Summary: A sequel to The Friendship, The Guilty, The Tall Stranger, The Crucible, and The Storm.

Jimmy Partridge. Margie Owens. Peter Kane. Laura White. Things were far from routine on the Ponderosa. His life – his family – was a shambles. That indefinable ‘thing’ that held them together, what made them ‘the’ Cartwrights, was lost.

Ben Cartwright despaired of ever getting it back.

Rated: PG-13 for brutality and Western style violence

Word count: 55,298

 

The Beauty of Darkness

I actually think sadness and darkness can be very beautiful and healing. Duncan Sheik

 

ONE

 

“Hey, Hoss, have you seen Adam?”

Joe Cartwright turned a corner, expecting to find his middle brother working in the barn, but the barn was empty.  He’d asked their pa, and Pa said he sent Hoss out to check on one of the horses that had injured its leg the night before.  It was a big black beauty, twin brother to Concho, the skittish horse that had been spooked by a prison guard named Travis almost a year back and thrown him.  Joe shook his head as he moved forward.  It was likely he would have been severely injured – or maybe even killed – if not for the intervention of one of the convicts Travis was guarding named Danny Kidd.  They’d given this horse the unlikely name of Silver since the pair were twins – after a silver Concho.  The curly-haired man could see the horse now.  Silver was in one of the back stalls tossing his head and snorting, like standing still was something he wouldn’t tolerate for long.  Crossing over, Joe leaned on the stall wall and gazed at the strong, well-muscled animal.  He loved Cochise, but there was something special about a horse black as midnight.  He’d thought about keeping Concho for himself before giving him to Danny as a gift for his hard work in saving the animal when it foundered.  A horse with a pure black coat was a magical thing – like riding it could take you to another place.

Joe shifted forward and cautiously reached out to the animal, speaking in soothing tones as he did.  Silver’s response was to blow air through his nostrils, fix him with his coal black eyes, and offer an unspoken challenge.

“You got it, boy,” Joe said softly as he moved into the stall.  “When you’re mended, you and I will see just how fast you can fly.”

‘You’re playin’ with fire there, Joe,” a familiar voice remarked from close by.  Joe turned to find Danny  Kidd had entered the barn.  The ex-con hesitated by the door with his gear tossed over the shoulder of his deep blue shirt.  “Concho’s brother ain’t no more domesticated than he is.”

Joe patted the animal’s neck.  “Concho wouldn’t have thrown me if that guard hadn’t taken a shot at you for back-talking him,” he replied, his tone was sober.  As he turned toward his friend, his lips broke into a wry smile.  “So I guess  it’s all your fault I took that ride.”

Danny dropped the equipment to the ground and came to join him.  “That was before I knew how hard your head was,” he said as he leaned on one of the wooden rails.  “If I’d of knowed, I would have just let him drag you all the way home.”

Danny had, of course, found out how hard his skull was when the ex-con cracked him over it with a branch and knocked him out cold.  Danny Kidd had known a hard life.   He’d lost his parents at the age of five – the same age he’d been when his mother died – and been in prison by thirteen.  After his ma and pa died, Danny was sent to the poorhouse where he was harshly treated.  When they’d first met Danny, the then convict had explained how he attacked another child in the institution because the boy stole his slice of apple pie.

It was something Joe couldn’t imagine; that kind of hunger or that kind of rage.  Maybe that was why he’d formed an instant soft spot for the other man.

Danny was twenty-three when they met and he’d never met anyone like him before.  When he’d asked how he could repay him, the chained and bound man lifted his shackled wrists and said – in so many words – ‘Set me free’.   He promised he would.  Joe knew Danny didn’t believe him, but he’d gone to his pa, and his pa had gone to the governor, and the governor had granted Danny a pardon on two conditions: Number one, he had to stay out of trouble for a year.  Number two….

Danny became his responsibility.

It hadn’t been easy in the beginning.  There’d been lots of missteps and misunderstandings, like the one with Bob Stevens who was jealous of the attention Ann Carter was paying the former convict at their house party.  Bob told Ann’s father all about Danny.  The older man had been hopping mad that they’d let an ex-convict dance with his daughter and promptly left.  Ann, of course, being Ann made a beeline straight back to the ranch to talk to Danny.  Joe touched his head.  He could almost feel the goose egg the wrist-thick branch had left when Danny cold-cocked him.  Ann had flirted mercilessly with Danny and, when passions were aroused, pulled away leaving her blouse torn.  Frightened of her father’s reaction, she’d blamed Danny.  Like a complete idiot – like everyone else – he’d instantly jumped to the wrong conclusion, that Danny had been at fault.  He threatened to return him to prison.  That was when his friend rightly let him have it.  When he woke up an hour later, with his pa and brothers surrounding him, Pa told him the truth about Ann and what had happened.

He’d been so ashamed.

In the end Danny made his own choice to remain at the ranch.  It had been almost ten months now and there’d been no more trouble.  Then again, Danny wasn’t taking any chances.  He’d chosen to remain apart – to become a loner – and didn’t socialize much.  His friend still had difficulty fitting in with the other men.  There had been a few brawls in the space of those many months.  One that had ended pretty badly.  Still, Danny was trying to overcome the dark past that haunted him and move on.

Joe patted Silver’s neck again and sighed.  Just like he and his family were doing.

Danny must have sensed something.  “How are you, Joe?”

It was a question he avoided answering as often as it came up.  “You know me,” the curly-haired man said with a cock-eyed smile, “I always come up kicking.”

Danny had returned a little over a week before from a two month cattle drive to Texas.  They’d seen each other in passing since then, but this was the first time they’d been alone.  Patting the horse’s nose one last time, Joe turned from it and headed for the barn door.  Danny’s next words stopped him.

“I’m sorry I was away when…it happened.”

It.

Laura’s death.

How could such a profound thing be summed up with one word?

It.

Joe closed his eyes and puffed out a breath.  It was hard to explain what thinking about Laura did to him.  There were times now when it was almost like it never happened – like he hadn’t planned a whole life with a beautiful woman that would never be.  He could still see his brothers helping him fix up the cabin on the hill – the one he’d planned to take his bride to.  They’d all been so excited, working together side by side to make it happen.  So much had transpired in the last half year.  Hoss losing Margie Owens.  Laura’s illness and…death.  Their Pa’s guilt over the killing of Jimmy Partridge and his not being able to stop it.  And Adam….good God!

Adam and Peter Kane.

It was like they were cursed or something.

“Joe?  Is there anything I can do to help?”

Joe sniffed and forced a smile as he turned back, “You can help me find my big brothers.  Pa’s been looking for Adam.  He thought Hoss might know where he is.”  He snorted.  “Trouble is, Hoss is missing too.”

Danny accepted his reticence to talk about Laura as only a friend could – without a word and without offense.  The other man crossed to where he had dropped the equipment near the door.  As he picked it up, he said, “I can’t tell you where Adam is, but I can tell you what direction he was headed.  I saw him ride out about an hour ago.”

Joe frowned.  They were supposed to go to town in a few hours – all of them, together.   “Did older brother say where was he going?”

“I didn’t talk to him.”  Danny hesitated before adding quietly, “He didn’t look like he wanted to be talked to.”

Joe’s scowl deepened.  It had been two weeks since Adam’s trial in the desert, and while big brother had been more introspective than normal of late – if that was possible – it appeared he had weathered the ordeal pretty well.  Joe gnawed his lower lip.  The ride home had seemed endless.  Adam was a dead weight on the stretcher he’d fashioned for Peter Kane, but that wasn’t what slowed them down.  It was their own guilt.

They’d given up.

Pa felt that worst of all.

Once in his own bed, older brother woke up.  He was out of his head for two days.  Doc Martin came out at Pa’s request and took care of him for three.  The Doc told them not to be worried.  That kind of raving was to be expected from a man who’d been severely dehydrated, let alone one who had suffered the kind of abuse older brother had.  As they stood around Adam’s bed on the third night, watching him sleep peacefully, the physician told them something else: older brother would soon be right as rain.

It was a lie.

Peckish, he’d risen just after midnight and headed for the hall, intent on making his way to the kitchen and a snack.  He halted when he heard hushed voices.  It only took a second for Joe to realize who it was – the Doc and his pa.  They were standing outside his brother’s room.  Doc Martin repeated what he’d said earlier, that Adam’s body had been through the mill and they were going to have to be patient with him.  Then he added something new.  The Doc explained how Adam going without water or any sustenance for such a long time might leave him physically impaired.  Older brother might not be able to think clearly and his memory could fail, which could lead to a deep melancholia in a man who prided himself on how keen his mind was.  The physician warned there could be personality changes as well.  Paul Martin said nothing of the nature of those changes, but – his voice falling even lower – hinted that the changes could be…well….permanent.

In other words, Adam might not be Adam anymore.

Joe drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, just like a man did when he was looking danger in the face and knew that fear and panic were about to overwhelm him.

“I’d offer you a penny for your thoughts,” Danny said quietly, “but somehow I don’t think I’d want to own them.”

The curly-haired man started.  He’d almost forgotten Danny was there.

Joe smiled his tight little smile.  “Just considering what I should do.  Pa expects us to be ready to head out for supper soon.  Margie Owen’s pa and his sister are bringing her baby to town for a visit.  George asked that ‘Uncles’ Joe,  Hoss, and Adam be there.”  He looked out the door.  “You said you saw where Adam was headed?”

“Toward the Virginia City Road.  Maybe he’s got business in town and is planning to meet you at the hotel later on.”

Joe stepped out of the barn.  “Maybe.  Still, you’d think he would have let one of us know.”

“Probably slipped his mind,” Danny offered as he followed.

“Yeah.”

That’s what happened when you had too much on your mind.  Little things – like courtesy – got crowded out.

Danny stared at him a moment.  “I don’t know about you, Joe, but I could eat a horse right now,” he said, deliberately brightening his tone.  “I’m off to get some grub and then I’m for bed.  I don’t envy you havin’ to get all duded up so you can sit pretty in some restaurant bouncin’ a baby on your knee and makin’ small talk with women folk.”  The brown-haired man snorted.  “Both always make me nervous.  Night, Joe.”

Joe waved his goodnight before turning back to the barn and closing the door.  Unexpectedly, as he dropped the bar into place, a deep sense of loss hit him.  Not only of the woman he loved, but of something else – something bigger he couldn’t quite put his finger on.  The closest he could come was a sense of the passing of something unnamed – something of great and immense importance.  It had to do with their family.  In the last nine months they’d all been wounded in one way or another, and instead of turning toward each other, they’d chosen to go their own way.   Like a fine bone china dish dropped in haste, the very nature of what they were was shattered.  What remained were four separate pieces; pieces it seemed not one of them was willing – or able – to stoop, pick up, and put back together.

Truth be told, the spirit had gone out of the lot of them.

Joe struck away a tear.

He wondered if they would ever find it again.

 

He wondered if he would ever find it again.

Whatever ‘it’ was.

Adam Cartwright tipped his black hat back, exposing his face to the late afternoon sun.  He rarely did that anymore, preferring to remain in the shadows.  Masking emotions had become his vocation of late.  The man in black snorted and shook his head.  It was something like Hop Sing’s reaction each time a citified woman with delicate sensibilities visited the Ponderosa kitchen.  The Asian man would toss a cloth over the offal and shove the cow’s remains into the ice box, as if that action alone could stem the process that was already underway; the process that changed food from something life-sustaining into a poison that could kill.

He’d killed.

God!  He’d killed a man with his bare hands.

Kane might not have died when his fingers were on his throat, but die he did.

What kind of monster was he?

Adam drew in a long breath and let it out slowly.

No.  No.

It wasn’t him.  Peter Kane was the monster.

He had to remember that.  Whatever he’d done, Kane had driven him to it.  He’d been beaten down – broken – tormented and tortured; driven by hunger and fatigue to the point where he didn’t know what he was doing.

Right.

He knew.

Adam’s right eye twitched.  He knew all right.

He knew a sick sort of joy as his fingers closed around Kane’s throat, crushing the bastard’s windpipe and choking the life out of him.  In fact, he had never known such joy.  It was as if, single-handedly, he’d rid the world of a blight that threatened to destroy it.  At that moment, he had believed himself a savior – a ‘good guy’.

Wasn’t that what all villains believed?

Was he a villain?

Would he ever know?

Adam sat for a moment, contemplating all that had happened since he had ridden out of the Ponderosa that fateful morning with his kid brother at his side.  Then he dismounted and lost his breakfast.

Several times.

The thing that shamed him the most was that he was angry – not at Kane, not even at himself, but at Little Joe!  His foolish younger brother who had elected to remain behind to watch a trial with a pre-ordained conclusion.  What a stupid, frivolous, selfish thing to do!  If Joe had been with him those men wouldn’t have gotten the drop on him.  Or even better, if Joe had not been with him at all, they would never have known he was carrying enough money to make it worth their while to waylay him.  Either way, it was his little brother’s fault, as so many things were his little brother’s fault, as….

God, was he so petty?

So…selfish?

Adam struck away spittle and sat back hard against a tree.  He had to face the facts.  If Little Joe had been with him, Kane could have used his brother against him – would have used his brother.  The villain would have reveled in torturing Little Joe and parading his misery before him.  He might have had to – probably would have watched his baby brother die.

Bastard was right.

Him, that was.  Not Joe.

Not Kane.

Adam snorted and then actually chuckled.  Was there a note of Divine irony in all of this?  What were the odds that the man who tortured, who humiliated him would be named Kane?  Kane, the first man who murdered – the slayer of his brother.

Adam lifted his hands.  They were shaking.  He was the first son, just like Cain, and like Kane, his hands had blood on them.

This time he didn’t chuckle.  He laughed, and the sound of it was insane.

Murderer.

Madman.

Peter Kane died in the desert.  That was a fact.  After all, he’d dragged Kane’s rotting corpse behind him for dozens of miles.  But Kane wasn’t dead.

The monster was still alive.

Alive within him.

“Adam?”

It took a second for Adam to realize that the voice wasn’t in his head.  He’d heard so many voices in his head over the last two weeks, he’d almost lost track of how to distinguish reality from fantasy.  He steeled himself before looking up at his kid brother.

“What do you want?”

Joe started and stepped back.  He looked shaken.

Was the sound of his voice so harsh?

“Are you…okay?” the kid asked.

He supposed another burst of insane laughter would be a poor reply.

Adam drew in a breath and put on his mask as he rose to his feet.  “I’m fine.  Why do you ask?”

Joe’s gaze went to his breakfast where it lay spewed on the ground, and then back to him.  “No reason.  Pa sent me to look for you.  He’s ready to head into town.  We thought….”

“Yes?”

“Danny told me….”

Danny?

Ah, yes, Danny.

He and the ex-con had more in common than his little brother could guess.  Danny had killed a boy over a slice of pie, while he’d killed a man….

Why?

To prove a point?

“Danny said you were on your way to Virginia City.  He thought….”  Joe cleared his throat.  “Were you headed into town?”

To be honest, he’d had no idea where he was headed when he rode out of the yard.

Away?

Yes, away.

Away from Pa and his questions.  Away from his brothers and their sympathetic eyes.  Away from….

Himself.

“Are you coming?” Joe asked.

“Coming?”

“To dinner with Margie’s pa and aunt.  Adam, I know….”  His little brother paused.  Joe’s face screwed up like it did when he was going to laugh.

Only he didn’t.

Laugh, that was.

“I know you’re hurting, Adam.  Can I help?”

Could he?

Could anyone?

Adam hesitated before speaking.  “Joe, can you do something for me?”

“Sure.  Anything.”

“Can you….  Will you make my apologies for me?”

“You’re not coming?”

“I…can’t.”  The man in black cleared his throat.  “I…can’t make small talk and coo over a baby.  I can’t…look at Hoss and forget all he’s lost.  All…we’ve all lost.”  Adam ran a shaky, sweaty hand over his face, feeling the stubble and realizing with a start that he’d forgotten to shave.  “I….”

Joe approached and placed a hand on his shoulder.  It should have felt good.  It should have felt like…support.

Why did it feel like condemnation?

“Adam?”

The man in black looked up and into his brother’s rich green eyes.  He saw sympathy there, and fear.  There was a question as well.  One that didn’t need to be voiced.

Was he….

Could he be….?

Lost?

 

Lost.

So much had been lost.

Hoss stopped what he was doing.  He held the brush suspended above Chubb’s black coat and let out a long sigh.

“Margie….  Damn!”

He didn’t mean to say it.  He’d managed to keep her name off his lips and on the tip of his tongue this last month or so.  In fact, he hadn’t said Margie’s name out loud since he’d come home several months back, empty-armed and dreamin’ of what might have been.  The saddest sight he’d ever see’d was Margie lyin’ there in that hospital bed in San Francisco.  She’d looked like she didn’t have a friend in the world.  That was wrong and he knew it.  Margie knew it too, but somehow she’d forgot.  She’d forgot him and her pa, and somehow gone and convinced herself that no one would care at all if she just upped and went away.

Hoss put the brush down so he could wipe away a tear.

He cared.  He cared a lot.

There was a place in his heart that was empty and would never be full again on account of Margie wasn’t there to fill it.

Margie was dead.

He had to face facts.  She weren’t never gonna be there to fill it.

And he weren’t never ever gonna forgive God for that.

She loved him.  He knew it.  He’d loved her too and they would have been happy if that there con man hadn’t never come along.  Pa’d taught them from the time they was tykes that there weren’t nothin’ the Man upstairs wasn’t aware of, so that meant God let it happen.  That meant the Almighty knew all about Mark Connors and He done let that villain come into their lives and woo Margie away with his sweet talk and his false promises of seein’ the whole wide world with all its wonders.

The big man’s fingers formed into fists.  Why?

WHY?

If he could of boxed God’s ears, he would have done it with no regrets!

Their Pa’d taught them since they was little’uns that God’s ways was the best ways.  How could that be?  How could Margie dyin’ in such a state be for the good?  Hoss shook his head.  No.

No.

God made a mistake.  That’s all there was to it.  He must not have been watchin’, else He wouldn’t have let that bad man win her over with his honeyed words and ways.  Margie, well, she’d been the prettiest, the sweetest thing – the best thing he’d ever know’d.  What that man made her into…what she’d been forced do to those last few months just so’s she could survive….  It just wasn’t right.  Hoss looked at his fist and then rammed it into the stall wall.  God abandoned her and let her die.

Just like God had abandoned him.

He loved Margie.  She should have been his.  He should have saved her.  God should have saved her….

But He didn’t.

Hoss stared at the blood dripping from his fingers.  Chubb shied at the smell.

“Sorry, boy,” the big man said as he went back to brushing.  “I didn’t meant it.”

But he did.

He wanted to hurt someone.

He wanted someone to pay.

He just didn’t know who.

 

Ben Cartwright stepped onto the porch of his Ponderosa.  He turned from side to side.  The yard was empty.

It was a reflection of his life.

Something had changed in the last month or so.  Something had been lost – something significant, if not imperative.  Each of his sons had been dealt a blow from which they might never recover.  Adam, his eldest, had walked through Hell; driven to the brink by a madman who challenged everything he believed in.  Hoss – not his youngest, but his most innocent child – had shattered in the face of man’s depravity. And Joseph?  Dear sweet, hot-headed, intense and introspective Joseph – who had been on top of the world – had plummeted to the depths when the beautiful young woman he had given his heart to succumbed to an incurable illness.

The rancher sighed as he stepped off of the porch.  And him?  What of him?  What of a father who stood by while the son of another father was killed?  He was fine.  As an older and wiser man, he was immune to such introspection and melancholy.

He was also a liar.

Ben’s gaze went to the barn and then moved on to the corral where he imagined one of his boys on the back of a bucking bronco.  He looked at the wood pile and saw Joseph chopping wood; the sweat making his chestnut curls spiral and trail before his eyes.  He saw Adam sitting on the porch strumming his guitar.  Hoss smiling at a new foal.  Or, that’s what he should have seen.  Instead – each and every time he looked at one of his boys – he didn’t see them.  What he saw instead was Jimmy Partridge laying on the floor; his life-blood pouring out.  He hadn’t meant to let it happen.  The choice had been out of his hands.  Still, Jimmy was dead and his father, left a broken man.  How would he have reacted if things had been the other way round?  What if Lem had stood by while some outlaw killed one of his sons?

Could he have forgiven?

Would he have forgiven?

Had Lem truly forgiven him?

Could he forgive himself?

Ben ran a hand over his chin and frowned.  His face was stubbly with distraction.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d shaved.  He had a vague memory of Hop Sing chiding him for breaking his routine as he came down the stairs that morning, and a slightly stronger sense of the Asian man voicing his frustration when he dismissed his concern.  No.  Things were far from routine.  His life – his family – was a shambles.  That indefinable ‘thing’ that held them together – what made them ‘the’ Cartwrights – was lost and Ben despaired of every getting it back.  The rancher leaned a hand on the hitching rail and looked out toward the horizon.  The last time he’d felt this lost was after Joseph’s mother died.  Everything came down to ‘before’ Marie and ‘after’ Marie.  Life became a dream, or more precisely, a nightmare.

One from which he feared he might never wake.

The Ponderosa had been assailed before.  They’d weathered brigands and thieves, deserters and desperados.  Arrows had pierced the door and bullets shattered the window glass.  Through it all, it had been the four of them – Pa, Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe.  Together they could withstand anything.  Together, they were everything.

Without each other they were nothing.

Ben looked again at the barn, noting its darkened interior.  His gaze returned to the deserted corral.  The yard was empty as well, as were the fields beyond it.

Empty.

Empty as their lives.

 

TWO

 

Crockett Murdoch placed the cork back into the bottle of cheap whiskey he’d just finished pouring, before shoving the glass across the counter. He nodded at the saloon’s bouncer where he slouched by the batwing doors, indicating with a lift of one eyebrow that it would be the customer’s last, before glancing over his shoulder. The noise coming out of the back room told him there was something there that needed looking into.

He didn’t look.  Instead he began to wipe down the counter.

Experience had taught him a long time ago to keep his nose out of other people’s business.

Besides, whoever it was grunting and groaning, probably deserved what they were getting.  Life was like that.  The Chinks in Chinatown had it right.  They had a word for it.  Or maybe it was two.  ‘Ying’ and ‘yang’.  According to them there was a balance to everything.  So if a man took a beating, why then, he’d obviously done something to deserve it.  Somewhere back along the way that poor sucker who was getting the stuffing knocked out of him sure as Hell had knocked the stuffing out of someone else – or maybe his father had.  It wasn’t only the Chinese who said so, but the Good Book too.  An eye for an eye.  A tooth for a tooth.

A life for a slice of pie.

“Crockett?”

He kept polishing.  “Yeah?”

It was the bouncer – went by the name of Caesar – tall as San Jacinto peak and broad as the Sierras.  “Man just came in.  He asked for you.”

A nod of Caesar’s head turned his in that direction.  “So?”

“So…I thought you’d want to hear what he has to say.”

He snorted as his rag bore down on a particularly dull spot.  “Why?  Is there something in it for me?”

“Could be.  Said his name’s Travis.  Says he knew your brother.”

Crockett froze.  He looked up.  “Cassidy?”

Caesar had no neck, so his chin touched his chest as he nodded.  “Yeah.  Cass.  That was it.”

The man behind the bar looked around the room, seeking the newcomer.

“He’s at the table by the stair.  The one in the shadows in the corner.  Acted like he didn’t want no one to see him.”

Crockett turned and looked at the gilded clock on the shelf above the mirror.  It was nearly eight.  “Do me a favor?  I got ten more minutes.  Ask him if he’ll wait.”

“Oh, he’ll wait,” Caesar said as he began to move away.

“How do you know?”

“He told me to tell you that he’d be there in that corner ‘til you came, or ‘til Hell froze over.”

Again, he looked.

Again, he saw nothing.

Crockett put the cloth down.  His fingers explored the darkness beneath the counter, stopping only when they encountered the cold, hard steel of his army service revolver.  He made a quick business of concealing it beneath the apron he wore.  Then he turned and picked up the pile of soiled linens and headed for the back room, which had fallen silent.

Balance.

It was all a man wanted, after all.  You couldn’t find peace if things were left undone.

His brother, Cass, knew it.

Sadly, he knew it better than most.

 

Joe reached out and caught the arm of the man who was waiting their table.  In a low voice, he asked, “Do you know what all the shouting is about?”

The long thin man with a handlebar mustache let out an long thin sigh.  “Why the management insists on leaving the door between the hotel and the saloon open, I will never understand!  Just some riff-raff getting roughed up.”  He made a face.  “With any luck, they’ll kill each other and save the sheriff some grief.”

“Oh.”  The curly-haired man eyed the open door longingly.  Dying in a bar fight would be preferable to dying of boredom.

“Joseph.”

Joe winced before turning back.  “Sorry, Pa.”

“Why, young man!” Margie Owen’s aunt said.  “One would think we were boring you.”

He sat up straight.  “Bored?  Who?  Me?  No, Ma’am.  I don’t think that.”

“I don’t think you’re boring either,” a light voice said.  It carried a hint of a smile.

Any other time he wouldn’t have been able to keep his eyes off its owner.  Margie’s aunt, Miss Ottelia Guilford, was a little younger than Pa and must have been a looker back in the days.  The young woman to her left, who traveled with the maiden lady as both a companion to her and a wet nurse for Margie’s baby, was one now.  Her first name was Lessy and her last name was White, just like Laura’s – ‘Lessy’ for Melissa – and ‘stunning’ didn’t begin to describe her. You could hardly tell the difference between her napkin and the hand she laid on it, her skin was so white.  Her hair, on the other hand, was black as midnight.  She had one of those faces.  You couldn’t exactly say what it was made her beautiful.  It wasn’t just her crystal blue eyes, or her rose-pink lips.  He’d thought maybe it was the way she cocked her head and looked up with just the hint of a smile – like she’d just done – but he’d seen other girls do that.  In the end, after watching her with Otie – as the older woman insisted they call her – he decided Lessy’s beauty went deeper.  She was kind and helpful and cheerful and loving.

Just like Laura.

Pa chuckled.

It took him a full five seconds to remember why.

“If there’s anything Joseph is not, it’s boring,” Pa said.

“Pa….”

“Oh, never mind him, young man,” Otie remarked.  “It’s been scientifically proven that all of this talk of times past and bygone days has the power to put one to sleep.  Just look at dear sweet Jorie.”

He’d avoided doing that because it meant he had to look at Hoss.  Joe felt his father’s hand move beneath the table.  It took hold of his own and gave it a squeeze.  Margie’s baby girl was a little over three months old and already she had a crown of golden curls just like her mother’s.  Her grandfather had named her Marjorie too, but called her Jorie.  Hoss was fingering one of those curls.  The big man had his head down, close to the baby’s.  He spoke softly to her and she cooed back in her sleep.  When Joe saw them that way, he couldn’t help but think that Margie’s baby could have been his brother’s – if things had gone different.

Or, if things had gone different, she could have been his.

“I should probably take Jorie back to the house.  It’s way past her bedtime,” Lessy said as she began to rise.

Joe stood immediately and went to that side of the table to help her out of her chair.

“You have the boy well-trained,” George Owens mused.

“I think the suit has something to do with it,” Pa said with a grin.  “They all seem to behave better when they are out of their chaps.”

“I’m sorry Adam couldn’t make it,” Margie’s father said.  “I think he and Ottelia would have gotten along swimmingly.  She used to trod the boards, you know.”

Joe was pushing the chair back in.  “Trod the boards?”

“Act, young man,” the older woman replied.  “You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but I was Juliet once upon a time.”

Joe thought a moment.  “A beauty too rich for use, for Earth too dear.”

The older woman’s eyes lit with surprise.  “You know the Bard?”

“No, Ma’am,” he said with a wink.  “My older brother Adam knows him.  Old Bill is more of a passing acquaintance to me.”

“You keep it quiet, little brother.  You’re gonna wake up little Jorie.”

Lessy was at his brother’s side.  “Here, Hoss.  Let me take her.”

Hoss looked like she’d asked him to cut off an arm.  “Do I gotta?”

“You can come over to the house tomorrow, son,” George said as he too started to rise.  “It seems that the youngest member of the Owen household needs to go home, so we’ll bid you goodnight.”

“Oh no!  You two stay and enjoy your company.  Jorie and I will be fine,” Lessy said.  “The house is just at the edge of town and it’s a lovely night for a walk.”

“Not alone, young lady.  This is neither Boston nor Baltimore.”

The words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself.  “I’ll take her,” Joe said.

He knew it.

He knew the hope those words brought to his father’s heart.

“Well, thank you, son, but I don’t know.”

“It will be fine, George,” Pa said quickly.  “Joseph can see Lessy to your house and stay there until we’re done.  I wanted to go over that bit of business we have before we left.”

“Oh, dear!” Otie fanned herself.  “Perhaps I should go with the young people!”

“Can I go, Pa?” Hoss asked as he reluctantly surrendered Jorie.

“I’d prefer it if you stayed.  This has to do with you as well.”

George Owen wanted to buy some land from Pa.  He said he found the house where he’d raised Margie too sad to stay in and wanted to build a new one.  Hoss and Adam were older than him and had already staked out some parts of the Ponderosa they wanted when the time came.  Hoss had even given Pa some money toward one particular plot where he hoped he and Margie would settle.  Middle brother wanted George to have that land.

Hoss nodded slowly, his eyes still on Jorie where she lay nuzzled up against Lessy’s breast.  “Yes, sir.”

“We’ll be about an hour, Joseph.  You be sure to take good care of Miss White until we get there.”

He had no idea why he’d volunteered.  The last thing he wanted to do was spend an hour with a beautiful young woman and a baby.

“Yes, sir.”  He turned to Lessy.  “If you give me your check, I’ll go get your cloak.”

“Thank you,” she said as she handed him the little slip of paper.  “I’ll just wrap Jorie up against the night air.”

A few minutes later they were on their way.  Pa was right.  Lessy shouldn’t have been walking around Virginia City by herself this time of night.  It was eight o’clock, the sun was down, and the path to the Owens’ house took her past several saloons including the one attached to the International House where they’d been dining.  He looked in as they passed the batwing doors.  One of the hostesses saw him and shouted his name.  Joe felt the call.  A man could lose himself in a saloon amidst the low lights, cheerful music, and cheap whiskey.

But he wouldn’t.

Forgetting himself in another woman’s arms was no way to remember Laura.

 

Crockett Murdoch dropped into an empty chair in the darkened corner. The man across the table from him grunted but said nothing as he lifted his whiskey glass, emptied it, and then gestured to a passing girl for another. The stranger had an ordinary face.  It was a little too fleshed out – maybe even jowly – with pale blue eyes small as a pig’s.  His nose was long with the tip turned down toward his lips.  His lips turned down too.  The funny thing was, even though they turned down, he looked like he was smiling.

At someone’s funeral.

“Caesar said you were looking for me,” Crockett announced as a saloon girl named Julie placed a glass of whiskey before the stranger and one in front of him too.

“On the house,” she said.

“Owner know?” he asked.

“What that bastard doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Julie replied with a smirk and a smart swish of her voluminous skirts as she moved away.

“Pretty girl,” the stranger said.   “Must be a new one.”

Crockett took a sip of the whiskey and relished the liquid fire as it burned its way to his empty belly before speaking.  “Owner has her waiting tables – and that’s it.  She draws them in, especially the princes.”

“Princes?”

“The sons of rich men.  The pretty boys with all that precious metal burning a hole in their pocket.”  He put the glass down with a decided ‘clink’.  “Now, you gonna tell me what you want or am I gonna have to have Caesar shake it out of you?”

The man licked his lips.  “Is Joseph Cartwright one of them pretty boys?”

“What if he is?”

The stranger leaned forward.  “I got me a score to settle with Little Joe Cartwright and you do too.”

Crockett knew the boy.  The youngest Cartwright came in most often with his brothers though, every now and then, when Little Joe was down – or up to raising hell – he came alone.   Sometimes he stopped in to talk to Julie.  He’d even heard the boy offer her money one time so she could take the stage and go back home.

“What’s Joe Cartwright ever done to me?” he asked.

“Broke Danny Kidd out of prison.”

Crockett’s knuckles went white on the glass.  “What?”

“You haven’t been here long, have you?” the stranger asked.  “About three months or so?”

“Why do you want to know, and what’s it got to do with Danny Kidd?”

“Well, let me tell you.”  The piggy man settled back in his chair.  “Up until about a year ago I had me a good job.  I was a prison guard.”

“Was?”

“Was.  Thanks to Joe Cartwright I ain’t no more.”

“What happened?”

“The warden sent me with a bunch of those caged animals to the Ponderosa to build a road for the territory.  I was doin’ fine until mister high-and-mighty Joseph Cartwright came riding by to check up on me and see if I was treatin’ them animals all nice and proper like they deserved.”  He snorted.  “Danny Kidd, he starts back-talkin’ me and I let off a warnin’ shot to let him know who’s in charge.  It spooked the Cartwright kid’s horse and it tossed him.  Got his foot caught in the stirrup.”

“And it took off?”

“Would have killed him too if Kidd hadn’t stopped the horse.”

Crockett leaned back in his chair.  “So Danny Kidd saved Joe Cartwright’s life?”

“Saved Cartwright’s life and cost me my job.”

“How come?”

He rolled his eyes.  “Cartwright, you see, he asks Danny Kidd what he can do to repay him?  Now, I ask you, what’s one of them animals gonna do but whine and say, ‘Get me out of prison’?  Joe Cartwright, he goes home to his papa and asks him if he can do just that.  They come to the penitentiary and the molly-coddled little brat tells the warden what happened – as he sees it.”  The stranger tossed back the last of his whiskey.  “Ben Cartwright, he’s got ties with the governor, so what do you think happened when Kidd told the warden I almost got Joe Cartwright killed?”  The man shook his head.  “Wasn’t my fault.  It was Kidd’s – that back-talkin’con.  He’s the one made me shoot off that gun.”

