PART TWO

1876

2269

 

ONE

 

Joe Cartwright stood with one black-gloved hand resting on the fencepost, looking out toward the Virginia City road.  The autumn wind rustled his curly silver-gray hair, tossing ringlets that sparked like quicksilver before his green eyes.  He didn’t bother to strike them away.  The cold winter wind was an excuse for the tears that filled them – just in case anybody noticed.  It was a ritual he repeated every October, standing here, waiting for the impossible.  He’d done it for twelve years and he’d do it for twelve more.  Hell, he’d do it until his bones froze up and he was no longer able to walk to the fence.

Adam had made him a promise.  One day he’d see him.  One day he’d come.

Joe cracked a smile.  Hopefully it would be before they were both too old to spit nails at each other.

He was thirty-four now, just about the age Adam had been when he went away.  Older brother would be somewhere around forty-six.  Sometimes he pictured what he’d look like.  Adam’s hair had always threatened to rear back from his forehead.  Would he have lost most of it, or, like their Pa, would he still have a full head of hair but gone white as snow?

Joe ran a gloved hand through his own unruly locks.  Pa said his hair was like he was – unwilling to be tamed.

Sobering, he turned around to look at the house.  If he knew his Pa, he was watching.  He said it was nothing but foolishness, but Joe knew in his heart Pa hadn’t given up either.  Pa was in his late sixties now and slowing down, though you’d never know it by any lack of determination or spirit.  Still, his body was growing old.  He’d always been a big robust man.  Pa was smaller now, thinner.  And they were about the same height.  Joe shook his head.  That had been a day – the one where he realized he was almost as tall as his pa.

It came to all of them, aging and dying.  Leaving or being left.  Jamie’d grown up and moved on.  And Hoss….  Hoss had left them in the spring of eighteen seventy-two.  He hadn’t thought anything could bring that big, gentle giant down.  In the end, the Doc thought maybe his size had something to do with it.  Could have been his lungs or maybe his heart was just too big to keep on beating.

Adam didn’t know.  He needed to know.

Joe drew in a breath of crisp cold air, dispelling the darkness that threatened to overwhelm him.  He’d lost Alice that same year, in the fall, just like he’d lost Hoss and Adam.

And his child.

The tears fell now and he didn’t care who saw them.  It happened every year, this sadness that threatened to take him with it.  In the beginning it had nearly done just that.  The Doc had been worried he’d take his own life.  He had to admit, he’d considered it.  The pain had been….well…he didn’t have a word for it.  Pa had been there taking his hand, trying to walk him through it.  He’d done his best, but Pa wasn’t a brother.  He’d needed his brothers.  Taken together with Alice’s horrific death, the loss of Adam and then Hoss had been almost more than he could bear.  The look in his pa’s eyes had been the only thing that stopped him.

He just couldn’t bring him anymore pain.

That had been four years ago.  Slowly, ever so slowly, with each day that passed living had gotten a little bit easier.  He’d thrown himself into work, driving himself so hard he’d ended up in bed for one whole winter with something the Doc called Dropsy of the Brain.  He’d been feeling poorly.  Later Pa’d told him how worried he’d been about him.  At the time the older man had thought his lack of appetite and inability to sleep were the result of all he’d been through.  He’d thought so too until one day he woke to a sudden fever.  By that night it had been so high he’d been out of his head.  He’d hear his pa and Doc Martin talking when they thought he couldn’t, whispering in low voices about damage to his brain.  He’d come to believe them too.  While he was fevered, strange images had flashed in his mind of a place for which he had no name – a place that seemed to grow out of the desert sands, the buildings more like plants than mortar and stone structures.  And the people there, they were beautiful but odd.  One of them, a man, spoke to him, telling him he had to come back, it was not his time, his family would miss him.

I would miss you, Joe.

Adam had said that, or at least he had thought it was Adam until he pried open his eyes and found it was someone else. Someone from long ago.

Someone who changed his life.

Joe heard the ranch house door open behind him.  He didn’t look.  It would be Pa.  The older man always joined him at the fence.  They’d stand there, trading stories about Adam and Hoss, remembering them with tears of joy instead of sadness as they would have wanted.   He waited for that familiar hand to land on his shoulder.

Instead an even more familiar pair of arms encircled his waist.

Come away, Joe, those arms said.  Embrace living and leave the dead to their hard-earned peace.

He covered the slender hand that wore his ring with his own, pulling it close so the woman it belonged to could feel his beating heart.  Then he turned and laid his hand on her amber hair.

When he’d wakened at last from his illness, he’d seen a woman sitting in the chair beside his bed.  The room had been darkened so the light wouldn’t hurt his eyes, so he couldn’t see her clearly.  She’d lifted his head and given him some water and then left to call his father.  An older woman had come back with the pair of them.  He felt their hands.  Heard their happiness.  And wished he could share in their joy.  But he had been too tired.  He’d smiled weakly and fallen back to sleep.

She told him later that nothing had ever frightened her more in her life.  She’d cried all night, fearful that he would never wake again.

But he did and the next time he was aware, and even though the room was dark that day too, he recognized her as surely as he recognized the woman standing beside her, holding her hand – it was Anne Landes and her mother, Carrie Pickett.[1]  They’d returned to the Piney Woods for their annual visit and had decided to pay them a call, arriving just as he fell ill.  Carrie told him later that nothing could pry Anne from his side.  Her child had grown thinner as well, often forgetting to eat as she tended him.  His Pa said he would come in in the middle of the night and Anne would be sitting there, holding his hand and stroking his forehead, telling him he had to come back – telling him she loved him and wanted more than anything to be his wife.

At first all he could think of was sleeping.  Then it was learning how to walk again.  He’d lain so long his muscles were weak and he had to fight for every step.  Then, it was pushing himself beyond endurance as if he had to prove something, roping more, riding longer, driving himself harder to prove simply that he could.  She’d scolded him one day – yelled at him really – accusing him of being afraid.

Afraid.

At that moment his brothers’ words had come back to him.  They’d always said their little brother wasn’t afraid of anything.  They were wrong.  Anne was right.

He was afraid of life.

Anne left that year, going back to New York to pass the winter with her mother.  He didn’t wait for her to come back.  He followed her and in her fancy parlor on Fifth Avenue he proposed.  It took her several months to sell her property there and then she and Carrie had come home to the Ponderosa to stay.

“You’re feeling sad,” his beautiful wife said.  “It’s Adam, isn’t it?”

With Hoss, there was no chance for a return.  Adam, well, Adam had ridden off that night and simply disappeared.  He didn’t know which loss was harder.

“You have us now,” Anne said, taking his hand and placing it on her belly.  “You have to let it go, Joe.  I’m not Alice.  No one is going to take me away.  Or your child.”

He nodded.   Words wouldn’t come.

“It’s late,” she said.  “Come to bed.”

With one last look over his shoulder at the expanse of autumn leaves, Joe Cartwright did something that was coming to feel more and more comfortable.

He did what he was told.

 

Joe woke later that night, or maybe it was early morning.  Anne was sleeping.  She had her hand draped over his chest.  Gently disengaging it, he rose.  Wrapping a lounging robe about his lean frame, he went to the door and opened it and stepped into the hall.  Pulling it closed behind him, he went downstairs.  Outside the windows there was a spark of light – a pale vermillion color tinted the long low bank of clouds heralding rain. The house was still. So still he could hear the ticking of the tall case clock with its green face that had sounded since before his birth and would sound long after he was dead.  The pleasure he’d found in Anne’s arms had distracted him for a time.  It might have done so longer if he had not begun to dream.  The images from his fever dreams were still with him as was the voice in his head –Adam’s voice, promising to return.

“Joe.”

His name was spoken so low he wasn’t sure he’d heard it. Joe halted and ran a hand across the back of his neck.  Then he shook his head, deciding he was crazy.  Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he headed for the kitchen.  Warm milk with a pinch of sugar might not be included in Doc Martin’s book of remedies, but it had always served him well.

“Joe.  It’s time.”

Joe halted.  He had heard it this time.  Not only his name, but the voice from the past that spoke it.

“Adam?”

“You have to be careful, Joe.  They’re coming for you again.  Whatever you do, don’t go to Bodie.”

He turned in a circle, frantic.  “Adam?  Adam, where are you?”’

A man stepped out of the shadow cast by that old tall case clock. The dawning light struck him, revealing a lean taut figure and a full head of rich black hair.  Joe frowned.  It couldn’t be Adam, the man was too young.

But it was.

“I’m sorry, Joe.  I want to stay, but I can’t – not yet.  Remember what I said.  Don’t go to Bodie.”

“Bodie?  What’s Bodie?  Adam?”  A sound behind him made the man with the shining gray hair turn.  When he did he stumbled back, confronted by a face from his nightmares.

“I regret the need to do this, but it is imperative we are not delayed.”

Joe blinked and looked down as the man’s hand landed on his shoulder. Seconds later long fingers pressed into his temple.

Forget.

 

“Was that necessary?” Adam snapped as he caught Spock by the shoulder and turned him around.  They were outside now, some distance from the house.

“Making contact was not wise.  That contact being accepted as reality would be even more unwise should your brother determine to share any recollection of it with another.”

“I know.  I just….”  Adam looked back toward the house.  “I just had to see him.  I had to warn Joe about Bodie. What you showed me – what I saw – I can’t let that happen.”

“No, you cannot.  But not for your brother’s sake alone.  Remember, his fate, Adam, is inextricably connected to the fate of your world.”

“So you’ve told me.  Time and again.  You still haven’t told me how.”

“What is not known cannot be revealed.”

“In other words, you intend to keep me in the dark, even though my brother’s life hangs in the balance.”

He could still see it.  The images shown to them by the Guardian.  At first the idea that he was traveling through time and space and standing on another planet had seemed like madness.  He’d even told Spock so, believing he must be ill or insane and had imagined the whole thing.  But then he’d come to realize that it was real and that it was what he had always wanted to do – to sail an ebon sea dotted with stars and to go boldly where other men had not gone before.  The Vulcan was amused.  At least, he thought he was amused.  Those sober lips curled a bit and his eyes seemed to dance when something struck him as particularly droll, but the effect was subtle at best.

Still, you travel with a man – well, a kind of a man – for half a year and you get to know him.

For them it had been a six months since he had walked away from his family and home.  For Joe and his pa, it had been more than a decade.  They’d spent the time tracking down the other groups supplied by the rogue Originator with time manipulators.  He’d walked on the Orion homeworld and visited one of the outer moons of Qo’noS.  He’d seen things and beings he’d never dreamed could exist.  And all the time they’d been looking over their shoulder.  At first Lieutenant Commander Spock of the Starship Enterprise had been listed as missing in action, then, as simply missing.  A short time ago Starfleet had put a price on his head.

James T. Kirk was one of the signatories.

The reason was the bracelets.  Starfleet knew that, as soon as it was discovered they were associated with Gateway and the Guardian, the entire galaxy would be after them.  He and Spock had managed to track a good many down and to stop the beings who wore them from causing any harm.  They, of course, each still had one.

Starfleet was not happy about that.

They couldn’t surrender them.  Not before their mission was complete.  Not before he made sure the bones of the man found in the Bodie mine wearing one of them was not Joe.  Somehow they had to stop that bracelet ending up on his brother’s wrist and his brother ending up in that mine.  Spock wouldn’t tell him what it was, but there was something about Joe – something important.

Important enough for someone to want him dead before his time.

 

Leonard McCoy had a mission.  He was armed with the necessary tools and was, at the moment, stalking his prey down a poorly lit corridor.  The one he hunted had made a few mistakes, but the biggest was returning to the scene of the crime.  It had been simple to pick up the trail and follow it – as easy as getting a frown from a Vulcan.

McCoy missed a step.

Now, why had that particular phrase come to mind?

Adjusting his balance, the self-proclaimed country doctor continued on, careful not to disturb the vial of precious liquid he held.  When he reached the end of the corridor he halted to allow a crewmember to pass by.  He didn’t remember him, but the man looked like he could use a transfusion, his skin was so pale.  Making a mental note to check if any of the crew had been diagnosed with pernicious anemia when he got back to sickbay, McCoy started across the corridor.  What lay behind the door in front of him was going to prove quite a challenge. Maybe he should take his dose now.

Nah.

It would be more fun to wait.

Stepping boldly up to the door McCoy bypassed the code that sealed it.  The first thing that hit him was the heat.  Ignoring it, he stepped inside.  The room was completely dark except for a faint red glow that pulsed against the far wall like a sunrise refusing to happen.

“Are you gonna turn a light on,” he asked, his tone wry, “or do you want me to trip and spill the Bourbon?”

Jim Kirk’s voice was weary.  “Bones, go away.”

“Not before you take this.”  He held the glass out.  “Doctor’s orders.”

“I fail to see why you think alcohol is the answer to whatever ails a man.  This is the twenty-third century, after all.”

McCoy squinted into the dark.  He could just make Jim out, seated at Spock’s desk.  “It must be the chair.  You’re talking like a Vulcan.”

“That’s not funny, Bones.”

He knew where the light was and so he moved forward and turned it on.  McCoy sucked in air when he saw his friend.

“You look like Hell.”

Jim ran a hand across his stubbled cheek and through his unkempt hair.  “Couldn’t sleep.  Bad dreams.  I came straight here.”

McCoy drew up a chair and sat down.  He shoved the glass toward his hurting friend.  “Like I said, ‘Doctor’s orders’,” he said softly.  As Jim obeyed, he made his diagnosis.  “You’re still blaming yourself, aren’t you?  For what’s happened with Spock.”

Kirk’s hazel eyes narrowed.  “It is my fault.  I should have trusted him.”

“And got yourself court-martialed along with him.”  McCoy sipped his Bourbon slowly.  “Spock wouldn’t have wanted that.”

Jim’s eyes flicked to his face.  His words bristled with challenge.  “He’s not dead.”

The doctor held up a hand.  “Whoa, there.  I didn’t say he was.  I’m just saying Spock wouldn’t want you sitting here in his quarters – in the dark – bearing the weight of a galaxy of guilt on your shoulders.”

His friend was fingering his glass.  He didn’t look up when he said, “Starfleet is sending me a new First Officer.”

“What?”

Again, those hazel eyes shot to his face.  “They’ve declared Spock a criminal.  He’s been officially stripped of his rank.”  He paused.  “I just heard.  There’s a price on his head.”

“Good God….”

One second Jim was sitting there, staring at his glass like a lazy Louisiana gambler.  The next thing he knew the blond man had burst out of his chair and was pacing the room, pounding his fist into his hand.

“It can’t end like this, Bones!  With Spock’s career in disgrace, with him….”  He had to swallow over the word, “…imprisoned or executed.”

McCoy whistled.  “Has it come to that?” he asked softly.

Jim’s jaw was tight.  “Not quite.  Not yet.  Command has given Spock another two weeks to surrender the himself and the Originators’ devices and then – then they go after him with all phasers primed.”

McCoy shook his head.  “How are they gonna find him if he’s still back there in the nineteenth century trying to solve whatever it is he thinks he has to solve?”

Kirk looked at him.  There was something in his eyes – something dangerous.  “A special agent has been selected to use one of the confiscated time manipulators to go back and get him.  I intend to steal it before he does.”

McCoy choked on his Bourbon.  “You…what?”

His friend rounded the desk and leaned on it.  “I intend to break into the vault that holds the time manipulators.  I’m going to use them to go back into the nineteenth century and help Spock do whatever it is he thinks he has to do.  Bones,” Kirk paused.  “I can’t order you – I wouldn’t want to – but I could use your help.”

“How are you going to…steal the manipulators?”

“As one of the signatories on Spock’s ‘wanted poster’, I have complete access to any and all things pertaining to the case.”

McCoy shook his head.  “You sly dog.  That’s why you signed it!”

Jim nodded.  He held his gaze.  “I hate to push you, Bones, but I need to know if you’re in.”

He downed the last of his bourbon.  “You think I’d miss the look on Spock’s face when you catch up to him?  Of course I’m in!”

“You’re sure?”

“Hell, I’m sure.  Things have been too dull around here without that green-blooded hobgoblin to bedevil.”

Kirk nodded.  Then he leaned over and depressed a switch.  “You can come in now.”

Puzzled, McCoy turned to look.  One after another three people filed into the absent First Officer’s quarters – Scotty, Uhura, and then, Sulu.

“Well,” Kirk said, “buckle your seatbelts everybody, here we go.”

 

Joe Cartwright halted what he was doing and looked up.  He squinted into the low-riding sun and then wiped his sleeve over his face. Though it was October and the air was chill, pounding fence posts was more than enough to make a man feel like it was summertime.  He’d removed his green jacket and was attired only in his light brown shirt and gray pants, a fact that was certain to make the woman approaching him chide him for being careless with his health.

Upon reaching him, Anne held out a basket.  “I brought you lunch.”

He bent low and kissed her cheek as he took it and placed it on the ground beside them.  “You didn’t have to do that, you know.  I’ve got some jerky.”

“I wanted to.”  She frowned.  “After last night I was…worried about you.”

“Now, don’t you worry.  I just fell and hit my head, that’s all.”  He grinned.  “That’s what I get for walking around in the dark without a lamp.”

“You were….”  She paused.  “…talking about Adam.”

It was his turn to frown.  “Was I?”

“Yes.  It was like…before.”

‘Before’ being when he’d almost died of the brain fever.  Joe dropped the mallet in his hand.  Taking Anne in his arms he pulled her close.  “Shh,” he said, brushing her hair with his fingers.  “Nothing’s going to happen to me.”

Her arms circled him and her hands gripped him with all her strength, like she feared he might suddenly up and disappear if she didn’t hold on tight enough.

“Hey.”  He gently pushed her back so he could look into her eyes.  She was crying.  “What’s wrong? Not Pa….”

“No.”  Anne turned so her face rested on his chest.  “There’s..something in the air, Joe.  Can’t you feel it?”

It pained him, less than it had before, but it still did.  He remembered Alice had been like this at times when she’d been with child – overly sensitive, prone to worry and tears.

He cupped her head in his hand.  “All I sense is a new beginning.  The old year’s almost over.”  With his other hand he touched her middle.  “And look what this one holds.”

“It’s a boy, you know,” she said softly.

He laughed.  “Ah, now, you can’t know that.”

She looked up at him.  Dead serious.  “But I do.  He’s your son.”  She shifted his hand.  “And he’s a fighter.”

He felt it.  It was the first time.  Wonder filled him at the tiny feet pressing through Anne’s skin into his hand.  He smiled, and then frowned.

“I bet that’s gotta hurt.”

“No more than dealing with his thick-headed stubborn-as-a-mule father!”  She laughed as she bent to retrieve the basket.  “And now, Mister Cartwright, if you would be so good as to put your jacket back on and accompany me to yonder tree, we will share the repast I have prepared.”

He snorted as he reached for the jacket.  As he pulled it on, he looked at the basket and all the wonders it held, including a bottle of wine.  Anne was a beauty and a wonderful woman, but she was not a cook. “You prepared?”

She shrugged. “With a little help from Hop Sing.”  As his eyebrows formed a ‘v’, she confessed.  “Well, I packed it anyhow!”

Joe laughed, kissed her again, and then – with their arms linked together – they repaired to yonder tree.

 

A lone figure waited in the hallway outside of Admiral Fitzpatrick’s office.  He had been called to receive his instructions regarding the mission to track down and apprehend Lieutenant Commander Spock.   His operatives were in place.  All he needed was the official seal to travel through time.  The man’s pale lips curled.  Well, it wasn’t that he ‘needed’ it, but it was all part of the game.  The endgame, really.  Within the pouch he wore, anchored on the hip of his current Western gear, was one of the time manipulators.  It was not one confiscated or counted by Starfleet.

It was his own.

He needed two, after all, not to travel but to write his signature, so to speak, declaring what he had done.  He would do it by having his agent place the bracelet on the wrist of Joseph Cartwright in the year of eighteen-seventy-six, deep within the heart of the Bodie Mine.

Oh yes, and he would enjoy doing so.

The man’s attention returned to the present when the door opened and he was ushered into Admiral Fitzpatrick’s office.  Fitzpatrick was a crusty well-seasoned Starfleet officer who regretted the task he had been assigned, but would execute it with his usual military efficiency.

The older man was looking at his screen. Without looking up, he said, “Major…Vance, is it?”

The being known as Theron Vance’s crimson eyes crinkled with a joke only he knew the punch-line to as he drew himself up to attention and saluted.

“Reporting for duty, sir!”

 

 

TWO

 

They’d done it.

James T. Kirk breathed a sigh of relief when he felt the green grass of eighteen-seventy-six Nevada solidify underneath his boots.  He glanced from one side to the other.  They were all there – him, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, and Bones – all whole and hearty in spite of their mode of transportation.  At least for now.  They’d put their necks in the rope for him and for Spock.

Now it was his job to knock down the gallows or, better yet, prevent them from ever being built.

It hadn’t been easy.  It had taken a complicated series of deceptions to break into the vault that held the bracelets, combining Scotty’s unsung ability to over-ride just about any security protocol in existence with Sulu’s martial arts skills, and dusting both of those off with Uhura’s use of her more than apparent charms.  Bones had supplied the anesthetizing gas, and he’d used his credentials to get them out of the facility before the alarm bells had gone off.

And boy, had they gone off!

He could still hear them ringing in his head even though the alarm was three-hundred and ninety-three years in the future.

They were all attired for the time, looking more like the cast of a musical set in a nineteenth century barroom than anything else.  Bones was once again the crusty but benign frontier doctor with his black leather bag.  He, well, he looked like a gambler in his silk vest and expensive suit.  Scot had chosen to wear his clan’s tartan.  He hated to say it, but in his plaid kilt and socks, sash, and feathered hat, his chief engineer was a little hard to take seriously.

