PART ONE

 

ONE

“You’re youngest brother is going to do WHAT?  Without my PERMISSION?”

Adam winced.  He’d known it was coming.  Thought he’d prepared himself.

He was wrong.

The sound wave from Pa’s shout probably rang the steeple bells in Reno.

“Now, Pa,” Adam began calmly, “Joe turned twenty-four last week and he doesn’t exactly need your permission to get a job.”

Or for much of anything for that matter.

“No son of mine is going to ride shotgun messenger on a stage!  I didn’t bring you up to be gunmen!”  Pa was heading for his hat, which hung on the peg by the door.  One arm was already in his coat, anticipating the early November chill in the air before stepping out into it.

“Pa, leave him be.  It’s only for a couple of weeks while he covers for Phil.”

That sounded like whining.  Was he whining?

God.  Joe had him whining.

His father pivoted on his heel.  “Phil Anderson?”

Adam steeled himself.  He nodded.

“That miscreant!  I should have known,” Pa growled.  “I warned Joseph that one day the hijinks that young man is fond of would lead him into trouble.”

Adam sighed.  “Pa, they were twelve years old.”

“That’s no excuse for burning down a neighbor’s chicken coop.”

And cooking most of the chickens.

It had cost his brother a complete month’s free time to work off the price of that meal.

“Look, Pa.”  Adam caught the older man’s sleeve as he reached for the door latch.  “Joe’s been a man for some time now.  He’s old enough to make his own decisions – and mistakes – whether it be about a job or a friend.”  He paused, swallowed, and then added, “You can’t protect him forever.”

His pa had always been a big man – bigger than him, not only in size but in presence.  A mountain of a man, his mettle forged by fire to a steely edge.  As Pa aged – as they all aged – he’d seen that edge soften and nowhere so much as with Joe.  If it had been him who had killed a henhouse of chickens, a smile and a wink, a heartfelt apology, and offering to clean up fried chicken guts would have barely scratched the surface of ‘sorry’.

At his words, the older man seemed to deflate.  “Adam,” his pa said softly as he drew his arm back out of his sleeve and hung his coat on the peg beside his hat, “what am I going to do with that boy?”

Boy.

Adam blew out a sigh.  Since he was still a ‘boy’ at thirty-six there was little hope Joe would ever be anything else.

“Let Joe do what he thinks is best.  He’s only doing what you taught him – his duty in helping out a friend.  Phil’s got a sick wife and no one to tend her, and the stage company told him that if he didn’t show – or send a replacement – they’d fire him.  Phil can’t afford to lose the job.”

“Are there no women in the town who can look after Mrs. Anderson?” his father asked gruffly as he crossed to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a brandy.

Never a good sign.

“Phil can’t afford one.”

“We could pay – ”

“Joe tried.  Phil won’t take charity.  He wants them to make their own way.”

He watched that effect his father.

“Well, I can’t fault him for that,” the older man admitted as he stopped the bottle.  “Still, pride is a sin.”

Adam checked his tongue.  If ‘pride’ was a sin, then their whole family was damned to Hell!

He watched as his father dropped wearily into the big red chair.  Pa took a sip and leaned back and closed his eyes, obviously relishing the warmth of the liquor as it coursed through him.  Adam stared at him a moment and then went to join him, taking a seat on the settee.

For a moment neither of them said anything.  Then his father remarked, “Do you remember the first time we feared your youngest brother was lost.  I mean, really lost?”

As in ‘dead’, Pa meant.

He nodded.  “You’re thinking of that day when we couldn’t find Joe, when he ended up at the top of Eagle’s Nest?”

His father nodded and then took another sip.  “All night we hunted and most of the next day.  Joe was only five.  There was no way a child of that age should have been able to survive alone in the wilderness.”

Adam felt a chill snake through him that had nothing to do with the November cold encroaching on the house.  He’d been about eighteen at the time, all ready to go off to college and forge a new life.  Joe’s disappearance and subsequent rescue almost made him change his mind as he’d realized, at that moment, just how much his father needed him here.

“I can still see him, Pa, all the way up at the top of the cliff, clinging on for dear life.”  He could hear Joe crying too.

As well as their father.

The older man had shed tears all the way up that near-vertical slope to his young son’s side.

“When I took hold of him….”  Ben drew in air and let it out slowly.  “When I took hold of Joe he was trembling like an autumn leaf in a nor’easter.  His clothes were torn and he was covered with dust, scratches, and blood.  Those green eyes of his were wide as wagon wheels.”

“Sure they were, Pa.  He was terrified.”

His father’s dark gaze shot to his face.  “I thought that too.  At first.”

Adam leaned forward.  “What are you saying, Pa?”

“Yes, your brother was terrified, but there was something else in his eyes of his that terrified me even more.”

“What?”

“A relish of living on the edge.”  The older man downed the last of the brandy and then put the glass on the table by the chair.  “I knew at that moment that life with your youngest brother would be lived one day at a time, experiencing again and again what I felt when I reached him at the top of that cliff.”

They all joked about Joe’s devil-may-care nature turning Pa’s hair prematurely white.

He had more than his fair share of white hairs too.

“Joe’s older now, Pa.  He’s…mellowed.”

Pa’s dark eyebrows shot up at that.  “Mellowed?  Your brother just signed on to ride shotgun on one of the most dangerous routes through the territory.  You know as well as I do just how many times the stage to Sacramento has been robbed.”

Adam wrinkled his nose. “That doesn’t mean it will be this time.  Besides, Joe’s only going as far as the exchange at Placerville before he turns back with a fresh load.”

His father nodded.  “Only one hundred miles through the hills and mountains, with the possibility of outlaws hiding behind every rock.”  Those near-black eyes pinned him.  “You know Red Pony and his renegades have been seen in the area of Webster’s Station.”

Yes, he knew about Red Pony.  He also knew about his father.  If there was even the remotest chance of something happening to one of them, he’d be planning what to do when it did.

Pa had told him something after that incident at Eagles Nest.  They’d been pretty far out doing ranch work and it had come time for him to watch Joe.  He’d left his little brother sleeping – just to do what was necessary – and when he returned, Joe was gone.  He’d berated himself for weeks for shirking his responsibility, and even gone so far as to inflict his own punishment – abandoning his idea of schooling in the east.  His pa found him outside one night, looking up at the stars.  As they stood there, Pa did something that surprised him.  Instead of quoting the Good Book, the older man quoted Shakespeare’s Midsummer’s Night Dream.

‘‘For never anything can be amiss, when simpleness and duty tender it’.  Eh, son?’

He’d remained silent a moment before answering.  ‘I’m not going Pa.  I can’t leave you with the burden of the ranch and Little Joe  –‘

“So now your brother Joseph is a ‘burden’?’

He frowned.  ‘You know what I mean.”

‘Do you know what I mean, Adam?’

‘Yes.’

That was it, just ‘yes’.

His father anchored his hands in his pockets as he rocked on his feet.  “I’ve felt it too, you know.’

‘What?’

‘The call of duty.  I knew it the day you and I turned our backs on Boston and everything it held and struck out for the west.’

‘You mean the duty to those you were leaving behind?’

The older man had shaken his head.  “The duty to ourselves.’

‘Pa….’

His father smiled.  ‘A great man named Daniel Webster said recently, ‘A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity.  If we take to ourselves the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, duty performed or duty violated is still with us, for our happiness or our misery. If we say the darkness shall cover us, in the darkness as in the light our obligations are yet with us.’

‘I know.  That’s why I can’t go –’

His father’s grip was unexpected.  ‘Son, it’s why you have to.  The Bible says it is for each man to bear his own burden.  You’re not to bear mine – or your baby brother’s.’

Adam remembered shrugging; remembered telling his father that Joe wasn’t really a burden.  His father had given him one of those looks and said, deadpan.

‘You could have fooled me.’

He’d sputtered.  They’d both had a good laugh.

And he went to school.

Adam cleared his throat.  “Is this a good time to quote Daniel Webster?” he asked his father, his full lips curling at the end.

Pa scowled.  It wasn’t fun to have your own words come back at you.

“You’ve raised all of us to have a strong sense of duty, Pa – to ourselves and to those we love.  Joe’s just trying to do what you’ve taught him, to take responsibility and be a man.”

His father shook his head.  “Your brother’s intentions are always for the best, it’s his judgment I question.  Certainly something could have been done to help Phil other than Joseph putting his life at risk –”

Pa stopped as the door opened and the subject of their debate blew in with the wind.  Joe’d obviously been to the barn and was chomping on one of the apples they kept there for the horses. When a glance at the somewhat full rack by the door showed him he would need two hands to hang his coat, he gripped the apple with his teeth.  As he turned back into the room, he saw them staring at him.  Joe’s cheeks went as  red as the Rall’s Janet that popped out of his mouth and into his hand.

“Did I miss something?” he asked.

Adam winced.  “Uh, no.  Not much, at least.  Pa and I were just discussing –”

It was ‘the’ voice and it came down like a sailor lowering the boom.

“Your new job.”

 

Joe swallowed over more than the piece of apple stuck in his throat.  “My new job?” he squeaked as his green eyes shot accusatorily to Adam.  “You know about my…job?”

“Don’t blame your brother, young man.  I asked a direct question and he answered it.”

“A direct question?”

Pa was doing that ‘thing’ he did.  Nodding his head up and down like a bull building up steam for a charge.

“Yes, a direct question,” the older man replied.  “Unlike certain other members of the family, your older brother doesn’t dissemble and dissimulate when it comes to his activities.”

Joe’s brown brows popped up toward the curls dangling on his forehead.  “Dis…what?”

“Lie,” Adam translated, helpful as always.

“I didn’t lie!” he declared.  “I just…well…didn’t mention it.”

His father folded his arms.  “And just when were you going to mention it?  From what Adam tells me, you leave tomorrow morning.”

Joe reached into his coat and with two fingers drew a folded piece of paper out of his pocket.  “I was gonna leave you a note, Pa.”  He blanched.  “I didn’t want to have you worry any longer than you –”

“You…were…going to…leave…a…note?”

He jumped on that last word.  “You know how you are, Pa.”  Turing to his older brother, he said, “Tell him how he is, Adam.”

His father pivoted.  “Yes, Adam, tell me how I am.”

“As the Bard once said, ‘the better part of valor is discretion’.”  Adam pursed his lips and one black brow popped up toward his thinning hairline as he raised a hand to his ear.  “Hark!  I distinctly hear one of the horses calling my name.”

And before he or Pa could say another word, older brother used the better part of his valor and walked out the door.

Coward.

When Joe turned back to his father, the older man was staring at him – not glaring – staring.  Glaring would have been easier to take.  He could have glared back, flown off the handle, shouted something about not being trusted or treated like a man, and eventually stormed up the staircase to his room.

Yeah, he could handle glaring.  Staring.  Well, that was another matter.

There was a world of hurt in that stare.

In the end he simply said, “I’m sorry, Pa.”

His father sucked in a breath and let it out slowly.  “So am I, son.”

That was new.

“Really?” he asked.  “You’re sorry?”  Joe hesitated.  Maybe it was a trick.  “About what?” he asked guardedly.

“That you feel I have so little trust in you that you have to lie to me about what you’re doing.”

Joe frowned.  “Ah, Pa, it’s not that.  I know you trust me.  Well, some of the time.  It’s just….”

“Just what?”

“There’s different kinds of trust, Pa.  I know you trust me to get my work done.  You trust me with the horses and the men, and with the ladies, Pa.  You taught me right.  I’m always a gentleman.”  He grinned.  “I mean, I know you aren’t worried I’ll come home some night with a little Joe.”  He paused.  “I mean a little Little Joe.”

“Thank Heaven for small favors,” his father muttered.

“But you don’t trust me to know what’s best for me.  It’s like, well….”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m still a little kid who needs his hand held when he crosses the street.”  Joe grew serious.  “I’m not a kid anymore, Pa.”

His father was staring at him again, only this stare was okay ‘cause it was riding on the back of a twist to the lips that was almost a smile.

“How old are you, Joseph?”

He frowned at that.  “Don’t you know, Pa?”

“Pretend I don’t.”

He rolled his eyes.  “If you say so.”  Joe silently counted up the toll. “Twenty-four years and seven days.  Oh, and a few hours.”

The older man sighed.  “How?”

“How what?”

“How can you be that old?  It seems just yesterday that you were a toddler sitting on your mother’s lap in the big blue chair by the fire.”  Pa’s eyes got that faraway look in them.  “The fire always caught in her hair and in your eyes.  It was like God had buried gold in both.”

Pa was ‘waxing poetic’ as Adam liked to say.

It was kind of embarrassing.

“Sure thing, Pa,” he said as he removed his gun belt and laid it on the credenza, not knowing what else to say.

“Your mother used to chide me, you know, for treating her the same way.”

No, he didn’t know.  He didn’t know much about his mother at all.

“Like what way?”

“Let’s take a seat by the fire, Joseph,” the older man said, nodding toward it.  “I can feel the cold creeping in.”

It was true.  He’d ridden home with the wind at his back and after taking time to stable Cochise for the night, he still felt chilled to the bone.  Ever since that time five years back when he and Adam had been caught out in freak early snow during Elizabeth Carnaby’s visit and almost frozen to death, he found he had less tolerance for the cold.  He’d have to bundle up before he left tomorrow.

Joe glanced at his father who was leaning against the hearth, studying the flames.

If he got to leave tomorrow.

“It’s funny,” his father began, “often what attracts a man to a woman is their differences.  One is slow, the other hasty.  One, thoughtful, the other just a little bit reckless.  One fiery, and the other cool enough to put out the flame.  With your mother and I, well….”

“What, Pa?”

“We were very much alike.”

Joe snorted.  “You and Mama?  Adam said my ma was a hellion!  That’s nothing like….”  He halted at his father’s look.  “Well, Adam didn’t exactly use that word, Pa.  He called her….”  Joe thought hard.  “Spirited.”

The older man was silent a moment.  Then he chuckled.  “Adam was right.  Your mother was more than spirited – she was a spitfire!  Marie was never at a loss for an opinion, and crossing her was tantamount to taking your life in your hands.”

“But you aren’t like that, Pa.”

This time he snorted.  “Really?”

Joe puzzled it over.  His Pa had mellowed with age.  It wasn’t too long ago he’d have taken a rifle and chased anyone who came onto the Ponderosa without permission into the next territory, threatening to kill ‘em if they trespassed again.  And before that, well, his oldest brother had told him how hard their pa had become after his first wife’s death.  Adam said Pa had sulked for years, brooding on his loss and making everyone around him miserable until Inger showed up.

Imagine that.  Pa, wearin’ his emotions on his sleeve  just like his mama.

Just like him.

His father came over and sat on the table directly in front of the seat he had taken on the settee.  He hung his hands between his knees before speaking.  “I’ll deny this if you ever bring it up in front of your brothers,” Pa said, looking up without moving his head, “but of all my sons you are the most like me.”  When Joe smiled, the older man held up a hand.  “And that is why you worry me so.”

Joe considered that before speaking.  “Did you worry your father?”

“Nearly into an early greave,” the older man snorted as his eyes rolled up.  “You think this head is white!”  After a moment, Pa reached out and placed a hand on his knee.  “I knew it that day at Eagle’s Nest.”

“Knew what?”

His pa leaned back.  “Joseph, do you know why I went to sea?”

He shrugged.  “To see the world, I guess.  For the adventure.”

“Yes,” he nodded, “there was that.  But that wasn’t the only reason – or the main one.”

He leaned forward.  This was something new.

“What was it then?”

“Why did you climb Eagle’s Nest when you were afraid of heights?”

“You mean a few years back?”  That episode was still a sore one with him.  In trying to overcome a childhood fear and be taken as a man, he’d acted childish and nearly gotten both of them killed.  He really didn’t want to talk about it.

“No, when you were five.”

Joe relaxed. “Gosh, I don’t know, Pa.”  He thought a moment.  “I guess I just wanted to see what was up there.”

“Even though you were afraid you might die?”

A chagrinned smiled curled his lips as he scratched at his sideburn.  “I figured I wouldn’t – at least until I looked down.”

“It was exciting, wasn’t it?  Thrilling even.  Cheating death?”

Joe looked at his pa with new eyes. “Are you saying that’s why you went to sea?”

His father reached out to touch his chest, just over his heart. “I’m saying that’s why you agreed to ride shotgun messenger for Phil, and why you hid the fact from me.  Because you feared I would forbid it and something in you just has to go – just has to take a look.  Just has to take that risk.”

“Pa, I….”

He was right.  It was like there was something inside him, pushing him to take on every challenge, forcing him to look danger in the eye, to face it, to laugh at it and come out on top – just to prove that he could.

Pa’s hand fell to his own.  The older man squeezed his fingers.  “You can’t beat death, Joe.  No one can.  No matter how hard they try.”

His father squeezed his fingers again and then turned round and sat on the settee beside him.  For some time the two of them remained there, side by side, saying nothing, just staring into the fire.  Then Joe did something he hadn’t done since he was a young boy.  He laid his head on his father’s shoulder.  As the older man’s arm encircled him, Joe shifted closer, relishing the feeling of complete and total security.

For the moment it was enough.

Tomorrow, he’d go about findin’ that danger.

 

 

TWO

“Where you going in such a gosh-darned hurry, little brother?”

Joe nearly lost his footing as Hoss caught him by the arm.  He’d been stepping off the porch, headed for Cochise who was already saddled and waiting, when his big brother had appeared from out of nowhere rising up from the early morning mist like a big old white whale beaching itself.

“Hey!” he exclaimed.  “What’re you tryin’ to do, knock me to the ground?”

“You wouldn’t have to worry none about that if you had more meat on that skinny little hiney of your’n,” the big man replied, adding a crack! to that hiney with the flat of his mammoth hand for emphasis.

