Chapter 19

Ruckus!

His way back into the land of the living was greeted by almost the same image with which his exit from said country some hours earlier had ended. Juliet’s face again, the same eyebrow cocked higher than virtually possible, her voice mildly scolding—which was an improvement, compared to the displeasure Adam had been confronted with in that earlier image—telling him, “Well, it’s about time you came back.”

It seemed that the whole process of coming back to life was a reversal of the way he had passed out. His first sensation was pain. Nearly unbearable, searing pain in his abdominal region. He tried to breath through the pain, to concentrate on the rising and falling of his chest rather than on the hot pokers that seemed to stab into his guts. Somehow he managed to gradually relax his body until the pain subdued to a dull ache. All he had to do was to stay as still as possible, that much was quite clear. Every movement would bring new bouts of burning hot agony. So Adam just lay still. There was no reason to move anyway. Everything was soft, warm, dry, and cosy. He was in a bed, he suddenly realised. In a very familiar bed. Good. He would simply go back to sleep and let Pa handle everything. And when he’d wake up later, all would be well. He sighed carefully, not wanting to disturb his busted—well, whatever was busted. He didn’t care right now; all he wanted was to drift back and…

His reverse travel into reality didn’t let him, though. The next sense he reacquired was his hearing. His auditory nerves were aroused by a crashing sound and a shrill shriek from downstairs. The shock of it initialised the return of his sense of seeing, too, when his eyes flew open. Through the open door he heard the voice of Juliet Heatherstone, and it made him wonder what business she, of all people, had at the Ponderosa.

“Who are you?”

And then he heard other voices, faintly familiar, but he couldn’t quite place them.

“My, whatta pretty bird do we have here. We think we come fer some booty and find such a cute biddy!”

“Nah, Gabe, she ain’t no biddy. She’s a real ostrich.”

“A what-stretch?”

“A ostrich, Gabe. That’s a real huge bird. With frilly feathers and long, ugly—”

“You most certainly didn’t invade this house to discuss ornithological topics.” Juliet sounded as imperious and indignant as humanly possible. But Adam also detected a certain edge in her voice. Fear. “Why don’t you just say what you want and then take your leave.”

“Gabe, do ya understand a word she’s sayin’? Talk like a book, that one!” Now Adam remembered the voice. The joker-killer. “What are ye, lady, a plush princess?”

“Yeah, that’s what she is! An’ she’s a-waitin’ fer a prince, right, lady?”

“First of all I am waiting for you to exempt this house from your presence!” Juliet got louder. Adam could easily picture her: shoulders squared, eyes narrowed and arms crossed. This wasn’t good.

“But we cain’t go now, Missy, since we’re talkin’ so nice-like.”

“Oh, I won’t hold you back; don’t stay on my account.” Adam couldn’t help but chuckle. It hurt to chuckle.

Now the joker seemed to get tired of the niceties. “Careful, lady, I don’t care beans fer yer high-falutin’ words. Reckon, ya better tell me where yer squire has his moolah, and real quick-like.”

“There aren’t any in mullahs in his house. This is a ranch, not a mosque.” Juliet sounded confused. “What are you on about?”

“Lady, don’ joke with me. Wherezzat dough, eh?” The joker wasn’t joking anymore. Adam had heard this tone before—it meant business. There was no way Juliet would get out of this unharmed. She needed help. Where was Hoss? If Adam ventured a guess, Juliet had come looking for him, probably mad as a hornet, which had alerted Hoss, who somehow had found him and brought him home. Now Hoss was on his way to get the doctor and had left Juliet at the ranch.

“I’d strongly recommend you—” Juliet was cut short by something that sounded suspiciously like a slap.

That’s it, Adam thought. He had to get up. He had to get up and help Juliet. Whatever it would cost him, he would not lie here in his bed, listening to Juliet getting mistreated. He carefully rolled over onto his left. The movement unleashed another stabbing pain in his right side. He gasped and clutched his side, finding a thick bandage just below his ribs. He breathed into the pain like he had done earlier, and again, it helped to dull it down to a just tolerable level. He stuck his legs out from under the covers, and somehow managed to push himself upright. He took a few heavy breaths, looking quizzically at his bare legs. Soon he discovered that he was completely naked. He wondered why no one had bothered to put him into a nightshirt; but of course, it was out of the question that he could do this for himself, and so he wrapped the bed sheet round his body in the fashion of a Roman toga. Using his bedpost for support he painstakingly got to his feet. Sudden dizziness overcame him, but he fought it with every ounce of strength he had left. There wasn’t much, he noted, but what little he had seemed to just be enough. His eyes darted around the room in search of his gun. There, on the chair at the desk, his soiled clothes were gathered in a pile, and on the desk lay his gun belt. He braced himself against the wall and accomplished the few steps that separated him from his gun. Good old Hoss! Of course he had retrieved the Colt from the swamp where Adam had lost it and put it back were it belonged. It still was muddied; and Adam fervently hoped that it wouldn’t malfunction.