The man was obviously a brute and most likely deserved what he got.  Still, it seemed the fates had aligned to bring them together for one thing.

“Did Kidd get released?”

“Damn straight.  He got released and I got fired!”  The stranger signaled Julie again.  She looked at him, knowing the man had already had one too many.  Crockett considered it and then nodded.

Loose lips and all that.

“So where is Kidd now?”

“Still on the Ponderosa.  Like I said, you’re new in these parts or you’d know.”

He wasn’t sure he would recognize Danny Kidd.  The con had been a kid the last time he’d seen him.  Hell, he’d been a kid.  He could have even served him a drink and not known it.

The thought made him burn.

“Kidd don’t come to town much,” the other man explained.  “Keeps to himself most of the time.  Back when he first came to Ben’s spread there was some trouble.  I heard Joe Cartwright almost sent him back, but didn’t.  Seems they made some kind of a deal with the warden.  Danny Kidd has to stay out of trouble for a year or it’s back in chains.”

So that was it.

“I take it, then, that you intend to stir up some trouble before the end of the year?”

The man nodded.

“And you would like some help?”

“I got me a couple of boys, name of Teller and Stevens.  Joe Cartwright went and got his daddy to fire them on account of Danny Kidd.  I figure between them and my boys – and you and whoever you got – we got us enough.”

“Enough?  Not too many?”

The stranger leaned in and lowered his voice.  “You and me, I think we got the same thing in mind.  Them others, well, they ain’t as…committed.”

Crockett stifled his laugh.  The other man had no idea.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Travis,” the former prison guard replied.  “Travis Mudge.”

Why was he not surprised?

He held out his hand.  “Well, Mister Mudge, you have a deal – pending our agreement on certain details.”

Travis looked at his hand.  “Certain details?  What are you expectin’ in return?”

What did he expect?  Not much.

Ying yang.

An eye for an eye.

Balance.

 

“Thank you for seeing me home, Joe.”

Lessy was smiling at him.  He smiled back.  “You’re welcome.”  He’d taken her cloak off and was hanging it on the gilt and mahogany coat stand by the door.  “Can I do anything to help?”

She laughed.  “Thank you, but no.  I need to feed Jorie and put her to bed.”

It took a second before what he’d said – and what she said – sunk in.  He blushed.

“You’re sweet.”  Lessy unexpectedly gave him a peck on the cheek.  “You just wait here and I’ll be back.  It will take about twenty minutes, I imagine.”

Joe watched her mount the stairs and then stood at the bottom, completely lost.  He’d been in George Owens home as a boy and thought he remembered the layout fairly well, so he headed to the left toward what he reckoned was the parlor.  The room was cold when he got there and he took it upon himself to kindle the fire and make sure it was blazing.  He was glad for the work.  It gave him something else to do other than sit and think about where he was and who he was with and how that reminded him of who he wasn’t with and where he wasn’t.

Before…Kane…happened, he and Adam had talked about..well…Laura.  Big brother didn’t try to comfort him.  They just sat side by side on the porch of the cabin they’d fixed up for the two of them and spoke about everything – life, love, good and bad luck, and loss.  At one point Adam started ‘waxing poetic’ as he liked to call it.  One thing he said stuck with him.  It came from a poem.  ‘Grief, a leech to the heart, sucks until paling, happiness dies.’  Adam didn’t mean it as a statement so much as a warning.  Older brother was trying to tell him that he had to let go; that he had to move on if he was to survive.  The trouble was, he didn’t want to.  Letting go – moving on – felt like he was betraying Laura.

And he couldn’t do that.

“Joe?”

He jumped a bit – and then laughed.  “Hey.”

“Sorry if I startled you.”

He had taken a seat on the settee near the fire.  Truth to tell he’d stoked it a little too much and the color was high in his cheeks.  Joe rose as the young woman entered the room.

“Oh, don’t get up,” she said.  “You look like you belong there.”

“On a settee?”

“As master of the house.”

He grinned.  “You got me wrong, I can tell you.  I’m more at home on the back of a horse than in a place like this.”  He pulled at the collar of his white shirt.  “And in a work shirt and chaps.”

Lessy tilted her head and the firelight glinted off her lustrous black mane, turning it to bronze.  “It’s hard for me to see, but then I don’t know you very well.”

“You should come out to the Ponderosa,” he said, and instantly regretted it.

She came to his side and took a seat.  “I’d like that.  We don’t have cowboys where I come from.”

“And where is that?” he asked as he moved to a chair opposite.

“Boston, by way of Baltimore.”

“By way of?”

She curled up in the corner of the settee, lifting her legs and showing just a bit of ankle as she did.  “I was born in Boston.  My husband came from Baltimore.”

Of course she had a husband.  She was a wet nurse.  That meant she’d been married and had a baby.

And lost it.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“That I’m from Baltimore or that I was married?”

His face flushed even higher.  “Neither.  Both.  Er…”  Joe swallowed over his embarrassment.  “That I’m an idiot.”

Lessy laughed, but sobered quickly.  “I suppose you would like to know how I came to be with Mrs. Guilford.”

“Only if you want to tell me.”

Lessy cocked her head and stared at him for several heartbeats.  “I will, but only because I sense you are a kindred spirit.  I think you know what it is to have loved and lost.”

He didn’t know what to say.

The young woman leaned on her hand and looked toward the window.  “His name was Brown.”  She smiled.  “It’s a funny name, I know – Brown White – but it was his mother’s maiden name.  We were married about this time around two years ago.”

Joe cleared his throat.  “Were?”

“Brown died before his child was born.  It was one of the sicknesses that swept through the city.  We went to a party Saturday night.  He was fine.  We woke up Sunday morning.  He fell ill and was dead by Sunday night.”  She held his gaze.  “Dead.  Gone.  In an instant.”

He didn’t know what to say.

Lessy stirred,  She sat up and turned toward him.  “I found out I was pregnant shortly after that.  Brown never knew.  I was so…overjoyed that a part of him still remained with me.  I dreamed….”  Her voice cracked as she choked.  “I dreamed of the life we would have together, his child and mine.  My child.  My son.  My daughter….”

When she said nothing more, Joe found the courage – somewhere – to ask, “What happened?”

Lessy’s jaw grew tight and she blinked back tears.  “Everything was fine.  Brown’s father insisted I see a physician and he said everything was fine.  The baby….”  Her voice fell.  Became hushed.  “She was so beautiful.  So..perfect.”  A little sob escaped her.  “Too perfect for this world.”

Joe didn’t know what else to do.  He rose and went to her.  For a moment he stood at her side and then took a seat on the settee.  Lessy looked at him, gave him a weak smile, and then dropped her head.

He put his hand on hers.

“Mister Owens contacted his sister, Otie, about finding a wet nurse for Jorie,” she said at last.  “She’s a friend of my father’s.  Papa knew….”  Lessy sucked in air.  “Jorie needed a mama and I needed….”

Joe felt like a heel.  Here he was, feeling sorry for himself and thinking that what had happened to him was the worst thing that could possibly have happened.  His pain was sharp, it was deep, but it was nothing when compared to Lessy’s.  She’d lost her husband – her love – and seen their child born and buried.

She’d lost everything.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked gently.

Lessy buried her head in his shoulder.  “Would you…would you just hold me?”

It was almost more than he could bear, but he did it.  Then, as he wrapped his arms around Lessy and held her tightly, Joe did something else he thought he could never do.

He let go of Laura just a little bit.

 

THREE

 

“Joseph?”

Little Joe Cartwright stopped what he was doing and looked over his shoulder.  It was late morning and he was saddling his horse in preparation for riding out.  One of the men had come in an hour before with word that a section of the north fence was down.  Might have been a wash of the nearby stream, Thom said, but he wasn’t sure.  He thought there was something fishy about it and wanted someone else to take a look.  Joe had considered telling his pa about it, but decided it wasn’t worth bothering him.

Looked like he’d be telling him now.

“Hey, Pa,” he said as he finished pulling on the cinch strap and turned toward the older man.  “What’s up?”

“Have you seen your brother?”

Now, there was a loaded question if he’d ever heard one.

“Which one?”

The older man’s gaze moved to the horizon.  “Either,” he said.  “Both.”

He’d seen Hoss ride out just as he reached the barn.  He’d kind of been expecting it.  The ride home the night before from the Owens’ house had been made in silence.  Pa was stoic.  He’d been, well, kind of sad.  Mostly for Lessy.

Hoss was angry.  So angry that, about half the way home, middle brother put his heels to Chubb’s side and sent the black flying for the Ponderosa, leaving the pair of them in the dust.

Around four a.m., he’d heard the big man head downstairs.  About half an hour later the front door opened and closed with a bang!  Joe glanced at his father.  He was sure Pa had heard that too.  It would have been kind of hard to miss.

“Hoss left just as I got here.  He didn’t say where he was going.  Adam….”  Joe hesitated.  “I think Adam needs to be alone.”

“The last thing either of your brothers needs is to be left alone!” Pa snapped, and then regretted it.  A bemused smile lit the older man’s face as he placed a hand on his shoulder.  “Who would have guessed that you would be the one son I could rely on?”

That smarted a little, but then he deserved it.  He wasn’t always reliable.  “Not me,” Joe replied with a little laugh.

It took a moment before his father realized what he had said.  “Joe, I didn’t mean it that….”

“It’s okay, Pa.  It just took me a bit longer to grow up.  I’m twenty now and just plain boring.”

Pa laughed this time.  “You will never be that!”

He laughed too.

“I’m worried about your brothers.  Worried that Hoss is so filled with emotion and Adam seems so…emotionless.”

“They’ll find their way, Pa.”

The older man’s keen black eyes fastened on him.  “Will they?  Are you sure?  I have seen far less take a man down, or turn him into someone he doesn’t know.  Someone no one knows.”

He understood his father’s distress.  He felt it too.  The problem was, he’d talked to both of his brothers and neither one of them would listen.  It was odd, him being the strong one.

No, it was downright wrong.

“Do you want me to try to find them?”

Pa lifted his hand.  “No.  Not yet.  Let’s give them some time.  If they’re still missing at supper, we’ll go looking – the pair of us.”

Joe gave him a little smile.  “Sounds good.”

“Son?”

He’d started for his horse.  “Yes, sir?” he asked, turning back.

“How are you?”

Three words.

Three words and they had the power to lay him flat in the dirt.

Joe’s jaw grew tight.  His impulse was to say ‘fine’.  It was his routine answer to any question that implied he was less than one hundred percent sound both mentally and physically.  He thought a moment before replying with uncharacteristic honesty.

“I hurt, Pa, but I’ll mend.  After all, you did – three times.”

“Yes, but you are not me.”

Joe nodded.  This time his voice was rough.  “I felt….  I didn’t think I could survive, but, well, I realized I’m not the only one in pain, and that there are those who are in far more pain than me.”

“Does this have to do with Mrs. White?”

It seemed funny to hear Lessy called that.  It made her seem…old…somehow.

“She’s lost so much, Pa.  Her husband.  Her child.  And yet….”

“Yet?”

He wouldn’t say the young woman was happy, but she was content.  After she’d cried her eyes out, they’d talked about just about everything from the time of day to the end of days.  When he got ready to leave, Lessy reminded him of a scripture Pa liked to quote – the one from Jeremiah about God having plans for a man’s future; plans to help and not to harm him.  She’d laughed when he told her that was hard for a man to reconcile with what the four of them had been through of late.  ‘I actually think sadness and darkness can be very beautiful and healing,’ she said.  ‘Something good will come of it.’

Something already had.

He’d met her.

“Joseph?”

He blushed.  “Sorry, Pa.  I was thinking.  Lessy told me something good would come out of all this bad.  She said I just had to give it time.”

“A very wise woman.”  Pa drew in a breath and let it out slowly.  “Yes, time.  We need to give your brothers time.”

Joe grinned.  “At least ‘til supper, right?”

“Hey, Joe!”

He turned with Pa to see who had shouted.  Danny Kidd had appeared.  He was seated in a wagon laden with supplies and directed the vehicle their way.

“Mister Cartwright, I’m sure I don’t know what to make of this here son of yours.  Here I am all kitted up and ready to roll and he hasn’t finished checkin’ his saddle!”

“I know,” Pa said, his voice rumbling with hidden laughter.  “The boy’s a slacker, I tell you – a slacker!”

“He better be a slicker too,” Danny said with an eye on the sky.  “There’s a storm coming.”

Pa looked.  The sky was a brilliant blue.  There wasn’t a cloud visible and the breeze was gentle, if a bit warm.  “Oh?  How can you tell?”

Danny’s look darkened just a bit.  He rubbed his right thigh with his knuckles.  “It’s an old wound, from the poorhouse.  Always complains when rains comin’ its way.”

“Well, then, the two of you had best get going – wherever you’re going, that is!”

Joe had finished his check list and swung up into the saddle.  “We’re gonna meet Thom Barker up in the north pasture.  I told him I’d help him mend that fence.”

“Without checking with your old man?” Pa asked with a wink.

“I figured I’d be there and back before you noticed I was missing.”

The sadness returned.  “I always know when one of you boys are missing.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for Adam and Hoss, Pa.”

“God keep you safe,” the older man said

Joe nodded as he put knees to horse flesh.

What did you say to that?

 

“I don’t know, Thom.  You really think this was deliberate?”

Thom Barker shrugged.  “I just don’t see how a rush of water could have pulled the stakes out and tossed them that far.”

Adam frowned.  At first glance it appeared the nearby stream had overflowed its banks, pushing rocks and bracken before it, and that the rocks and bracken had knocked the posts out of their holes.  If that had been the case, normally, they would have been carried a few feet at most.  Thom had found three several yards away, laying at an odd angle.

“You think it could be rustlers?” Thom asked.

He didn’t know what he thought.  If it was rustlers, they were either careless or stupid.  The only ground cover nearby was a clump of trees.  Maybe if they were planning on moving the cattle under cover of darkness….

“You said Little Joe’s on his way?” he asked.

Thom nodded.  “He’s comin’ and bringin’ Danny Kidd with him, along with supplies.”

That didn’t surprise him.  The pair had practically been inseparable since Kidd’s return.  If he’d been the kind of man to muse – and he was – he’d have wondered about the Fates bringing the pair together, and especially in the way they had.  Still, almost a year had passed and so far Danny had proven an able, if not exemplary employee, as well as – wonder of wonders – a good influence on his little brother.

“I suppose I should wait until Joe gets here,” he said with a sigh.

“You got somewhere to go?”

Adam’s lips twisted with a wry smile.  “No.”

Thom stuttered something and moved away.

The man in black stared at the ranch hand’s back for a moment and then his gaze returned to the stream.  It was running fast and hard with the recent rains.  He knelt on the bank to examine the area where it appeared the rush of water had overwhelmed it.  The ground had an oddly consistent look to it, as if a shovel or some other implement had been applied.  Adam rose and looked around, noting said ‘clump’ of trees and wondering if there was someone there now watching him and Thom.  What he couldn’t figure out was ‘why’.  If it was rustlers, they would have to know their actions would arouse suspicions.

Was that the point?

“Here they come!”

He pivoted in Thom’s direction.  Sure enough there were two specks on the horizon – one riding high and the other low.  Adam watched a moment and then shook his head.  The fool kids were racing.

Danny must have those supplies seriously secured!

Joe arrived first, both he and Cochise breathless.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Adam asked, his tone put-out.

“Feelin’ his oats,” Thom muttered.

Joe slipped from the saddle and headed toward him.  “It’s okay, older brother.  Some of us don’t cotton to slow and steady.”

“No, you ‘cotton’ to fast and reckless.”  A shiver of fear ran through him.  “One of these days, Joe, you’re going to break your neck.”

Baby brother turned.  The look out of those great green eyes was surprisingly sharp.  “Like you’d care.”

He caught his shoulder.  “What do you mean by that?  Of course, I’d care!”

Joe shook him off.  “Would you?  Is that why you’ve been avoiding me ever since we brought you home from the desert?”

Adam went rigid.  “Now is not the time to talk about that.”

“Oh yeah?”  Joe came closer.  “If not now, when will it be ‘time’?  I want to know, Adam.  What have I done wrong?”

“You…didn’t do anything wrong.”

His brother’s gaze narrowed.  “You and me, Adam, we don’t always see eye-to-eye, but there’s one thing I thought we had.  I guess I was wrong.”

Danny Kidd had come up behind Joe now.  The man in black glanced at him, but the ex-con’s face gave nothing away.

“What’s that?”

“Respect.”

“I do respect you.”

“No, you don’t.”  Joe’s jaw was set.  “You don’t respect me enough to tell me the truth.  You’re keeping something from me, from all of us.  I know it.  Pa knows it.  Even Hoss knows it, and right now he doesn’t know much of anything.  Adam….”

He hesitated to ask.

“What?”

Joe glanced at Danny, who nodded and moved away, before catching his arm and pulling him toward the rushing stream.

For a moment he thought Joe was going to toss him in.

The kid stared at the rushing water and then turned and looked at him. There were unspent tears in his eyes.  “Adam, I apologize.  I just got done telling Pa we had to give you time and I meant it.  It’s just….”  Joe’s jaw tightened and his nostrils flared.  “You make me so darn mad!”

He couldn’t help but smile.  “The feeling is mutual, little brother.”

Joe started.  Then he laughed.

It was short-lived.

“Older brother, you need…us.  We need…each other.  We can’t keep going our own way.  It’s like….” Joe thought a moment.  “You know, it’s like Pa’s bundled sticks.”

They’d each gone through that exercise.  One stick alone breaks easily.  In a bunch, they are nearly unbreakable.

What his little brother hadn’t gone through was a week with Peter Kane in the desert.  Little Joe, Pa, Hoss…their sticks were straight.  Intact.

His was twisted.

“Joe, I can’t….”

“Yes, you can!  And you are the only one who can!  Look, Adam, Hoss is missing.  Go find him.  Take him home to Pa.  You go home to Pa.  Both of you need to talk to him.  Pa won’t reject you or condemn you, no matter what you think you’ve done.  He loves you!”  A single tear trailed down his little brother’s cheek.  “Adam, please.  Pa’s heart is near breaking.”

Adam looked over his brother’s curly head at Thom and Danny where they worked emptying the wagon.  The portion of the boundary fence behind them was broken – washed out and wasted.  It could no longer function.  Anyone with any sense would just toss the remains on the fire and walk away.  But there were Thom and Danny – and here, was Joe – determined to do whatever it took to make it right.

Whatever it took.

“I….”  He cleared his throat.  “I don’t know if I can.”

Joe’s lips curled at one end. “Well, you know what, ‘educated-back-East-I got-an-answer-for-everything older brother’, I do!”  The kid gripped his arm.  “You’re Adam,” Joe said, with all the wonder of the four-year-old boy he had been, “you can do anything.”

 

Joe watched Adam walk mount up and ride away.  The curly-haired man sucked in air, wiped the snot from his upper lip, and then deliberately turned his back on his older brother’s departure, hoping his words had touched the man in black as Lessy’s had touched him the night before.  On the way out from the ranch he’d had time to think.

Time.

Yes, Adam and Hoss needed time, but they also needed him and Pa – and each other.  If one of them didn’t do something – and soon – there wasn’t going to be a Cartwright family.  So he’d made up his mind to be the one who did it.  He’d decided to start with Adam, since older brother was the most stubborn of them.  People thought that was him, but it wasn’t.  Pa told him that when older brother was a toddler, he’d hold his breath until he passed out rather than give in.  He was stubborn too – heck, stubbornness was part and parcel of being a Cartwright – but there was something in Adam that was different; something that made being right not a thing he wanted, but a thing he had to have.

That was pride.

And that was what had died with Peter Kane.

Joe glanced at the horizon just in time to see his brother turn from a speck into a memory, and then he turned back to Thom, Danny, and the task at hand.

“So, where do we start?” he asked as he rolled up his sleeves.

Thom was eying the stream.  “I don’t know about you two, but the height of that water is makin’ me nervous.  I agree with Danny that there’s a storm on the way.  I’m thinkin’ maybe we should wait.”

“And let more of the fence wash out?”  Joe was surprised.  “We can’t do that.  We’ll lose too many cattle.”

“Better that than lose your life.  I’ve seen flash floods before and don’t want no part of one.  If the water burst its banks once, it can do it again.”

Thom was older than him and Danny, maybe by ten years, and therefore more cautious.

“But did it?” Danny asked.  “How can we be sure?  Looks to me like someone knocked it down and made the water come this way on purpose.”

“Even if,” Thom agreed.  “Don’t mean it can’t happen again natural-like.”

Joe looked at the sky.  The sun was still shining.  “You sure about that rain?” he asked his friend.

Danny’s thumb kneaded his thigh.  “Yep.”

Thom pointed east, toward the clump of trees.  “It’s early in the day.  How about we reset the fence farther away from the water – maybe ten yards that way?”  The cowpoke grinned.  “Your pa’s got thousands of acres, what’s a few feet?”

“What if it is rustlers that did it, Joe?” his friend asked.  “Won’t they just come back and knock it down again?”

“Could be.”  Joe scrunched up his face.  “Look, here’s what we’ll do.  We’ll fix it in place and then ride away.  About a mile out, Thom will take charge of the wagon and take it home.  Danny, you and me, we’ll ride back and keep watch.  That way, if it is rustlers, we’ll catch them red-handed.”

Thom eyed him like he’d sprouted a second head.  “Your Pa will have my hide if I let you take a chance like that!”

Joe laughed. “What chance?  I promise we won’t try to take them.  We’ll wait and watch, and – at most –follow.”

The older man crossed his arms.  “Pull the other one, why don’t you?  I was young once, you know.”

Danny laughed.  “I promise I’ll keep him in line, Thom.  I got me one month to go and then I’m free for good!  I’m not gonna take any chances with that.”

“Pa will be fine with it,” Joe said.  “In fact, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell him what we’re doing.”

“Now, Joe….”

He held up a hand.  “Thom, Pa’s got a lot on his plate with Adam and Hoss.  He doesn’t need to worry about me too.  Just tell him Danny and I decided to camp out overnight and finish the work in the morning.  It’s the truth, after all.”  His gaze returned to the scattered poles.  “We’ll never finish this today.”

“I won’t lie to your pa.”

“You don’t need to.  If Pa asks, tell him.  It’s not like it’s a secret.  Just…well…just don’t tell him if he doesn’t ask.”  Joe pinned the other man with his stare.  “Besides, you owe me.”

Thom made a noise.  “I thought you said you wasn’t gonna bring that up again.”

His grin was wicked.  “Said, not promised.”

Thom was a good man, but he had a problem with the bottle.  Joe’d come on the wrangler drunk as a skunk one time during a cattle drive – and had taken it upon himself to sober him up before his father was any the wiser.

“What is it that Chinaman works for your pa says?” the older man asked.  “If you can’t change your fate, change your attitude?”  Thom wagged a finger.  “You do what you promised, boy.  You hear?”

Innocent as an angel, Joe asked, “Don’t I always?”

 

The day was long and hard and steaming hot.  About halfway through it the rain pounced, and then pounded and poured for more than an hour before falling off to nothing.  They’d managed before the storm broke to shift the fence to the east and put the posts in place, but were forced to wait for its end to add the rails.  It was a wet, slippery, and filthy business.  All three of them were mud from head to toe by the time they finished, so much so that Thom’s horse actually shied from him when he approached it.  Thom said he’d clean up once he was back at the Ponderosa and wished them well in doing the same as he took off in the wagon with his horse hitched behind.

Neither he or Danny had brought any extra clothing. They did have their slickers since the sensible ex-convict and his aching thigh had insisted they retrieve them before leaving the Ponderosa.  It felt mighty funny to be wearing the oil-cloth garments and nothing else, but that’s what they did as they sat down to fix their supper with their freshly washed clothes spread far and wide over branches and fallen logs beside them.  The stream was running high – much too high for them to have washed themselves in.  They’d followed it a ways and found a small waterfall, which they used instead, and then made camp close by.  That put them a good mile downstream from where they’d laid the fence.  It was their intention to eat and catch a few hours sleep before returning there to keep watch for the rustlers.

If there were rustlers.

“I don’t know,” Joe said.  “The more I think about it, the more I’m starting to believe that Adam might have been right.  The wash-out could have been natural.  That water’s got some power to it.  It could have tossed those poles that far.”

Danny shook his head as he leaned forward to stir the beans bubbling in a pot over the fire.  “I don’t agree.”

“Why not?”

“Look, Joe, I did a lot of digging when I was on the press gang.  I know the marks of a shovel.”

“So do I!”

His friend snorted.  “Shovelin’ horse crap isn’t the same.”

“Like that’s all that I’ve shoveled,” Joe growled.

“Yeah.  You’re knee-deep in it all the time, aren’t you?”  Danny said with a grin.  He picked up a plate and began to dish out the beans.  “There’s a look to a shovel pushed in hard and fast.  It cuts in a certain way.  And that’s not all.”

Joe accepted the plate, took a bite, and swallowed.  “What else is there?”

“Someone worked backward to cover it up.  They wanted it to look natural.”  Danny shoved his beans around on his plate as if thinking.  Then, instead of speaking, he smiled again.

“What are you smiling about?”

The ex-convict scoffed.  “One time me and some of the other fellers, well, we paid Travis back.  We dug us a pit and covered it over with branches and leaves.  Then Jones, he pretends he’s sick and can’t work.  Travis, he comes stormin’ over and falls in….”

The image of the prison guard shooting his gun and almost hitting Danny with a bullet just for talking out of turn flashed before Joe’s eyes.

“Sheesh, Danny.  I’m surprised he didn’t kill you!”

“Nah.  Travis knew we were worth too much to the government.”  His friend laughed.  “I couldn’t lean back for a month, but it was worth it!”

Joe fell silent, considering once again the life his friend had led before they met.  Born to poverty, abandoned at a young age and left alone to fend for himself – imprisoned at an age when most kids were still in school –  Danny had spent most of his life caged and treated like an animal.  By comparison, he’d lived like a prince!  His pa warned him when he took Danny on, that it would be hard to keep him out of trouble.  His friend’s anger ran fast and furious as the stream rushing at their backs.  There’d been a lot of fights and a good many misunderstandings in the last year.  Once or twice he’d thought Danny wasn’t going to make it – that something would push the former convict over the edge and make him strike out with deadly force.

But he hadn’t.

And here they were, eating beans and having a fine time one month shy of the governor granting him a pardon.

One month and Danny Kidd would be a free man!

Joe chewed a moment longer.  “I wonder what happened to Travis.”

“Why?”

Joe shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Just curious, I guess.”

Danny’s look was keen.  “Is there something you didn’t tell me?”

The curly-haired man wrinkled his nose.  “I guess I never told you.  I reported him to the warden.  You know, for the way he was treating you and the other men who were working on our land.”

Danny snorted.  “I doubt the warden cared.  We were no more than animals to him.”

“Pa cared,” Joe said as he reached for his coffee.  “He went to the gov –”

A second later Joe was clutching his hand to his side.  A bullet had cut the skin on the top and it was bleeding.

“Don’t move!” a sharp voice commanded.  “You move so much as an inch and I’ll put the next one between your eyes!”

Joe met and held Danny’s stare.  He shook his head.

His friend had been poised to spring between him and danger.

“Rustlers?” Danny mouthed.

Joe shrugged.

“Who are you?” he shouted.  “What do you want?”

A figure appeared.  In the waning light Joe couldn’t make the man out, other than to say that he was of average build and height and his clothing was dark.

Sadly, he could see the moonlight glinting off the barrel of his gun.

“Look at you two sittin’ pretty,” the man said as he moved closer.  With the tip of the weapon, he pointed to Joe’s tan paints where they hung drying.  “Looks like they’s nekkid as jaybirds, boys!”

“There’s not much more vulnerable than a snake shed of its skin,” another man hissed.

Joe shivered as he felt the cold steel of a blade press against his neck.  Whoever it was had come up behind him

He sucked in air, but refused to be cowed.

“I’m asking you again, what do you want?”

“Now ain’t he mister high-and-mighty?  Just like that pa of his,” the first man said.   “Mister ‘I-got-me-the-governor-as-a-friend’ Ben Cartwright.”

Joe exchanged a look with Danny.  His friend’s eyes had gone wide.

The man speaking – the one with the gun?

It was Travis, the prison guard.

“You know what you and that inteferin’ pa of yours cost me, Little Joe Cartwright?  My job.  My wife and kids.  My home!”  Travis spit.  “Everything!”

“Whatever you lost, you lost it yourself!” Joe shot back.

“Well, now, I guess that’s right,” Travis agreed as he pointed his rifle’s nose at Danny’s belly.  “Just like Mr. Kidd here.  He made a choice to kill and he had to pay – or he would have if not for you.”

“Leave Joe out of this,” Danny breathed.  “This is between you and me, Travis, and only you and me.  I won’t –”

“Now, Mr. Kidd, I hate to tell you, but you ain’t got that quite right,” Travis said.

“What do you mean?” Danny asked.

“Seems there’s someone’s got a higher claim than mine for makin’ you pay,” the prison guard replied.  “Ain’t that right, Murdoch?”

The knife blade was shifted from the back of his neck to Joe’s throat.  He gasped as its sharp tip cut into his skin.

The name meant nothing to him.

It meant something to Danny.

 

FOUR

 

“Child.  Child!  Get your head out of the clouds!”

Lessy blinked and roused herself.  She glanced down at Jorie, who had fallen asleep at her breast, before responding to the older woman.  “Have you been there long?”

“Long enough,” Otie said with a shake of her head.  “George is here to take his granddaughter to meet her cousins and I can see you are far from ready.”

She was weary.  She’d been up half the night thinking.

“I’ve just finished feeding her.  Would it be all right if I stayed here?  I can prepare a bottle.”  Hand breast pumps were a new-fangled thing, but she’d mastered the use of one.

Otie came to her side.  “Are you ill?”

Lessy shook her head.  “Just tired.  It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since we came to Virginia City.  I’m afraid I don’t feel up to more socializing.”

She surrendered Jorie to the older woman’s arms.  It was both a relief and an injury to do so.  The older woman gazed at the baby, smiled, and nodded her head.  “Cousin Mildred is going to be there.  She can take care of Jorie.”

“Oh, no!  You should go too.  I don’t want to keep you away from your family.”

Otie reached out to touch her cheek.  “Child.  Don’t you know by now?  You are my family.”  She started for the door.  “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Lessy watched her go and then turned back to the window.  She had to consider what she was going to say.  She’d spent most of the night feeling guilty.  Brown had been gone less than six months.

She shouldn’t be thinking of another man.

“It’s Little Joe Cartwright, isn’t it?” Otie asked as she returned.

The young woman blushed.  “Why…no….”

Otie sat beside her and took her hand.  “He’s quite a handsome young man.  Just like his father did in his youth, Joe Cartwright turns all the girls’ heads.”

Lessy dropped hers.  “I suppose he has a girl.”

“He did,” the older woman said.  “She died.”

“Oh?  He didn’t say anything.”

“That’s men, dear.  They don’t talk – they do.”  The older woman rose and walked over to the mantelpiece where she occupied herself straightening a photo frame.  “I don’t know all the details.  One of Ben’s old friends, a sea captain, came to the Ponderosa.  Apparently Joe and his daughter Laura knew one another when they were children.  She had blossomed, of course, and the pair fell in love.  No sooner had their engagement been announced than the poor child was gone.  I hesitated to ask Ben about it, they were all so sad.  It appears she was ill all the time and Little Joe knew nothing of it.”

“You mean her father hid the truth about her condition?”

“So it seems.”

“How horrible!”

“So, you see, dear, the young man is as wounded as you are.  You must tread carefully.  It is far too easy for two wounded chicks to seek to strengthen one another when neither has the strength to help themselves.”

“Little Joe is just a friend!” she declared.  “Well, hardly even that.  I only met him the once.  And besides that, Brown has been gone less than a year.  It would be unseemly…”

Otie was at her side again and took her hand.  “Pish-tosh!  What does the heart care for ‘seemly’?  Now, my dear, George is still waiting.  I think you should put yourself right and we will all go out together.”

“You didn’t send him on?”

“No.  On second thought, I believe it would be best for you to accompany us.  You are far too vulnerable, my dear, even for the likes of a gallant young gentleman like Joseph Cartwright.”

“I think….”  Lessy paused.  She didn’t want to offend the older woman.  She liked her too much.  “I think…even if I had a feeling for Joe Cartwright, it would be up to me to decide what to do about it.  Wouldn’t it?”

“Of course, my dear, but I beg of you to remember one thing.”

“And what is that?” she asked smartly.

“Sometimes the person you fall for isn’t ready to catch you.”

 

Adam cleared his throat and waited.

Nothing.  Hoss kept brushing Chubb’s black coat like he’d turn it white.

So he tried again.

There was a slight pause and then the brush moved again.  “Go away, Adam. I don’t want to talk.”

“That makes two of us then,” he replied.

His younger brother looked over his shoulder.  “Huh?”

Adam moved into the barn.  “I don’t want to talk either, but I think we should.”

“About what?”’

There was a warning in those two words.

Adam shrugged as he moved to the other side of the black.  “About the weather?  Politics, maybe?  How about Joe and Pa?”  He placed his hand deliberately on either side of the brush as he met his brother’s defiant stare.  “Or, maybe, ourselves.”

“There ain’t nothin’ to say,” the big man grunted and turned away.

“Would you take that answer from me?”

Hoss halted.  “What?”

“I said, would you accept that answer from me?  Haven’t you been goading me – “  He rephrased it.  “Haven’t all of you been encouraging me to talk about what happened?”

The big man turned toward him.  “Yeah, but you ain’t.  And I ain’t gonna neither.  No good will come of it.”

“No, I guess not.”  Adam took a seat on a nearby hay bale.  “It’s better to leave it untended and let it fester and rot.”