Joe’s temper spiked.  “Now what’d’ you gotta go and do that for?” he growled as he rubbed the offended part.  “I gotta board seat to sit me on for the next two weeks!”

Hoss’ blue eyes crackled with laughter.  “Consider it trainin’, little brother.”  The big man paused.  “So you really talked Pa into lettin’ you run shotgun on the stage?”

Joe pouted.  “What do you mean?  I didn’t have to talk Pa into anything.”  He straightened his green corduroy coat and reclaimed his dignity.  “I just told him I was goin’.”

“Oh.  You told him, did you?”

He loved Hoss.  He really did.  But there were times when talking to him was like talking to your Ma.

“Yes, I told him.  Last night.”

Hoss tipped back his ten gallon hat and shook his head.  “Mm-mm!  I’m sure sorry I missed that.  Must of been a better fireworks show than last Fourth of July.”

“For your information,” Joe said as he turned back to Cochise who was watching the interplay between the brothers with his usual stoic forbearance, “there weren’t any fireworks – ”

“No, those went off before Joe got home.”

Joe winced.

Adam.

What was he doing up so gosh-darned early?  And, matter-of-fact, what was Hoss?

“Are you two nursemaiding me?” he asked with a scowl.

“Far be it from me to play nursemaid to one who has left his childhood behind.  My duty has been discharged – forever!” Adam declared, placing a hand over his heart and raising his face toward Heaven.  “Yon nurse, bereft eternally of his churlish charge, is headed into yonder fair city to parlay with its merchant class, thence to repair back in time for Hop Sing’s sumptuous evening repast.”

Joe’s nose wrinkled.  “Huh?”

Adam rolled his eyes as he headed to the barn  “Not everything has to do with you, Joe.”

Hoss was snickering.  “He sure got you there, Little Joe.”

Little Joe.

Still, he could hardly argue ‘size’ with the mountain that was towering over him right now, blocking out the morning sun.

Putting one foot in the stirrup, Joe sprang onto his horse.  Now that he was taller than Hoss, he felt more in control.

“So what are you doin’ up so early, if it ain’t got to do with me?” he demanded.

Hoss snorted.  “Well, ain’t the boot on the other foot now?  It’s usually one of us askin’ you that.  I’m here to tell you, little brother, that Adam’s right.  It ain’t got nothin’ to do with you.  Matter of fact, I just rode in.”  His brother twisted his lips and popped one eyebrow.  “If you remember, I been at the sawmill pickin’ up timber for repairin’ the fence rail.  So you see, Joe, you ain’t the center of the universe, no matter how much you like to think you are.”

It was only then Joe noticed the trail-dust on his brother and how tired he looked.

“Sorry, Hoss.”

The big man shook his head. “Don’t I wish I had me a nickel for every time you’ve said that word since the Doc brought you kickin’ and screamin’ into the world.”  His brother walked over and placed a hand on the side of his saddle, near his leg.  “You be careful, Little Joe.  You hear?”  Hoss glanced at the house and then back at him.  “Words out that some of Red Pony’s renegades have been seen along the route you’re takin’.”

Joe swallowed over just a little fear.  He shrugged.  “Pony’s Indians aren’t much interested in stages.”

His brother’s clear blue eyes pinned him.  “Now, I’ll admit there’s truth in that.  Them renegades ain’t interested in bags of money or letters comin’ through, but you know as well as I do, Joe, that what they is interested in is worse than any robber or outlaw.  Pony’s type just want to see white men dead.”  Hoss paused and then he reached up and tapped him on the side of the face.  “That curly head of hair you got there is gonna look mighty temptin’.”

At that moment Adam came walking out of the stable, leading Scout.  He eyed the two of them for a moment, but said only, “I’m ready to head into town, Joe.  You want to ride together?”

For a second Joe balked.  They’d had it planned all along, the two of them!  Hoss would delay him just long enough for Adam to be ready so he could ride with him into town and see him off.  For all he knew, Adam didn’t have any business in town and he was gonna wait an hour or so and then follow the stage all the way to the Placerville station, watching over him like that little kid who needed his hand held while walking across the street.

And you know what?

It was all right.

“Sure, Adam.  Glad for the company.”

Hoss snorted approval as he backed away from Cochise.  “Now, you remember you got a job to do, little brother.  No stoppin’ by the saloon for a beer or gettin’ distracted by some pretty girl in distress.”

Joe tipped his hat as he turned Cochise’ nose toward the road.  “You got it, middle brother.  See you in a couple of weeks.”

Adam had mounted and as he came alongside him, Joe heard the door to the house open.   He should have known.  There was no way he could leave without the last member of the family being present.

Glancing back, he saw the tall figure of his father framed by the door.  The older man took a step forward and raised his hand.

“God go with you, son!” he called.

Joe smiled as he turned back.  God was with him, he knew that  and he was grateful for it.

But he was even more grateful for the family the Man upstairs had given him.

 

It was early afternoon when they rode into Virginia City.  As it was a Monday, the growing town was up and rip-roaring to go, looking toward the new week ahead.  Adam glanced at his kid brother who was leaning on the stage depot wall talking to his driver and grinned.  In spite of Joe’s promise to Hoss, he’d already had to steer the kid clear of at least a half-dozen pretty young things hanging on their mother’s arms who had cocked their heads, batted their eyelashes, pursed their plumped lips, and sent him signals that they were interested.

The man in black sighed.  As the philosopher’s said, beauty was a curse, no matter how you looked at it.

Looking at him now, though, you would never have known that Joe’d been anything but all business.  He was standing shoulder to shoulder with Deke Jones, going over a map of their route.  Jones was a wizened and widely experienced employee of the stage line, known for having successfully navigated more runs across the Sierra than his brother had dates.  It gave him a little peace to know Deke was the one Joe would be riding shotgun messenger for.  It would do the same for Pa.  Deke was no kid.  He was a well-qualified and cautious man of forty-five who knew the land like the back of his hand.  Deke had a son just about Joe’s age.

His brother was in good hands.

Joe was headed his way.  “You ready to go?” Adam asked him.

“Soon as the passengers are aboard,” his brother replied.  “Deke says that’ll be another half hour or so.”  Joe grinned and nodded toward the saloon.  “You want to get a beer while we wait?”

“Before noon?”  Adam clucked.  “You know Pa doesn’t think that’s proper.”

Joe snorted.  “What Pa doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right?”

Adam waited until Joe met his gaze.  “You mean like taking on a job to ride shotgun on a stage without telling Pa first?  Or might you be thinking instead about not bothering to tell him that the stage you’re riding on is carrying fifteen thousand dollars in gold bars in its Treasure Box?”

He dropped his voice when he said that last – after looking around to make sure they were alone.

Joe winced.   “So, you found out about that, did you?”

“Yes, I found out about that.”

Joe was chewing his lip.  “How?”

Adam rolled his eyes.  “I asked Deke what your cargo was.”  He stifled another sigh.  “Do you know what the gold is for?  He didn’t say.”

Joe nodded.  “You remember Aurora Guthrie?”

God.

Dear God.  No.

Were the fates just bent against his little brother?

“You don’t mean this is the stage that’s transporting the Henshaw fortune the paper so carelessly reported she’d inherited?”

Joe moved in closer and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.  “The paper printed that on purpose, Adam.  Anyone reading it won’t expect the money to be on the move now.  That’s why this run is so important.  The paper ran another article a couple of days back, saying the stage with the money would be leaving first thing in the morning.  It’s part of the reason we’re taking off midday.”

He was afraid to ask.  “And the other part of the reason?”

“Deke here don’t like to get up any earlier than I do!” his brother laughed.

Adam nodded to Deke as he came alongside them.  Deke Jones was a man who looked like he should have been six foot tall but too many miles spent under the blazing sun had shrunk him down to about five foot nine.  His skin was baked a perpetual shade of brown and his blond hair bleached near white.  A thin stubble of it coated his gaunt cheeks like snow.  Deke’s eyes were the blue of a desert sunset that tended – curiously – toward purple.

Deke took the hand he thrust out and shook it firmly.  “What’re you  gonna give me for taking this rascal off your hands for a week or two, Adam?”

“My eternal gratitude for a portion of peace?” he responded with a wink.

“There is such a thing as it being ‘too’ quiet, you know?”

He was sure Deke did.  Though the older man had made more successful trips than any other driver in the line, the wiry driver’d had one or two bad runs.  One robbery left him stranded alone in the mountains for five days.  There was nothing as quiet as that.

He glanced at his smiling brother.

Or as deadly.

Forcing a jovial air, the man in black replied, “Oh, I don’t know – coming in after a long day’s hard work, reading in silence, sitting by the fire with no war whoops to  jar me out of my chair when Joe wins a game of checkers….  I think I can live with that.”

“Don’t get too used to it, older brother,” Joe said with a wink.  “Two weeks will fly by so fast you won’t even know I was gone.”

Looking at his baby brother, standing there, full in the freshness of youth – so alive, so vibrant – and thinking of all that could go wrong, Adam felt a little chill.

God, he hoped so.

Holding his hand out, he waited.  Joe stared at it a minute and then with a broad grin took it and shook it.

“Best of luck, Joe,” he said.  “I know you’ll make it the safest and smoothest run Deke’s ever had.”

For once, his little brother was at a loss for words.  Finally he managed to stammer, “Th…thanks, Adam.”

Adam held Joe’s gaze, probably a second longer than he should have, and then turned and walked away.

There was nothing else left to do.

 

Adam was at the mercantile haggling over prices with the store-keep when he heard the stage pull out.  He glanced at the clock above the counter and noted the time. It was six after three.  Nothing special about it other than it was the middle of the afternoon and an unusual time for the stage to head out.  Still, for some reason, a chill shivered through him.  He calmed his nerves by telling himself that he was jumping at shadows.  Still, something lingered in the back of his mind, some portent of trouble ahead….

Adam shook himself.  What was wrong with him?  He was acting like a superstitious school girl unsettled by saying ‘he loves me not’ as she pulled the last of the daisy petals.

No, that wasn’t it.

He was acting like Pa.

An hour later Adam was still in the mercantile and still wrangling with the owner over the price of nails.  In the end he decided the man was just bored and arguing with him was his day’s entertainment.  He finally got some relief when Jim Edwards, the current foreman from the ranch one over from theirs, came in and said the store down the street was selling nails for two pennies on the dollar less than Ed and everyone should hurry over there.

Adam stayed put and got them for three pennies on the dollar less.

As he triumphantly stepped out of the door, arms laden with his prize and several stout lads following behind carrying the rest of the supplies he’d come to town to get, the afternoon stage rolled in.  He looked up and saw that it was half past five.  Joe had been gone for two hours.

So why did it feel like two years?

“Joe’s a grown man,” Adam scolded himself.  “He’s ridden to other towns by himself plenty of times.  You can’t follow him everywhere.”

Of course, that was precisely what he and Hoss had discussed him doing, following Joe and the stage – at a discreet distance, of course.  The problem was, the run to Placerville by stage took about five days and Pa simply couldn’t spare either one of them that long. With winter coming on there was too much for them to do.  That, of course, had been another sore point about Joe taking the job.  Somehow, they’d both ended up promising to do his work while he was gone.

That boy really should be a politician.

“Good day, Adam.”

Nails in hand Adam turned toward the voice.  It was Owen Saunders, one of the town’s postal clerks.  Owen had worked for them briefly about a year before.  Last winter he and his wife had fallen on hard times and their farm had failed.  Rather than leaving town, their pa had convinced Owen to stay and helped him get the job at the post office.

“Evening, Owen.  How’s Jennifer and your little one?”

“Fit as fiddles,” Owen beamed.  He was a new pa and there was no smile quite like that one.  “I saw you coming out of the mercantile and thought I’d bring your mail over to you rather than lock it up for the night.”

Adam placed his package on the wagon seat and nodded to the boys to begin loading the rest of the supplies.  “That was thoughtful of you, Owen,” he said, accepting the pile of envelopes.  “Did these come in with the stage?”

Owen’s brown head bobbed.  “Say, was that Little Joe I saw riding out on the last stage with Deke?”

He nodded absentmindedly as he thumbed through the envelopes, stopping on one that was blue and had a distinct scent.

“That one must be for Joe,” the postman said with a wink.

“You think?”  Adam was about to check out the name on the envelope when the next one caught his eye.  It was the confirmation of a contract from a company that Pa had been waiting for.  “Pa will be happy to see this one,” he said, wagging it.

“You didn’t answer about Joe.”

Adam glanced to the west.  “Yes, that was Joe.  He’s filling in for Phil Anderson on the run to Placerville.”

Owen frowned. “I hear Phil’s wife’s not doing to well.  Jenny said she was mighty low.”

“That’s what Joe said,” he responded while thumbing further.

“That was kind of Little Joe to offer to fill in for him, considering.”

That last word stopped him.  He looked up.  “Considering what?”

Owen glanced at the five o’clock stage – which Adam just realized had come in at five-thirty.  When the postman didn’t say anything more, he looked.

There were a half dozen arrows sticking out of its wooden frame.

Shoving the stack of letters under the wagon seat, Adam started toward it.

“You won’t find out anything there, Adam.  Old Charlie, the driver, took himself right off to the saloon after he came in.”

He turned back.  “Was anyone hurt?”

“Not so’s I heard.  Charlie said they was given chase, but the Indians never showed themselves.  Just shot a few arrows off and then disappeared.”

“They didn’t follow through with the attack?”

Owen shook his head.

“Where did this happen?”

“Outside of Moss, this side of Placerville.”

That was quite a ways down the line.  That meant Joe and the stage he was protecting were probably safe as they would soon be stopping for the night.  Adam drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, releasing the fear that had clenched his chest like an iron fist.

“You say Charlie is in the saloon?”

“Said he was gonna drink until he was numb.”

Adam scowled. “And how long ago was this?”

“Twenty, maybe thirty minutes.”

More than time enough to for Old Charlie to accomplish his dubious goal.

“Thanks, Owen.  I appreciate it.  Say hello to Jenny for me, will you?  You got a gem there.”

Owen beamed.

Sometimes he wondered about the world and all its cruelty.  It took so little to lift someone’s spirits.

“Will do, Adam!  You take care.  And don’t you worry any about Little Joe.  If there’s anyone can take care of himself, it’s that youngest brother of yours.”

Adam waved.  Then he closed his eyes.

A little over two hours.

It had to be a record.

 

The man in black heard it, saw it, and smelled it before the bat wing doors swung open on the riot of life that was a Monday night at the Bucket of Blood saloon.  It was one of the newer establishments in town and catered to a different crowd that the Reisen or International House.  While you might find the occasional drifter in those finer houses and maybe a miscreant or two, the Bucket drew from the bottom of the barrel and was peopled by every unsavory sort that might drift in and out of a frontier town.  There were hard-bitten miners, loggers, and other sorts of handymen on one side and – almost as if there was a line running down the center of the main room – cowhands, drovers, and cattle drivers on the other.  In the middle was that sort of man who was a mystery, the drifter and his ilk, men who rolled into town with the tumbleweeds and were most often tossed out at the end of the day with the slop.

Adam’s hazel eyes narrowed as the bartender, Sam, shouted a greeting.  He formed a ‘W’ with three fingers indicating he’d like a whiskey and then plunged into the seething, roiling mob.  Several of the saloon girls gave him a smile and a wave, looking to catch his eye.  They liked waiting on the Cartwrights.  In fact, the girls sometimes fought over who would tend to them.  He liked to think that it was because they treated them with respect and not that it had anything to do with their money and his little brother’s habit of throwing it around.  One of them – a handsome blonde woman by the name of Nel – made it first to the bar to pick up his order, crowning herself queen of the day.  He smiled at her as she gracefully wended her way through the boisterous throng, managing to avoid the filthy fingers clutching at her silk finery and the hands seeking to work their way underneath it.  Nel was a tall woman with skin white as Parian marble.  In some ways – though his father would have his hide if he ever mentioned it in his hearing – she reminded him of Inger.

Maybe that’s why he shown her the town a time or two.

“Adam Cartwright.”  Nel named him as she sat the whiskey on the scarred surface of the table.  “And what brings the scholar of the Ponderosa to such a den of stupidity?”

He chuckled. “Why, I came to see you, Nel.”

Yes, she was much like Inger.  Pretty as a summer’s morn.  Though Nel had a few years on him, her skin was petal-soft and her lips and cheeks, pale roses.  She was tall – nearly as tall as him – and willowy as a sapling, with a deep husky voice and a warm laugh.  Her eyes were the same deep green as his brother’s, with just a touch of golden-brown like Joe’s.  And her hair, well, her hair was a deep blond, not pale like Inger’s but rich like Marie’s.

Adam ruminated for a moment on just what it might mean that he was attracted to a woman who reminded him of two of his three mothers before asking her to sit down.

“Don’t mind if I do,” she said as she tossed her crimson skirts aside and took a seat.  “So long as you’re buying.”

He nodded toward the bar.  “Order what you like.  I haven’t eaten.  Can I get you something?”

The grin she favored him with was a tired one. “That would be lovely.”

“You look weary.”  Adam frowned.  “Sorry.  You’re not supposed to say that to a woman.”

She made a dismissive noise.  “I am tired.  It’s this sickness that’s going around.  Jimmy has it.”

Jimmy was her son.  The child of a love affair and her reason for turning to the life of a kept woman.  Nel didn’t service just anyone.  Hers were long time affairs.

Often bad ones.

“Sorry to hear that.  Do you have money for medicine?”

The blond woman leaned back.  “You Cartwrights, always the good Samaritans.”  Her clear blue eyes studied him.  “Yes, we have medicine.  Thanks to an envelope with money I found stuffed under the door a few days back.  Now, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

He pursed his lips.  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Of course, you don’t.”