Hopefully that would work to their advantage.

Uhura and Sulu had presented the greatest challenge.  Due to the primitive thinking on Earth at the time, neither of them would be accepted as full-fledged members of society.  In the end Sulu had opted to present himself as a Chinese servant.  There was, after all, one by the name of Hop Sing in the Cartwright household.  Uhura, well, she was breathtaking.  Apparently the men of the Wild West hadn’t made any distinction when it came to using women.  She had chosen to become a dance hall girl and was dressed to the nines, as they once said, in a skin-tight crimson gown with black bead trim that emphasized everything she had.

Everything. 

She was the first to step up to him.  “Orders, sir?” the Bantu woman asked in her husky voice.

They’d laid out a plan.  Sulu would initiate contact with the Asian population in Virginia City by claiming to be one of the Cartwright’s cook’s cousins.  From what the records said the Chinese man had…well…hundreds.   Uhura and Scotty would go to Virginia City as well.  The lieutenant was to learn all she could from the patrons at the Bucket of Blood, while Scotty used a cover story to introduce himself to the local constabulary.  Once known, the engineer could then use that connection to discover what the sheriff knew.

He and McCoy were going back to the Ponderosa.  He wasn’t sure what kind of welcome they would receive.  After twelve years they might not even be recognized.  Still, he doubted that.  Considering the measure he had taken of the man Ben Cartwright was, that keen mind would forget little – and maybe forgive less.  After all, they had disappeared the same night as Adam and Joe.

It was possible the older man thought they were responsible.

Though his close-mouthed Vulcan friend had revealed little before vanishing for the second time, Kirk did know one thing for sure – Joe Cartwright’s life was in danger and, somehow, it mattered to the world he came from just as much as it did to Cartwright’s own that the young man survive.  He was banking on Ben’s love of his son to give them the proverbial foot in the door.

They just had to prove they were on his side.

Somehow.

“Well, pardner, you ready to mosey on down to the Ponderosa and see if anyone’s home?”

Jim turned to find Leonard McCoy with one thumb stuck behind his gun belt and his hip thrown back, chewing on a piece of straw.

He was enjoying this entirely too much.

“Bones, this is serious business.”

“Sure it is. Never said it wasn’t,” he drawled.  “Doesn’t mean a man can’t enjoy himself.  You know, I just might retire to some place like this in Georgia – sun, wind, the smell of pines….”

“No antibiotics, primitive anesthetics, amputations,” Kirk countered.

“Hostile Indians, gunslingers, banditos,” Sulu added with a flourish as he joined them.

“And ye have to remember, Doctor McCoy, it was very hard to find a fine bottle of Scotch.”

It took a second and then they all burst into laughter.

For Kirk the moment was short-lived.  There was an ominous silence where Spock’s rejoinder should have been.

Bones caught his shoulder with his fingers.  He didn’t miss anything.  “We’ll find him, Jim.  We’ll bring him home, and somehow we’ll manage to sort out the mess the pointy-eared bastard’s gotten himself into.”

“The doctor’s rrrright, Captain,” Scotty added, rolling his ‘r’s’ with relish. “We’ve beat the odds before.”

Yes, they had.

But every gambler, no matter how good, had to run out of luck some time.

 

Shadowing Joe had proven easier than either of them thought it might.  It seemed baby brother had mellowed with age.  He’d spent the morning in the house doing paperwork and then headed out about noon for the north pastures.  After checking in with the men, Joe had settled in and begun to repair the fence along the pasture line.  Adam watched him hauling posts and pounding them into the ground, noting how Joe had gained bulk over the last twelve years.  His youngest brother was still smaller in stature than a lot of other men.  There were several working the fence farther down the line that appeared like giants in comparison.  One looked like he might weigh in at three hundred pounds or more.  Still, Joe was well-muscled and fit and probably had a meaner punch than he had as a kid.

And that was saying a lot.

Adam smiled and then grew sober as he thought of the lost years.  While it was true he could travel back to the very moment when he had left, Spock had explained that it was dangerous.  If he elected to return, it would have to be to this time stream where Joe was in his thirties and Hoss was….

Hoss was dead.

He’d blamed himself when the Vulcan first told him.  He should have been there.  There must have been something he could have done to prevent it.  Spock had thrown his cool cold logic in the face of that, explaining that the records indicated his brother had died from a pulmonary embolism.  The records also showed that Hoss had an enlarged heart.  Spock explained that, with the medical knowledge of the era, there would have been no way to save him.

Hoss, with a heart that was too large…

Imagine that.

In the time they had traveled together the Vulcan had admitted to him that the human emotion he had the most trouble understanding was guilt.  There seemed no reason or explanation for it.  One did what one was called upon to do and there was no need to question the doing of it, as it was, in the end, the only logical thing one could do.

It made sense.  Of course, that didn’t stop the way he felt.

He’d asked Spock, one night, if the Vulcan had ever felt the tiniest spark of guilt.  It had been a rare night when the twenty-third century man was in a rare mood.  Spock told him about the time, during the Babel Conference, when his captain was injured and he had to leave his dying father – the father only his blood could save – in order to save the ship and its passenger load of dignitaries.  His mother had confronted him, so angry she had slapped him and told him she never wanted to see him again.  At that moment, Spock said, there had been something – regret for his choice, a feeling that he might have done differently….

Guilt.

It was most unpleasant, he had remarked casually, and then returned to his calculations.

Adam snorted.  This must have been how Joe felt when he’d confront him about his emotions and force him to think.

“Do you find something amusing?” Spock asked.

Adam cast a glance at his brother where he worked across the field.  Since his wife had gone, Joe had removed his jacket again and tossed it over the fence.  He was taking a drink of water.  It seemed safe to take an eye off of him for a minute.  Crossing to where the Vulcan sat under a tree, his eyes closed and his hands balancing on his bent knees, he halted before him.

“Are you awake?” he asked.

The sigh was suppressed.  “I do not talk in my sleep,” Spock replied without opening his eyes.

“Well, you look like you’re asleep.”

Those near-black eyes opened.  They fixed on him.  “We have traveled together six-point-o-three months, Adam Cartwright, and you have not yet realized that I am meditating when in this position?”

Adam’s lips quirked.  “We’ve traveled together six-point-o-three months and you haven’t yet learned to know when I’m kidding?”

“Kidding is illogical.”

Adam snorted. “Yeah, but it’s fun.”

There is was again. That suppressed sigh.

After making certain they eliminated or accounted for all of the time manipulators they could, he and the Vulcan had used the two they had to come to eighteen-seventy-six to prevent Joe’s kidnap and death in the Bodie Mine. Since the night he’d made contact with his little brother they had shadowed Joe, following close behind him, camping near him at night, and then watching him work during the day like they were doing now.  Since time was fluid, they had no idea when the attempt to abduct him would be made or who would make it.  They only knew that someone was going to take Joe at some point and stick him in that mine and leave him to die.

He took a step back and looked again to make sure Joe was alright.  His brother was busy pounding posts.

Satisfied Adam returned to the Vulcan’s side.

 

After lunch Joe had gone back to mending fences.  This kind of labor wasn’t something he had to do – there were plenty of young men whom they employed that could perform such menial work – but there were a number of reasons he did it.  First off, he liked it.  Driving posts wasn’t challenging like riding a bronco, or fast and furious like driving a herd.  It wasn’t grand as cutting lumber or dangerous like going down in a mine.  It was, well, relaxing.  He laughed to think what his two older brothers would have said if they’d heard him admit that he enjoyed something that was relaxing.  But then, he wasn’t that young man anymore who had shinnied out of every chore in any and every way possible in order to make a break for town and trouble.

He was going to be a father.

Joe pulled at his left glove, making sure it was tight.  Another reason he continued to do this kind of work was those young men they hired.  He’d heard one of them not too long ago refer to him as the ‘prince of the Ponderosa’.  The title’d made him laugh, but it had stung as well.  The last thing he wanted anyone to think of him was that he was some kind of pampered rich boy. Those who knew him knew different.

But not everyone knew him.

Like that new bunch Pa had hired while he and Anne had been away a few weeks back.  The ones who were working up the fence from him now.  The round-up was coming and he knew they needed extra hands, but there was just something about them.  His father was a good judge of character, but when it came to the round-ups he sometimes hired men he knew could be trouble.  They needed men who were willing to do the dirty work – rough, tough men who could wrassle a steer to the ground with one hand tied behind their back.  Deets, Brewer, and Carter were certainly that.  Deets was the oldest and the largest, weighing in somewhere around three hundred pounds.  He looked to be around forty-five.  His age didn’t mean anything though.  He’d seen the man tackle Brewer, who was also of a good size and closer to twenty, and take him down in five minutes flat.  Deets hadn’t even come up breathing hard.  Deets was tall, with dark skin for a white man, and there was a slight upturn to his eyes like, somewhere in his past, one of Hop Sing’s cousins might have snuck into the line.  Brewer looked like he might be part Indian.    The last of them, Aiden Carter, was slight-built like him, but not as well muscled.  Carter had dark curly hair and today was wearing a light shirt and gray pants.  The first day they’d worked,  the trio had greeted him cordially enough, but he didn’t like the way they looked at him.  Deets treated him like a rival and Carter, well, Carter….

He looked at him like he was the mother lode or something.

Deets saw him looking now.  Putting down the sledge hammer he held, the big man rolled down the sleeves of his checked shirt and started walking toward him.  Carter and Brewer followed closely behind.

“Is there something you desire from me, Mister Cartwright?” Deets asked as he halted a few feet away, sweat glistening on his rolling muscles as he flexed them, showing off like a cock striking at the ground.  “Perhaps you think I am not working hard enough?”

“Look, Deets,” Joe said with a sigh.  “You’ve had a chip on your shoulder since the day my Pa hired you.  Why don’t you give it a rest?”

Deets was seven inches taller than him.  He leaned in menacingly, emphasizing that difference.  “Why don’t you make me, Little Joe?”

Hardly anyone called him that anymore.  In fact, he preferred they didn’t.  It reminded him too much of his absent brothers.

“Maybe I will,” he replied, completely unruffled.

The big man stared him down for another heartbeat or two and then leaned back and roared.  A second later he slapped him on the shoulder so hard it nearly drove him to the ground.

“I like you, Cartwright!  You have the heart of a warrior!”

Joe blinked.  This was hardly the outcome he’d expected.  “You…you don’t want to fight me?”

“On the contrary, I would be honored to meet you in battle.”

“Battle?”

“Unfortunately, I have been ordered to take the coward’s path.”

“Who are you calling a ‘coward’?” Carter sniveled.

Joe looked from one to the other.  “What is this all about?”

Brewer  stepped between them and drew his gun.  His lip curled with a sneer as he said, “This.  It’s time you come with us, Mister Cartwright.”

Joe looked from one to the other.  There were three of them and one of him, but only one was armed.

It was about even.

“Ah,” Deets said, nodding.  “You will not surrender without a fight.”

“I sure as Hell won’t!” Joe shouted.

And charged.

 

Ben Cartwright shifted in his chair.  He was seated behind his desk working on paperwork.  It seemed he did more and more of this every day and spent less and less time in the saddle.  Most of the hard work and rough-riding he’d been forced to turn over to Joe, not because his son insisted, but because the time had come at last to admit to himself that he simply could not do it anymore.  When he felt like complaining, his thoughts turned to Dan Tolliver[2].  Dan had refused to admit he was getting old and that refusal had almost cost his son his life.  Joe had been the one to tell Dan that a man had to move on, to find something he was capable of doing – maybe just sit back and pass on what he had learned. It was hard, but he was ready.  His life had been good.  He’d spent it carving out an empire – creating a legacy to leave to his sons – and it was time to pass it on.

Sadly, Joe was the only son he had left.

The irony was, of all of the boys, Joe was the one he had most feared would not live to see old age.  Adam had always been so sensible, so steady, and Hoss….  Ben choked to think of his gentle middle boy who had been taken from them so suddenly and so senselessly.  Hoss, well, he had been as rock steady as the earth itself.  Joe had always been reckless and impulsive, so full of anger, and impossible to control.  Now, he was going to be a father himself.  Ben shook his head as a smile chased away the aches and pains.

He was going to be a grandfather.

The thought of it was bittersweet as the reality of Joe’s first child who lay buried in the same grave as his first wife.  He’d loved Alice.  He’d mourned her loss nearly as much as his son had.  For a long time he believed Joe would never dare to love again, but then Anne had returned.  They’d had a special bond, the two of them.  Just like Joe had with Carrie.  A bond that, with time, had turned to true love.

A soft footfall alerted him to the fact that his daughter-in-law had come into the room.  She was carrying a bouquet of autumn flowers.  Hop Sing came out of the kitchen to take them from her and the two of them laughed as they exchanged a few words.  Anne, though forceful and quixotic at times as Joe’s mother had been, was a welcome addition to their home.  She loved his son and that was all that mattered.

With a familiar and long missed swish of skirts, Joe’s wife came to his side.  “How are you this evening, Pa?” she asked.

Pa.  Joe had insisted.  He had a daughter now in the place of two sons.

“I’m fine, Anne.  How are you?”

She sighed.  “Waiting on Joe.  You know, I think he’d work twenty hours a day if you let him.”

“There’s little I do or do not ‘let’ Joseph do anymore.”  He smiled.  “It’s your job now to rein him in.”

She turned and looked out the window above the dining table.  “He’s like a stallion, isn’t he?  With that mane of silver hair blowing wild in the wind and his muscles rippling in the sun.”

While he had never considered describing his son in quite that way, he could appreciate the image.  “You’ve tamed him.”’

Anne pivoted toward him.  She looked ill.  “Have I?”

Ben rose and went to stand beside her.  “I meant that as a compliment.”

“It’s just, I would never want to change Joe.  I hope you know that.”

He leaned down and kissed the top of her head.  “Life and time change us all.  Now, why don’t you go up and get ready for supper?  I’m sure Joe will be home shortly.”

He watched until she had mounted the stairs and headed toward the wing he had given to the pair.  After what happened to Alice, Joe had decided to stay in the ranch house rather than build his own.  Here, there were eyes and ears other than his to guard his wife and child-to-be.

Rising from his seat, the older man crossed to the door and opened it and looked out, half expecting to see a man clothed all in black walking his way.  He was too old to wait like Joe by the fence post.

But he never stopped hoping.

 

Joe Cartwright swayed on his feet, but he didn’t go down.  His lip was bleeding.  Hell, just about everything on him was bleeding from his forehead where Deets had just landed a good punch to his knees where they’d scraped the ground when he fell, cutting through the fabric of his gray trousers.

“This is pointless,” he heard Carter say.  “End it!”

Deets spat on the ground.  “I would not expect you to know anything of honor, worm.  You who work in Intelligence spend your days in the dark like the gagh, cowering beneath the belly of a rock!”

Joe’s eyes went from one man to the other.  He hated to side with the big guy, but it seemed doing so might make his life longer.

Raising his fists again, Joe tried to look fierce.  “Come on,” he demanded.  “It’s not…over until it’s over.”

Carter looked at him with disdain.  “Oh, it will be over soon for you, Cartwright.  You’ll be dead.”

If that was their goal, why not kill him now?  “You’re bluffing.”

A strange weapon appeared as if by magic in Carter’s pale hand.  It resembled a gun but was too compact.  And there was no barrel.  As the man with the dark blond hair spoke, he aimed it at him.  “Try me.”

“He cannot die now,” Brewer stated, speaking for the first time.  “Neither the time nor place are right.  Our orders are to deliver him to Bodie alive, and then to collect our fee.”

The name sent chills shivering through him. Bodie.  Adam had warned him about it – if the figure he had seen in his dreams was Adam.

“I see you’ve heard of it,” Carter said, his upper lip twitching.

“I have and I’m not going there.”

“Deets.”

Before Joe could think to move the giant of a man had hold of him.  He pinned his arms to his back even as Carter swooped in like a carrion bird scouting out supper to come.  “You have a choice, Mister Cartwright.  You can come with us willingly, or I will order Brewer to give you some incentive.  Perhaps that pale thing you have taken for a mate….”

Joe froze.  Visions of his home, his wife, his child going up in flames swam before his blood-shot eyes.  A woman was at the window of the burning house looking out at him, pleading for him to save her.  It was Alice.  And behind her was Anne.

“No,” he said simply.  “No.”

Carter’s pale eyes flicked to the powerfully built man.  A challenge passed between them.  “Deets, stand down,” he ordered.

Deets bristled.  Then he nodded.  “It is my regret,” he said, seeking Joe’s gaze and holding it, “that you will not die in battle as you deserve.  You are a man of honor.”

‘Thank you’ just did not seem the right thing to say.

“Bind him!” Carter ordered.  Brewer was the one who complied, roughly taking his hands and drawing them up behind his back where he bound them with some sort of twine.  When he was done, the small man ordered, “Get the wagon and put him in the back.”

Joe knew once he was in the back of that wagon he’d lost any hope of escape.

“Pa will be looking for me,” he warned.  “And Sheriff Coffee.”

“They will not find you.”

“Why not?” he asked.

Joe watched as Carter caught his green coat from the fence and then came to stand before him.  “Because you will be buried so deep in the bowels of the Earth that no one will find you.  Your fleshly form will be left to rot until you are nothing but a pile of bones and a story to be told to an audience that has no interest in the tale.”

Joe’s eyes misted even as his jaw grew tight.  “Why?  Tell me why.”

The thin pale-skinned man looked directly at him.  “I suppose you deserve to know.  Your death and burial in the Bodie Mine will serve as a catalyst,  It will echo down the centuries until it reaches one man, a man who – thanks to your capture today – will be reborn.”

They were mad.  The lot of them.  But that meant little.  Mad or not, his death was the only thing that would satisfy them.

Joe bit his lip and considered his options.  Finally he decided that if he was going to die, it would be on his own terms.  Bracing himself, he called upon his waning strength for one more attempt – one more chance to break free and smell the open air.  One more –

Deets was there, looming over him again.  There was a pistol in his hand, poised to slap him in the side of the head.  Regret filled the big man’s eyes, not for what he was doing, but for the way he was being forced to do it.

Deet’s hand moved.  Joe felt steel contact flesh even as Carter uttered words he would only half-hear.

“Good night, sweet prince.”

 

Adam stopped at Spock’s side.  The Vulcan was rising to his feet.   “I have been considering the circumstances in which we find ourselves and have come to a conclusion concerning our proper course of action.”

“Yes?”

“I believe it best we advise your brother as to the threat facing him.”

Adam’s black brows shot up.  “Tell Joe?  About me?  About you, and where you come from?”

Spock nodded.  “He is already aware of me through the link, and while the truth has not entered his conscious thinking, it is locked in his subconscious and should render the shock…acceptable.”

Well, that was encouraging.

“Why?”

The Vulcan’s eyes flicked to the field where Joe was working.  “It would be well if one of us traveled ahead to Bodie.  I believe it should be you.”

“Why me?”

Spock hesitated.  “You have a working knowledge of mines, do you not?  And are an architect?”

“Yes.”

“You will, therefore, have a better grasp of the layout of the mine.  If you brother is taken and ends there, it is imperative that we have a better way to reach him.  Before….”  The Vulcan paused.  His black eyes narrowed.

“Before?”  Adam drew in a sharp breath.  He was still wrapping his brain around time travel, but one thing he understood was that this man – this alien – had been moving through it for some time.  “Spock, have you been here before?  In this place?  At this time?”

The Vulcan did sigh this time.  “It was not my intention to indicate that.”

“Meaning ‘yes’.”  Adam bristled.  “By all that’s holy, why didn’t you tell me?”

“The knowledge would have served no purpose other than to confuse you.”

The dark-haired man was putting it together.  “So you were here before, in eighteen-seventy-six, in Bodie – with Joe?”

Those dark eyes held his.  “Yes.”

“You said he was kidnapped and left at the bottom of the mine, and that we had to stop him from going there.  Which means you weren’t able to stop him before.”  A chill ran the length of his spine.  “What happened the first time?  What happened to Joe?”

Spock’s voice was quiet.  “I made a miscalculation.  Your brother died.”

Adam stumbled back.  What did that mean?  Joe died?  Joe was alive now, in the next field, hammering away at fence posts.  His brother hadn’t yet been to Bodie, but he’d already died in Bodie?  Adam pressed his hands to his head and moaned.

Again, the Vulcan’s voice was quiet.  “I can take it all away.  If it is too much for you.  Adam,”  Spock waited until he looked, “even with our travels, this may be too much for you to bear.”

He was shaking.  “But you need me, right?  That’s why you pulled me out of my own time and took me with you?  You need me to save Joe.”

“You are the random element.  The past has not been repeated, it is renewed.”  Spock pursed his lips.  “I was in the mine.  I was not able to reach your brother in time.  There was a moment, a window when he might have come to me, but he would not.  He did not trust me.”

Adam nodded.  “And you knew he would trust me, no matter what.”

Spock hesitated.  “I do not have a biological brother, Adam, but I understand the bond.  It is the same with James Kirk and me.”

The admission had taken something out of him.

Adam shook himself, trying to forget what he’d just heard, or at least pushing it away until he had time to process it. The only thing that was important was that Joe was in danger and this man – this alien – for whatever motivation of his own, was Hell-bent on saving him.

“Well,” he said at last, “if we keep close enough watch on Joe my knowledge of that mine will be unnecessary.  This time we’ll keep him from ending up there.  I say we stick together….”  Adam broke off what he had been about to say.  Spock had moved toward the field where Joe was working.  The Vulcan rarely showed any emotion. He was showing it now.

Adam looked.

Joe was gone.

 

 

 

THREE

 

It was after supper and Joe was still not back.  Ben had talked to Anne and had a hard time calming her fears, but in the end had managed to convince her that it was not all that unusual for any of the men to be out late, or even all night.  Things came up, he said, unexpected things that needed tending.  If Joseph was not back by morning, he promised, he’d go looking himself.