“Let what fester and rot?” his brother demanded.

“Grief.  Shame.”  Adam paused.  “Pride.”

“I ain’t proud.”

“Yes, you are.  So proud you can’t bear the thought that the woman you loved didn’t love you.”

“Adam, you watch what you’re sayin’….”

“We’re all proud.  That’s what makes us Cartwrights,” he replied.  “Proud of our pa.  Proud of this land.  Proud of what he’s made of it.  Proud to be who we are; of all that we have.  Proud simply of being a Cartwright.”  Adam pointed to the sky.  “One day the gods looked down from Elysium and, with great beneficence, chose Benjamin Cartwright out of all of mankind to bestow their bounty and blessings upon, with the promise that there would never be anything he could not overcome.”

“You ain’t makin’ any sense, older brother.”

“Yes.  Yes, I am!”  He rose and began to pace.  “Pa loses one wife.  He finds another. The Indians kill her and there is a third.  She dies too but, like the righteous man he is, Ben Cartwright holds onto who he is and rises up from the ashes of despair to possess thousands of acres of fertile land replete with cattle, timber and more, to leave as a legacy to their three fine sons.”  He laughed – the sound of it was a bit hysterical even in his own ears.  “We should have seen it coming.”

Hoss was eying him strangely.  “Seen what comin’, older brother?”

His words were a whisper.  “The whirlwind.”

The big man blew out a breath.  He placed the brush on the table behind him and then rounded Chubb to stand at his side.  “Lookee here, Adam, I ain’t sure of what you’re talkin’ about, but I am sure of one thing.  I’m mad as Hell.  I’m mad at Margie for wantin’ more than I could give her, and for choosin’ that low-down snake over me on account of he promised her somethin’ he didn’t have to give.  I’m mad at Marc Connors for existin’, and I guess that means I’m mad at God too for creatin’ him in the first place!”  Hoss shook his head.  “I’m mad at me too for lettin’ her get away and for not stoppin’ Margie from goin’ with him.  I shoulda done somethin’.  I shoulda made her listen.”

Adam shook his head.  “She thought she was in love.”

“That ain’t it, Adam.  I don’t think she did.  I think she…loved me.  Trouble was, she loved what she thought Marc Connors could give her more.”

“Et tu, brute,” he said softly.

“Huh?”

“The fatal flaw.  Pride, misplaced trust, excessive curiosity, lack of self-control.”  Adam swallowed.  “Hubris.”.

“What’s that?”

“Hubris is the characteristic of excessive confidence or arrogance, which leads a person to believe that they may do no wrong.”

“I don’t think that.  I know I done wrong.  So did Margie.”

Adam stared at his brother.  “What makes you think I was talking about you?”

Hoss scratched his head.  “So who you talkin’ about then?  You?  Adam, Peter Kane was a madman.  From what little you told us about what happened, it sure seems he did everythin’ in his power to make you kill him.”

“Because I said I wouldn’t.”  He paled.  “Because I thought I couldn’t.”

“Adam….”

“But I did.”  He thrust arms before him.  “With these hands.  Kane chose to break me because I was so damned sure I couldn’t be broken.  Because of my arrogance.  Because of my God-damned pride!”  The man in black closed his eyes.  They burned with unspent tears.

He had no more to spend.

Without another word Adam turned and left the barn.  He mounted his horse and galloped out of the yard.

Joe had been wrong.  He’d wanted his little brother to be right.  All his life, words had saved him.

Now, they damned him.

 

Ben Cartwright pulled up short.  Hoss had stepped out of the barn and nearly run into him.  He gave his son a brief smile and then asked, “Where is your brother going?”

The big man’s answer was gruff.  “I don’t rightly know.  Away, I guess.”

Fear narrowed his eyes.  “Away?”

“Shucks, Pa.  I don’t mean it like that.  Seems I been bitin’ just about everyone’s head off lately.”  Hoss sighed.  “It’s just that Adam’s hurtin’ and well, you know how he is.”

Yes, he did.  His eldest son believed himself invincible – or at least believed he needed to appear that way to his younger brothers.  Ben looked in the direction Adam had gone and then turned back to his middle son.

This one was hurting as well.

“How are you, Hoss?”

Inger’s son shrugged.  “Okay, I guess.”

Ben raised an eyebrow.  “Define ‘okay’.”

Hoss looked startled, and then laughed.  “You sound just like older brother.”

“Words are important, son.”  He paused.  “What would you think if Joseph told you he was ‘okay’?”

“I’d know the ornery little cuss was lyin’.”

“Are you?”

“Am I what?”  His son looked puzzled, then rolled his eyes.  “I ain’t lyin’, Pa.  Not really.  I mean, I am okay…in some ways.”

“And….”

Hoss pursed his lips.  “You ain’t gonna like it.”

Ben scoffed.  “There’s nothing about what’s going on right now that I do like!”

The big man drew in a long breath and let it out slowly.  “Well, I guess – sir – you see….  I’m just plain mad at the Man upstairs!”

“You’re mad at God?”

“Yes, sir.”  He nodded.  “There.  I said it.”

The rancher eyed the sky.  “Still clear,” he said.

His son looked too.  Then he looked at him.  “You expectin’ somethin’?”

“No. but you were.”

Hoss frowned.  “You feelin’ okay, Pa?  You sure you don’t need to go sit down or nothin’?”

“I’m fine.  And so are you.”  Ben turned his eyes upward again.  “No lightning bolt.”

It had been a long time since Hoss was a little boy.  Even as an adolescent he had been taller and weighed more than most full grown men.  Still, there were times when Ben could see the child the big man had been.  It shone mostly from his son’s eyes, but that wide-eyed innocence also turned up the corners of his lips in a special way.

“Aw, shucks!  You mean I done told God I was mad at Him and He didn’t strike me dead or nothin’.”

The rancher placed a hand on his son’s arm.  “That’s exactly what I mean.  God had broad shoulders, son.  He can take your anger.”

“But Pa…it just don’t feel right.  I mean, God’s been good to me…to us…but, well….  He just shouldn’t have let it happen!”

“Marjorie and Marcus, you mean?”

His son’s jaw tightened.  “You always told us that God makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him.  Marjorie done went to church.  She was a good woman.”

“And she’s dead.  Unfairly.”

The boy nodded.

They were his own words, spoken so long ago in the wake of Elizabeth’s death.  His first wife was a beautiful, intelligent woman.  Thoughtful and caring.  Filled with loving-kindness. She would have made an amazing mother.  There had been dreams of a large family and of a long life together.

And then, she was gone.

Angry?

Hoss didn’t know the meaning of the word.

“Pa?”

Ben hesitated.  How to put it?  It was true God promised ‘good’ to all who loved Him, just as He promised a future to prosper a man and not to harm him.  But what did that future look like?  Was it the one they with their limited human vision could see, or another far better one planned and executed by an omnipotent and loving Father?  He and Elizabeth would have had more children, but they would not have been the children he had.  Neither Hoss nor Little Joe would have existed.  He would not have known Inger or Marie.  Most likely, he would have gone on to take the lead in Able Stoddard’s shipping line and spent half of his life at sea.  He would not have seen his children grow.  There would have been no Ponderosa; no thousand acres of Heaven.

Who is man that Thou art mindful of him?

“Sorry, son.  I was lost in my thoughts.  I don’t have a clear answer for you.  Each man has to find his own.  All I can tell you is that I have lived half a century, and in that time I have learned to see God’s hand in both the good and the bad.”

“Can you see it in Jimmy Partridge’s death?” Hoss asked sharply.  Then he paled.  “Sorry, Pa.”

“No.”  Ben let out a sigh.  “No.  It’s a valid question and deserves an honest answer.  No, I can’t.  Now.”  His smile was slight but heartfelt.  “But I will one day.  I have faith.”

“I sure wish I had faith strong as yours, Pa.”

Ben squeezed the massive shoulder. “You do.  I’ve seen it.  You’ll see it too in time.”

His son returned his smile.  “Well, I best be getting’ about my chores.  Them horses ain’t gonna feed themselves.  Say….”

“What?”

“Little Joe was supposed to be back by sundown to help me.”  Hoss looked in the direction his brother had gone that morning.  “Him and Danny should have been here by now.  Shouldn’t they?”

Ben turned to look as well  “You know, come to think of it, I saw Thom ride in a while back.  I just assumed Danny and Joe would follow.  I’ll check with him.”

“Let me do it,” his son said.  “You look all done in.”

He was tired,  It had been a long day.  But then, Hoss was tired too.

“And you aren’t?”

“Aw, shucks.  Sure I’m tired, but I got me somethin’ that’ll give me a second wind.”

Ben was puzzled.  “And what’s that?”

The big man grinned.  “Takin’ my ‘tired’ out on my baby brother’s hide.  Knowin’ Joe, him and Danny decided they’d had enough and took off for town to wet their whistle.”  Hoss’ lips straightened and his ice blue eyes narrowed.  “You just wait ‘til I get hold of that boy!”

The rancher laughed and it felt good.

“Well, don’t take more than your pound of flesh.  Your brother can’t afford to lose it!”

Hoss laughed as well.  A second later, he seemed to think better of it.  A cloud passed over his face, one of sadness mingled with guilt.

And just a little bit of hope.

“You get some rest, Pa.  I’ll go get Little Joe.”

 

Hoss’ hand came down a little heavier on the bunkhouse door than intended.  Not because he was mad, but because he was in a hurry.  The thought of a ride into town, with four, maybe five hours to think about what he and his Pa had discussed was appealing.  Pa’d said a lot of things that made sense.  The big man grinned.  Still, even more appealing was the idea of huntin’ down his little brother.  He felt like poundin’ somethin’ and Little Joe would do.  Course that was only because Little Joe needed to pound somethin’ too.

Maybe breakin’ up a saloon would make them both feel better.

Sam wouldn’t mind.  ‘Specially when he slapped half of this week’s wages on the counter before they got to it.  They probably wouldn’t break nothin’ but a table or two, and maybe some of them cheap glasses on the shelf behind the counter.  Hoss scowled as he rapped again.  It’d be good if they missed the gilded mirror on account of the fact that it came out of San Francisco and they’d have to sell both their saddles and their horses to pay for it!

Finally the door opened.  It was Deke who showed.  He was one of the younger hands they had.

The young man grinned his apology.  “Hey there, Hoss!  You caught us in the middle of a round.  Had to wait ‘til we was finished.”

“You win?” Hoss asked.

The brown-haired man was about Little Joe’s age.  He’d come out of California and was about as able a wrangler as he’d ever met.

“Sure did!  You want to sit in?”

Hoss shook his head.  “No, thanks.  I’m looking for Thom Barker.  You seen him?”

Deke turned into the room.  “Thom?”

Hoss heard the other man reply and, a few seconds later, Thom appeared.  The older man’s look was puzzled until he saw him standing there.

Then it became downright guilty.

“Hey there, Hoss.  You need something?”

“I need to talk to you a minute, Thom.”

“What’d you do, Thom?  Forget to close the corral gate?” a voice called out.

“Maybe he forgot Little Joe,” another one answered.

A third hooted.  “I bet he mistook Joe for an ornery beeve, trussed him up and left him beside the road instead!”

Thom rolled his eyes as he stepped out the door and closed it behind him.  “Sorry about that. They don’t mean no disrespect.  They all like Joe.”

The big man laughed.  “That’s okay.  The idea of trussin’ up Little Joe and leavin’ him by the side of the road has crossed my mind often enough.  Fact is, I think I might have done a time or two.”

The guilty look deepened.

“You got somethin’ you need to tell me, Thom?”

The older man sighed.  “God must have heard my prayers.”

“What’s God got to do with this?”

He winced.  “I was prayin’ you was gonna be the one to ask me that question and not your pa or Adam. I kind of promised Little Joe I wouldn’t say anything.”

Hoss sighed.  “What’s little brother done now?”

“Nothing.  At least, nothing…yet.”

He studied the other man.  The best way he could put it, was that Thom appeared uneasy.

“Maybe I should rephrase that – what’s little brother thinkin’ of doin’ that he don’t want our pa or Adam to know he’s doin’?”

Thom scratched his head.  “Well, you know we went out to fix the fence.”

“Yeah.”

“It was kind of peculiar.  It looked like the river had overflowed and washed it away, but then again…it didn’t.  Adam  said –”

“Big brother was there?”  That must have been before Adam came back home and they had their…discussion.

“Yeah.  When I first saw it, I thought maybe someone took the fence out on purpose.  Adam did too, but in the end we decided the river did it.  Nothin’ else made sense.  There weren’t nowhere to hide cattle or nothin’.”  Thom paled.  “Little Joe, well, he had other ideas.”

“What ideas?”

“Rustlers.”

“Rustlers?”

Thom nodded.  “Seemed kind of far-fetched to me, but you know Little Joe.  Once he’s got an idea in his head….”

Once little brother got an idea in that curly head of his, he was so stubborn he wouldn’t move camp for a prairie fire!

“Yeah, I know.”  Hoss felt his stomach flop.  He told himself it was because he was hungry.  He didn’t want to think it might be fear.  “So what’s this ‘thing’ Joe decided to do?”

“We finished work and rode off.  I came here, but him and Danny went back to keep watch.”  Thom looked a little sick too.  “Joe promised they’d do just that and, if any rustlers did show up, they’d follow a ways and then hightail it for home.”

If they saw the rustlers first and the rustlers didn’t get the drop on them.

Hoss swallowed hard.  “How long ago was this?”

Thom glanced at the sky.  “Four.  Maybe five hours.”

The big man considered what to do.  Adam was God only knew where.  Pa, well, the three of them had put Pa through enough these last few weeks.  The older man was right where he needed to be – restin’.  That left him.  Odds were there was nothin’ to worry about, but – and this was the funny thing – in a way he was glad to have somethin’ to worry about.  When he lost Margie, somethin’ inside him – somethin’ dark – told him he’d lost it all and there was nothin’ left that mattered.

It was a lie.  He still had plenty left to lose.

Hoss shifted his hat forward on his head and turned toward the barn.

Somethin’ told him he’d best ‘high-tail’ it now and find that ornery little brother of his, if he didn’t want Little Joe to be the next thing.

 

FIVE

 

“Joe?  Can you hear me?  Joe?”

Like the tide on the shore, the blackness surrounding him receded – and then rushed back in a tsunami of pain.

“Joe?”

The voice came from far away – across the rushing river, maybe.  It was full of air and something else.

Fear?

Someone was afraid.

He wasn’t.  He was just…tired.

He needed to sleep.

They needed to go away.

“Joe?!  C’mon, friend!  Give me a sign here!”

When a hand gripped each arm and rolled him over onto his back, the black wave rose again.  It was all he could do not to go under.  The pull was as powerful as a spring tide.  Once, when he was a little boy, he’d gotten away from his mama and run into one of those tides.  If it hadn’t been for his father’s strong arms, it would have taken him away.  Mama held him and cried and cried.  She was afraid he would die.

Was that what he was doing now?

Dying?

“C’mon, Joe.  Don’t do this to me.  Don’t let him win.”

With the words came a feeling –  tepid liquid on his lips. Some of it dribbled down his chin.

Even as memory dribbled into that darkness.

The night was cold and he was naked.

He awoke surrounded by men; vile, abusive men.  They taunted him, pointing to his privates and calling him ‘little’ Joe, as they struck him and bound his hands and feet and lifted him into the air.  Someone nearby shouted his name.  He knew who it was, but it didn’t matter.  There was only one thing that mattered.

That was surviving so he could pay the men back in kind.

He was carried like a coffin between them, and then rocked like a baby in a cradle and let go.  When the river took him, Joe thought he was finished.  With his hands and feet bound, there was nothing he could do but sink like a lead weight to the bottom.  He would have drowned if the vile men hadn’t fished him out and tossed him, sputtering, on the shore.

‘Get him up!” someone ordered.

He must have blacked out.  The next time he became aware he was laying on the grass, clothed in his shirt and pants.  His tan hat and beloved green coat were gone.  Someone took hold of his collar and hauled him roughly to his feet.  They shoved into a ring of light where he stood, swaying and blinking.  He raised a hand.  The light was blinding and he used it to shield his eyes.

That was when someone delivered the first punch.

‘What’s the matter, Little Joe?” the man jibed.  “Not feelin’ so good?’

The second blow was to his back, just above his kidneys.  It made him stagger.

He almost fell down.

Almost.

‘I heard me that Joe Cartwright was tough as nails.  You don’t look so tough now…pretty boy.’

A shiver ran through him, even as his anger ignited and warmed him.  He shouted something.  Whatever it was, the reply came in the form of a boot to his back.  He was knocked to the ground.  Someone  wrapped filthy fingers in his curls and thrust his face into the dirt.  Then another man….

Stepped on him like he was nothing.

“You hear me, Joe?  Don’t let Travis break you.”

The wave was black.

Black was good.

Black meant no pain.

 

Danny Kidd glanced up at the circle of men clustered around the campfire, and then back down at his friend.  Joe lay on his side, curled into himself.  The ex-convict had done everything he could to prevent what had happened, but knew from the beginning there was little hope.  If there was one thing Travis Mudge excelled at it was torture.  He’d known what was coming the moment the prison guard stripped Joe’s slicker off and left him naked and exposed.

You broke a man in stages.  First, by telling him he was less than a man, and then by beating him down until he believed it.  Travis stood by while his men humiliated Joe, and then ordered the cowboy bound hand and foot and tossed in the river.  Just before he would have drowned, a crew of Travis’ men fished Joe out and dumped him, naked, on the shore.  Mudge ordered the pair that had worked at the Ponderosa – Bob Stevens and Asa Teller – to get him dressed.  The first groan that passed Joe’s lips brought the pair down like vultures.  They swooped in, dragged him to his feet, and hauled him into the middle of a circle of lantern light where the taunts and jabs began again.  Danny couldn’t help but smile at the memory.  Most likely Travis thought he’d broken the rugged cowboy.  His friend staggered a couple of steps forward and halted with his head down, breathing hard.  He was probably the only one who noticed Joe’s tight jaw and clenched fists.  If one of the brutes hadn’t struck Joe on the back of the head at that moment, they’d have found out soon enough just how unbreakable a Cartwright was.

Danny leaned in close to whisper.  “You hear me, Joe?  He didn’t break you!”

Just to look at him, you’d never know how bad off Joe was.  Travis knew how to hit a man where it hurt but didn’t show, and how to make him suffer without killing him.  A shuffling, seemingly lifeless prisoner who failed to obey orders and do his work got the hotbox.

A dead one brought an inquest.

The ex-con winced as he tugged up the front of his friend’s shirt.  Joe had a lot of bruises, all of which should heal given time.  One or two troubled him, like the imprint of a boot heel on his friend’s back just above his kidneys, and the impression of a rifle butt on Joe’s right temple.  After they’d finished with him, the guards dragged Joe’s unconscious form over the rough ground and dropped him at his feet.  A few minutes later the man he knew as ‘Crock’ made followed.

Crock nudged Joe’s side with the toe of his boot.  “Means somethin’ to you, don’t he,” he said.

It wasn’t a question.

Danny sighed.  To admit the truth was to give Crock – and Travis Mudge – a weapon to use against him.

To deny it was impossible.

‘What’s it to you?’ he growled in return.

Crockett Murdoch, the older brother of the boy he’d killed a decade before over a slice of pie, spat on the ground and sneered.

‘Ammunition,’ he said.

The ex-convict closed his eyes and leaned his head against the tree behind him.  He regretted it now, causing Cassidy’s death.  Regretted it deeply.  But when you were told you were an animal day after day, month after month – year after year – you learned to be an animal.  At that moment, that piece of pie represented everything that had ever been taken away from him: his dreams, his hopes, his liberty.  Freedom.  Life.  By the time he was thirteen everything had been stripped from him until there was nothing left but a crudely carved wooden soldier in his pocket and whatever scraps he could beg, borrow, or steal.  Danny’s chuckle had little mirth in it.  There was the irony!  He’d taken from others.  Stolen from them.  When he did it, he saw it as a vindication of everything that was wrong.  It was a way to put things right – to upturn a world turned upside-down.

In other words, he deserved whatever he could get.

So when Cassidy took that slice of pie, he took him down, just like the lyin’, thievin’ animal he was.

Because he was a lyin’, thievin’ animal.

Danny opened his eyes and laid a hand on Joe Cartwright’s shoulder.  Yeah, that’s what he was until he met this rich, privileged kid whose daddy owned half of the state of Nevada.  He’d hated Joe Cartwright at first – blindly and without reason – just because of who and what he was.  That’s why he’d thrust his shackled wrists under Joe’s upturned nose and dared the high and mighty princeling to do something about it.

“You showed me, Joe,” he said softly.  “You really showed me.”

Miracle of miracles – he got a moan in reply.

“Joe.  Can you hear me?”

“ggg…wyyy.”

“Joe?”

Another groan…and then the words were repeated, more clearly this time.

“Go…away….”

Danny wasn’t sure if he believed in God.  He had a hard time reconciling all he’d been through with the idea of a heavenly Providence, but he thanked Him anyway.

“Friend,” he said with a sigh, “you have no idea how good it is to hear your voice.”

Joe curled into himself a bit more.  “Not…yours,” he grumped.  “Let…me sleep.”

Danny had seen – and been the recipient of – enough beatings to know better than to give in to that request.  “C’mon, Joe.  You need to sit up.”  He took hold of the other man and urged him to do just that.  Like a baby, vaguely reaching for something, his friend attempted to bat his hand away.  Danny thought a moment.  He doubted he could make Joe do anything he didn’t want to.  What could he….?

Then he had it.

“That’s okay, Joe.  After all, you’re nothing but the molly-coddled kid of a rich rancher.  What else can I expect?”

Maybe two seconds passed before he got the reaction he was hoping for.

“Wh..at?”

“Pampered rich boy.  Always got someone to look after him.”  Danny went in for the kill.  “I bet you couldn’t sit up if you tried.”

Joe’s eyes shot open and then, he began to stir.  The injured man pressed one hand into the grass, sucked in a breath, and shoved.  The action caused his friend to cry out, but Joe kept at it until he was upright – well, mostly upright.

“Thanks, Danny,” he panted.

“Here, let me help,” the ex-convict said as he wrapped an arm around his friend’s middle.

“Well, ain’t you two a picture?” a snide voice remarked.  “This how you got through all them long lonely nights in the lock-up, Kidd?”

Danny looked up, expecting to find Travis or Crock.  Instead, it was Bob Stevens; the cowboy he’d nearly drowned in the Cartwright’s water trough.

“You know them pretty boys,” Asa Teller said as he came alongside the other man.  “They stick together.”

Danny felt Joe’s muscles go taut beneath his fingers.  He wanted to tell his friend it was okay; that this wasn’t the first time he’d been accused of such a thing.  What he didn’t want to tell Joe was that there was some truth to it.  In the middle of winter, in an unheated stone cell strewn with straw, feces and urine, a man took what comfort he could find.

Under his breath, he whispered, “Don’t give them an excuse, Joe.”

“You speakin’ soft nothings in Cartwright’s ear, con?” Stevens jibed.

Joe’s fingers were bruised and bloodied.  He’d fought back hard.  It cost his friend as he formed them into fists.  The ‘pampered princeling’ jammed them into the earth and said nothing.

That cost him too.

Danny had learned early on that men of Stevens and Teller’s ilk – brutes like Travis Mudge – were looking for something.  They weren’t mean just to be mean.  They wanted a return for the effort they were putting into being bastards.  That return was your anger and indignation – the assertion that you were somebody and they had no right to treat you as nobody.  If you didn’t give it to them – if you kept your head down and your mouth shut – they’d rough you up, but after that they’d grow bored and leave you alone in your misery.

He didn’t know if Joe understood that.

In fact, he was pretty sure he didn’t.

Danny’s fingers tightened on his friend’s shoulder.  ‘Trust me,’ the familiar touch said.

Joe bit his lip until it bled, but he didn’t move.

Stevens stared at them for several long heartbeats.  He snorted, spat on the ground, and then walked away.  Teller glared at Joe before turning to follow.  Then, without warning, the bully pivoted on his heel and aimed a kick at the cowboy’s mid-region. The blow bent his friend in half.

With a derisive snort, Teller left them alone.

Once he’d caught his breath, Joe breathed between clenched teeth, “I’m…gonna…kill…him!”  Then, he was sick.

Danny held his friend as he retched; his gaze locked on Stevens and Teller’s retreating backs.

Only if he didn’t kill them first.

 

Hoss kicked a loose stone and sent it flying as his narrowed gaze took in the remnants of what had once been a camp – along with the confusion of scuff marks on the ground.

“This where you left them?”

“Nah.  That was about a mile from here.”  Thom nodded at the odd bits of clothing strewn about the area.  “Looks like they used the falls to take a shower.”

The big man knelt to examine the ground.  He couldn’t help but note the twisted and turned patterns of bare feet in the grass, as well as an ominous trail in the dirt where their owners had been dragged away by men in boots.

“Dagnabbit!” Hoss cursed quietly to himself.  Looked like little brother was right after all.

He done found his rustlers.

“You gonna go back and tell your pa?” Thom asked, his voice a bit shaky.

The big man knew why it was shakin’. There wasn’t much he and his little brother kept from one another.  He knew all about Thom and his drinkin’ problems and the time Joe caught the older man with a bottle on the trail.  It wasn’t much of a leap to figure out that the ornery little cuss had used that to keep Thom’s mouth shut.

Hoss rose and looked at the sky.  Night was falling and the moon – what there was of it – was on the rise.  If there was a clear trail to find, it wasn’t going to be tonight.  He could camp here and wait it out, but that would mean all three Cartwright sons were ‘absent without leave’ and he wasn’t sure his father could take that right now.  With any luck Adam had returned home and the three of them could set out in the morning to look for the little scamp that tried – and held – their hearts.

“Think I’m gonna haf’to,” he acknowledged with a sigh.

Thom’s head was hangin’ down.  “I shouldn’t have left them alone.  No matter what Joe said.”

“No, you shouldn’t have, but you did and I know why.  My little brother can be mighty persuasive when he wants to be.  I bet he pinned you with them big puppy dog eyes of his and told you he and Danny would stay put, or ride home for help if they saw somethin’. Then he gave you a smile and a wink.”

The older man snorted.  “That’s about the size of it.”

Hoss loved his little brother – loved all one hundred and thirty-odd scrawny pounds of piss and vinegar that made him up – but there were times, and they were many, when he wished Little Joe had come out a little more like their pa than his ma.  Pa admitted to a wild and misspent youth, and to a boilin’ hot temper that could blast the lid off the pot.  The thing was, when Pa decided to get into trouble, he knew he was doin’ it.  Just like older brother Adam, Pa thought things through before he acted on them.  The big man chuckled.  Could be that made it worse!  Little Joe was like Marie – God rest her soul.  Joe made his mind up lickety-split and was out the door and on his way before you had time to grab your hat.  That got little brother into a whole world of trouble.

Like he feared he was in now.

The big man clapped a hand on the other man’s shoulder.  “Come on, Thom.  Let’s go home.  Ain’t nothin’ we can do now but trust to Little Joe and Danny to take care of themselves until we find them.”

And they would find them.

He just hoped it was whole.

 

Joe wiped a shaking hand across his bloody lips and nodded.  “Good,” he grunted.

Danny smiled.  Travis had given then a plate of cold beans and bread to share, as well as a canteen with about four mouthfuls of water in it.  He gave Joe three of them, the last of which his friend had just finished.

“Better?”

Joe nodded and then leaned his head back against the tree.  His eyes closed for a moment and then opened slowly to fix on the circle of men lying just outside of the campfire’s light.  It was night and most of the ragtag band was snoring away.

“Travis?” Joe asked.

“Sleepin’ the sleep of the unjust,” Danny answered as he capped the canteen and sat it beside his friend.

Joe snorted and then winced as he gripped his side.

“Broken ribs?” the ex-convict asked.

“Think so.  It’s kind of….”  He drew in a shaky breath.  “Kind of hard to breathe.”

Bad as that was, Joe’s ribs would heal.  He’d had to help his friend…well…relieve himself a short time before and Joe’s pee had been red with blood.  That could indicate something far worse.

“How’s your head?”

Joe’s smile was lop-sided.  “Well, I…still have one.”  The other man moaned as he straightened against the tree.  “You think they’re going to kill us?”

Danny shook his head.  “No.  We’d be dead already if that was what they wanted.”  His gaze went to J, Crockett Murdoch, who crouched on the ground just within the ring of light.  Crock’s gaze was fixed on them.  “They’ve got something else in mind.”

“Like…what?”

He inclined his head toward the fire.  “You see that man?  The one watching us?”

“Yeah.  So what?”  Joe sighed.  “Just…another…worthless piece of….”

“No, Joe.  He’s different.  Mr. Murdoch there is a righteous man.  He’s come lookin’ for recompense.”

“Recompense?”  His friend shifted again as if unable to remain in any one position for long.  “What for?”

The ex-convict pursed his lips and looked away, seeing that day again – the day when a man lost his life because of him.  “The murder of his little brother.”

Joe looked at Murdoch and then back at him.  It took a second, but the cowboy was smart.  “Not the one with the pie…?”

Who would have thought that you could kill a man – or a boy – with a fork?  He’d driven that fork between Cassidy’s ribs with all the force of his anger at an unfair world that turned helpless, hopeless children into sadistic animals, and hit just the right spot.

Or just the wrong one.

Danny nodded.  “A man’s life for a slice of pie.”

“You didn’t mean…to do it.”

“You’re wrong, Joe!  I did.  I would have done the same to anyone who kept me from what I thought was mine.  You have to understand.”  He turned to look at his friend.  “I deserve whatever these men have in store for me.  The problem is…you don’t.”

“So why beat me and…not you?”

Danny had thought about that long and hard and was afraid he knew the answer.  He didn’t have much in the world that belonged to him, but the one thing he did have was Joe Cartwright’s friendship.  In a way, Joe belonged to him and he belonged to Joe.  They were…well…like brothers.

And J. Crockett Murdoch knew it.

Crock.

He could see him now: a long, lean, lanky teener with brown hair touching his shoulders, part of which was bound back in a leather tie.  It was why he remembered him.  That and the clothes he’d worn, which were store bought.  One day the warden brought Crock by.  There weren’t any introductions.  He learned the older boy’s name and story later from one of the inmates who served the warden in more ways than one and was privy to private conversations.  The Murdochs had been a family that mattered once upon a time – before their old man hit the bottle and then hit another man with deadly force.  The elder Crockett swung five days later, leaving his family destitute.  After their mother drank a bottle of lye in a failed attempt to kill herself and ended up in the madhouse, the Murdoch kids scattered to the wind.  Crock went north leaving Cassidy in the care of an older sister, who also died.  It wasn’t too long before Cass turned to crime and ended up in the poorhouse, sharing a dirty cell with the kids he’d once looked down on.  The funny thing was, Danny couldn’t remember Crock visiting before Cass’ death.  He’d never forget watching with fear from behind the bars as the warden searched the sea of wan, wanting faces, looking for someone.

And pointed at him.

His eyes met Crock’s.  Even then there was something cold and unnatural about them.  Danny swallowed hard.  He knew in that instant that Cass’ brother had marked him for death and that one day, he would seek him out and make him pay.

That day was now.

Yeah, Danny knew why Travis had beaten Little Joe and not him.  Crock had put him up to it.  The beating was a message.  The ex-convict wasn’t entirely sure what the content of that message was yet, but there was one thing he was sure of.

He was gonna find out.

 

SIX

 

Ben Cartwright put his newspaper down and rose to his feet at the sound of hooves striking the hard-packed earth outside the ranch house.  He’d been trying to occupy himself as the hours ticked by and he waited for his sons’ return.  The strange thing was, now that one or more of them had come home, he was apprehensive.

They’d survived so much – been given such grace – his fear was that payment was surely to come.

The door opened a moment later and a weary and dusty Adam walked in.  His son placed his gun belt on the credenza and his hat on the peg before he turned.  When he saw him, he stopped.

“Were you waiting up for me?” the boy asked, his tone flat but managing somehow to sound peeved.

“I suppose, in a way I was.”  Ben moved toward him.  “Though, mostly I was waiting on your brothers.”

One black eyebrow peaked.  “They’re not home?”

“No.  I can tell you Hop Sing was quite distressed when there was no one to eat his cooking but me,” he remarked in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

It didn’t work.

“Where are they?” Adam asked.

Ben shrugged.  “The last time I saw Hoss, he was going to talk to Thom.”

“Thom came back alone?  What about Joe and Danny?  They should have finished that fence long before this.”

“I don’t know, son.  I wish I did.  When I went looking for Hoss, I found both he and Thom had gone.  Deke said they rode out together.”  Adam had moved to the hearth.  He stood by it, staring into the flames.  “Son?  Do you know something?”

“I know one thing – if there’s trouble to be found, Little Joe will find it.”  His eldest turned toward him.  “Joe was pretty sure the fence had been taken down deliberately.”

He could sense it in his tone.  “But you didn’t think so?”

“Some of the rails had been carried pretty far from the river, but you know how it is with the late rains.”  Adam slammed one hand into the other.  “It seems now I was wrong.”

“You think Joseph and Danny stayed behind to see if they could catch whoever did it?”

“That little brother of mine.  He thinks he can take on anything and anyone and win.”  Adam’s chuckle was mirthless.  “Kind of like me, once upon a time.”

Ben drew a breath.  This was the first time Adam had even hinted at what happened to him.  Since returning home, he’d remained as silent as a man being shaved about his ordeal in the desert.

Was this an opening?

“Adam….”

His son lifted a hand.  Silence fell between them, broken only by the ticking of the tall case clock.

“It’s an irony to me,” Adam said at last, “that someone who prides himself on his command of the English language can fail so miserably when it comes to expressing his own feelings.”