Adam took a sip of his whiskey and then kicked back in his chair.  “I’m looking for someone.  Old Charlie, the stage driver.  Have you seen him?”

She gestured with her head.  “He’s over there by the bar.”

Adam looked.  “Where?  I don’t see him at a table.”

“That’s because he’s under it.”

“Oh.”

Nel leaned in, pressing her elbows together and plumping her ample bust where it hung between them suspended in a nest of black lace and red silk.  “You won’t be getting anything out of him until morning.”  She smiled sweetly.  “I could put you up for the night.”

Adam raised his eyebrows.  “I bet you could.”

She chuckled and rolled her eyes.  “Always the gentleman.”  With a hand she called one of the other girls over.  After they’d ordered food, Nel turned back to him and asked, “What would you be wanting with that old lump, Charlie?”

Adam was still working his whiskey.  “Did he say anything when he first came in, about the stage run?”

“Did he?”  She scoffed.  “The old hermit was bragging and blowing about how he had defeated a whole tribe of Indians single-handed.”

“The Indians who shot at the stage?”

She shrugged.  “So he said, but then you can’t believe the half of it.”  Nel watched him a moment.  “Why do you care?”

Adam considered it.  There was no reason to tell her, but then there was no reason not to.  “My little brother is riding shotgun on a portion of Deke Jone’s run to Sacramento.”

“The one that left this afternoon?” she asked.

There was something in the way she asked it that made the hackles stand up on the back of his neck. “Yes.  Why?”

Nel’s eyes went to the middle strata of the saloon, where the drifters and outlaws were seated.  “There was a man in here late last night asking about that stage.  Seemed he had a special interest in it.”

Adam sat up.  “Oh?”

The tall blond shivered.  “I didn’t like him.”

He waited.  When she wasn’t forthcoming with any more information, he asked, “Was there a reason?”

“Nothing I could put my finger to.  He….”  She paused.  “It was his eyes.  They….  The look out of them made my skin crawl.”

“Precisely what was he asking about the stage?”

She frowned.  “He didn’t exactly ask.  He seemed to know a lot about it already.  At first I thought he was a passenger, but when I questioned him, he told me ‘no’.  I asked him then if someone he knew was riding on it and he said they weren’t, but someone he knew was meeting it.  I asked him if he was gonna meet them in Placerville.”  She paused, obviously troubled.

“Well?  What did he say?  Was he going to meet them in Placerville?”

Nel’s blue eyes fastened on his.  In them was real fear.

“No.  He said he was going to meet them in Hell.”

 

 

THREE

Joe and Deke conferred and they came to a decision.

They decided to press on through the night.

There were only three passengers on the stage, a single man, and a husband and wife.  Deke didn’t tell him before they took off – because he’d been under strict orders not to – that the husband was actually one of the officials of the New York City bank where the money Aurora Guthrie had inherited was first deposited.  Albert Norris had come west with it and planned to continue on to see it delivered safely to the modern and efficient bank at Sacramento.  He was all for pushing through without stopping.  Joe wondered at the banker bringing his city wife along for the ride.  While Norris was a no nonsense type, she was as jittery as a filly swishing her tail near a beehive.  Mrs. Liberty Norris had never been out West before and she’d spent the last two hours complaining loud enough for him and Deke to hear it about the weather and the wind, the dust, and the bumps and the jolts, even though she was inside the coach and they were riding out in the fresh air.

The single man traveling with them had eyed Mrs. Norris as he answered the question about pushing on.  He said he didn’t care.  If they wanted to ride through the night, he’d just prop his feet on one seat and his shoulders on the other, pull down his hat, and snore away.  Joe grinned.  The city woman hadn’t liked that much.  She’d demanded he not snore.  The man obliged by saying he was a hat salesman and he’d chosen a hat with an especially thick brim just for the trip.

The salesman – Jerolin Carlisle – was as odd a duck as his name, which he said came from his Latin teaching father winning a coin toss the day he was born.  Joe couldn’t figure him out.  Jeri, as he liked to be called, had arrived late and bought a ticket just as the stage was about to leave.  Mr. Norris hadn’t been too happy about a stranger riding with them.  He and Deke had exchanged a glance, both feeling a bit uneasy too.  Carlisle had no luggage to speak of, which was kind of odd for a salesman.  When they questioned him, he said he was going to meet up with another rep and pick up a fresh supply of hats when they arrived in Placerville and take it on with him to California.

They couldn’t really argue with that.

Joe cast a glance back and down at the coach window where Jeri’s arm was anchored.  There was nothing remarkable about the man.  He had dark bushy hair and pale eyes, and a complexion burnt brown by traveling the West from town to town.  His clothing was plain and well-worn – a somewhat long charcoal-gray Callahan frock coat and pants, with a white side button shirt and a canvas double-breasted vest.  From the fashion choices he’d made, he could have been anything from the hat salesman he claimed to be to a doctor or a maybe even a preacher.  His speech was cultured and he spoke with a southern accent.

When Mrs. Norris heard that, she was sure they were traveling with a Confederate.

“What are you snickerin’ at, boy?” Deke asked him.

Joe turned back.  As he spoke he drew the collar of his heavy plaid coat up about his ears, relishing the warmth of the fur lining.  “Just thinking about Mrs. Norris.  You know, it makes a feller wonder why a man ever gets married ”

“That so?”  Deke shifted in the seat.  For the most part he was letting the horses have their head.  They knew the route as well as he did.  Their pace was neither quick nor slow but steady, and with one or two stops for water and a bite to eat, would carry them well into the night before they were forced to stop and rest the horses.  “All women ain’t like Mrs. Norris.”

Deke had been married, but his wife had been killed ten years or so back during one of the Indian raids.  Joe studied his profile for a moment, cut as it was against a sky backlit by a dying sun.  Deke wasn’t a handsome man but he was what women would have called ‘striking’, with a sharp nose, a straight jaw, and thin lips pulled tight with determination.  “If you don’t mind my asking, how come you haven’t remarried, Deke?”

The older man paused a moment.  Then he smiled.

“Because there ain’t no other woman like Mrs. Jones.”

They fell into a companionable silence then.  Joe’s head lolled slightly beneath his tan hat as the miles rolled by.  When it got so bad he felt his fingers slip on the sawed-off shotgun he held, he shook himself and looked at his companion.

“I sure could use some coffee.”

“To keep you awake or to warm your toes?”

Joe laughed.  “Both.  I’ll drink some and pour the rest in my boots.”

Deke indicated the road ahead of them with a nod.  “There’s a ramshackle cabin about three miles on.  We’ll stop there.  It ain’t a way station, but the man who runs it welcomes travelers.  Old Jess is always ready to provide a pot of coffee and a quick meal – for a price.”

As he shifted to wake himself up, Joe grinned  “Well, we got plenty of cash,” he said.

The older man’s eyes went to his feet, beneath which the pine Treasure Box was stowed.  “Kind of like ridin’ on nitro, if you know what I mean?”  After a second, Deke turned toward him.  “I’m glad for your company, Joe.  You’re a good man.  But I can’t say I’m glad you’re along for this ride.”

“Why not?  Would you rather have someone else?”

Deke thought long and hard.  Then he nodded.

Silence descended again.

A few minutes into it, Joe couldn’t stand it.  “Did I do something wrong?  I mean, I’m sorry I almost fell asleep.  I – ”

“You got it wrong, Joe.  It ain’t nothin’ you done.”

He was confused. “Well, then, what is it?”

Deke was silent a moment.  “You ever heard of the Gwylio Marwolaeth, Joe?”

That was a mouthful.  “Can’t say as I have.  What is it?”

The older man leaned back in the driver’s seat.  “My father’s mother – my nain – she was Welsh.  It’s a belief held in the old country.  It translates roughly to ‘the death watch’.”

Joe’s agile brown brows met in the middle.  “Oh?”

“There’s this sound, some thinks it’s made by an insect.  It’s sort of a ticking sound, like a clock.  It’s heard when someone’s going to die.”  Deke paused.  “It’s kind of like the sound of the coach wheels as they go round and round.  Tick, tick.  Tick, tick.”  He paused.  “I heard it last night when I was camping.”

Even as Joe shuddered, he heard his pa berating him for giving an ear to superstition.  The modern age of science was upon them, Pa would say, and was doing away with such old wives’ tales.   He’d explain that such beliefs were nothing more than the ignorant mind trying to account for something it didn’t or couldn’t understand.  Still, Joe wondered.  He and his brothers had spent long hours in the company of old cowhands on the trail; men who had delighted in scaring the living daylights out of Ben Cartwright’s three young sons by regaling them with harrowing tales of their narrow escapes from Indian curses, skinwalkers, and such.  Men, he respected.  Men he knew didn’t lie.  Every culture had the same stories, Pa would say.  The people who told them were to be respected, but their tales not believed.

He really didn’t want to believe Deke.

“You don’t really believe that stuff, do you?” Joe asked.

Deke hesitated.  He let out a long, low sigh.  Then he grinned.  “Got ya.”

It took a second.

“Oh, for gosh sakes, Deke!” Joe exclaimed.

The older man chuckled as he picked up the reins and urged a little more speed out of the tired horses.

“Bet you ain’t sleepy anymore.”

 

In the end, Adam decided to go home first rather than follow the stagecoach, though it took all the restraint he had within him not to do so.  They really were short-handed at the ranch due to the illness that was going around and the time of year and, what with Joe being gone, if he was going to go riding off, he felt he had better let his father know why.

Or at least a part of why.

If he told Pa the whole truth there would be no stopping the older man from chasing down that stage and, while his little brother might forgive him for showing up unexpectedly to thumb a ride and add another gun, Pa showing up was another matter.  It would embarrass his brother in front of Deke and the other men.  Besides, the man in black told himself, the stagecoach should have stopped for the night by this time.  He’d only be a few hours behind them if he started off at first light.  They couldn’t have made it more than twenty or twenty-five miles in the time they had been on the road.  On horseback, he could cover that distance in half , if not less the time.

It was late when Adam rolled into the yard.  He was hungry and wondered if Hop Sing had kept his supper hot.  He’d intended to be home long before this, but had spent a couple of hours wandering around town making inquiries about Nel’s unsettling drifter.  It seemed the man had come into town about suppertime the night before and made his rounds of the saloons, sitting in on a game of poker here, dancing with a hostess there, and so on.  He’d asked a lot of questions, specifically about the stage that was leaving town at three o’clock the next day.  His story was that he’d had bad news and was making his mind up about a trip to California.  He’d mentioned a sister to one of the girls who worked with Nel.  Cat was sure he was the man who had bought a ticket for the stage at the last minute.  Nel said, no, it hadn’t been him.

Still, she couldn’t swear it.

Of course, there was nothing sinister about asking for information on a departing stage or in buying a last minute ticket.  Maybe the man really did have family in California and had decided on a whim to pull up stakes and go there.  Nel said he’d won a few rounds at the table, so he had money in hand for the ticket.  When he’d asked what the man looked like both women had said he had thick dark hair and light eyes and wore a dark gray coat.   Adam wondered, and not for the first time, if the women were talking about two different men.  Cat had found the man she described exciting, while Nel seemed to think the one she saw was a demon from Hell.

Whatever and whoever he was, he needed to find out.  His little brother’s life might depend on it.

The best way to do that, of course, was to follow the stage and confront the man.  Hopefully he would turn out to be some innocent clerk or sales rep who really did have a sister in Sacramento.

As he hopped from the wagon and headed for the rail, reins in hand, Adam stopped.  It was dark and he’d just noticed the pair of horses tied there.  As he stood, staring at them, trying to place the light-colored one, the front door opened and his middle brother stepped out.  Hoss glanced over his shoulder and then came out to meet him.

“What took you so long?” the big man asked, a hint of trouble in his tone.

“I was making some inquiries.,” he answered as he wrapped the lines around the rail.  “Who’s here?”

“Roy.”

He eyed the two horses.  “And?”

“An army man.  Name of Eastwind.”  His brother’s bright blue eyes narrowed as he frowned.  “Adam, Little Joe’s in trouble.”

An army man?  “Did he bring word of Red Pony?  Is he planning an attack on the stage?” he asked, nearly breathless.

To his surprise, Hoss wrinkled his nose and sniffed.  “Well, yes and no, but that ain’t the worry.”

Adam blinked.  “No?  Then what is?”

“Adam.”

The black-haired man pivoted to find their father standing in the open doorway.  The older man’s face was grave.  In fact, it looked as if nearly all the color had drained out of it.  “Please come inside.  You need to hear what Captain Eastwind has to say as it concerns you too.”

Adam dropped the reins and followed his father and brother inside.  Roy Coffee was standing just within the door on the Indian rug.  The lawman nodded as he passed.  Adam headed for the settee but was brought up short when he noticed a martial straight individual occupying the front edge of the red chair his father normally sat in.  His stripes marked him as a captain.  The man rose as he approached and held out his hand and it was only then that Adam noticed the color of his skin.

It wasn’t white.

“Mister Cartwright,” the soldier said as he shook his hand.

“Adam, this is Captain Nathaniel Eastwind.  Captain, my eldest son, Adam.”

He was trying not to stare.  Adam considered himself an educated, well-rounded man, one not prone to the general prejudices of the West, so it shamed him just a bit to find himself dumbfounded that he was shaking the hand of a captain in the United States Army who was obviously a native.  He’d heard, of course, of Indians fighting on the side of the Union Army in the conflict between the north and south, but those had been mostly eastern tribes.

Nathaniel Eastwind looked Paiute, or maybe Apache.

“Captain Eastwind is a scout out of Fort Henry, Adam,” his father explained.  “He’s come with some rather disturbing news concerning the recent increase in Indian activity along the stage line.”

Adam shot a glance at Hoss. “I thought you said this didn’t have to do with Red Pony.”

Hoss’ lips were pursed.  He had that look he got, like a little boy considering the next checker.  “Listen to what Captain Eastwind has to say, Adam, and you’ll understand.”

“Before I begin,” Eastwind said, turning to their father, “if  might I have a glass of water, Mister Cartwright?  It was a long dusty ride here.”

As his father went to get the water, Adam took the opportunity to study their unexpected guest, who remained standing before the fire.   Nathaniel Eastwind was obviously native though, if he had to guess, he would have said the captain was of mixed heritage with at least one parent – or more likely, a grandparent – being white.  His skin was fairly light, though deepened by exposure to the sun.  His hair was near-black, as would be expected, but in the fire’s light there was a sheen to it that he might have called ‘bronze’.  Eastwind’s eyes were an unusual light brown, like chocolate mixed with cream.  He was a handsome man with strong features that included a wide and generous mouth which quirked from time to time at the ends as if something amused him.

Probably watching four white man try to figure him out.

The captain took the water his father offered him. He sipped at it, as if used to making due with little, and then sat the glass down on the table by the red chair.  Locking his arms behind him, he began to speak by asking a question.

“Tell me, Adam Cartwright, what do you know of Red Pony?”

Red Pony again, even though this wasn’t about Red Pony.

“He’s a renegade chief, in charge of a band of outlaw Indians – Paiute, Apache and a few others – who have burned and looted and killed, driving off our neighbors and friends,” Adam replied, barely suppressing his anger. “They’ve been active on and off in the area for years and for some reason have started to conduct raids again.”

“Red Pony isn’t behind the raids,” Eastwind said.

He glanced at his father.  “What do you mean, Red Pony isn’t behind the raids?  He’s been seen.”

“His men have been seen,” the captain corrected him.  “It is only a rumor that the chief was among them and that he was the one who sent the men out to commit these recent acts.  He is not.  He is at the Paiute camp north of here near the Bannock’s land.  Red Pony has not been…well.”  Eastwind paused.  “At this moment the chief could not even sit a horse.”

That seemed like very specific information for an army captain to have.  “Do you mind if I ask how you know that for certain?”

“Because Captain Eastwind’s just been with Red Pony!” Roy Coffee declared, speaking for the first time. “Ain’t that right, Captain?”

Roy’s admiration of the man was obvious.  Again, Adam wondered just who he was and why he was really here – and what it had to do with Joe.

“Just been with Red Pony?  How?” Adam scoffed.  “I would think a red man wearing the uniform of the white man’s army would be the first one Red Pony’s men would cut down.”

For the first time, Nathaniel Eastwind smiled.  “The answer is simple.  I was not wearing this uniform.”

“What?  You mean you travel with Red Pony as an Indian?”

“Well, of course, he does, Adam,” Roy said, his tone laced with humor.  ‘Don’t you know who the captain here is?”

He was so confused it felt like Joe was home again.

“No.”  He turned back to the enigma wrapped in blue and gold before him.  “Just who are you?”

“Adam,” his father said, “Nathaniel Eastwind is Red Pony’s son.”

 

They’d reached Jess’ place and knocked on the door, rousing the old man with a grumble from the light sleep decades of living in a hostile land had taught him to practice.  He’d come out ranting and raving about the lateness of the hour until he saw Deke and then, with a grin, had set to haggling with the driver over the price of a pot of coffee and some jerky and biscuits.  Mrs. Norris had never seen jerky.  She near fainted away when Deke handed her piece, declaring loud enough for the residents of San Francisco to hear that she was not about to eat dead meat.  Joe’d scratched his head at that one.

Was there any other kind?

In the end they’d decided to let the passengers take a little rest before starting out again.  It was a clear night with the stars singing overhead, so they’d have no trouble finding their way.  There was some risk in traveling in the dark, but Deke felt it was outweighed by the danger of staying too long in any one place with the cargo they were toting – especially since its arrival and delivery had been the talk of the paper’s social page for nigh onto six weeks now.