In the end it had taken her mother’s soft scolding to get her to bed.

As for him, old habits died hard.  He’d rambled around the house for several hours, interrupting Hop Sing in the kitchen irritating his foreman when he came in to drop off supplies, and finally even irritating himself by how much difficulty he had thinking of Joseph as a grown man who could take care of himself.  He and his youngest had been through a lot together, from the loss of his mother through killing fevers, blindness, and then, that terrible fire that had consumed not only Joe’s house but his hopes for the future.

Feeling everyone of his sixty-odd years, Ben lowered himself into the blue velvet chair that had seen him through it all.  He braced his elbows on the arms and leaned to the  right, resting his chin on his fist.  He’d sat here awaiting the birth of his last boy.  It was here he had tested and teased all of them.  And here, on that awful day in seventy-two, when he’d been informed Hoss had not made it. The thought of it brought tears to his eyes, so he closed them and leaned back.

It was then he heard a voice.

“Mister Cartwright?”

Ben blinked back the tears and looked.  The great room was empty – or so it seemed.

“Who’s there?” he asked, instantly alert.

“Friends,” the man said as his shadow separated from the ones cast by the burning oil lamp on the side table, “whether you believe it or not.”

It was a young blond man, about Joe’s age.  With him came another man, older, a little taller, with ice blue eyes and a genuine smile.  Ben’s own near-black eyes narrowed.  The pair seemed impossibly familiar.

“Who are you?  How did you get in?”

“As to how we came in, it was through the side door into the kitchen.  We saw the light and figured either you or your son were still up.  It was…imperative that we not be seen.”  The blond man paused.  “As to ‘who’ we are – we’ve met before.  Long ago.”

Ben rose and walked to the oil lamp where he spun the thumb wheel, illuminating the pair.  He cast his mind back, thinking over all the ranch hands he had employed in the last fifteen or so years.  When the hook finally sunk into one, he had two reactions – anger, and then astonishment.

“Kirk…”  He turned toward the older man.  “And…Doctor McCoy.”  Ben shook his head.  “It can’t be.  You haven’t…aged a day.  How can that be?”

McCoy shrugged.  “Good breeding?”

Ben stumbled back to his chair and sat down.  He closed his eyes and ran a hand over his face. “I must be dreaming.”

Several heartbeats later he felt a man’s hand on his arm.  He looked up to find Doctor McCoy standing by his chair.  “We’re real, Ben, just as real as the threat to your son.”

“Joseph?”  There was only one to worry about now.  “What about…?”  Ben halted.  These men.  They had been at the Ponderosa the day Joe and Adam disappeared.

How dare they?

The blond man he knew as Jim Kirk all those years ago followed his thoughts without him expressing them.

“As I said, Mister Cartwright, you have no reason to trust us.  Our acquaintance twelve years back lasted a day or two and ended in mysterious circumstances.  We…can’t explain to you why or how we came, or why we left when we did.  But then – as now – it has to do with the welfare of your remaining son.”

“There are men who want to hurt him,” the doctor said softly.

“Men?” he asked, looking from one to the other.  “Other men than you?”

“We don’t want to hurt Joe, Ben,” Jim said, taking a seat on the edge of the low table that butted up against the settee.  “A friend of ours,” he glanced at the doctor, “a man we both respect and care for found out your son was in danger.  He came here in order to help him.  The trouble is, our friend ended getting lost.  We’ve come back to find him.”

“Why was Joe – is Joe in danger?”

McCoy answered.  “We don’t know.  But there are men hunting him.  Bad men, Ben.

“This time we have other friends with us.  We think we can stop them, but we need your help –  and trust – as well as that of your son,” the blond man said.  “If we could speak to him?”

“Joe isn’t here.”

The two men exchanged glances.  It was Jim Kirk who was immediately on the alert.  “If Joe’s not here, where is he?”

Ben glanced at the stairs.  “He…didn’t come home tonight.  I told Anne – his wife – that he probably ran into something that delayed him and made camp for the night.”  The older man paused. “I assured her he would be home in the morning.”

“Good God!” McCoy breathed.  “Jim, you don’t think….  Are we too late?”

Jim was on his feet in an instant.  “What was your son’s last position?”

Ben’s fingers gripped the armrests, the knuckles gone white.  “In the north pasture, mending fences.”

The blond man was already on his way to the door.

“Jim,” McCoy called gently.  “We’re supposed to rendezvous with the others, remember?”

“Damn!”  Kirk spun to look at his friend.  “All right.  We’ll keep that and then head out.”  He turned and looked at him.  “Mister Cartwright, you have my word that – if it is within our power – we will find your son and bring him back to you.”  His eyes flicked to the doctor.  “Come on, Bones.”

Jim’s hand was on the door before Ben could find his feet.  “Jim!” he called.

The blond man spun back toward him.

“Who…who are you?”

McCoy was at his side.  They both looked at him.

“Like we said,” Kirk replied, “friends.”

And then both of them were gone.

 

As Ben Cartwright followed the two men out into the night, watching them mount two horses and ride until their forms became one with the descending shadows of the night, a slight female form stepped out of the others cloaking the head of the stair that led to the great room.  Her eyes on the older man, she quickly descended without a sound and passed into the kitchen.  Once there, Anne Cartwright gripped the edge of Hop Sing’s preparation table, breathing deeply to steady her nerves.  She didn’t know who those men were, but she could hear the truth in their voices.  They believed Joe was in deadly danger.  Someone had taken him.

Someone who meant to harm or, maybe kill him.

Anne glanced at her attire.  She was wearing her night dress.  It didn’t matter.  Nothing mattered but finding the father of her child and making certain he was safe and whole.  Looking out of the kitchen window, she checked to see if Ben was still there.  He was.  His back was bent.  He looked like he’d aged twenty years.

She watched Ben return to the house a few minutes later with his head down, as though he feared the worst had already happened, and head for his office.

Once her father-in-law was settled, Anne slipped out the side door and headed for the stable.  There would be spare boots there – too big, but they’d do.  Joe had ridden out on a sturdy work animal that morning, leaving his current Paint behind.  He called this one Cochise too.  The horse knew her.  It would carry her without question.

After finding a spare pair of Joe’s boots and stuffing the toes so they wouldn’t fall off her smaller feet, Anne saddled Cochise and mounted.  Pointing the horse’s nose toward the open door, she moved him outside and then leaned down and breathed next to his ear.

“Cooch, Joe’s in trouble.  Find Joe.”

The horse blew air out of his nostrils and nickered, and then he flew like the wind.

 

Nyota Uhura was standing at the bar in the Bucket of Blood saloon watching the crowd.  She glanced at the clock. Her shift ended in thirty minutes and she was supposed to meet with the Captain and the others in approximately two hours at a point halfway between the city and the Cartwright ranch.  So far the only things she’d managed to collect were propositions, a couple of drunken proposals, and a coarse handprint on her rear.  It had been interesting at the start of her day to watch the cowboys and miners file in one by one and take note of her presence.  One, who sounded like he was from one of the southern states, had complained to the Bucket’s owner, saying he had polluted the atmosphere of the establishment by employing a ‘Darkie’.  Nyota’s lips curled.  He had quickly been shouted down by a dozen others and then taken by the collar and thrown into the street amidst cheers and boos.

Apparently, she was considered rather exotic by the rough and tumble white men who frequented the bar and, when she began to sing, they’d hung on every word and every sashay of her ample hips.  She’d gone from table to table, playing up to them, running fingers along their scruffy sun-burnt faces as she searched each one for a sign of anything out of the ordinary.  For the greater part of the day she had found nothing.

That had changed five minutes ago.

The Bucket had the stereotypical swinging doors that ushered sober men in and drunks out.  She’d heard them swing a hundred times since she’d started her day.  Still, there was something different the last time it happened.  Maybe it was the hush that fell on the room.  Maybe it was the fact that all heads turned.

Maybe it was the man who made them turn.

She was waiting on a tray of drinks and doing her best not to stare.  The man was dressed in black from his hat to his snakeskin boots, and had his gun tied down just like all of the illustrations she’d seen of gunslingers in the Wild West.  Nyota’s beautiful face formed a half-smile.  So not all stereotypes were untrue.  But unlike those illustrations, his skin was neither tough as leather nor burnt brown by constant exposure to the sun.  It was white.  Pure white.  So was his hair.  But his eyes, his eyes….

They were crimson.

She recognized him as an albino, a person effected by a genetic disorder that resulted in a lack of pigmentation of the skin.  Other than a thin band of skin at his wrists, where his sleeves failed to meet with his gloves, and his face, he was entirely swathed in cloth, most likely to protect that sensitive skin.  Just looking at him set off all the alarm bells her academy training had given her.  She didn’t know how she knew, but somehow she did.  This man was not from this time anymore than she was.

She wondered if he could tell the same thing about her.

“Here, you are, Nyota,” the barkeep said.  “Take this to table three and then you can call it a night.”  He looked her up and down and shook his head, making a sort of ‘yummy’ sound.  “Best thing I ever did, hiring you.”

She leaned in and ran a finger under his chin.  “Thanks, honey.  Best for me too.”

The big man gulped.  She held the pose for a minute, tempted to pull her finger toward her to see if he drifted after it like that ancient cartoon character transported by the thought of a delicious treat.  She let him loose and watched his jaw fall toward the counter.  Picking up the tray, Uhura held it to one side and made her way through the crowd, flirting as she went.  As it happened, table three was right next to where the black and white gunslinger had decided to take a seat.

Smiling at the men who had ordered the whiskeys she carried, she lifted them from the tray and placed them on the table.  Then, without looking at the albino, she headed back to the bar.  It wouldn’t do to let him know she was interested, and he didn’t look like the type that would play any sort of game.  It was better to remain aloof and then let the captain know about him.  If he posed any kind of threat – other than to the men in the Bucket – they’d soon find out.

Five minutes later the handsome Black woman left the back room of the bar and headed for the door.  Night was falling and the fading sun painted the dusty path in front of the saloon orange-red.  She’d just stepped off the boardwalk and into the street when she felt someone take hold of her arm.

“Mister, if you know what’s good for you, I’d advise you let go,” she said as she turned.  Then, she fell silent.

It was the albino.

His crimson eyes were lit by a sort of immoral delight as if, like a child, he knew the secret to the game and she did not.

“I’ll let go once I deliver my message,” he said.

She held still.  “Message?”

“Tell your captain, Curran Theron is here.”

“Curran Theron.  That’s it?”

He nodded and did as he said.  He let go.

“One more thing,” Theron added as he backed into the shadows.

“What’s that?” she challenged.

“He cannot win.”

 

“I keep tellin’ ya, there ain’t no one in Virginia City answerin’ to that there description!  Are you deef?”

Montgomery Scot folded his arms over his tartan sash.  “Arrre ye surre, Mon?” he asked, laying it on thick.

“Son, I been from one end of this here town to the other today, and there ain’t no tall skinny maybe-Asian, maybe-not man with pointy eyebrows who speaks like a perfessor and is dressed all in black, nowhere no how!”

Scotty buried the smile the sheriff’s description brought to his lips.  Was that what he had said?  Appearing to consider what the lawman had told him, he lowered his eyebrows and his voice.   “Noo, ye arrre not pullin’ my leg, arrre ye?”

Roy Coffee’s pale eyes went to what lay just below the hem of his kilt.  “I wouldn’t take hold of one of those pale hairy legs of your’n if’n you paid me!”

The Enterprise’s engineer sputtered.  “Pale!  Skinny!  Mon, I’ll have ye know that those arrre the legs of a Scotsman and thereforrre, farrr betterrr than yours, ye wee sun-baked scantily bewhiskered mon!”

“Listen here,” the sheriff countered.  “I’ve half a mind to throw you into one of my cells for disturbin’ my peace!  I got a lot of things to do to catch up.”  The lawman leaned on his desk and glared at him.  “Now you go on and get outta here!”  With that Roy Coffee turned and headed for the safe at the back of the room.  “God must hate me,” he muttered as he went.  “Why I ever let Ben Cartwright talk me into comin’ back to this here one-horse town, I don’t know.  And what ‘d I ever do to deserve this sort of thing at the end of the day?”  He glanced back to see if the Scotsman had left.

He had not.

“Well, what’re you waitin’ for?”

Scotty remained as he was, arms crossed.  “Just admirrrin’ the law at worrrk.”

“For the love of Pete!  I’m gettin’ my keys and I’m goin’ home, and….”  He was working at the combination.

It wasn’t working.

“Dag-nab it!”

“Could you use a wee bit of help, Sheriff?” the engineer asked.

“I know enough to get my own safe open,” he snapped, fiddling with the dial and listening to the tumblers.  “Now what in Sam Hill’s wrong with this thing?”

“I’m handy with locks, if I do say so myself.  Arrre you surrre you don’t want me to take a look?”

Roy let out a sigh as big as the Ponderosa.

“Good!” Scotty said, smacking his hands together.  “Out of my way, lad.”

Leaning down he listened.  Compared to the Enterprise security systems, opening an old-fashioned tumbler lock was like taking candy from a baby.  Scotty worked it one way and then the other and then stood back as it clicked and opened.

And cooed with admiration.

Reaching into the safe he pulled out a bottle that sat next to the sheriff’s keys.  It carried the Rosebank label and was dated eighteen-forty-five.   His eyebrows peaked as he asked, “Arrre you a Scotch drinkin’ mon, then?”

The sheriff actually smiled.  “It ain’t worth drinkin’ if it don’t put hair on your chest.”  Roy Coffee’s blue eyes crinkled.  “Or on your legs, in your case.”

Scotty blinked – and then roared.  Picking up the sheriff’s keys in his free hand, he crossed to the older man.  He held both hands out, offering the keys – and the whiskey.

“Well, sheriff, which will it be?  Arrre you going home to an empty house and a cold supperrr, or would you like to bet who can drrrink who under that therrre desk of yourrrs?”

Roy Coffee stared at him.  He took the keys in his hand and tossed them toward the door.

The lawman thought a moment.

“Pull up your skirts, stranger, and take a seat.  I’ll get the glasses.”

 

Kirk and McCoy rode hard and reached the rendezvous early.  It was his hope that the others might do the same, but when they reached the halfway point between the Ponderosa and Virginia City there was no one there but Sulu.

“Any news of Mister Spock, Captain?” his helmsman asked.

Kirk answered even as he dismounted.  “No.  Nothing.  You?”

“I was lucky.  The Cartwright’s cook was actually in town to visit his uncle.  I was introduced as number thirty-one cousin,” he laughed.  “It’s amazing how quickly I was accepted.”

“Did you have any luck?” McCoy asked as he joined them.

He shook his head.  “From what I can tell, Mister Spock never made contact with Hop Sing.  The only strangers he remembered, and that was vaguely, were you two.  Apparently you made him nervous all those years ago.”

“That’s it, then?”

“Well, there was one other thing.  I don’t know if it means anything.”

“What’s that?” Kirk asked.

“There was a ranch hand, came about that same time, in eighteen-sixty-four.  He thought he was with you.  Hop Sing said he looked like a devil.

“Why’s that?” McCoy asked.

“From the description I would say he was an albino, Captain.  It was the crimson eyes.”  Sulu grinned.  “Hop Sing thought he was a human incarnation of a dragon.”

“An albino?” the doctor asked.  “In the West?  Seems a strange place for a man with an aversion to light to settle.”  He paused. “Jim?”

Kirk nodded.  “I remember him.  His name was…Theron Vance.   Remember, Bones, the man was with Joe Cartwright when the accident happened.  The one that almost killed Joe.”

Bones shrugged.  “Vaguely,” he said.

“We left before we found out what happened to him.” Kirk’s thoughts were whirling.  He turned to Sulu.  “Did Hop Sing say?”

Sulu shrugged.  “Hop Sing said Vance turned into a dragon and flew away.  I asked around.  Apparently he worked for the Cartwrights for a short time and then disappeared.”

“Jim,” McCoy asked, “what are you doing?”

He was tapping his forehead, trying to force a memory to the fore.  “Bones.”  Kirk looked up.  “Bones.  What was it you told me about that crewmember you passed in the hall before you found me in Spock’s quarters?”

McCoy frowned.  “You mean the one with anemia?”

Kirk nodded.  “Could he have been an Albino?”

Bones considered it.  “I didn’t see him well.  Just saw he was too pale.”  He shrugged.  “Could have been.  Is it important?”

He thought it might be.

“Do you think he’s following us, Captain?” Sulu asked.

“Or preceding us,” he said, his tone dark.

“I saw him too,” a new voice added.  “Just now, in the Bucket of Blood.”

They turned to find Uhura had arrived.  She moved forward with her usual determined stride, her silk skirts swishing. “Captain, a man fitting that description came into the Bucket just as my shift ended.  He had a message for you.”

Kirk’s brows lifted.  “For me?”

She nodded.

“What was it?”

“He said to tell you his name was ‘Curran Vance’ and….”

“Uhura?”

“That you cannot win.”

 

Anne Cartwright had dismounted.  Leaving Cochise behind, she followed the strangers who had visited the ranch house through the trees to their rendezvous.  There were four of them now.  It was obvious from what they said that they had been spying on the house and all of them but, for some reason, she didn’t fear them.  It seemed they were here to help.  To help her, to help Ben.

To help Joe.

Drawing closer, she continued to listen to their conversation.

“Has anyone seen Scotty?” the blond man asked.  “Sulu?  Uhura?”

Both of them shook their heads.  The Chinese man said, “The last time I saw him, Captain, he was with Sheriff Coffee.”

Captain?

The captain nodded.  “Probably following a lead.”  He paused a moment and then went on.  “We can’t wait any longer.  From what we understand, Joe Cartwright has disappeared.  Maybe he’s been taken.  We have to get on the trail.  Sulu?”

The Chinese man stepped forward.  “Sir?”

“I want you and Uhura to go to the Ponderosa.  Come up with a cover story.  Sulu, you lean on being cousin number thirty-one and Uhura….”

The negro woman grinned.  “And me?  How do we explain me?”

Kirk eyed her.  “In that get-up, I’m thinking maybe a traveling actress?”  His gaze flicked to the Chinese man.  “Sulu, you can be her servant.”

The woman laughed.  It was a magical sound.  “That works.”

“Keep a watch on the place.  I understand Joe Cartwright has a wife.  Whoever is behind this might try to take her, to make Joe do…whatever it is they want him to do.”

Anne drew a breath.  She hadn’t thought of that – that her rash action might actually put Joe in greater danger.

As the strangers continued to speak, Anne began to back away, intent on returning to Cochise.  She was confused.  What should she do?  Everything that was in her screamed she needed to go after her husband, but, maybe….

Maybe, she should just go home.

When she reached Joe’s horse, she paused to pat his neck.  “Sorry, boy, that I ran you so hard.  I think I made a mistake.  I think – ”

“You didn’t make a mistake, my dear.”

Anne started.  She glanced around but saw no one.  “Who?”

Without warning a white hand clamped over her mouth and a sinister voice whispered in her ear.

“You are precisely where I want you.”

 

 

 

THREE
Joe Cartwright groaned as he opened his eyes.  At first he was confused because the ground seemed to be shaking beneath him.  Then he realized he was in the bed of a wagon.  It was painful to move, but he shifted anyhow, intent on sitting up.  It was then he found he was trussed like a calf with both his arms and his legs bound.  He couldn’t see anything.  There was a tarp thrown over him, probably to hide the fact that he was in the wagon.  He closed his eyes against the pain and nausea consciousness had brought with it and tried to think.  Where had he been?  In the field, right?  Working on the fence.  Someone had been there other than him.  Someone….

Deets.

And Carter and Brewer.

They’d beat the crap out of him.

Even as the memory of what happened flooded back, the wagon he was in jolted to a halt.  He heard someone jump to the ground and then the tarp was thrown back flooding the wagon bed with light. Unaccustomed as his eyes were to the brightness, he winced and turned away even as a pair of powerful hands took hold of his shirt and dragged him up and out of the wagon.

A second later he was  tossed to the ground.

Brewer had done it, but it was Carter who crouched beside him.  The smaller man reached out with a gloved hand and took hold of his face and forced his head up.

“Are you ready to die, Cartwright?” he asked, a sneer curling his lips.  “Because we’re here.”

Joe frowned.  He couldn’t see much past the small sneering man.  Deets was there, watching with his dark brows drawn into a ‘V’ of disapproval.

“This is no way to treat a warrior,” he said.

Carter pivoted.  “I told you to holster your martial scruples, Deets.  They make you and others like you weak.”

The ‘V’ deepened and was accompanied by a growl.  “How dare you!”

Carter rose to his feet.  He went toe to toe and forehead to chest with the bigger man.  “Because I am in charge and High Command will have your head – and other parts of your anatomy – slowly and painfully removed one at a time if you disobey me.”  Carter turned slightly.  “Brewer come here.”  Pivoting back he added, “You two get him up!”

Joe’d seen a panther laying in wait, biding his time, knowing that time would come.

That was the look Brewer had.

“Sir!” he spat.

Brewer took hold of him on one side and Deets on the other, and they drew him to his feet.  It was all he could do to stand.  The ropes had cut off the circulation in his feet.  Tears flooded his eyes as they were forced to bear his weight, but he refused to cry out.

Carter was pacing before him.  After a minute, he stopped and met his gaze. “Do you know where you are, Joseph Francis Cartwright?”

He hadn’t really paid attention.  He’d assumed they were somewhere in the woods beyond the Ponderosa.  Now, looking, he realized it was unknown territory.  There were few if any trees.  Mostly it was rock and….

And a sign that read ‘Bodie’.

Carter chuckled.  “Now, you get it.  This is the end of the line for you, Cartwright.”