“It’s all right, son –”

“No.  It’s not.  You, Joe and Hoss, you’ve been…patient with me and I appreciate it.”  That shy smile appeared.  The one that looked so like his mother’s.  “I haven’t been the easiest thing to live with these last few weeks.”

“You went through quite a trial.  One we can only begin to guess at.”

“Yes, I did,” his son said quietly, “but you did too, Pa.  You gave me up for dead.”

The words were a stab to his heart.  He supposed he paled.

“I don’t say that to lay blame.  Any sane man would have given up long before you did.  I only meant to say that I understand you went through an ordeal too.  You, and Hoss and Joe.”

“I don’t think Little Joe gave up,” Ben replied quietly.  “No, I know he didn’t.  He never would.”

His son nodded.  “That’s Joe.”

“Have you….”  He drew a breath.  “Have you given up?”

Adam sat on the hearth stones and considered the question a moment before replying.  “I thought I had.  Now, I’m not so sure.  I thought….”  He drew a breath.  “I thought I knew who I was, Pa.  Peter Kane forced me to…reevaluate.”

“You sound….”  The rancher paused.  Did he have it right?  “Almost grateful.”

His son’s black brows peaked.  “Do I?  ‘Grateful’ isn’t the word I would have chosen.  Humbled, maybe.  Surprised?  Definitely.”  Adam knit his fingers together and leaned forward, a wry smile curling his full lips.  “I think maybe Joe was right.”

“Your brother? About what?”

“About me.  I was an arrogant son of a bitch.”  At his look, he laughed.  “Sorry for the language, Pa, but it’s the only way I know how to put it.  I thought I knew everything.  I thought I could handle…anything.  I thought….”  His eldest stood up.  “Never mind what I thought.  We need to find Joe and Danny.”

The changed of subject startled him.  “What?”

“I need to tell Joe….”  Adam shook his head.  “I just need to talk to him.”

Ben glanced out the window.  “Son, it’s dark.  We can’t do anything until morning.”

“Pa’s right,” a new voice said.  Ben turned to find Hoss standing in the doorway.  Somehow they had both missed the sound of it opening.  As the big man hung his hat on the peg and unbuttoned his coat, he went on.  “I just got back from where Little Joe’s supposed to be and he ain’t there.”

There was something in his tone; something left unspoken.

“Rustlers?” Adam asked.

“Looks like,” Hoss said as he moved into the room.

“Damn.”  Adam scowled.  “So Joe was right.”

“Fraid so.”  The big man took a seat near the fire.  “There was tracks.  Lots of them.  With the light fadin’, I couldn’t make heads nor tails of them.”

“Did Thom come back with you?” the rancher asked.

Hoss shook his head.  “He volunteered to stay behind in case Little Joe or Danny, you know, showed up.”

Escaped, he meant.

“You think the rustlers took them captive?”

The big man nodded.

“If it was rustlers,” Adam commented.

Ben turned toward him.  “What are you thinking?”

“It’s been bothering me, Pa.  It’s part of why I argued with Joe.  Why would rustlers take down a fence and then take the time to make it look like it had happened naturally?  Why would anyone for that matter unless….  Unless they wanted someone to become suspicious.”  He paused.  “Unless they wanted someone to come looking for them or, maybe, wait for them to return?”

“You’re thinking this was a trap?” Ben asked.  “But for whom, and by whom?”

Adam shrugged.  “Maybe someone just wanted a Cartwright.”

“Seems to me,” Hoss said, “whoever it was, they was lookin’ for Little Joe in particular.”

“Why is that?” his eldest asked.

“You and me, Adam, we see somethin’ like that – even if we think there’s somethin’ funny goin’ on  – we’re gonna ride for help.  Joe’d be the one to put his neck in the noose.”  The big man winced.  “Sorry, Pa.”

The rancher nodded.  “But that suggests whoever set the trap had to be someone who knows Little Joe pretty well.  I refuse to think that one of the men – ”

“It could be someone who used to work for us,” Adam suggested.  “Maybe someone who has a beef with Joe….”

“Someone like Bob Stevens,” Hoss said.

It took him a moment.  “Stevens?  You mean the man that was fired after he got into it with Danny Kidd?  I thought he’d left Virginia City.”

“He’s back,” the big man replied.  “So’s Asa Teller.  I saw them in town the night we met with Margie’s pa.  They was staggerin’ down the street.  Looked like they’d been in a fight.”

“I don’t know,” Ben replied.  “If you ask me, it all seems a bit far-fetched. Joseph may have lodged the complaint, but as owner of the Ponderosa it was my choice to fire Teller and Stevens.  If those two are angry at anyone, it should be me and not your brother.  This is just speculation.”

“It is,” Adam agreed, “until we prove something one way or the other.  I think one of us needs to ride into Virginia City tomorrow to see what he can find out, while the other two go in search of Joe and Danny.”

“Are you volunteerin’, older brother?”

His eldest fell silent. Then he nodded.  “I’ll go.  I’ll see Roy, and then make the rounds of the saloons and see what dirt I can dig up.  After that, I’ll join you.”

“Adam?”

They both turned toward Hoss.  He looked if anything, a bit sheepish.

“What is it?” his eldest asked.

“Well….”  Hoss wrinkled his nose.  “I guess it ain’t very important what with Little Joe missin’ and maybe in danger, but I was wonderin’ if you could go see that little gal that’s nursin’ Marjorie’s baby girl and give her somethin’ for me?”

“Mrs, White?”

The big man nodded.  “I started it right after I seen Margie’s baby for the first time.  I kept thinkin’ about what I done told Joe about that mare her mama loved so much.”

“June Bug?  What was that?” Ben asked gently.

“I told Joe that one day I’d give that little gal of Margie’s one of June Bug’s colts to have for her own.  Since Jorie’s such a little thing, it’s gonna be a while ‘fore  I can do that.  I wanted to give her a promise of sorts, so I carved her a little pony of her own that she can have for now.  It’s up in my room.”

“I’ll make sure Mrs. White gets it,” Adam said solemnly.

After that a silence fell.  It lasted until the rancher cleared his throat.

“Well, I think we’d best turn in and get what sleep we can.  If we’re exhausted, we’ll be of little use to your brother – whatever he’s gotten himself into this time.”

His sons nodded and, along with Ben, headed for their beds.

Only to lay awake in them and stare at the ceiling and worry.

 

All three men were up before the sun the next morning and on their way by the time its light broke on the horizon.  They traveled the Virginia City road together until it came time to part.  Adam sat on his horse and watched his father and brother ride away, and then spurred Sport on at top speed toward the town.  The ride was a full twenty miles.  On a good day, at an easy lope, it took nearly four hours to get there.  When he was in a hurry, he cut it down to three.

Today, he made it in slightly over two.

The first thing the man in black did upon his arrival was take his winded and somewhat exasperated horse to the livery to be looked after.  Sport was unhappy with him and rightly so.  Adam apologized profusely and promised his friend the day off – and then rented a hardy wilderness pony for his return journey.  He had a feeling he would have need of him.

Something told him the hunt for his little brother was not going to be an easy one.

Adam paid the livery man and then strode out of the stable door and headed for Roy Coffee’s office.  Roy made it his business to know who was in town and what they were about.  The lawman didn’t hesitate to walk right up to a stranger and demand to know their business.  Right from the start Pa made Roy aware of the situation with Danny Kidd – how the ex-convict was trying hard to go straight, but still prone to act out of his old ways.  Sheriff Coffee knew all about the altercation with Bob Stevens that happened shortly after Danny’s arrival.  The seasoned lawman told their father he’d been only too happy to ‘see the back side of that one’.  So it stood to reason that if Bob was back, along with his shadow Asa Teller, Roy would know,

The man in black fingered the wooden horse in his pocket.  After he was done with Roy, he would go to see Melissa White and deliver Hoss’ present.  He was thankful his brother seemed more at peace with Margie’s death.

He was even more thankful that he had come to a place where he could notice.

The door to the jail was open, so Adam stepped in.  Roy was seated behind his desk with one foot propped on an open drawer.  He had a wanted poster in one hand and another pile of them stacked six inches high beside him.

“Is that it?” Adam asked with a nod toward the pile.  “Only six inches of bad?  Virginia City must be losing its touch.”

“Well, if it isn’t Adam Cartwright!” Roy exclaimed as he sat up.  “Come on in and sit down and tell me what you know.”

Adam headed for the chair shoved up against Roy’s desk.  “Actually, I came to find out what you know,” he said as he settled in.

“You got trouble at the Ponderosa?” the sheriff asked, instantly all business.

“You might say so.  Little Joe is missing.”

Roy stared at him, assessing his mood.  “I take it you got a reason to believe the boy didn’t go chasing some pretty girl and got run outta the territory by her pa?”

“Uh huh.  Actually I know where Joe was.  He just isn’t there anymore.”

“You got a reason to suspect foul play?”

The phrase caught him off-guard.  “Well, I’m worried that something might have happened.  Joe was up in the north pasture by the river with Danny Kidd –”

“That the ex-convict?”

“Yeah…  But Danny’s okay.”

“You sure of that?”

“Yes, I’m sure.  Danny’s only got one more month to make it and he’ll be a free man.”

“Is that right?”  Roy shook his head.  “Seems it wasn’t a month ago your pa came in here to explain how Bob Stevens was like to come to me and make trouble for Kidd.”

“Bob Stevens. That’s why I’m here.”  He straightened in the chair.  “Have you seen him lately?”

“Yep.  Seen ‘em both, Stevens and that other feller who follows him around like a lonesome puppy.  Tellman?”

“Teller.  Asa Teller.  Have they….”  He paused.  How to put it?  “Have you heard them make any threats toward Danny…or Little Joe?”

“You’re thinkin’ that pair is behind Little Joe goin’ missin’?”

“It stands to reason.  They were fired because of what happened.”

“Lots of men get fired.  Don’t mean they go kidnappin’ other folks.”

Adam ran a hand over his chin.  “Look, Roy, I know this may sound somewhat…high-handed…but we’re not just ‘other folks’.  It’s happened before.  Someone is mad at Pa, so they try to hurt one of us.”

“What about Kidd?  How’s he fit in all of this?”

“How about this?  Little Joe humiliated Bob Stevens when he intervened in that fight.  Joe’s support of Danny got Bob and Asa fired.  Pa let them go and told them to stay out of town, and here they are back again – and Joe is missing.”

“They got a right to be here no matter what your pa says.”

The man in black rolled his eyes.  “I know that.  But you know my father.  Would you take Ben Cartwright on unless you had a very good reason?”

Roy nodded his head.  “I can see where you might have cause for concern.  I’ll check it out soon as I get through this stack of posters.”

“Who’s that?” Adam asked, pointing to the one Roy had laid down.

The lawman took a finger and spun the poster around.  The face staring out at him was not a cruel one.  In fact, it was pretty nondescript.  There was something about the man’s eyes though.  They were as cold as they were determined.

“He’s got himself a number of names.  Real one’s Murdoch.  Jethro Crockett Murdoch.”

“What’s he wanted for?”

“You’d do better to ask, what ain’t he wanted for!” Roy scoffed.  “He’s a mean one.  Turned bad ‘bout the time he left his teens and been bad ever since.”

“Is he in town?” Adam asked.

“He was tendin’ bar at the saloon attached to the International up until he took off with another man a few days ago.”  Roy hesitated.  “I was gonna come out to your place to talk this over with your Pa, but seein’ as you’re the oldest, I guess I can tell you.”

Adam sat up.  “Tell me what?  Who’s the other man?”

Roy thumbed through the posters until he came to one near the bottom.  He pulled it out and pushed it across the desk.  The piggish face staring up at him was vaguely familiar.

“Who is it?  Do I know him?”

“You should,” Roy said.  “Worked on your land for a time.  Name of Travis Mudge.”

Adam snorted.  “Mudge?  I don’t think so.  I would remember that name.”

“Might not have heard it.  Just went by Travis.  Used to work at the penitentiary.”

The man in black looked again.  His eyes went from the face, which was pudgy and puerile, to the list of crimes the man was wanted for.  Extortion.  Robbery.  Brutality.  Curiously, all of the offenses had occurred within the last year.  As his gaze returned to the sketch, he had it.

“The guard who almost got Joe killed.”

“One and the same,” Roy said as he rocked back in his chair.  “Seems your little brother’s testimony caused the warden to let him go.”

“And he turned to a life of crime?”

It was the lawman’s turn to snort.  “From what I can tell Mudge was already runnin’ just about every racket possible from inside the prison.”  Roy winked.  “He just don’t need to hide it anymore.”

Adam swallowed hard.  “So it’s possible Bob Stevens and Asa Teller are working for Mudge – and Mudge is working with or maybe for Jethro Murdoch?”  He rocked back in his chair.  “That puts an entirely different spin on Joe’s disappearance.”

Roy stared at him a moment.  “There’s more.”

“More?  Good, God!  What?”

“I did some checkin’ into Danny Kidd when your Pa took him under his wing.  Just to be neighborly, you understand?  I was kind of worried about how close he and that little brother of yours was becomin’.”

“It’s appreciated, Roy.  We know you have the family’s best interests at heart.”  He steeled himself.  “So what did you find?”

“You remember Danny Kidd got sent to Yuma Penitentiary for getting’ into a fight and killin’ a boy over a piece of pie?”

It seemed impossible, but it had happened, so desperate were those who were incarcerated and without hope.

He nodded.

“I found me a newspaper with the transcript of the trial.”

A sick feeling rose in his stomach.  “His name?”

“Cassidy,” the lawman said.  “Cassidy Murdoch.”

 

“Pa?  Why don’t you come over here and get somethin’ to eat?”

Hoss Cartwright sat beside the campfire he’d kindled a short time before.  He’d put on a pot of pork and beans and had a big skillet of his best golden-brown biscuits resting on a trivet above the coals.  The coffee was hot and smelled like Heaven.  Now, bein’ a respectful man, he wasn’t about to plow into the grub until everyone was seated.  Everyone bein’ his Pa – who hadn’t sat down for the last half hour.  He was too busy pacin’ up and down just outside of the ring of firelight.

“Pa?”

The older man turned toward him.  “What?  Oh, supper?  I’m not hungry, Hoss.  You go ahead.”

“Dadburnit!  If you and little brother don’t have more in common than a foot and a shoe!”

His father’s dark brows rose.  “Eh?”

“Your stomach shuts down when your heart opens up.”  Hoss shook his head.  “You not eatin’ ain’t gonna make Adam show up one second faster.”

“Or add one day to my life or a hair to my head,” Pa sighed.

The big man scratched his thinning hair.  “I sure wish it could do that last one!”

His father chuckled and then came to his side and sat down.  “You’re right.  Dish me up some beans, but make it a small portion, please.”

“Lands sake!  If you ain’t careful, you’re gonna get so skinny you’ll fade away, just like that little brother of mine.”  Hoss stopped with his hand above the biscuits.  “Sorry, Pa.  I didn’t mean nothin’ by –”

His father held up a hand.  “No need to apologize.  You’re right.  Joseph could stand to gain a pound or two – or twenty!”

The big man smiled as he handed his father the plate.  “I’m sure shortshanks is okay.  He’s just playin’ hard to get.”

It had been their joke since they’d returned to the abandoned camp and found no clear trail to follow.  Joe was playin’ hide and go seek.  He knew they was lookin’ for him and was funnin’ like usual.

Neither one of them believed it.

“I’m afraid things are looking a bit more dire than that,” Adam remarked as he stepped into the circle of light.

Hoss let out a whistle.  “Gol-darn-it, Adam!  If you was a snake, I’d of been bit and gone to see Jesus!”

His brother grinned as he took a seat beside the fire.  “You got enough to share?” he asked, indicating the food.

“More than enough since Pa’s eatin’ like a bird,” he groused.

For about ten minutes, while Adam dug in, they were silent.  Hoss stared at his plate, picked up his fork and tried to eat, but found his appetite wasn’t much bigger than their pa’s.  All he could think about was what older brother had said on his arrival and what in the world he’d meant.

Adam handed the plate back, took his last sip of coffee, and put the cup down.  He nodded and gave them a little half-smile.  It was only then the big man realized how sore tired older brother looked.

“Did your food give you enough energy to explain your last statement, son?” Pa prompted.

“Yes, sorry.  I….”  Adam ran a hand over his stubbly cheeks.  “It’s been a long day.”

It didn’t take long for him to give them the bad news.  Bob Stevens and Asa Teller was back and they was carryin’ a territory-size grudge against little brother. Them varmints had no love for Danny either, since sparrin’ with him was what had got them fired.  Added to that was the fact that they was workin’ for, or with Travis Mudge – the prison guard what lost his job on account of Joe – and Travis had hitched himself up to a no-good named J. Crockett Murdoch, whose little brother Danny Kidd just happened to kill.

All of that rolled into one ball spelled ‘trouble’ with a capital ‘T’ for Little Joe.

“So, I think it’s safe to assume that one of the above – or all – have gotten hold of Joe and Danny,” Adam finished.  He sighed.  “I should have listened to Joe.  He was sure the destruction of the fence was intentional.”

“But your brother thought it was rustlers.” Pa reminded him gently.  “Joe had no way of knowing the danger he was putting himself and Danny in.”

“I know, but….”  Adam rose to his feet and began to pace. “If I hadn’t been so caught up in my own troubles, so…separate…from all of you, I would have seen it.  I should have seen it!”  He kicked a stone and sent it flying.  “If Little Joe is k….”

The thought – and threat – was carried away on the wind.

“Son, sit down.  Please.”  It took Adam several heartbeats to comply.  When he was seated, Pa went on.  “We’ve all been wrapped up in our own troubles.  You, Hoss…me.  It seems Joseph is the only one who has been thinking clearly.”

Adam snorted.  “Now, there’s an irony!”

Pa’s smile was affectionate.  “It seems I…all of us have underrated your youngest brother.”

“Yeah, I mean….”  Hoss cleared his throat.  “Here I am moonin’ over Margie and she done up and left me.  Little Joe and Laura, well….”  He sniffed.  “They loved each other and was plannin’ on a life together.  I ain’t never gonna forget the look on Joe’s face when we showed him that cabin.”

“I think we’ve all been so caught up in our own grief, that we have forgotten his,” Pa agreed.

“I need to apologize,” Adam said.

“What for?”

“Thinking only of myself.  Here Joe’s been thinkin’ about all of us.  He talked to me.  I think he talked to you too, Hoss?”

The big man nodded.

“Your brother tried to talk to me as well, but I wouldn’t listen,” Pa said.  He fell silent and then slapped his thighs and stood up.  “We need to make a pact.”

Adam looked up.  “A pact?”

Hoss put his plate down and rose as well.  “I’m game.  What for?”

Older brother rose as Pa began to speak  “That from now on, when we have trials – whether it be going through them or when they are ended – we won’t shut down and shut each other out.  We will share our hurts and hopes with one another and not hide our feelings.”

The big man smiled.  “Take a page out of little brother’s book, you mean?”

“Yes.”  Their father met their gazes, holding each for several heartbeats.  “Agreed?”

Hoss nodded and placed his beefy hand on top of his father’s calloused one.  Adam hesitated briefly because he was, well, Adam, but did the same.

“Agreed,” older brother said.

Pa spread his arms out to encompass them both.  “Good,” he said. “Now, let’s see what we can do about finding Little Joe!”

 

 SEVEN

 

Danny Kidd stood with his hands dangling at his side and his chin on his chest.  He’d learned quickly in prison that to look another man in the eye was to invite trouble.  He resisted the urge to glance over his shoulder.  That was another lesson he’d learned early on – keep your eyes forward.  It didn’t matter what lay behind.  It was gone.  Dead.  Looking behind was just an excuse – a way of avoiding what lay ahead.  His problem – this time – was what lay ahead was connected to what lay behind.  His friend, Joe Cartwright had been rudely awakened, dragged to a different tree, and tied to its base.  Joe was defenseless.  He’d heard the thugs who traveled with Mudge and Murdoch taunting and punching him.

Behind him lay his connection to the man he believed he could become.

Ahead of him was the last link in the chain that bound him to the boy he had been.

They sat before him, perched on a couple of stumps – Mudge and Murdoch – lookin’ for all the world like a pair of hanging judges ready to mete out justice.  The worst thing was, he deserved it.  He deserved whatever sentence they passed; whatever punishment they cared to hand out.

Joe didn’t deserve any of it.

The cowboy’s only crime was being his friend.

“Prisoner 1031!  You will step forward!”

That was his old number; the one they had sewn onto his shirt at the penitentiary and branded on his heart.  The one he’d hoped to leave behind.

How silly of him.  Hope was for the innocent.

“Prisoner!  You will state your full name!” Travis Mudge barked as he halted.

Danny lifted his head to face his accusers.  “Daniel Malachi Kidd.”

“Age!”

“Twenty-three.”  Or so he’d been told.

“Do you understand the nature of the crime of which you stand accused?”

That one stopped him.  Did Travis mean the crime he’d committed that had sent him to prison, or something he’d done recently?  A quick look at Crock assured him it was the former.  Cassidy’s brother’s face was carved out of stone.

“Murder,” he said.

Crock’s brows peaked toward his dark hair.  “You don’t deny it?”

“No, sir.  It was murder whether the state called it that or not.  I knew what I was doing.”

“So you admit that you killed my kid brother willfully, and with intent?”

Danny thought a moment.  “No.  I don’t admit that.”

“What do you mean?” Mudge cut in.  “You just said –”

“I admit I went for Cass on purpose, but I didn’t do it with intent.  I just…did it.”

“Out of pure instinct?”

He nodded.

“Are you aware that makes you an animal?” Crock asked.

Danny considered it.  “Yes.  I am.”

Crockett Murdoch rose from his seat and approached him. He stopped an arm’s length away. “You say you’re twenty-three.  That means you were, what, when you killed my brother?  Twelve?  Thirteen?”

He shrugged.  “If you say so.  I ain’t for sure certain.”

Murdoch came closer.  “I am.  It’s been nine years since Cass had that knife stuck in his gut and bled out on a cold and filthy prison commissary floor.  I hope that slice of pie was real good, Kidd, ‘cause you’re gonna pay dearly for it.”

The ex-convict’s jaw grew tight.  “You can do whatever you want with me.  I admit it, I caused your brother’s death.  I deserve to die.  But….”  Danny hesitated.  He’d learned another lesson during those long years of incarceration.  Never plead.  Pleading gave your opponent an advantage because it told them what was important to you.

He did it anyway.

“Let Little Joe go.”

Crock’s eyes flicked to the spot behind him where he knew Joe was being held.  “Cartwright?”

He nodded.

Cass’ brother made a clicking noise with his tongue.  “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

He glanced at his companion.  “Well, first of all, Travis would have something to say about it.  He’s mighty sore at Mr. Cartwright for costing him his job.”

“And second?”

“Joe Cartwright is here for a reason.”

After Cass’ death, whenever Crock visited the prison, he would stand outside the cell block and stare at him for hours.  He was sending a message then.

Just like he was sending one now.

“What reason?”

Murdoch smiled.

It wasn’t pretty.

“Insurance.”

“What sort of ‘insurance’?” Danny demanded.

“That you’ll do what I want,” the other man replied.  “If you don’t, Joe Cartwright will do more than scream.  He’ll die.”

For the first time, the ex-convict felt real fear.  Death was what he’d expected – for himself.

Not for Joe.

“What is it you want me to do?”

The other man snorted.  “You thought I was gonna kill you, didn’t you?  Why would I do that?  Death isn’t a punishment, it’s a release.”  Crock came close; so close he could smell victory on his breath.  “Tell me, Daniel Malachi Kidd.  What is it you fear the most?”

He’d have died for Joe.  Really, he would.  That’s what friends did.

But would he – could he go back to prison?

 

Joe licked blood from his lip and spat.  His tormentors had moved far enough away that there was no retaliation – this time. The last time the bloody spittle hit one of their boots and he’d been forced to lick it clean or have his head split in half.  Bob Stevens and Asa Teller had been decent enough men when they worked for his pa; not so different from most of the drifters and short-term workers they hired.  Evidently associating with Travis had brought out their inside ‘ugly’.  A fair fight like the one he and Danny had gotten into with them was one thing.

Beating a man bound by the arms to a tree was another.

Then again, he had to remember just who Travis Mudge was  – a nasty piece of work who’d taken power where it was offered; a man who reveled in the license the territory had given him as a prison guard to inflict pain and misery on his fellow man.  With the power of the governor under his belt, his pa had asked the warden to look into Travis’ activities and they soon discovered that Mudge was as corrupt as they came.  He’d developed a system of reward and punishment within the prison, intimidating and threatening both inmates and guards.  All so he could line his own pockets.  Travis was brought before the warden and summarily dismissed.

And rightly held him to blame.

Joe’s gaze strayed to his friend.  His vision was blurred, so it was hard to see that far, but it appeared Danny was standing alone facing two men, kind of like he was on trial.  Probably Travis Mudge and the one called ‘Crock’.  It wasn’t right – blaming Danny for something he’d done when he was a kid.  Pa always said to take a man for who he was, not for who he had been.

Pa.

Joe blinked to clear his eyes and sniffed.

Dear Lord, he wanted his pa!

“Got somethin’ in your eye, Cartwright?” a snide voice asked as a boot connected with his foot, sending a jolt of pain through Joe’s ravaged body.  A slightly inebriated Bob Stevens crouched before him and waggled ten dirty fingers in front of his face, dangerously close to his eyes.  “You want I should take it out?”

Joe’s breath caught as fear coursed through him.  So far none of the damage done to him was permanent – or at least he didn’t think it was.  Several ribs were cracked if not broken, his pee was pink, and he was battered and bruised from his toes to his teeth, but he was whole.  He’d suffered worse abuse before, in particular as a kid at the hands of John C. Regan.  The curly-haired man held his tormentor’s gaze.  There was one difference though.  Regan was a prize fighter.  Other than the sneak attack, he’d played by the rules.

With Bob Stevens, there were no rules.

Joe gulped as he stared at the pair of filthy thumbs not two inches from his nose. There was no way he wanted those dirty digits pressed into his eyes.  He needed to swallow his pride, mind his manners, and use his Sunday voice.

Or maybe not.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” he responded.  “How about you untie my hands, Bob?  That way I can take it out by myself.”

Stevens sucked in a breath – and then nearly bust a gut laughing.  Some of the men around them stopped to stare before returning to what they were doing.  Stevens was snorting, trying to regain his composure.

Everything would have worked out just fine if Asa Teller hadn’t opened his big mouth.

“Pretty boy’s sure got you right where he wants you, Bob!”

Stevens stiffened and then, without warning gripped Joe by the shoulders and forced him to his feet.  Sober now, the outlaw stepped behind the tree, took hold of his hands, and untied them,  For a second Joe thought maybe – just maybe – Bob was going to take him on man to man.  Instead Stevens gripped his wrists and forced his arms up into a painful position and bound them again to something – a branch or maybe the stump of one – high up on the tree.  Unbidden, tears spilled down Joe’s cheeks as the pain from this new indignity shot through his already exhausted form.

Bob Stevens rounded the tree and stood before him, legs apart.  He spat and then sneered.

“Aren’t you gonna thank me for makin’ you more comfortable, Cartwright?”

Joe closed his eyes for a second, gathering courage.  It was gonna cost him and he knew it, but it was gonna cost Stevens more.

His eyes shot open as his lips curled with a smile.

“Sure, Bob.  Thanks!”

The sound Stevens made this time as Joe’s boot connected with his privates turned every head.

 

Danny whirled around just in time to watch Bob Stevens hit the ground and roll away in pain.  Joe Cartwright stood over him, straining at the ropes that bound him to the tree; eyes blazing and nostrils gone wide.  He loved Little Joe like a brother.  Joe was funny and fun; a hell-raiser and a skirt-chaser,  His friend had a laugh like no other, and a spirit wild and untamed as the range horses he loved.  But there was another side to Joe.  Danny understood it, maybe better than the anyone else.  Deep within Joe Cartwright’s belly there was a fire born of the injustice of his mother’s untimely death.  It smoldered for the most part, banked as it was against the wall of his father and brothers’ love.  That fire fueled his friend.  It gave him courage, as well as strength and determination.  Trouble was, it also made him reckless.

Like now.

The ex-convict winced as Asa Teller struck a blow to Joe’s middle.  His friend’s legs were free and Joe used them to drive the other man away.  That kept Teller at bay until a pair of Travis’ men came up on either side of the tree and took hold of Joe’s legs and held them down.  Asa moved in again even as Bob Stevens staggered to his feet.

“They won’t kill him,” Crock remarked casually.  “That is, unless you turn down my proposal.  In that case, they will.”

So that was the bottom line.  He did what the brother of the boy he’d attacked wanted, or Crock would murder Joe.

He had to choose.  Damn Joe or damn himself.

Danny chuckled.

“You think somethin’ is funny, Kidd?” Crock asked sharply.

“I was thinkin’ about dying,” he replied, his gaze steady.  “You’re afraid of it, aren’t you, Crock?”

“Any sane man is afraid of dying.”

The ex-convict shook his head.  “Any sane man fears living.  Every day you walk the earth is another day of trouble.  The Good Book says so.  You should know that.”

“What do you know of the Good Book?” Crock snapped.  “You’re a murderer.”

“And you’re the righteous hand of God?  Is that it?”  Danny spun and pointed a finger at his friend, whose bruised and battered body swung unconscious from the tree.  “What has Joe done wrong?  What?  How come he has to die?  If you kill him, isn’t that murder?”

Crock came right up to him.  “Joe Cartwright knew about Cass and he still chose you as a friend!”

“That doesn’t change anything!”  Danny was breathing hard.  “He’s not responsible.  I am!”

Crock didn’t miss a heartbeat.  “It doesn’t matter.  No man is innocent.”

“So you’re gonna string up the whole world?”

“No.”  Crock gripped his shirt and pulled him in close.  “Just your friend and you get to watch!”

“And then you’re gonna kill me?”

The thought was almost a relief.

The other man shook his head.  “No.  That would be too easy.  I’m not going to kill you, I’m going to blame you.  Let’s see how many years you get for killing a Cartwright!”  Crock released him and backed away.  “Either way, you’re going back to prison.  My way, I win and Cartwright lives.  Your way, you see him die and I still win.”  Cass’ brother drew in several deeps breaths, calming himself before speaking again.  “I guess, in the end, it comes down to the meaning of friendship.”

Crock wanted him to rob the bank in Genoa.  He was to show his face during the robbery so he could be easily identified and then, after pretending to flee, allow himself to be caught and returned to the hellhole of a territorial prison Joe Cartwright had rescued him from.  Crock said, if he did that, he’d let Little Joe go free.

He didn’t believe him.  Joe’d seen them.

His friend was dead either way.

So he had two choices – refuse to rob the bank and watch his friend die, or consent and wait for Joe to be killed later.  Number two, at least, bought them time.  He knew Joe’s family would be looking for him and, while Crock and Mudge knew that too, they didn’t know the Cartwrights like he did. They had no idea of the fierce love the four men had for one another, or of the lengths they would go to in order to protect their own.

Or of the wrath of God they would call down upon anyone who dared to harm Joe.

“So, what’s it gonna be?”

Danny drew in a breath and let it out.  “I’m in,” he said, and then added, “On one condition.”

“So now you’re giving orders?”

The ex-convict looked his enemy in the eye.  “Yeah.  I guess I am.”

Crock snorted.  “What’s your condition?”

“That Bob Stevens goes with us.  I don’t want him left in charge of Joe.”  Danny paused.  “You know he shouldn’t be, Crock.  Not if you want Joe alive,”

The other man considered it.  “Done,” he said.

Danny snorted.  Yeah.  ‘Done’.

That’s what he was.

Done.

 

“Joe?

“JOE!”

The curly-haired man groaned.  Someone had hold of it – his hair, that was – and was using it to force his head up.  He steeled himself for another round of abuse, but was surprised when the only thing that was hurled at him was a prayer of relief.

“Thank God!  You’re alive.  I thought….”

Joe worked his mouth, winced, and then spat out blood and spit. “Don’t sound so happy about it,” he moaned.

A familiar laugh – short and wary – told him who had hold of him and his whole body relaxed.

“Danny?”

“Yeah, it’s me.  Look, Joe, I….”

“Not…your fault,” he managed.

His friend remained silent a moment.  “You’re wrong.  You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for me.”

Joe wet his lips again before he looked up and met his friend’s gaze.  Danny looked awful.

Probably as awful as he looked.

“Travis doesn’t need you…”  Joe drew a ragged breath against his busted ribs.  “…as an excuse.  He hates…me… for me.”

Danny’s lips quirked with a half-smile.  “I guess you got me there.”

“The other guy…”  Joe winced as he straightened up, his back against the tree.  “Murdoch….”

“I deserve whatever Crock hands out, Joe, but you don’t.”

There was something in the ex-convict’s tone – a sort of fatalistic note.  “Danny, don’t give up.  You can’t…give up!”  Joe’s jaw grew tight as the light dawned.  “It’s me.  He’s using…me to threaten you.  Isn’t he?”

Danny’s gaze ran the length of his battered and bound form.  “Crock says he’ll kill you if I don’t do what he says.  So I’m gonna do it,”

Joe strained against his bonds.  “You’re crazy!  He’s gonna kill me…anyway.  I can identify  –”

“Don’t you think I know that!” Danny snapped.  “But this way, Joe….  If I go with them, there’s time for your family to find you.  You know they’re coming.”

He knew.  In fact, that was the only thing holding him together.  But he wanted them to rescue both him and Danny.

Joe swallowed over fear edged with grudging gratitude.  “No.  You gotta be here too.”

Danny shook his head.  “I made my bed, Joe.  I made it all those years ago when I attacked Cass and now I gotta lie in it.”  The ex-convict placed a hand on his arm.  “But I sure as Hell mean to make certain you don’t lie in it with me.”

“Hey, lover boy!  Time to go!”

Joe scowled at Bob Stevens.

