important word in the world at that moment. “Yes,” he whispered and began to rise from his seat. He would go to Joe, talk to him, take him away from all of this that had happened.

“Sit down!” Marguerite ordered and yanked hard on his arm. He resisted the notion but did as she demanded.

She satisfied herself that he wasn’t going to charge down into the pit but then hissed that they had a problem. “They said the bidding would start at ten thousand. That’s all we have. Quick, what have you got on you?”

He felt his jacket hem. “Another hundred in gold. Couple of hundred in my pockets. Paper.” Panic rose in his gut, making him sweat.

Catching St Larouche’s eye, she shook her head and put three fingers on her cheek. Not enough for the bid had already gone to ten thousand three hundred.

“There must be a way to stop this. He can’t be sold. Look at him, he’s…”

 

Marguerite seized his arm and forced his attention to her words. “There is only one way to stop this. Look at him. You’ve known him all his life. What is his body saying? Look at him!”

Adam wiped his hand across his mouth. Despite the sweat that poured from his very soul, he shivered. Again, she demanded he look at Joe. Unlike the others that had stood before him in that pool of light, Joe looked straight ahead into the shadowy faces. When the command came for him to turn around, he glared defiantly at Charles and his whip. Arrogance exploded from him as he turned on his own. It was that motion that told Adam what to do.

“Strip his shirt off!” Adam screamed. He leaned forward, caution thrown to the wind, and let the light fall on his face.

 

 

Chapter 29

 

One at a time that afternoon those who had made up the Judge’s household had been brought down to the cages. The chains that had hung on the wall in orderly fashion came down to snap on wrists. Old and young alike, they were chained then put into the cages. Rachel, the skinny cook, had been the last, empty of all rebellion now. Thomas had cried unashamedly as he reached through the bars and begged Charles to let him go, reminding him that he’d never been any trouble. Child had retreated into his own world, rocking himself in the dirt, sucking his thumb and crooning to himself. When Hannah had come, Joe had waited until Charles was gone then called to her.

“Hannah! Hannah! Listen to me. This is it. This is our chance!”

Thomas snorted. “Chance for what, white boy? Chance to die maybe.”

“Not you. Not any of you. Listen, I’ve got an idea.” As he lined it out, it had sounded so simple. He would cause a disruption but it would take the rest of them rising up as well. In the ruckus, they could get away.

“What you gonna do that they all ain’t gonna take out after us?” the cook asked, her thin voice matching her body.

Joe took a deep breath. “I’m going to kill Charles.”

Hannah laughed robustly. “Just like that?! The skinny boy gonna kill Master Charles. What you gonna do? Snap your fingers and he fall down dead?” Another round of laughter bit Joe. “I told you to run – to get outta here – but you wouldn’t go. Remember? Now you tell me that we gots a chance. Locked in these here cages. By moonrise, we gonna be sold. But we gots a chance? In chains, we gots a chance? I seen the beating Master Charles give you and you want me to think that you can kill him? You in chains, you gonna kill that man? No, boy, they gonna kill you iffen you try. And us.”

“What have you got to lose by trying?” His hands gripped his own chains until his knuckles turned white. He had to make them understand even if he didn’t himself.

In the end, they half-heartedly agreed to try but only if Joe was able to take Charles out. Hannah was the one who asked how he intended to do it.

“These chains, Hannah. When the time comes, these chains.” He wouldn’t say any more.

 

The setting sun cast long shadows into the cages. Charles had come down with the auctioneer and they’d stood for a while discussing each of them. The auctioneer had balked at first at the idea of selling what was clearly a white man. Eventually, Charles had convinced him of the circumstances only by promising to double his commission on Joe’s sale.

“Then clean him up. They see that blood on him and you won’t get a wooden nickle for him. Put a shirt on him that’s thick enough they can’t see through in the light. No leg irons on him and take off that damn collar. Don’t cut his hair. It’ll cover the ring that’ll be around his neck when you take the collar away.” The man had moved a few steps away. Charles went to unlock the cage door. Joe, still strung up by his chains had lurched toward him. Those same chains brought him up short. “And I want a hundred even if we can’t sell him. Understand? Just looking at him, I can tell you that Dansen needs to drop his low figure. Be lucky to get a hundred for him, much less the ten thousand he wants.”

“You and I do our jobs and he’ll fetch plenty.”

Then with the darkness came the sounds of people. Lots of them from their voices. Men and women both. Above the cages, the wooden beams shook with their footsteps. Then came silence.

Child was the first to be pulled from his cage. It wasn’t long before he was returned but chained to the opposite side away from the cages. There were other men that came into the area who looked him over and spoke among themselves for a few minutes.

One by one, the others followed the same pattern until only Joe was left. Charles oversaw that he was rechained in heavier manacles. A prod to his back and he was sent forward. Over his arm, he saw Hannah crying in her tattered dress, shaking her head and mouthing the word ‘no’.

He listened unattached to the proceedings as the auctioneer had given the instructions for his sale to the gathered people. There were patterns in the gold sawdust at his feet where chains had dragged; a wet spot where Ted had lost control of his bowels; a piece of cloth with a tiny button he recognized as having been on Hannah’s dress. He tried to concentrate on them.

He failed. A lifetime of being what he was lifted his head and squared his shoulders. He would meet whatever was his fate head on, looking it in the eye. That was the only way to judge when the time would be right for him to wrap his chains around Charles’ throat and hang on. He had played the scene over and over in his thoughts that afternoon. They would whip him, strike him maybe even choke him but he would hang on until Charles was dead. The shouts and the confusion that ensued would give the others their chance at freedom and he would make it last as long as he could…as long as he lived.

There were only bodies seated in the benches, their heads and faces hidden in the shadows yet he looked where the faces should’ve been. Over there, something white fluttered and he imagined a woman’s handkerchief. A cough off to his right and the glint of gold on white – a man’s shirt sleeve. To Joe, they were human yet not human.

Then came what he had been waiting for. The order to turn around. This would be his chance and he let Charles come closer, the chains now in his fists, ready to rise up and loop around that thick neck. He had only a few more moments to live, of this he was certain. The chains tightened across his thighs as he pulled his arms apart. Earlier in the day, when he had first contemplated this man’s death his father’s words against taking a life had assaulted him but not now. Even as his legs tensed for the spring that would give him Charles’ neck his only thought was of his father. I’m sorry, Pa. I’m sorry.

            

The shout. The voice he recognized. It brought him up short. It was Adam! Yet it was demanding that he be —

Joe whirled at the sound, sure he had been wrong. The face he saw was different yet as it came from the shadows, he saw the eyes.

The eyes of his brother.

Stunned, all thought of Charles disappeared. He felt the rough hands grabbing him, his shirt being ripped away. There was a gasp from the darkness. None of this registered with Joe as he stared into his brother’s distant eyes. Was there anger in them? Yes. No sadness, no pity, nothing but anger. All too quickly the face and the eyes went back into the shadows. He continued to stare at the space but it was empty.

The auctioneer tried to get the bids rolling again but he was fighting an uphill battle. He would be loath to admit that the obviously damaged flesh before him appalled even him. He’d seen it, he thought, that afternoon in the cages. The boy had been beaten some. Whipped too, and he’d counted the marks – three– and noted that they were fresh. There was more now. It came to him reluctantly. In the cages where no one else but the other slaves had watched, the boy had beaten himself with his own chains. How he managed to still be standing, the auctioneer wasn’t sure. He was sure that he wanted it over with.

One bid only. Ten thousand three hundred. It had come from Number Seventeen. The same person who had bought the old woman.