As Mr. Norris took to working in his ledger and Mrs. Norris fell into an uneasy sleep in Jess’ late wife’s rocking chair, Joe moved outside.  True to his word, Jeri was sleeping in the coach and  Deke was taking care of his animals.  That left him alone with his thoughts.  He moved a little ways off and sat on a stump by the rail fence.  Watching Deke as he talked to the lead horse and stroked its brown muzzle, Joe was suddenly struck with a longing for home – for Cochise, for the ranch house, for the scent of Hop Sing’s cooking and a night spent before the fire teasing and tormenting Adam and beating the chaps off Hoss at checkers.  Much as he would deny it, bein’ grown-up wasn’t easy.  Or at least, it wasn’t easy for him.  Adam had put on adulthood before he went to second grade, and Hoss, well, Hoss had always been so big that he was thought of as a man before he could cinch his own saddle.  Him, well, he guessed in a way – and boy, did it hurt to admit it – in a way he was a pampered little rich boy.  Maybe that was why he felt he had to keep pushing so hard to prove he wasn’t.  There’d always been someone there for him – someone to take care, someone to look out; someone to pull him out of trouble.  Joe snorted as he wiped a bit of moisture from his eye.  Pa was worried about him having some kind of a death wish.  It wasn’t that.

He just knew there would always be someone there to catch him when he fell.

So, that was why he’d agreed to help Phil.  Of course, it had been the right thing to do – there was a sickness in the area and Phil’s wife had been hit hard.  She had a new baby and wasn’t very strong and Doc Martin had told his friend that his wife needed constant care.  Phil couldn’t afford a round-the-clock nurse and he had no family left.  He and Phil had been fast friends when they were boys, along with Seth and a few others.  They’d raised twelve-year-old hell and had a great time of it.  His pa had never approved of Phil, calling him ‘wild and undisciplined’.  Joe grinned.  Pa’d never forgiven Phil for the chicken coop fiasco.

He wondered what Pa would say if he knew cookin’ those chickens in the coop had been his idea.

Anyhow, when Phil told him he couldn’t make the run ‘cause of Maggie’s illness, he’d gotten it into his head that he could.  He was good with a rifle – probably one of the best in the area – though his strong suit was with the pistol slung on his hip.  He felt confident that he could guard the stage as well as any man and, well, being out here – without his family in the mountainous area of the Sierra – was another step toward proving he was a man and that he could function, well, without that safety net that he knew he had.

After all, he was twenty-four!  A lot of men his age had their own spreads with a wife and children and all the responsibility that came with those three things.  In a way, it was odd that none of them had married.  He’d come closer than Hoss or Adam even though he was the youngest, and truth to tell he was always chasing the dream of finding a girl and settling down.  But that was just it – it was a dream.  In reality he feared he’d wake up from one day and find himself alone.  Not alone because he chose it, like now, but alone because the woman he loved had died.

Just like his mama.

Maybe that was why he tended to like older women.  Not only did they remind him of his ma a little – at least of the picture of her he had in his head that was based on the paintings his pa had – but they’d made it past thirty and had a firm hold on life.  Weathering a storm made you stronger.  Sure saplings could bend with the wind, but they were also easily uprooted.  Gone in a breath of air.  Like Amy.

Like Laura.

Joe sniffed again and stood up.  Thrusting his hands into his pockets to warm them, he headed over to talk to Deke who had just finished with the horses and was heading back to the shack.

“Hey, Joe!” the older man called in greeting. “How come you aren’t catchin’ twenty winks or so?”

“I might ask you the same thing,” Joe replied.

Deke shook his head.  “I got me someone ridin’ shotgun.  I can sleep on the seat.”  The older man reached out and poked his shoulder.  “It’s you as gotta have your wits about you.”

Joe looked out into the night.  “How much farther do you intend to go before stopping?”

“There’s a way station about every twenty or thirty miles.  The first leg is the longest since the company figures you fattened up and rested at the main branch before leaving.  I think we got us about ten more miles to the first one.”

So they’d covered near twenty miles already.

Joe glanced at the stagecoach where it sat looking for all the world like the one that Eller girl’s fairy godmother had magicked out of a pumpkin.  He lowered his voice.  “What do you make of Mister Carlisle?”

Deke shrugged.  “Normally, I don’t bother to put a make on the people I haul.  They’re just more cargo.   But with what’s in the Box….”

Joe shivered.  He blew out a puff of breath vapor as he said, “Yeah.  Me too.”

Deke’s hand went to his shoulder.  “You’re shakin’, boy.  You need to get inside and get warmed up and sleep for a bit.”  He looked up at the moon that was near full.  “I figure we’ll leave in an hour or so.  Maybe ride two or three more hours.  That should take us to the company station.”  The older man lifted his hand from his shoulder as he turned and looked out over the land in front of them and the range of hills surrounding it.  “If we move at an even pace, the coach won’t make too much noise.  I don’t like the fact that the moon’s so high, but look over yonder.”

Joe turned west.  The sky was dark there, almost like a blight.

“Rain,” he said.  “Or snow.”

“Yep.  Maybe a mix of both.  Good and bad for travel.  It’ll mask the moon and us, but it’ll also make this hilly trail tricky tomorrow when it melts.”  Casting an experienced eye upward, Deke added, “I think we can make it to the station house before it hits.”

“Do you think it will slow us down much?” Joe asked, still eying the western sky.

“Hard to say.  Might add an extra day or two.”  The driver’s voice softened.  “You missin’ home, boy?”

He hated to admit it, but at the moment his great adventure was beginning to look like one long, hard, frigidly cold, uncomfortably hot, wet and uncomfortable journey.

Joe grinned.  “Just a little.”

“I bet you got a big old bedstead with a fine feather tick right next to a toasty fire in that big ranch house of yours.  And if I know Hop Sing, there’s always a cup of somethin’ hot waitin’ beside it.”  At his look, Deke chuckled.  “Good fortune ain’t a buckin’ bronco.  You don’t want to get thrown.  It don’t mean you’re spoiled, Joe.  Just blessed.”  The older man took another step in the direction of the shack. “Now, come on, I don’t want no bleary-eyed boy ridin’ beside me.  I need a fully rested man.”

Joe nodded and together, they returned to Jess’ place.

 

On a slight rise in the ground, not too far away and hidden behind a clump of scrubby fir trees, a pair of native men watched the two white men disappear into Old Man Jess’ hovel.  The eldest of the pair looked at the warrior at his side.  He was young – no more than two and twenty as the white man tallied years – as well as reckless.  Shadow Walker was known to take action first and consider the consequences of that action later.  It was different for him.  He too had been young once, but his father had named him ‘Thinks Twice’ because that was what he did even then – think, and think again so that there would be no consequences.

“We should return to Many Kills and tell him what we have seen,” the young warrior said, urging his mount to turn.

Thinks Twice sighed.  He was never content, this one.  He was consumed by a need to prove himself that burned hotter than the sun and that was why his name was Shadow Walker.  Always he walked the edge of the night, waiting for the dawn, eager for the next hunt – the next kill.  That was why, though among the youngest of the warriors who had left the ailing Paiute chief to follow his son, Many Kills, Shadow Walker had been chosen for the honor of leading the raiding party against the white man’s stage the following day.

He had counted the whites as they went into Jess’ place.  Four men and a woman.  Three of the men were near his age; men old enough to have a son such as the one who sat beside him.  The other was young as Shadow Walker.  Thinks Twice sighed.  He too had had a son of this age, but he had been sacrificed under this moon to the white man’s guns.

Perhaps, if the raid went well, he would have another one.

Of course, Thinks Twice scoffed as he turned his pony’s nose west and followed his companion silently into the hills, if all went as Shadow Walker desired, there would be no one left alive.

 

 

FOUR

Adam glanced at the soldier beside him who was checking his cinch strap, making sure his saddle was secure.  Nathaniel Eastwind had changed out of uniform and was dressed as a civilian now in an outfit that included a black slouch hat, a deep blue bib shirt, and Y-back braces.  He had a black kerchief tied around his neck and  wore brown canvas trousers.  When Adam had jokingly asked him if he had a war bonnet hidden somewhere in his saddle bags as well as a full set of Indian regalia, Nathan – as the soldier told him to call him – had just smiled.

The two of them were getting ready to set off in pursuit of the stagecoach Joe was riding shotgun on.  They were going to travel fast and light.  Hoss and his father, as well as Roy Coffee and half a dozen other men – among them some very irate ranchers – would follow two hours behind.  This would give the two of them enough time to assess the situation and ride back in order to plan some kind of strategy.  Adam shivered.  Logic and common sense lay at the heart of any successful line of attack.

How did one plan to deal a madman?

“I want one last word with your father, and then I’ll be ready to ride,” Nathan said and then, without a further word, walked to the ranch house and went inside.  He’d dealt with military men over the years – many of them buying horses – but it still took some getting used to when it came to dealing with such a steel trap mind.  It was either open waiting for trouble, or closed tight and dealing with it.  Nathan was not much of a conversationalist.

Although he had talked more than enough the night before.

He’d been right in assuming that Nathan had white blood.  His maternal grandmother had been a captive, taken by the Paiute as a substitute for a daughter they had lost to the white man’s plague.  Her daughter had married Red Pony.  She was one of several wives the chief had and, as his youngest, had been favored.  When Nathan turned thirteen – an age at which he and his brothers were still going to school and sticking girls’ pigtails in inkwells – the Indian scout, then called Bluecoat for his love of watching the long lines of soldiers crossing the land, had been deemed old enough to join in the raids on settlers’ farms.  In one such raid the family – which fought with honor the soldier said, showing a bit of his native heritage – was massacred.  One son survived.  The boy was taken by Red Pony and reared as his son.

The boy had been Fleet Rowse.

Even now, just the mention of the outlaw’s name made Adam shudder.

Nathan explained that in time his father came to honor Rowse more than him, for the older man and the white boy were of a type.  While Nathan questioned every destructive action the tribe took, Fleet was more than satisfied to ride at Red Pony’s side and wallow in the blood of innocent men, women, and children.  In time, though he was not disowned, Nathan ceased to be his father’s son.  His maternal grandfather, a wise old man who saw the future with dying eyes, told him on his deathbed to leave; that his destiny lay elsewhere.

It lay among the men his father and white brother sought to kill.

And so Bluecoat became Nathaniel Edward Eastwind.  He sought out his grandmother’s people and when they found he was the grandson of the child they had lost, they welcomed him.  He knew he was fortunate.  It could easily have gone the other way.  They could have rejected him for being Indian.  They did not, and as they were people of some substance, he was sent to the east to school.  When the war between the states began, he saw it as his duty to fight for the Union, joining one of the eastern units of mixed Native tribes.  After his service ended, Nathan decided to remain in the army.  When he’d asked him why, his companion had smiled sadly.

‘It is the only family I have,’ he replied.

Adam leaned on Sport and looked toward the ranch house.  After that the conversation had turned to the dire news Nathan brought to them.  After the war he had requested a position on the frontier near the home of his childhood.  His superiors agreed that he could do the most good here, and so he had returned to Nevada to live within the shadow of the life he had known – a part of it, and yet, not a part.  He had served as a scout for many expeditions and was sometimes assigned to accompany the stagecoaches as they rolled across the land – if and when they carried army supplies, men, or money.  Such had been the case a week and a half before when the stage had been attacked near Webster’s Station.  During the battle he had seen a lone figure watching from the top of a gorse-covered hill, observing the scene of carnage.

It had been his brother, Many Kills.

His white brother.

Fleet Rowse.

Immediately after the raid ended, Nathan had ridden back to his unit and wired all the nearby forts and towns for information.  From what information the army had supplied he believed the adopted son of Red Pony was in prison.  It was then he discovered the truth.  His white brother had escaped from the institution five years before.  After killing several men, he’d gone to Virginia City where he kidnapped one of Ben Cartwright’s sons and nearly caused the death of him and his brother.  Nathan also  learned from the telegrams he received from Sheriff Roy Coffee, that Fleet had recently made inquiries in town about his sister.  Her name was Aurora Guthrie Clark – the same Aurora Guthrie Clark whom the newspapers reported had only recently inherited a vast fortune.  Nathan told them that Aurora was headed for Placerville at this very moment, traveling on the eastbound stage.  According to what word the army had, the stage she rode was bound to pass the one Joe was riding shotgun on around Webster’s Station.

Instantly it had become clear what the outlaw’s intentions were.  Fleet Rowse was going to use the Indians to raid either one or both of the stages.  He would take Aurora and her fortune and kill anyone who got in his way.

Due to the Indian uprisings further north, Nathan said, there were few soldiers to spare.  A patrol of half a dozen men had been ordered to ride from one the California posts to overtake Mrs. Clark’s coach.  The soldier was sure that the growing storm would slow them down.  Seeing this, Nathan had sought and gained permission from his commander to ride to Virginia City to warn the authorities .  He was to raise a posse and meet both stages.  Before they left, he had considered it his duty to come to the ranch.  It seemed the Cartwright name had come up often in the reports.  Joe had been mentioned, and so had he.

Apparently Rowse had been asking about them too.

At the end of the evening all of them had been shaken hands, determined to set out at first light.  So far the storm had held off.  If God was with them, they would reach the stagecoach Joe rode shotgun messenger on before it made it halfway to Placerville – before Webster’s Station and in plenty of time to prepare for the planned attack.

Adam ran a hand over his face.  Then again, this was his little brother they were talking about.   And though he loved Joe more deeply than his own life, he had to admit that it wasn’t Francis that was his brother’s middle name.

It was ‘trouble’.

 

Joe hadn’t slept a wink.  For the whole hour he laid in the shack, listening to Old Jess’ soft snoring, he’d heard a steady sound above it.

Tick-tick.

Tick-tick.

Even though he figured the old man had a clock hidden somewhere or maybe it was Mr. Norris who had a timepiece in his pocket – after all bankers always carried gold watches – all he could think about was Deke’s grandma’s mouthful of Welsh death.  When Deke came to call him he was wide-awake.  Unfortunately, it was that kind of ‘awake’ that put a man on edge and made him jumpy.

The kind that caused him to make mistakes.

Fighting stiffness and feigning cheerfulness, Joe climbed up and onto the driver’s seat as Mister Norris and his ever-complaining wife came out of the shack.  He wondered idly if the woman ever did anything other than complain.  Of course, after spending a little time talking to her this morning during breakfast he understood a her little better.  The world was a small place.  She’d known Adam’s Boston grandmother and was a Massachusetts’ girl herself.  It wasn’t so much that she was angry or put out or just plain bothersome.

She was scared.

He’d also discovered that she wasn’t as old as he thought at first.  While Mister Norris was a little younger than Pa and a little older than Deke, she looked like she was about Adam’s age.  She told him this was her first trip out West and from what she had seen so far, it would be her last.  He’d smiled and promised her Sacramento was a lot more civilized and he thought she’d be happy there.  She’d given him a smile then that had made him see what must have turned Mister Norris’ head ten years before when they got married.  She kind of reminded him of the picture of Inger his pa had on his desk.  She had really light blond hair and pretty blue eyes.  The only thing that marred her beauty was the worry lines on her face.  They wrinkled her forehead and were plowed deeply in at the ends of her plump pink lips.

Joe smiled at the woman again as she approached the stage and watched as her husband helped her in.  Mister Norris was in a foul mood.  Not only had he balked at the long delay, but he wasn’t happy that Jeri Carlisle had disappeared.  Deke informed him that the salesman had gone to relieve himself and that he’d thought it was better to do it out of Mrs. Norris’ sight.

That was the first time he’d heard the woman laugh.

A moment later Carlisle reappeared, pulling his overcoat closed and buttoning it.  The man gave the two of them a friendly wave before boarding, and then – with a salute to Jess for his kindness – they were off once again.

Joe figured it had to be about one in the morning.  With luck, they would pull into the station about dawn and in its relative safety take refuge from the approaching storm.  Deke was still tossing coins as to whether it would be rain or snow.  He was afraid it would be both.  If old man winter decided to lay down a thick coating of ice that it would take the autumn sun hours to burn off, they might lose all the time they had gained. Deke said the way station was a nice one, built by some fancy dude who thought he could fleece the passengers coming through both ways.  He’d set it up with a Spanish cook and a cantina and thought he would be king of the Sierra.  They’d found him one day, nothing but bones, lost while out surveying his domain.  After that it had passed into the hands of the stage line and they’d kept it pretty much as it was.  There were several beds and a good place to cook and eat, and most of the time it was manned by an old Mexican Indian couple who had ties with the American Army dating back to President Polk’s War.  After his less than restful night, Joe was looking forward to the stop.  They’d lay up there about half a day while the horses were changed out and they all got some rest, and then make another run, moving again under the cover of darkness.  It was a hard push, but that way they’d make it to Placerville in record time.  As Deke urged a little more speed out of the horses, Joe pivoted on the seat, taking a look behind.  At the moment he had little fear any trouble would come from there.  After all, they’d barely put two miles between them and the station.  Still, something nagged at him.  Something that left him uneasy.  Maybe it was due to his being tired – to his heightened senses – or maybe it was due to the sound one that the coach wheels made as they rolled along.

Tick-tick.

Tick-tick.

 

Hoss Cartwright yawned as he stepped out of the house, gear in hand for the early morning job he had to do in the barn.  After a fitful night of sleep, the dawn had come and it found him in charge of the ranch.  Their pa had insisted on joinin’ up with the posse, so’s he’d ridden to town with Roy Coffee the night before.  Adam, who was stepping into his stirrup and mountin’ Sport, was headin’ out with that there army man.  That left him to manage things at home.

He sure wasn’t happy about it.

They’d traded a few sharp words, him and Pa, not sayin’ it, but tryin’ to outdo each other for their worry for Little Joe.  Adam loved Joe, he knew that, but for him and Pa there was somethin’ that just went clean through and past that word when it came to the youngest Cartwright.  One of his lady friends – a girl he’d courted a short time who was as outspoken as his little brother – had called him an ‘old mother hen’ one day when he’d been worryin’ and fussin’ about Joe not pullin’ in yet for supper.  ‘You’d think you were his mother,’ she’d chided.