Joe licked his lips.  His voice cracked when he spoke.  “Why?”

The look out of the man’s eyes reminded him of a coiled snake about to strike.  Carter drew closer and used that gloved hand to take hold of his chin and force him to meet his stare.

“You’re going to die, Cartwright, and you’re never going to know.”

There was a moment of silence into which Deets spoke.  “This is not the way of our people or the code of the warrior.  Release him!  Let him fight for his life.”  The imposing man paused.  “He is a worthy opponent.  Let him die with honor.”

“A death with ‘honor’ is not in the contract, or have you forgotten that Deets?  If we want use of the manipulators beyond this, then we do what my people ordered us to do, which is cooperate with Curran.  And that is to leave Cartwright bound and gagged in the bottom of Bodie Mine with one of them on his wrist.”

‘You have to be careful, Joe,’ the ghostly Adam had said.  ‘They’re coming for you.  Whatever you do, don’t go to Bodie.’

Joe began to struggle.  Death here, above ground, was preferable to one buried in complete darkness beneath the earth’s surface, gasping for air.  He fought hard, pulling against Brewer and Deet’s strength in what he knew was a losing battle.  If he could only make them mad enough – make them strike him so hard he’d never get up again.  If only –

“Joe?”

The voice took him by surprise.  He looked up and the world – stopped.

“Joe, I’m so sorry.”

There was a man on a horse.  Though it had been twelve years, he recognized him.  It was the man who had come back from Virginia City with him close to twelve years before, the man who had stood by as a group of other men trailed him, bent on taking him for some unknown reason – the man who had calmly and quietly said –

You cannot escape.

Theron Vance was seated on Cochise, his crimson eyes laughing.

Anne was in his arms.

 

As Adam Cartwright galloped alongside Spock, he tried not to think about what they might find when they arrived at Bodie.  In spite of everything they had done, it seemed nothing had changed.

Joe was still going to end up at the bottom of that damn mine.

When he was at college he’d taken part in debates about the nature of time and joined in the speculation about whether or not, if one traveled into the past, he could change it.  There were two schools of thought.  The first said ‘yes’.  Man was not a creature out of control.  He could choose his own destiny.  But there was another school that said that time flowed just like a river and, inevitably, no matter how hard you fought against it, the rushing waters would pull you back to the same place.

He felt like he was drowning in time.

Spock had said little once they realized Joe was gone.  The set of the Vulcan’s jaw spoke the words that would not come.  Spock was determined not to fail again like he had the first time.  There had been that moment, the one he told him about, when Joe could have been saved.  His little brother had embraced fear for just a second too long and that had been the end of him.

Could he – would he be able to redirect that river?  If it was his hand reaching out, his voice calling, would Joe react fast enough?  Could he snatch him from his fate?

From…death.

The sun had risen as they mounted their horses and began the thirty mile ride to Bodie.  They had pushed the animals mercilessly until a sheen of foam coated their sides.  Common sense dictated they stop to let them rest.  If the horses keeled over and they had to continue on foot, it would do Joe no good.  Still, like a racehorse at the gate, Adam champed at the bit, feeling each wasted second as the stab of a knife in his side.  Was Joe in the mine yet?  Was his brother still alive?

Or was he already buried under a ton of rock.

They were riding again now, moving forward.  The sun was mounting the sky toward noon.  They should be there soon and then he would know the truth.  He’d know if time could be rewound.

But did he want to?

 

Curran Theron gestured to Deets.  When the Klingon came forward, he ordered him to lift the woman from the saddle and place her on the ground.  As Deets complied, albeit grudgingly, Theron dismounted and crossed to stand before the bound.  The look out of Joe Cartwright’s eyes was delicious.  In it was a mingling of indignation, rage, and out and out fear.  Theron closed his eyes, drawing in the sensation, feeding on it.

Enjoying it.

“You will not shout or attempt to get away, do you understand?  Do so, and the woman dies instantly.”

Cartwright nodded.  “Let her go,” he pleaded.  “I’ll do whatever you want.”

Theron scoffed.  “You will do what I want whether I let her go or not.”

“If you harm her, I’ll – ”

“What?” the man with the crimson eyes queried.  “Burst forth miraculously from your bonds and kill me?  I think not.  I think you’ve used up your quota of miracles,” he scoffed.  “My friend Deets knows how to secure an enemy.  He has been schooled in every aspect of the art of war since he was old enough to walk.”

The human’s eyes were on the woman.  “Let her go.  Please.”

The white-skinned, white-haired man, who was no man but one of the Originators simply said, “No.”

Theron knew what was coming and he welcomed it.  He’d witnessed in his many trips through time and space what kind of a man Joseph Cartwright was.  Fury kindled in the rancher a strength that surpassed anything human – perhaps, anything Klingon.  Bound as he was, the human struck out, ramming his shoulder into Brewer and breaking free of Deets’ grip.  His feet were still bound as were his hands.  He knew he couldn’t do anything, but still, he was determined to try.

He failed, of course.  Deets brought the handle of his nineteenth century weapon down on the back of Cartwright’s head and dropped him at his feet.

As the woman softly sobbed, calling out for a man she would never touch again, Theron knelt at Joseph Cartwright’s side.  He took hold of that thick, curly silver and gray hair and lifted the human’s head and looked into his dazed eyes.

“Your only child will be born on another world, in a place where the meaning of honor is not known.  He will be reared among my people and given power over time and space.  And he will use it.  In time his descendants will learn to use it too and then, instead of bringing order to the galaxy, the last of your line will bring chaos, disorder, and destruction.”  Theron leaned in close.  “Would you like to know his name, father of all that will come?  Would you?”

Joe grunted, barely conscious.

“I will tell you what it is,” he whispered.

“James…Tiberius…Kirk.”

 

James Tiberius Kirk sighed.  He’d sailed the stars.  In a way, he had conquered them.  But now, when he needed to own them and to make them work in his favor, they’d turned against him.

His horse had thrown a shoe.

“Jim.  Here,” McCoy said, thrusting the reins of his own mount toward him.  “Take mine.  I’ll follow as soon as I can.”

“Bones, I don’t want to leave you out here alone.”

“What are you worryin’ about?  I’ll be just fine,” the Georgia doctor drawled.  “I’m a tough old bird.  There isn’t an animal within a hundred miles would want to take a bite out of me.”

Kirk scowled.  “It’s not the four-footed kind I’m worried about.”

McCoy sobered.  “Jim, we can’t know for sure, but I just think there’s no time to lose.  And somehow, I think when you find Joe Cartwright that you’ll find Spock too.”  His friend hesitated.  “They need you.  I can get by without you.”

“Oh, you can, can you?”

McCoy shrugged.  “I’ll manage.  Scotty’s bound to be along soon.”

Kirk frowned.  In all the excitement he had forgotten about his engineer.  “What do you suppose is keeping him?”

The doctor snorted.  “I’m laying odds on the Bucket of Blood.  That is, if they have Scotch behind that counter.”  McCoy approached him and laid a hand on his shoulder.  “Really, Jim.  Go.  That young man needs you.”

Kirk nodded, giving in.  “Head back to the Ponderosa.  Find Sulu and Uhura and all of you stay put.  Between Spock and Joe Cartwright, I’ve got enough to worry about.”

“God speed, Jim.”

As McCoy began to lead his lame horse back the way they had come, Kirk leapt into the saddle of the doctor’s mount and settled in.  He’d been surprised to find just how natural it felt, how at home he felt on a horse.  He knew there were adventurers and trailblazers in his past, and knew as well that much of what he was had been written in his genetic code long before he was born.  He wondered now if there was a cowboy or two, or maybe a land baron like Ben Cartwright in the mix.

Or someone like his son.

Gripping the reins tightly, the blond man signaled to the tired animal that he expected him to ride like the wind.  The horse must have had some trailblazers in his past as well.  It snorted and stamped the ground, and then sprinted forward in a nineteenth century equivalent of Warp Four.

Kirk snorted too and, leaning forward close over the saddle, relished the wind in his hair.

 

Joe struggled without success against the two men who dragged him ever close to the mine’s entrance.  He’d kept his gaze locked on his wife’s as long as he could.  He wanted to tell Anne so much – that he loved her, that he would do everything he could do to survive and return to her and their child.

That he would throttle the bastards who threatened them with his bare hands if given a chance.

She’d looked so small, so helpless, so – lost – standing there.  He heard some of the words Theron spoke after Deets had bashed him in the head.  What he heard hadn’t really made sense.  The trouble was, he didn’t know if his head was so muddled from the blow that he misunderstood them, or if the Albino was mad and actually thought he could travel through time and space.  It made him think of that book Adam had read to them one snowy winter called, ‘The Last Man’.  He’d had a hard time following it, and had slept through more of it than been awake, but he remembered it talked about a far flung future where men traveled in airships and had become so full of pride that they challenged God.

‘Remember what the Good Book says, Joseph, Pride goes before destruction’, he heard his Pa say in his head.  A man who believes he knows more than God is doomed to failure.’

He had to hold onto that.  Had to believe it was not happening again.  He didn’t care what happened to him, but he couldn’t lose Anne and the baby, not the way he had Alice and his first child.  God couldn’t be so cruel, so…heartless.  This time it had to be him.  If someone died, it had to be him.  He couldn’t survive it again, just couldn’t.

His Pa’s voice returned.  This time quoting Jeremiah.

‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’

Humbled, he prayed silently as the dark open maw of Bodie Mine claimed him, ‘God, give Anne and the baby a hope and a future.  If you have to take someone, take me.  Please, God, please, let them live.  But whatever God, whatever….”  The tears were flowing down his cheeks freely now.

“Thy will be done.”

Once inside Deets untied his feet and chafed them to return the circulation.  It was pointless.  He wasn’t going to walk to his own death.  So far he’d refused to aid them in any way.  His defiance had brought about another beating – this time from Brewer – during which the two men holding him had had a heated exchange in a language he didn’t know.

Deets forced him up, Brewer took his other arm and they began to drag him again.  As he was hauled along what seemed at least a mile of rough tunnel floor, Joe closed his eyes and tried to gather his strength.  If they eventually left him alone there might be a slim chance he could escape – maybe work his way deeper into the mine and find another exit.  If he was going to try, he had to rest, had to save what little strength he…had….

When his body jolted against the floor, Joe moaned and opened his eyes.  It shamed him to realize he’d fallen unconscious.  His head was throbbing from the beating and the blow to the head he’d taken and the pain was casting tiny flecks of light on the mine walls.  Joe closed his eyes and opened them again.  It was then he realized the light wasn’t in his head.  It was real and was advancing toward them.  His vision was blurry so he couldn’t be sure, but he thought it was Carter, carrying a lantern.  As the light grew brighter, Joe began to shiver, not with fear but from the cold.  This far down into the mine the temperature had dropped.  It felt like the inside of a spring-fed cooling room.  Brewer snorted, deriding him as his teeth began to chatter.

When Carter halted before him, Joe saw he was wearing his green.  That jacket was warm.  Carter must have been cold.    “Bring him!” Carter surprised him by ordering.

And then they continued on.

He didn’t know how long they traveled this time.  As they moved along the primitively hewn corridor Joe lost all awareness of it, of where he was and where he had been.  Life became one long descent.  Here and there sputtering torches, their flames starved for oxygen, lit the way.  He’d been in mines before.  He knew what that meant.  They were taking him deep – very deep.  So deep it was unlikely anyone would find him.

This mine was going to be his grave.

They’d traveled another five minutes or so when Carter called a halt.  Joe had ceased struggling by that time, his head wound finally lulling him into a state of semi-consciousness where nothing existed but echoing footsteps, the scent of smoke, and the remembrance of light.

“Release him,” Carter ordered.

Four hands obeyed.  Twenty fingers opened.  He fell to the cave floor again and lay there unmoving.  Above him there was a burst of light.  Into it came a pale sneering face.

“Does the condemned man have any last words?”

He was out of energy, but he found enough to do one last thing.

Spit in the man’s face.

Joe tensed.  He knew it was coming.  Out of the dark came a hand with something hard clamped around the wrist.  Whatever it was, it struck him in the side of the head.

In a blur of lightly tanned skin, red pain and green cloth, the lights went out.

 

As he fought against Spock’s Vulcan strength, Adam both hated and admired the man for his ability to control his emotions.  It gave Spock an edge, but it also made him one of the coldest bastards he had ever known.

“That’s my kid brother they’re dragging down into that Hell hole!  Let me go!”

“Adam,” the Vulcan said as he easily restrained him, his tone even and unperturbed, “listen to me.  This has happened before.  The Originator, Curran Theron, is a man of compulsion, driven to assure that his plan for the future of this galaxy unfolds as he demands.  He has a time in mind for your brother’s destruction.  It is not now.  Nothing will happen until it is.”

“How do you know things haven’t changed?  You yourself said I am the random element.  I was not here before.  Maybe my very presence has altered what happened.”  His jaw was clenched, his words were breathed more than spoken.  “Did you consider that?”

The look Spock gave him was almost comical – would have been if things had not been so desperate.  “I have considered all options and concluded there would be no rational reason for Theron to alter his plans.  The odds are fifty-two-point three-five to forty-seven-point-seven-five that the Originator is not aware of your presence.”

Adam gripped the cloth covering Spock’s chest and shook him.  “I’m not betting my little brother’s life on fifty-fifty odds!”

“Fifty-two-point- ”

“Damn it, Spock!” he swore, pushing the Vulcan back.  “Too much can go wrong!  We have to get down there.  We have to get close to Joe before….”  Adam paused.  His gaze went to the Albino.  Theron stood beside a wagon.  They’d just watched him force a bound and gagged woman into it a moment before.  “We have to get to Joe before they blow that mine.”

“Again you forget, Adam Cartwright, that I have been here before,” the Vulcan said, shifting to stand beside him where he could watch Theron’s movements.  “The man named Carter will return in one-point-two minutes and together he and Theron will move off into the trees, leaving Deets as guard and Brewer to set the explosives.  This will take approximately forty-two-point-three minutes including the trip for Brewer both down and back to the surface.  There is a separate entry leading to the place where your brother is being held that can be navigated in twenty-point-two, leaving a window of opportunity of twenty-two-point-one minutes in which to rescue Joseph and return with him to the surface.  If he had not fought me, I would have been able to free him the first time I was here and to escape with him before the charges went off.”  Spock paused.  “This time, you are with me.  He should have no objection to following you.”

Adam drew in a breath.  “There’s only one problem with your theory.”

The Vulcan’s right eyebrow tipped up.  “Indeed.  And what is that?”

Joe’s brother indicated the mine entrance with a nod.

“It’s been three minutes and Carter’s not back.”

 

Kirk had pushed his horse so hard the animal had finally given out and he’d been forced to abandon it by the side of the road.  Now, he was running.

There was no time to lose.

Spock had often remarked on his ‘hunches’, almost but not quite dismissing their possibility.  He’d lived with them his entire life and knew they had nothing to do with logic or anything else that made sense, but were intuitive leaps based on an inner ‘gut’ feeling.  He didn’t really understand where they came from either.  He’d tried to convince himself they were based on cumulative experience. but that fell flat.  He’d had them when he was a boy before he had any experience.  One day he’d asked his mother about it and she’d told him that it was something passed down from generation to generation in her family.  It was this genetically-driven keen insight that had made the men in their family what they were and caused them to succeed where others failed.

Whatever it was – hunch, insight, or intuition – it was screaming now that he had to reach that mine and reach it soon.

As he ran, sprinting forward like an Olympiad, a wry smile parted his lips.  It hadn’t been all that long since he’d fought like a Klingon targ against Bones’ orders that he devote extra time to his physical training.  His friend had lifted his eyebrow and crossed his arms over his chest at the end of his last exam – where he’d been ten pounds overweight – and refused to listen to his excuses that he had no time, that there were other more important things he had to do, that – for God’s sake! – all he did was sit in a chair all day and issue orders, and what the Hell did he need to be able to outrun a sehlat for?

Thanks to Bones, he was barely winded.

He’d passed a sign to the mine about a mile back. Now he was beginning to see signs of habitation; small huts, tents, and the like.  They were empty.  Autumn was here and winter was fast approaching and it seemed the mine, which at this time in its history was unproductive when compared to other richer strikes in the area, had shut down for the season.  He was still puzzled by why Theron had brought Joe here. Why not just kill the youngest of Ben’s sons outright if that was what he intended to do?  No, there was more going on here than simple murder.  There was a reason, at least in the Albino’s mind, that Joe Cartwright had to die at the bottom of that mine.

A reason he wished to Hell he knew.  Though maybe he was over-thinking it.  Maybe Theron was simply insane and Joe’s death in that mine  – and the discovery of an alien artifact in the future – was just his sick way of saying to the galaxy, ‘Theron was here.’

Kirk skidded to a halt when he saw a light appear in the distance.  He stood, panting, catching his breath for a moment, and then advanced forward stealthily.  There were two men standing outside the mine’s entrance.  One was Theron.  He recognized him by his white hair and pale skin.  He was dressed like a gunfighter.  The other man wore a long black coat over his pants and shirt.  There was a familiar look about him.  He was a little dark and a lot wild-looking and would have been counted as a giant in this time.  There was something about the way he held himself and the cast of his eyes he’d seen before.

Where….?

The blond man’s sharp mind rolled back through all the faces he had seen since joining Starfleet.  It finally stopped and recognition clicked into place.  Deep Space Station K7.  The one with the tribbles.

And a ship full of devious, lightly-tanned, round-eared Klingons.

Kirk moved closer so he could see better.  Theron had moved away from the wagon.  There was someone in its bed.  He couldn’t tell if it was Joe, but it made sense that it was.  He’d just determined to slip into the trees on that side of the mine when he sensed as much as saw something move in the shadows to his right.  The blond man stopped, his hand resting on the rough hide of a tree.  It wasn’t one but two men.  They were heading away from the cave’s entrance, going around….

Kirk stiffened.

One of them was Spock.

Almost as if sensing his scrutiny the Vulcan halted and turned his way.  A second later, he was gone.

Kirk hesitated, unsure of his course.  Should he follow his long absent and somewhat errant first officer and confront him, or rescue whoever was in the wagon?  While the Vulcan’s recent actions were a mystery to him, he knew in his heart that Spock would never betray him or the Enterprise and that, while he might not agree with his methods, his friend undoubtedly had a logical reason for everything he had done.

When it came down to it, he either trusted Spock or he didn’t.

This time, he chose to trust.

 

 

FOUR

 

Adam Cartwright stared down a long, dark, nearly vertical shaft.  It was barely more than shoulder-width, though he suspected it widened as it cut into the mountainside  that contained the mine.  He’d seen this kind of exploratory shaft before.  It had most likely been cut early-on in Bodie’s development to allow preparatory access.  Now it led to the medium-sized chamber where Joe was being held.  In his initial trip to eighteen-seventy-six, Spock had discovered it and used it to reach Joe just as Theron’s man ignited the charge to bring the mountain down on top of his brother.  Sadly, Joe had been injured – struck in the head and not thinking clearly – and his reactions had been slow.  His brother’s ability to think had been hampered and his choices dictated by fear.

He could hear it in Spock’s voice.  The sense of failure, the guilt.  The Vulcan’s fingers had brushed Joe’s.  Then he’d lost him and Joe had…died.  His brother had died suffocated in darkness and buried under a ton of rubble.

Alone.

Well, not this time.

Adam swung his legs up and into the shaft.  Spock caught his arm before he could descend.  “You have fifteen-point-five minutes in which to extricate your brother before the setting of the explosives is complete.  You must both be in the shaft before they are detonated or you will be trapped within the mine.  If Carter is there still, you will have to overcome him before you will be able to flee.”  Spock paused.  “You remember Qo’noS?”

Adam nodded.

“That is Carter’s home planet, despite the dissimilarity of facial features and coloring to the people you saw there.  He is of a race that is reared to violence, whose actions are controlled only by their own questionable sense of honor.  You must beware.”

“What are you going to do?”

Spock glanced to the left.  “I will endeavor to free the woman and to overcome the one who holds her.  It is obvious she is someone of importance to your brother.  My calculation would be that she is his wife.”

Adam still could hardly believe it.  Joe.  Married.  It had almost happened so many times in the past that he guessed he had assumed it would never actually happen.

As Adam caught the top of the shaft with his fingertips and began to lower himself into it, he glanced at Spock who was now nothing more than a single lean shadow within the greater bulk of shadows cast by the mountain.

Then he began to slide.

 

Ben Cartwright sat in the darkness of the great room after the two strangers departed, feeling completely useless and out of control – for about fifteen minutes. Then he sprang to his feet and, damning old age and infirmity to Hell, put on his gun belt, wrapped a coat around his diminished frame and placed his hat on his head before aiming straight as an arrow shot from the bow toward the stable.  Once inside he crossed to Buck and patted him on the nose, telling him he was sorry to be taking one of the younger horses, but what he needed tonight was not certainty and experience as much as raw, reckless energy.

Kirk and McCoy already had a half-hour’s head start.

Moving farther into the stable he watched a pair of young freshly broken horses stamp and snort and toss their manes, ready for action. He chose a beautiful high-spirited Appaloosa he’d watched run like the wind only a few days before.  Of course, Joseph had his eye on him.  After all, his youngest son and the animal had a lot in common.  Anne had watched with both admiration and fear as her husband worked to break the animal, barely managing to keep his seat.

It was only fit that this would be the one to bear his son home.

Saddling the horse took longer than Ben would have liked.  By the time he left the barn nearly an hour had passed.  As he walked the Appaloosa out, ready to depart, he saw that it was going to take even longer.  The white-haired man drew in a breath and held it.  He really didn’t have the energy for a fight.

Hop Sing was waving his arms and running toward him.

