Chapter 15

Early One Morning

It was a good month later when Adam and Juliet decided that Niobe was well-behaved enough to try her out on the open range. Juliet had repeatedly let slip that she wanted to explore the beautiful Ponderosa landscape Adam so often raved about. The two of them easily agreed to skip the next church service to have a headstart into a full day out on Ponderosa territory.

On the scheduled morning Adam was riding to Virginia City even earlier than originally planned. There had been some heavy rain the night before, and Adam wanted to check out if the lovely trail leading to his favourite viewpoint still was negotiable before he picked up Juliet. This spot, which for its quiet and secluded atmosphere he had named the Study, was a sunny place with surprisingly soft grass and just enough space for a medium sized blanket and two people sitting not too far from one another. It was hidden in the massive rock formations, framed by large boulders but with a clear view of the lake at one end. Fortunately the weather had improved much, a clear blue sky and a bright sun promised a warm day once the damp air from the drying pastures had cleared. Come midday the fine meadows of the Study would be dry and warm—just perfect for their lunch picnic.

Adam was equipped with a heavy blanket and a less-heavy book containing a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets. He intended to read a carefully sought out choice of poems to Juliet to make her see the error of her ways in holding Christopher Marlowe above the Bard. He had also marked passages so different from everything that the dubious poet-spy Marlowe had written, that no one in her right mind would consider his scribblings and this poetry coming from the same origin. The Bard was the Bard, in Adam’s opinion, and even if he did have any doubts in Shakespeare’s authorship, he’d cleary opt for Sir Francis Bacon as the most likely candidate. Anyway, Adam was looking forward to some heated discussions with well thought out and witty comments from Juliet that would challenge him to give his best to contradict her. Not that Juliet would ever give in; no, she was as hard headed as—well, as Adam himself. But for some inexplicable reason Adam found her way of stubbornly persisting in being right quite endearing. Especially when this brought her to the verge of losing her refined manners. One day, he had promised himself, one day he would make her stomp her foot, just like the little girl she resembled so much when she was being obstinate.

It was going to be a very interesting lunch break in more ways than one. A few days ago Hop Sing had set off on a trip to San Francisco to visit one of his neatly numbered yet seemingly countless cousins, this time cousin number seven or eight-and-a-half or something. This had led to Juliet volunteering to take care of their provisions. Adam didn’t cherish any illusions about Juliet’s housekeeping skills. A titled lady, raised in a manor house full of attendants, now lodging in a boarding house, wouldn’t get her hands dirty in a kitchen.

Adam remembered when Juliet had talked about her life in England. She had told him so little, as if she’d rather keep her former life a secret, and she had been so evasive when he had asked for details, that he didn’t have the heart to urge her any further. She had spoken about Barnstoke Hall, though, the great, old manor house, somewhere in the heart of Kent, near a sleepy village called Pluckley, where the most noteworthy curiosity obviously was a man going by the name Bob the Butcher, who made the best sausages west of the river Rhine. She seemed to have fond memories not only of Bob’s sausages that were served for breakfast much to the chagrin of a guy named Jackson (some kind of butler/secretary/children-scarer person, as Juliet described him,) but also of the butcher’s very flowery love poems to the Heatherstone’s cook, Mary. These poems would usually be delivered in the stoneware containing the bangers (as Juliet called them.) Mary was illiterate but entrusted young Juliet with reciting the literary outpourings of the unfortunate slaughterer for her. Mary didn’t like Bob, but she, like Juliet, loved his poems. The Earl of Barnstoke, Juliet’s father, eventually put a stop to this, after he barged in the reading of one of the saucier parts of Bob’s latest work. As a consequence Miss Westlake, a bulky Midlands matron, was engaged to be Juliet’s governess and teach her the finer aspects of being a lady. The education had also included literature, mathmatics (Miss Westlake turned out to be a very scientific person,) geography and some other subjects that seemed appropriate for a future countess. Miss Westlake had refused to give Juliet lessons in singing and playing the piano, though. This was delegated to a Mr. Pinford, a man Adam felt sorry for from the bottom of his heart.

Naturally, the little countess’ education had not included skills that would be of any help at, let’s say, a ranch house. She didn’t know how to run a household or how to breed chickens or how to grow vegetables. And of course she didn’t know how to cook. Every bite she had ever offered Adam after their riding lessons, every piece of cake, every sandwich, every cup of tea had been prepared by none other than the famous Widow Hawkins.

Juliet would find some creative way to solve the problem of providing food for their excursion, though, Adam was sure of that. Maybe she’d order a hamper at the International House or Widow Hawkins, who harboured very motherly feelings for her fellow British guest, again would take care of things. Adam only hoped that if the widow was in charge, she wouldn’t add any of her notorious teeth-cracking cookies to the feast.

Adam had rounded some boulders near the entrance to the path leading to the Study when his attention was caught by a lone figure on a horse. A lone and unfamiliar looking figure. Adam reined in Sport and approached the lone rider slowly, one hand loosely on his Colt. When the man, startled by the nearing hoofbeats, looked up at him, Adam stopped.

“Howdy,” he greeted the stranger. “Do you realise you’re on Ponderosa land?”

The man looked at him squarely. “Yeah, jest like ya are, right?”

“Well, while I have every right to be here, since this is my family’s land, you are clearly trespassing.” Adam’s voice was calm and low but held a not small amount of steel in it.

The stranger blinked a few times, obviously considering the man in front of him and his own options to get out of this situation with as little trouble as possible. Finally he said, “Yah, sorry bout that. I jest wanna shortcut through ta ‘ginia City, ya know. But I got stuck here….” His voice trailed off as he indicated the trail his horse was standing on.