That was ‘cause, in a way, he was.

A memory stabbed the big man as he stood there, staring at his older brother sitting on Sport’s back.  Adam had just returned from college.  Older brother had been heading into town and Little Joe’d wanted to go with him.  Joe couldn’t have been no more than ten.  His big brother had been in a big hurry to join their pa and he left so fast he practically kicked dirt in Joe’s face.  What Adam didn’t understand was that Joe didn’t want to tag along to annoy him or to get into trouble in town with his friends.  Joe’d missed him and wanted to be with him.  He just didn’t know how to say it.  It weren’t long after Ma’s death when Adam left for the East and his goin’ done cemented one fact in baby brother’s active,  agile mind.

People who went away didn’t always come back.

Little Joe had thrust his lip out, brushed the dust off his shirt and pants, and then stomped toward the house and the door.  The boy sure had been strong even then.  He’d heard the door slammin’ clear out in the barn.  Later, when he went inside, he found Hop Sing callin’ his brother’s name.

Where you be, Little Joe?  Supper ready, Little Joe!  Hop Sing tell father when he return if you no come to table now!  

He’d sat down and ate his supper, but still Joe was a no-show.  After the table had been cleared and Hop Sing had stopped shoutin’ and started worryin’, they both started huntin’.  Finally, he found his little brother up in Adam’s room, on older brother’s bed, sobbin’.  Pa weren’t there, so he was the only one could comfort him and he had, taking Little Joe into his arms and holdin’ him halfway through the night.

Hoss’s lips twitched.  There was another memory.  It was of Marie this time, on a day when she’d been told Adam and his Pa were in danger and she should stay put until the search party found them.

You should’ a seen how fast that little woman could pull on a pair of dungarees!

“Something funny, Hoss?” Adam asked from his perch on Sport’s back.

Nathan Eastwind had just settled on his horse.  He turned to him and said in that way Indians’ did.  “That is not a smile of amusement, but one of affection and concern.”

The big man snorted.  “Tell me, Captain Eastwind, are all of you natives mind readers, or does it just seem that way to us white folks?”

Absolutely deadpan the soldier responded, “Of course we read minds.”

His blue eyes blinked.  “Really?  Can you tell me what I’m thinkin’ right now?”

Adam had lowered his head and was shaking it.  “Oh, for goodness sake….”

Nathan Eastwind was like most of the Indians he’d come to know while travelin’ with his pa.  There was a sense about him of being rooted to something so deep no white man could understand it – as if the land he walked, the wind and the water, were all a part of him.  It wasn’t exactly that Indians didn’t know fear – any smart man did – but he had a notion that death only meant going into that deep place and so there wasn’t nothin’ there a man like Eastwind was scared of.

The soldier’s eyes danced and his lip quirked.  “You do not mean to remain behind.”

Beside him, Adam’s head came up.

Hoss sputtered.  “Course, I’m stayin’ put.  I promised Pa –“

“You promised your father not to argue with him anymore.”  Nathan’s white teeth flashed within the framework his deeply tanned face.  “I believe your exact words were. ‘It ain’t no use arguin’ with you, Pa.  I’ll just be about doin’ what needs doin’.’  Were they not?”

Adam was watching him, a frown on his face.

“I might of said that.”

“Hoss, Pa needs you here to manage the ranch.”

“Both you and I know, Adam, he don’t need no such thing!” he exploded.  “The ranch hands can handle it for a few days.  Pa just don’t want all three of us out there exposed to those renegade Indians.  He’s already half out of his mind with worry about Little Joe, and now he’s got to throw you into the mix and I’m the one come up short!”  Hoss drew a breath and held it, fighting his temper.  “I’m sorry, Adam.  I ain’t gonna sit here at home nursin’ cows while some dang renegades are out to kill my family!”

Nathan stared at him a moment and then opened his hand and held it out to Adam.  Hoss frowned as his brother fished for and dropped a coin into it.

The soldier laughed at his face.  “I told your older brother I could read minds.  He bet I couldn’t.”

“That one didn’t take much,” Adam growled.

Nathan’s smile faded as he looked from him to Hoss.  “I would trade all I own to have brothers such as you.  For many reasons, between Many Kills and me, there is nothing but hate.”

Hoss pursed his lips.  “I’m sorry about that, Captain,” he said softly.

“Nathan, please.”

The big man nodded.  “Nathan.  Now, you take care of that brother of mine you got there with you, you hear?”

Adam was looking at him.  “So when are you intending on leaving, or aren’t you going to tell me?”

“I’ll let the posse get an hour’s lead or so, and then head out,” he said with a grim smile.  “That way, while they watch your back, I can watch theirs.”

“Pa’s, you mean.”

Hoss nodded.  “Yeah.”

After Little Joe, in their family, it was their Pa who seemed to have a knack for getting into trouble.

Adam nodded to him as he and Nathan pointed their horses’ noses toward the road.  Hoss watched for a moment and then he remembered something Pa had asked him.

“Say, Adam!”

His brother reined in his horse and looked back.  “Yeah?”

“Pa asked if you got the mail when you were in town yesterday.  Did you?  He’s lookin’ for that contract.”

Adam thought a moment.  “Yes, I did. When I got home and saw Roy’s horse, I completely forgot about it.  It’s under the wagon seat.  The confirmation is there.”

Hoss gave him a thumbs-up.  “You take care!”

His older brother flashed one of those devil-may-care smiles he had – the kind that made him look like an older version of Joe – and then, with a salute, he and the army man were gone.

After finishin’ his chores in the barn, Hoss came back outside, more than ready for the hot breakfast Hop Sing would be puttin’ on the table.  On the way he went to the wagon and fished yesterday’s mail out from under the seat.  Some of it had wedged behind one of the boards . He had to tug to get it out and tore the corner of a pretty pale blue envelope open in the process.  When he got in the house, he tossed it along with the other mail on the credenza and went to eat.  After helpin’ Hop Sing clear the table, the big man was headin’ back out when he noticed the blue envelope again.  Curiosity won out and he crossed to the credenza and picked it up.  He turned the letter over and saw that it was addressed to Little Joe.  Liftin’ if to his nose, the big man breathed in the perfume it was soaked in.  As he did, he saw there was somethin’ shiny in it.  He shook it and a little silver paper ring fell out  of the hole and onto his palm.  As he eyed the trinket a phrase on the exposed part of the letter caught his attention.

‘…be there soon’, it said.

Now, he wasn’t one for readin’ his brother’s  mail, but with Joe bein’ gone and all he figured it was his duty just to make sure Joe didn’t miss anythin’.  Hoss held the letter to his nose and smelled the perfume again.  He sighed just a little as he did.  Anythin’ or any one that was.

After all, what were big brothers for?

Crossing over to his father’s desk, he located Pa’s letter opener and slipped it into the torn envelope.  It only took two motions and it was open.  Placing the little paper ring in his shirt pocket, he began to read the letter.

The first paragraph or two were filled with the kind of chit-chat girls’ was prone to, talkin’ about where they’d been and tellin’ all about the latest fashions and such things.  As he continued to read, the writer mentioned havin’ been away five years and lookin’ forward to seein’ Little Joe again.  Hoss turned the paper over and looked for a signature.  Just as he found it, the paragraph above it jumped out at him.

“No,” he breathed.

‘So, you see, I’m all finished with finishing school now.  They couldn’t seem to find anything left to polish, so they let me go.  I now know how to sit, stand, walk with a book on my head while keeping my back in the proper position, yawn like I’m bored but not gape, and bat my eyelashes with the best of them.  The sole purpose of which is, of course, enticing young men and snagging the richest husband I can find.  But you and I both know I’ve already got a rich and handsome young beau, and I’ll be expecting him to meet the 5 o’clock stage from Sacramento on the seventh of November.  Bring the ring with you.   I’ll be aboard!’

It was signed with a kiss and the name, Bella Carnaby

Elizabeth Carnaby was headin’ for the Ponderosa and she was on the same stage as Fleet Rowse’s sister.

 

Joe stretched and ran a hand through his unruly curls, trying to tame them before he put his hat back on his head.  Dawn had come and gone along with storm, which had proven less potent than Deke feared.  It had laid down less than an inch of snow over the spare hills and road and that had already vanished as the land heated up.  There was another one the horizon, though, and the stage driver had awakened him an hour or so early so they could check the stage over again and care for the horses and be ready to head out by the time the others had finished breakfast.  They were looking at a long day.  The next way station was twenty-three miles on and Deke wanted to make it by dark and then lay over like they had the last night before taking off again and traveling through the wee hours of the morning.  Joe looked at the older man as they worked in tandem on getting the horse’s tackle in place.  Deke was edgy.  His eyes kept moving from the horizon and the storm to the road ahead.  When he’d asked him about it, the older man had shook his head and muttered something about it not being ‘prudent’ to speculate on what was going to happen – like saying it out loud might call it down on their heads.  He hated to admit it, but he had a sense of it too.  Like something hanging, waiting to happen.

Then again, that could have just been the storm.  They could do funny things with a fellow’s head.

When Deke was satisfied, it was a repeat of the day before with the passengers mounting the stage as the day pushed into afternoon and waving goodbye to the old Indian couple who had fed and given them a bed for the night.  He’d had a hard time falling asleep at first and had wandered out on the porch.  When he did, he heard voices coming from the little stable that was attached to the side of the main house where they’d sheltered the horses from the storm.  Wandering over, he’d realized it was Deke, talking to the man who ran the way station.  When he heard the name ‘Red Pony’ his ears perked up.  It seemed some of the earlier reports of the renegades actions in the area had come from the old Indian, whose name was Jacob.  Some of Red Pony’s men had been spotted, Jacob said, about ten miles down the road just before the Strawberry Valley stop.  That was where they were aiming to halt for the day.  Deke had decided to pass by Yank’s station without stopping.  After that, there were still some forty-five miles to go to Placerville.

They’d be about halfway there.

Joe sat now, wide awake, his sawed-off double-barrel shotgun clutched in his fingers as he scanned the land both before and after the coach.  It didn’t help that the pass they were going through was thick with pine trees and other ground vegetation, providing ample places for someone to hide.  They’d warned Mister and Mrs. Norris and Jeri Carlisle that they were going through a tricky bit of country. The banker had surprised him by pulling out a fancy pearl-handled pistol with silver fixings, saying he could take care of himself and his wife.  Carlisle had merely grunted and told them he was prepared for anything.  So far Joe hadn’t seen anything, but like Deke his senses were heightened.  He jumped at every bird call and once had even gone so far as to pivot and rise, sighting along his gun when he heard two of them answering each other.  Still, as the evening progressed and nothing happened, he relaxed a bit – at least enough that he could carry on a conversation with Deke and even have a laugh or two.

That stopped just about midnight as weariness overtook them and both he and the driver looked forward to gettin’ the last five miles done.  It was the dead of night and snow had begun to fall once again, coating the rugged trees and blanketing the already cold, barren land.  The moon was full like the night before and its light caused the ribbon of road that ran before them to turn into a silver river.

Joe saw it first.  Just over the next rise.  A thin trail of smoke, spiraling up into the sky like a spirit on its way to the next world.

Deke clucked and slowed the horses.  He didn’t stop.

“Keep an eye out, Joe.  This could be a trick to make us stop.”

Joe nodded as his fingers went white on the polished barrel of his shotgun.  He licked his lips.  “You think it’s Red Pony?”

“There’s no tellin’ ‘til we get there.”  Deke shook the reins, picking up a little speed.  “You just take hold, Little Joe.  If it looks like trouble old Luke and Lutie know what to do.”

Luke and Lutie were the horses pulling the stage.

As they topped the rise, the source of the smoke became all too apparent.  A partially burned stagecoach lay on its side in the center of the road, the smoke rising from a small portion of it that was still burning.  All around it were scattered suitcases and valises that had obviously been ransacked.

Several bodies lay amidst the ruins.

“What’ll we do?” Joe asked, breathless.

“You see any sign of anyone hanging around?” Deke asked.

“I say!” Mister Norris suddenly called, sticking half of his lean frame out the window.  “What’s going on?”

“Sit down and shut up and keep that gun of yours ready!” Deke ordered, all business.  As he did, Joe heard Mrs. Norris gasp and a ripple of sympathy ran through him.  Poor woman.  This was more than she’d asked for.

“What’s going on?” he heard Carlisle ask.  “Deke?  Report!”

The driver glanced at him.  His look seemed to say, ‘Sorry, Joe’.  “Burned out stage.  Looks like everyone’s dead or dying.  You want me to stop?”

Joe frowned.  Deke was taking orders from Jeri Carlisle?

The other man’s dark head was showing on the side of the stage.  He was leaning out the window.  “No.  Roll on past.  Slowly.  If it seems safe, we’ll stop on the other side.”

When Joe turned to the driver with a puzzled look on his face, Deke mouthed, ‘Pinkerton.’

He’d wondered why the Treasure Box with the gold wasn’t under Deke’s feet anymore, but in the coach’s hold.  Now it made sense, as did Carlisle’s rather cavalier attitude.  Jeri must have been hired by the bank or the stage company to travel incognito so he could keep watch over their investment.

“Almost there,” Deke announced through gritted teeth.

Joe heard Mrs. Norris take in a breath of air, cough, and then start sobbing as the smoke from the burning coach passed over them in a cloud, carrying with it the scent of roasted meat.  Joe’s stomach sickened and he wanted to turn away, but he forced himself to look at the bodies that lay beside the road out of respect as much as necessity.  There wasn’t much left, but he could tell there was an older man and woman, probably husband and wife.  Their scalped and scorched corpses lay near one another. The woman’s hand was stretched out.  Beside them was the body of a young woman whose skirts were pulled up, indelicately displaying her partially burned legs.  As they rolled by, he noted another figure amidst the ruins. A man who might have been the driver.  He was partially hidden.  One of the coach’s horses had fallen on top of him before dying.  It had several arrows in its brown hide.  As Joe noted that the man had not been burned, he saw him move.

“The driver’s alive!” he yelled, his voice low and shaking with rage.

Deke nodded, his face grim.  “Mister Carlisle?”

There was a pause.  Then, to Joe’s relief, Carlisle called out, “Okay, slow down.  I’m getting off.”  Before the coach had come to a halt Jeri was out of it and issuing orders.  “Cartwright, you’re with me.  Deke, take the Norris’ on another quarter mile or so and then stop.”

Joe looked at Deke.  The older man shrugged.  “I’ve got my orders.  Guess you do too.”

The stage was still moving, but climbing down and hopping off was a piece of cake compared to riding a bucking bronco.  As Joe’s boots hit the ground, Carlisle ordered him to bend low and follow him over to a clump of trees.  “I need to get over to the driver,” he said, all business.  “Cover me.”

Joe nodded.  He hesitated, but he had to know.  “Why me?  Why not Deke?”

Carlisle shot him a look that rolled from his face to the gun slung low on his hip.  “I checked around, Cartwright.  I know you know your way with a gun.  I’ve been told you’re just about the fastest draw around.  Deke’s a good driver, but that’s not what I need.”  He looked around briefly. “I don’t for one minute believe they’ve gone, but I need to talk to the driver before he….”

He let the end of that sentence hang in the air just like the driver’s life was hanging – by a thread.

“Red Pony, you mean?” Joe asked as he pulled unbuckled the strap on his holster.

Carlisle snorted.  “Yes, Red Pony.”   Raising up a bit on his legs, the agent crouched and counted.  “On three, use the shotgun to lay down some cover and then get that pistol up and ready.  One.  Two.  Three!”

Joe did as he was told, scattering shot from first one barrel and then the next before dropping the larger weapon and palming his six-shooter.  When there was no answering fire, he took a moment to reload the shotgun and then sat there on his haunches waiting for further instructions.  It was probably only a few minutes later, though it felt like an eternity, when Jeri Carlisle ran back to his side.  Once there he crouched again.

“No sign of anyone?” Jeri asked, breathless.

Joe shook his head.  “What about the driver?”

“Dead.”  The agent paused.  “It’s strange.  I was sure he wouldn’t leave without the money.”

“Money?  Since when’s an Indian interested in money?”

Jeri Carlisle stood up.  After a second, he holstered his weapon.  “I’m afraid, this particular ‘Indian’ is.  You keep your gun at the ready, Cartwright.  I’m going to talk to Deke.”

For a moment, Joe remained crouched where he was.  Then as Carlisle moved off, he did too, walking over to look at the driver who lay trapped beneath the near ton-weight of the animal.  He even knelt just to double-check that he was dead.  As he did, Joe heard a horse whinny and nearly jumped out of his skin until he realized it was another of the coach team that was standing just off the road, munching on grass as if nothing of any moment had happened.  In the distance he could hear Mrs. Norris shouting.  She sounded hysterical.  Within a few minutes her cries turned to sobs and she fell silent.  Probably warned that if she didn’t she’d likely meet the same fate as the victims lying in the dirt.  That, or be taken by the Indians as a captive.  The curly-haired man made it to the end of the burnt coach, with the intention of paying respects to the dead, when suddenly he stopped.  The girl he’d seen as they rolled past was there.  She couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old.  Just a child, really.  A child who would never grow up to marry, to have her own kids, and to grow old in the bosom of a loving family.

“Joe.”

He nearly jumped out of his skin.  A sheepish grin lit his face.  “Hey, Deke.”

“Sorry I startled you.  I…  Well, I felt bad I had to keep from you who Carlisle really  was.”

He shrugged.  “It’s okay.  The only thing it might have done was make me feel a little better, you know, knowing a professional was on board.”