“Take care, Joe,” Danny said as he straightened up.  “Stevens is goin’ with us, so at least you got a chance of making it until your pa and brothers get here.”

Danny looked, well, resigned – like a man headed to the gallows.

“What about you?” Joe asked his friend.  “What chance do you have?”

The ex-convict smiled.  “I’ll be seeing you, Joe.  Just you make sure it ain’t too soon.”

“Crock’s ready,” Bob Stevens said as he came alongside them. “You two lovebirds done sayin’ your goodbyes?”

Joe wanted to wipe the smirk from Stevens’ face, but – even if his hands had been free – he wouldn’t have been able to.  His energy was spent.  The curly-haired man leaned back against the tree as Danny walked away taking with him any hope he’d had of getting out of this together.  Tears welled in his eyes, but he forbid them.  Not because crying was a sign of weakness, but because he wouldn’t let these bastards sully his friend’s sacrifice with their derision and hate.  He’d just rested his chin on his chest when a sound caused him to look up.

Bob Stevens sneered as he made a fist.

And the lights went out.

 

Crockett Murdoch gazed at the limp body of Joe Cartwright. He took hold of a handful of the kid’s wet curls and used them to lift the cowboy’s head. There wasn’t much pretty left about the Bob’s ‘pretty boy’.  Cartwright’s eyes were swollen shut; his lips split.  That pert little nose, while he didn’t think it was broken, was bent and crusted over with blood.  Travis’ men – ex-prison guards, all of them – knew their job.  To the naked eye the kid looked like he’d been worked-over, but beneath what was left of his expensive clothes, there were layers upon layers of subtle torment.

Layers.  One upon the other.  He knew about layers too.

Intent.

Capitulation and cooperation.

Deceit.

Recompense.

Crock spat on the ground.  He hated Travis Mudge nearly as much as he hated Daniel Kidd.  Maybe more.  Kidd had been little more than a child when he murdered Cassidy.  He’d been in prison before.  He knew it was kill or be killed.  Not that that pardoned Kidd’s actions, of course.  It was a reason, not an excuse.  Travis had no excuse.  He was a cruel, petty, self-serving little man who deserved nothing more than to be stepped on like the slug he was and ground into the earth.

Crock’s fingers clasped and unclasped several times.

Balance.

He had to seek…balance.

As a kid, he’d been the kind to listen at church. The New Covenant stuff was all right, but his ears pricked and his interest perked whenever the preacher read out of the Old Testament.  An eye for an eye.  A tooth for a tooth.  Someone takes something from you, you take it from them.  That he understood.  Grace, on the other hand, had never made sense to him.  You take something from me, I give you more of what I got?

Not J. Crockett Murdoch.

He was going to send Danny Kidd back to prison.  He’d wrestled with that punishment as far as balance went.  Shouldn’t he kill Kidd like Kidd killed Cassidy?  But then he thought about what his brother had suffered.  The knife had been dirty and gone in deep.  Cass lingered in pain for days before he died, and then turned green and black and putrefied into somethin’ unfit to pass the gates of Heaven.  No.  Dead, Danny Kidd would be free to go to whatever reward a reformed con had coming.

He wanted him to suffer.

There, was balance for Cass.

Crockett Murdoch’s gaze returned to the unconscious man who hung before him.

But what balance was there for Joe Cartwright?

Travis wanted Ben Cartwright’s son dead.  The ex-prison guard would have killed him before now if he’d not prevented it.  What exactly had Joe Cartwright done to deserve death, he wondered?  Befriended Danny?  Got the con out of prison?  That was a sin, but then Kidd had saved his life – so Cartwright was only seeking balance too.

Wasn’t he?

Crock sighed.  It was a conundrum – and he didn’t like conundrums.

There was no…balance…in them.

Joe Cartwright could identify him, as well as Travis and his men.  He didn’t give a damn about them, but he did care a bit about himself.  Maybe he should kill him just to keep him quiet.  Then again, after the robbery, he and the men who rode with him were gonna high-tail it to Mexico and stay there, so the U.S. law couldn’t touch them.  So what if Cartwright fingered him?  By now, the local sheriff, along with Cartwright’s family, had probably figured it out anyhow.

Crockett Murdoch closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. He let it out slowly as he opened his eyes and looked at the unconscious man. He couldn’t do it.  Ying, yang, or an eye for an eye.

It was still balance.

Crock chuckled as he made his way toward the tent near the tree-line where he was bedded down.  That old preacher, he’d taught his lessons well.

He needed to talk to his men.

 

EIGHT

 

Adam knocked on the door and it opened.  Behind it was a servant; a pretty young girl with a round face and a pair of wide, innocent eyes.  That, he knew, could be a deception.  He’d romanced enough doe-eyed beauties in his thirty-two years to understand that a heart black as pitch could lurk behind those glistening orbs.  The man in black mumbled a greeting as the young lady led him into the drawing room of George Owens’ house.  Thirty-two years?  He’d seen enough in the first ten years of his life to jade him.

Adam chuckled.  Pa would have had a nicer word for it.  Life had left him ‘wary’.

Especially where those he loved were concerned.

The servant pointed him toward a chair and asked him to take a seat.  On the way there, he fingered the small wooden horse he had tucked carefully in his pocket.  He’d done that so many times on his way to see Jorie Owen’s wet nurse, that he wondered if the pony would shine like a diamond when he finally brought it out.  The horse reminded him of the ones his step-mother had given his baby brother the Christmas before her death.  Marie loved horses as much if not more than her son.  She’d done everything to encourage Joe’s interest in them and then – oddly enough – been hesitant to allow him to learn to ride.  People were funny that way.  They seldom made sense.

Which was why you couldn’t trust them.

Could he trust her, he wondered?  This young widow and grieving mother whose job it was now to feed and care for a dead woman’s child?  What motivated her?  What desperate need drove Melissa White to leave her home and the city she knew – everything she knew – to travel west to a strange house in a strange town?  Pa said she was a friend of George’s sister.  The age gap between them pointed to the daughter of a friend and not the friend herself.  He’d witnessed grieving mothers before; women whose babies had been left behind in a shallow grave along the trail to the West.  Some of them lost their minds for a time and grieved forever afterwards.  Others surrendered to fate or God, or whatever and soldiered on.

He wondered which Mrs. White would prove to be.

Adam looked around the well-appointed room before taking a seat – only to rise again as the lady in question appeared.

No wonder little brother had been bedazzled.

Melissa White was certainly a looker.  The young widow was willowy and a little bit tall, with fair skin and nearly black hair.  Her figure was lovely – slender hips and a small waist with a tightly corseted bust thrust high enough you couldn’t miss it.  Of course, she had a maternity corset on.  He remembered that from Marie.

Access was what it was all about when you were nursing a baby.

Adam grinned as he remembered his step-mother’s yelp when she didn’t feed her petit Joseph fast enough to suit him and he nipped her!

“Did I miss something?” the raven-haired beauty asked, slightly puzzled.

“Forgive me,” he said, tucking his smile back behind his full lips.  “Just thinking of my youngest brother.”

“Little Joe?” she asked.  The look that accompanied the name told Adam his little brother had done it again.

Melissa was smitten.

“Yes. Joe.  I believe you spent some time with him the other night?” he asked as nonchalantly as his amusement would allow.

“You’re Adam then?  The oldest brother?”

“I’m sorry.  I forget myself.”  The man in black took a step forward and offered his hand.  “Adam Cartwright.”

The young woman’s lips turned up at the ends.  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Cartwright.”

“Adam.  And you are Mrs. White?”

A shadow passed over her face.  “I was.  Just call me Lessy.  Everyone does.”

“Do you like it?”

She blinked.  “Do I like what?”

“Your nickname.”

She shrugged.  “I don’t mind it, now that I’m older.  I hated it when I was a child.  Most of the time it was turned into ‘messy Miss Lessy’.”

“Try living with Adam’s…apple,” he said with a wink.

That broke the tension and she laughed.  “I suppose we all have our crosses to bear.  Now, I understand you have come to see me specifically.  What is it I can help you with, Mister…Adam.”

He wanted to say, ‘my distraught little brother’, but instead dug deep into his pocket and produced the wooden horse.  As he held it out to her, he said, “From my other brother – from Hoss.”

Lessy took it.  “It’s beautiful,” she remarked as she looked it over, and then looked up to meet his gaze.  “For me?”

Her tone was puzzled.

“I’m sure Hoss would carve you one if you like.  But no, it’s for Jorie.”

“Ah.”  She ran a finger along the horse’s back.  “A promise of some sort?”

She was sharp – that, or the subject had come up with her and Joe.  Not a surprise considering it concerned a horse.

“Yes.  Hoss made a promise to himself.  He’s going to catch that strawberry mare again and make sure Jorie gets one of her colts.”  Adam noted her look.  “Is something wrong?”

A tear entered Lessy’s eye.  It glinted and then escaped as she turned her head.  “I was just thinking of my late husband.”

“Oh.”

The young widow indicated a chair and then took a seat on the settee opposite.  She stared at the horse for a moment before speaking.  “What do you think of the promises we make when we are young?”

Considering she couldn’t have been more than twenty, he wondered just how young she meant.

“They’re made in good faith.”  He smiled.  “That doesn’t mean we can keep them, or that we should.”

“I thought….”  She sucked in air and started again.  “When I was fourteen, I made a vow.  I would find a man I loved and marry him and be his forever and never look at another man.  I made the same vow when I married Brown and meant it. And then….”

“He died.”

She nodded.  “Most unfair of him, don’t you think?”

“Pardon me if this seems too familiar, but what I think would be unfair is holding yourself to a vow you made as a child.”

“There are girls who marry at fourteen.”

“Yes.  They’re still children.”  Adam paused.  “Is this about my brother?  My youngest brother?”

Lessy looked like a deer caught in someone’s sight.  “Oh, dear!  Is it that obvious?”

He laughed.  “No.  My brother is that obvious.  When Joe feels something, the whole family feels it.”

“Then, he…likes me?”

Attraction was a numinous thing.  It happened in an instant and there was very little that could be done about it.  The heart leapt and joined itself to another, never knowing if that other knew of its existence.

At least he could help her there.

“I think Joe likes you quite a bit, but you should know….”

“His fiancée just died.  Yes, I know.”  She turned the horse over in her hands nervously.  “Otie, Mr. Owen’s sister told me about it.  Her name was Laura, wasn’t it?  It’s so sad.”

“So, you both are…wounded, should we say?  Maybe a little vulnerable even?”

Lessy shrugged.  “Otie said that too.  I know you must think me a hussy.  It’s just that Joe was so sweet to me the other night.  So understanding….”  She blushed.

Adam rose and went to sit beside her.  He hung his hands between his knees and paused for a moment, thinking of what to say.  “Let me tell you about my little brother.  You won’t find anyone who is kinder or more compassionate – unless it’s my other brother.”  He laughed.  “Joe is thoughtful and a hopeless romantic.  He’s also fiercely loyal and very determined.  It’s those last two that get him into trouble.”

“Trouble?”

How much should he reveal, he wondered?  Pa would say all, and to ask for prayers.  He was less prone to trust so quickly, but it seemed Lessy and Joe had already come to some sort of understanding and she deserved the truth.

“Joe is missing.”

Her eyes lit with fear.  “Missing?”

“Yes.  Joe has a friend.  His name is Danny.  I….”  Adam sighed.  “I didn’t listen to Joe and left the pair of them alone on the range and they disappeared.  There were signs of a struggle.”

“Someone took them?  Deliberately?”

“We think so.  There’s a man named Travis.  He used to be a prison guard.  He has a…beef against Joe.  He’s with another man, one who isn’t too fond of Danny.  We’re afraid they’re connected somehow.  So, I need to get going.”  Adam rose to his feet.  “I have to meet my father and Hoss so we can start looking.”

“Have you involved the sheriff?”

Involving the sheriff was a double-edged sword, even when it was someone like Roy Coffee. The biggest problem was raising a posse – one you could trust not to gun down the first thing that moved.

He shook his head. “Roy knows what’s going on, but we Cartwrights look out for our own.”

“I see,” she said, like she didn’t.  “Do you think these men will hurt Joe?  Travis and…?”

He cast his mind back to his conversation with Roy.  “Murdoch.”

If you’d have asked him before it happened, he would have said it wasn’t possible for Lessy to grow any more pale, but she did.  Her hand crept to her throat as she whispered, “Murdoch?  Jethro C. Murdoch?”

And then she told him her story.

 

Adam glanced at his father where he sat across the fire from him.  Hoss stood nearby, his hand steadily brushing Chubb’s silky nose.  He’d just finished telling them Lessy’s story.

It brought silence.

And fear.

In his mind the universe was a strange place, full of coincidences.  Of course, his father disagreed.  The older man said there was no such thing as ‘coincidence’ and put everything down to the hand of God.  When he was a young man in his teens, he’d challenged that.  He’d demanded to know how a woman who went mad because her six-month-old baby had starved to death and been laid low in a grave along the trail could be the ‘hand of God’?  Or what about the two men who got into a fight over a scrap of food and shot each other, leaving two families bereft?  How about that wagon that went over the edge of a cliff and took six people with it?  Pa had been resolute.  God was in control. ‘Adam,” his father would say, ‘wouldn’t you rather believe that everything – good, bad, and indifferent – happens for a reason?  Is it better to believe that it is random and a whim of fate?  If God isn’t in control, then who is?’

He still didn’t have an answer for that one.

When it came to experiencing the underbelly of life, Lessy White might have him beat.  She started life as Melissa Faye Manners of Boston but spent most of her young life in Sante Fe.  Her mother, Annette Manners, had been widowed in her early thirties.  Her father, a much older man, had left his young wife two well-established businesses in his will – a thriving mercantile and a boarding house.  There were just the two of them.  Melissa was the only baby not to end up in one of those graves along the way West.  She was fifteen when her father died.  Her pa, she said, pampered her mother, and so the older woman knew nothing of running a business.  Her banker told Annette she needed to find a manager, so she advertised for one in the local papers. A few days later when Melissa came home from school, she found her mother excited and optimistic.  A man with all the skills needed had answered her advertisement.  He was willing to work for a low wage plus a percentage of the mercantile’s profits, which he said he would raise in no time.  He’d been invited to supper that night.  Lessy said that the moment she laid eyes on Jethro C. Murdoch, she knew her mother had made a mistake.

She just didn’t know how big a mistake.

At first Jeth, as he told them to call him, was kind, soft-spoken, and mannerly – always the gentleman.  He was good to her mother and that was good enough for her.  By the time Melissa turned sixteen, things were going so well her mother decided to send her to live with a friend in another town so she could attend a finishing school.

Her first trip home was enjoyable, but by the second – at Christmas – she knew something was wrong.  Her mother seemed to have forgotten how to smile and her movements had grown furtive.  One day she caught the older woman with her blouse off and saw the bruises.  Melissa tried to ask her about it several times, but Annette always put her off.  She’d taken a fall down the stairs.   She’d been clumsy and run into the edge of a cabinet.  When she asked her about Jeth, her mother would smile and say the business was doing well.  Jeth was taking care of it and her.

The way she said it sent chills down Melissa’s spine.

She didn’t come home again until summer, when the school year ended. This time the change in her mother was more apparent.  Annette had grown thin and gaunt.  She chewed nervously at her fingers and flitted about the house like a skittish bird.  Jeth was away at the time and so she asked the older woman about him again, begging her to tell the truth.  Her mother broke down and admitted everything.  Jeth was stealing from the business.  He used the money to gamble and drink and carouse with bawdy women.  He would even bring them into their home at times to take his pleasure.  Melissa begged her mother to leave him and to come to the town she was living in, but the older woman was too afraid.  They stood there, in the parlor, clinging to one another and sobbing.

And then Jeth came home.

There was no way to prove what happened next.  It was his word against hers and, in the West, men almost always had the last say in court.  Jeth was drunk.  He became angry the moment he saw them together and began to make threats.  Her mother had obviously been through this before.  She began to speak to him in a calm, soothing voice, trying to reason him out of it.  It seemed to work at first, for Jeth quieted – but only for a time.  Waking again into a violent rage, he took hold of Melissa’s mother and threw her against the hearth.  Annette hit her head and died.

The coroner ruled the death accidental.

Jethro C. Murdoch was known in the town as a good and upright citizen.  What the townsfolk did not know – until much later – was that he was also a criminal with a record as long as their main street.  The night after the funeral, when Melissa told him she was leaving and returning to school, he told her she was not.  He would no longer pay for it.  She said that was fine.  She would get a job and manage it herself.  It was at that point that Jeth informed her of the will her mother had left.  The will – which, no doubt, had been forged – that made him her guardian until she came of age at twenty.  Until then, she would do as he said.

Or else.

Over the next year Murdoch browbeat and cowed her until she didn’t know up from down.  Melissa told him she knew in her heart that he was grooming her for the day when he would enter her bedroom unannounced and she would take her mother’s place – willing or not.

That was when God sent Brown Alphaeus White into her life.

The young woman had laughed then and made a comment about her “White’ knight before going on.  She was working in the mercantile under her step-father’s watchful eye.  That was where she met Brown.  She tried to stay away from him when he came to shop, knowing what Jeth would say – and might do – if he found out he was interested in her.  Brown didn’t care.  He’d sized up Jeth quickly and just as quickly offered to take her away.

He loved her, he said.  More than his own life.

Her eighteenth birthday was on the horizon.  Jeth had made it clear that day would be the end of her maidenhood.  He talked then, as he often did, of balance.  Her mother had been taken from him, so it was only natural that she be his.

In the end she decided that marrying a man she didn’t know who had shown her kindness, was better than remaining with a man who didn’t know the meaning of the word.

She was blessed, Melissa said.  Brown proved to be everything Jethro Murdoch was not.  He took her far away to Baltimore where, unbeknownst to either of them, Margie Owens’ aunt lived.  They’d married that autumn.

One month later they found out he was dying.

Adam could still see her, sitting on the settee; her tears dotting the polished white pine hide of the wooden horse his brother had carved for Jorie.  Lessy had drawn a breath and looked up, her dark eyes wide with fear.

“Adam,” she said, “go!  Go now!  You must find Little Joe and find him quickly.  Jeth Murdoch is a devil.  He has no conscience.  He will kill him without a thought.”

The color drained from his father’s face when he heard that.

“Good Lord,” Pa breathed.  “I thought….  I knew your brother was in danger, but this?”

“We can’t be sure that Murdoch has Joe…or Danny,” Adam replied, his tone gentle.

Pa’s black eyes were misty.  “Can’t we?”

Adam’s lips quirked, not with a smile, but as an acknowledgment of what they both knew.

It was Little Joe.

Yeah, they could.

 

In the morning, they talked it over and decided to split up.  There was a lot of territory to cover and no real indication of which way to go.  Whoever had come unawares upon Joe and Danny had been careful, not only to erase their tracks, but to lay down new ones.  Hoss counted at least a dozen horses.  Their riders had trampled down the grass surrounding the camp and then taken off in four different directions.  They knew the trail leading back the way they’d come was a false one.  That left three paths and there were three of them, so they said their goodbyes and took off, their intention to meet back where they’d begun come dark.

Hopefully with Joe and Danny in tow.

Adam kicked himself as he kneed his mount’s sides and demanded more speed.  If not for his own self-absorption, he would have seen the fallen fence for what it was – a set-up. Thinking back on it now, the signs were clear.  There was too much destruction for a simple wash-out and yet, in other ways, the site was clean.

Where was the debris?

To be honest, though, self-interest had been only half of the problem.  The other half was something Hoss called ‘older brother syndrome’, which was a polite way of saying that he could be an ass simply because he was the eldest.  He had to admit it.  He still saw his youngest brother as a child.  Joe wasn’t.  At twenty, he was a man.  A young and inexperienced one, but a man.  Adam chuckled.  He was still having trouble adjusting to the fact that the kid had a thought that wasn’t his.

It was almost impossible to believe that thought might be right!

They’d been moving at a steady pace for a good fifteen minutes, so when he reined his borrowed horse in, the sturdy animal snorted with impatience.  “Hang on, boy, I just need to check something out,” he said as he dismounted.  An incongruous spot of pinkish-brown on the green grass had caught his attention.  With one eye shut against the beams of early morning light that penetrated the trees, he knelt and picked it up – and knew it instantly.

It was a piece of his kid brother’s shirt.

Adam rose and turned so the light fell on the scrap of cloth.  Yes, it was Joe’s.  He’d recognize the high quality cloth and color anywhere.  For a moment, hope swelled in his heart.  Then he noticed something else.  The cloth looked to have been cut away and not torn.  He remained where he was, puzzling that out.  If Joe was being held captive, would he have a knife to cut it with?  And if someone cut it off of him, why was there no blood?  Knowing his younger brother, he would have fought like a tiger unless….

Unless he couldn’t.

The man in black swallowed his fear.

A second later, it overcame him.

Adam began to shake, and then to tremble as images of his brother’s torture flashed before his eyes.  Joe beaten, bruised, cut and bloodied; tormented and made to suffer not by Travis Mudge or the mysterious J. Crockett Murdoch.

But by Peter Kane.

He fell to his knees and his fingers clutched the tall grass, shredding it and pulling it out by the roots as he watched Kane pick up an axe handle and strike Joe over and over again, feeling each blow as if it fell on his own body.  Saliva thickened and spilled from his mouth.  He retched.  And retched.

And retched again.

“No, God, no,” he breathed.  “I will not….  You will not win!”

Kane was there.  He was always there, lurking on the edge of his psyche – that leering face, those intense insane eyes; the cruel mouth that taunted without words.  Adam knew in his heart that Kane would always be there.  Somehow….some way…he had to learn to live with the Devil.

He had to learn to live.

Adam lifted a hand to wipe the spittle from his chin.  He’d closed his eyes, waited, and then opened them again.  This time there was no leering Peter Kane.  Just trees, and the grass and late autumn gorse.

No, that wasn’t right.  There was something else, and he saw it clearly for the first time since his ordeal.  It was the thing that brought him back from the brink this time, just as it had on that day in the desert when he’d felt a familiar hand touch his shoulder.

Pa.  Hoss.  Little Joe.

The man in black rose shakily to his feet.  He straightened his back and then tugged his coat into place.  Peter Kane had no power.  Peter Kane was nothing.

Family.

That was everything.

 

“Whoa, boy.  Come on, Chubby.  Whoa!”

Hoss Cartwright hauled back on the reins one last time and managed to bring his horse to a standstill before dismounting.  Chubby sure wanted out of this place!  The big man looked around, puzzled.  It was a pretty autumn day with a slight chill in the air – the kind that made a man want to sit by the fire and warm up with one of Pa’s sea-faring toddies.

Hoss chuckled as the thought kindled a memory long buried.  Pa and Hop Sing was gone somewheres.  He and Adam took Little Joe out in the snow to play – without askin’ Mama’s permission, of course.  Marie had mentioned somethin’ the night before about how much fun she’d had as a young’un when she visited some northern kin and got to do the same thing.  Bein’ little ‘uns, that was permission enough.  It was early on in the winter and not all that cold, so they shed their jackets as the day wore on and left them behind on a rock as they scampered through the woods.  Come afternoon, a herd of clouds moved in and the temperature plummeted ‘til it was cold as a well-digger’s toes.  All three of them caught cold – and got a good scoldin’ once Mama bundled ‘em up in blankets and made sure they was okay.  Hoss smiled at the memory.  Marie never could stay mad long though, so by nighttime she’d forgot all about it.  Then, Little Joe started coughin’. Then he started sneezin’ and Adam’s throat got sore, and by the next day they was all sick as dogs.

Hoss’ smile broadened as he remembered what happened next.

Mama did her best to take care of them, but by bedtime she was plum wore out.  About midnight she headed for Pa’s liquor cabinet where he kept a bottle of fine French brandy.  Marie put the bottle on the table in front of Adam, who watched her with bleary eyes and little interest, and then vanished into the kitchen.  About twenty minutes later she came back carryin’ a silver tray with an enamel pot and four china cups.  All of them – even Little Joe who was only three and a half – watched as she filled each cup with tea and added a dash of the sweet liquor.  Brother Adam’s eyes went wide as she handed him his ‘dose’ and he said something’ about not wantin’ to be there when Pa came home and found more than half of his brandy gone!  Him and Joe was just little kids.  All they knew was they was doin’ somethin’ they weren’t supposed to do and it was fun.

Mama was fun.

He sure missed her.

The big man ran a hand under his nose and sniffed.  Just like he missed Margie.

Dang it, if that gal hadn’t broke his heart in two and taken half of it with her to the grave!  He’d loved her with a love as fierce as the one he had for his pa and brothers and, even though she was gone, he still loved her, just like he still loved Mama.  Bein’ dead didn’t do nothin’ to stop love.  In some ways, well, it made it even stronger.  In a way, bein’ alive reined someone in – just like he did Chubb.  It kept them in one place.  When they was dead, they became a part of you and was everywhere at once.  In everythin’.  Hoss shook his head as he looked around at the trees and tall grasses.  Thinkin’ that way didn’t stop the hurtin’, but it did help the healin’ a little bit.

And he was healin’.

Slowly.

Chubb shied again and almost pulled the reins from his fingers, returning Hoss to the present.  His big black was a pretty sturdy and sensible feller.  Whatever it was makin’ him afear’d, must be somethin’!  He tethered the animal to a tree, patted and reassured it, and began to nose around. The tracks what led him to this place had been left by three riders who’d headed west out of Joe and Danny’s camp.  There was no way of knowin’, of course, if this trail was false.  After all, two out of the three of them had to be.  He was kind of hopin’ his was the true one ‘cause he was sore worried about his little brother, but then he knew Pa and Adam was thinkin’ the same thing.  Little Joe was mighty special to them all and the idea that some no-good low-down skunk of a man might have hurt the boy was….

Hoss stopped.  A chill ran through him.

He’d just spotted a pair of tan boots stickin’ out from under a bush.

Everyone who knew him said he had a heart two sizes bigger than most men.  They was right, ‘cause it had done leapt into his throat and stuck there and he couldn’t breathe.

The big man closed his eyes and whispered a quick prayer.  Then he steeled himself to go over and take a look.  The tan pants almost got him, but a second later relief washed over him like a flood.  The dead man had black hair and a lot longer legs than shortshanks.

It was a dang shame they had the same taste in boots!

The big man sat on a nearby rock and…breathed.  He remained there for a couple of minutes, thanking his lucky stars and the Man upstairs.  Then he rose and returned to the dead man’s side and turned him over.  He was a pretty tough lookin’ feller, so that said somethin’ for the man what took him out.  The dead man wore a dark blue coat with two rows of buttons runnin’ down the front. The hat layin’ beside him looked like the kind the men who drove trains wore.  Hoss thought a moment longer and realized that, even though he didn’t know ‘who’ the dead man was, he knew ‘what’ he was.

A prison guard.

“Damn,” he cursed softly.

Travis Mudge had his brother.

 

Travis Mudge had his son.  Ben was sure of it.

The rancher’s jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed as he surveyed the rocky, gorse-covered terrain before him.  He’d chosen to take the northern trail that crossed the river and led up into the hills on the other side.  There was very little to follow.

Except his heart.

He knew.  Somehow he knew this was the way the outlaws had gone.  It was hard to explain ‘why’ to his oldest sons when he didn’t know the answer himself.  He was connected to all of them, heart, soul and blood, but with Joseph there was something more,  Something almost visceral.

Most likely, because the boy needed him so badly.

Ben’s lips twisted with a smile as he negotiated a tumble of rocks in his path.  Not that Joseph would ever admit he did.  While his youngest boy was more than affectionate and open with his love and praise, he was wary of anything that alluded to weakness.  As a parent he’d tried but failed – so far, at least – to teach Marie’s boy that needing someone was not a weakness, but a strength. It took strength to be vulnerable and to admit that, at times, you alone were not enough.  The rancher chuckled as he reached for a handhold.  He’d been very like Joseph in his youth – a bit wild and impulsive, quick to anger and to act.  He’d been knocked on his backside more times that he could count by bigger and stronger men, but that taught him nothing.  It took his Father in Heaven knocking him down – three times – to crack his thick skull and show him that the things he believed important were, in reality, nothing but dust blown in the wind.  The Lord sent three angels – Elizabeth, Inger, and Marie – to minister and to educate him.  Ben snorted.

He had to admit it – there’d been a bit of a devil in that last one!

His wives had been given to him and taken from him, as the Lord God said was His right, but each had left a bit of herself, not only in him, but in their sons.  When he failed to stop Jack Groat from pulling that trigger – when young Jimmy Partridge fell to Jack’s bullet and bled out and died – it had been his sons who had saved him.  He could not survive without his boys and that was not a sign of weakness.

It was, and would always be, his greatest strength.

Joseph too would become the man God intended him to be only when he learned to surrender his pride, and admit that he could never make it alone.

Ben glanced at his horse.  Buck snorted and shook his head, frustrated by their slow progress up the hillside.  He was frustrated too, but for a different reason.  He had the strongest presentiment that time was short.  Still, he wasn’t a young man anymore – neither was Buck for that matter! – and it was time to take a rest.  The rancher ran a hand over his eyes.  He’d hardly slept since this whole thing began and it was time for a drink and a bite of food, even though his stomach rebelled at the thought.  He couldn’t help but consider his youngest son and wonder if he was in distress.  Joseph was far too impulsive for his own good and had yet to learn when to rein in his temper and his tongue.  His impetuousness invited other men’s anger and, at times, incited it.  He’d seen the look in Travis Mudge’s eyes as they passed the prison guard the day he’d talked to the warden.  It was pure raw hatred.  If that horrible man truly had his boy and Joseph mocked him….

Ben blew out a breath as he took a rocky seat.

It was then he saw it.  A glint of white in a sea of brown and green.  The fir trees this high up were more sparsely placed than lower on the ridge.  Still, their voluminous branches brushed the ground; some touching one another.  Whatever it was lay tucked beneath their spindled skirts.  He knew, most likely it was a white pebble.  Still, something said it wasn’t.  Ben’s heart raced as he placed his canteen on the ground, rose, and began to walk.  At his approach, a second spot of white joined the first.

And then a third.

The rancher knelt on one leg and leaned forward.  As soon as his fingers touched the ribbed cloth, Ben knew it for what it was – his youngest son’s corduroy jacket.  What he’d seen were the whitish-blond toggle buttons shining in the sun.  At first the jacket appeared to be intact.  Then he began to notice the stains – and then he saw the blood.   The crisp, rusty stains liquid told a horrific story.

One he did not want to read.

With the corduroy jacket in hand, Ben rose and returned to his horse.  Once at Buck’s side he remained still, considering his next move.  God had granted his prayer.  He was the one to find the trail that would lead to his child.  Now he had to trust that what he’d told his sons was true.

God was in control and was the author of whatever he would find at the end.

 

NINE

 

Personally, he hoped it was the kid’s older brother who followed the right trail and not one of the false ones they had laid.

Balance.

That’s what it was all about.

Crockett Murdoch toed the dirt and spat. In the end, he’d stayed behind. It had been his intention from the start to go with Mudge and the thugs from the territorial prison to Genoa to watch the robbery go down.

Then, he changed his mind.

What better way to control Danny Kidd than to be the one who held the power of life and death over Joe Cartwright?

He glanced at the kid where he sat propped against the bole of a giant sycamore, and then at the men surrounding him.  They were all his with the exception of one: Asa Teller.  He and Travis had argued, but Mudge had seen his point of view in the end and agreed it was best to part Teller and Stevens.  There was still some debate as to where the pair’s loyalties lay – with them or with each other.  Crock puffed out a breath as he started toward the tree.  The men with him were a hard lot.  Some were ex-cons, like Kidd.  Others, men who’d been set free after serving time and had nowhere else to go.  All were outlaws or desperados.  They were good for what they were good for, which wasn’t much other than looking after their own skins.  A few of them were none too happy with him right now.  He’d pretended to sleep the night before and listened to their rumblings.  He was ‘wasting a valuable asset’, one man said.  Another said that Joe Cartwright was ‘a gold mine’ and the money they’d make in ransom was worth more than any decades-old vendetta.  The dark-haired man snorted.  That last one had rumbled a little too loudly and he’d struck him down fast as lightning.

He knew how to keep discipline in the ranks.

What a stint in the military failed to teach him, a stretch in prison had.  There’d been nothing to do but think in that eight by eight cell and, when he came out, he was older and far wiser.  Life was unfair.  Didn’t matter how you looked at it or which way you turned it, it was.  The rich got richer and the poor got nothing but abuse.  His little brother knew that all too well.  Crock sneered.  He understood his men’s desire for riches.  It was his desire too.  Money might not buy happiness, but it sure as hell could provide everything else.  He’d just learned to go about it another way.  Shoot a man, you go to prison.  Kill him, you hang.

Cheat him out of all he’s got and make sure he can’t tell anyone.  That’s how you thrived.

The dark-haired man passed a hand over his eyes as he drew to a halt.  Every once in a while, like now, he had a feeling.  Maybe what he was doin’ wasn’t right.  Maybe….

But then he remembered.

The world owed him.

God owed him.

Balance.

Someone cleared their throat.  “You okay, Crock?”

He opened his eyes to find Billy Lawton watching him.  Billy was a young’un.  Not much older than the rich kid he was guarding.  He was a big’un too, nearly twice Joe Cartwright’s size.

Crock dismissed the question with a gesture of his hand as he nodded toward the wounded man.  “Cartwright?”

“Behavin’,” Billy replied.

Crock looked at his prisoner.  The kid’s right cheek was red, like he’d been struck not all that long ago.  Cartwright’s curly head was dangling at an uncomfortable angle and he was obviously unconscious.

“Try not to break his neck, okay?” he snarled.  “We need him.”

The big man shrugged.  “He got smart with me.”