“Ten thousand three hundred! Going once! Going twice!”

A man’s voice cried out in the darkness. “Ten thousand four hundred!”

“Your number, please sir.” A flash of white in the upper reaches and the assistant at that level called out that it was Number Twenty.

The auctioneer had been looking at the back of the boy’s head when the shouted bid had come. All of the arrogance and defiance in him disappeared at the sound. He continued to watch, fascinated by the odd drama before him.

“Going once! Going twice! Sold for ten thousand four hundred to Number Twenty.”

Charles reached for Joe’s arm, seeing the final defeat written on the boy’s body. He was about to lead a very different being back down to the holding pen. This one was thoroughly cowed, humiliated into complete submission. A tug on the arm brought him around. Charles turned his attention to the walk they would make.

He never saw the chain coming. Joe had doubled his hands together and swung the dual lengths of chain at Charles’ head. It wrapped itself twice around the man’s throat, the first time cutting off his startled cry; the second broke his neck and ended his life. Joe pulled viciously at it, freeing the lengths again as another man came toward him. The links lashed out and caught the gun in his hand, breaking his arm in the process.

Adrenaline made him strong. If a man stood between Joe and the door, he used the chains to cut them down. Three more were on the floor with the first two when he felt the cutting lash on his exposed back. One more wild swing and the chains hit a lantern, shattering it, spraying burning kerosene over the dry sawdust. He didn’t turn back but moved on relentlessly. The screams of terror behind him only spurred him on.

 

Hannah was coming toward him at an angle. She pushed him and together they fell into the cold grass outside, her ponderous weight pinning him beneath her. He tried to push her off but she stayed put. When the building exploded in a fireball fueled by dry timber and kerosene, he was protected by her. When an angry Dansen saw her sprawled in the grass and pulled his pistol, her body sheltered him and the bullets which ended her life never touched his. When he felt her take her last breath, he whispered, “I’m sorry.” Then blessed darkness claimed him.

 

In the melee that had followed Charles’ death, Adam had lost track of his brother. While the other members of the gathering had fled for the doors, Adam had clawed his way down toward the pit. Glass from the exploding lantern had gashed his cheek and fire had licked at his pant legs. Still he’d kept going, shouting his brother’s name as he went. He shoved aside the auctioneer, vehemently consigning the man to hell for his part in this. Like the others, he saw the big woman fall and barely missed trampling her the way the others did.

The night lit up when the building exploded, raining burning splinters and bright embers. By that light he found Marguerite, her dress torn and disheveled but otherwise all right. He paused beside her, resting his hands on his knees as he fought for breath.

“Where did he go?” he finally got out. “Joe! Where’d he go? Did you see him?”

She shook her head, grabbed his arm and tried to pull him away. Behind them, haloed by the fire, she saw Dansen. He had a pistol in his hand that he used twice on the old woman already laying in the grass. The shots went unheard over the roar of the fire but Marguerite saw the body react to the impacts. Dansen came on toward them, the pistol extended in front of him.

“Cartwright!” came his shrill scream as he recognized Adam. With each step he took, he pulled the trigger. Each bullet plowed a furrow in the grass at Adam’s feet.

Frantically, Adam clawed at his waistband but he’d lost the Colt .45. He put the woman behind him. A shot hit him low on the right side, knocking him back into her. Above him loomed Dansen, his eyes glittering with rage as he looked down the barrel of the pistol.

“Damn you to hell,” he snarled and pulled the trigger.

 

Chapter 30

 

Was it the rocking motion of the coach that awoke him or was the stopping of it? Adam wasn’t sure. It just seemed a major miracle to him when he found himself able to open his eyes at all. After all, the last thing he could clearly remember seeing was the bore of a 45-caliber pistol not inches from his face. No. There was a sound he recalled and as he did so, smiled. It had been the distinctive click of the hammer striking an empty chamber of that same pistol. But if that was the way it had happened, why did his head hurt so? Reflexes kicked in and he closed his eyes against a flash of light. There were soft, muted voices and many hands lulling him into complacency. Then a half-remembered voice made him sit up.

“Now that was a mistake, wasn’t it, Mister Cartwright?” The hand holding a bloody cloth to his head belonged to the Ursuline Mother Superior. “The world will look better if you lay back down for a bit.”

Adam couldn’t find his voice to reply that she was right and he didn’t dare nod his head. Instead, a deep groan sufficed as he did as she’d suggested. She laid a cool, damp cloth against his temple that at first blazed fire through his head then, slowly but surely, brought relief to the pressure building in his skull.

“What happened?” he finally was able to ask. Once again the bore of the pistol loomed large in his memory.

“It helps to have friends,” the Mother Superior answered then chuckled. “From the looks of Jacques when he came in with you, I’d say he gave someone a good tussle. Marguerite, hand me that cloth, please.”

Adam kept his eyes closed. He had to or the ceiling would slowly rotate, leaving his stomach somewhere behind. He could feel the women around him, bandaging his head, cleaning his cheek and tut-tutting about his general overall condition.

“Yes, it was Jacques. Out of the blue but he was a bit lax. Dansen had already hit you once with the gun butt and was rearing back to do it again when Jacques hit him, knocking him away from you. Us, I should say since I was pinned under you, Sugar. And you can thank what’s left of your watch. The one shot he did manage to get off at us hit your watch. Made a mess of it and left you rather bruised. Daniel always was a poor shot.”

“My brother?” Adam croaked, willing his eyes to open and focus. They refused to cooperate.

“He is in the other room. The sisters are tending to him.” That was Marguerite’s soft voice answering his question. She went a step further. “They think he’s going to be all right but it may take a while.”

Adam gave a short, weak chuckle. “You don’t know my brother Joseph. Within a week, he’ll be…” He’ll be what? Adam thought, unsure of anything at this point in time. It welled up in his chest that he now had to get his brother home and that plans needed to be made, passage arranged for…

“We’ve got a little time but not much, Mother. How’s your patient?” The voice belonged to Peasha.

“This one is doing fine but I think he could use a little of the brandy you carry in that flask.” There was a gentle chiding in her words that made Adam want to smile upon hearing it.

“How about it, Cartwright? Want some? You have to open your eyes to get it.”

This time when he asked his eyes to open they did, presenting him with an odd tableau. He found himself sprawled across a church pew, above him arched a glorious painting of Moses ascending into Heaven, the shadows giving it an ethereal look. It was blocked by Peasha’s face – a battered and bruised face- wearing a most sardonic grin.

“Where am I?” Adam inquired after accepting the brandy Peasha offered him.

“Our bolt-hole. Better known as the Sisters of Ursuline Chapel,” the man replied, taking a healthy dose of the brandy himself. “With what your brother pulled off and what I had planned, the locale of Belle Fleur got rather unhealthy rather quickly. For us and for you, and therefore, for your brother as well.”

“I’m confused. What do you mean – what you had planned?”

“Simple. I had some of our men set to swarm over the plantation, arrest the Judge, Dansen and Charles and cart them off into the swamp for a little Louisiana justice. The fire and the panic your brother started undid that.”

“You mean that the Judge and Dansen got away?” Adam swung his legs over the edge of the pew, preparing to sit up.

The look that ran across Peasha’s battered face told it all. “But Dansen was hurt, I know he was. I heard ribs crack when I tackled him.”

“But not hurt enough to do more than slow him down?” Adam’s throat thickened, thinking of the monster still at large.

