Summary: On a trip to San Francisco with Hoss, Joe buys himself a new jacket – and, inexplicably, a giant bolt of green fabric. This purchase launches the boys into an evening of chaos and hijinks involving mistaken identities, Confederate spies, and old friend Mark Twain.

Rating: G

Word Count: 19,382

The Man in Green

1.

As he walked down the bustling streets of San Francisco, all was well in Joe Cartwright’s world.  He had no immediate responsibilities, he had money in his pocket, and Hoss was waiting for him in a saloon down by the waterfront.

He had just finished the last of his pa’s business in the city, quite effectively if he did say so himself.  Most of the money he was carrying was his father’s, but enough belonged to him to make him feel pleasantly wealthy.  And that was the best way to feel while heading for a San Francisco saloon.  Oldest brother Adam had lectured them sternly about the Barbary Coast saloons, so of course that was always going to be his and Hoss’s first stop once the work was done.  Sometimes Adam acted as if they were mere children, who’d never been off the Ponderosa before.  Why, the last time they’d been in San Francisco, they’d saved Pa from being shanghaied!

All in all, it was an uncharacteristically sunny day in the city by the bay, he was young, wealthy and San Francisco was full of lovely women.  Everything was perfect.

And then, as though the afternoon had needed just one more element to complete the idyllic picture, his gaze snagged and he came to an abrupt halt outside a shop window.  There, inside the shop, was—the one.

He had had this feeling before, of perfect rightness, of an ideal match, of an absolute sense that this—this was always meant to be part of his life.  It had happened the first time he saw Cochise, his beloved paint.  It had happened with a ramshackle old cabin on the Ponderosa, the perfect place with a perfect view.  It happened maybe a little too frequently with women, with mixed results.  And now it was happening with a green jacket displayed in a tailor’s window.

Joe fingered the collar of the blue jacket he was currently wearing.  He liked it well enough, but it had never quite—settled, never felt like a part of him.  The jacket he was looking at now had a similar collar, but that color—he’d never worn much green, but he was suddenly convinced that that was the color he always should have been wearing.  He prided himself that he had no trouble charming lovely ladies, but this new addition to his wardrobe could only be an extra asset.  Not to mention it would set him nicely apart from the mostly browns and blacks the rest of his family seemed to favor.

He stepped inside the tailor’s shop, ready for a date with destiny.

 

The tailor sized up the young man entering his shop with one assessing gaze, and then moved smoothly forward to ask if the gentleman was looking for anything in particular.  He didn’t look as though he was carrying any great wealth, but this was, after all, a tailor shop near the Barbary Coast.  The shopkeeper was very accustomed to sailors, miners and cattlemen coming in wearing near-rags and spilling gold coins out of every tattered pocket.  It was best to treat everyone as a secret, hopefully reckless, millionaire.

“I thought maybe I’d try on that green jacket you’ve got in the window there,” Joe said, with a diffident nod at the item in question.  He’d bought and sold enough cattle to know that you never let the seller know how much you wanted to buy their cows, and surely the principle applied to clothes too.

“Ah, you have excellent taste, young sir!” the tailor said, mentally calculating size and cost both at once.  He glided over to pluck the jacket from its perch.  “I believe the display piece should be a very fine fit.”

Joe felt the jacket settle over his shoulders, and thought that yes, he had been right – this was his jacket.  It was a perfect fit, a bit looser than his blue jacket, the sleeves the right length, the collar the right height…  “Not too bad,” he said, examining his reflection in the shop’s tall mirror.

“Not too bad?” the tailor repeated in apparent horror.  “Why, it fits as though it was made for you!  And the color is excellent – see how the shade brings out the green in your eyes.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Joe said, peering closer into the mirror.  More than one girl had complimented him on his eyes.  This was going to make him irresistible!

The tailor, meanwhile, was already mentally counting the money from the sale of the jacket, and wondering how he could increase that profit.  “Perhaps you’d like an entire outfit –a new pair of pants, a new shirt – I have some very fine hats as well—”

“No, thanks, just the jacket.”  Joe half-turned, admiring his left profile.  His black hat went well enough with the new green.