Adam faced exactly what he had anticipated: the trail was flooded. The soil that had accumulated in the beaten tracks had turned into swamp. In the place where the stranger’s horse seemed to be stuck, just at the beginning of the trail, the track was nearly five feet wide and had developed into what could rightly be named a mud hole. The horse’s hind legs were sunken in the nearly knee-deep mud—but that shouldn’t really keep it from going on. It didn’t look too comfortable, though. Well, maybe it just had a little stone stuck under one shoe. Adam dismounted, took the rope from his saddle, and held out the loop.

“I can rope your horse and pull it out of this,” he offered. “Then you can move on. And next time take the longer way round the Ponderosa.”

“Yeah, thanks, I’m gonna do that,” the stranger replied and got off his horse, too. He sank ankle-deep into the swamp.

As Adam gingerly approached horse and rider, suddenly it struck him that he knew this horse. He cast a quick glance to the animal’s hindquarters, and there it was: the Ponderosa brand. This was the horse they had sold Eugene Johnson some years ago, the horse that had been among the stolen items from the break-in at the Johnson’s farm. Adam unconsciously took a step back. He narrowed his eyes at the man next to the horse and drew his gun.

“Where did you get this horse?” he asked the stranger, who stared wide-eyed at the Colt in Adam’s hand.

“Why, I—”

Adam never heard the rest of the sentence. The sharp crack of a shot came at the same time as the impact of the bullet on his body. The blinding pain followed only a split second later and made his legs give way. He went down to his knees and then crashed face first into the reeking mud before he even managed to get his hands up. His body went numb, he didn’t feel anything at all; he couldn’t move, he couldn’t talk, he couldn’t even breath properly. His ears seemed to be the only part of his body that was still working. He heard hoofbeats, a horse coming to a standstill, and the stranger’s voice demanding, “Why did ya shoot ‘im?”

A new voice answered, “He was going to shoot you, Gabe; I saved yar life!”

“Is he dead?”

The sound of footsteps, and then a boot hooked under Adam’s ribcage and hauled him over. The numbness vanished for some seconds of stabbing pain that started in his upper abdomen and radiated into every fiber of his body. He emitted an involuntary grunt and tried to open his eyes. At least he wanted to see the face of the man who was responsible for his miserable state. But his eyes betrayed him just like the rest of his body. He had to admit, though, that breathing had become much easier now his face wasn’t buried in mud anymore. And his ears still worked perfectly.

“Looks like he’s as good as dead. Ain’t gonna be too long before he bites the dust.” The new voice chuckled. “Has bitten the mud already.”

Oh, great, a killer with a sense of humour, Adam couldn’t help but think. Alas, this time the joke was on him. And he didn’t regard the joke as worth much laughter. But maybe it was just him who was getting a bit humourless—not too surprising, considering his current condition. Or it was his brain that desperately tried to shut down, that numbed and muffled even the noises now. He could hear the two guys talking, but his brain refused to transmit the befuddling sounds into meaningful words. Then he heard Sport’s piercing whinny and quick hoofbeats. It filled him with some odd satisfaction that the burglars wouldn’t get his horse, too. And maybe, just maybe Sport would run all the way back to the Ponderosa and alert Hoss, who had stayed home today to finish the repair of the barn roof.

Adam’s thoughts drifted back to the previous day’s supper, when Hoss and Pa had argued whether it was more urgent to repair the barn roof before the next rain or to “have one’s soul saved at church,” as Pa had put it. Surprisingly Hoss had won this time, not at last due to his elder brother’s intervention—even though Adam’s statement, that Hoss might be closer to God on the barn roof than at church anyway, had earned him another scolding look and some headshaking from their father. The memory of Pa’s disapproving face made Adam chuckle, and this sent a new shockwave of pain through his body and brought him back to alertness.

He heard nothing. Nothing but his own heartbeat. Loud and fast and in rhythm with the pounding of agonizing pain. He was alone. Left alone to bleed to death on a muddy trail far offside the road to Virginia City, the road that his father and brother would take on their way back home. And even if by some bizarre coincidence they’d decided not to take the main road but this uncommon trail, they’d come far too late to find him alive. They had an invitation to the Granger’s after church, and since Joe was more than amicably interested in Granger’s beautiful daughter Caroline, Pa would have a hard time to coax him home anytime before supper. And by then Adam would be long dead, that much was sure. And Hoss? Well, unless Sport made it home, Hoss wouldn’t miss him until tonight. No one would miss him until tonight. Well, no one but Juliet.

Juliet. A pang of guilt shot through Adam. Juliet would be sitting at Widow Hawkins’ front porch, waiting for a friend who would never turn up. She wouldn’t be amused about being abandoned. Boy, how she wouldn’t be amused. Adam could easily picture her brooding, tight-lipped, narrow-eyed countenance, and her muttering “You’d better have a very good reason for this, Adam Cartwright!” Well, he had a very good reason for this, in his opinion anyway, but he wasn’t sure if bleeding to death was an excuse for not appearing for an appointment in her world. If he just could move any part of his body, he would try to get to her and ask her forgiveness for not being able to keep their tryst. Perhaps he could then die without her being vexed at him. Somehow the idea of her being disillusioned with him seemed much worse than dying itself. The last image Adam’s brain provided him with was that of Juliet, looking at him with her right eyebrow raised higher than he had ever seen it, tsking, “This is not the way a gentleman would behave, Adam. I’m very disappointed in you!”

With this picture in mind he let himself fall into the welcoming arms of darkness, engulfing him and taking him to a place beyond thinking and imagining and feeling.

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