“Mister Ben!  Mister Ben!!  Do not go, Mister Ben!”

Ben checked his ride.  “Hop Sing, I’m not in the mood to argue –”

“Hop Sing no want to argue.  Hop Sing wish go with you!”

He shook his head. “I appreciate the offer, Hop Sing.”  And he really did.  But he needed to fly like the wind and, while his longtime friend was a fair rider, there was no way the Chinese man could keep up.  “But I need to be on my way now.”  He turned and looked in the direction the two men had gone.  “I may already be too late.”

“Hop Sing come.  Bring wagon.  Maybe need for Little Joe or for Mrs. Joe.”

Ben almost missed it.  Then he snapped to attention.  “Mrs. Joe?”

A soft worried woman’s voice spoke from out of the dark.  “Anne’s gone too, Ben,” Carrie Pickett said as she stepped off the porch.  “I think that child got a notion in her head to go after Joe.”

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed.  “What was Anne thinking?”

The older woman’s smile was sad.  “Only about the man she loves.”

Ben considered their options and then nodded.  “Hop Sing, have Carrie help you pack the wagon with blankets, medicals supplies, and some food and water.  Follow me when you can.  I am going to track those two strangers and I have no idea where the trail will lead me.”

Hop Sing caught hold of the Appaloosa’s reins.  “You be careful Mister Ben.  No want find you in need of wagon too.”

He nodded.  “Thank you, Hop Sing.”  Ben looked at Anne’s mother.  “Carrie?” he called.

“Yes?”

“Help Hop Sing.  And try not to worry.  I’ll bring the children home.”

She raised a hand.  “I’m right sure you will, Ben.”

He started to move and then halted and turned back.  “One more thing.”

Carrie came to stand beside Hop Sing, her pale eyes determined and afraid.  “What is it?”

Ben’s eyes misted.

“Pray.”

 

Spock remained where he was and watched Adam Cartwright descend into the darkness like Earth’s mythic Hermes in pursuit of Persephone.  He’d had little time to spare to consider the possible ramifications of the introduction of this random element into the equation.  Things were happening too quickly and they were unfolding in a slightly parallel line to what had happened before.  The first time he had walked this path Carter had returned to the surface to reconnoiter with Theron, leaving Joseph Cartwright alone.  The fact that the man from Klingon Intelligence had not this time suggested either a betrayal of Theron on Carter’s part, or a successful attempt by their victim to overcome his captors.  In either scenario, both Adam and Joseph Cartwright should be able to make their way to the surface unimpeded unless someone else intervened.

Therefore, the most expedient thing he could do was to make certain Curran Theron was removed from the equation.

From what he had been able to learn, Curran Theron was an Originator – one of the race that had built the Guardian of Forever and created the gateway to time that it was.  The Originators were sworn to non-interference.  The Guardian was meant to be a tool with which man would observe and record history, not seek to alter it.  As a youth Theron had been one of the best and brightest of his people, but he had grown discontent with their guiding principle.  He saw non-interference as weakness.  Curran Theron believed that the Guardian should be employed to meddle.  He believed that, instead of bringing order and peace to the galaxy, its – and his – purpose was to open a door to chaos and disorder.

Since he, Doctor McCoy, and Jim Kirk had passed through the Guardian into time before, their past and present were clearly written there in three intersecting lines.  The rogue Originator had stumbled across these lines.  Studying them, he had come to a conclusion.  There was a man within them whose life could be altered, turning him from an agent of law and order to one of chaos and disorder, thereby changing history.

James T. Kirk

Spock blew out the breath he didn’t know he held.

He had seen some of these images himself.  He’d watched as Jim’s ancestors came to America as explorers, and how they had opened up the young country’s western region, leaving paths behind them for others to follow.  There were so many lives, so many bold choices, all leading to one man – one man in whom all of these characteristics would find ultimate completion.  A man of determination and drive who feared nothing, who at times appeared reckless, but was in reality preternaturally certain that no matter what he did that it would come out right.  A man of checks and balances, one whose anger was tempered by compassion; whose high sense of justice was married with a sense of honor that would not suffer wrong.  A man, Spock thought, whose gut feelings outstripped logic.

Joseph Francis Cartwright.  Benjamin Cartwright’s youngest son.

There had been good men before, and there would be others after him in the captain’s lineage.  But Adam’s young brother was the fixed point upon which the man who would be James T. Kirk hung.

And Theron had determined to destroy him.

The Originators had created the time manipulators for their own purpose and pleasure.  They were mobile devices attuned to the Guardian’s thoughts, that employed the Guardian’s power.  Never interfering, they used them to move through time, observing and watching as nascent races rose and fell, lives were lived and ended, and worlds were born and died.

In time the Originators grew cold and indifferent, as unfeeling as the waves of time they rode.  It was at this time in their history that Curran Theron was born.  As he grew, Theron determined he would be nothing like those who had gone before him.  He would use the power of the Guardian to interfere, to change time and make the galaxy into a place that fit with his own twisted sense of right and wrong.

Curran Theron was quite mad.

And in that madness he had fixated on Joseph Cartwright.  The Originator had studied the rancher, gleaning from the eddies and waves of time shown to him by the Guardian that Joseph and his son were all he needed.  Theron determined the time when the rancher’s son would be conceived and then traveled back to eighteen-seventy-six – before the boy was born – with the intention of killing Joseph, so he could father no other sons.  He would then take Anne, his wife, and their child away with him.  He meant to rear the boy and make him into the father of disorder.  James T. Kirk as he was known would not be there to stop Gary Mitchell from reaching out and destroying universes, or to call out the godlike boy Trelane and stop his devastating childish pranks.  Charlie X would be free to vent his anger on the universe as well and Captain Kirk – Jim Kirk whose intuitive leaps had saved the lives of thousands – would not be there to stop the Horta’s children from being hunted to extinction, prompting their peaceful mothers to start an intergalactis war that would devastate worlds.

Instead, Joe’s seed would develop into one of the most destructive forces in all of time and space.

James Tiberius Kirk with no conscience.

Spock stirred.  Time was passing.  He had lost one point-nine-minutes to idle speculation.  He had noted of late that his thoughts were slightly disjointed.  His calculations and logic slowed.  The Vulcan knew it was the influence of the venom that had been introduced into his system three times now as he used the manipulator.

After the next two times he would join Curran Theron.

He would go mad.

 

It had taken everything in Ben not to push the thoroughbred to a gallop.  He knew the animal would grow exhausted quickly if he did.  Instead he moved forward at a steady trot.

Still, it was nearly impossible to ignore the fear deep inside that drove him.

The two strangers had headed southeast.  The trail would take him into California soon, and into a low mountain range.  He knew the area.  It was dotted with mines, most of which were barely able to sustain their existence.  Ben tried to remember which might still be operating.  He could only recall one.  Ten years after Sutter’s Mill a group of four prospectors had made a rich strike in those hills.  The mine was named after W. S. Bodey, one of the four, for the absurd reason that Bodey had perished that winter in a blizzard and never made it back.  A sign painter had misspelled the man’s name and it had stuck, and soon the town of Bodie – and the mine of the same name – became reality.

Bodie called to him.  He was sure it was there he would find his son.

Gently nudging his mount to put out a little more speed, Ben moved quickly forward.  The road he was traveling was two-pronged.  One path started near the Ponderosa and the other just outside of Virginia City.  They ran in a parallel fashion for some time and then converged and crossed over into California at its southernmost border.  He was nearly there now.  If he calculated right, riding at full tilt through the night, with a change of horse, he should arrive at the mine early the next day.  Hop Sing would be following close behind with the supplies.  He could only pray the Chinese man would find his way.

He had a feeling they would be needing those supplies.

Just as he reached the place where the two paths came together like the rods of a witching stick, Ben heard the pounding of horses’ hooves.  He halted and listened.  It was a party of at least a half-dozen by the sound of it.  With no cover to take, Ben drew his gun and a breath and waited as the strike of hooves grew louder and the riders appeared .

When he saw who was at the head of the party, he let the breath out in a relieved sigh.

“Ben!  What in Sam Hill are you doing out here?” Roy Coffee inquired as he drew alongside him and reined his mount in.  “Why ain’t you at the Ponderosa?”

“I’m looking for Joe.  I’m afraid –”

“Now, if that don’t beat all.  That’s just what we’re up to.  Ain’t it, Montgomery?”

As Roy spoke, he turned to look at the stranger who had come up alongside the lawman.   The newcomer was of moderate build, with dark hair and intense eyes – and wearing a kilt! Beside him was another man, dressed much the same as Hop Sing, and behind that man there was a beautiful negro woman attired as an actress or maybe a dance hall girl.

“Mister Cartwright,” the man said, revealing himself by both tongue and dress to be a Scot, “you dinnae know me and hae no reason to trust me, but believe me when I tell you we’re here to help find your son.”

When Roy saw the look on his face, he chuckled.  “I didn’t quite know what to think of Montgomery either, Ben, but I can tell you this.  If a man holding his liquor is any sign of character, he’s got it in spades!”

“Mister Cartwright.  My name is Nyota Uhura,” the beautiful woman said as she nudged her horse forward.  “My friends and I….  From what we have been able to determine from hearsay and rumor in the town, a band of men have taken your son into California.  We have a friend who is missing as well, sir.  We think he might be with Joseph.  If you will have us, we would like to join with you and offer our help.”

Ben met and held Nyota’s dark eyes.  He read no deception in them, only concern and resolve.

The decision took less five heartbeats.  Ben nodded.  He turned then to Roy.  “I believe they took Joe to the Bodie Mine.”

Roy looked skeptical.  “You got a reason for thinkin’ that, Ben?”

He hesitated.  A slight smile quirked his lips.  “No.”

Roy pulled at his chin.  “But you’re sure anyhow?”

He nodded.

The Asian man beside Nyota looked at her and grinned.  “He sounds like Captain Kirk, doesn’t he?”

Ben stiffened.  “Jim Kirk?”

Montgomery Scott answered for them all.  “Aye, sir.  James T. Kirk.  He’s one of the men whot we’re lookin’ for.”

There was something here, something…

Perhaps an answer to prayer.

“He’s the man I’m following,” Ben replied.  “Kirk, and Doctor McCoy.”

A slow smile spread across the Scot’s face.  “Well, why didn’t ye say so before?  What are we waitin’ for then?”

“Nothin’ I know of,” Roy said.  “Ben?”

Looking from one to the other, Ben knew he had four sure souls at his side.

Now, if they were only in time.

 

It was like going back into the womb.  Adam finished his descent down the shaft and into the mine with a short drop and a tumble to the floor.  He righted himself and then stepped back and pressed up against the clammy cavern wall, anchoring himself so he could find balance in the complete and total darkness.

Only it wasn’t complete.

The black-haired man realized there was an unnatural pallid glow off to his left, some one hundred feet or more away.  In spite of his need for haste, he waited until his eyes adjusted before moving.  It was going to be difficult enough to navigate the mine’s floor without making a false step or sound and he knew he could do it better if he could at least pretend to himself that he could see.  Spock had warned him Carter might still be down here.  He was hoping the Vulcan was wrong.  Maybe the light was something left with Joe, like a lantern.

But no, that would indicate that there was some small shred of compassion in the black souls of his brother’s kidnappers and he knew better.

Half-crouching, half-walking, Adam approached the area with the light.  He halted behind a large stalagmite and used it for cover.  Even with the light it was hard to see, but there were two men – one standing, holding a gun, and the other on the ground.  As the man with the gun shifted and stepped back into the range of the light, a smile broke across Adam’s face.  He couldn’t see his face, but he could see the bright green jacket he wore and the gray pants.

Joe must have turned the tables on Carter and had the upper-hand.

Relieved, Adam rose and stepped in front of the pillar of rock. “Joe!  Joe, thank God!  I was afraid you were….”

Adam’s voice trailed off as the man pivoted to face him and a slow sneer twisted his tightly compressed lips.

It wasn’t Joe.

 

Something woke him.  A voice?  Yeah, that was it.  Big brother’d called his name.  He must have overslept again and Adam was hopping mad that he wasn’t up and doing his chores.  Joe shifted and frowned both at the pain he felt and at the cold hard surface he was laying on.  What’d he done?  Fallen asleep in the barn after a fight?  Or maybe he’d had one of those nightmares, the kind where he’d roll out of bed and wake up on the floor.  It took a lot to pry his eyes open, but he managed it.  When he did, he realized his second thought had been right.

It was a nightmare.

Vance’s cohort, Carter, was standing over him.  He was wearing his green jacket, which confused him.  Had he put it on because of the cold?  Carter was holding a gun and pointing it at…who?  Joe squinted and frowned.  He couldn’t make the other man out.  Whoever it was had dark hair and was dressed all in black.  The man and Carter were arguing.  Joe tried to listen to what they were saying, but the pounding in his head drowned most all of it out.  All he managed to catch was a word here and there.

…Cartwright

…die here

…No

…my brother

Did Carter have a brother?

He did.

No, he had.  Both of them were dead.

Worse than the pain in his head and chest, that realization made Joe moan.

A swift kick in the side silenced him.

The newcomer shouted and his angry words reverberated through the chamber, bouncing from one wall to the other and along the corridor leading to a surface world that was now lost to him.  In response came more words – not from Carter or the man he held the gun on – but from that world above.

“Carter!  Five minutes…  …detonation!  Get…here!”

“I know.  Watch…one while…finish.”

Joe forced his eyes open again and looked up.  Carter’s attention was focused on the stranger and not on him.  He didn’t have a clue who the other man was, but if the bastard who had taken him and whose companions were holding his wife hostage was his enemy, then that meant they were friends.

And friends looked out for one another.

 

Adam remained riveted to the spot, his thoughts flying fast and furious.  Carter and his gun stood between him and Joe.  He knew this scenario was different from the one Spock had described, where the Vulcan had been the one who crawled down the shaft to rescue his brother.  But that didn’t mean that it might not end up the same way, with both of them trapped by a rock slide, only this time it would be the skeletons of both he and Joe the man from the future would find with the Originator’s bracelets on their wrist.

At that thought, Adam’s hazel eyes flicked to Joe.  He let out a small hopeful sigh.  His brother’s hands were tied in front of him.  There was no bracelet on Joe’s wrist.

Yet.

 

In spite of the pain pounding through him, which signaled infection and made him want to cry out, Joe managed to keep his eyes closed and remain still – even when he heard another man join them.  Whoever it was, was shouting, screaming at Carter that it was time to ‘Get out!’  The sneering man must have listened.  All of a sudden he felt someone loose the ropes binding his hands.  Seconds later they took hold of one of his chafed wrists.

Joe opened his eyes a slit.  It was Brewer, not Deets who stood nearby.

“What are you doin?” he demanded.

“Putting the manipulator on Cartwright here,” Carter growled as he snapped the bracelet open.  “It’s in the contract.  Kahless alone knows why.”

“Hurry it up.”  Brewer was nervous, and why shouldn’t he be?  If the explosive detonated it would bring the whole mountain down on all of them.

Joe looked once again at the stranger Brewer held at gunpoint.  Whoever it was, his black-swathed body was tense.  He looked like a stallion ready to make a break for freedom.

The curly-headed man drew in a breath.  It really didn’t matter who the man was.  In any case, the enemy of an enemy is a friend.

Without letting the breath out, Joe bunched his legs up and kicked out, taking Carter in the chest and driving him back into the nearby cavern wall where he struck his head on an outcropping and fell motionless to the ground.

 

Good old Joe!

Adam had seen his brother moving and knew what to expect.  They’d done the same thing many times before, not only to escape danger but to toss their brother Hoss laughing to the ground.  Even as a twinge of regret stabbed him, thinking of the brother he could not save, Adam lunged forward to save the one he still had.  The man who had come to warn Carter had turned toward the commotion, so the gun was aimed away from him now.  Adam struck the Klingon’s arm and drove the weapon out of his hand and then crashed with him to the ground.  Brewer’s strength was amazing.  He was twice as strong as Hoss.  While he struggled with Brewer, Adam glanced at the man Joe had taken out.  Carter had regained consciousness.  He was rising, reaching for the abandoned gun.

It would only take him a second to shoot Joe.  He had to do something.

As panic seized him Adam’s eyes landed on the lantern.  If it was extinguished the playing field would be leveled.  No one could see and no one would have an advantage.  Maneuvering Carter’s companion into position, Adam struck out with his foot and drove him into it.  The lamp turned over, rolled –

And went out.

 

In complete darkness Joe listened the to the scuffle.  There was an ‘oof’ and then someone hit the ground.  Seconds later someone else began to run, up the passageway, up toward the surface and safety even as a voice called again that it was time to get out – that the charge would go off any minute.

Joe’s hands were unbound now and so he used them to right himself, and then worked his way to his feet using the wall as a prop.  The cavern was absolutely black.  ‘Stygian’, Adam would have called it, using one of those fancy words he got from the books he loved so.  Joe could hear a man breathing hard.  Assuming it was the one in black rather than Brewer who’d probably fled like the coward he was, he followed the sound and stumbled toward him.

It surprised him when halfway there the man caught him in a bear hug.

“Joe,” he breathed, his voice breaking with emotion.  “Joe.”  Then, a second later.  “We have to get out of here.  The mine’s about to blow.”

The man caught him then about the waist and directed him away from the path Brewer had taken.  Joe’s feet skidded on the mud-covered floor.

“Where…where are…you going?  The way…out is –”

“There’s another way, Joe.  A shorter  route to the surface.”

He put on the brakes.  Though his strength was ebbing, he managed to pull away.  “Whoa….  Why…should I trust you?”

There was a silence, so profound it made the darkness deeper, thicker, more suffocating.

“Joe,” the man said, breath in the words, “it’s me.  Adam.  Your brother.”

 

 

FIVE

 

James T. Kirk stared at the space Spock’s departure had left for maybe a minute and then made his way through the underbrush and positioned himself to the left and behind the wagon.  Once in place he quickly realized that the occupant of the wagon had not been Joe Cartwright, but his wife, Anne.  She’d been lifted from its bed and was standing by it now, her cries for her husband’s release piercing the air.

Joe was in the mine.

From his vantage point Kirk watched the altered Klingons come and go.  The one called Deets, a giant of a Klingon warrior, had completed the task of placing the explosive charges in the mine and was standing about thirty feet away, awaiting the order to set it off.  The blond man looked up at the massive pile of rock.

When he did, half the mountain would come down on those inside.

He’d been watching Deets.  It was clear the Klingon held Theron in contempt, and that he would rather bury Carter under a ton of rubble than Joe.  Kirk had a suspicion that Carter was Klingon Intelligence rather than a part of their vast military organization.  The small, sneering man reminded him far too much of Darvin, the small sniveling man who had wrecked so much havoc on Space Station K7.[3]

The blond man reprimanded himself.  None of that mattered now.  What mattered was that Joe Cartwright was going to die within minutes if he didn’t somehow prevent Deets from triggering that explosion.

The problem was Anne Cartwright.  There was no way he could protect her.  If he took on Theron, Deets posed a threat and vice versa.  He simply couldn’t be in two places at once.

It was then Kirk saw Spock again.  His wayward first officer appeared briefly, directly to the right of Theron, exposing himself just long enough to let him know he was there.  Jim frowned.  He wondered why Spock was not attempting to rescue Joe, since that had seemed to be the Vulcan’s mission all along.  Then he remembered there had been another man with Spock.  He made a leap and suddenly knew it was Adam Cartwright.  Adam was with Joe in the mine.

Spock, like him, was looking to stop the explosion that would doom them both.

Jim did likewise, exposing himself by stepping out of the shadows for just a moment and then ducking back.  Theron seemed unaware of them both.  The Albino stood with his back to Spock, holding Joe’s wife fast.  Theron’s lips curled in a sneer as he pivoted, angling the terrified woman toward the mine’s gaping maw.

He was going to make her watch.

Outraged, Jim rose up, meaning to go for Theron’s throat.  As he did Spock shook his head.  The Vulcan held his gaze for a heartbeat or two, again asking for his trust, and then disappeared.  A moment later a pale hand hovered over Theron’s shoulder.  The Vulcan applied pressure and the man dropped.

As his first officer stepped out of the trees to take charge of Anne who was silently sobbing, Kirk did the same and headed for Deets.  He saw the Klingon rear back in recognition. The massive warrior looked at the detonator in his hand.  He hesitated, as if debating whether or not to complete the order he had been given since the one who issued it was lying flat on his face.  Whether it was the desire to create a smokescreen for his escape, or simple military training, Kirk would never know.

It didn’t really matter, after all.

All that mattered at that moment was the signal passing through the air from the detonator to the explosives in the tunnel.

A signal he could do absolutely nothing to stop.

 

“Joe, come on.  Trust me.  You have to trust me.  We’re out of time!” Adam pleaded.   He couldn’t see his little brother, but he could hear him breathing heavily.

“You…can’t…be Adam….,” he argued.  “Adam’s…dead.”

“I’m not dead, Joe.  I’m here.  I’m alive.”  He thought furiously.  How could he convince him?  “Joe, remember back when you were a kid.  That time Lotta Crabtree came to the Ponderosa.  Remember what you told me when we were fighting at the house –  after I said you could just forget about us being kin?”

Please, Joe, Adam pleaded silently, please remember.

His brother’s tone darkened a bit, as if that argument still stung.  “Yeah…I…remember.”

“You told me that’d be easy because you couldn’t see yourself as kin to anything whelped out of a – “

“Thin…blue-blooded…Boston Yankee.”

“Yes, Joe.  Yes!  It’s me!  How else could I know that?”  Adam paused and turned in the direction Brewer had taken. There had been a sound.  Whatever it was reverberated along the walls, moving down the tunnel toward them.

Joe was silent for five long unsettling seconds.  Then he said, his voice small, strangled, disbelieving.