“Don’t worry. We’ll catch the bastard,” came Peasha’s chuckling response, followed by the Mother Superior clearing her throat. “What we need to do now is to get you and your brother out of the area. Seems the little soiree got the attention of our beloved occupying forces and they are looking for anyone who may have attended it.”

Now able to sit up, Adam asked for another swallow of brandy then asked if he could see his brother. The Mother Superior nodded, taking the flask from his hand. Marguerite moved in, offering to help him to stand. He used the back of the pew to lever himself up but took her offered arm, a faint smile dancing on his lips.

The smile died when he was shown into the small room off to the side of the nave. There, on a narrow cot, was Joe. The two nuns attending him barely glanced his way as Adam made his way into the room then, hands clasped before them, backed away.

“Oh, Little Brother. This is a mess, isn’t it?” He sat on a small stool beside the cot and took up the wet cloth one nun had been using to wipe blood from his brother’s arm. For a few heartbeats, he looked at the stained cloth. It was a watery red.

“Is he even breathin’?” Marguerite asked gently. A hand placed on Joe’s chest told Adam that he was but it was shallow and labored.

“Broken ribs. Extreme bruising to the back and chest. A concussion. His right arm is broken. And there are marks from -” the smallest of the attending nuns explained until Adam held up his hand and asked to left with alone with him.

The silence stretched for several long moments. Gently, Adam called his brother’s name but there was no response. No fluttering eyelids. Nothing. He touched his shoulder and called again. Nothing. Adam’s mind was reeling with what he should be doing – getting a doctor; getting him someplace safe. Getting them both back to Nevada where they belonged – not here in this city, this war. Just making this whole nightmare end.

“Adam, you need to come away for a bit. Let the sisters take of him,” came Pearl’s soft entreaty. He turned to look at her and for just that moment, saw both the Mother Superior and the madame. Two of the three, he muttered. Marie was the other one. Look at their faces. They’re grieving – because they know that their damn secret caused all of this. Before I leave here, Joe, I’ll know what it is they’re hiding.

            

His knees buckled, throwing him to the steps of the altar. The women tried to help him but he pushed their hands away. Try as he might to regain his equilibrium, he couldn’t, so he let his head fall into his hands. With one hand pressed to his bandaged temple and the other to the growing blossom of pain in his side, Adam Cartwright looked just like he was – a desperate man pushed to the limit. He raised his eyes to the Mother Superior and saw her rosary beads wrapped around her hand, the altar’s candlelight catching the tarnished gold of the crucifix. “I have to know,” was his hoarse whisper.

She knelt beside him. “Your brother will be all right. Truly. It will take some time but none of his injuries-”

Adam slapped her hand away and tried to shout but his voice failed him.

“I think he means something else, Marie Rebelle,” Pearl said as she settled herself in the front pew. “There is a price to be paid for it, you understand.”

“Paid for? You’re no better that Dansen with your damn blackmail then!”

The two women silently spoke to each other. And again it was Pearl who spoke. “No, no golden coins will pay for this. A sunny day is paid for with a rainy one. A bright moon is paid for by the sun’s light. A trade, even up, sometimes but other times…. No, no blackmail. Just….” She turned her head, refusing to let him see the tears running down her cheeks.

“You mean to tell me that my brother hasn’t paid enough for your damn secrets? Look at him!” With an accusing finger pointed at the closed doorway, Adam filled with the church with his rage.

“You must understand, Adam. There is pain – great pain- in what we know. That is the price you will have to pay – you will know our pain and will have to deal with it. Can you?”

“Right now, the only pain I care about is my brother’s. And your damn secrets can’t begin to compare with he and my father have gone through.”

“Which one of us do you want to hear it from?” Pearl asked.

“It doesn’t matter. Just one of you tell me the truth about all of this. Tell me why this is happening. Tell me…about…explain….” His head pounding fiercely, Adam couldn’t finish his demand. Instead he let his head fall into his hands.

The two women looked at each another. Pearl couldn’t hold it, though, and found herself looking above the nun’s shoulder at the votive candles, a handkerchief pressed to her trembling lips. When the Mother Superior asked quietly if she should tell him, the madame nodded once.

“What do you know of Jean Lafitte?” Her soft and gentle hands pulled Adam’s from his face and lifted it so that she could look into his eyes as she spoke. When she saw only more confusion there, she went on, letting him go. As she spoke, she fingered her rosary, bead by bead, as if she were praying. The movement held his attention the same way her words did.

“Jean Lafitte was a pirate, a scoundrel and a hero to New Orleans. It all depended on who you spoke to as to what role he played. After all, he had to have some means of turning his plunder into usable goods so there were some merchants here who were willing to take his stolen items in trade for flour, rum, new sails, and the like. But in the summer of 1827, he played a very different and a very important role to three very young girls. It was a few days after a terrible storm when he and his men set out from their homeport in search of plunder. What they found was a small boat, a lifeboat really.

 

The one adult left alive told of a ship sinking during the storm. Before he could give them any more information, he died, leaving only the three little girls. Lafitte, brigand that he was, could have followed the pirate custom allowing no females on their ship and left them to die but Lafitte, the champion, refused to do so. Instead, he took them on board and sailed to New Orleans. During the trip, he became enamored and enchanted by the little ones. Why, we have no idea, but he just did. And he named them Marie, for his own mother supposedly. With three Maries, it must have been confusing so he called one Marie Le Rebelle – Marie, the rebellious; another was Marie Le Perle -Marie, the pearl, and the last, Marie Le Juste – Marie, the righteous. When he arrived in New Orleans, his plans had been to settle the girls with one of his friendly merchants.”

In spite of himself, Adam chuckled.”But little girls are not the same as Spanish gold.”

“Exactly. So, the story goes, he brought them here, to the Ursulines’. The Mother Superior was aghast. Here was the famous pirate Jean Lafitte with three very young children standing at her doorstep! And when I say very young, I mean just that. The oldest of them couldn’t have been more than four or five; the youngest, maybe three. None knew their names other than that given to them by Lafitte. This made them much too young for the school – the school only took the girls if they were eight or older, you understand – and at first the Mother tried to convince him to take them to the orphanage. But Lafitte was shrewd, and compassionate apparently. He offered to give the Ursulines a yearly stipend for the girls’ care and education. The Mother Superior was also a sharp dealer and she accepted.”

“Do you mean that you two and my step-mother-?” Adam’s query floundered to a stop as the nun continued.

“We grew up here in the convent. To cast aside any possible dispersions, we were given last names that the nuns chose from headstones of entire families who had died of the fever the spring before. Because of our closeness in age, we thought of ourselves as sisters but as we grew older, the physical similarities told us that we were not. That never stopped us from thinking that way. And that, Adam, has caused all of this to happen.”

At that the Mother Superior stopped, then took a deep breath that shook in her throat. Yet steadily, her fingers moved over the rosary beads.

Pearl took up where she had left off. “We were three happy girls. We played in the convent gardens. Went to classes with the other girls much older than us. Because of the age restriction, we were passed off as being older than what we actually were, you see. Other girls came and went but we stayed on until…. It was 1837. Marie, out riding, caught the eye of a man – a man from a wealthy family.”

“D’Marginy,” Adam filled in the blank. The two others nodded, yet Pearl followed hers with a single shake of her head, aimed solely at the nun. The nun shifted uncomfortably on the steps and her fingers paused on her rosary.