“Carlisle’s a good man.  I’ve run with him before.  He has a lot of wartime experience with the Indians.  Used to be in the army before he signed up with the Pinkerton’s.  Wells Fargo hired him to guard Mrs. Clark’s money and wanted him to travel incognito.”  Deke smiled grimly.  “I guess he raised a few eyebrows hoppin’ on the stage at the last minute.”

Joe nodded.  “He sure raised mine.”

Deke was silent a moment.  “Carlisle found the stage roster.  Looks like it was near full for the run.”

A concord coach could hold up to nine people on the inside alone.  He’d counted four bodies so far.  “Near full?”

“A Mister and Mrs. Parrish.  We’re betting they’re the ones dead.”  He grimaced.  “They were traveling with a son and daughter.  Seems there were two more.  Another young girl and Mrs. Clark.”

Joe blinked back surprise.  “Aurora was on the stage?”

Deke looked wary.  “She a friend of yours?”

The vibrant redhead had been Aurora Guthrie five years before when his pa had hired her to come out to the Ponderosa in order to watch over eleven-year-old Elizabeth Carnaby who’d come to stay with them for the winter.  Everything had gone south when Aurora’s brother escaped from prison and came looking for her and the payroll money Pa usually kept in the safe….

Joe paled enough that Deke put out a hand and caught him by the shoulder.  “You okay, boy?”

His green eyes wide, he pushed past Deke and headed over to where Carlisle was standing, talking to Mr. Norris.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” he demanded.

The agent turned to look at him.  “Who?”

“It wasn’t Red Pony was it, that did this?  I bet it wasn’t even Indians!”

The man caught his arm and directed him away from the stagecoach where Mrs. Norris was trying to rest.  “It was Indians, all right,” Carlisle said as he released him.  “They’re the ones who usually travel with Red Pony, but they’ve got a new leader since the old chief’s sick.  Goes by the name of Many Kills.”

“It’s Fleet Rowse, isn’t it,” Joe stated, his jaw tight and his nostrils flaring.  “He’s taken Aurora and you think he’s out there waitin’ to take the money as well.”

Carlisle shrugged.  “That’s about the size of it.”

“Couldn’t you have done something to prevent – this!”  Joe pointed to the coach, the lingering smoke; the dead bodies.

“The army was sent out on the western end.  It appears they were held up by the weather.  There’s a army captain in Virginia City who is supposed to have organized a posse  He should be coming this way.  I came as quickly as I could.  Cartwright, what else were we supposed to do?”

Joe’s anger vanished as quickly as it flared.  “I…don’t know.  I’m sorry.”

Jeri Carlisle was a good twenty years older than him.  He placed a fatherly hand on his shoulder.  “It’s all right, son.  It’s a lot  to take in.”

He hung his head and nodded.  “Do we know their…names?”

“Well, there’s the Parrishes, like I said.”  The Pinkerton agent reached into his pocket and pulled out a singed piece of paper.  “Mother, Mary, and father name of Charles.  The missing boy is named Thom and their girl was Polly, or is Polly.”  He paused.  “There was another teenage girl on the coach.  There’s no way of knowing which young woman’s dead.  They’re both listed as being seventeen.”

Joe could see the girl’s half-burned legs, the blackened skin grotesque where it fused with the pure white cloth of her torn pantaloons.

“What’s the name of the other girl?”

When he heard it, it was as if the world stopped.

“Bella, it says here.  Bella Carnaby.”

Tick-tick.

Tick-tick.

 

 

FIVE

Adam Cartwright stood stock-still, gaping in horror at the ghastly scene that had unfolded as he and Nathan topped the rise.  The estranged son of Red Pony was at his side, offering support without words.  He’d realized as a kid when he went with his father to treat with the various Indian tribes in the area, just how important silence was.  Unlike most white men, the natives of this land valued silence.  They understood that there were some things that were simply too deep for words.

Like this.

“I will look for him,” Nathan said.

Adam caught the other man’s arm as he began to move.  His own hand trembled.  “No, I’ll look.”

He owed Joe that much.

The two of them had ridden hard, using Eastwind’s army authority to commandeer horses at each of the way stations they passed.  With fresh mounts on the average of every twelve miles, they’d made good time in spite of the fact that a light snow had begun to fall.  They’d expected to overtake Joe and the coach he was guarding long before dusk.  When they’d arrived at Jess’ station, the old man there told them they were too late.  The stagecoach was long gone.  Deke had decided to do the same thing it seemed – press on without stopping and beat the approaching storm by driving his team through the night.

The burnt-out skeletons of two top-of-the-line Concord coaches that lay abandoned on the road before him told the story of just how spectacularly wrong that choice had been.

Without words.

Still, being a white man he fought the need for them.  After all, Adam Cartwright was a man of letters – a scholar of the white man’s words.  He’d need words to tell Pa what had happened when his father and the posse rode over that hill later in the day.  His Pa would come to him for the words he wanted to hear – that his little brother was all right; that Joe’s vibrant presence hadn’t been snuffed out in the wind of hate that blew through this place the night before in the form of a dozen bloodthirsty renegades mounted on the backs of painted ponies.

“Adam.”

Words.  He didn’t want them now.  Had come to hate them.  Without words he could pretend everything was as it had been, that his little brother’s mutilated corpse had not been found among the half-dozen or so scattered across the land before him, some so badly disfigured only their clothing identified them as men or women.  Adam’s hazel eyes shifted to the far side of the eastbound coach.  There was one grave.  A shallow one.  Above it someone had staked a makeshift cross.

It’s surface was splattered with blood.

A hand came down on his shoulder.  He braced himself for the words.

“Unless your brother is in the grave, he is not here.”

Adam’s legs nearly buckled.

Words.

He had to remember, there were other words.  Not carnage or devastation, destruction, or despair.  He struggled for them.  They wouldn’t come.  What were they?  Then, like the wisp of smoke spiraling into the sky above the far coach, almost impossible to catch, one came to him.  Only one.

It spilled out along with his tears.

Hope.

“Not…not here?” he stuttered.

Nathan’s jaw was tight; his chocolate-brown eyes narrowed with rage and purpose.  “Two women and a girl.  Many men.  None of them young.”

One of the men was Deke.  They’d come upon the stagecoach driver first, a little ways off from the scene of the bloodbath.  He was lying behind a group of rocks surrounded by scrubby bushes, his gun in his hand and his body riddled with arrows.  Beside him on the ground, crushed and battered and soaked in God only knew whose blood, had been Little Joe’s hat.   There’d been another corpse a little ways off, so badly burnt it was impossible to identify.  A thin layer of pristine white snow blanketed it as it did just about all of the land around them.

The storm had arrived just in time to bury the dead.

He’d started for that second corpse, sure it was Joe, and then –

That was when he lost it.  At that moment everything that was in him had come roaring up and out in one great vomit of grief.  He’d fallen to his knees and remained there as Nathan came alongside and then passed him, moving from one violated corpse to the next, doing what he should have been doing, searching for the little brother he loved and had failed.

“None of them…are Joe?” he repeated, barely daring to believe those words.

This time they were the anchor he needed.

“No.  I will go unearth the grave.”

And then Nathan and his hand were gone.

Adam waited a moment and then sucked it in and rose to his feet.  He’d lived near a lifetime in the west and been party to a good many atrocities, but never had he personally seen wholesale slaughter on such a scale.  It was as if whoever had done this had been filled with a rage that new no limits.  The people who were dead had been killed, but that had not been enough. They’d been scalped as well, mutilated, and their bodies burned.  It was the work of…a madman.

His fists tightened until he feared the skin over his knuckles would burst.

Rowse.

Nathan was walking toward him, his face long and thoughtful.  There were more words to come.  At first they brought him joy, but then immense sorrow.

“The grave was shallow.  It is a female in it.  I would guess, sixteen or seventeen years old.”

Adam winced.  Hoss had told them about Bella being on the eastbound stage.  She was about that age.    Could it be….

“Joe,” he said after a moment.

The captain frowned.  “I said it is not your brother – ”

“No.  It was Joe buried her.”  Adam chuckled and the sound of it was madness in his ears.  “He’s the only one I know who would be crazy enough to bury someone in the middle of an Indian raid.”

Nathan was silent a moment.  “I will be honored to meet him.”

‘Will’, not would have.

There was that word again.

Hope.

As they buried the other victims the snow continued to fall, covering the brown earth and the crimson blood with a blue-white mask.  They’d been at it a couple of hours when he heard the sound of horses hooves thundering in the distance.  Adam looked at Nathan who was kneeling beside the grave of the girl.  He’d just placed a fresh cross there, made with scrap wood from one of the coaches.  The soldier rose and came to his side.

“Your father?” he asked.

Adam nodded.  Somehow he knew it was.  “Yes.”

“What will you tell him?”

Adam glanced at his companion and then at the row of shallow graves.

Words.

 

Joe Cartwright squinted, wiggled his nose, and tried to open his eyes.  When that didn’t work, he reached up and pulled at the dried blood that welded his eyelashes shut in an attempt to speed things up, but only succeeded in knocking some of the rust-colored matter into his eyes where it burned and brought tears.

As if he hadn’t cried enough.

Gingerly, he reached around the back of his head to check the wound there and winced as his fingers found it.  Pulling them back and looking at them, he sighed.  It had been some time since the Indian attack and the wound was still bleeding.  That was probably not a good sign.  Still, at the moment his thinking was pretty clear, so maybe what he’d taken was just a glancing blow.  Scalp wounds bled like heck no matter what.  Joe closed his eyes and leaned against the rock at his back, taking a moment to rest his eyes.  He knew it was a stupid thing to do.  After all, he was surrounded by hostile Indians, all of which wanted him dead.  What he really needed to do was get on his feet and hightail it into the hills. But he couldn’t do that.  At least not yet.  Shifting slightly, Joe glanced at the unconscious man at his side.

Jeri Carlisle was still alive.

Joe blew out a sigh.  The others weren’t.  They were dead.  All of them were dead.  The surly banker Mister Norris and his frightened wife.  The Parrish family from the first coach.  Deke.  His friend, Deke.  And God…dear God….

Bella.

He was sure it was her.

There was no reason to know other than that he just knew.  After Deke read the name off the roster, he’d walked woodenly over to where the girl’s body lay.  She’d been tossed there like something that had been used and discarded as trash.  He hadn’t seen Bella in nearly five years.  He’d gone to visit her that spring like he promised, the one after she’d come to the Ponderosa.  They’d had a grand time and she’d agreed to come visit him again the next year but then, her family’s fortune changed.  They lost a crop and then there was a fire and they lost their beloved little house.  The Carnabys tried to hold on for a time.  Pa offered to help them rebuild, but Levi Carnaby was a self-made man and he politely refused, saying he couldn’t accept  charity.  Instead he packed the entire family up – his wife Mary, Bella, Jack, and their dog, Scamp – and went to Oregon for some of that free land Pa was always talking about.  Bella wrote him and he wrote her back over the next few years, letters and letters and letters.  Through them he witnessed her growing up, going from that cute little twelve-year-old girl who never stopped talking and who had an answer for everything, to a young woman whose letters spoke of finishing school and dances, and the dream of getting married.

Married.  Joe’s lips curled in a regretful smile.  He’d promised to marry Bella one day.

Instead, he’d just buried her.

Seeking to exorcise the demon vision of that blackened corpse, Joe thought about the last letter he’d gotten from her a few months back.  She was close to completing a two year course at a girl’s school and had hopes of getting a job at a high-end ladies’ store so she could help support the family.  There were two more Carnabys now, another brother and another little ‘Bella’ named Sophie who he heard had the same spiraling golden curls.

He’d found one of those curls, hacked off and tossed beside her body.  He’d kept it.  The lock of hair was tucked deep down in his pocket.  When the despair and rage he felt got to be too much, he’d reach in and wrap his fingers around it and its softness would remind him of her.

And the tears would flow again.

Using his gun hand, Joe ran a filthy sleeve over his face, striking back the ones that were falling now, and then hunkered down again.  Leaning his head against the boulder, he listened for any sign of the Indians.  They were like smoke, the Paiutes.  Or maybe more like a morning mist that rose out of nowhere and disappeared just the same.  He was so tired and his head hurt so much.  All he wanted to do was sleep, but he had to stay awake.  He had to stay alive.  He just had to.  Someone had to tell these people’s story.   Someone had to make the renegades pay….

Someone….

Joe’s head jerked up.

God.  No.

He’d fallen asleep.

He couldn’t do that.

If he fell asleep, they’d take him.  He knew what Indians did to their captives and, worse, what these Indians would do to him if they caught him.  All along people had thought it was Red Pony who was leading these raids.  It wasn’t.  It was Pony’s adopted son, Fleet Rowse.  Joe hadn’t seen Rowse, but he’d heard him – laughing as the Indians hacked and scalped and burned their victims.  He’d have known that cold malevolent voice anywhere.  ‘Many Kills’, that’s  the name Red Pony’s people had given him, which was funny since he was only a boy then.

Well, not funny really.

Sad.

What could make a child hate that much?

Tasting blood, Joe spit it out.  In the position he’d taken, wedged in-between a pair of rocks, not quite standing up but not laying down, the blood from his wound ran along the curve of his jaw and into his mouth.  He didn’t remember being hit, but then, he knew from experience that was nothing unusual.  Doc Martin told him it was a miracle he had any memories at all considering all the times he’d been thrown from a horse and hit his head or been pistol-whipped.  Apparently, a man’s head could only take so much and when it was struck too hard he forgot a little ways back and a little ways forward.

He wished he could forget.

Forget those blackened legs and those white pantaloons.

That curly golden hair.

God, no….

Joe’s head didn’t jerk this time.  It lolled to one side and the motion woke him up.  He was laying on the ground looking up at the sky.  Carlisle was still beside him, coughing and breathing hard.  He felt really guilty about Jeri.  The Pinkerton man had fought him about burying Bella.  He said they needed to get moving, that hanging around wasn’t really a smart idea.  That Fleet Rowse was out there somewhere.

But it was…Bella.  He couldn’t….

He just couldn’t leave her like that.

Finally, the agent relented.  While Deke got the horses and the passengers ready, he told Joe he could bury the girl.  Just the girl.  Jeri needed to get to Placerville so he could send off telegraphs and call in other agents.  So he could alert the army.  They’d come, he said, to canvas the hills for Rowse and Aurora.

Aurora.  At least she was alive.

But Bella….

Joe’s fingers fought to clench, but didn’t quite form fists.  What little strength he had was draining away fast, but it would be enough – it had to be enough.  He didn’t want the army or the Pinkertons or Roy Coffee or anyone else to find Fleet Rowse.  It would be their duty to bring the outlaw to justice.

Duty.  Justice.

Words.  Only words.

Standing there looking at that shallow grave, taking a rock and hammering a cross with the name ‘Bella’ into the hard earth above what was left of his heart, he’d been filled with such a soul-deep rage that his slender frame had been unable to contain it.  He’d dropped to his knees and let out a howl of anguish that echoed across the miles.

Or so he thought.

But, no.  It wasn’t an echo.  Not at all.

It was a war cry.

The renegades had returned.

Deke rushed forward, seeking safety within a nest of rocks and taking the first shots.  He’d run to join him, but just as he arrived the driver fell with two arrows in his chest.  After that it was a blur.  Chaos exploded around him.  Mrs. Norris was screaming.  The stagecoach was on fire.  Smoke rose into the air, obscuring the view of what had suddenly become a battlefield.  Joe remembered standing by Deke’s body.  His hat was gone and a warm breeze blew through his hair.  One of the renegades was coming right for him and he took him out with last shot.  Then, he was on his knees.  As his senses caught up to what had happened, he raised a hand to his head and felt blood.  A second later a hand caught his arm.  Jeri hauled him up and shouted at him to ‘run!’.  His feet obeyed, even though his brain was lagging behind, still wondering how it was gonna make them move.  In the murderous frenzy that followed, somehow they managed to get away – him and Carlisle.   It must have been the smoke.  There was so much smoke.  It billowed across the barren ground, mingling with the snow that had begun to fall.

As Carlisle snapped another order and he fought to make his body obey, Joe remembered Deke telling him that the Pinkerton agent was an army man.  When there was nothing left, Jeri’s training took over.  He got them away from the field of battle and, when he just couldn’t get his feet to move, half-dragged him up into the rocks where he was now.  Before he lost consciousness, Jeri said he was pretty sure the Indians knew where they were and would be content to wait until they’d weakened enough that they could move in and finish them off.

Joe wasn’t so sure.  He remembered that demon laugh, rolling across the hills.  Somehow he didn’t think it was over between him and that madman.

Not by a long shot.

The next time he opened his eyes, Carlisle had fallen silent.  The wound in the agent’s thigh had been a bad one and from the puddle of red underneath him, it looked like the man had bled out.  Sucking back more tears, Joe looked up.  A gentle snow was falling.  He blinked as the big flakes settled on his eyelashes.  The funny thing was, he wasn’t cold.  He was covered in snow, lying on bare ground, and he wasn’t cold.  Then again, maybe he was so cold, he was numb.

That, or he was dying.

Yeah, that was probably it.

He was dying.

As he lay there, slipping in and out of consciousness on his way to eternity, Bella came to him.  Not as he remembered her – not as the twelve-year-old girl she’d been the last time he saw her – but as the woman he’d glimpsed once or twice when he caught her staring at her image in the mirror primping, or watching him with something more than puppy love in her eyes.  She knelt, took his hand, and spoke the words her younger self had spoken all those long years ago.

‘You still gonna wait for me to grow up so I can marry you?’

Joe chuckled as his eyes closed.  “Well, now, how about…we check back…on that in four or five years?’ he replied, just as he had before.  ‘Who knows, by then…you might have another feller.”

She fell into his arms then and held him tightly.  He could feel her, smell her; hear her beloved voice.