“Adam….”

There was no time for a reunion.  Focused on the sound, which he now recognized as a series of charges going off, Adam struck out with his hand and caught his brother’s arm.  “Joe, they’ve done it!  We have to get into the shaft.”  He looked up.

Rock was falling.

“Now, Joe!  Move!  Now!”

The shaft Adam had descended was about a hundred feet away.  As they ran, the ceiling above them cracked and debris began to strike the cavern floor.  A massive cloud of dust rose up from that and then another exploded inward, rushing down the corridor from the surface, stinging their eyes and choking in their throats.  Joe was moving too slowly.  It pained him to do it, but he forced him to move faster, almost dragging him.  A few seconds that’s all they had.  A few precious seconds in which they could reach the shaft.

They had to reach the shaft….

Suddenly, they were at its base.   As rock and stone pounded him, Adam pushed Joe before him and shoved his brother up and into it.  He followed as quickly as he could, pulling his legs in just as a large boulder crashed to the floor, partially sealing them in.  Once in the shaft Adam reached for his brother, found him and pulled him close, pressing Joe’s mouth and nose into his shirt and wrapping his other hand around his head, guarding him from the dust that swirled about them, keeping him safe as he had done for his brother when he was a little boy – as he had so longed to do and so much missed doing over the last twelve years of Joe’s life.  As he waited for the roar of the explosion to fade, for the rocks to stop falling – waited to see if they would survive – Adam Cartwright couldn’t help it.  He smiled.

He was home.

 

“Jim!” Spock shouted, calling his attention to the woman running toward the dust and debris rolling out of the mine.

Altering his direction, Kirk ran forward and caught Anne Cartwright in his arms even as she bolted for the collapsing rock.  He caught her and held her tightly, letting her fight and kick against him, pressing his hand into her hair as she cried out for the man she loved.

The man they had failed to save..

Spock was crouching beside Curran Theron, making certain the Albino was out.  The Vulcan rose and walked woodenly over to where they stood.  He waited until Anne’s shouts had diminished to silent sobs before speaking.

“Mrs. Cartwright.  Anne,” Spock said, his look and words intense.  “There is hope.”

Anne stiffened.  Her head came up.  She looked at him first and then at Spock, her eyes widening with surprise even as she asked, her voice robbed of strength, “There’s hope?”

Spock’s dark eyes flicked to him and then returned to the grieving woman.  “You’re husband was not alone.  His…brother was with him.  They may have made it out.  There is another way.”

Again they locked gazes.  Yes, there was hope in the near-black depths of his first officer’s eyes, but it was slim.

Kirk nodded and, taking Anne Cartwright in hand, said, “Lead the way.”

Without a word the Vulcan turned and began to walk.  He led them to the right of the mine entrance and into the trees.  They walked a short distance and then turned and angled back toward the mountain.  As they approached it Kirk noted dust swirling in the air.  This must be what Spock meant.  His first officer must have found an exploratory shaft cut into the side or something of that nature.  It was how Joe’s brother had gotten to him.  If the gods were kind, they would find the pair sitting just outside the mine.

But the gods are capricious.  Outside the shaft there was more dust whirling up and into the sky.

Dust….and rock.

The shaft had collapsed on their end.

 

Doctor Leonard McCoy was carrying his boots.  It was a new pair, created and produced by the Enterprise’s replicator for his second journey into the past, but they were just as damned poorly fit to his feet as the first ones!

He knew it.  He knew the computer hated him!

At first he’d led Jim’s lame horse along the road, intending to return to the Ponderosa as ordered.  Then, a few miles out, he’d abandoned it and turned around and begun walking.  Oh, he hadn’t just left the animal beside the road.  He’d waited until he was near a farm and then shooed it into the field toward a boy who was working.

McCoy had no idea how much of  a lead Jim had on him.  He imagined it was fairly substantial.  He’d considered stopping, but somehow that didn’t seem right with Jim in danger, Spock out there somewhere, and Joe Cartwright missing as well as half of the Enterprise bridge crew.

“You don’t do anything halfway, do you, Spock?” he muttered.

The Georgia doctor considered the road ahead.  The night sky was brilliant with stars and the moon shone down, lighting the road before him.  If he was going to find Jim, he was going to have to keep walking.  Maybe he could find another horse and trade something for it.  McCoy looked himself over.

He wondered with a wry smile if there would be any ranch hands who would be interested in a trade that involved a used hypo-spray?

McCoy snorted as he sat on the edge of a large boulder and lifted his foot to put his right boot back on.

Maybe he should use it on the blisters on his feet.

As he placed one boot on the ground, Leonard McCoy heard a noise.  It was indistinguishable at first from those of the night, but then he realized it was the sound of horses flying fast –

And coming his way.

After quickly lacing the boot he held, he had caught up the other one and just about finished with it when the first horse and rider appeared.  The man shot past him, quickly followed by another and another and….

That one.  The woman.  It was –

“Uhura!” he shouted.  “Lieutenant Uhura!  It’s McCoy!”

He was concerned at first that she hadn’t heard him and then relieved when he realized she had. The beautiful Bantu woman checked her horse and turned back. As she did, the others with her did the same.

Riding as if she had been born to it, Uhura came to his side.

McCoy stuck out a thumb in the universally recognized code for hitchhiking.

“Ma’am,” he drawled, his face breaking with a smile.  “I’d be obliged if I could trouble you for a ride.”

 

When he removed his hand and shifted Joe, Adam discovered his brother was unconscious.  They’d managed to work their way up the shaft to the point where it widened before narrowing as it left the mountainside.  They were in a pocket about four feet high and as many feet wide, blocked on both ends by fallen rocks.  He could see sunlight, so there were small openings feeding them air.  Leaving Joe, Adam crawled forward to see if he could move any of the rocks, but found all too quickly that were wedged in tightly and wouldn’t budge.  Returning to where his brother sat propped up against the wall, Adam crawled over him and checked the other end as well.

It was worse.

By the time he took his place at Joe’s side, he found he was exhausted.  The air was thick with dust and growing stagnant.  The shaft’s walls were damp and cold.  The light piercing the rocks at the end of it was meager.  Still, it was enough to let him see his brother.  Joe was pale – even paler than the rock dust.  And he was breathing hard.  Joe had obviously been beaten.  Reaching out, Adam ran his fingers through the matted curls to the left side of his brother’s face.

He was right.  It was blood.

Moving his fingers to his brother’s cheek, Adam licked his lips and then called him.  “Joe.  Joe, can you hear me?”

For a moment there was nothing.  Then Joe’s eyelids fluttered.  Finally, he opened his eyes and looked around like a man waking from a dream.

“Adam?”

The black-haired man drew in a sigh of relief that fought for escape.  He knew Joe would balk if he perceived he thought he was showing any hint of weakness.

“How are you, little brother?”

Joe’s hand moved.  It reached for him.  “Adam?”

He clutched it, as reassured by the touch as he hoped Joe was.   “Yes, it’s me. I’m here.”

Joe licked his lips and coughed.  “…how?”

He snorted.  “It’s a long story.  I’ll tell you, Joe, the next time we’re sitting in the great room in front of the fire.  But first, I have to get us out of here.”

His brother looked at him sideways.  “Where’s…here?”

Adam shifted so he was sitting against the rock wall like Joe was.  He leaned his head back and sighed.  “‘Here’ is a pocket of air in the middle of a ton of rock.”

A slow smile crept across his brother’s face.  “Same old Adam.  Always encouraging.”

“How are you, Joe?”

The curly-haired man drew in a breath, coughed, and then shifted, moaning as he did.  “I’ve been better.”

“Your ribs?”

“Hurt.  My head hurts more.”

The blood. There had to be a wound there.  Adam hesitated and then said, “I’m sorry, Joe.”

Those green eyes rolled over to look at him.  Joe did that funny thing with his lips.  The one where they pursed them and smiled at the same time.  “Oh?  ‘Bout what?”

“I..didn’t make it in time.  I should have moved faster, gotten to you before the blast went off.”

“Because you’re…perfect.”

Adam blinked.  “What?”

“You always…thought you…were perfect.  Or…had to be.”  Joe coughed again.  “You’re just…a man, brother.  No more…no less.”

He smiled.  “When did you get to be so wise?”

Joe’s energy was fading.  His words slurred as he spoke.  “When…had to take care…myself.”

His brother’s words stabbed him.  “God, Joe.  I couldn’t….  I….”  It was so hard to say.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here when Hoss died.  When your wife, your child….  I know there was nothing I could have done about Hoss, but I might have been able to prevent….”

Still fading, Joe let out a little sigh before speaking.  “You know, I…thought I couldn’t survive when Alice….”  He drew a pain-filled breath against the memory.  “When Alice…and the baby died.  Pa…told me something….”

“Yes, Joe?”  He needed to hear it.  He’d been so long without their father’s wisdom to guide him.

“It was after…I tried….Well, after…I thought about…ending it.  Pa came…to my room.  Sat by me.  ‘Never regret…anything from your past…son’, he said.  ‘One day you’ll…look back and thank it.’”

“Thank it?” Adam asked.  “Whatever for?”

Joe laughed.  “For…hurting you.  Pa…said you’d thank it…for…hurting you so much…that you decided to be…stronger.”

Adam reached out and squeezed his brother’s arm and then slipped his own in behind Little Joe and pulled him close.  Joe’s head fell to his shoulder as they sat there in the dark, breathing in dust and debris, waiting to suffocate or for the shaft to cave-in and bury them.

Together.

 

Dawn broke as Kirk and Spock surveyed the damage the Klingons’ explosives had caused.  They’d collapsed the main entry to the mine and partially caved-in the shaft.  This was it, Kirk thought, shaking his head and not even slightly amused.  The ‘freak’ accident in the historical record that revealed the gold vein and turned Bodie into a prosperous town.

At what a cost.

He’d looked and there were chinks between the rocks so, if the brothers had managed to make it into the narrow shaft, they were getting at least a minimal amount of oxygen.  Even with Spock’s Vulcan strength they’d been unable to move any of the fallen rock, it was so tightly wedged in.  They’d tried calling out to the pair but, so far, there had been no reply.  That didn’t necessarily mean either or both men were dead, but if they were unconscious from lack of air, that did mean time was running out.

What he wouldn’t have given to be able to use a phaser!

Running his hand over his face, Kirk considered the fall of rock before him and then turned to Joe Cartwright’s pregnant wife who sat on top of a low boulder nearby.  The dawn was breaking and it set her amber hair on fire.  She was a strong woman and, once the shock of what happened had worn off, had done all she could to help them.  The problem was, now, there was nothing left to do.

Nothing but wait for the inevitable.

“Anne?” he asked as he came to stand beside her.  “Do you need anything?”

She looked up.  He read the unspoken answer in her eyes.  She needed her husband and the father of her baby, alive and whole.

“No,” she said quietly. “No, thank you.”

Kirk sat beside her and took her hand in his. “Don’t give up hope.  Not yet.”

Anne’s eyes flicked to the wagon next to which Curran Theron lay, trussed like a pig awaiting the spit.  Her voice was small.  “How can a man hate so much?”

It was Spock who answered.  He hadn’t realized the Vulcan had joined them.  “Curran Theron does not hate.  His crime is worse than that.  He feels no ill will, nor acts from any desire other than to spread chaos throughout the universe.  You, your husband, the Captain and I, to him, we are nothing but expendable pieces in a galactic game.”

Kirk looked at his friend.  Was that a tremor of emotion in his voice?

“Spock, are you –”

Kirk stopped.  There were horses – many horses thundering toward them.  Rising to his feet, he placed himself between whoever it was that would arrive any second and the grieving woman.  Seconds later he heard her sharp intact of breath.

“Ben!” Anne breathed.

 

Ben Cartwright was exhausted.  He’d ridden through the night without sleep.  He was also entirely awake and primed to take action the second it appeared it was necessary.  He didn’t know what he had expected to find when he rounded the bend and saw the Bodie mine, but it had not been two bedraggled men and the very dusty and dirty, tear-streaked face of his daughter-in-law.

He was off the horse before it stopped.

“Anne!”

The older man saw Jim Kirk step aside as Anne recognized him and rose to her feet.  A heartbeat later she was running toward him.  As she caught hold of him, clenching him so tightly he stumbled back, his daughter-in-law’s composure failed and she began to sob.

“Pa,” she breathed.  “Oh…Pa….”

As the others in his party arrived, Ben placed his hand on her head and soothed her quietly, even as he looked over it to meet the blond man’s eyes.  He read no despair in them, but there was also little hope.

“Joe?” he asked.

Kirk joined him.  Ben knew the expression on his face.  It was one a soldier gave their general when forced to acknowledge they had failed.  “Alive, sir, we believe, but….”  Kirk drew a breath.  “You son is trapped in a shaft leading to the surface.  I am afraid, Ben,” the young man’s eyes flicked to Anne, “that both his air and time are running out.”

His daughter-in-law drew in a breath and let it out in a strangled cry.

“Is he alone?”

Kirk started to respond, but then another man moved forward.  One Ben had not seen before.  He was dressed all in black as Adam had often been.  “He is not, sir,” the newcomer said.

“Who’s with him?”

The two men exchanged glances.  Ben saw something pass between them.  Almost as if they had come to a joint decision – as if both felt the need to hold something back.  It was Kirk who finally answered.

“We don’t know.”

 

Spock glanced at his friend, grateful Jim had agreed that this was not the time to tell Ben Cartwright his oldest son still lived – and was trapped with his brother in the mine.  He then headed for the others who had ridden in with the older man.  The first he encountered was Montgomery Scott.  Beside him was an older man whose wry eyes and determined look reminded him of their head of security.

“Mister Spock,” the Scotsman sighed.  “Do ye hae any idea how long we’ve been lookin’ for ye?”

One ebon eyebrow peaked.  “Assuming you began the moment I left the Enterprise for the second time, I would calculate it to be six-point-two-four months and – ”

“He didn’t really want an answer, Spock.  That’s the human way to say ‘we missed you’.”

The Vulcan turned to find Leonard McCoy coming toward him.  He was limping.

“Doctor, are you injured?”

The doctor grimaced.  “Tortured.  That’s what I’ve been – tortured by a bad pair of boots.”

He really had no reply to that.

The older man who had come with the crew of the Enterprise had been eyeing the elder Cartwright and Joe’s wife.  He turned to him and asked, “You gonna tell us what happened, son?”

Spock’s eyes narrowed.  It was the closest he could come to showing his disappointment.  “We arrived too late.  The men who took Mrs. Cartwright delivered her husband into the mine and then…detonated the explosives, causing a cave-in.”

“And just how come you were late?” the older man demanded.

“This is Sheriff Roy Coffee, Spock,” Scott explained.

He inclined his head toward the lawman.  One black eyebrow lifted.  It seemed simple enough.   “We were too late because we did not make it in time.”

His statement unexpectedly raised the sheriff ‘s ire. “Now, you listen here….”

Suddenly Kirk was at his side.  “Sheriff?   Sheriff Coffee, you’ll have to forgive my friend.”  Kirk shot him a look.  “English is his second language.”

“Actually, Captain, it was my fourth….”

This time the look said, ‘shut up.”

He did so.

“Captain?” Roy Coffee asked them both suspiciously.  “You two soldiers – or sailors?”

Kirk nodded. “Sort of.  Sheriff, I hate to tell you what to do, but now that we have more man-power, might it not be wise to see if we can move any of that rock?”

 

Adam shifted his brother’s weight.  Joe’s head fell to his lap as he did.  When he touched his skin, he felt the fever rising.

He’d also come away with fingers thick with blood.

“Joe?  Joe, wake up!” he demanded, gently slapping his brother’s face.  Doc Martin always said not to let a man with a concussion sleep.  He might never wake up again.  “Joe!”

The only answer he got was a vague sort of grunt.

Adam felt like a heel for doing it, but he sucked it up and said, “Joe.  Anne needs you.  So does your child.  Joe, you have to fight – you have to stay with me so you can return to them!”  When his brother didn’t stir, he pressed him.  “Joe!”

This time he groaned and his eyes opened, sort of.  “Anne….”

“She’s waiting, Joe.  Outside this hellhole.  She’s waiting for you.  You have to stay awake so you can get back to her!”

His brother blinked.  His eyes opened wider, this time with some amount of clarity.  He looked around.  “We’re…still trapped?”

“Yes.  But I think I heard something, just a moment ago.  Joe, I think someone is trying to reach us.”

It had been faint, but he was sure he had heard the sound of rocks being pulled away and of men grunting as they labored to move them.  He’d definitely heard voices.  At first he thought they were in a dream, but the longer he’d listened the more certain he’d become they were real.

They were real.

“Pa,” Joe breathed.  “That’ll…be pa.  He’d never…give up.”

Adam wondered idly if his father had given up on him.  It sounded like Joe had.  But then he couldn’t blame him – couldn’t blame either of them, really  – not after what had happened with Hoss.

“That’s right, Joe. Pa wouldn’t give up.  You can’t give up either.  You hear me?”

His brother’s head moved.  He thought it was an affirmative.

A second later a cloud of dust covered them as a series of rocks tumbled from the pile blocking their exit to the top of the shaft.  The light increased.  It appeared to be the rosy light of dawn.  Adam laid his brother down and then crawled over him, moving toward it.

“Here!” he shouted.  “We’re here!”

A muffled cheer went up.  Someone asked a question.  He couldn’t understand it, but he could anticipate it.

“Joe’s alive,” he called back.  “Do you hear me?  Tell Anne!  Joe’s alive!”

Someone went running and then even more rocks fell.

A second later a hand reached through a small opening the rock-fall had created.

Adam gripped it and held on for all he was worth.

 

“I have him!” Ben cried.  “Get the rest of this rock out of the way.”

He knew it was difficult.  Jim Kirk’s people had formed a line through which they’d passed stone after stone.  Montgomery Scott was an engineer and it hadn’t taken him long to find the needed tools in one of the empty shacks and then use them to begin to remove the rocks blocking the shaft in an ordered fashion so as not to cause any more damage.

He was in the way and he knew it, but there was no way on God’s green earth that he was going to let go of his son’s hand!

“Joe!” he called.  “I have you!”

Nyota Uhura bent beside him.  She used a wet cloth to clear his eyes.  Then she smiled.  “It won’t be long, sir,” she said, packing all of his hopes and fears into that one phrase.

But would it be soon enough?

“If you will, sir,” the young Chinese man said.  “Push aside as  best you can.  We need to get this large rock out.”

Ben did as he was told, but he didn’t let go.  He couldn’t let go.

The man named Spock moved in next.  He’d seen it before, for his size the odd black-haired man was a mountain of strength.  Spock took hold of the boulder and pulled – hard.  A second later it came away and a dusty and dirty figure tumbled out into his arms.  Ben had expected Joe.  It wasn’t Joe.

Ben’s heart skipped a beat.

It was Adam.

 

 

SIX

 

Kirk glanced at the wagon near which their two prisoners sat, hands and feet bound.  They had Theron and Deets.  In the excitement of the explosion Brewer had gotten away.  He’d thought about pursuing the Klingon, but decided at the moment that it was a waste of time and energy.

He was probably halfway back to Qo’noS by now.

The blond man turned his attention then to the makeshift structure they had created out of branches and bark and covered with boughs and leaves from nearby trees.  It housed two very sick men.  Though the elder Cartwright brother had not been wounded – at least not in any way they could find – he had fallen unconscious in his father’s arms and had yet to wake up.  Joe, well, Joe Cartwright was far from being out of danger. When he’d talked to McCoy, the doctor had growled and complained about an era where medicine had yet to advance to the level of Spock’s stone knives and bear skins.  The blow that Deets had given to Joe’s head had broken the skin and become infected.  His fever was high.  A course of powerful antibiotics could save him.

Without them, McCoy warned, he might die.

Housed in the moment within the construction were four people.  Anne Cartwright would not leave her husband’s side.  Bones said it was all right.  She’d been a great help to him and was a lady to be reckoned with.  Ben Cartwright sat between his two sons, fearful for the one and filled with wonder at the other – at the son who had gone missing so many years ago, whom he had feared dead, who had been pulled from beneath the earth in a second birth and was now alive and yet in danger.

Across the camp his crew was sleeping too.  They’d been on their feet for more than twenty-four hours.  It had taken an order, of course, to get them to do so.

Kirk ran a hand over his face.  Unfortunately, there was no one around who outranked him.

“You need to get some sleep,” a familiar voice chided, “unless you want to end up in a third bed in my make-shift sickbay.”

Jim looked up to find McCoy watching him.  He shook his head.  “There’s Theron yet to deal with.”

His friend inclined his head toward the wagon beside which the trussed malcontent and rogue Originator sat.  “Spock’s gone to see to him.”

Kirk looked over his shoulder.  He could see his friend’s long lanky form advancing slowly toward the wagon.  A frown furrowed his brow as he turned back.  “About Spock….”

McCoy nodded.  “There’s something wrong.  I can’t put my finger on it.”

“Do you want me to order him to let you examine him?”

The doctor shook his head.  “No need to antagonize him yet.  I’ve got my eye on him.”

Kirk glanced again at his first officer.  Spock had stopped by Theron.  His tall form was rigid, disapproval of the rogue Originator written into every line.

“Good,” he said.  “That makes two of us.”

 

Curran Theron’s smile was as mad as it was maddening.  His crimson eyes lit with a queer delight as he looked up and asked, “I bet you think you’ve won, Vulcan.  Don’t you?”

“Idle speculation is as worthless an occupation as betting.”

The Originator laughed.  “That’s why you’ll never understand.”  He paused.  “Do you play chess, Spock?”

Frowning was illogical, but it was genetically impossible for him to avoid doing so thanks to his mother’s DNA.  “Yes.”

“How about poker?”