The madame continued. “Le Juste – that was her nickname among the three of us- was not as righteous as her name implied. She flirted with him, led him on, teased him until he could not contain himself. And having grown up sheltered here with the good sisters, she didn’t understand what she was doing. In confession, she told the priest what had happened and he immediately went to the family, demanding they marry. Jean’s family was very strong and very powerful but the Church was more than even they could deny. So it was that Le Juste was married and left us here. She couldn’t have actually been any older than fourteen or fifteen but because we had been passed off as older in age, everyone believed she was…. You know what happened then. The man Jean swore he found in her bed, his leaving, feeling he’d been cuckolded and cheated by not just his wife but his family and the Church as well. She bore him a son while he was gone, the result of that single night of juvenile foolishness. His family, to keep their good name intact, had all but imprisoned her during her pregnancy. When the fevers came, it hit them hard.” Pearl’s eyes were glittering with tears and she seemed to be struggling with her words

Adam held up his hand, asking for a moment to digest what he’d learned. Finally he shook his head. He’d known about Marie’s marriage to Jean D’Marginy, about the lost child, and he said so. “But you mean to tell me that she was only, say, sixteen, at the time?” He quickly did the math and found himself aghast that when she’d been presented to him as his step-mother, she wasn’t that much older than he’d been, she at maybe eighteen or nineteen years old and himself at fourteen. “But she always seemed so much older.”

The Mother Superior spoke up. “You act as old as you think you are, Adam. And remember, for many years, we had been lied to and lied about so that the annual stipend would continue to come from Lafitte. But this was no shame on us and did not cause the present difficulty.”

Pearl laughed lightly, drawing the others’ attention. “No, it caused it, all right. Just in a little different manner. You see, Le Juste was not the only one flirting with the opposite sex. She was the lucky one, though. By this time in our little melodrama, we were old enough to be presented to Society. Lafitte asked – probably promising grand allowances- for some of his friends here in New Orleans to assume guardianship of his remaining girls – namely Le Rebelle here and myself. In steps Yves St. Larouche, the old scoundrel. He didn’t bargain on getting the three of us but he did. The D’Marginys put Le Juste on the street once she was well enough. So it was that we were to live under his guidance until other arrangements – namely marriages- could be made. Mind you, we never laid eyes on Lafitte but we knew where our bread was buttered! Anyway, we were happy. We were together, we were beautiful and we were young. We had New Orleans at our beck and call. It wasn’t long before problems arose.”

The air about them seemed to freeze; the silence only broken by the hiss of the candle flames behind him. “What happened?” Adam asked, catching the strained faces of the women.

“I got pregnant and the father just laughed at me. Said how was he to be sure that the child was his?” the Mother Superior replied. “Ah yes, you heard Pearl earlier when she called me Le Rebelle. I was the rebellious one. I threw his words back in his face and told him I would make him pay for what he’d done. I was a fool.”

“Yves was away in France at the time or we could have used his wisdom and simply done what other women in that state have done: gone away, bore the child and invent a past to suit. We did none of these things. Also, by now, the allowances from Lafitte had ceased coming. He was most likely dead but we had no way of knowing this. We still lived in grand style but knowing the funds were dwindling steadily. I gave birth to twins. A boy and a girl. We all loved them dearly but things were going financially from bad to worse. Then Le Juste went to work with Edward – Yves’ nephew from some unholy union, surely. But it was not enough so she made a pact with the devil himself.”

“She sold herself.” Adam let those three words hang in the night shadows. The others couldn’t meet his gaze, telling him that he was right.

“I was furious when I returned home from France.” Larouche inched into the candlelight. “Like others, I had misplaced my sanity about these three young women – no! girls! They were really children but all thought them…bah, it doesn’t matter now.” Wearily, he sank into the second row of pews, his tattered clothing and white hair in disarray. Pearl slid down the bench until she was able to pat his hand in consolation. “I went to Dansen – not Daniel, his father William. I offered to buy back her contract but he refused. I challenged him to a duel but he only laughed at me. Called me an old fool and had his servants escort me from the house.”

“But then divine intervention stepped in. Your father, Adam.” Pearl’s smile was genuine and full. “From the moment they first saw each other, it was plain that they were in love. She spoke with us about him, about how happy she thought she could be with him if not for Dansen. We convinced her, Le Rebelle and I, to lie about her situation. No, not with words but by just not telling him. We feared that if he knew, he would challenge Dansen as he had before and we knew Dansen’s prowess.”

“My father would have done anything for her. He loved her. Until the day she died, he loved her.” Even as he said the words, they sounded hollow somehow.

“And she loved him. Remember that, Adam. We three, Yves, Pearl and I, were determined that after all the bad that had happened to her, the sacrifice that she was about to make by giving herself to Dansen because she loved us…. No, she deserved happiness but she said she could not lie to your father.”

“So what went wrong? I mean she married him and left here for Nevada. She never said a word about any unpaid debt, nothing. Something else happened, didn’t it?”

“Yes, it did, Sugar.” From the shadows, Marguerite eased forward to settle beside the Mother Superior. For the first time, Adam noticed the striking similarities that marked them as mother and daughter. “Marie Le Rebelle gave up her children and went into the convent for good. She gave them up, knowing that the price her sister Marie Le Juste was going to pay would be too high. She couldn’t know that she was giving them to her mortal enemy. Yes, Sugar, Jacques and I are her’s, those children she gave up. We were raised at Le Belle Fleur until we were sixteen. That’s when William Dansen, in a fit of civility, sent us packing. I don’t know why; he just did and we spent no little time getting out of there.”

Adam settled back, trying to comprehend all that he’d learned. Through his tired brain the names Lafitte, Dansen, the three Maries all swirled. He tried to reach out and grab one, to make it hold still while he analyzed it. It always slipped away until one solid fact remained: Jacques and Marguerite had ultimately paid the price. He sought the young woman’s eyes and found them beside him, looking up at him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Don’t be. I grew up a pampered plaything. If Jacques were here, he’d tell you the same thing. We lived a good life while we were there. Probably better than we’d had otherwise – no offense to you, Mother and to you, Aunt Pearl. Until the day William turned us out, we had no idea you all even existed and even then he didn’t tell us the whole story. So, Adam, don’t be sorry. It was none of your doings.”

“Well, Jacques is here and telling you that we have a huge problem.” From the back of the church, his words were low and almost unintelligible. He hurried forward. “The Yanks are coming for us, Marguerite. You too, Yves and Pearl. Seems they caught wind of us being at the sale tonight and having bought ourselves a young man. They aren’t pleased about it.”

Within moments, everyone was on their feet and trying to talk at the same time. Larouche stamped his foot and demanded silence. “Rebelle,” he addressed the Mother Superior, “get your patients ready for travel. No! No telling me that they can stay here, can be given sanctuary. Just get them ready. Jacques, while you were out, were you down by the docks? Good! Was the Crescent Moon still there?”

“Yes, but-”

“No buts. Get a carriage. Pearl, my dearest, help Marguerite fetch some food. Anything that will travel. Also, get a bag together of bandages and the like. Hurry, child, hurry. There is no time!” To emphasize his point, he clapped his hands together smartly. They scurried away obediently, leaving only Adam there to see his faint smile.

“Just like a captain on his ship, Larouche. Or should I call you Monsieur Lafitte? Pirate, scalawag, champion of three lovely young girls. Their story. It all works out but for you. It’s true, isn’t it? An old man, with no children of his own. No wife to speak of. He suddenly appears as an old friend of their patron. He has some money, some wealth, and promises to care for them until they find the right man.”

Larouche stroked his elegant mustache, bringing the white tips down to his chin. “Each, in their own way, found the right man. Le Rebelle found him in God; Le Juste in your father; Le Perle -”

“In you. Do they know?”