“Very good,” the tailor said smoothly, undaunted by the need to be creative for a sale.  “It strikes me, though, that you are likely a man who is hard on his clothes?”

Joe paused to consider, never having given the idea much thought.  He supposed he was at that.  There were times when his life seemed to involve a lot of scrambling through brush and over rocks, falling off of horses, sleeping on the ground – Hop Sing certainly complained about how dirty he got his clothes.  “I suppose so,” he conceded, turning to examine his right profile.

“This could be a difficult fabric to match, very difficult,” the tailor said, in tones of generous concern.  “Luckily, I believe I can help you.”

Turning had also brought Joe to face the window again – and wasn’t that a pair of very pretty girls looking in right now?  “Help me how?” he asked absently, offering a smile to the ladies outside.

“I just happen to have in my possession more of the fabric that went into making this very fine jacket.  Why not buy extra now, to be ready when you have need?”

“Uh—yeah, sure,” Joe said, barely listening, as the girls outside giggled to each other, half-covering blushes with their hands.

“Then you’ll take the lot?”

“Right, yeah.”  Joe craned his neck as the girls kept walking – could he catch up with them before they disappeared on the streets – probably not, but the streets were full of beautiful women, so—

“A very smart decision!” the tailor said, grasping his arms and beaming at him.  “I’ll have my assistant bring it out.  I expect you’ll wear the jacket?”

Little Joe had the abrupt feeling he might have missed something.  “Yeah, I’ll—”

“Very good – let me get the bill of sale for you, and I’ll just need a signature and all money ahead, no refunds, that has always been my policy…”

Joe found himself in a sudden whirl as a pen was put in his hand, and an unexpectedly high figure named.  “Wait, how much—”

“A very good price; I’m losing money on it,” the tailor assured him.  “Here’s your extra fabric now.”

An entire—what was the right term for fabric?  A bale?  A heap? – whatever it was, there was a lot of green corduroy suddenly thrust into Little Joe’s arms, his money was disappearing equally fast, and before he quite caught his breath again he found himself back out on the street with a lighter wallet and a new jacket on his back, carrying an enormous roll of fabric.

He stared down at the roll in his arms somewhat bemusedly.  What was he going to do with all of this?  What could he do with all of it?  He and Hoss didn’t even have a hotel room yet where he could drop it, Hoss would be expecting him – he was half-tempted to just dump it somewhere, except that the only thing even worse than explaining to his father how he’d spent a small fortune on fabric was to have to explain it without at least having the fabric to show for it.

No, there was nothing for it – he’d just have to drag it along and figure out what to do with it later.  The roll was heavy and awkward, but he could get it as far as a saloon and then, well, big brother was really good at carrying heavy things.

Anyway, it wasn’t all bad, Joe reflected philosophically, hoisting the bundle a little more securely in his hold.  The jacket was good.  The jacket was very good, and was plainly going to be worth every penny.  Those first two girls were long gone by now, but there were plenty more like them all around.

With a spring in his step and a—ream?  A herd?  What was the term? – of fabric on one shoulder, Joe set off towards the saloon.

2.

Hoss was only halfway through his first mug of beer when he glimpsed his little brother coming in the door.  Little Joe was late, but just enough to be typical, not enough to make Hoss worry.  He raised an arm to signal from his seat at a back table, and Joe flashed a grin and started weaving through the crowd to join him.

It was only when Little Joe was getting closer that Hoss realized there was something strange about the picture.  What in blazes was Joe carrying?

“Hiya, big brother,” Joe greeted him, and dropped his burden on the table between them.

Hoss stared at the object in confusion as it gleamed softly green in the dim saloon’s light.  “Little Joe, why are you carryin’ a bolt of fabric?”

Joe snapped his fingers.  “A bolt, that’s the word I couldn’t think of!”  Then he frowned.  “Why do you know that?”