“I love you, Little Joe,” Bella whispered near his ear.  Then her warm lips brushed his cold cheek.  “I love you.  Please don’t be dead, Little Joe.  Please, please, open your eyes….”

He should, he supposed.  She was asking so sweetly.

But it was such a nice dream, he really didn’t care if he ever woke again.

 

Ben Cartwright was shaken.  He had heard, of course, of such massacres, where the intent was to obliterate identification of the victims by stripping away both face and form, but he had never seen it so close up or had it hit so close to home.  It seemed in the five years Fleet Rowse had spent in Mexico that he had given in completely to his darker nature.  Ben remembered hearing – from someone, Atticus Godfrey perhaps – how as a boy Rowse had been known to kill animals just for the thrill of it, and how that sick pleasure had grown into a nature fully capable of the evil they saw here.  He knew as well that there were among the Indians – as with any group of men – those who would follow Rowse’s lead.  Hate had done this – a great hate.  A hate so dark and so deeply rooted that it could only find relief in desolation.  The older man stood up.  He looked around noting the blood.  There was so much, the snow had yet to cover it.  It chilled him think about what Nathan Eastwind had said.  The soldier believed Fleet Rowse’s anger had been directed at these poor people, not because he hated them, but because the one he did hate had escaped.

Little Joe had not been among the victims.

Ben closed his eyes and breathed out a prayer of thanksgiving.

“Pa?”

He knew which son it was before he turned.  Hoss had been quietly propping him up since shortly after they arrived to find his brother Adam standing, stunned to inaction, in the midst of the ruined and burned wreck of what had once been two majestic ships of the land.  Though he had told him to stay at the ranch, he couldn’t be angry with his middle son.  Not after what had happened.  Hoss’ place was here, with him.  With Adam.

And with their missing brother.

Ben sighed before turning toward his giant of a son.  “Yes, Hoss, what is it?.”

Hoss looked hesitant as he always did.  As if what he was going to say was out of place, maybe unwanted.

“Adam’s hurtin’, Pa.  He won’t talk to me.  You think maybe you could….”

He had tried, but for Hoss’ sake, he’d try again.

“Where is he?”

The big man tilted his head toward the east.  Ben looked.  The sun was just rising after a long, cold night.  His eldest son’s black-clad figure was cast as a silhouette against its glory.  Adam was standing with Joe’s hat in his hands, his head bowed before the long line of graves.  The older man patted his middle son on the arm and headed that way.  When he arrived, he said nothin as he joined Adam in paying his respects.

It was a few minutes before his eldest’s shoulders rose and fell with a sigh.  “Why, Pa?  Why?” he asked.

Words felt false, wrong.  Not enough.  But they were all he had.

“It’s not for us to know, son.”

Adam’s hazel gaze sought his face.  “It could be Joe buried here.  It might have been.”  He paused.  “It still may be.”

The older man cleared his throat when the words refused to come.  He knew as well as Adam that the fact that Joe ‘s body had not been found meant little.  It could mean he had escaped, but more likely it meant Rowse had found him and taken him and if that was so….

Adam turned toward him.  The raw emotion on his face was like a blow.  “I want Rowse, Pa.  I’m going to have him.”

Even though it nearly killed him, Ben had agreed to wait to begin the search.  There was no way of knowing how many renegades they were facing.  At the moment they were waiting for the soldiers who had set out from California a few days before to arrive.  Roy was holding back his posse.  Every man there was ready and eager to head into the hills in search of survivors, regardless of the danger to themselves.  It wasn’t all altruistic.  They understood that their families were in danger from these men.  Maybe their whole way of life.  Like him, the citizens of Virginia City who had come with Roy, recognized that whoever had orchestrated this attack was a monster – a spirit more malevolent than any of them had ever known – and that he had to be stopped.  There was to be three parties – Roy’s, the army’s, and the one theirs, which would be led by Nathan Eastwind.  He and his sons had volunteered for it.  Insisted, really.  Now he wasn’t so sure Adam should go.

Angry men made mistakes.

“Adam….”

“I know what you’re thinking, Pa.  It’s not that.  It’s not revenge.  It’s….”  His son’s eyes met his, pleading for understanding.  “It’s like a mission.  It’s my fault, Pa.  This, the other raids, they’re all my fault!  I was stupid that day on the hill five years back.  All I could think of was Joe.”  His son fell silent, faltering, like a tall ship that had lost its wind.  “I let Rowse get away.”

When a ship lay becalmed, it often lost its way.  He couldn’t let that happen to his son.

“Your brother had been hurt.  He was lost in a blizzard.  You found Joseph lying at the bottom of a ravine, hurt, perhaps dying, and knew he would quickly freeze to death.  Of course, your first concern was for him.”

“But, Pa!  If I’d just thought!  I could have taken Rowse out first.  I should have –”

Ben stepped up to his son and did something he seldom did, with Adam at least.  He cupped his hand around his boy’s neck and made him look into his eyes.  “Could have.  Should have.  But.  If.  Adam, words have power.  They can break a man’s soul or heal it.  Saved.  Restored.  Blessed.”  Tears welled in his eyes and threatened to fall.  “You found your brother.  You saved him.”

Adam drew in a breath and let it out slowly, regaining control.  He straightened up and looked toward the rocky hills in the distance – in the direction Rowse and his renegades had gone.

“Only to lose Joe again, Pa.  Maybe this time forever.”

Forever.  Another word.  A beautiful and terrifying one.

Ben Cartwright’s smile was rueful.

He had to remind himself – as he would remind his eldest when Adam would hear it – that no matter what they found, Little Joe was safe forever in God’s arms.

 

Someone was pawing at him.  He hoped it wasn’t some sort of scavenger.  He wasn’t dead yet.  Or, at least, Joe didn’t think he was.

If you were dead, did you know you were dead, or did you just, well, get up and keep movin’ until you stumbled on the Pearly Gates?  After all, it seemed like Saint Peter would have to be a million places at once to rope everyone who died everyday and haul everybody up there.  Maybe that’s what angels were for.  Pa said the Heavenly Host was past counting, numerous as the stars, so there’d sure as shootin’ be enough of them to find all those wandering souls.

You know, maybe that’s what was pawing at him.  Not some scavenger, but an angel.

Maybe you did have to walk.

Joe gave it a lot of thought and then tried to move his legs.

Nope.  Nothing.

He kept it up for what seemed like a day or two and then sighed.

Only it came out as a groan.

That hand, the one that had been pawing at him, started in again.  Fingers ran through his hair, touched his face, even pressed against his heart as a voice breathed near his ear. “Shush, you have to stay quiet.”  The hand covered his mouth.  A heavier weight pressed against his chest.

What were they doing?  Breathing was hard enough without whoever it was laying’ on top of him!

He meant to tell them about it.  Instead, he moaned again.

“Little Joe!  Hush!  They’re right on top of us.”

The fingers clamped down more tightly on his lips.  Leastwise, they left his nose clear so he could breathe.  He guessed they didn’t want him dead.

If he wasn’t already dead.

He thought he was dead.

“Shush,” whoever it was ordered.

He decided to try counting.  He’d heard once you couldn’t count in a dream, so he figured maybe you couldn’t count if you were dead either.  He managed to do it, though it went something like ‘one, two, four, six, five, ten.’

He was counting toes and fingers in his head, so he knew when he got to twenty-four something was wrong.

The pressure on his chest increased and suddenly his chin was resting on something soft and warm.  For a moment he thought it was Cochise nuzzling him, but then he remembered he’d left his horse in town for his brothers to fetch and take back home.  He was going to be gone for a while.  For a week or two.  Gone with…Deke…on the stagecoach…riding shotgun messenger.  Deke…who was dead.  Deke who had shown him that God-awful manifest.  Deke who told him Bella was dead.

Bella.  Dead.

Joe’s eyes shot open.  He was staring at a dawn sky shot with purple, pink and orange.  Whoever was laying on top of him blocked his line of sight, but he could hear them, panting, taking tiny little breaths like they were terrified.  He could smell them too.  Puzzled, his eyebrows worked their way toward the center.  While he smelled like leather, soot, and sweat as most any man would, whoever it was smelled, well, like a field of flowers on a fine spring day.

Make that a field of lavender covered with snow.

A moment later the hand released its hold on his lips and the pressure on his chest eased.  He heard something that sounded like a sigh and then words.

“Thank god!  He’s called them back.”  A little wind struck him, chilling him to the bone, as whoever it was slipped off the top of him onto the ground.  “Little Joe!  Did you hear me?  They’re gone!”

They were in his line of sight right now.  He couldn’t see them clearly, but he thought he knew who it was.  Though their face was hidden in shadow, the rising light had come down to earth and settled in the halo of golden curls framing it.  Joe’s hand inched toward his pocket where the earthly form of one of those curls lay.

Yep, Saint Peter sent angels all right.  This one had come to take him home.

Joe’s dry lips parted.  His hand trembled as he reached out for her.

“Bella,” he whispered.

A word.

Nothing more.

 

SIX

The army had arrived and the chase was begun.

All together about two dozen men took to the snowcapped hills that lay close to a half-mile east of the road the stage traveled.  They split into three parties, two of which were mounted and comprised of a mix of deputized civilians and Calvary men.  The third contained Captain Eastwind, him, and his sons.  They took off as soon as it was light, hoping to follow what tracks remained before the sun had time to burn them away.  Roy Coffee headed the party that went north and Major Hamilton from California, the one that went south.  He and Hoss, along with Adam and Nathan, abandoned their horses as soon as they reached the bottom of the hills and proceeded on foot.  They were going to cover the roughest and rockiest terrain.

The men they hunted, for the most part, were known to the Indian scout.  Nathan had lived with them and, in some cases, fought at their side.  Eastwind was a man of deep conviction and feeling.  Jaw tight, his voice shaking with barely contained rage, he had argued against searching the flat lands to the north and south, insisting that they would only be wasting their time.  If any of the passengers had gone that way, he declared, they would have been overtaken and killed.  It was only in the hills that someone might find refuge from the threat of the ruthless men who had once been his brothers.  In the end, he won permission to take a smaller party up into the rocks to look for signs.  Their objectives was to locate survivors.

Theirs was.

His was to find his son.

Ben Cartwright’s grip on his pistol he held was white-knuckled.  The best they could tell the attack had happened mid-afternoon to late evening the day before.  That was some twelve to thirteen hours ago.  A great deal could happen in that time.  If those who survived were wounded and losing blood, they would be weakening by now or dead.  If they escaped unharmed, the frigid temperatures overnight would have brought about the same result.  The land was merciless.  It didn’t care whether people lived or died.  It was what it was and it had never changed, nor would it, no matter what man desired.  Fortunately, the army was well-provisioned and they had given each one of them a canteen and food, which they carried in two leather satchels.  His only regret was that the army surgeon was not among their number.  The man had orders to follow and he had gone with Major Hamilton.  Nathan Eastwind told him not to despair.  He knew something of the white man’s medicine and even more of the red man’s.  His grandfather had been a healer and he had often assisted the older man, finding healing more to his liking than killing.

Ben glanced at his two older boys.  They were as grime-coated and grim-faced as he was.  So far they had seen no signs, nothing at all to indicate anyone had come this way.  When Adam mentioned the lack of a trail, Nathan’s reply had been a nod and the single word, ‘Good’.  It was hard to think of it that way, but then, it made sense.  If they couldn’t find a trail then neither could Rowse’s men.  If Little Joe and any of the others had managed to climb these rocks, they just might have found shelter and safety.

There was a chance they were alive.

Major Hamilton had dispatched messengers before departing, aimed at Placerville and Virginia City.  Soon this place would be crawling with army officers.  The major held out hope that one of the renegades would lead them back to Red Pony’s camp and they could put him out of business for good.  At this point Ben didn’t care about Red Pony.  He accepted Nathan’s word that the chief had not been involved in this raid.  The man behind this horror, now as five years before, was Fleet Rowse.

“Pa!  Over here!”

It was Hoss.  He’d seen the big man wandering off to the right where he disappeared behind a pile of large boulders.  Ben arrived to find his son kneeling, his broad hand opened wide and  encompassing a patch of ground soaked in blood.

His middle son turned stricken eyes on him.  “Pa, it’s blood.  A lot of it.  Looks from the position to be from a head wound.”  He rose to his feet and pointed.  “Look over there.  You can see prints.”

It took a moment to tear his eyes away from the pool of dried blood, but Ben did.  He saw them then.  Footprints.  Two sets.  A man and a woman’s.

“Are these your brothers?” he asked, pointing at the ones obviously left by a man’s boots.

It was Adam who answered even as he knelt to look closer at them.  “See that nick there, Pa?” he asked, also pointing.  “I’d bet the missing gold that’s Joe’s boot.  He was complaining about losing a chunk of the heel the other day.”

Hoss scooted over and examined it. Then, with a grin, he announced.  “It’s Little Joe’s.”

Ben felt a bit dizzy, so he anchored himself on a rock as he breathed, “Thank God.  What about the woman?  Is it Aurora?”

The big man looked thoughtful as he tipped his ten gallon hat back and scratched his head.  “From what I remember, Mrs. Guthrie was about five foot six or seven.  Them’s awful tiny shoes, Pa.”

Hoss was right.  From the look of the print he would have guessed the woman or child to be five foot three at most.  Ben exchanged a hopeful glance with his son.  Could they be so fortunate as to have had both of them survive?

“Could it be Elizabeth?” he asked quietly.

“You know, Pa, it could be,” Hoss replied, brightening.  “It’s a dang shame we didn’t find no manifest for that coach.  We don’t even know for sure she was on it, or how many other young women there were.”

“There were five on the coach Joe was riding messenger on,” Adam said, wincing at what he hoped was not a sore point.  “We know Joe’s alive, but it doesn’t look like any of the others made it.  We’ve got five definitely deceased from the second stage.  If we assume Rowse took his sister alive and Elizabeth or some other girl is with Joe, that leaves, what?  Another possible four people missing if the second coach was full?”

“And if no one was riding outside,” Ben said thoughtfully.  “Certainly if there were other survivors one of them would have found us by now.”

“But Pa,” Hoss said, ever the optimist.  “They could have gone north or south.  That’s why the major and Roy took off –”

“No,” Nathan said as he joined them.  “I know my brothers.  On open land, the passengers would have been east targets.  Only here, in the hills, could they survive.”  He paused and then added softly, “If they were very lucky.”

“Or very blessed,” Ben said softly.

Nathan looked at him.  A moment later he nodded.  “That too.”

“Nathan,” Hoss said, kneeling again, “come take a look at this.  We’re pretty sure these prints belong to Little Joe and one of the women.”

The army captain dropped at his son’s side.  He studied the ground and then stood up and walked a few feet away.  At the bottom of a natural stair, he knelt again and fingered the earth.

Coming back, he presented a hand whose fingers were tipped in red.

“More blood,” the scout said.  “They went this way.”

“What way?” Ben asked as he came alongside him.

The native’s chocolate-brown eyes lifted as he looked at the towering rocks.

“Toward Heaven.”

 

Bella Carnaby peered through the cascade of golden curls that dangled before her blue eyes and concentrated on her knees.  She hadn’t had so many scrapes and scratches since she’d spent her days chasing her little brother Jack who ran fast and always managed – somehow – to get into trouble.  By the time they were settled in Oregon, it had been Jack running after Sophie and little Benjamin Joseph.  ‘Benjie-Joe’, her little sister liked to call the baby, going into gales of giggles as she repeated his name over and over in a sing-song sort of way.  Benjie-Joe.  Benjie-Joe.  He was named Benjamin for Benjamin Cartwright of course, and Joseph, after her other little brother,  Joseph Francis.

She’d called his name too, time after time, just like Sophie.  Only Little Joe wouldn’t – or couldn’t – answer.

It was that last part that frightened her.

Bella blew out a breath, shoved the filthy sweat-soaked curls out of her eyes, and stood up.  Ten steps took her to where she’d left Joe wedged under a rocky overhang that was barely tall enough to crouch beneath.  Kneeling, she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled in.  When she got to him, she found he was shivering again in spite of the warm temperature and the warm winter coat he had on.  Every so often, she’d abandon the look-out position she’d taken outside and come in here and lay with him to warm him up.  Staying put where they were probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but once the Indians rode away and the sound of gunfire stopped, she’d decided it might be their only hope.  There was no way anyone was going to see them up here once it was dark, and she didn’t know if either of them could survive another night in the cold.

Laying down, Bella wrapped her arms around Little Joe’s middle and placed her cheek on his chest.  Every time she did, it calmed her.  It was the only time she could hear his heart beating and knew for sure  he was alive.  Sometimes when she went out to look, she’d come back to find him lying so still.  On account of he was so pale, she’d thought he was dead more than once.  She just couldn’t bear the thought of him dying without knowing she was there.  Without knowing he wasn’t alone.

Without knowing how much she cared.

Bella sniffed back tears as she snuggled in closer.  Her ma would have told her to forget all her nonsense and say a prayer, and Pa would tell her to believe it was going to be answered.  She knew that was true, but it was still hard because God didn’t always answer prayers the way you wanted.  She’d prayed and prayed and prayed about making this trip – about coming to Nevada to surprise Little Joe – and now look at them!  She’d worked hard at the dress shop, sewing her fingers to the bone and waiting on all the snobbish superior women who bought Mrs. Tucker’s fine wares, just to afford the ticket.

People had no idea how hard it was to fit a corset to a woman with a forty-five inch waist when she insisted it was really thirty-four!

But she’d done it.  She’d earned the money.  Pa had been so proud of her.  Ma’d been proud too, but she was kind of quiet about it, like she might have been happier if she hadn’t been able to.  Ma was funny like that.  She’d smile and nod, and then you’d catch her sitting there, looking at you like you were a kettle with a lid and she thought if she looked away you’d boil over.