The old man slowly shook his head. He studied the floor for a long moment then raised his watery eyes to plead with Adam. “Is it too much to ask that you keep this little secret for a while longer? I am, after all, an old man and will soon end his mortal days upon this earth. I want to see that my girls are happy.”

“No, I’ll keep your secret, Monsieur, just like you have kept the Maries’ all these years. And, just so you know, my step-mother was happy. I believe that with all my heart.” He took a ragged breath before he plunged on. “I gather that there is no time for me to return to my hotel room.” The shake of the shaggy white head agreed. “There is a fair amount of gold coins in the bottom of my bags. Split them between yourself and the Church.”

To his surprise, the old man chuckled. “I have no need of your coins, Monsieur Cartwright. After all, by your own admission, I own the best whore house in all of New Orleans. Well, I am part owner. I will give it all to the Church.”

“Whatever. Now you want to tell me what you have in mind?”

A smile creased the old man’s wrinkled face. “A ruse we once played on the governor of Jamaica.”

Chapter 31

 

The Crescent Moon was a small sidewheeler. Even by the thin moonlight, Adam could tell she was loaded heavily, sitting low in the water. But above her stacks, puffs of white smoke were evident, clearly stating that she would soon be underway while none of the rest of the boats at the dock showed any sign of life.

Jacques and Larouche had gone onboard as soon as the two carriages had reached the cluttered dock, leaving Adam behind with his brother, Marguerite and Pearl. Twice during the short ride from the chapel they had been stopped by patrols. Each time they portrayed drunken revelers and when threatened with the name of a commanding officer – supplied graciously by Pearl- the patrools backed off. They apparently never noticed that one of the revelers, Joe, never spoke or moved. But, as Adam considered it, if he had been smothered by Pearl’s endowments in the same manner, he might be just as catatonic with passion. Marguerite played her part with him remarkably well, remaining close to him even after the carriage stopped.

“You know, when this whole shenanigan of a war is over you could come back and we could have a real good time together, Sugar,” she purred, once again using the pet-name she’d christened him with earlier that evening. “I’m sure my brother won’t mind.”

“I might consider that but it is possible that before the war is over, you might just very well be shot as a spy. By either side.”

She laughed low and husky. “I doubt that. Jacques and I are too good at it. Besides, we’ve never taken sides. Except of course to support the South. No, we never wanted to see the states secede. Thought the best way was to thrash it out in Congress but we weren’t part of it. We are a part of the South, though, and we want to see this war end.”

“We all do but if you support the South-”

“You’re looking at it all wrong, Adam,” Pearl interrupted. “There are many of us down here who love our home states just like you do your Nevada. We also love the United States of America. We don’t believe that the Confederacy has a snowball’s chance in hell even if they win this bloody war. We don’t believe in slavery but we do believe that every state should have its own rights adhered to by the nation. So it is that folks like Jacques and Marguerite work clandestinely. They free slaves. They bring news from the outside world that hasn’t been sifted through the politics of newspapers. They help Yankee soldiers they find behind the Confederate lines get back to where they belong. And sometimes, they help the innocent – like your brother – get away from it all.”

“And men like Dansen? What do they do about him?”

“They’ll continue to hunt him down. That has nothing to do with the War, I’m afraid. It has everything to do with the Judge and a woman named Eleanor.”

“Wasn’t she his niece or sister or some relation?” Adam fumbled back through the conversation he’d had with the woman named Carlotta not long ago.

Pearl snorted. “She was nothing of the sort. Like your step-mother, she belonged to a man. From the time she was a little bitty baby, she belonged to him. He told everyone that she was some relation to him but it wasn’t true. He used her and used her and used her, trying to get himself an heir but nothing ever came of it. Then one day she turns up with child. He can’t decide if it’s his or not because he’d caught her down in the slave quarters so he marries her off to that backwoods idiot Dansen. William Dansen fit right in with the judge. Sorry-assed drunkard who made himself important by marrying into the richest family in Louisiana at the time. Made a big deal too about caring for the boy-child after Eleanor ups and kills herself. Best thing the man ever did was get lost in the bayous. Never did find his body, did they, Marguerite?”

“No. And they never will either, if I can help it.”

A faint shiver of fear shot down Adam’s spine, hearing her soft southern drawl harden like that. He remembered her disappearing Colt 45 act and how easily she’d aimed it at him that night in the alleyway. Whatever else he would take away as a memory of that night waiting by the dock, one was certain: her words would stay with him. There was a distinct ring of truth and perhaps deserved justice tainting them.

“Sorry but there were no cabins available. At any price. I know; I tried.” Jacques settled his back against the bulwark as the little ship made its way out into the open river. Between them and sheltered from the chill of the night and the occasional spray of stinking water, Joe remained unconscious. Only twice had he come around and each time seemed disoriented. Adam hoped that it was the result of the concussion and not something far more threatening.

“You want to tell me where we’re going?” Adam asked, passing the silver brandy flask back to the southerner.

“Simple. You and your brother are headed home. I’m just headed out of town.”

That got a dark eyebrow cocked in his direction so Peasha continued. “Once we clear the Union blockade, this little boat heads to Galveston. I get off there but you and your brother will continue down to Panama, hop, skip and jumping the little ports along the way. There at Limon, you catch the train across -”

“I know all about that. Remember how I got here?” There was heat in Adam’s words that made Jacques flinch. “What about Dansen? You said he got away. What about him?”

“Don’t concern yourself about him, my friend. He’s mine. You get your brother back home and I’ll take care of Dansen.”

Adam growled, his temper rising with each turn of the paddlewheel behind them and each verbal zig-zag of the other man. “You don’t understand. I want to make sure that he doesn’t come back into our lives. I need to know that this business with him is over and done with. I want to know that he can’t hurt my family ever again.”

“Like I said,” Jacques said slowly, not bothering to even look in Adam’s direction, “Dansen is my concern. I will do you the courtesy of telegraphing you the time and place if you’d like.”

“Yes. I would very much like that little piece of courtesy from you!”

“Goodness but we are snappish this evening, aren’t we?” The southerner chortled. “We’d best get some sleep while we can.” With that, he pulled his dirty jacket collar up around his ears, crossed his arms and settled down to sleep.

It always takes two to argue and Adam was clearly left on his own. The steady beat of the paddle-wheel behind him and the surge of the vessel down the river with the outgoing tide lulled him into a dreamless sleep.

 

In the thin light of morning, Joe awoke. At his back was the steady swish and flush of water over the paddle-wheel that corresponded to the thump of the piston below him. He would have rolled onto his side but one deep breath told him that it wouldn’t be a wise move. He tried to lift his hand to his forehead but found it trapped beneath a soiled gray jacket. For a moment, he tried to remember where he was and how he might have gotten there but it was a confusing kaleidoscope of images. His memories of the night before came in snatches of sight, sound and color. He recalled Hannah’s death yet couldn’t figure out how it came to happen. Then one settled over him and he shook as though caught in the grips of a fever. It was the voice of his brother shouting out from the other spectators at the sale, bidding on him as if he were a prize stallion, demanding he be stripped. A faint wisp of the memory of being pleased came to him for that had been his sole purpose that evening: show everyone there how he’d been beaten and how difficult he would be to control should they purchase him. True, he’d done it to himself, hearing the others – Hannah, Rachel, Thomas and Child – begging him to stop for fear that he would somehow kill himself. Instead, he’d killed Charles as he’d planned. But now, where was he? More importantly, where was Adam?

Or had he simply imagined him there?

“Easy there, Joe. Let me…” came warm words from above him. If he could have mustered the energy, he would have cried. Adam was near by. He hadn’t imagined him after all.