For a moment Spock was struck dumb by the absurdity of a being whose species had created a link to all of time and space engaging in a simple card game.

“No,” he said.

Theron was not an Albino, but he had chosen to make himself look like one, which in some ways was a window into his twisted mind.  Spock pursed his lips.  A window he should have been able to open.

“Oh, you’re wrong.  You’re playing it now,” the Originator laughed.  “I’ve dealt you  a hand and you’re losing.”

Spock stiffened.  “You have been defeated and are under arrest.  I fail to see how you could in any way consider yourself as having the upper hand.”

Curran Theron’s voice changed.  It deepened and grew more intense.  “Did you really think for one Earth minute that a being such as I could be incapacitated and held by such a simple thing as ropes around the wrist?  I walk with the gods, Spock,” he declared.  “And soon, you will too.”

Theron’s last words were close to a whisper.  They carried both a warning and a threat.

“It’s not over.”

 

Ben Cartwright stirred.  He sucked in air and ran both hands over his stubbled cheeks.  He’d reached into that shaft, meaning to save one son and had found, in fact, he’d saved two.  His eldest son, whom he had given up for dead, was alive.  Adam was here.

Adam was home.

The older man turned and glanced at his other son.  Anne had not left Joe’s side.  She was there still, asleep, her head laying on his son’s chest.  Joe’s hand was draped over her shoulder.  Sadly, Joseph was far from well.  Doctor McCoy’d said he had done all he could before he left, the rest was up to Joe now.  Ben leaned back and looked at the green boughs above him.  How many times had he heard those words concerning this, his last born child?  His son had a strong constitution.  Joe had survived more than any man should be asked to survive.  Still, there would be an end, as there had been an end for Hoss, for Marie, and for his other wives.

He prayed Joe’s would not come before his own.

As the older man sat there, thinking, his oldest boy stirred.  A low moan escaped Adam’s dusty lips.  He seemed to grow quiet and then, without warning, shot up out of the bed.

“Joe!”

Ben caught his shoulders, still amazed that the touch was real.  “Son, you’re brother is beside you.  He’s…hurt, but he’s here.  You kept him alive, Adam.  You saved him.”

His son blinked once, twice, and then focused on his face.  ‘Pa?’ he mouthed and then reached out and touched him as if trying to determine whether or not he was real.

He knew the feeling.

Ben caught his hand and squeezed it.  “I’m real, Adam,” he said, “as real as you.”

Unexpectedly, Adam began to cry.   Tears streamed down his dusty cheeks.  “Pa,” he whispered.  “Pa, I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what, son?”

“For leaving you.  You and Joe and…Hoss.”  He shook his head.  “If I had been here, maybe….  Hoss, Pa.  And…Joe’s wife and child.”

“I was here, son,” he said, his heart breaking as well as his voice.  “There was nothing I could do.”  Ben paused.  When he spoke the words he meant them.  It had taken a long time, but he did mean them.  “God’s will be done.”

Adam’s eyes went to his brother.  “God’s will….” he mouthed.

Ben nodded.  “Be done.”

His son fell silent then, as if dealing with that in his own way.  A moment later his eyes returned to him.  “I didn’t go away because I wanted to, Pa.  There was something….  Something I had to do.”

“Each man plots his own course, son.  It does no good for another to question it.”

“No, Pa,” Adam insisted, gripping his hand.  “I need you to understand.  It was for Joe.  It was to protect Joe.”  He watched as his eldest son’s eyes went to his brother and his sleeping wife.  “So he could have a life.”

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends…or for his brother,” Ben quoted, his words quiet.

It took a moment, but Adam nodded.  The grip on his fingers was returned.  “I love you, Pa.  I’m so glad to be home.”

He’d told his sons that tears were a blessing and he meant it.

He did nothing to stop their flow.

 

Kirk pulled Scotty to the side.  “Where’s Sheriff Coffee?” he asked.

“He left, Captain.  He’s looking for the man whot escaped.”

He let out a sigh.  “Let’s hope he doesn’t find him.  I’d hate to think of a local sheriff going up against a Klingon.”

Scotty laughed.  “My money would be on the sheriff, Captain,” he said with a wink. “He’s a bonny man.”

Absently, he nodded.  “Where are Uhura and Sulu?”

“Standing guard, Captain.”

He thought a moment.  “I want you three to return to our time and the Enterprise and wait for my orders.”

“Sir?”

“We’ve tampered enough with the time stream.  The more of us there are in the past, the more possible damage we can do.  McCoy has to remain for the time being.  Joe Cartwright can’t be left alone without a doctor.  Spock,” he glanced in the direction of the wagon.  “I’ll watch Spock.”

Scotty frowned. “Are you thinkin’ there’s somethin’ wrong with Mister Spock, sir?”

It was a feeling – another one of those inexplicable  hunches.  “I don’t know, Scotty.  I hope not.”

“Very well, sir.  I’ll gather up the others and we’ll use the time bracelets to return.”

“Take them off the minute you get there and hand them over to security.  Don’t for any reason use them again.”  He drew a breath.  “Even though you’ve only used them once, I don’t want to take any chances.”

“What about you, Captain?  You’ve used it three times.”

Kirk grinned.  “Five seems to be the charm.  That’s part of why I’m worried about Spock.  He’s used it four times so far as I can deduce.”  He looked for the Vulcan’s slender form near the wagon, but didn’t see him.  Spock must have finished with Theron and gone on to something else.  “In order for Spock to return to our time, he will have to use the manipulator again.  I want Bones there looking out for him when he does.”

With that the blond man left Scotty to inform the others of his decision.  As he crossed back over to the makeshift hospital a pale glow lit the sky behind him and he knew they were gone.  That left him, Bones, and Spock to mop up the mess they had made in history.  Theron would need to be taken to a Starfleet facility, all of the bracelets gathered and quarantined, and it would probably be wise to go to Gateway to check in with the Guardian and see if it could show them the past they had lived and the future they might have unwittingly created.

Bones was coming out of the tent when he arrived.

“Joe?” he asked.

“The same,” the doctor replied, his tone discouraged.  “Damned if I don’t feel useless!  The man has a simple infection and it’s probably going to kill him.”

Kirk scowled.  “You really think he might die?”

The other man shrugged.  “I’m a doctor not a prognosticator.  It’s up to Joe.  He’s young and strong.  He may make it.”

He nodded and then glanced toward the wagon.  “Have you seen Spock?”

McCoy frowned.  “He was over there a minute ago.”  When he looked and didn’t find him, he added, “Where’d he go?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.  “But I’m going to find out.”

Kirk hastened his pace as he drew near the last place he had seen Spock.  That inner sense he had was tingling.  When he arrived, the tingle turned to a shock.  Curran Theron was nowhere in sight.

Neither was Spock.

 

The Vulcan stumbled and almost fell.  It had happened so fast.  Theron had appeared to be subdued, his hands bound, his feet hobbled.  Then, suddenly, he was free.  Having had no direct contact with the Originators before, it appeared they had underestimated their powers.  Theron had allowed himself to be taken.  He could have escaped at any time.  He chose not to.  He chose to let everything unfold as it had, knowing that – no matter what – his will would be done.  Even now, he meant to go back, meant to leave Joseph Cartwright in that mine.  Then he’d kidnap Joseph’s wife, in effect kidnapping his son.  Theron would rear the boy as his own, corrupting him, bending the child to his will and molding the last of his descendants to become one of the most destructive forces in the universe.

Jim Kirk unleashed.

Before that he would play with them, as a cat did with mice.  He would torture McCoy, ruin Kirk, and him, well, Theron had told him what he intended to do with him – destroy his mind.

Though there was no one Spock would admit it to, that scared him.  It scared him so much he had decided that logic dictated illogical action.

He was going to kill the man with his bare hands.

Even as the thought crossed the Vulcan’s mind, Curran Theron turned to look at him.  It was as if the Originator could read his mind.  “Behold the noble Vulcan!” he said.  “The archetype of non-violence.”

If he could read his mind, Theron didn’t need to be told.  Half of his heritage was human.

“I will not let you destroy Jim,” Spock warned as he walked.  “Now or in the future.”

“And how do you propose to stop me?”

“I do not know how,” he admitted, “but I will.”

The rogue Originator caught him by the arm and spun him around.  Theron’s crimson eyes blazed a trail into his near-black ones.  “Tell me, Spock,” he breathed, “what is it you fear most?”  Theron’s hand touched his.  Cold fingers encircled his wrist and then grasped the bracelet he wore.

Spock drew in a sharp breath.  “No.”

The Originator’ smile was wicked and pregnant with pleasure.  He took hold of the bracelet and pressed a hidden switch, releasing all of its remaining venom in a single deadly burst.

“Yes.”

 

When Adam opened his eyes again, it wasn’t to find his pa but a lovely woman keeping watch over him.  She sat between him and Joe and, by the way she was holding his little brother’s hand, he knew she must be his wife.  The woman was beautiful as he would have expected, with deep golden blonde hair and a face that would have moved a master painter, but there was more to her than that.  Even as she held her wounded husband’s hand and tears ran down her cheeks, her eyes were bright with hope.   He continued to watch her until she blinked and turned to look at him.

She must have sensed somehow he was awake.

That beautiful face lit with a smile.  “Adam?”

He returned it.  “And whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

She looked at Joe, leaned over and kissed his forehead, and then placed her husband’s hand on his chest.  Turning fully toward him then, she said, “My name is Anne.  Anne Cartwright.”

His eyes went to her belly, which was big with child.  “Mrs. Anne Cartwright, I hope?” he laughed.

She laughed too.  “Yes, Uncle Adam.”

That sobered him.  Again, the loss of those twelve years away struck him as hard as the falling rocks in the mine.  He’d missed so much – saying goodbye to Hoss, helping his brother through his loss, Joe’s courtship and wedding….”

”Adam?”

“Sorry,” he sighed, shifting his covers and sitting up.  “Just feeling sorry for myself.”

She looked at him, seeming to read his mind.  “It doesn’t matter why you went away.  You’re here now.  You….”  Her voice broke.  “You were here to save your brother.”

“This time,” he said quietly.

He felt her hand on his.  “We can’t question God, Adam.  About Hoss or Alice.  If she had lived, I wouldn’t be here and Joe….  Well, he wouldn’t be the man he is now.”

What was it Joe had said as they sat in the mine shaft waiting for their air to run out?  That God allowed a man to be hurt so he would decide to be stronger?

“You’re very wise,” he said with a little smile.

“No, she’s…not,” a tired voice remarked, so softly they almost missed it. “…just…stubborn.”

Anne pivoted sharply.  “Joe!”

His grin was pale, but it was there.  Adam watched as his brother weakly lifted his hand and his wife caught it.  “Hey…beautiful,” he said.

Adam closed his eyes.  He sighed with relief.  It wasn’t over by a long shot.  There was the threat of internal injuries, of infection, of…so much.  But his brother was awake and alive.

“If you two awake aren’t a sight for a weary old physician’s sore eyes,” a tired voice pronounced, opening Adam’s eyes again.   He looked and found Doctor McCoy standing just within the door of the small structure.  The older man was grinning.  “I’m beginning to believe I could cure the common cold!”

Adam began to rise to his feet.

A hand on his shoulder held him down.  “Now, you wait a minute, young man.  Until you have a permission slip from this old Georgia doctor, you’re not going anywhere.”

“I need to….”  He paused.  “I’d like to talk to my father, Doctor McCoy.”  Adam’s eyes flicked to Anne and Joe.  “Alone.”

McCoy lifted his hand. “Oh, I see.  Well, I guess that couldn’t hurt.”  He brightened.  “I just left off talking with him myself.  He was saying goodbye to Sheriff Coffee.”

“Roy left?”

“The sheriff needed to return to his duties in Virginia City.  Your father asked him to check in at the Ponderosa and let the men there know what was going on.”

“What about Theron and Deets?  Roy left them here?  Unguarded?”  Even though he knew the rogue Originator and altered Klingon had no business in Roy’s jail, he found it hard to believe the seasoned lawman hadn’t fought for just that.

McCoy smiled.  “Son, you’ve been traveling with the sour-tempered, close-mouthed first officer of the Enterprise.  Jim Kirk is blessed with a winning smile and an even more winning way with words.  He convinced your sheriff that he was a Pinkerton detective and, as such, had jurisdiction over the prisoners.”

Adam snorted.  “Amazing.”

“That’s Jim.”  McCoy nodded toward his brother.  “Now, you just let me get to the man who needs me before I start feeling useless.”  The doctor nodded toward the entrance.  “You go talk to your father.”

He rose to his feet, a bit more shakily than he had expected.  As he reached the opening, the doctor called him again.

“Oh, and Adam….”

“Yes, Doc?”

“Keep it short.”

 

“Where are they?” Kirk demanded of the remaining prisoner.   He had removed Deets’ gag and was glaring at the Klingon.  “Where’s Theron?  What happened to Spock?”

Deets spit and then wet his lips with his tongue.  “Your man was unprepared.  Theron overcame him.”

Spock?  Unprepared?

“You’re lying.”

“Why would I lie, Kirk?  What would it gain me?”  He pulled at his restraints.  “Remove these and I will show you whose side I am on.”

“You were working for Theron.”

“No!” he growled.  “I did not work for that Ferengi dog!  I was assigned to K’Resh by the High Command, the man you knew as Carter.  I was fulfilling my duty, nothing more.”

Kirk mulled it over.  He’d pegged Carter instantly as Intelligence.  Deets was a soldier and he knew what that meant since, in a way, he was one himself.

“What’s your true name?” he asked.

Something sparked in Deets’ black eyes.  Respect, he thought.   “Drax.”

“Drax,” Kirk repeated.  He drew a breath and let it out slowly.  “I’d like to trust you, but I’m not sure I can.”

He was surprised to see Drax’s eyes move to the structure where the two Cartwright men lay.  “Theron is a spineless coward,” he spat.  “I have seen bravery here unmatched by our young Klingon men.”

Kirk frowned.

“Joseph Cartwright,” Drax explained, his lips curling with a sneer that was what a Klingon used for a smile.  “That one has the heart of a warrior.  I would be honored to kill the man who meant to kill him.”

Kirk winced.  “How about you help capture him instead?”

Drax’s eyes were at first confused and then lit with delight.  “Ah….  So he may be tortured first.”

“…right.”

He’d deal with that expectation later.

Moving behind the Klingon, Kirk cut Drax’s bonds and then stood back, prepared to defend himself if necessary.  When the giant just stood there at military ease, he breathed a sigh of relief.  With a glance at the structure from which Adam Cartwright was just emerging, he nodded.

“Let’s go.”

 

“Pa?”

Ben Cartwright had been watching an exchange between Jim Kirk and one of the men who had tried to harm Joseph.  These men – Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and the others – they were good men, but they were…wrong.  Something about them was  simply wrong.

Just like something was wrong with his eldest son’s return.

Ben drew in a breath and turned to look at him.  In some ways it was almost like Adam had never left.  In fact, Adam looked like he had never left.

He looked as young as Joe.

“Son.”

Adam took him by the arm, almost as if needing to know he was real.  His son stared into his eyes for several heartbeats before releasing him.  Then he smiled.  “I imagine you have questions.”

His lips curled with a smile.  “About a million of them.”

Adam nodded.  “I’ll warn you up front, Pa, there’s almost a million I can’t answer.”

Ben reached out and touched his face.  “It doesn’t matter, son.  You’re home.  That’s all that matters.”

Adam hung his head.  When he looked up again, Ben saw the face of the little boy who had been through everything with him.  “I just want you to understand one thing, Pa.  Like I said before, I didn’t choose to go away because I wanted…needed something for myself.  Oh, I’d talked about it often enough.”  He paused and his voice changed.  It became filled with wonder.  “I talked about how I wanted to see strange, far-off and distant places.  I…did that, and it was amazing.  But the only reason I left, Pa, was for family.  For Joe.”

“That wanderlust that didn’t take you,” Ben asked, his gaze locked on his son’s, “is it satisfied now?”

Adam glanced at the place where his brother lay and then back.  “It is, Pa.  It is.  I don’t want to be anywhere but here.”  A second look of wonder overtook his handsome features.  “I’m going to be an Uncle!”

Ben nodded.  And he – he would be a grandfather.

There were truly miracles still left in the world.

Letting the tear that had formed in his eye fall unimpeded, Ben sniffed and nodded toward the structure.  “Let’s go see that brother of yours.”

As Adam fell into place beside him and they began to move, Ben halted and turned toward his son.

“What is it, Pa?” Adam asked, doing the same.

“I just have one question.”

Adam’s black – not gray – but black eyebrows peaked.

“Whatever it is they gave you where you went that’s kept you so young looking….  They don’t sell it in bottles, do they?”

 

Kirk’s heart sank to his toes when he heard a low, almost bestial noise.  It was the kind one animal made over another, expressing without words a loss that had no words.

The problem was, it sounded human…or…Vulcan

He glanced at the Klingon jogging at his side.  Drax had heard it too and recognized it as well.

He’d been on enough battlefields.

With a nod of his head, the blond man indicated the warrior should head to the right, while he took the left.  He didn’t know what they were looking for, but everything in him told him it had to do with Spock and Theron.

He just prayed the rogue Originator was also the originator of the cry.

Of course, prayer had never availed him much.

Breaking through the trees, the first thing he saw was Spock writhing on the ground.  “Drax!” he shouted.  “I’ve found Spock!  Theron has to be somewhere nearby!”

“He is mine!” came the forceful answer.  The Klingon shouted a battle cry and then he heard him breaking through the trees.

Dropping to his knees beside his first officer and friend, Kirk caught his shoulders and tried to steady him.  “Spock!  Spock!  It’s Jim.  Can you hear me?  It’s Jim, Spock!”

The Vulcan quieted, minimally.  He still moaned and moved from side to side, but his movements were less violent than before.  His lips parted but the only thing that came out was a strangled, “No….”

What had Theron done to him?  Quickly examining him with his eyes, the only thing Jim could see that was out of place was a ring of deep green on Spock’s wrist beneath the time manipulator he wore.  On closer examination he realized the green was running along the Vulcan’s veins, almost like blood poisoning.

“Spock?  Can you hear me?” Kirk heard the tremble in his own voice. “What did Theron do to you?”  Even though it was a waste of time, he wished he had a communicator – wished he could call Scotty back on the ship and forward in time and have him beam McCoy to his side in an instant.  “Spock?”

This time the Vulcan’s eyes opened.  They contained something Kirk had seldom seen – fear.

“…Jim?”

He gripped him harder.  “Yes, Spock.  It’s me.  Jim.”

“Theron….”

“He’s gone.  Tell me what he did, Spock.  Tell me – ”

Vulcan strength bruised his flesh.  “Joseph…must save…Joe….”

“He’s safe, Spock.  Remember?”

“No!”  There was a desperation in those eyes as well, something also seldom seen.  “Save him…Jim.  Save…the future….”

Jim glanced the way Drax had gone. Turning back to Spock he said, “I can’t leave you alone.”

“Yes…save Joseph.  Send…McCoy….”

Spock stopped struggling then as he lost the battle to remain conscious.

He’d had to make many hard calls.   He’d have to make many more, but this was one of the hardest.

Kirk left Spock laying where he was and ran for all he was worth back to the camp.

 

Anne Cartwright stood and stretched and then placed a hand in the middle of her aching back.   She was weary beyond words.  Since Joe had awakened briefly, giving them hope of a full recovery, a weariness had overcome her borne, she was sure, on the back of everything that had happened over the last few days.  Her other hand went to her belly.  She had heard of maternal impressions and knew a child could be marked for life by what its mother endured.  She could only hope that the love and strength of the Cartwright men would be what her son felt rather than her fear.

She had been so afraid.

With a sigh she scolded herself.  What a fool she had been for walking away all those years ago!  She could have been married to Joe for over seven years now and had two or three little ones.  She would have known his love all that time, would have shared the joy of  their children born.  Now, here she was, keeping watch over him, broken…maybe dying.

Was that it?  Would she be a widow, raising a boy without a father’s strong hand as Ben had had to raise his three boys without a woman’s touch?

Adam’s bed was empty.  He and his father had just left.  They’d checked in on them and then gone to find Jim Kirk.  She wondered about Adam.  Once he had cleaned up by running a wet cloth over his face and removed the dust from the mine, she’d been startled to see that Joe’s older brother barely looked older than Joe.   Maybe by a year or two, but certainly not twelve or thirteen.

There were mysteries within mysteries here.

As the thought crossed her mind, her husband moaned and she turned toward him.

Anne gasped.

Theron Vance stood beside Joe’s bed.  He had the fingers of one hand entwined in her husband’s curly hair.  The other rested on Joe’s throat as if he would throttle him.  Theron’s crimson eyes lit with triumph.

“The cards are on the table, my dear,” the villain gloated.  “I win.”

 

 

SEVEN

 

Captain Drax of the Klingon Imperial High Command clung to the shadows near the human’s camp.  He watched as Captain James Kirk, the bane of the Empire, halted and leaned forward, placing his hands on his knees in an attempt to recover from his quick and impressive sprint through the trees.   Adam Cartwright, the brother of Joe, turned toward him as the Starfleet captain arrived.  The oldest Cartwright son had been standing near the wagon with his father and seemed to instantly understand what had happened.  Apparently, though he did not burn with the same fire, Joe’s brother was Duranium bound in cloth.  He broke into a run and headed for the structure where his brother lay.

Ben Cartwright followed hard on his heels.

He would like to know this man – this man who fathered such sons.

Drax waited as they entered the structure, already knowing what they would find, in order to know their battle plans.

Kirk was the first to appear.  “Fan out!” he shouted. “Find them!”