Clutching his gun as if it was able to keep him upright, he slowly staggered along the wall, through the door, all the way down the landing. When he reached the stairs he leaned heavily against the wall. Something drove spikes of fire into his side, and when he clutched at the bandage again, it was soaked with blood. Well, he hadn’t expected that this little stunt would help him in any way to the road of recovery. With leaving his comfortable bed he had literally begged for a world of nauseating agony and he had achieved exactly what he had bargained for. He could only hold himself at fault for this. Time for another round of pain management. Breathe in, breathe out. Slowly—and not too deep, that would only produce more agony. Breathe in, breathe out. In, out. In, out. Slowly the pain abated to a dull throb and the roar in his ears decreased. The black spots in his vision grew fewer, until his sight was clear again. He braced himself with one hand at the wall, and cautiously peeked around the corner and down into the great room, his gun ready in his other hand.

The joker had herded Juliet to the credenza next to the main entrance. While joker’s friend Gabe was rummaging through the furniture, the joker stood very close to Juliet, fingering her face. Juliet was pale but for the red bruise on her left cheek. Even from his upstairs lookout Adam could detect the daggers her eyes were shooting at her captor. She tried to draw her face out of the joker’s grasp.

“Get your hands off me, repulsive rotter!” she hissed.

“Nah, nah, lady, don’ bite ma head off,” the outlaw breathed at her slimily. “Iffn ya be ma little sweety I might even let you live.”

He leaned toward her face, trying to pull her mouth in his direction with his fingers at her chin. Adam could see the shock on her face, and then anger and the sudden resolve. He raised his gun and prepared for a shot. Juliet got her hands between herself and the outlaw’s body and, taking full advance of the moment of surprise, she pushed her startled attacker from her with all the strength she could muster. The joker was taken completely off-guard, and he staggered a few steps backwards.

Adam trained his gun on the still unsteady man and, giving every breath he had left, roared, “Hold it!”

The joker whirled around and reached for his gun. He never stood a chance. His last joke died with him.

Juliet let out something Adam could only describe as a squeal, as impossible as it seemed, and darted away from her position at the door to the stairway, to him. Gabe, who had reacted much slower than his unfortunate friend, still stood in front of the credenza, staring quizzically at the man he had left for dead in the swamp. His mouth gaped and he didn’t even try to fumble for his own weapon.

Adam took one step forward, and stabilised his swaying body with a death grip at the banister. His still smoking Colt pointing at the joker’s crony, he told him, “Don’t even think of it. Get your hands up and leave ‘em there!” With satisfaction he watched the man obeying.

The increasing roar in Adam’s ears signaled that he didn’t have much time left. He began to feel lightheaded; he couldn’t breathe through the stabbing pain in his side anymore, and he felt his grip on the gun slackening.

Juliet made to come upstairs. He had to stop her.

“Juliet, no. Stay there.”

“But Adam—”

“No. Juliet, only this once do what I tell you and don’t argue.” His voice was urgent and low and filled with pain. Even he could hear the weakness in it.

“Adam, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Perfect. Now go get to the desk.” He kept his eyes and his gun on the outlaw. “And you, if you so much as move a finger, you’re dead, understood?”

Gabe just nodded.

“Are you at the desk now, Juliet?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Open the first drawer on the left. There’s a revolver. Take it out.”

He heard rummaging, then Juliet’s voice. “I’ve got it.”

“Check if it’s loaded.”

Nothing.

“Juliet?”

“Yes?”

“Check to see if the gun is loaded.”

“I…yes.”

Metallic sounds. Then metal on wood. What was she doing?

“I think it is loaded.”

“You think?”

“It is loaded.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course, I’m sure!” Indignant. Good. That was what he had waited for. He needed her confident and strong. He was about to give up. He felt how his nerveless fingers dropped the gun. Sweat broke from his skin, making him itching and hot and cold at the same time. His knees started to buckle in earnest.

Downstairs in the great room Juliet held the revolver awkwardly in her hands. She was just glad that the burglar had kept his anxious eyes on Adam, not on her. That way he had missed her futile attempt to find out whether or not that annoying gun was loaded. She had clattered at the weapon with Ben Cartwright’s pen knife and with the stamps box to purport a thorough examination. She just hoped she wouldn’t have to use the gun anyway.

“Now keep the gun trained on the scalawag until help arrives.” Adam’s voice sounded even weaker than before. Obviously it was time for her to take over. Juliet straightened her back and gathered her wits.