 

The movement beside Adam had dragged him from his uneasy sleep. Wedged between a large wooden packing grate and a bale of cotton there had barely been room for the three of them to sleep sitting with their backs against the bulwark. But now, this morning, Joe had moved and been able to lie down and was covered by the suit coat Jacques had been wearing. Adam looked around but couldn’t see the man. He sensed his brother’s coming around and decided that had precedence. A few gentle words, the coat pulled higher up on his chest was all Adam could manage but the reward – a sliver of green between bruised eyelids- was worth it. When he asked him if he wanted a drink, the split lips jerked in a quick smile. Adam wished that it could have been something else but the last of the brandy from Peasha’s flask would have to do.

He knew it was coming. Joe asked for their father and it was Adam’s job to tell him that he wasn’t here. The only response was a weak grunt. Adam could only agree with the sentiment. He wished their father was there too. Only then could Adam lay down the burden that had been thrust upon him. No, he corrected himself, I took it on myself. Now I’ve got to finish the job I started.

“You hungry?” he asked his brother as he reached into the satchel one of the nuns had given him as they’d left the chapel. It wasn’t much, she’d claimed, but it would keep them from starving for a while. There was a large slice of beef, some bread and a few peaches. He listed the possibilities aloud.

“Help me up and I’ll take a peach.” Adam did more than help Joe sit up but he wouldn’t mention it. He was just thankful that Joe wanted to eat. As he helped him lean back against the wall, a packet fell from the jacket. It was wrapped in heavy paper and tied with a length of string. There was writing on it: I found this in the Judge’s safe but it belongs to you. Read it when you’re ready for the truth. It was signed JP. Adam hefted it in his hand then decided against opening it then. Instead, he tucked it into his pocket.

They shared the one peach, passing it back and forth between them without discussion. When it was finished, so was Joe. He eased back, letting the bale of cotton beside him take his weight, and closed his eyes. Adam made sure he was propped up enough, using the food satchel and the small bag of bandages. At the thought of the bandages, he checked those on his brother’s arms. The splint still held the right arm firmly. Both wrists and his neck were also bandaged with very little weeping of fluids showing through. What astounded and perplexed Adam were his ankles – or more appropriately, his feet. At the Ursuline Chapel, Joe had been barefoot. This Adam knew for a fact. Now, however, there were dandified half-boots on them.

It hit Adam like a rock. The jacket covering his brother. The boots. The way Joe had been positioned so that he could stretch out. And no Jacques. Sometime in the night while he’d been sleeping, the southerner had made sure his brother was comfortable then most likely gone over the side of the ship. He stood up quickly. Yes, there was the shoreline not far off their starboard side. Imagining a hand waving to him from the shore, Adam raised his own in salute.

“Go get that bastard,” he whispered.

At the first port they docked at, they changed ships. One of Adam’s hidden twenty dollar gold pieces bought them passage on a sleek clipper ship to Limon, Panama. The second one bought them clothing and food. When he returned to the ship, he thought his brother would be delighted. He wasn’t. Although he thanked Adam, calling them gifts, he merely put them aside.

“I thought maybe I’d see about getting the captain to lend us his bath tub. Big old tin thing he has in his stateroom would hold Hoss!”

Joe shrugged.

“And seeings how our supply of fruit has been depleted, I got these. Apples. Crisp tart apples.”

Again the shrug.

Adam let it go. His brother just needed some time to heal, both his body and his mind, he decided. The body had been healing. Adam had seen to that, changing the bandages, cleaning the wounds. He could only hope that time would bring his brother’s spirit back. That night, as the sails filled with a freshening breeze and the clipper moved from the dock on a high tide, he stood at the railing alone with his thoughts.

What would it have been like, he wondered. Kidnaped, beaten repeatedly if the marks on his body are any indication. Taken to what amounts to a foreign land in chains. Treated with no dignity. Sold with even less. Kills a man with what amounts to his bare hands. Yet he survives it all. How? Why? I’m not sure I could have done it – survived to fight back. And he’s just a kid. No, I take that back. When I put my hand on his chest that other night, it wasn’t the chest of a kid. It was a man’s. A kid couldn’t have made the choices he did. He threw a short bark of a laugh into the night wind. Damn it, he’s grown up on me. Now I’ve got to…what? Get him back to the youngster he was for Pa to coddle? I can’t give him back the innocence Dansen ripped away. No one can. Yet that’s what we all expect from him: that child-like innocence, that joyful laughter, that impish grin of his. Those things are all gone. I’ve got time to help him but all the time in the world isn’t going to bring back Pa’s Little Joe. Maybe…no. It’s high time we let him grow up, Pa. Time for him to just be Joe – however he is now.

            

He tried to tell himself that it was the sting of the salt air that brought tears to his eyes.

 

The tub of hot soapy water sloshed with the rhythm of the ship. Adam had been right. It would have been big enough for Hoss. That let him stretch out to his full length, just his chin above the bubbles. At first he’d regretted the motion as the water stung his abraded neck and back. When Adam had left their small quarters, he’d taken the splint off his arm and allowed his arm to float beside him. He’d yet to put washcloth to soap; he just didn’t care about the reasoning behind the bath. The embracing warmth of the water was enough.

“Sink any further and I’ll have to dive in after you,” Adam teased, pulling Joe up with his words. As his brother sat up in the tub, it was as if a mask had dropped over his face. Gone was the contented look of only a moment before. Replacing it were the down-cast eyes and hunched shoulders Adam associated more with a whipped dog. He tried to look beyond this sudden subservience and offered casually to wash his brother’s back. Joe only looked away, his face hidden. With his own shrug, Adam gathered soap and cloth, told him to lean forward, and proceeded to gently wash the bruised and torn flesh.

“Now see? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he chided as he dropped the soap over Joe’s shoulder. A shoulder that was trembling. “Hey! What’s the matter, Joe? Did I hurt you?”

The answer was a strained ‘no’ yet Joe still kept from facing his brother. He was okay, he insisted.

“I don’t believe that for an instant, Brother. Come on. Tell me what’s the matter.”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

Adam stood up from where he had hunched down beside the tub, his hands turned to fists. He fought down the urge to demand Joe to answer him truthfully, to reach out and grab his chin and make him look him in the eye. He turned his rage toward the distant Dansen and silently prayed that Peasha had found him by now. Unable to bear watching those broadening, trembling shoulders, he looked away, out the small porthole and into the bright sunlight dancing on the passing waves.

How long he stood there, he wasn’t sure. Finally he heard motion behind him.

“Really, Adam, there’s nothing wrong. It’s just that one of the things Charles did….” The humiliating memories of Charles washing him rose up and over him again, bringing with it the feeling of hopelessness and abasement.

Even though Joe had not spoken of the memory, Adam understood what must have happened. His mind dashed about looking for the words to tell his brother that it was all right. Deep in his soul, he knew he would be lying. It wasn’t all right. So he said the only other thing that came to him. “I’m not Charles, Joe. I’m your brother. I’ve helped you”- since you were a little boy – “before”- this monster took that boy away. “And you’ve helped me” –Oh God, help me now – “because we’re brothers.”He turnedback to him. “But first you’ve got to talk to me so I can know how to help you. Deal?”

Joe gave him a shadow of a nod, his eyes riveted on the now cooling water.

“Good. Then wash behind your ears before you get out of the tub. And be quick about it. I want a bath, too.”