It was doubtful the Cartwrights or the Federation men would find Curran Theron or the warrior named Joe.  But he would.  Unlike the Federation slaves who were bound to obey the orders of men too weak and frightened to sit in a captain’s chair, once there were no orders a Klingon commander was given reign to use his own mind without being bound by rules and regulations.  The human lawman had tied him hand and foot and taken his disruptor, but he had not searched him thoroughly.  Drax bent down and freed the handle of the knife he kept concealed in his boot, making the weapon readily accessible.  Then he opened his belt buckle and palmed the small scanner hidden within.  While he had laid in the wagon with Theron, he had managed to attach another of his hidden tools, a homing device, to the Originator’s clothes.

It was beeping now.

Drax turned and plunged into the wood, following its call like a hunter follows sign.  As he ran he considered how he had come to this moment and this place.  Theron, the Originator, had contacted his superiors and laid out a plan, the likes of which would have astounded Kahless himself.  Theron explained how, by using the Guardian of Forever – which the puny humans had usurped and kept to themselves – he had discovered a fixed point in time which was the genesis of the future they now occupied.  One man was the crux. One man they all had reason to despise for his interference and his ability to triumph over the Empire.

James T. Kirk.

Theron went on to say that he intended to travel back in time – and this was the part that should have warned him – not to kill the man from whose loins Kirk’s lineage sprang, but to take his child and rear it in a warrior’s way, training it to set aside peace and to crave destruction and glory.

This Kirk would be a warrior not a peacekeeper.

Drax sighed as he pushed a low tree limb aside and continued on, his eyes trained on the device.  James T. Kirk was solely responsible, Theron had said, for what the galaxy had become – weak, listless, and without honor.  If Kirk had not defeated the Romulans and his own people, they would have triumphed, bringing strength, control, and order instead.

Not a green targ, he had questioned him.  Why not simply kill Kirk outright?

‘Think’, Theron had replied.  ‘Think!’

What could be accomplished with a very different Kirk and the resources of a very different Starfleet on their side?

And so he had signed on, along with K’Resh and Ba’Or who were in it for the reward the Originator promised more than anything else, to join in Theron’s madness.  For it was madness.  It would be to his eternal shame that he had not seen the signs of this.  Not until it was too late.

Not until he had given his word.

Theron’s treachery after the explosion had released him from that bond.  K’Resh was dead and buried under a ton of rock, that damned time band still on his wrist.  Drax glared at the one he wore.  If not for the need of it to return him to his time and home, he would tear it from his flesh lest the very metal contaminate him.

Drax took time to spit.  He smirked at the thought of what awaited the Originator when he found him, and then he crouched like a Grishnar cat stalking its prey.

His prey was within his sight.

 

Joe lay on the ground, panting hard.  He’d come fully awake back in the camp when he’d felt impossibly strong fingers tighten on his throat enough to choke off his air.  To his horror and surprise he discovered the man threatening him was none other than Theron Vance, the Albino his father had hired and fired a dozen years before.

Apparently when Theron had a grudge, he held it.

Instead of choking the life out of him, Vance had lifted a finger to his lips and called for silence.  Wondering why Theron thought there was a snowball’s chance in Hell of him doing what he wanted, Joe’s gaze followed his nod to find Anne standing there, her skin drained of color, trembling from head to foot.

It was at that moment, he knew he was dead.

Vance had led them both out of the back of the tent, more than half-supporting him.  The man was tough as Hoss and twice as determined.  Theron was taking them somewhere.  Wherever it was, he’d lay odds it was to torture and kill him, and then to take Anne hostage against his brother and his father who would turn Heaven and Hell upside-down to bring justice.

He’d only just found Adam and now….  Joe’s eyes sought his wife’s frightened gaze and held it.  If she could escape, could get away, at least Adam would be there for his child.  Adam and, for a time, Pa.

But first Anne had to escape.

He saw her read it in his eyes.  She shook her head slowly.  Anne’s hand went to her belly and she did it again. ‘No’, she said silently, ‘I won’t have my child grow up without his father.’

‘You have no choice,’ he replied in the same way.  ‘I love you.’

Theron dropped him to the ground, kicked him in the side, and then moved away.  Then, he looked down.  The Albino was dressed like a gunslinger with a pearl-handled Colt holstered and tied down to his right leg.  The black cloth emphasized his pure white hair and skin.

“You were supposed to have been at the bottom of that mine, Joe.”  He cackled manically.  “Whatever is Professor Campbell going to think when he discovers one of the manipulators instead on the wrist of a Klingon!”

Joe’s head hurt enough without listening to gibberish.  “You’re mad!” he spat back.

“Am I?”  He seemed to seriously consider it.  “If so, I am only mad north-northwest.  When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw,” he smirked.

Adam had read him that.  It was Shakespeare.  The man was quoting Shakespeare!

“Let my…wife go,” Joe pleaded, his hand clutching his ribs where they throbbed.  “ Do what…you want with me… but…let Anne go.”

The Albino rolled his crimson eyes.  “We’ve been through this before, Joseph.  I fully intend to kill you, but I have no intention of letting your wife go.  She, and your child, are mine to mold.”

Joe tried to push himself up.  It was a struggle, and if he made it to his feet he knew he would be useless.  Still, he had to try.

“You’re…not…taking her,” he grunted.

Theron struck like a snake, taking him by the throat even as he rose and then holding him, actually lifting him off his feet with that grip.

“And who is going to stop me?” he sneered.

“Me!”

Joe looked.  Anne was so close it startled him.  Her jaw was set and her eyes colder than he had ever seen.  She was backing up, moving away from them.

She’d come up without being heard or seen and she had Theron’s pearl-handled gun in her hands.

 

Yes!  Yes!  Drax formed a fist as his lips curled with satisfaction.  The woman was as much a warrior as her mate!  No wonder Theron so feared their progeny.

Moving closer, the Klingon heard her say.  “You get away from my husband, you bastard!  Let him go!”

The Originator refused.  “He is suffocating now.  He can last three minutes without air. One has expired.  Surrender the gun and I will let his boots touch the ground.”

The woman’s eyes narrowed.  She had the look of a Sabre bear protecting its offspring.  “If I shoot you, you’ll drop him now.”

“With a crushed windpipe,” he countered, his fingers tightening.

Drax saw her falter.

Her only choice was to shoot.

As the thought crossed his mind, Drax noted something out of place to his right.  When he looked, he saw nothing – until James T. Kirk rose up for a second to show he was there.  Then, to his left, something moved as well.  It was Adam Cartwright.  Along with the warrior’s brother was his father.  In their eyes there was no sign of fear.

They were worthy.

The Klingon warrior watched as Kirk moved through the trees, maneuvering himself into a position from which he could attack.  The Cartwrights did the same.  While stealth was to be admired, caution was not.

Drax stepped out of the trees and shouted  “Curran Theron, you are challenged!”

 

Leonard McCoy halted when he heard a shout and turned back the way he had  come.  When there was nothing more, he resumed his passage through the trees.  Kirk had run into the camp.  He’d met his eyes and said one word.  Only one.

Spock.

Their exchange had been brief.  From what little Jim had managed to communicate, he guessed it was bad.  They knew when they’d used the time manipulators that there had been a risk of being poisoned.  Apparently the beings who created the Guardian were stingy and wanted to keep time travel to themselves.  McCoy grunted.  No, that wasn’t fair.  They needed to keep it to themselves.

He just wished they’d found a kinder, gentler way to do so.

Kirk had given him quick directions to the place where he had left Spock even as he took off again.  It seemed the Vulcan had taken a full dose of the bracelet’s venom, either by mistake or by Theron’s design.  He had no idea what that would do to the poor green-blooded bastard.

Jim had mentioned a bent-over tree and a few other landmarks.  As they came into view, the physician quickened his pace.  Between Jim’s return trip and his into the woods, it had been almost half an hour since the captain had discovered Spock in whatever condition he was in.  God alone knew what might have happened in that time.  As he passed the tree and sighted the clearing where Jim had left the Vulcan laying, Leonard McCoy stopped.

The clearing was empty.

Spock was gone.

 

Jim moved through the undergrowth to join the Cartwrights as soon as he saw Drax make his move.

“What is he doing?” Adam demanded.  “There’s no time!”

He knew that.  He’d looked.  Joe’s veins were standing out and there was a blue discoloration around his lips and nose.

Kirk gritted his teeth.  “He’s being a Klingon.”

“A what?” Ben Cartwright asked.

As the captain of the Enterprise mentally kicked himself for forgetting the older man had no idea what this was all about, Adam stepped in.

“It’s a type of soldier, Pa.  Like a samurai or abrafo warrior.”

“Warrior or not, he is jeopardizing your brother’s life!”  Ben’s gun was in his hand.  He scowled , his finger itching on the trigger.  There was no way to get a clear shot.

Kirk felt for the older man.   “Give Deets a few more seconds.  We can barge in, but if we do, then both Joe and Anne may die.  As well as your son’s unborn child,” he added softly.

For a moment the older man said nothing.  He nodded and then pulled his watch from his vest.  “Deets has half a minute.  Then we go in.  Agreed?”

Kirk exchanged glances with Adam.  It had to end – one way or the other.

“Agreed.”

 

Drax did not hesitate, but walked straight past Anne Cartwright to Curran Theron and spit in his face.  “You are without honor!”

“Honor mattered little when you signed up,” the Originator sneered as the spittle dripped down his cheek.

“Honor is everything!  I honored my commander’s orders, nothing more.”  He dropped his voice. “Now, you will honor this man and let him go.  He is worth more than all of your valueless kind taken together.”

Theron glanced at Joe.  Cyanosis painted the warrior’s face blue.  “And if I don’t?”

“I will kill you,” he breathed.

Theron looked at him long and hard and then he did something he had not expected.  He let go.  Joe Cartwright plummeted to the ground at his feet and lay deathly still.

“You may have him,” the Originator said.  “I will take the woman.”

“You will do no such thing,” Joe’s consort snarled like a brush devil, aiming the gun she held again between Theron’s crimson eyes.  “You will not threaten my family again!”

Ben Cartwright sprang to his feet and shouted human words.  “Anne, no!  You’ll never forgive yourself!”

The son of steel joined him, revealing himself – sadly – to be less worthy than he had first believed.

“He’s right, Anne,” Adam Cartwright told her.  “I know.  I…caused a man’s death once….  A man who deserved to die.  It still haunts me.  Life is life.”

“No, it’s not,” the warrior’s woman declared, showing her mettle.  The gun did not waver.

The Federation captain shot him a glance and then stepped between Theron and the woman.  “Anne, give me the gun.  Your husband needs you.  Put it down and go to him.”

The woman of courage blinked and then her eyes went to her mate.  After a moment, she stood down.  It was not a surrender.  It did not diminish her honor.

No matter what race, a woman’s place was to look out for her own.

As Anne Cartwright moved, Drax looked from one human to the other.  Their honor demanded they not take a life unless their own life was threatened.  He had encountered it before, this mercy they spoke of.  On the battlefield they were as ferocious as any race he had battled, but off the field, they failed.

He would not.

It took four steps.  By the time Drax reached the Originator, his knife was out.  Catching the worm by the throat, he squeezed, giving him ten heartbeats to experience what the warrior Joe Cartwright had.

And then he gutted him like a bireQtagh he was.

 

McCoy had been panting when he broke through the trees.  Now, he was breathless.  Drax, their former prisoner, had just murdered Curran Theron.  As he watched, the Klingon dropped the Originator’s lifeless form to the forest floor next to Joe Cartwright.  He could immediately see something was wrong with the young man.

Joe’s coloring was off and he was still, so very still.

He reached him at the same time as his brother and father.  Adam knelt before he could, pressing his hand against his brother’s chest.  When he looked up, his gaze was a mix of horror and hope.

“His heart’s beating.”

McCoy nodded.  He’d seen Joe’s chest rise and fall.  It was the lack of air he was worried about.  That, and the damage it might have done.

“See to your sister-in-law,” he grunted as he set to work, startling the young man who seemed for a moment not to remember he had one.

“Yeah.  Anne.”  Adam rose.  “Pa, I’m going to get Anne.”

Ben Cartwright stood close by.  He made no move to kneel or get in his way, but kept a silent vigil as McCoy set to work.  He nodded agreement to his oldest son and then his eyes returned to his youngest.

The doctor met those eyes.  “I’ll do all I can.”

Around him there was chaos.  He heard Adam speaking in low, soothing tones to Anne.  Kirk was yelling.  Probably at Drax.  Even though in his heart of hearts Jim would have wanted the bastard dead who had done so much damage to this fine family, he knew his friend.  Jim could not and would not stomach murder.

There would be whatever the Klingon equivalent of Hell was to pay.

Pushing all such thoughts aside, he turned back to his patient.  Joe’s throat was swollen and he was having difficulty breathing.  In this century there was only one thing to do.

“Ben,” he called, his eyes rising to the older man.

“Yes?”

“I need your permission.”

Ben frowned.  “For?”

McCoy sighed.  “A tracheotomy.  It’s a simple operation.  It will help him breathe.”

“I know it,” he nodded.  “You have my permission.”

With that, Doctor McCoy turned back to his patient and got to work.

 

Captain James T. Kirk of the Federation Starship Enterprise stared down Captain Drax of the Klingon Imperial High Command.  Well, stared ‘up’.

‘That was uncalled for,” he said.

Drax’s lip lifted in a sneer.  “I do not agree.   There was a threat.  It was eliminated.”

“Theron was not an ‘it’.  He was – ”

“A madman.  A murderer and a coward.  One who would use a woman and a ruin a child to create his own twisted vision of the future.”  The Klingon raised on black eyebrow.  “Or am I wrong?”

Kirk scowled, some of the wind taken from the sails of his righteous indignation.  “No, you’re not wrong.  But – ”

“That is the difference between us, James T. Kirk, between human and Klingon.  Your sense of honor is hampered by mists of mercy that cloud your eyes.  Our eyes are open wide.  There is evil.  There is good.  One deserves to live. The other does not.”  His dark eyes flicked to where Theron’s body lay, covered now with a blanket.  “Theron did not deserve to live.  Joe Cartwright did.”

How could he argue with that?

“Drax, there’s self-defense and there’s murder.”

“The warrior could not defend himself.  His capture was gutless; his captor spineless.  I would not let Joe Cartwright die.”  Drax sought his gaze and held it.  “Would you have done differently?”

Would he?  Would he have let Ben’s son die because of his high-minded principles?  Because he refused to dispense death to a creature who not only threatened Joe and his family, but all of time?

Humbled, he replied.  “I don’t know.”

The Klingon tilted his head.  His eyes narrowed.  “Do you know why, Kirk, the Originator wanted Joseph Cartwright dead?”

It bothered him.  None of it had seemed to make any sense.  Why Joe?  What was so special about a man who would live his life on one plot of Nevada land, marry, father children, rear them, come into his old age, and pass on as all had to do.  There was no monumental accomplishment that they could find.  No mountains moved or climbed.

He shook his head.  “No.”

“Tell me of your life, human.  Tell me where and who you come from.”

Kirk balked.  “Why?”

Drax sneered again.  “Humor me.”

“It’s the usual story,” he shrugged.  “My ancestors were European settlers on the North American continent of Earth.  I was born in Iowa.  My family came there, oh, a hundred or so years back.  Before that, they lived in the West and pioneered the frontier in the nineteenth century.  I don’t recall any names but….”  Kirk stopped.  He turned and looked at Bones where he was working on Joe Cartwright.  “No.”

“Yes.”

He pivoted back to face Drax.

“It was you, Kirk, whom Theron meant to use as a weapon to destroy this universe you now serve.  The birth of Joe Cartwright’s son is the fixed point in time from which you sprang.”

“Joe…is my….”

“Many times removed great-sire.”

Kirk blinked, taking that in.  “Even so,” he countered.  “Why would Theron fixate on me?  I’m not that important.”

Drax actually laughed – well, more barked his amusement.  “Stopping the advance of parasites on Deneva that would have driven the galaxy to madness, triumphing over the Romulans and, yes, my people as well, halting the advance of how many hostile races and their threat to the Federation?”  The Klingon shook his dark head.  “There is more, Kirk, so much more.  These are things you cannot yet know.”

He was silent a moment.  Then he asked, “Did Spock know?”

Drax nodded.  “One thing our people have in common, James Kirk, is the worth of a comrade.  I am sorry for your loss.”

He hadn’t admitted to himself that Spock was dead, but he did have to acknowledge the Vulcan was lost.  Lost in madness and lost somewhere in time with no sure way to discover where and when.  When he returned to twenty-two-sixty-nine he intended to petition Starfleet to allow him to go to Gateway and use the Guardian to search for him.  After all, it was Spock who identified the danger to all of them and took the singular risk to set time right.  Rather than branding him a criminal, he should be given a commendation.

He would be, Kirk told himself.  Once he found him and brought him back.

“Kirk?”

He shook his head.  He had no words.

Drax nodded, accepting his silence.  After an interval, the Klingon said, “I would return to my people, James Kirk.  Will you attempt to stop me?”

Kirk looked at him.  A wry smile twisted his lips.  “Somehow I don’t think a Wild West jail could hold you, Drax, and right now the Federation has no jurisdiction.  Though I need that time manipulator….”

The soldier drew himself up to his full height, which was about the same as a mountain.  His heels came together and his hand shot out.  “I salute you, James T. Kirk.  May we have an opportunity to meet in battle.”  Drax actually smiled this time.  “I would make your death a glorious one.  As to this,” the Klingon paused and then added as he twisted the time manipulator he wore.  “I need it more.”

Drax vanished in a twinkle of starlight.

 

Adam Cartwright halted outside his baby brother’s door.  It had been three days since the cave-in.  They’d returned to the Ponderosa only the night before as Doctor McCoy had insisted they let Joe recover before moving him.  The tracheotomy had saved his life, but left him weak.  Due to Joe’s other injuries, it had taken most of that time to stabilize him enough that he could endure the ride.  A weary smile curled his lips.  This was the first opportunity he would have to sit with his brother alone.  Anne had rarely left Joe’s side.  Earlier, he’d come up to see how he was doing and found her in a deep sleep in the chair beside the bed.  When he called her she hadn’t wakened, and so he had lifted her up and carried her to the next room and placed her on the bed.

In Hoss’ room.

His father had kept it as a shrine.  It was filled with the items his middle brother had used in life that were now memorialized in death.  Hoss’ white felt fur hat was there, and his gun and holster.  So was his leather vest.  Each was left in its usual place as if his brother might return any minute to don them.

He’d had tears in his eyes as he closed the door and it had taken him about an hour to compose himself before he could return to look in on Joe.  That was what he was doing now.  Checking on his remaining brother.  As he paused outside the door Adam became aware of a voice coming from inside the room.  Thinking perhaps Joe had wakened, he gripped the knob and opened it.

And found Jim Kirk sitting in the chair beside his sleeping, but restless little brother.

“The fever is lower,” Kirk said quietly as he rose.  “Bones thinks he’s past the crisis.”

“Bones?”

Kirk smiled as he approached.  “It’s what I call Doctor McCoy.  Short for – ”

“Sawbones.”  He’d tried that with Doc Hickman once.  The result wasn’t pretty.

The blond man nodded toward the hall.  Adam agreed and they stepped outside.

“You’re leaving, I hear,” Adam said.

“Yes.  We need to get back to our time.  We…”  He drew a breath.  “I need to look for Spock.”

“I could come with you.”

Kirk shook his head.  “Your place is here, at your brother’s side.  At your father’s.”  He grinned.  “And with your nephew, Uncle Adam.”

He ran a hand along the back of his neck. “It’s just, I feel I owe Spock so much.  I feel the need to repay him for –”

“You know what Spock would have to say about that.”

He held Kirk’s gaze.  “He’s a good man.”

Jim Kirk agreed.  “So are you.  So is your brother.  I’m…grateful, in spite of everything, that I got to meet you all.”

The way Kirk said it, gave it more weight than it deserved.  “Any special reason?”  he asked.

“No.  Nothing special.  Just…thanks.”

Adam watched Kirk depart and then turned back to his brother’s room.  He entered and went to sit by Joe’s side.  There was a bloody bandage around his brother’s throat.  The doctor had removed the stem that had let him breathe only the day before.  It would need to be changed yet again tonight.  Adam drew in a deep breath and turned to look around the room that had been Joe’s the entire time he had lived at the Ponderosa.  He was there now instead of in the wing that he and Anne occupied, as it was easier to look after him.  They were there, just like in Hoss’ room, stuffed in a blue and white bay rum jar, written in the worry lines of the Indian chief’s portrait…

The memories.

“Adam.”

His brother’s voice was soft.  Barely audible.

“Yes, Joe?” he asked, leaning in close.

“Are you….”  Joe coughed.

Adam caught him when the fit didn’t stop and then gave him some water to drink.  “You just keep quiet, Joe.  Doctor McCoy said you shouldn’t talk much for a few days.”

“Have to….”

He shook his head.  “Nothing is more important than your health.”

A half-smile curled his brother’s lips. “This…is.”

Adam put the glass down on the bedside table.  He caught his brother’s shoulder with his hand and said, sternly, in his best Ben Cartwright voice while wagging a finger, “One question, young man, and that’s all.”

Joe laughed – and coughed again.  “Just…one.”  His brother’s green eyes grew moist.  “Are you…home?”

Adam glanced around again, hearing the memories whisper along with the wind through the Ponderosa pines.  Outside the moon was shining, lighting a land he knew – even now – like the back of his hand.  Pa was in the great room, sound asleep in the chair where he had kept vigil for them all night after night, year after year, waiting on three wayward boys to find their way home.

How could he ever leave again?

Adam squeezed his brother’s fingers.

“Yes, Joe.  I’m home.”

 

 

End of Part Two

 

 

[1] From Same Pines, Different Wind by Marla Fair

[2] A Time to Step Down

[3] The Trouble With Tribbles