“I know things,” Hoss said defensively.  Just because he hadn’t gone to a fancy Eastern college like brother Adam, he still knew things.  Couldn’t just exactly remember why he knew this, but he knew it.  “But why do you have—”

“Yeah, that’s not important,” Joe said hurriedly, in the way that meant this was sure to come back and get them in trouble later.  “Why do you want to talk about fabric while we’re in a fine establishment like this?  Spot any pretty girls while you were sitting here?”

Now that he mentioned it…  “Well, there are a couple of real pretty gals down there at the end of the bar.”  Virginia City had its share of saloon girls, and Hoss couldn’t exactly point to anything unusual about these two, but something about the big city – they seemed different somehow, more exciting.  It wasn’t that they were actually showing more shoulder than the saloon girls back home, but somehow it felt like they were.

And Hoss should’ve known he wasn’t going to re-focus Little Joe once he pointed him that direction, but he frowned down at the intrusion on the table anyway and tried one more time.  “But I still don’t see why—”

“Do you know you haven’t even commented on my new jacket?” Joe interrupted, flicking up his collar even while his gaze was aimed at the two women at the bar.  “Nice, isn’t it?”

“I guess.”  Truth was, Hoss hadn’t actually noticed until Joe pointed it out.  “Ain’t it a lot like your old jacket?”

That got Joe to swing his head around and stare at him.  “No, this one is green.  The old one was blue.”

Maybe there were other subtle differences there, but clothes weren’t something Hoss gave a lot of his attention to.  “Yeah, all right, but other than that—”

“The color makes all the difference!  It brings out the green in my eyes.”

Hoss shrugged.  “Whatever makes you happy, little brother.  And why are you standing here talking about clothes?”

“Big brother, you’re so right,” Little Joe agreed, a glint in his eye and a familiar grin on his face.  “Let me see if I can go entice those two pretty girls to come over here.  You watch my fabric.”

“Watch yer—” Hoss spluttered.  “Why’m I watching yer fabric?”

“I don’t want anything to happen to it.  It was expensive.”

That set off a few more warning bells in Hoss’ mind.  “Little Joe, how much did you spend—”

“Later, brother, later,” Joe said, waving him off and heading towards the bar.

 

At first, all went well.  He laid on the trademark Joe Cartwright charm on the ladies by the bar, and they seemed perfectly happy to be bought a drink and introduced to his older brother.  He hadn’t quite got their names yet, but he’d get there.  It wasn’t until they got back to Hoss and the table that things began to go south.  Literally.

The bolt of fabric somehow looked even bigger, lying across the slightly rickety table, being eyed by two pretty saloon girls.  “You always bring fabric to a saloon?” the redhead asked, eyebrows rising.

“No, this is a special occasion,” Joe said swiftly, drawing her chair out and hoping that she wouldn’t ask him any follow-up questions.  Not about that, at least.

“Not the strangest thing we’ve ever seen,” the blonde said with a shrug, plunking herself down in the chair next to Hoss.  “Although usually a fellow’s got more drinks in him before the really peculiar belongings start coming out.”

Joe managed a weak laugh and sank into his own chair, taking a healthy swallow of his beer.

“So where are you boys from?” the redhead asked, sipping her drink and casting a come-hither glance over the rim at Joe – though he had the feeling it was more automatic than passionate.

“We’re in from Nevada,” Hoss volunteered, before Joe had time to come up with the best-sounding answer.  “Out Virginia City way.”

“Oh,” the redhead said knowingly, and exchanged a glance with her friend.  “Country lads, eh?  That explains the clothes.”

And that rankled Joe.  He liked the country.  He liked the city too, but he got itchy in cities before too long, and wanted the clear cool air of the pine trees again.  He didn’t see that there was anything wrong with being from the country.  But it was all in the way she said it.  Or in the implied criticism of his new jacket.  “I bought this jacket here in San Francisco, you know.”

She flicked a glance over him.  “Charming.  Buy all that fabric here too?”