            

The story came in fits and starts over the days it took to reach the Pacific Ocean. Adam tried to not push his brother, understanding how hard some of it was to face. The growing degradation his brother had been put through made him want to go back and hunt for Dansen. He couldn’t really and he knew it, but it didn’t stop the wanting. When Joe spoke of Hannah, it was with stunning compassion. How she wanted him to run away, how she’d thrown herself over him and saved his life, how being a slave all of her life had ultimately cost her that life. It put a face to slavery and shamed Adam that he’d set still when she was bare-breasted and sold like so much meat. What was it Marguerite had asked? What if she’d been his grandmother? She’d been right. It was horrible.

Even as the pieces became a whole, Adam felt there was something Joe was holding back. A gentle probe was useless. Joe would clam up at the slightest provocation some of the time. Other times, it would open a flood gate of emotions so strong he couldn’t speak clearly. As they neared the California port of San Diego, Adam felt the sands of time running swiftly through the hourglass.

“Couple more days and we’ll be in San Francisco, Joe.”

It elicited only a noncommital grunt.

“When we dock in San Diego, we have to change ships. Once I know which one, I’ll wire Pa.”

Again, no reaction when Adam thought he should be jumping for joy at the idea of being so close to home. He said nothing more about it, hoping Joe would open up and say something, anything. When he did, it rocked Adam’s perception concerning what was going on his brother’s head.

“San Diego is part of California, isn’t it?” Joe asked casually as they entered Coronado Bay.

“Last time I heard, it was. Why?”

“That means they speak American.”

“So?” Adam edged closer to where Joe stood on the deck, a niggle of fear racing up his spine.

“If I can’t understand them, I can’t get a job. No job, no roof over my head, no dinner.”

“A job? Here? In San Diego?” Adam snorted once. “Why here when you have a job, and a home at the Ponderosa already?”

“No.”

That raised Adam’s brows and he cocked his head to look at his brother as they leaned against the railing, watching the ship maneuver toward the dock. “You want to explain that no?”

“It’s just that I know some things that you don’t.”

Don’t bet on that! Adam thought but couldn’t say. Instead, “Oh? Like what?” He turned his back to the rail and leaned against it, letting the off-shore breeze buffet him lightly. When Joe hadn’t answered him, he nudged his shoulder. “What could you possibly know that I don’t?” He fought to keep his tone bantering and teasing.

”

You said you left the Ranch before Dansen sent any ransom request,” mumbled Joe, keeping his gaze straight ahead and not acknowledging Adam.

“So?” Uncomfortable suddenly, Adam switched back and put his forearms on the deck railing, his body close to Joe’s.

“Then you don’t know about what Dansen was saying about…” Joe paused and bit his lower lip.

“I know that he’d been around town, spreading filthy lies about your mother.” Which turned out to not be l

ies after all. “But rest assured, my good young man, no one took him seriously.”

“If that’s the case, why didn’t Pa…? We’d been in San Francisco a couple of days. I overheard them – the other men–”

“Say their names, Joe. We talked about this. You keep avoiding calling them by name and they will continue to have control over you. So Dansen and Charles, say it!”

Reluctantly Joe did as he asked, praying that Adam didn’t hear the hesitation, the subconscious urge to call them ‘master’. “Charles…and…Dansen, they’d sent a telegram to Pa.” Dansen’s words echoed once more in his mind, again crushing him. “No! We’ve given Cartwright enough time to answer. You hear me, boy? Your father has decided to let you go with us. No wanting you back. He knows about your mother now and he wants nothing to do with you. So you’re mine to do with as I see fit. You hear me, boy? Mine!” After more than a minute of hearing that awful voice and letting the words crush him again, Joe went on. “Pa didn’t answer it, Adam. They must have convinced him and he—”

Adam’s palm striking the railing sounded like a pistol shot. He jerked Joe away from the rail, grabbing his shirt front in his fist and with a long finger shaking in his face told him, “That’s absolutely ludicrous. Absurd. If you think our father doesn’t want you back….” Adam couldn’t finish the sentence.

“If that’s the truth, why didn’t he answer the telegram? He had three days, Adam. Three days.”

Adam let go of his fistful of shirt but kept his eyes bored into his brother’s face.”Did it ever occur to you that Dansen was lying? That he’d gotten a response – that Pa would pay the ransom- and just wanted to do what he did?”

“No, he wanted to be rid of me. Said I was a burden a couple of times. Kept …Charles from outright killing me more than once. No, Adam, Pa doesn’t want me back. I’m sure of it.”

“What, pray tell, could make a man not want his son back, Joe? Answer me that.”

Again Joe caught his lip between his teeth, biting down until he tasted blood. To say the next words hurt more than the beatings, were heavier than the chains he’d worn and squeezed his heart. “Maybe Dansen knew I’m not a Cartwright. Maybe he knew my mother was…not the woman she claimed to be. Maybe he knew she was….” He fumbled to a stop, his emotions tangled into a tight knot. Then another ugly vision rose before his mind’s eye: his brother Hoss shot and bleeding on the ground at his feet. “And because when Hoss was shot, I did nothing. I know you said he was mendin’ fine when you left but maybe, just maybe, things didn’t go so well. And Pa might have thought I shot…”

Adam’s mind reeled. How do I fight this? How? Dansen knew Marie was “property”, his father’s property. Could Pa’s plan to sign the Ponderosa over to me have backfired? Is that what Dansen wanted and Pa found that there was no way to give it to him? No, Judge Thompson said he was going to hold the deed Pa’d signed. Not post it at the land office like any other sale would be. So, technically, the Ranch was still his. So what happened? Why didn’t Pa answer the ransom demand? Even if, God forbid, Hoss had died of some complication, I can’t believe Pa would hold that against Joe. And Joe would no more shoot Hoss than the man in the moon. Yes, he killed Charles with his bare hands but Hoss? No…not in my wildest dreams….

            

“I tell you what. We’ll make a deal. After I get us San Francisco passage, I’m going to have to wire Pa anyway. Tell him what ship we’re on. If he isn’t on the dock when we get there, I’ll make sure you have whatever you think you need if you don’t want to go on to the Ponderosa.” Adam didn’t know where he’d get whatever it was Joe would ask for since he’d stripped his own accounts bare and left all but the twenty-dollar gold pieces hidden in his boot heels in New Orleans. No, Pa will be there; I know he will. “And if he is there, you do my chores for a month. Deal?”

“Now who’s being stupid, Adam? No, San Francisco is full of folks who know me as Ben Cartwright’s son. I wouldn’t be able to get away from that there. Here in San Diego it’s a different story. I can just -”

His head shaking, Adam braced his brother, forcing a bond between them that Joe seemed determine to sever. “If you don’t go on to San Francisco, you’ll never know, Joe. There will always be that doubt – if not for you, for me. And whether you understand it or not, you owe me something right now. I got you out of that Hell.”

Flashing through his fractured memories of the night at the sale barn, Joe heard his brother’s voice once again, raising the bid on him. Buying him. He’d become his brother’ possession. The thought turned his stomach sour. He would have to do what Adam wanted, wouldn’t he? Because he’d simply changed one master for another? Absently, he spoke his thoughts. “Because you bought me that night, I have to do what….”

Adam shook him hard, seeing that faraway look in his eyes that he’d come to recognize as Joe remembering something unspeakable. “I don’t own you, Joe! No one does! You are a free man, for God’s sake! You can go and do whatever you please!”

“But I heard you. That night…the night I tried to get away. You bought me, Adam. I heard your voice. You had the highest bid.”