The Cartwrights were an interesting bunch.  It hadn’t been hard to find out about them.  Everyone in Virginia City was bustin’ their buttons to give you their two cents worth.  Some found them high-handed.  ‘Old Ben Cartwright, he thinks he’s better than everyone else, and them boys of his ain’t no better!’  Others painted them as saints.  ‘They’d give you the shirts off their backs, and then take you to the mercantile to buy a pair of pants that matched!’  He found some who were scared of them, citing times a few years back when ‘old Ben’ had chased men off his land with a rifle, threatening to kill them.  The oldest was an arrogant son of a bitch.  The middle son, not so bad – but look out or he’d break you in half!  The youngest one….  Crock glanced at the crumpled form at his feet.  Pampered.  Mollycoddled.  Soft.

He laughed out loud.

From what he’d seen of Joe Cartwright, they didn’t come any tougher.

His laugh caused the young man to start, and then shift and moan.  Instantly alert, Billy jammed the tip of his rifle into the kid’s shoulder as a warning.  It was only then that Crock noticed the kid’s feet were untied and that he wasn’t bound to the tree, just leaning up against it.

“Living dangerously?” he asked Billy, indicating Cartwright’s ankles.

“Said he needed to take a leak.  I untied him and held out a hand – that was when he told me where I could stick it and I let him have it.”  Lawton kicked the injured man’s thigh.  “He ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

The color in Billy’s cheeks implied the suggested location had not been a welcome one.  “He been like this ever since?”

“Til now.”  The big man prodded Cartwright’s shoulder, eliciting another groan.  “Hey, pretty boy!  Pee-yew!  You pissed yourself.  That’s what you get for –”

Crock touched the man’s shoulder. “Lawton?”

“Yeah?”

“Give us a minute.”

Billy looked puzzled, but he did as he asked – after giving Joe’s outstretched leg a second sharp kick for good measure.

The kid’s eyes shot open in pain.  The cowboy winced and then closed them and leaned his head back against the trunk of the tree.  A moment later, his full lips curled with a smile.

“Something funny?” Crock asked.

The injured man opened one of his swollen eyes.  “I hate to admit it, but Lawton’s right.  I do stink.”

“Look, Cartwright,” he said. “I owe you an apology.”

The other eye opened.  “For what?  Killing me?”

“You’re not dead yet.”

“But I will be.”  Joe adjusted his battered body as best he could, drawing up to the full measure of the dignity he had left. “You and I both know it.  You can’t let me go.”  The kid sucked in a painful breath as his gaze went beyond, to the men surrounding them.  “And even if you could, they won’t let you.”

“Maybe,” he admitted.  “But that’s not what I mean.”

“Then what do you mean?”

The question was pointed and it stirred something in him – that tiniest bit of doubt.  “The way I see it, you’re an innocent bystander in all of this,” Crock said. “Danny Kidd saves your life and you’re beholding. You pay him back by setting him free.  Maybe even become friends.  None of that’s your fault.  You had no way of knowing what kind of a man –”

“You’re wrong.”  Joe Cartwright’s jaw grew tight.  “I do know, and he’s a thousand times the man you are!”

Billy was right.  He had a smart mouth.

“Look, kid….”

“I’m not a kid, but Danny was when he killed your brother.  A kid of thirteen!” Joe shot back.  “Do you know why?  Do you know why Cassidy died?”

“Of course, I know!” he snapped.  “Over a stinkin’ piece of pie!”

“You have it wrong.  It wasn’t about pie, it was about ownership.  That ‘stinking piece of pie’ belonged to Danny and Cassidy took it!”  The kid sucked in air and calmed his tone.  “Can you imagine?  Can you even imagine what it’s like to be so desperate  to possess something – anything – that a piece of pie is worth fighting and maybe dying for?”  Joe shook his head wearily.  “No.  You have to face it, Crock.  Danny was the victim.  Cassidy died because he was a thief.”

He had the wounded man by the collar in a second.  “My brother wasn’t a thief! You take that back!”

“I can’t.”  The kid let out a sigh.  “As much as you don’t want to face it, it’s the truth.”

He beat him.  He beat Joe Cartwright so hard and so long that the cowboy was laying on the ground unmoving by the time he finished with blood pouring from his lips and nose.  In fact, it took Billy pulling him off of the Cartwright’s motionless form to get him to stop. The big man reminded him of what he’d said – they needed the kid alive – before he shoved him in the opposite direction and told him to walk it off.

Crock walked as the sun set behind the mountains.

He walked as the camp settled down for the night.

He walked until the moon had risen and the stars showed in the sky.

It wasn’t enough.

There was no distance far enough to separate J. Crockett Murdoch from what he knew to be the truth.

 

Joe Cartwright opened his one good eye.  This time he stifled the groan.  He was lying on the cold ground in a pool of his own blood.

If he’d stunk before, it was nothing compared to now!

He stifled a chuckle, and that flooded his eyes with tears.  He was pretty sure he’d about hit his limit.  There wasn’t an inch of him that didn’t hurt.  Then again, it wasn’t all that much worse than the time he’d taken a spectacular fall off of a bronco and gone through not one but two fences and landed with his backside up against the barn wall.

Come to think of it, his backside didn’t hurt.

He should be thankful for small blessings.

Joe winced and shifted so he could look at the man guarding him.  The outlaw’s name – Billy – had absurdly put him in mind of the story his mama used to read to him when he was a little boy about the three billy goats gruff.  The three goats wanted to cross a bridge, but there was this big troll underneath of it keeping guard.  They kept trying and he kept stopping them.  Finally, the biggest billy goat went for the troll and ‘crushed him to bits; body and bones’.

He sympathized.

Outlaw Billy’s chin was resting on his chest.  Joe was pretty sure the big man was asleep.  To test it, he called his name softly and waited.  His personal ‘troll’ didn’t stir.  Relieved, the curly-haired man rolled over and looked up.  Through the sprawling branches of the Sycamore tree, Joe noted the position of the moon and realized it was near midnight.  Turning his head ever so slightly, he looked at the campfire and saw a lot of boots sticking out of blankets.  It seemed everyone was asleep.  He supposed neither Billy nor anyone else thought he was going anywhere, beat to a pulp as he was.

But then again neither Billy, nor any of the men with him, knew Joe Cartwright.

It served him well bein’ the youngest and, what people took for, the most pampered Cartwright.  It didn’t hurt being smaller than his brothers either or – Joe sighed – the prettiest.  It meant people who didn’t know him underestimated him.  The thing people didn’t understand – unless they were the youngest and the prettiest as well – was how that sort of thing lit a fire in a man to prove that he wasn’t either.  He’d spent his entire life trying to outride, out rope, outshoot and outdo his older, taller, bigger and – Joe chuckled – uglier brothers, and he’d learned to use every weapon in his arsenal from pouting to poking, to praying and pretending to do it.

He was really good at the pretending part.

Like now.

God, he hurt!  He hurt like hell.  Maybe even worse than when he’d awakened after John C. Regan ambushed him.  Truth was, he might even be dyin’ considering the amount of red in the pee staining his tan pants.  But if there was one thing he’d learned in the two decades he’d walked the Earth, it was to keep fighting and never give up.

No matter how much you wanted to.

Joe eased himself up and onto one elbow.  He remained where he was for a few seconds, breathing hard, and then sat up and pressed his back against the Sycamore’s trunk.  A few seconds later – after the world stopped whirling – he looked around.  Billy was still snoring.  None of the men sleeping around the fire had moved.

So far, so good.

Weary to the bone, the wounded man leaned his head against the tree, closed his eyes, and took stock.  Murdoch had to be gone, otherwise he would have been had.  The man was just plain spooky.  Travis Mudge was gone too, and Bob Stevens with him.  That left Bob’s partner, Asa Teller, but Teller didn’t matter.  Stevens was the one with the grudge against him.  The disgruntled cowboy would have kept a close watch.  Asa was snoring along with the others.

So he might just have a chance.

Joe opened his eyes and looked at his feet.  They were free and he still had his boots on.  Which was good.  What was bad was that his hands had been retied behind his back.  He knew from experience that having his hands tied would throw off what little balance he had left as he ran.  Still, he had to try it.  Anything – any chance of escape no matter how remote or seemingly hopeless – was preferable to remaining where he was.  He meant what he said.  If Crock didn’t kill him, the men traveling with him would.  He’d seen their faces.  He knew who they were.

He could finger them to the law.

Joe closed his eyes again and breathed deep, gathering strength.  As he did, his thoughts flew to his missing friend.  He wondered where Danny was now, and if he’d been forced to commit the bank robbery.  If he had, it would be almost impossible to convince the law that he’d been forced into it.  Danny was an ex-convict.  No matter that he’d kept clean for nearly a year now, most any judge would send him straight back to the penitentiary.  The curly-haired man opened his eyes and leaned forward.  Once he got away, he’d need to find a horse.  Genoa wasn’t that far away.  He’d go there first and, if the robbery hadn’t gone down, do what he could to stop it.  Danny was like a brother to him.  He wasn’t about to let him down.

Even if it killed him.

 

Danny Kidd let out a sigh of relief and then dropped onto the wet grass underneath a tall tree.  The robbery had been postponed.  It was supposed to have gone down the night before, but two of Mudge’s men messed up.  Instead of scouting things out like they were supposed to, they’d gone into Genoa, gotten drunk, and put the law on the alert.  Not that the sheriff suspected a bank robbery, but because of the brawl that ensued, the lawman had called more of his men into town.  Then, after puttin’ everything to rights, the sheriff and his deputies settled in to whet their whistles and swap stories ‘til the sun crested over the hills.

Which was about an hour ago.

He would have gone through with it if he had to.  Crock’s plan was for Mudge and the other men to take part in the robbery along with him.  Once they had the money in hand they would head out, leaving him behind to close the door.  Sometime during the heist he was to ‘lose’ his bandana mask, so that – when he turned back into the bank just before his exit – his face would be seen, marking him.

Yeah, that was Cass’ brother’s plan.

He had a different one.

He was gonna keep his mask firmly in place and – in the middle of the heist when everything was pure chaos – make good his escape and head back to the camp to save Joe.  Danny grinned.  His plan was the one that was gonna work, mostly because Travis Mudge and his prison guard cronies were, in a word, ‘stupid’.  Bob Stevens was the only one who was smart enough to stop him and Stevens was dead.  The ranch hand’s short fuse had caught up with him at last.  Not too long after they hit the trail Stevens and one of Mudge’s men fell out over something.  Hot words were exchanged, and then shots.  The ex-prison guard fell where he stood.  Even though Stevens was nowhere to be found, the trail of blood he left behind told the story.  He was wounded.

Wounded bad.

Danny glanced up at the mounting sun.  Mudge had come by a short time before and informed him that the robbery was on for tonight.  ‘Tonight’ was a full eight hours away and that gave him plenty of time to figure out a way to escape and beat it back to Joe.  Hopefully, by now his friend’s family had arrived and rescued him.  He’d like nothing more than to ride into that camp and find J. Crockett Murdoch and his men trussed up and at the mercy of a trio of righteously enraged Cartwrights.  Danny winced and then ran a hand along the backside of his neck.  He hated to admit it, but he felt kind of sorry for Crock.  Not because of what Cass’ brother would face at the hands of Joe’s brothers and father – that he deserved –  but because he’d caused him a lot of pain.  Then again, he had to remember he’d been a kid when Cass died.  A kid who had been treated like an animal.

A kid who thought and reacted like an animal.

He’d make it up to him – somehow.  Crock, that was.  He’d find a way to convince him that he was sorry.  It wouldn’t take back what had happened, but maybe it would go some way toward making things right.  And if Crock wouldn’t accept his apology?  Well then, he’d do whatever it took.  If J. Crockett Murdoch insisted on what he saw as balance – a life for a life – then it would be his.

Not Joe’s.

“Kidd?  You deaf or somethin’?”  Danny looked up,  One of Mudge’s men was standing over him; plate in his hand.  “Travis said you should eat.”

“I’m not hungry,”

The man sneered.  “Travis don’t care.”

The ex-convict considered refusing, but then reached up and took the plate.  “Thanks.”

“Right,” the ex-guard snarled before he walked away.

He wasn’t tied up because Travis didn’t think he was going anywhere.  He’d let the ex-prison guard believe he had him cowed.  Every time Mudge made some snide remark about his ‘pretty boy boyfriend’ and how he’d take care of him if he stepped out of line, he’d acted scared.  Sadly, he knew the minute he went missing Travis would seek out Joe and make good his threat.

Danny took a bite of food, made a face, and forced it down.

He hoped Mudge tried it.  He really did.

That way he’d be justified when he wringed the bastard’s neck.

 

Ben Cartwright lowered his binoculars.  He’d located the camp of the men who had taken his son just as darkness claimed the land.  After a restless night with little sleep, he’d risen early and taken up a position on a rocky shelf that overlooked the area.  For more than an hour now he’d scrutinized every inch of the clearing, looking for a sign of his son.

He hadn’t found any.

The older man drew a breath and let it out slowly in a sigh combined with a prayer of thanks.  There was something else he’d feared he’d find, which he hadn’t: a plot of turned up earth indicating a freshly dug grave.  His hope was that his youngest and his friend were still alive.  It might be that Joseph and Danny were there, but kept out of sight.  There was a single tent pitched at the back of the camp, butted up against a thick line of trees.  One or both of the young men could be in there.  Or, if God was gracious, they weren’t and the pair had gotten away.  That possibility both excited and terrified him.  If they had escaped, then it was a sure bet that Joseph and Danny were being hunted down like animals by unscrupulous men with years of experience in the chase.

The rancher raised his field glasses again and returned his attention to the main camp.  Even at this distance he could sense a certain tension in the air.  Men were on the move.  A few, in a hurry.  Voices drifted up to him.  Some raised in anger.  Others, their tones imperious.  He counted ten horses and eight men.  It was a guess as to whether there were other men nearby, hidden from sight, or if the extra animals were for carrying supplies.  In either case, Ben knew he’d best complete his surveillance quickly and seek some kind of shelter, lest he be discovered.

It wouldn’t do for Hoss and Adam to show up and find him a prisoner like their brother!

The rancher shifted the glasses to focus on the tent.  Something about the small hide structure drew him like a magnet, though he had no idea why.  He soon became convinced that he needed to know who – if anyone – was inside.  After all, if Joe and Danny weren’t there, then they weren’t in the camp at all and he was wasting precious time.

As he made his way down the hill, Ben formulated his plan.  He’d noticed a big old, fat-bellied Sycamore not too far distant from the tent.  If he could follow the tree-line, he could come up behind it unseen and then move on.  When he reached bottom, the rancher halted to check the shaft of his leather boot.  He wanted to make sure  the long knife he’d anchored there had made the descent with him.  Ben smiled grimly as his fingers brushed the polished handle of the blade.

Reassured, the older man moved into the underbrush and headed for the outlaw’s camp.

It didn’t take long and he needn’t have worried about being noticed.  By the time Ben reached the camp, more than half of the outlaws had mounted up and ridden away.  Of the four left, one was occupied in emptying a bottle while the other three moved about breaking camp,

On one hand, Ben felt blessed.  On the other hand, he was depressed.  It seemed less and less likely that he would find his son or his son’s friend in that tent.  Surely if Joe and Danny were in there, a guard would have been left stationed at the door.  Still, he had to be sure and there was only one way to do that – go to the tent, cut a slit in the back wall, and peer in.  Ben halted his progress to check on the men in the camp again.  The drinking man had joined the others.  Whatever else the brigands were, they were efficient.  Nearly everything was stowed on the pack animals.

He’d better move fast.

The rancher held his breath as he drew alongside the Sycamore tree.  He had just made his mind up to pass it by when he spotted something marring its side – a dark rust-red smear that he took at first for lichen or moss.

But soon realized was blood.

There was blood everywhere – on the tree’s bark, covering the crushed grass; seeping into the ground.  So much blood!  It was not pooled but spattered – as if the drops had been cast off as someone was struck over and over, and over again.

Ben closed his eyes.

Joseph.

It had to be Little Joe’s blood.

He knew his son.  He knew what happened when the boy was afraid – how fear became a fire in Joe’s belly that consumed all reason.  When he could, the boy would strike out with his fists.  When he couldn’t, he used words.  Biting words that struck with the same deadly force as a bullet.

The concerned father’s gaze returned to the emerald grass turned crimson.

This time, silence said it all.

 

Joe staggered and fell.  He lay on the ground for several heartbeats – panting, praying; his heart pounding hard – before pushing himself up onto one knee and moving again.  He could hear them.  They were coming fast!  Unfortunately, it hadn’t taken Crock’s men long to notice he was missing and they were in close pursuit, shouting to one another as they drove their horses through the tall grasses in search of him.  He couldn’t let them find him.  If they did, he was dead.  There’d been talk of ransom the night before.  He’d heard it while he lay awake nursing his wounds.  ‘Old Ben Cartwright will pay plenty to get his pretty boy back,’ someone said – and they were right.  Still, if there was one thing that kind of man valued more than money, it was his hide.  There would be other ‘pretty boys’ to ransom.  He was too much trouble.

In choosing to escape, he’d sealed his fate.

“Over there!” one shouted.  “By the river!”

He was ‘by the river’ that ran not too far away from the camp.  He’d hoped to plunge into it and make his way upstream.  There were river caves there where he could lay low.  Hoss had taught him the trick when he was young.  Not even the best tracker could follow you in water.  The trouble was, he had to have enough of a head-start to make it work.  Crock’s men were too close.  They were closing in on both sides.  His only option was to plunge into the rushing waters.  The current was strong and he was weak.  He doubted he had enough strength to make it.

A weary smile split Joe’s swollen lips as he staggered to the shore.

“Remember Joe.  Where there’s life, there’s hope….”

The water was flowing fast as Cochise could fly.  His breath caught as he watched it charge past, carrying with it the battered remnants of  uprooted trees and bushes, along with other man-made debris.  Joe stood there, breathing hard, with one hand pressed against his side to brace it.  The pain was dizzying.  All he wanted to do was drop to his knees and flop over on the riverbank like a fish out of water and wait for the crows to come along and pick his bones.  The weary man’s gaze returned to the field.  The sound of men in pursuit was close.  Too close.

In the river he had a chance.

A slight one, but a chance.

Joe’s gaze went to the rushing water.  There was a battered tree trunk just like the ones his father’s workmen felled in the timber camps coming his way.  He’d been at one of those camps recently with Adam.  They’d placed a bet on how fast the logs traveled down the flume.

He was about to find out if he would have won.

 

“I tell you, I saw him not fifteen minutes ago.  He was headed this way,” Jake Shelton insisted.

“Well, he ain’t here now!  We’ve been up and down this stretch of the bank a half-dozen times.”  There was a pause as Billy Lawton eyed the raging river.  “You don’t suppose Cartwright went in….”

“You lose something, Lawton?”

The pair whirled to face the man who had spoken.  J. Crockett Murdoch shoved his hands into his pockets as he emerged from the trees.

“Crock. We….”  Lawton sucked in what courage he had.  “Cartwright got away.”

The dark-haired man pursed his lips.  “Let me see, you had what in camp?  Eight able-bodied men with guns?  And you’re telling me you couldn’t catch hold onto one ‘pretty boy’ who’d been beat until he was half-dead?”

“That’s just it, Crock!  Cartwright was half-dead. That’s why I didn’t tie his feet.”  Lawton’s jaw grew tight as his gray eyes reflected fear.  “I mean, who would’ve thought he could even live after that beating you….”

Crock’s words were smooth as snakeskin.  “That beating I gave him.”

“You had every right, Crock,” Jake said.  “Nobody’s sayin’ you didn’t. Cartwright deserved what he got.”

Murdoch’s eyes narrowed as he turned to the river.  “You think he threw himself in?”

“Had to,” Billy replied.  “We had him pinned down.  There’s nowhere else he could’ve gone.”

The brown-haired man looked over his shoulder.  “You sure about that?”

Lawton shifted uneasily.  He shrugged.  “You want we should keep looking?”

Crock bent, picked up a twig, and tossed it in the water.  The river whisked it away in seconds.  “No point,” he said.  “If the kid went in, he’s dead.”

The two men exchanged glances.  “So, what do you want us to do?”

“Find the others,” he said, still staring at the water.  “Send them on to Travis.”

“What do you want we should tell them?” Jake asked.

Crock considered it.  “Tell them I have Cartwright with me.  Danny Kidd’s not to know he’s dead, you understand?”  He pinned them with a stare.  “If Kidd finds out, I’ll know who told.”

Lawton nodded – warily.  “Sure thing, Boss.  You coming with us?”

“Not yet.  There’s something I have to take care of.  Tell Mudge I’ll join you later.  Oh, and Lawton?”

The big man had mounted.  He pivoted in the saddle.  “Yeah?”

“I expect Danny Kidd to be waiting for me when I get there.  You think you can hold onto him, seein’ as how the one that was half-dead got away?”

“He’ll be there,” the blond man promised before he and his companion rode away.

Crock stood beside the river with his head down for a full minute, almost like he was praying. When he stirred it wasn’t to return to the camp or to head for Genoa.  Instead, he walked in the opposite direction; upstream, toward the river caves.

That thing he had to attend to?

It was time to make things right.

 

As J. Crockett Murdoch disappeared into the trees, another figure emerged from them and headed for the river.  Ben Cartwright had heard the men beating the bush, looking for his son.  He had heard as well the conversation of the villains who had just left.

The villains who had killed his son.

The rancher’s usual bold stride faltered as he neared the rushing water and gazed upon the torrent it had become.  The late rains, a rock fall – a dam pressed beyond endurance – who knew what had caused it to swell and rage so?  Ben knelt, searching for a sign that his son had been there and found it in the imprint of the boy’s boots on the shore.  Had Little Joe been driven into the surging waves by the evil men who pursued him or, in a last desperate bid for freedom, thrown himself in?

Either way, it was murder.

Even as grief clutched at his heart, threatening to drive the rancher to his knees, a burning hot rage arose within him and drove it back.  They wouldn’t get away with it.  Not one of them!  He would hunt Murdoch and Mudge and the vile men who traveled with them down and make them pay!  Ben staggered as his gaze returned to the water.

But first…

First he had to find his boy.

There was a sharp bend in the river not a mile back.  He’d check there first for the…body.

If the boy…if Little Joe was there…he had one last promise to keep before turning his attentions to his son’s murderers.

That was to see that Joseph Francis Cartwright lay safe for all eternity in his beloved mother’s embrace.

 

TEN

 

“Gol-darnit, Adam!  You done scared ten years of life out of me!”

Adam Cartwright shifted his black hat back on his black hair and gave his brother a weary smile.  “We’re even then,” he replied as he checked his horse and dismounted. “What were you doing kneeling in the middle of the road?”

‘Road’ was a liberal word for what lay before him.  In fact, it was anything but.  He’d nearly run his younger brother down when emerging from the trees that lined the hidden path.

Hoss stood up and dusted off his knees.  “I spotted some tracks.  Thought maybe it was Pa.”

“And was it?” he asked as he came to his brother’s side.

They’d met at dark just as their father commanded, only Pa didn’t show.  When morning arrived and found him still absent, Adam expressed his fear that the older man, like him, had found a false lead and followed it.  After all, only the strongest intuition that something was ‘off’ had kept him from going on alone in search of the owner of that small and precious piece of brown cloth.  Ever the optimist, Hoss disagreed.  ‘I bet Pa’s found Little Joe,’ he said.  ‘Now we just gotta find them both.’  Shortly after that the two of them split up and headed out to begin the day’s search.

“It’s Pa all right.”  Hoss lifted his hat and scratched his thinning hair. “Thing is, I can’t figure how he came to be here.  This ain’t the direction he started off in.  He must have found somethin’ made him come this way.”

“Some…thing,” Adam mused as he stared at the ground and the familiar tracks.  Both he and his brother knew the cut of Buck’s hoof prints as well as they knew turn of the curls on their little brother’s head. The man in black looked up and around.  The place, as a whole, was unremarkable.

What had brought their father here?

Hoss indicated the tracks.  “Looks like he was headed north.”

“The river’s that way.  I wonder if –”  Adam broke off abruptly.  “Listen.  Do you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

The sound came again.  Louder this time.

A horse, whinnying.

They turned in tandem as Chubb whinnied a reply.

“That cain’t be…?”  Hoss grinned.  “It is!  Adam, it’s –“

He finished the sentence.  “Buck!”

From the strength of the call, Pa’s horse was nearby.  As he ran, visions of what he would find on the other side of the trees raced through Adam’s mind – all the way from his little brother and father sitting contentedly beside a campfire and sharing a pot of coffee, to Buck shying and rearing back from a body lying on the ground.

Whether it would be his father or his baby brother’s he had no idea.

Nor did it matter.

The man in black broke through the trees a few seconds before his larger, heavier, brother. What he found when he did, stopped him in his tracks.

Buck.

And only Buck.

“Where do you s’pose Pa is?” Hoss asked as he landed beside him.

Adam  approached their father’s edgy mount with caution.  “Whoa, boy.  Easy.  Easy now.  It’s me.”  He made a kissing noise as he reached for the dangling reins.  “You’re safe now.  Hey, it’s me!”

The buckskin had shied back, wide eyed.

“Be careful, Adam.  He’s awful upset.”

Adam nodded even as he reached out to pat the buckskin’s neck.  “Where’s Pa, boy?  Can you tell me?”

The voice that answered was so utterly weary and doleful that it took him a moment to recognize it.

“I’m here.”

Though he was relieved to find his father alive, Adam was shocked at what he found.  The older man appeared to have been to hell and back.  Pa’s face was unshaven.  His thick white hair, wet and wild.  He was missing his jacket and vest, and his blue work-shirt – what was left of it – was in tatters.  The exposed skin beneath showed traces of blood.  Worse, though, was the look on the older man’s face.

He could only describe it as demoralized.

The man in black glanced at his brother, gave him a reassuring nod, and then headed for their father.  As he drew near, he noted the numerous cuts and scratches on the older man’s face and limbs.  There was a story here.

One he wasn’t certain he wanted to hear.

“Pa?”

His father’s eyes were closed.  The older man shuddered and then opened them and fixed him with a stare so full of despair that he knew his little brother was never coming home again.

Adam swallowed hard.  “J…Joe?”

His father shook his head, and then – like a dead man walking – passed him without a word.

Like a dead man.

 

That night, after choking down a bit of food and enduring a period of forced rest, Pa told his tale.  The up-side of it was, there was nothing to prove Little Joe was dead.

The down-side, of course, was that there wasn’t anything to prove that he wasn’t.

Adam cast a worried glance at his younger brother.  Hoss was pale as a winding sheet.  The big man had taken the news of Joe’s…loss…hard.  And that was what their little brother was – lost.

Gone without a trace.

“I searched the river bank,” Pa said, his voice a bare whisper of its normal strength.  “All day and most of the night, I searched.  I followed the river to the bend and beyond.  I went into the water, I don’t know how many times, and worked my way into jams of bracken and debris.  I even….”  The older man paused.  “There was a body.  A young man…washed along with the debris.”  He glanced up.  “Not Joe.  Thank God, it wasn’t your brother, but….”  Pa closed his eyes and seemed to shrink.  “He was some man’s son.  I…made him a shallow grave beside the riverbank.  I fashioned a cross.  I….”

Adam couldn’t imagine what his father had endured.  “I wish I’d been there,” he said softly.

“No.  No, you don’t.”  Pa put his cup down and rose to his feet.  He took a few steps, but quickly halted – almost as if he had forgotten where he was going.  “It was hard, son.  So hard.  If I could have traded places with that boy, I would have.  He was so young.  Laura.  Your mother…  Hoss’.  All so young”  The older man’s shoulders sagged.  “Young as your brother….”

Hoss spoke up.  “We don’t know Little Joe is dead.”

“Here, I don’t know it.”  Pa’s hand touched his head, and then moved to his heart.  “But here….”

“You cain’t give up, Pa!”  The big man’s eyes filled with tears.  “You just cain’t!”

“I won’t.  I…haven’t.”  The older man turned toward them.  “I’m sorry, son…sons.  I’m…tired.  Tomorrow is a new day….  Tomorrow we’ll begin again.”

“We’ll find him, Pa.  We’ll find little Joe.  I know we will!” his brother declared.

Hoss saw the smile the older man gave him as a sign of encouragement.  Adam knew it for what it was; one of resignation.

Pa had lost hope.

Maybe there was something he could do about that.

Adam cleared his throat.  “I never told you….  I didn’t want to….”  He cleared it again.  “I never told you…about Kane.”

He’d seldom spoken of his time in the desert.  He realized now that was a mistake.

“I had no fear he would take my life.  That wasn’t what Kane was about.”  As he continued, his voice regained some of its strength.  “Peter Kane didn’t want to kill me.  He wanted to break me and to compel me to accept his twisted view of reality as my own.  I…almost did.  I almost forgot that there was…good…in the world.  Good in me.”

”You’re a very good man,” his father said as he returned to his seat by the fire.

Adam snorted.  “I don’t know about the ‘very’ part, but I can accept now that I am a good man – in spite of being the instrument of Kane’s death.”

“He would’a killed you if you hadn’t!” Hoss protested.

“No.  He wouldn’t have done that – at least not intentionally.  Kane was like an infectivity.  If it kills its host, there’s nothing left to feed off of.”  He thought a moment.  “Peter Kane wanted me to live, but to live as a broken man.  A man without hope.”  The man in black sought his father’s gaze.  “Do you remember what you taught us about hope, Pa?”

A tear slid down the older man’s cheek.

“You taught us that we all have an unexpected reserve of strength – of hope – inside us.  I found that reserve.  It brought me out of the desert and back to my family.”  Adam rose and went to his father’s side.  He placed a hand on the older man’s shoulder.  “I remember, Marie had a saying for times like these: ‘Hope is passion for what is possible’.  You didn’t find Joe when you were alone today, Pa.  Maybe that was so we can find him together.”

His father said nothing, but reached up and placed a hand over his.

Hoss sniffed.  “That’s right, Pa.  We’ll find little brother….”

Adam squeezed his father’s hand even as he realized Hoss had left the sentence unfinished.

As their lives would be, should Little Joe have drowned.

 

Joe awoke to the sound of rushing water and was startled when he realized he wasn’t in it.  He was, instead, laying on a cold stone floor, shivering in spite of the fact that it felt like he’d been spitted and left to roast over an open fire in Hell.  When he opened his eyes the room swam before him and, for just a moment, he thought he was wrong – the river wasn’t running somewhere close by, he was in it!

He had been in the river.

Hadn’t he?

The injured man closed his eyes and tried to recall what had happened.  It was hard because his thoughts were as muddled as his skin and clothes were muddied.  There had been men chasing him.  He was sure of it.  Men on horses.  He remembered the sound of the animals breaking through the tall grasses beside him and their rider’s shouts.  They wanted to kill him.

He had to get away!

He took a step toward the river only to realize it was rushing too fast and he was too tired.  The churning water was as much of a death sentence as being taken by the men who hunted him  He’d hesitated on the bank, weighing the choice between drowning and a quick bullet to the brain, and then….

Then….

“Sorry about your head, Cartwright.  You could of made it easier.”

His head?

Joe reached up to find a thick linen strip circling his head and holding his rampant curls in place. When he touched it, pain shot through him; pain strong enough to take his breath away.

The sound of footsteps echoed off the cave walls and a man crouched before him.  “People told me you Cartwrights had thick skulls.  Guess they were right.  Sorry I nearly cracked it.”

It took a moment before the wavering form took shape.

“Bastard,” he snarled.

Crockett Murdoch scoffed. “Is that any way to greet the man who saved your life?”

Joe winced.  The pounding, pulsing pain made it hard to concentrate.  “You…saved me?”

“Sure enough.  I pulled you back from the river’s edge.”  Crock shook his head.  “Fool kid!  You fought me like a tiger.  I had to take you down.  Hit you with the butt of my gun.  If I’d hadn’t, you would have jumped in and drowned.”

“Why?” Joe asked.

“Why what?”

“Why….”  Joe tried to sit up, but decided it wasn’t a good idea.  He held his breath as the world turned end for end and then righted itself again.  When he spoke, his voice had lost much of its strength.

“Why save me?  You made it pretty clear back in the camp that you were going to kill me.”

Crock stood.  ‘I’ve asked myself that, kid, a dozen times or more.  In the end, there’s only one answer: balance.”

“Balance?  What do you mean ‘balance’?”

“You got yourself a Chinaman for a cook in that big house of yours, don’t you?”

Joe was completely thrown off by the change in subject.  What did Hop Sing have to do with the man who had wanted him dead keeping him alive?

“I know you do,” the dark-haired man went on when he failed to reply.  “He must have talked to you about the philosophy of yin and yang.”

His head hurt so badly it was hard to think about anything, let alone Chinese ‘philosophy’. “Yeah.  So….?”

“When the life-force is in balance, things are right.  They flow smoothly.  When it ain’t, everything goes wrong.”  Crock’s visage darkened.  “I got a right to make Danny Kidd pay for what he did.  Ain’t no one can deny it.”

He could – and would have if he could have found the strength.

“But you….”  Crock sighed.  “What I done to you ain’t right.”

Joe’s brows reached for his curls.  “No?”

“No, and I’m payin’ for it.  Things ain’t going right.  So, I gotta make ‘em right.”

Joe’s thinking was slow, but there was one thing he was fast coming to understand – he was dealing with a madman.  There was an upside to that.  If you could get inside a lunatic’s head – figure out what they wanted – you could turn that to your advantage.  Of course, thinking that hard would take energy and he didn’t have any energy.

In fact, he thought he might be dying.

“What do you…?”  Joe paused and regrouped.  “How do you plan on doing that?  Make things right, I mean.”

Crock smiled.

It wasn’t a pretty sight.

“Already done it.  Saved your life, didn’t I?”  The madman jammed a thumb into his chest.  “You got me to thank.  I’m the reason you’re still breathing, Little Joe Cartwright!”

As well as the reason he probably wouldn’t be tomorrow.