Pa told her it had something to do with being a woman and it wouldn’t be too long before she understood.

Anyhow, she’d earned the money, and Pa and Ma had taken her to town to buy her ticket on the stage.  They made it into a kind of holiday, buying Jack and her little brother and sister candy and letting them sit in the back of the wagon like they were watching a parade.  Sophie only understood that her big sister was going somewhere, so she started to wave the minute they left home.

Bella smiled.

For all she knew, Sophie was waving still.

The first part of the stagecoach ride had been horrible.  It had been her and two maiden ladies who only talked to each other.  At the next stop more passengers got on.  There was a Chinese man who didn’t speak English, a couple of stuffy old salesmen, and a dour Scottish lady who promptly informed her that she was the woman her pa had hired to be her chaperone.  Her name was Mrs. MacTavish and she had a letter to prove it or she wouldn’t have believed her.  Mrs. MacTavish never stopped talking, but it was all about herself.  At least she’d only been hired to travel to Carson City with her and then she was done!

God was good.  Pa couldn’t afford any more.

As the miles dragged by, the Chinese man started smiling at her.  That got her to thinking.  Finally, she managed to remember a couple of the words of Cantonese that Little Joe had taught so she could say ‘Good morning’ and ‘Good night’ to Hop Sing during her visit five years before.  At one of the stage stops she tried them on her fellow passenger.  The man’s face lit up like the sun rising and from then on they’d been good friends, even if dour old Mrs. MacTavish frowned on her talking to a man.

When she and her chaperone left the coach line they were on and transferred to the one that was going to take them to Virginia City, the Chinese man cried.

Bella sat up a little and looked at Little Joe’s face.  He’d been crying in his sleep.  She’d wiped the tears away a couple of times already, but they always came back – like he was grieving for someone or something.  Shaking him gently, she tried again to call his name, whispering it close to his ear.  When he didn’t stir, she lay back down.  After a minute, she reached inside his shirt and laid her hand on his feverish skin.

She wanted to make sure he knew he wasn’t alone.

In the end sour Mrs. MacTavish got off early at Sportsman’s Hall and headed back west because she got herself a new chaperone.  When they got to Placerville, a whole bunch of people boarded.  First of all there were the Parrishes, who had a teenage boy named Thom and a girl about her age named Julie.  Julie was just a little older than her.  There was Mister Smith too.  He looked like a banker or maybe a lawyer, but he was nice enough.  And then – just like a birthday surprise – the Widow Guthrie climbed onto the stage!  Bella had to laugh as her memory of the ‘old’ lady Little Joe’s pa had hired to take care of her during her stay at the Ponderosa gave way to the young woman in her thirties sitting beside her.  She found out, of course, that the widow wasn’t a widow anymore.  She’d remarried and her name was Clark now.

She’d also come into a fortune.

After Aurora – she told her to call her that – sent Mrs. MacTavish packing, the two of them sat on one seat and talked up  storm.  At one point, the redhead leaned in close and told her all about it.  She explained how the local newspapers had found out about her inheritance and printed just about every detail of how she was going to get it, including where the money was coming from and when it was going to be on the move.  Mister Smith, she found out, was a Pinkerton man who had been had hired to protect her friend.  He was going with Aurora all the way to the station at Strawberry Valley where they were going to meet with another stage and exchange the money.  Then Mister Smith was going to go along with Aurora to Virginia City to see that the gold made it safely to the bank.  The paper had said it was going to be at Placerville, but that and the time the stagecoach was to arrive had been changed due to the publicity.  Both banks – the one in New York and the one in England – decided it would be safer that way.

It was just like one of the fictional stories in the penny novels Little Joe mailed her from time to time!

Elizabeth sobered quickly as her free hand moved to touch her little brother’s matted hair.  Or so it had seemed until the stagecoach rolled over a low rise just west of the Strawberry Valley station and everything became dreadfully and unalterably real.

Mister Smith was the first one to spot the renegades since he was riding outside with the driver and the man with the shotgun.  He called down to tell them to stay back from the windows.  Mrs. Parrish gathered her children in her arms and retreated to a corner while her husband drew his gun.  She remembered looking at Aurora and as one they moved to the window.  It was the middle of the day and the sun was high so the shade was drawn.  Aurora pulled on the cord that dangled from it and it flipped up.  Outside there were a dozen Indians on horseback sitting on the top of a low rise.  The only motion they made as the coach rolled past was to turn their feather-bedecked heads and follow it with their eyes.

At first it seemed that was all they were going to do – watch them.  Then, one of them raised a hand.  A second later there was a shout and then all of the Indians began to whoop as they kicked their horses into motion and thundered down the road.

The driver was killed right away and the shotgun messenger too.  Mister Smith tried to take the reins, but he didn’t last much longer.  They saw him fall to the ground with an arrow in his back.  With no one to guide them, the horses ran wild and the stagecoach gathered speed.  To the protests of his wife, Mister Parrish climbed out and headed for the driver’s seat.  Aurora looked at her and then at the door.  Most of the Indians were riding ahead of the coach, jumping on the horses and hacking at the reins and tongue to separate them from the coach body.  The rest were riding along the eastern side.  Bella remembered looking at the scenery flying past fast as a magic lantern show and then feeling Aurora’s hands on her back.  Next thing she knew she was suspended in the air and then on the ground rolling over and over.  When a low bush finally stopped her progress, she lay there stunned until Aurora caught her arm and urged her to get up and run toward the hills.

They ran and they ran until their hearts were pounding hard in their chests and they were out of breath, and then they ran some more. Unbelievably, none of the Indians followed them.  It seemed kind of strange, but she didn’t think much about it at the time.  She just kept running and running.  As she ran, the sounds of battle – the screams, the shouts, the gunshots and wild whoops of  merciless joy – dwindled to nothing.  Everything receded until it seemed the whole horrid bloody thing had been nothing more than a nightmare.

Then she heard it.

A horse nickering.

They both looked.  A single horse and rider were coming toward them.   The man on the animal’s back wasn’t an Indian.  He wore a long dark coat and black hat and had Western boots on his feet.  Where they were – in the middle of an open space with few trees or anything else – there was no place to hide.  So they just stood there, clinging to one another as the man pulled up and got off the horse.  For a moment, she dared to hope they had been rescued, but then she saw Aurora’s face and she knew.

She knew who he was.

She’d never seen him before, of course.  The first time she’d heard of him, it was when she was staying at the Ponderosa and Sheriff Roy talked about the outlaw who had taken Little Joe and was holding him for ransom.  Even when she’d borrowed Freckles the pony and ridden off to find little brother, even after tracking him down with Adam and then riding through the snow to get help, she’d never seen the face of the man that most described as a devil.  She’d never seen Fleet Rowse.

She saw him now and she knew they were right.

Aurora turned to her then.  The older woman took hold of her shoulders and told her to remain still, and then she went to meet him.  Bella remembered standing there, watching them talk, shivering right down to her shoes from fear as much as from the light vanishing and the fresh snow starting to fall.  It was about five minutes later when the redhead returned and told her she was free to go.  The older woman cried as she touched her cheek and kissed her forehead.  After that, she mounted the horse behind her brother and disappeared into the night.

Leaving her alone.

They’d run so far she had no idea where the road was.  She was so tired, she knew there was no way she could make it there anyway.  So she spent about ten minutes crying, and then another fifteen hunting for shelter, which she finally found in a clump of low shaggy bushes.  Lying down among the needles and thorns she cried herself to sleep.

Only to be awakened by more shouting and gunfire.

At first she thought she was dreaming, but then she realized that, no, something was actually happening.  Still half-asleep, she’d stupidly risen and staggered toward the sound, thinking only that it meant she’d find people there.  When she got close, she realized what was happening.  The stage Aurora had come here to meet – the one with her fortune on it – had arrived and was under attack.

Ducking down behind a clump of knotted bushes, she watched in horror as it happened again – the driver being hit by arrows, the man beside him leaping down, another man leaning out of the window of the stagecoach and then falling back in with an arrow to his heart.  The wrecked coach being set on fire.  It was only when one of the Indians grabbed an older woman by the hair and lifted his knife, that she looked away.  Just as she did an impossibly familiar voice rang out.

She couldn’t believe it.  She didn’t want to believe it.   But it was true.

The man who had jumped down was Little Joe!

In spite of her fear, she grinned.  Little brother was here!  Little brother would save her this time!  Little Joe would know what to do – how to get them away and back to his beloved Ponderosa!  Then she saw an Indian in front of him take aim with his bow at the same time one on horseback come  rushing up from behind.  Little Joe drew his pistol and fired so fast she missed it.  He fired and the man coming toward him dropped.  The other Indian – the one on the horse – kept coming and swung out with a club.  Little brother ducked and the blow barely missed.  A second later the Indian came back at a run.  This time the club caught Little Joe on the back of his head and he dropped like a sack of stones.

Elizabeth reached up with her fingers and ran them once again through Little Joe’s matted hair.  The golden-brown ringlets were caked with sweat, mud, and blood.  It was thickest on his left side where the blood had run down his cheek and soaked the collar of his tan shirt and the thick woolen coat he wore.  It had scared her at first – all that blood – but then she remembered the time Jack had fallen and cracked his noggin and the blood had just poured and poured.  Ma’d told her that scalp wounds bled like the dickens, but were most often nothing to worry about.  Jack hadn’t even passed out.  Bella’s finger moved to trace the cut on Little Joe’s forehead.  She’d realized something was wrong when he didn’t wake up and had set to looking.  It was then she found it – another wound.  The first time the Indian had swung at him the renegade hadn’t missed.  The edge of the club had raked across little brother’s skull, cutting the incision that was bleeding.  But that wasn’t the problem.  When the Indian struck little brother the second time, the club hit him on the back of his head.  She’d found another, smaller cut there, and a little bit of a bump.  From how hard he was hit, there should have been a big one.  Ma said a wound like that had to swell, either out or in.

‘In’ was bad.

She’d watched then as the Indian on the horse made a circle around Little Joe where he lay on the ground, whopping with triumph, before riding on to the next kill.  Her eyes had followed him a short distance and the, to her surprise, when she looked back little brother was on his feet!  Joe staggered a few steps before he fell against a pile of rocks behind which another man lay all hunched over.  Less than a minute later, a third man came alongside him and caught him by the arm.  After pulling Little Joe to his feet, the man threw his arm around his waist and together the two of them stumbled into the smoke and disappeared.  The battleground fell silent as the Indians exchanged their rifles and bows for torches and began to burn the bodies and the coach.  At one point two of them rode off carrying the stagecoach’s Treasure Box between them.  She was sure it contained Aurora’s gold.

When they were all gone, she began to walk.  Night had fallen and she had no idea where to go and so, in the end, she did her best to follow Little Joe’s trail.  It was silly, but she figured – if nothing else – at least they could die together.

It didn’t take real long to find him.  She’d been walking maybe an hour when she heard a funny noise, almost like a chuckle.  She’d followed it and near stumbled over her little brother.  He was half-sitting and half-laying on the ground beside the other man.  The one who had saved him.

The man who hadn’t been able to save himself.

Ignoring the dead man as best she could, she knelt down beside Little Joe and took his face in her hands and stared at him real hard.  She couldn’t help herself, even bloody and near unconscious, he was just so beautiful.  She ran her fingers through his matted hair, trying to free the curls, and then brushed some of the dried blood away from his eyes.  He’d stirred a little as she did and even opened his eyes once to look at her.  His lips parted but nothing came out.  She’d thought for a moment that he recognized her, but then he started crying and slipped away again.

A half-hour or so later she managed to get him on his feet, though she still wasn’t sure how.  He’d opened his eyes again and was saying all kinds of crazy things about pearly gates and ropes that didn’t make sense.  She ignored them and concentrated on getting him moving so they could climb higher into the hills and hide.  The climb wore him out.  She found the little cave underneath a shelf and put him there so he could rest and then crawled in after him.  During the hours of darkness she heard Indians calling to one another.  They got awful close.  So close she could hear what they were saying.  One of them mentioned Aurora’s brother’s name and Little Joe’s in the same breath.  It was then she knew she had to keep Little Joe hidden.  Fleet Rowse had let her go, but she knew he wouldn’t do the same thing for the man she loved.

It was Joe and his family that had stopped Rowse from getting his own way the first time and that kind of man wasn’t about to let that go.

As she continued to run her fingers through Little Joe’s tangled mass of curls, he groaned softly and opened his eyes.  He blinked several times before his lips parted.

“Thirsty,” he said.

“I know,” Bella answered as she sat up a little bit.  “I’m thirsty too, but we don’t have any water.  Maybe we will tonight if it snows again.”  She stopped.  He was staring at her.  “Little Joe?”

Shakily, he raised a hand.  The tips of his fingers brushed the trailing ends of her golden-blonde hair.  Little Joe smiled shyly and then said, so softly she almost missed it.

“I guess Saint Peter…done found that rope.”

Then his eyes closed again.

Bella sat there staring at him for some time, her hand on his chest, feeling the rapid beat of his heart.  She was afraid to go to sleep.  Afraid that, when she woke in the morning, he would be gone.  Lying down again, she wrapped her arms around his waist and drew him close.  Then she reached out and took one of his hot hands and drew his fingers to her lips and planted a kiss on them.

Then she fell asleep.

 

Hoss Cartwright blew out a breath as he lifted his hat and drew a damp dirty sleeve over his forehead.  There was nowhere quite like the Sierra where you could wipe sweat from your face and shiver all in one motion.  Night was on them.  Reluctantly, Pa had called it quits.  He’d protested loudly, but fallen silent when he saw his father’s face.  They’d all descended and had a bite to eat and then, weary beyond words, fallen silent and gone to sleep.

Well, at least the others fell asleep.

He couldn’t and so, even though he knew his pa would have tanned him if he’d been younger, Hoss got up and stole away against the older man’s wishes.  It was the middle of the night and he knew it was near pointless to keep lookin’ since there weren’t no way of seein’ signs.  But he just had to look.  Somethin’ kept drawin’ him back to this one place they‘d been before.   It was way up in the rocks, pert near all the way to Heaven like Nathan said.  Before the army men chased away the Indians, some of them had been seen movin’ in these hills, searchin’ for somethin’ like they knew it was there.

Somethin’ they wanted real bad.

Hoss turned and looked back the way he had come, down the rocky trail that rose in a near perpendicular natural stair.  He was sort of surprised that older brother Adam hadn’t been sent to fetch him back.  Maybe Pa’d decided to give him his own head for a while, figurin’ he wouldn’t sleep anyhow if he didn’t try.  It made never no mind anyhow.  Even if Adam showed up, he’d just tow him along in his wake.  He was bound and determined to check that rocky outcropping one last time before he gave up and there weren’t no one gonna stop him.

The big man glanced down at the lantern he carried.  It was lit, but he’d kept it shuttered for the most part, fearful that one of them Indians was still around and might spot it.  Considerin’ his size, there weren’t no point in makin’ himself any more of a target than he already was.  Why, the sleeves of his white shirt alone fairly flagged down trouble.  Once he’d reached the outcropping and was behind the wall of stone, he opened the lantern’s shutter and let the light spill out along the ground.  Just like Pa had said, there weren’t much to see.  Only stone and some gnarled fir trees, a clump of bushes, and a low overhang with a black pit of shadow underneath.

That held a pair of light-colored boots.

Hoss’ heart near stopped.  He blinked, suddenly unsure of what he had seen.  Crouching down, he swung the lantern in closer, letting its golden glow spill into the hollow.  Yep.  Unless it was a mirage, he’d done seen what he thought he saw – a pair of tan boots.  Next to them was a tiny pair of shoes.

Trembling, the big man rose.  He parked the lantern on a nearby rock where its light would still penetrate the hidden chamber, and then crossed back over to where the man and woman lay.  With a hand on the rocky overhanging, he leaned down and peered inside.

A name escaped him, stabbing the darkness like a knife.

“Joe!”

His brother didn’t move, but the woman did.  Wearily, she lifted her head from Little Joe’s chest to peer at him.

“Who…who’s there?” she breathed, her voice robbed of strength.

“Hoss Cartwright, ma’am,” he answered, feeling like a fool for soundin’ like they was bein’ introduced at a cotillion.

There was a pause.

“Hoss?” the small voice repeated.

“Is that you, Miss Bella?” he asked, not daring to hope that it was.

The big man backed up as the girl began to crawl toward him.  She stood as she emerged from the hollow and blinked in the lantern’s light.  Hoss watched as she put out a hand to steady herself.  Elizabeth or Bella Carnaby didn’t look like he remembered.  She’d been a pretty little filly that barely reached his chest the last time he’d seen her.  Her waist hadn’t been no bigger than his bicep.  She’d been a bouncin’, endlessly chatterin’ bundle of energy and life.

The girl before him looked wrung out as a week old washcloth.

“Hoss?  Hoss, is…is it you?” she stammered as tears poured down her filthy cheeks.  Then she said, quite clearly, “I found little brother.”

“I see that, Miss Bella,” he replied, one eye still on those boots.  “I’m mighty happy you did, and that you done took such good care of him until I could get here.”

Bella turned to look at Joe before returning her enormous blue eyes to him.  She sniffed and then crumbled.

Hoss caught her in his arms before she could hit the ground and held her, stroking her tangled and matted curls.

“Now, there, Miss Bella, you just take it easy.  I’ll get you and Little Joe out of here, I promise.  Everything’s gonna be all right.  You’ll see.”

Her fingers clawed at his shirt.  “I can’t find it, Hoss.  I felt it for so long and then I couldn’t find it anymore.”

“What’s that, Miss Bella?” he asked.  “What cain’t you find?”

Bella’s tears began to flow in earnest.  “His heartbeat.  I can’t find it anymore.

“I think Little Joe is dead.”

 

END PART ONE