“Adam, are you—” Her question was answered by the muffled thud of a collapsing body on the landing.

This turn of events provoked the outlaw to chance an escape. He tried to fix Juliet with an attempt of a threatening stare and started towards her. But the Mistress of intimidating stares and deadly glares would have none of it.

“Don’t move!” she grounded him, waving the gun. And for good measure she added, “Varmint!”

From the landing Juliet heard a faint chuckle.

“If you think you have cause to laugh at me, you should seriously reconsider your state of mind, Adam,” she scolded. “I thought you had fainted already, anyway.”

“No, not yet. But I’m on my way.” Adam’s reply came in a voice so low and so lacking his usual bite, that Juliet believed him right away.

“Can’t you try and get back into your bed?”

“No, it’s—” There was shuffling on the landing, and then another thud and a grunt. “I just…can’t.” Adam let out a sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “I’m just gonna lie here and—”

His words were cut short by the cracking bang of the front door being thrown against the wall. Juliet gave a startled cry and literally jumped a few inches while turning to the sudden noise. The Colt fell from her hand and went off when it hit the floor. The bullet lodged in the ceiling somewhere above the main entrance, where it left an ugly crater in the plaster. The bang unleashed another shriek from the involuntary Amazon Warrior. She whirled around, just in time to watch the burglar making a leap in her direction. But before she could even decide whether to try to go for the gun again or to simply run away, the abhorrent criminal was tackled to the ground by no one but Hoss Cartwright.

Juliet nearly cried in relief. Help had arrived, indeed. For a tiny moment of weakness she swayed on her feet, feeling lightheaded and slightly nauseated, but she would not faint. She staggered to the blue chair next to the stairway and held onto it for dear life. Closing her eyes and trying to will away the threatening dizziness, she heard the commotion in the room as if through a thick blanket. She registered the proceedings in the great room like a faraway reality that was beyond her reach or desire to join. She understood, though, that not only had Hoss and the doctor arrived, but also Ben and Joe Cartwright. Of course, Hoss would have alerted his family as well. She also understood that while one burglar was dead, shot by Adam, the other one still was very much alive but bound now, and that both would have to be taken to Virginia City.

And while Joe was left downstairs to keep an eye on the outlaw, Ben Cartwright, Hoss and Doctor Martin rushed by Juliet and up the stairs to look after Adam. Adam. This thought brought her out of her stupor. She gathered up her skirt and skittered upstairs.

Adam lay on the floor just at the top of the stairs, curled up on himself, his left hand clutching his right side. He finally had lost consciousness, which to Juliet, who remembered his pain-racked voice all too vividly, seemed to be a blessing. Dr. Martin crouched next to him, took a short peek under the bloodied make-shift bandage and checked Adam’s forehead for signs of fever.

“Well, that doesn’t look too bad,” he announced. “Just let’s get him back into his room. Hoss?”

Hoss picked up his brother’s body, and in doing so snatching the sheet he was wrapped in. He easily carried Adam into his room and settled him on his bed for the second time that day. The doctor followed Hoss with Ben and Juliet not far behind.

“Ben, I know you want to stay here,” he said. “But I don’t need anyone hovering at my back making anxious comments—” He held a deterrent hand out. “And we both know who will just do that.” He turned to Juliet. “And I most surely don’t need a fainting damsel in distress here.”

Juliet opened her mouth, but at a glance from Doc Martin she reconsidered and closed it again.

“So, please, go downstairs and wait for me. Maybe Miss Heatherstone could make some coffee or tea. That’ll do you all good, and I will surely need some when I’m finished here.”

The doctor had spoken with the full force of authority his profession gave him at times. But he would never have expected that both Ben Cartwright and Queen Heatherstone, without as much as a word of complaint, would obey him. They simply stared at him for a moment and then left the room silently. Maybe he should examine them both later, too. For now the doctor was glad he could work in peace. There was just one thing that made him wonder.

“Hoss, I don’t see any trace of that mud you talked about.”

Hoss looked at the doctor, and then at the clean and pristine, and very naked form of his brother under the blanket.

“He was soaked ta the skin, Doc. All his clothes were wet an’ muddy. Miss Juliet must have—” He cut himself off and stared at the doctor in unconcealed horror. His face was turning beet-red while he worked his mouth without forming another word. Doctor Martin had a hard time not to chuckle.

“Well, Hoss, she’s done a thorough job. Good of her. We don’t want pneumonia on top of everything else, do we?”

Hoss still couldn’t get a word out. He just shook his hot, red face.

“Now go downstairs, too, Hoss and let me do my work. I’ll call if I need help!”

“Yeah, jest holler iffn ya need somethin’,” Hoss finally had found his voice. He gave Adam one last look and, shaking his head, left the room.

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