Joe wrapped his arm around his waist as a pain shot through his middle.  He could tell something was wrong.  One of the blows he had taken – something Crock had done to him the night before during that last beating – something was working on him, dragging him down and closer to death.

“You’ve killed me, you bastard!” he breathed through gritted teeth.

“Maybe.  Maybe not.”  The dark-haired began to walk away.  “Anyways, I got me things to do, Cartwright.  See you later.”

“You’re…going to leave me here?  Alone?”

He hated how pitiful he sounded.

Crock paused at the cave mouth.  “You got that wrong too, Cartwright.  You ain’t alone.”

Joe raised his head and looked around.  There was nothing to see but shadows and the silhouette of his tormentor.  “You’re insane!” he spat.  “There’s no one here.”

Murdoch chuckled.  “And here I thought you Cartwrights were God-fearin’ men.  I’m leaving you with your Maker, kid.  It’s up to God now whether you live or die.”  The madman rubbed one palm against the other.  “My hands are clean.”

Then, he disappeared.

Joe closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and sat up.  Well, half-sat up – at least far enough that he could see outside.  What little light remained was blood-red, indicating the sun had set and the day would soon be over.  He must have been unconscious for hours.  Now that Crock was gone, all he had to think about was the pickle he found himself in.  He had no idea where he was.  Somewhere along the river since he could hear it, but where?  There were dozens of caves along it.  Just how far had Murdoch dragged him?

And even more important – was there anything he could do about it?

Joe’s gaze went to his feet.  They were free, as were his hands.  If he could summon the energy, he could just get up and walk home.  Then again, that was probably why Crock had left him unbound: he knew full well that he had no energy.  Something inside of him was broken.  His ribs, most likely, which was no big deal – unless one of the broken ends had punctured something.  His temperature was rising, so infection was setting in.  Joe swallowed hard.  He was a son of the West and he knew what that meant – time was short.  If he didn’t do something soon, his fever would spike and he would become delirious.  Probably pass out too.  Wild-eyed, he looked around.  The shadows were gaining on him.  No one would find him hunched in the back of the cave.

He was gonna die here.

Unless he got outside.

That day the bronco threw him, his brothers had rushed to help.  After making sure he wasn’t hurt too badly, they’d lifted him to his feet and supported him until they reached the house.  Pa started shouting the minute the door opened, sending Hop Sing running for hot water, herbs, and bandages, and Adam for the doctor.  That left Hoss.  He’d protested mightily when the big man insisted on carrying him up the stairs, but had secretly enjoyed it, relishing his brother’s touch as well as the comfort and reassurance it offered.  Joe looked at the hollow of hellish light before him.  The cave-mouth was fifty, maybe sixty feet away.

He would have given anything for his brother to carry him now.

Slowly, painfully, the wounded man dropped to the cold stone floor.  Joe stretched out his left hand and sought a finger-hold and used it to draw his body forward a couple of inches.  Then he repeated the action with the right.  Once.  Twice.  Three times.

Four.

Each time, the pain increased.  Each time it grew more intense, until his heart hammered in his chest and knocked against his breastbone like death calling.  Still, he wouldn’t give up.  He couldn’t give up.  Determined, Joe dragged his weary body forward – inch by inch, bit by bit – until the sun drew its last gasp and darkness fell.

No, it wasn’t darkness.

This time, he welcomed the black wave like an old friend.

 

Sometime later, Joe opened his eyes.  At first he had no idea where he was – then the only ‘idea’ he had was surprise.

He was still alive!

A groan escaped his lips.  Now, he remembered.  He’d been crawling, trying to make his way out of the cave so someone could find him.  Sadly, he’d fallen far short of his goal.  There had to be twenty, maybe thirty feet yet to go.  He had to move.  Now.  Lift your hand.  Find a finger-hold.  Use it….

Joe’s head dropped back to the stone floor.  ‘Face it, Cartwright, you’re done,’ he thought.  ‘You’re not going to make it.’

His lips ate dirt as he whispered, “Sorry, Pa.  I can’t….”

‘Yes, you can, Joseph.”

What was that?

Joe lay still a moment, and then lifted his head to look.  What he saw made him question his sanity.  He’d heard that when you were dying your life flashed before your eyes, but he’d never believed it.

“Mama?”

His mother was standing in the cave mouth, her arms outstretched toward him.  Beside her was a man – a tall, commanding, and familiar man.  His father stepped forward.

“That’s it, son,” he said,  “You can do it.”

“Non!” his mama exclaimed as she started forward.  “Benjamin, no!  He will fall!”

His father caught his mother’s arm and held her back.  “Leave the boy be.”

She turned toward him.  “But mon cher…. Mon petite Joseph needs me!”

His father’s tone was kind – but firm.  “A child’s first steps must be taken alone.  It is the only way he will figure out where he needs to go and who he needs to be.”  The younger version of the man he knew  looked directly at him.  “Son, you have it in you.  You can do this.  Don’t let it concern you that you have failed.  Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.”

Joe’s head had slowly returned to the stone.  Weary, he closed his eyes for a moment.  When he opened them again, the vision was gone.

His father’s words remained.

He lay there a moment and then raised up and eyed the cave mouth.

Third or fourth?  Joe snorted.  Try ninth or tenth.

The wounded man closed his eyes again, and then reopened them with determination.  He planted his hands on the cave floor, drew a deep breath, and pushed himself up into a seated position.  Once he’d gathered enough strength, he stood up.

Then, he grinned.

And then, with the same lack of grace he’d had when he took his first steps under the watchful eyes of his parents, Joe Cartwright staggered out of the cave and into the night.

 

“Pa?”

Ben Cartwright started and turned to find his oldest son standing behind him.  He’d left their makeshift camp about an hour before.  Both Adam and Hoss had been asleep, or so he assumed.  He’d tried to sleep, but thoughts of his youngest son crowded it out and so he rose, determined to find a secluded place where he could talk things over with God.  That was what he did when he was troubled.  Some people called it prayer and he supposed he should too, but ‘prayer’ seemed too calm – too inactive a word for what he ended up doing.

Ben chuckled.

“Something funny?” Adam asked.

“I was thinking about prayer.”

His oldest was a believer, he was sure, though Adam kept just what he believed close to his chest.  “Oh?  Not praying?  Just thinking about it?”

The older man turned back to the vista spread out before him.  “In New England, where I grew up, we were taught reverential prayer.  My family had a pew – all families did.  Every Sunday morning and evening we were there with our hearts humbled, our heads bowed, and our lips tightly closed.  God was to be feared.”

“Not loved?”

Ben looked at his son.  “Do you love me?”

“Of course.”

“And do you fear me?”

Adam smiled.  “Of course.  Though not as much as I used to.”

“The God of my childhood failed me when I came out West,” he admitted, his tone soft and a little sad.  “You witnessed it and I’m sorry that you did.  I became a hard, embittered man.  That God was meant for safer, saner places.  Not for this wilderness.”

Adam came to stand beside him.  “But you found Him again.”

“Not again.  Anew.”

“How ‘anew’?”

“Listen.”  He indicated the wilderness around them.  “What do you hear?”

“Other than Hoss snoring?  Nothing…and everything.”

Ben nodded.  “Exactly. “‘And he said, ‘Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord’. And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord.  But the Lord was not in the wind.  And after the wind an earthquake.  But the Lord was not in the earthquake.  And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire….”

Adam completed it for him.  “And after the fire a still small voice.”

“And the Lord was in the still small voice.”  The rancher stood.  He placed a hand over his son’s heart.  “This is where God resides.  He is with us in everything.  His desire is to know everything about us, including the things that are not pretty.  God wants us to be honest with him.  If we hurt, He wants to know.  If we are angry or confused, or even doubting, He wants his children to tell him.”

“Are you doubting, Pa?”

“No.”  A slow smile curled his lips.  “But I did give Him a piece of my mind.”

His eldest turned back to the view.  “Little Joe is out there somewhere, Pa.  I’m sure of it.  If he was….”  The boy winced.  “I’d know somehow, that’s all.”

Ben moved his hand to his son’s shoulder.  “Yes.  I agree.  I’m…sorry for my behavior earlier.”

“You were tired.”

“I was…”  He cleared his throat.  “I have to admit, I’d lost my way,”  The rancher gestured toward the stars.  “I found here out here, where I always do.”

“It is beautiful.”

Ben sensed something in his son’s voice.  “But you’d prefer to sit in one of those stuffy New England churches, wouldn’t you?”

Adam shrugged.  “Maybe someday.  Right now, all I want to do is to find that little scamp and give him a piece of my mind.”

The rancher tapped his son’s shoulder and headed toward their camp.

It was his prayer as well.

 

ELEVEN

 

Early the next morning a little bird, winging its way joyously over the trees, remarked to itself on the unusual amount of activity in the forest.  A trio of men followed the river, making their way slowly and surely – and it seemed to her, sadly – north.  At the opposite end of the fast running water, near the hills where the grass was sweet and the berries thick and filling, a single man walked with his head down, as if lost in thought.  What did he contemplate on such a fine morning, the bird wondered?  Did he, like she, glory in the new day?  Or did he, perhaps, consider the Hand that made him; the One that raised the sun and set the moon in the sky?  She thought not.  She was sure his thoughts were of a darker nature, for she had seen this man the night before enter one of the river caves, dragging another man behind him.

Last night he had the look of a fat fox pleased with its kill.

It took the bird little time to cover the vast area that comprised her home, tilting, flying, winging this way and that, as she sought sustenance for her fledglings.  While she flew, she asked the One who held all creatures in His hands to watch over the injured man and to direct his family to him.  She asked as well that the men prowling beyond her trees would not find him first.  She did not like the look of these men.  Like a great cat they came with teeth and claws bared.  She had seen their kind before.

Their only thought was to find their prey and kill.

Weary from her journey, the little bird alighted on a branch and took to preening her feathers.  As she tugged at a particularly stubborn one, a man appeared beneath her, startling her so she almost fell to the earth.  He was young and had hair the color of the earth.  ‘This is the great cat’s prey,’ she thought.  She did not know him, but the One who created her had created him as well, and so she called out a warning.

The man looked up at the sound and gave her a smile.  “Well, hello…little one.  How are you this…fine morning?”

She chirruped a hasty reply, wishing him on his way.

“I sure wish…you could loan me…your wings,” the man said, breathing heavily.  “If I had wings, I could fly away from…those fellers and….I could find my friend.  Say, maybe you’ve seen him?  He’s a handsome devil with curly brown hair and eyes green as God’s good earth.”

Excited, the little bird danced on the branch.  He’d described the injured man.

Had her prayer been answered so soon?

‘He’s here!’ She sang as she rose from the branch and winged toward the hills.  ‘Here!  In the cave!’

The young man smiled and shook his head.  “Sure wish I talked bird,” he muttered as he turned away.

‘No!’ she chirped as she rode the air back to the tree.  ‘This way!’

Too late.

He was gone.

With great sorrow, the little bird returned to her branch.  The prowling men were moving into the trees.  It would not be long before they showed their faces.  Should she fly to the cave and warn the one who had been left behind, she wondered?

Would he listen?

But no, she had her own fledglings to look after.  Even now the warm wind carried their hungry voices to her.

With a wing and a prayer, the bird took off.

A prayer that the One who lay within the cave would not, in the end, fatten the stomach of either the great cat or hungry fox.

 

Danny paused to place his hands on his knees and draw in several long breaths.  He’d been running hard for what seemed like hours.  He’d made good his escape just after sun-down.  Mudge’s men – ex-prison guards, disgraced deputies, and the like – were not used to waiting.  The power they wielded had made them impatient.  When they shouted ad order, it was to be instantly obeyed.  ‘Jump!’ they would bellow and a dozen men, fear in their voices, would ask, ‘How high?!’  No more than an hour passed before one brought out a bottle, and then another, another bottle, and they began to polish off their impatience with coffin varnish.  He’d waited until they were dead drunk and then run.  He’d hoped for at least a few hours lead, but it seemed one of them hadn’t been quite as drunk as he thought.

That, or they had to take a piss.

Anyhow, he had youth and longer legs as well as sobriety on his side.  Then again, being awakened in the middle of the night and ordered onto your horse could sober up a man mighty fast.  Danny chuckled.

Whether or not one of the guards had taken a piss, they were all sure as Hell pissed at him now!

The long, lanky man straightened up and looked around.  He’d done a lot of range-roaming since coming to the Cartwright spread.  Of course, most of the time he’d been in the company of a thousand head of beef and it was mighty hard for a man to do any sight-seeing when he was riding herd.  There was a river nearby.  He could hear it rushing by.  Danny turned and looked back the way he’d come, toward the tree where he and the little bird had had their conversation.  Behind the tree was a range of low hills.

Come to think of it, they looked kind of familiar.

He took a few steps toward the river to his right, but halted a dozen feet away from it and looked to the left.  Sure enough there was a funny formation of rocks that looked like a cowpoke wearin’ a hat, sittin’ in whorehouse bathtub.  He had a sudden flash of Joe Cartwright pointing at the rocks and making a comment that would have set steam coming out of his pa’s ears.  When he told him that, Joe had laughed and laughed.

Danny laughed too.

He knew where he was.

Back the way he had come – past the little bird’s tree and up in those hills – were a series of caves.  Most of them were shallow, though one or two were deep enough that the older Cartwright boys had been able to convince their baby brother if he kept on going long enough he’d end up eating supper with Hop Sing’s family in China.  He felt drawn to them.  After all, a trip to China would be preferable to a trip to Hell, which was where Mudge and his men meant to send him.  The problem was, the caves were the first place Travis would think to look for him.  Anyhow, saving his own hide wasn’t why he’d escaped.  Escaping was about getting back to Joe.  He meant to free his friend no matter what.  Before he could, one of two things had to happen – J, Crockett Murdoch had to die or he did.

And he didn’t want to die.

Danny scratched his chin.  He ‘d feel bad about killin’ Murdoch, of course.  He was the cause of Cass’ death, after all, which gave Crock the right to kill him.  An eye for an eye and all that.  The problem was Murdoch didn’t want to kill him, he wanted to kill Joe, and Joe wasn’t guilty of any crime other than being his friend.

The ex-convict remained where he was for several heartbeats, considering his options, and then he started to run again – away from the river caves and the shelter they offered.  After all, this wasn’t about shelter.

As J. Crockett Murdoch would put it.

This was about balance.

 

Hoss Cartwright felt a hand on his arm and then a quick tug threw him off balance and caused him stumble back into the trees.

He glared at his brother.  ‘Dagnabit, Adam, what -?”

Adam pressed a finger to his lips and inclined his head toward the river.

The big man looked through the fringe of leaves that partially obscured his view and frowned.  Someone dressed just like the dead man he’d found the day before was standing by the water.

And he wasn’t alone.

Hoss’ gun left its holster as he dropped the ground beside his brother.  “Mudge?”

“Think so,” Adam replied tersely.  “Looks to be a half-dozen men.”

He counted heads.  “At least.  More like a dozen, maybe.”

The men were watering their horses and talking among themselves.

“From the look of them horses, they’ve been ridin’ hard,” he remarked.

Adam nodded.  “Hunting someone.”

“Who?”  Hoss looked again.  He’d counted eight men and at least twice as many guns.  “Little Joe, you think?”

“Could be.”

The big man glanced over his shoulder.  “Where do you suppose Pa is?”

They’d split up earlier after they found signs indicating someone had dragged something heavy along the ground and then up, toward the hills.  Pa insisted on goin’ alone to check it out.  He said it would take two of them to keep up the search along the river.  Truth to tell, they both thought he was just done tired of lookin’ at the water where he thought his son had drowned.

“Hopefully he’s well out of this.”  Adam shifted and his gun appeared in his hand.  “We don’t need him taken and held as hostage against us.”

“You mean, it’d be Little Joe or him, or somethin’ like that?”

“I don’t know what I mean and I don’t want to find out.”  His brother caught his wrist.  “Look!”

Another man had joined the ones by the river.  He was of an average height and build, with straight brown hair, and was dressed like a feller who worked in a city.  There weren’t nothin’ remarkable about him ‘ceptin’ for the way he held himself like he was someone.  Travis Mudge had been leanin’ over the water, splashin’ water in his face.  When he turned and found the other man behind him, he had a ‘look’.

Kind of like the ones on the faces of the prisoners he was used to bullyin’.

“You know him?” Hoss asked his brother.

Adam’s lips were a tight line.  “Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

His brother reached inside his coat and fished around.  A few seconds later, his hand reappeared with a folded paper in it.  He handed it to him.

Staring back at him from the wanted poster was the face of a man; an ordinary-lookin’ man ‘cept for his eyes, which belonged to a jackal.  The big man read the words under the sketch.  The outlaw had a lot of names and was wanted for a lot of things, includin’ extortion and murder.

“You think that’s him?”

“J. Crockett Murdoch.”  Adam breathed the name like a curse.  “That’s him.  I’m certain of it.”

“How?”

“I just am.”

Hoss remembered all the things Adam had told them Jethro Murdoch.  None of it was good, and all of it spelled trouble for their missing little brother.

“You’re thinkin’ he had somethin’ to do with Little Joe goin’ missin’?”

The look his brother gave him told him Adam thought that – and more.

“We need to talk to him.”

Hoss frowned.  He glanced off into the distance. “What about Pa?”

“We just have to hope that Pa does what he said – that he heads up into the hills to check out the caves.”  Adam shifted his grip.  Hoss noted his brothers fingers were white-knuckled on his gun.

“What are you plannin’ on doin’?”

Adam looked right at him.

“Something Pa would definitely not approve of.”

 

Crock shifted his gaze from the fleshy face of Travis Mudge to the men who traveled with him, and then to their horses.  Most had a rider.

None of them were the rider he wanted to see.

Before he could ask where Danny Kidd was, Mudge started to yammer.  “Crock, before you go off half-cocked, you gotta listen to me!”

One brown brow cocked toward his hairline like a trigger.  “I’m listening.”

“I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it.  It was them!”  Mudge thrust his arm out, pointing at the brood of miscreants he traveled with.  “They all got stinkin’ drunk and let him get away!”

“I see.  And where were you?”

“I was in Genoa making sure everything was ready, just like I knew you would want me to.”

“So…”  Crock indicated Travis’ men who, by now, had caught wind something was up and were watching them.  “Which one of these ‘stinking drunks’ did you leave in charge of Danny Kidd?”

“Well…well, it’s like this….” Travis stammered.  “Kind of…all of them.”

Crock nodded as he moved between the men who were dismounted.  “All of them?  How many’s that?  Looks to be about a dozen here.  A dozen ex-prison guards and they couldn’t keep hold of one prisoner?”  He whirled to face Travis.  “Maybe that’s why they’re ‘ex’ guards.”

Mudge was watching him closely.  “You don’t seem mad, Crock.  I thought you’d be mad.”

“Mad?  Me?”  He stopped in front of Travis.  “Heck no, I’m not mad.  You see, I’m a man who believes things happen for a reason.”

The piggy man eyed him warily.  “What kind of…reason?”

Crock shrugged.  “A bird falls so a cat can eat.  A cat eats, and a dog has his supper.  The dog sleeps when it’s full, so it’s barking doesn’t wake it master.”  The muscle at the edge of his right eye twitched.  “Don’t you want to know what happens because the dog doesn’t bark?”

“Okay.  Sure,” Travis bit.  “What happens because the dog doesn’t bark?”

No one saw him draw the gun, but they saw the bullet enter Travis’ gut and heard the splash as his corpse broke the surface of the water.  With the weapon still smoking, Crock turned to the ex-prison guard closest to him.

“Have you figured out what happened to the master when the dog didn’t bark?”

The outlaw swallowed hard over his fear.  “He…died?”

Crock stepped up and patted his cheek.  “Smart man.”

 

Adam Cartwright looked back the way they had come.  “Did you hear that?”

“Sure did.  Sounds like gunfire,” Hoss said.  “You want I should go back and see?”

“No.  It’s best we stay here.  It’s too risky.”

They’d moved to a place of shelter to wait.  It was his hope that Crock would leave the other men and set out alone, so they could follow him.  He was betting the outlaw had Little Joe hidden somewhere around here and would want to check on him before returning to camp.  If not, they would need to capture him somewhere along the way and question him.

“I ain’t so sure,” Hoss countered.  “I think we need to know what’s happenin’ back there.  What if…?  I mean, Little Joe could’a been with those bad men.  We might just not have seen him.  What if he’s in the middle of all that shootin’?”

“We would have seen him,” he replied, his tone grim.  “One of them, Travis or Murdoch, would have been…well….”

“You mean you think they would have hurt him?”

“Sadly, yes,” he admitted with a sigh.  “There’s more going on here than just a simple kidnapping or ransom.  Lessy told me Murdoch is obsessed with the idea of balance – tit for tat, an eye for an eye, that kind of thing.”

“What’s Little Joe got to do with that?”

“In Murdoch’s mind Joe’s friendship with Danny has made him a viable target.  Lessy explained his method of operation.  Crock would have watched the Ponderosa for some time before hatching his scheme.  He would have seen how close Joe and Danny were.  When he saw that, he decided to use Joe to get Danny to do what he wanted.”

“What does he want?  I just ain’t gettin’ it.  Wouldn’t Murdoch want Danny dead?”

The man in black pursed his lips.

Would that evil was so simple.

“To be honest, Hoss, I don’t have an answer.  All I know is, we have to talk to him.  If anyone knows what’s happened to Joe, I’d place my money on it being Jethro Crockett Murdoch.”

The big man growled.  “If that varmint has hurt Little Joe, I’ll break him in two!”

That was another thing Pa would not approve of.

If Murdoch had hurt – or killed – Little Joe.

He’d sit back and watch.

 

Ben Cartwright halted to push his hat back and look at the sky.  The sun was low on the horizon.  The light it cast was meager; its shadows, long and lean.

And hungry.

He’d hated to leave his sons behind, but what he said was true – it would take more than one of them to search the river bank and its surrounds.  He’d spent the last day and a half doing just that and, to tell the truth, even the sound of the running water made him heartsick.  Here in the hills, Little Joe had a chance.  If he found his son here, he might be wounded or sick or both. Joe might even be…dead.  But he wouldn’t be drowned.  The rancher passed a hand over his eyes.  He’d seen drowned men before and, as the search continued, the image of his brilliant, vibrant, and ebullient son had given way to one of Joe’s bloated corpse floating face-up in brackish water, silent and still.

In other words, he was a coward.

While he traveled, first on horseback and then on foot, the worried father had carried on one of his ‘conversations’ with God.  While the temptation was to rail against fate and to beg and plead for his son’s safe return, he resisted.  Instead, he thanked his Heavenly father for his life, for the three wives with whom he’d been blessed, and for the sons each had given him.  He offered praise for his land and his life, and for all of the blessings that had been heaped upon him.  Then, and only then, did he ask his Father in Heaven for what he wanted.  ‘Surrender’ was a word that was hard for a man like him to stomach, but that was what a Godly man was meant to do.  He had to yield; to give up control of everything.

Did he want his son’s safe return?  Did he want to find Joseph hale and whole and blessedly alive?

Yes.

But did he have to…?

If he’d been able to answer that question with a ‘no’ when he was young, he would not have become the bitter, hardened man his eldest son remembered from his childhood.

A man who had given his child scars of his own to overcome.

Did he have to find Joseph alive – did his faith in God rely upon it?

The rancher puffed out a breath.  The answer was, perhaps, not as sure and resounding a ‘no’ as the Almighty might have liked, but it was ‘no’ nonetheless.

“Still,” Ben breathed as he lifted his eyes to the heavens.  “Maybe just this time, I can have what I want?”

His journey had brought him to the base of the first of the river caves.  There were a series of them strung out along the water’s route.  They’d been favorite haunts of his sons when they were young.  A few of them were deep and frightened him, but he’d trusted Adam well enough to know he wouldn’t lead his younger brothers into peril.  If there was one blessing in his life, perhaps even greater than his three sons, it was his sons’ love for one another. All that had occurred this last six months had driven them apart for a time, but he knew now there was nothing that could keep them apart.

Like that bundle of sticks he showed his boys, their family was stronger because of what they’d overcome.

The rancher halted again, this time to get his bearings.  The light was almost gone.  It would be useless, as well as dangerous, to continue the hunt after dark and he needed to look for shelter.  The entrance to the cave was somewhere close by, most likely hidden by underbrush.  On impulse, Ben put his hands to his mouth and shouted.

“Joseph?  Joseph, are you here?  It’s Pa!”  The anxious father waited, his heart in his throat.  “Little Joe?”

To his surprise, he heard a sound.  It was bestial – almost feral – in nature.

Ben took a few steps forward and called out again.  “Joseph?  Are you here, boy?”

This time, there were words.

“Here.  Over…here.”

The rancher’s heart pounded against his breast bone.  “Where?  Son, where are you?” he called out as he began to run.  The cry had come from his right.  Just as a cave mouth yawned before him, he heard it again.

“Here…  Please….”

Ben sensed movement to his left, in the brush beside the cave.  He carried a lantern, but had not kindled it for fear of being seen.  He did so now and lifted it high above his head.  With his free hand, the rancher parted the waist-high grasses.

“Joseph, boy, I’m –”

The sound of a cocked trigger made him tagger back.

The gun in it was pointed straight at him.

“Sorry, old man,” Bob Stevens said as he emerged from the cover of the leaves.  “You’ll have to settle for…me.”

 

Travis Mudge was dead.  So were his men.

Crockett Murdoch kicked the boot of the corpse closest to him. Then he sneered.

Miscreants, the lot of them.  All a waste of space.

His own men had come along shortly after he’d dumped Mudge in the muddy waters.  He’d known they were coming, of course.  One of them brought word before he confronted the men on the beach.  Together, they’d made short work of the slaughter.

Now, it was time to find Danny Kidd.

The ex-con was close by, he knew it.  There was no way Kidd would desert Joe Cartwright.  He wouldn’t even need tracks to follow.  The ex-con was an animal, bred by the system.  All he needed was his wits and the keen sense of survival one developed and honed to razor sharpness behind bars.  The thing he had to decide, was how and where the confrontation was gonna occur.  He could wait here for Kidd to find him, or he could go back to where he’d left Joe.  If God was on his side, the next time he and his brother’s killer locked eyes, it would be over Cartwright’s rotting corpse.

Balance.

Crock sneered.

The Almighty had the best sense of it of all.

“Crock?”

He turned to find Asa Teller coming up behind him.  He was one of his now.  Teller’s hatred of Mudge had grown after Bob Stevens’ disappearance.  Asa was sure one of Travis’ men killed his pal.

“Yeah?”

“What do you want we should do with the bodies?”

He wanted to feed them to the fishes, but figured a dozen bodies floating downstream might just attract attention.

“Something funny, Crock?”

“Bury them deep somewhere where no one will find them.”  He kicked one of the corpses again.  “I’d help, but I gotta go.”

“Go where?  If you’re going after Danny Kidd, I’m comin’ with you.”

Crock blinked.  “Says who?”

“Says me!  If it hadn’t been for that convict, Bob would still be breathing.  He’s gotta pay!”

Teller had changed.  He was no longer the milksop he’d been in Stevens’ shadow.

He wasn’t sure he liked it.

“Kidd is mine.  I got prior claim.”

The cowboy sneered.  “Okay by me.  All I ask is that you let me watch.”

Crockett Murdoch chortled, and then placed a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “If you ask nice, I might even let you toss in the first handful of dirt.”

 

Danny Kidd was on his way back to the river.  Halfway to the camp, he’d rethought his decision.  The last time he’d seen Joe Cartwright, the cowboy had been unconscious; beaten senseless and dangling from a tree.  There was no way out – no hope of escape.

But this was Joe Cartwright.

Joe would have found a way, and if Joe found a way, he would have had to head somewhere safe.  On that trip they took to the river, Joe had stopped and pointed up to one of caves.  ‘It’s be a great place to hide,’ he’d said.  ‘No one would find you there.”

Joe was there now.

He was sure of it.

The light was gone by the time the hills came into view.  Danny had just jogged passed the little bird’s tree when he heard a familiar sound – hoof beats.  A lot of hoof beats.  He ducked down behind a bush just in time to avoid a group of nine or ten men.  He recognized them as they passed.  They were the men who traveled with Crock; the ones who’d been in the camp.

Joe wasn’t with them.

What that meant and what it didn’t, he wasn’t sure.  The only thing the ex-convict was sure of, was that he’d made the right choice.  It looked like Joe had escaped and the men were hunting him – here, near the caves.

Once the party had passed, Danny rose to his feet and stepped onto the path.  As he did, a small bird took flight.  Winging overhead, she chittered and chirruped and then headed up into the hills.

This time he was gonna follow her.

“Hang on, Joe,” Danny said as he began to climb.  “Hang on, friend.  I’m on my way.”

 

TWELVE

 

“Put the light on the ground.  Throw your gun over there, and then back away.”

Ben did as he was ordered. He placed the lantern on the grass, tossed his gun into the shadows cast by the trees, and then raised his hands and took a step back.

“Look, Bob.  I don’t know what’s happened and I don’t care.  All I care about is finding my son.”

Stevens held one hand to his side.  Both his white shirt and his fingers were black with blood.  “Who’s with you?” he demanded as he took a halting step forward.  “Travis?  Crock?”

“I assure you I am alone.”  Ben kept his voice even; calm.  “You’re not thinking straight.  Why would I be with the men who took Little Joe?”

“Little Joe.”  Bob sneered.  “The last time I saw him, he didn’t look so good.”

“What did you do to him?”

“Gave that uppity, smart-mouthed, rich kid what he deserved.”

Swallowing his rage – and his fear for his son – the rancher replied, “Look, Bob.  You’re hurt.  Badly, from the look of it.”  He lowered his hands.  “Let me help.”

“Get your hands up, old man, and keep them up!”

“All right.”  Ben raised his hands. “Now what?”

Bob blinked.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean, now, what?  We stand here like this until you bleed out?”

“I’m fine,” he insisted.

“No.  You’re not. And you know you’re not.”  He indicated the wound.  “What happened?”

“Crock sent me off with Travis’ men. Told me to keep an eye on them.”  Bob coughed.  He struggled for air for before continuing.  “I caught two of them scheming.  They were gonna go to Genoa and tell the sheriff everything.  I got one of them.”  He snorted.  “The other one got me.”

That must have been the prison guard whose corpse Hoss stumbled upon.  “What happened after that?”

“What do you think happened?  I ran!  I figured I’d hide out until Travis and Murdoch were gone, but then you came along.”  Bob waved the gun.  “What do you suppose I should do with you?”

“You’re gonna…let him go.”

Stevens froze at the voice.   Ben did too.

No. It couldn’t be.

He heard a trigger cock, and then a man stepped out of the shadows.

It took Ben a moment to realize it was his son.

Joe was holding his gun.

“Joseph, no!” he declared.

“Stay where you are, old man!” Bob Stevens shouted. The gun he held moved back and forth between him and Little Joe, as if the injured man couldn’t decide who was the greatest threat.

His youngest took a step.  “Put the gun down, Bob, or I’ll blow a hole through you.”

Stevens scoffed.  “What we got here is a standoff, Little Joe.  You shoot me, I shoot your old man.  That what you want?”

Obviously Stevens couldn’t see what he could see.  That, or he didn’t know his son like he did.  Joseph was barely on his feet.  Even in the dim light the signs of past abuse were evident.  His face was swollen; the skin bruised.  His pallor rivaled that of a corpse.

Still, somehow, the boy held himself together.

Most likely by sheer grit.

“I want you to…put the gun down and go, Bob,” Joe said as he took another step.  “Go now, and don’t look back.”

“Like you’ll let me go.  I know you Cartwrights!  You’ll….”

“Little Joe is right, Bob.  Go now and I promise we’ll say nothing.”  His eyes flicked to his son.  Joe had begun to tremble.  He was breathing rapidly.  “We’ll give you a day before alerting Roy.  Two.  You can…”

A sudden cry stopped him.  Joe clutched his side and dropped to his knees.

Somehow, he managed to keep hold of the gun.

Ben whirled to face his former ranch hand.  “Bob, please.  Let me go to Joe.  He’s just a boy.”

Stevens was not doing so well himself.  His side was black with blood now and he was listing to the left.  For the longest time he said nothing.  Then, “You get that gun and throw it to me, or I’ll shoot him down where he stands.”

Ben inclined his head in thanks and hastened to his son’s side.  Once there, he took the gun from the boy’s near lifeless fingers and tossed it at Stevens’ feet.  Then he caught him up in his arms.  At first Joe said nothing.  Only when he brushed the curls from his son’s fevered forehead did he stir and open his eyes.

“Hey, Pa….”

“Hey, yourself.  You gave me quite a fright.  What did you think you were doing, coming out of the trees like that?”

“I had to…needed to know you…were okay.”

His son’s voice was rough with pain.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, almost dreading the answer.

“I….”  Joe caught his hand and then did something that startled him – he smiled.  “Did you tell Mama?  She’ll…be happy.  I learned…to walk….”

Ben’s heart sank.  He turned toward Stevens who still held them in his sites.  “He’s delirious, Bob!  Joe needs help.  Buck is just at the bottom of the hill.  Let me take him and….”

Hope lit the outlaw’s eyes.  “You got a horse?  Here?”

He nodded, reluctantly.  “Yes.”   Ben swallowed hard at the betrayal.  “Take him.  Go!  Just let me look after my boy.”

“A horse.”  The gun dropped as Bob muttered to himself.  “A…horse.  I got…a chance.”

Ben’s hands moved over his son, seeking the source of the infection that burned through him.  He was horrified by what he found.  There were so many injuries!  He’d obviously been beaten severely, and more than once.  Joe’s ribs were broken and his abdomen – it was tight.

“Pa!” Joe tossed his head and cried out at his touch.  “Pa….  Mama!  Gotta tell Mama….”