“But, thanks to what you did to Charles, the ruckus you started, I never forked over a dime, Little Brother. And considering what Charles had done to you, even the Law would call his sudden demise a justifiable homicide. Joe, please, go with me to San Francisco. You’ll see. Pa will be standing there at the dock, waiting to see you get off the ship. I’d bet my last dollar that he’ll grab you up and not want to turn you loose.”

Unable to shake him, Joe would only answer that Adam would lose…but he would go on to San Francisco.

 

 

Chapter 32

 

Adam took it as a sign of good fortune that the ship they booked their north-bound passage on was called New Hope. He’d dutifully sent the telegram to their father, using the last of their funds. Atypically, he decided that once they hit San Francisco – should Ben not be there- he would only then figure out what to do next. He forced himself to not make a contingency plan for the irrational fear that he might need it. For the time being, he would enjoy the voyage, the salty air and his brother’s company, morose as it may be.

That night, while Joe slept, Adam took out the packet Peasha had left him. Feeling much like a thief in the night he’d untied the string and flattened the folded papers. In the brassy glow of the swinging overhead lantern, he read them. These were the documents that had damned his step-mother into servility.

Pain raced through Adam’s heart as he read the words. For the consideration of five thousand dollars, paid in legal tender to Marie Le Rebelle Monserrat, within three days of the execution of this document, the undersigned, being of legal age and in full mental capacity, forfeits all rights of possession and ….

He searched through the other papers for the manumission document that freed Marie in exchange for the twins. It wasn’t there. There were only other papers signing over the house she’d lived in, and, curiously, a letter she’d written to Larouche telling him she was sorry for what had happened. At least that was what he could make of the French she’d written it in. It was the last sentence she’d written that caught him. So you see, my dear one, there is a price to paid for their freedom, and I shall be the one to pay it. It was signed Marie le Juste Del Vrye D’Marginy just a few weeks before she would meet his father and fall in love with him.

Peasha had been right. The truth was hard to swallow. As he refolded all the papers carefully, he was tempted to rush outside and consign it to the depths of the Pacific Ocean. But he couldn’t. If his father asked, he would have to show it to him, tell him the whole story he’d heard and committed to memory that night in the Ursuline Chapel. After he replaced the letter into the packet Adam Cartwright did something others would swear he was incapable of – he put his head down and cried.

 

It was late afternoon when the New Hope sailed through the Golden Gate Straits, rounding against the oncoming tide and fighting the breeze. Again the two brothers stood at the deck rail each with their own fears carefully tucked behind a false show of anticipation. As the ship slowed and neared the empty dock, they looked at each another.

“You lose, Adam. He’s not here. I told you -” Joe began but Adam cut him off short.

“We haven’t docked yet. Besides, something might have delayed him.” He knew he was grasping at straws but once they hit solid ground, he was certain there was no way he could keep his brother from disappearing into the city.

Joe snorted and shook his head. Although it bore down heavily on him, he was ready to accept what had happened. He’d held out half a hope that Adam was right but it seemed that he’d been right all along.

“Maybe

he couldn’t get there. We’ll need to check the telegraph office.”

The mooring lines were thrown and slowly, gently, the big ship was pulled to the dock – a dock that remained void of a barrel-chested, white-haired rancher.

The gangplank was lowered and stabilized. Adam hung back, blocking Joe’s leaving, his eyes still scanning the street, the dock, everywhere. Finally, with the other passengers down on the dock, he had no choice. He held onto his brother’s arm with the grip of a drowning man.

“Just wait here until I check the telegraph office, Joe. Just a few minutes more, I swear.”

“A few more minutes won’t change anything. He’s not coming, Adam.”

“Then you wait here.”

Dodging around the dray wagons and the other people on the street, Adam ran to the telegraph office two blocks from the docks. When the man on duty said that he had no telegram for him, Adam yelled at him to look again. The answer was the same: nothing. He stepped out onto the street and ran his hands over his face.

I’m right. I know I’m right. I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life. Oh God, where is he? Slowly, he walked back. Just go slow. Give him time to get here. Give me time to convince Joe. Give me time to keep my brother.

           

 At the last corner, he turned and looked back up the street he’d just walked down. It was empty of the one man he needed the most. He checked the street that ran along the docks. The same emptiness. There were people there offloading freight from the New Hope, carriages picking up passengers. Now instead of looking for his father, he looked for Joe, fearing that he hadn’t waited. He couldn’t see him. Frantic, he dashed in front of a carriage pulling away from the dock and began pushing his way through the waiting people, shouting his brother’s name.

One man wouldn’t budge and Adam, full of fury, shoved at him again before the man turned to him.

“Where you been, Adam?” Hoss asked him, pounding him on the shoulder in greeting.

Adam stood there dumbfounded. Just a foot away was the most beautiful sight he thought he’d ever see in his life: his father wrapped around his youngest brother, his face tucked beside the shaggy brown curls crushed to his chest, Joe’s fists knotted into his father’s shirt back. As he felt Hoss’ greeting, another one beckoned him – his father’s outstretched arm, his tear-stained face reaching for him. Unashamed, he went.

Where had he been? he thought, feeling relief wash over him like a tidal wave. I’ve been to Hell.

            

But I’ve come back and brought home the truth.

 

 

Epilogue

 

The wind whipped through the open barn door, carrying a few flakes of the first winter snow.The night’s darkness pressed into the barn but faltered by the forge. Adam gave it another bellows-full of air and watched the coals redden. He looked around the barn, letting his senses tell him again that he was alone. The horses stood quietly in their stalls, some of Hop Sing’s escaped chickens nestled on the stalls. The reddish glow from the coals reflected from bridle bits. There was no one else there.

He fumbled his hand into his heavy jacket and pulled out the packet Jacques Peasha had given him months ago. He studied it for several long moments, feeling the importance of the documents it held again. Yet with that came the fact that not once in the three months since they’d returned home had his father asked what he’d found out in New Orleans. He wondered if he ever would – that is until today when a telegram had come for him from Kansas City. The missive was short but it lifted the world from his shoulders. Today. 9am. Here. And it was signed with only the letters JP. Ben had raised an eyebrow when Adam exhibited relief but otherwise showed no reaction and had asked no questions.

The threat was gone but the truth remained, written on the papers Adam held in his hand. One by one, he fed them to the fire, stirring it to make sure nothing remained of them. The last to burn was the most damning one. He watched as the flames licked at the edges, slowly eating inward. With the last of it gone, a peace settled over him that he hadn’t known was missing. He stirred the coals once more and watched as tiny sparks rose. As the coals died slowly, he continued to watch, the cold seeping in and stealing away the warmth until it was all that remained.

“What was it they said? That there was a price to pay for everything. You paid the price for your sister-friend, Marie, but it wasn’t enough, was it? Her children paid as well and so did your son, for the secrets, the lies you didn’t know were lies. It all ends here, Marie. Of that you have my eternal promise,” Adam whispered to the dying coals then turned up his jacket collar and slipped out of the barn, headed for the lights of the house.

For if nothing else he could do this for his father, a woman who’d loved them all and more importantly, his brother. For Adam Cartwright had found that the price of the truth………..

 

………..is silence.

 

 

 

The End

 

The Tahoe Ladies

April 2000 to August 2006

 

Authors’ Note:

There are two other “truths” hidden within this story. One is a lie in what the Mother Superior and Pearl told Adam in the chapel and would surface later. But did they know the truth or did they pay for it the same way Adam did? With their silence?

 

The other truth was destroyed by Adam’s burning of the documents. But that knowledge we buy with our own silence. You, the reader, will have to determine that truth for yourself.

 

TLs