“Shh, boy.  It will be all right.”  The rancher looked up.  Bob Stevens gait was halting, but he was on the move.  “Please!” Ben cried out.  “Please find Hoss and Adam and send them here!  Bob!  For the love of God –”

A shot rang out, stopping him in mid-sentence.

Bob halted.  He stared off into the distance and then turned to look at him.

Then, he fell.

“Well, well, what do we have here?” a cool voice asked as a man stepped into the clearing.  He looked at Joe and then at him and said, “Let me guess, you’re Ben Cartwright.”

Joe roused enough to catch his sleeve.  He tugged, seeking his attention.   “Murdoch, Pa….  That’s…Crock….”

Ben considered the source of all their woes.  Jethro Crockett Murdoch was an ordinary-looking man, expect for his eyes, which were hard and cold as iron.  The outlaw gave Bob Steven’s body a kick before stepping over it and coming to his side.

Murdoch indicated Joe with a nod.  “You breed them tough, Cartwright.  Who wouldn’t guessed ol’ Joe would still be hanging on.  I thought when I left him, he was a goner.”

“You left Joe here, in this condition?” he asked, incredulous.  “Alone?”

“Not alone.  Never alone.”  Crock scoffed.  “Like I told the kid, I left him in the hands of God.”

“You left my son to die!”

Murdoch sighed.  “You gotta understand, Ben.  It’s all about balance.”

His hand was on his son’s forehead.  The boy was burning up.  He had to get him help – and soon!

“What do you mean, ‘balance’?” he snapped.

“Balance.  Yin and yang, you know?  I wanted Danny Kidd to suffer.  That ex-con, well, he don’t care about himself.”  Crock snorted.  “But he cares about your son.”

“You’re sick!” Ben breathed between clenched teeth.

“No.  No, I’m not.  Danny killed my brother, Cass, so Danny had to pay.  That’s balance.  It just happened, the best way to make him pay was to use your son.  Everything was perfect, but then I got to second-guessing myself.”  He inclined his head toward the ground.  “Joe here didn’t commit any crime.  Where was the balance in that?”  Crock scoffed. “So, you know what I did?”

He glared at the other man.

“I rescued him.  After deciding I would kill him, I saved your son’s life and brought him here.”  The madman shrugged.  “I decided to leave it up to God.”  Those wicked eyes widened.  “Then, this morning, you know what happened?”

“What?”

Crock produced a gun and pointed it at his son’s head.  “God told me I’d been right all along.  He does want Joe to die.”

“No!”  Ben shifted and placed himself between the barrel and his boy.  “God doesn’t want my son to die!”

Crock’s finger pulled back on the trigger.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

Ben rose to his feet.  “If you must kill someone, kill me.”

“Well now, Mister Cartwright, that’s mighty generous of you, but…sorry.  That’s not the way it works.  An eye for an eye.  A life for a life.  A brother for a brother.”  An insane sneer curled Crock’s lips.  “That’s what I call balance.”

“You’re wrong, Crock.  Dead wrong.”

The voice came out of nowhere.  Ben recognized it immediately.  Joe did too and the boy became agitated.   Weak as he was, he struggled to rise.  “No!  Danny!  No….”

Ben knelt and stopped him.

“If you’re looking for balance,” Danny Kidd said as he approached.  “You’re not going to find it by killin’ Joe Cartwright.”

Crock faced Danny now.  “You sayin’ you know better than God, Kidd?”

Ben had begun to move.  Danny fixed him with a stare and shook his head.

‘Leave this to me,’ it said.

The ex-convict halted in front of the man who hated him.  “Tell me this, Crock.  How do you know God wants Joe dead?”

“How?  Because He told me.”

“Is that so?”  Danny huffed.  “Well, do you know what God told me?  God told me you got it wrong. Cass will never rest in peace if you kill Little Joe Cartwright.  All you’re gonna do, Crock, is lay Joe’s murder on your brother’s eternal soul.”

Ben placed his hand on his son’s chest.   He could feel Joe’s heartbeat. It was weak and thready, but it was there.

Attempted, he corrected silently.

‘Attempted’ murder.

“No,” Crock countered. “I’m gonna free Cass.”

Danny went nose to nose with the madman.  “I got a question for you.  You gonna answer it?”

“Sure.  What do you want to know?”

“Tell me.  How come Cass ended up in the poorhouse?”

Murdoch faltered.  “Because…because our parents were dead –”

Danny shook his head.  “No.  That ain’t it.  Cass ended up there because of you, Crock.”  He pressed a finger into the other man’s shirt.  “He ended up in the poorhouse because you failed as an older brother.”

Crock still had the gun.  He waved it in front of the ex-convict’s face.  “Don’t you say that.  Don’t you dare say that!  I took care of him.”

“How?  By abandoning him?  By going away where you wouldn’t have to watch?”

“I needed to make money, to send –”

“You needed to be a big brother.  You needed to show Cass the way.  You weren’t there and so he turned to crime.”  Danny paused.  “I didn’t kill Cass.  Little Joe didn’t kill him.  You killed him, Crock, and you know it!”

The madman gripped Danny’s shirt and hauled him forward.  “It was you put a knife in his gut!”

Danny nodded.  “Yeah.  Yeah, I did.  But I didn’t kill Cass.  I set him free!  Cass was dead already.  We all were!”  The ex-convict’s voice broke as he continued.  “The damned… the dead walked in that place; the place where they beat and starved and drove out everything in us that was human!”  Danny sucked in a breath.  Ben watched him come to a conclusion.  “Do you want me to tell you how Cass really died?  Do you?”

“I know how he died!  You gutted him!”

It was at that moment that Ben sensed someone moving in the trees.  Across the clearing, behind Danny, two men appeared.  With a mixture of relief and apprehension, the rancher recognized them as his older sons.  Ben held a hand up to catch their attention, and then inclined his head toward the trees behind him.

“Pa?”

He looked down.  Joseph was trying to rise.  His son was clawing at his knee.  “Pa….”

“It’s all right,” he said.  “It’s just your brothers.”

“No, Pa….  Danny!”

Ben followed his son’s gaze.

“Balance,” he heard Crock say.

And then the gun went off.

 

Joe Cartwright slowly opened one eye, and then the other.  He recognized the room and the bed he was in as his own, but had no idea how he had gotten there.  As he pondered that, someone leaned in to speak a hushed word in his ear.  Cool lips touched his forehead, and then the bed dipped.  He turned his head to see who it was and –

Everything went black.

The next time he awoke Joe opened both eyes and held still.  The end of the bed and the ceiling were about all he could see, but it seemed safer not to move.  No one came into his line of sight or said anything, which made him wonder if he’d been dreaming before.  Over the last few days he’d seen – or maybe ‘sensed’ was a better word – a lot of people moving around the room.  He was pretty sure one of them was his father.  And maybe his brothers.  There was also a woman who liked to sing lullabies.  Of course, the fact that a woman was in his bedroom in the ranch house pretty much proved that he was out of his head.  Maybe none of them were real.

After all, the last thing he remembered was dying.

He made it out of the cave.  He remembered that.  Once he was outside he had no idea what to do and just thinking about it cost him mightily.  His fever skyrocketed and suddenly he found himself in Boston going to that fancy school older brother Adam had attended.  Pa told him once that Boston was a ‘whole other world’, still it had surprised him when his classmates turned out to be long-horn steers who carried their coats on their horns and insisted on eating the textbooks.  The headmaster wasn’t too happy about that – the book-eating part, that was – so he stepped right up and rapped the nose of the biggest one with a ruler.  The big steer wasn’t too happy about that and he let the headmaster know it by running the man through with his coat-rack horns.

Adam got really mad.

He’d been in the middle of apologizing to his brother – with the professor still hanging off of the steer’s horns – when he woke up and realized he wasn’t in Boston at all, but was lying in the dew-wet grass shivering and shaking.  The pain in his side had increased.  It was so bad, he started to think that he was the one who got gored.  Rolling over didn’t help.  It made him retch.  He retched so long and so hard he was damn sure there couldn’t be anything left inside.  Now, he might have been sick as a dog, but even a dog knew a man can’t live with his insides out – at least not for long – so he got up to went looking for them – his insides that was – and plunged right over an embankment.

That was when he died.

Funny, he’d never really thought about what shape God would take, although he did remember the preacher saying more than one time that most men thought God was like their father.  When he opened his eyes again, that was who he saw – his pa – though he knew it couldn’t really be his pa because Pa didn’t know where he was.

No one knew where he was.

No one but Crock.

He was glad he hadn’t seen Crock when he opened his eyes, because then he would have known he was in Hell.

Joe shifted his body and waited.  When the furniture stopped bouncing off the ceiling and remained on the floor, he decided it was safe to turn his head and look around.

Funny.  He never thought heaven would look like his bedroom.  It was kind of disappointing.

“Hey, sleepyhead.”

Or God sound like a woman.

Soft fingers brushed his cheek.  “I’ll go get your father,” God, or the woman said.  “He’ll want to know you’re awake.”

His father.  Was Pa in heaven too?

No, Pa had been at the top of the embankment – the one where he died.  He could see his father standing tall and strong, and hear him calling his name.  Joe frowned.  His vision was blurry and it was kind of hard to see.  There’d been someone else leaning over him before that.  A man with warm brown hair and ice-cold eyes.

The Devil!

Joe sat bolt upright, took hold of his covers and threw them back, ready to hit the floor – and he was pretty sure he would have ‘hit the floor’ if a pair of powerful hands hadn’t gripped his arms and stopped him.

“Whoa, there, little buddy!  Where do you think you’re going?”

The ailing man closed one eye in an attempt to keep the world from spinning.

It didn’t work.

“A-mm,’ Joe said, his tongue and voice thick.  “Aa-dm?”

“Yeah, it’s me.  Now, come on.  Let’s get you settled back in bed.”

Joe sagged into his brother’s strength – for two heartbeats.  Then he remembered why he’d wanted to escape.

“No.  Pa!” he insisted as he clawed at his brother’s sleeve.  “Pa…Devil!”

“I have been called many things in my time, young man, but that’s not one of them,” a familiar and beloved voice remarked.  It was laced with a bit of a smile.  “At least not by one of my sons.”

Joe looked over Adam’s shoulder at the door to find his father occupying it.

“See,” the older man said, pointing at his head.  “No horns.”

“Now will you get back in bed?” Adam asked, exasperated.

Joe stared at his father until his knees began to buckle, and then he gave in.  He offered no resistance as Adam put him to bed; fluffing his pillow and pulling the coverlet up to his chin just like he’d done when he was little.

“Adam,” he said, clearly this time.

His brother halted in what he was doing.  “What is it, Joe?”

“Are you…mad at me?”

Older brother glanced at their father and then back to him.  “Why would I be mad at you?”

“Because of the steer.”

“What steer?”

“The one with the coat on its’ horns.”

“The one with what?”

Joe winced.  “The one at your college that ate the textbooks?”

“The steer at…my…college….”  Adam gave him a ‘look’ and then headed for the door.  “I’ll get my hat and coat.”

Pa was rounding the bed.  He stopped with a hand on one of the posts.  “Where are you going, son?”

Older brother halted just inside the door.  “To get Doctor Martin.  What else?”

Pa laughed, and then looked slightly concerned.  His father’s hand went to his forehead.  “No fever.  Hmm.  Joseph, do you think, maybe, you dreamed up this…collegiate steer?  After all, you’ve never been to Boston.”

No.  He’d never been to Boston, or anywhere that far east.

But he had been on that hill.

Joe suddenly felt sick.

“What is it, son?”

“Could you….  Pa.  …Adam.”  He glanced at his brother.  “Could I talk to you alone?”

Adam rolled his eyes.  “I can take a hint.  I’ll find Hoss and then locate the Doc.  They’re both going to want to know that Joe is awake.”

“And…rational,” Pa added.

Older brother lifted one brow.  “Kind of gives a new meaning to the word, but okay.  And rational.”

As Adam departed, his father took a seat on the edge of the bed.  “Are you sure you’re up to this, son?  You look rather peeked.”

He felt completely ‘peeked’, but he had to know.  “Pa, what happened?”

A shadow passed over his father’s strong face.  “What happened…when?”

The sick man indicated the bed, the room; himself.  “To me.”

Pa let out a sigh.  “First, tell me what you remember.”

It was all sort of a jumble.  His memory was hazy but, even worse, the memories themselves were painful and he shied from them.  The skin on his wrists and ankles was raw, so he knew he’d been tied up.  It hurt to move, to talk – hell, even to breathe – so he’d been beaten pretty badly and had broken ribs or worse.  There were layers of linen bandages wound around his chest and middle and more on his head and….

“Someone hurt me?” he said, but it came out as a question.

His father’s jaw tightened.  “Yes.  Someone hurt you.”

“Did they want to kill me?”

Pa said nothing for a moment.  Then the older man reached out to cup his chin.  “Yes.  And they almost succeeded.”

“My stomach hurts.”

“I’m sure it does.  There were abdominal injuries.  We thought….”  His father shook his head.  “Well, let’s just say it’s a good thing it’s not just the Cartwrights’ skulls that are tough.  You’ve been a very sick boy.”

“How long?”

“How long what?”

“How long have I been in this bed?”

“It’s been over a week.”

“A week?”  He sat up shocked.  “I’ve been out of my head for over a week?”

“In and out,” Pa replied as he pressed on his shoulders.  “Now, you need to calm down and lay back.  It’s a miracle you can even sit up.”

Joe did as he was told.  He lay there, thinking, as his father reached for the pitcher next to his bed and filled a glass with water.  He took a couple of sips, relishing the cool, clean taste, before speaking again.

“I learned how to walk,” he said, feeling like a little boy again.

His father turned away from the table with a frown on his face.  “You’ve said that several times since we brought you home.  I thought it was because you were fevered.”  He smiled.  “After all, you’ve known how to walk for a long time.”

“I was so tired, Pa.  I hurt so much, I…gave up.  I fell and didn’t want to get back up.  Then, I heard a voice.  A woman’s voice.  I looked up and….”  He knew he sounded crazy.  “There you were – you and Mama.  I was trying to walk and she was afraid I would fall.  She wanted to pick me up, but you told her to keep back.  You…said I had to do it on my own.”  Joe blinked back tears.  “I had to get out of that cave.  I knew you would never find me inside.  The only way I was gonna do that was to stand up and walk.  So I did.  I got up and walked.”

His father’s eyes were moist as well.  “Thank God you did.  You saved my life.”

“I did?”  He scowled.  “I don’t remember much after that.  Pa?  Tell me what happened.  Please?”

The ailing man lay in his bed, stunned into silence as his father related in halting tones all that he had forgotten.  Everything came back as the older man spoke – the taunting, the abuse; the repeated beatings.  As Pa’s tale progressed, Joe began to remember and was able to fill in some of the missing details.  He tried to conceal how bad his time as a prisoner of Mudge and Murdoch had been, knowing how deeply his torture and torment would affect his father.  It was no use.

His body was an open book that told the tale of all he had suffered.

The room fell silent after that.  They sat, hands and hearts joined, for some time before Joe found the courage to ask his one remaining question.

“Pa, where’s Danny?  What happened to him?  The last thing I remember is you tossing the gun into the grass.  I picked it up and pointed it at Murdoch and then, it all goes black.”  The sick man drew a breath against his fear.  “What aren’t you telling me, Pa?  Where’s Danny?  Why haven’t I seen him?”  He swallowed hard.  “Is he…dead?”

His father’s thoughts had drifted he knew not where. The older man started and shook his head.  “No, son.  I’m sorry if I led you to believe that.  Danny isn’t dead.”  He pursed his lips.  “Though, in some ways, he might as well be.”

Fear gripped Joe.  “What do you mean?”

His father rose and walked to the window.  As was his habit when in deep thought, the older man thrust his hands into his back pockets before looking out.  “Your brothers arrived just as Danny and Crock confronted each other.  I signaled them to join us.  I had you in the grass and was trying to get you to respond, so I was distracted for a while.  Then, I heard something and looked up.”  Pa closed his eyes, as if to shut out the memory.  “They were so close, Crock and Danny.  Almost like one. When the gun went off….”  His father turned to look at him.  “There was blood everywhere.  I had no idea who had been shot until Murdoch fell.  Even then, I wasn’t sure that both hadn’t been hit.”

“Did Danny kill him?”

“Yes, son.”

“To save me.”

Pa came to his side and touched his hand.  “Perhaps.  But more to save himself.”

Joe clenched his teeth.  “I need to see Danny,” he said abruptly.  “Bring him here.”

“Joseph, I will not be ordered about – ”

“Sorry, Pa.  Sorry.  I’m worried about Danny.”

“So am I, son,” the older man replied as he brushed a curl from his forehead, “but I’m more worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” Joe said as he leaned back.  The motion made him wince.

“Joseph, you are far from ‘fine’.”  His father sighed.  “Even now, it’s a miracle you are here.  You were taken, held against your will, and used as a pawn in a malevolent game of revenge.  Those outlaws tortured and beat you to within an inch of your life – more than once.  Several ribs were broken.  One came very close to puncturing your lung.  That alone could have killed you, let then there’s the damage to your abdomen and the fever….”

“Sounds like a normal day in the life of Joseph Francis Cartwright.”

It hurt, but Joe rolled his eyes.  Now, he’d never get to see Danny.  Adam had done what he said.  Hoss was standing in the doorway – right behind Doctor Martin.

Maybe they’d let him sit on the porch come spring.

 

Doc Martin was a hard nut to crack.  Joe tried his best to look healthy, but he supposed all the grunts and moans and gasps as the doctor lifted him and touched various places gave him away.  He wasn’t fine and he knew it.

But he would be.

The Doc declared him healing but not healed.  His sentence – one more week in bed and then at least two weeks with no heavy work.  The first few days weren’t so bad since he was still kind of weak, but the last four would have been hell if not for the fact that Joe found out why he’d thought God sounded like a woman.  It was because He was a woman.

Er, well.  She was a woman.

It was Lessy who’d been singing him lullabies.  When she heard what had happened, she’d insisted on coming out to the Ponderosa to look after him.  The beautiful young woman told his father that she felt responsible for Jeth Murdoch coming into their lives and, even though Pa told her she was no such thing, she’d packed up Jorie and moved in.  Figuring out that it had been Lessy in the room instead of God explained another thing – now he knew why Hoss had been absent so much of the time!  Hoss was taking care of Jorie while Lessy was taking care of him.  Middle brother was having a grand time of it!  Lessy was here now, with him, sitting in the chair by the bed.  Now that he was awake, she spent her time reading to him instead of singing.  He had no idea what she was reading.  It didn’t matter anyway.

He just enjoyed looking at her.

“Mr. Cartwright?”

Joe blinked.  “Huh?”

“I asked if you’d like to hear another chapter. Would you, or would you prefer to just keep staring?”

“Do I have to make a choice?”   Joe shifted and pulled his body up so he could see her better.  Lessy was instantly on her feet plumping pillows and rearranging them behind his back.

“There.  Is that better?” she asked.

He caught her hand.  “Thanks.  For everything.”

“Why?  Whatever have I done?”

“Other than singing all those pretty songs to put me to sleep?”  Joe smiled.  “You’ve been a good friend.”

Lessy sat back down as he released her.  She picked up the book up, opened it as if she would read again, but then closed it and anchored her hands on top.

They were trembling.

“I was so afraid you were going to be killed and it would be my fault.  If you’d died, I don’t know what I would have done.”  She sucked in a breath.  “Maybe died myself!”

Girls were so cute in the way they exaggerated everything.

“How would my dying have been your fault?” he asked, genuinely puzzled.

“That awful man!”  Lessy shivered.  “I should have done something the minute I knew Jeth was in the area!  I should have…stopped him somehow!  I should have….”

Joe held her gaze.  “Lessy, listen to me.  Unless you took a pistol and shot Murdoch through the heart, there was nothing you could have done to stop him.”  It was his turn to shudder.  “I’m glad you didn’t.  Really.  You would have ended up in jail and – ”

“Black and white are definitely not your colors.”

They both started.  Joe turned to find Danny Kidd leaning on the doorframe.  He’d asked and asked, but this was the first time he’d seen Danny since…. Well, since passing out on that hill.

His friend had changed.

“Took you long enough,” Joe said, with a bit of an edge to his voice.  “Where’ve you been keeping yourself?”

Danny made a face.  “I figured you’d been through enough without having to look at this ugly kisser.  Didn’t want to cause a set-back.”

Lessy put the book down and rose to her feet.  “Don’t be too hard on him, Joe,” she said as she headed for the door.  “Danny’s been busy.”

“Oh?  What’s he been up to?”

Lessy paused on the threshold.  “Show him, Danny.  I know you have it on you.”  She looked at Joe and grinned.  “He’s never without it.”

“Will someone tell me what’s going on?” Joe snapped.  “Without what?”

Danny reached into his jacket pocket as he ambled into the room and headed for the bed.  He pulled out a piece of paper and ran his fingers over it before holding it out.

Joe took it and unfolded it.  When he read the words it contained, his eyes went wide.  “It’s your pardon!  You got it early?”

“Jeth was a wicked man,” Lessy breathed, “and Danny is a hero.”  She moved to lay a hand on his friends arm.  “Whether he chooses to believe it or not.”

Danny ducked his head, disentangled himself, and crossed the room to the window.  He stood there, staring out, his back to both of them.

“Lessy?” Joe called softly.

“Yes, Little Joe?”

He inclined his head toward the window.  “I’d like to talk to Danny alone, if you don’t mind.”

She looked from Danny to him.  “Oh, I don’t mind.  It’s feeding time for Jorie anyway.”  The beautiful woman returned to the bed, leaned in, and kissed him on the cheek.  “Talk to him, Joe,” she whispered in his ear.  “Tell Danny what he did was a good thing.”  As she straightened up, she added aloud, “I’ll be back with your supper after Jorie has hers.  See you soon, Joe.  Good night, Danny.”

Danny grunted something, but didn’t move.

The moment the door closed behind Lessy, Joe said, “Okay, out with it.”

“Out with what?”

“Whatever you got stickin’ in your craw.”

Danny shrugged.  “I ain’t got nothin’ sticking in my craw.”

“Well then, whatever’s stuck up your –”

His friend slammed his hand down on the windowsill.  “It ain’t right, Joe.  I’m tellin’ you, it just ain’t right!”

Joe sucked in air.  He’d jumped and it hurt.  “What…ain’t right?”

“People callin’ me a hero.”

“But you are.  Everybody says so.”

“Everybody?”

“Pa, Lessy, Adam….”

“Yeah, well, they don’t know anything.”

He thought a moment.  “You aren’t having misgivings about killing Crock, are you?  I mean, I know you thought he had a right to….  Well, because of Cass.  But he would have –”

Danny swung around.  His eyes were hollows.  “But I didn’t!  I didn’t kill him!!”

Joe indicated the chair beside his bed with a nod.  “Park it over here.”

His friend glared at him but did as he asked.  Danny sat heavily in the chair and dropped his head.  “I’m not a hero,” he said quietly.  “I wish everyone would stop calling me that.”

“Okay.  If you’re not a hero, what are you?”

The newly freed man looked up.  “A liar.”

“How?  What did you lie about?”

Danny’s jaw grew tight.  Then he spit it out.  “When I first saw you, Joe, I thought you were dead.  I thought I had….”  He shook his head.  “We got you back here, me and your family.  Soon as you were settled Adam went for the doctor and sent one of the hands to get the sheriff.”  Danny ran a hand over his face.  “I gotta tell you, Joe, I almost ran.  I was so scared.  I thought if the law knew I’d killed someone, I’d go straight back to prison.”

“But Crock was an outlaw.  Adam told me there’s even a wanted poster.”

“You think that would matter?”  He snorted. “It never does with an ex-con.”

“But you’re here.  They didn’t arrest you.”  Joe held out the paper Danny had given him.  “And you got your pardon!”

His friend took it, looked at it, and tossed it on the bed.  “That’s a lie too.”

“What do you mean?” Joe protested.  “You’re a free man!”

His friend rose and returned to the window.  “I heard your pa tell the sheriff how I killed Crock.  He told me later how he sent a letter to the warden of the prisoner and the territorial governor as well, telling them the same thing.”

“So what’s wrong with that?  Adam said there’s a reward.  You’re free, and you’ve got money.  You can start out fresh.”  Joe paused.  “Danny, what you did was a good thing.”

“I told you, Joe.  I didn’t kill Crock.”

“Of course you did.  Pa saw you do it.”

He shook his head.  “No, what your pa saw was the gun goin’ off.”

“Pa said your hand was on it.”

“Yeah, that’s right.  But Crock’s hand was on it too.”  Danny looked at him over his shoulder.  He hesitated, almost as if he were deciding whether to talk or run.  Then he returned to the chair.

“We’re friends, right?”

“Right.

“And friends don’t lie to each other.  Right?”

Joe nodded.  “Right.”

Danny reached up and crossed his heart with a finger.  “God’s honest truth, Joe.  I didn’t kill Crock.

“He killed himself.”

 

EPILOGUE

 

“Hey, Hoss, have you seen Adam?”

Joe Cartwright turned a corner, expecting to find his middle brother working in the barn, but the barn was empty.  He entered and walked toward the stalls.  It was at that moment that a sense of having been where he was before overwhelmed him. It nearly drove him to the floor.

Strong hands caught hold of him and helped him over to a bale of hay.

“Little brother, dang your ornery hide!”  Hoss groused as he deposited him on it.  “Pa’s gonna skin you if he finds you’re out of bed!”

He was tired of being in bed – he’d been in it a week longer than predicted due to the return of his fever. Besides, he didn’t need to be in bed.

Really.

He just needed to catch his breath.

“I saw….”  Joe sucked in air.  “I saw him ride out.”

Hoss’ hands were on his hips and he was scowling.  “So you just hopped out of bed like a bunny and came downstairs?  Say, how’d you get past Hop Sing?  He’s been watchin’ the front door like a chicken hawk.”

“He went with Pa,” Adam replied as he made an appearance.  Older brother placed the halter he was carrying on a table before coming to their side.  “You don’t look so good.”

Joe’s usual reply was on the tip of his tongue but, considering he felt like sliding off the bale and onto the  floor, he decided uttering it would only make him look stupid.

“I don’t feel so good.”

His brothers exchanged a worried glance over his head.

They probably thought he was dying.

Joe raised his hands.  “Look, I promise I’ll go back to bed like a good little boy as soon as I get some answers.”

“What answers?” they asked in tandem.

He knew something was going on.  Everybody had been avoiding him for the last few days.  Joe turned to Adam.  “For one thing, I overheard you and Pa talking in the hall last night.”

“You were asleep,” Adam said.  “Or, at least, you were supposed to be.”

Doc Martin had given him a sedative to take.  He hoped the plant in his room survived its nap.

“I want to know what’s up with Danny.  I heard you talking about him.”  He hesitated.  “Did Pa send him away?

Older brother scoffed.  “Danny’s a grown man.  He makes his own choices.  Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Because he didn’t tell me he –”  Joe drew a breath.  It really wouldn’t do to whine with these two.  “Because Danny and I are friends.  I saw him two days ago and he told me he had a new job he was looking forward to – one with a lot of responsibility.  I figured Pa had made him foreman or somethin’, but now he’s gone.”

“That’s right.  Danny’s got himself a new job,” Hoss said.

“It isn’t here on the Ponderosa,” older brother added.  “Danny left.”

“Left?  What do you mean ‘left’?  You mean he’s really gone, as in gone?”  Joe fought back the desperation he felt.  “Without saying goodbye?”

Hoss sat beside him and circled his shoulders with one great arm.  “Little brother, it’s mighty hard to say goodbye.  It’s makes a thing kind of, well, final-like.  Danny told me he’ll come back to visit, so’s maybe he don’t consider this goodbye.”

His eyes were misty.  “I still don’t understand.”

Adam’s right eye twitched.  He crossed his arms, and then cleared his throat.  “Are you going to tell him, or should I?”

Hoss glared at him.

Joe was on fire instantly.  If there was one thing he hated, it was feeling like a little kid left out of the conversation.

“Tell me what?!”

“Well?” Adam asked, one eyebrow arcing.

“If you ain’t just about the sneakiest thing….”  Hoss sighed.  “Now don’t you go flyin’ off the handle, little brother.  Danny didn’t want us to say anything.  He thought….  Well, he thought maybe you’d be mad at him.”

Joe was on his feet.  “Mad at him?  Mad at him for WHAT?”

“For going off with George White,” Adam replied.

He looked at Hoss who looked away.  And then at Adam, who shrugged.  “What?”

“Tell him, Hoss.”

The big man slapped his knees and stood.  “You know that land I was gonna sell to George Owens, for Margie’s daughter to have one day?”

He knew.  The acreage was a part of the Ponderosa.  “What’s that got to do with anything?!”

Adam touched one ear.  “Ear bigger than mouth.”

Joe growled but he shut up.

“George decided that the West wasn’t the best place for Jorie to grow up in,” older brother explained.  “He asked Pa to put the land in trust for his granddaughter to have one day…and headed back to Baltimore.  He hired Danny to be their guide.”

Joe’s heart sunk to his toes.  “You mean Lessy…Mrs. White is gone too?  All the way back East?”  He shook his head.  “No, she wouldn’t do that.  Not without saying goodbye.”

“She said goodbye,” Adam informed him.  “You were sleeping.  She didn’t want to wake you.”

Joe plopped back onto the hay bale and dropped his head into his hands.  It felt like his world was falling apart.

“I don’t understand,” he muttered.

A moment later a finger tapped his shoulder.  He looked up to find Adam offering him an envelope.  “I imagine this will explain it.”

Joe knew before he caught the scent that it was from Lessy.

“Come on, Hoss,” older brother said as he walked past and headed toward the back stall.  “Let’s see how Silver is doing.”  Big brother touched his head in passing.  “We’ll be right here, Joe, if you need us.”

Joe sat looking at the note for a long time before opening it.  It was hard to believe that just a month before he had been in this same spot when Danny came through the door laughing and smiling – and now his best friend was gone – to Baltimore!  So much had happened in that month.  Some of it still wasn’t over.  Once they got back to the ranch, Pa had met with Roy Coffee, and Roy and his men had gone out and rounded up what was left of both Travis Mudge and Crock Murdoch’s outlaw bands. There was going to be a trial.  Pa said he’d have to testify.  That meant Danny would be needed too, though he supposed he could have given a deposition before he left.  How could he have left?

How could Lessy?

Joe closed his eyes and breathed deep.  He could hear his brothers talking in low tones behind him.  That comforted him a little as he contemplated what it was that disturbed him most.  Danny was a free man now.  The reward had come through, so he was also pretty well set.  There was nothing to tie him to the Ponderosa or the West and plenty to make him want to leave.  The last time they’d talked, his friend had made it clear that he was uncomfortable living where everyone thought he was a hero when he knew he wasn’t, and had even hinted he might move on one day.  And really, he understood how hard it would have been for his friend to say goodbye.  It would have been hard for him too.

He guessed maybe it was Lessy leaving that bothered him most.  After all, women didn’t think like men.  They were all about who and what they were attached too.  She wouldn’t have been concerned if she got all tearful and gushy.  She would have thought she needed too!  He guessed what upset him was that he thought they’d become friends and, maybe, in time, could have become something more.

Joe fingered the envelope, and then opened it and began to read. The first few lines brought a frown.  It slowly turned upside-down as he continued.

‘Dearest Little Joe,

First of all, I want you to know that I love you with all my heart and soul.  I knew I loved you that first night we met, when you were so kind and gentle with me.  While I took care of you that love deepened, but it also changed.  I came to realize that I love you as a dear and cherished friend – one, who, I hope will forgive me for what I have done.

As I write this letter, Danny is sitting beside me in the coach.  He was always there waiting when I returned from your room, wanting to know how you were.  Sometimes with your father and brothers, and other times alone, we would sit and talk and talk.  Then,  one night – like the logs on the hearth behind us – something was kindled.  Danny was so sad when he heard I was to go away, that I asked him to come with me.  I don’t know yet what sort of fire will come from that spark – perhaps it will fizzle and all will turn to ash.  Or, perhaps, what we feel now will become real love.

Danny asked me to express his deepest regrets for what he calls his ‘cowardice’ at not saying goodbye.  I assured him there was no need.  Friends understand.  I told him as well that we will see one another again – in this life or the next. 

In closing, let me say ‘thank you’, Joe Cartwright, for awaking in me something that I thought had died.  May God, in His mercy, do the same for you, and may you one day find happiness – forever.

Your eternal friend,

Lessy’

A hand came down on his shoulder.  He thought it was Hoss, or maybe Adam, but it was his pa.

Oops.

“Hey, Pa.”

“’Hey Pa’ yourself.”  The older man shook his head.  “And just what are you doing out of bed?”

“I needed some…fresh air?”  Joe winced.  “How come you came back?”

“I forgot my wallet.”  His father paused and then inclined his head toward the letter. “From Mrs. White?”

“Yeah.  She’s gone.  So is Danny.”

“I know.  I’m sorry, son.”

He shrugged.  “It’s okay.  I’m…. Well, I’m glad they’re together.  I hope they’ll be all right.”

“How about you, son?  Are you all right?”

Joe  ran a finger over his name on the outside of the envelope.  It was kind of funny.  Hoss had come to peace with what happened to Margie.  Adam was himself again, so he’d let go of Kane.  Pa hadn’t mentioned Jimmie Partridge once in the last two weeks.  And him?  He’d been the first one to recover.  The first to face the darkness and let it work some kind of beauty in him.

Or so he thought.

He knew now it wasn’t the loss of Lessy he mourned.  He loved Laura and he would always love Laura, and if the truth be known, he would never let her go.

But he would move on.

“Yeah, Pa,” he said as Adam and Hoss joined them.  “I’m better than all right.

“I’m fine.”

 

Tags: The Friendship, The Guilty, The Tall Stranger, The Crucible, The Storm, SJS