That was harder to make not look ridiculous.  “Well, ah…”

“So, what do you do out in Nevada anyway?” the blonde asked.  “Herd sheep or something?”

“Not exactly, ma’am,” Hoss said, and Joe would have preferred he leave it there than continue with, “but you’re sort of close.  We’re cattle ranchers, see.”

“We run the biggest spread in Nevada,” Joe said hurriedly.  With Pa and Adam, of course, but there was no real need to drop their names in right at this moment.

It didn’t impress the redhead anyway.  “So it’s really deep countryside.”

On the right day, in the right mood, with the right audience, Joe could paint a picture of the Ponderosa that made it sound like a piece of heaven on earth, the only place really worth being.  But the way this woman had already dismissed anything outside of city streets, and the way he was already rattled by his inability to explain why he’d bought a big bolt of green corduroy, he couldn’t seem to formulate the right words.  And in the crisis, he fell back on one other card he could play.

“Actually, ma’am,” he said, shifting into the French accent he’d carefully learned when he was seventeen and trying much too hard to distinguish himself from his family, “we live in Nevada, but I’m from New Orleans.  Beautiful city, you know, a real jewel of the country.”

This also failed utterly, much worse than anything that had come before.  “Oh,” the woman said, dripping disdain into the single syllable, “the South.  Come on, Clarabelle, we don’t need drinks bought for us by Confederates.”

Joe blinked.  “Wait, no, that’s not…”

Too late, as they both sashayed their way back to the bar.

“Huh,” Joe said, looking rather blankly at his beer mug.

“I thought you gave up that boy-from-New-Orleans bit a couple years ago,” Hoss commented.

“Sometimes I bring it back,” Joe snapped.

“Uh-huh,” Hoss said, and drew a long drink of beer.  “It ever work?”

“Sometimes!”

“Not today, little brother.”

“Yes, thank you, I can see that!”

It was enough to make him wish he’d come into the saloon with his very Eastern, very intellectual oldest brother.  Except Adam probably wouldn’t have let him in the saloon to begin with, and definitely wouldn’t have let drop the question of how much all that corduroy had cost.  So it was a toss-up.

 

Unbeknownst to the Cartwrights, their activities in the saloon had not gone unobserved.  Two men at a nearby table had been watching and listening, and now one turned to the other and said, “You noticed the big man in the corner, of course?”

“Of course,” his companion agreed.  Small and thin, with something of the ferret about his nose and his posture, he was a long-time master at spotting the biggest man in the room.  It paid to keep his eyes open.

“He came in alone and sat there, obviously waiting for someone,” the first man continued.  Tall and thin, his wiry frame hid more muscle than most would guess.  “And then his contact came in.”

The ferrety man frowned.  “The cowboy.”

The tall man lifted one finger.  “The one dressed like a cowboy.  But didn’t you hear him say it was a new jacket?”

“I heard something like that.”  A loud saloon was not the ideal place for eavesdropping, but he had caught snatches of the conversation.

“Well, then.  Obviously it’s a disguise.  He let his cover slip talking to that saloon girl – he may be trying to hide his accent, but it came through briefly.  He might look like a cowboy and he might be posing as from Nevada, but he’s really from New Orleans.  He admitted as much.”

“Isn’t that a rather foolish thing to do?”

“Many otherwise sensible men do very foolish things when a pretty girl bats her eyes at them,” the tall man said.  “Besides, it was clear from the moment he walked in that he wasn’t what he appeared.”

“It was?”

“Of course.  What cowboy comes into a saloon carrying a bolt of fabric?”  The tall man shook his head sagely.  “No, all the pieces add up to just one conclusion.”

“Which is?” the ferrety man prompted, knowing his companion would rather be the one to make the statement himself.  They had had this sort of conversation many times before.

The tall man smiled.  “We are plainly looking at two Confederate spies.  And there must be something significant to that fabric.”  With a sudden new tension, he caught his companion by the arm.  “And look – the gentlemen in question appear to be leaving, and taking the fabric with them.  Do you know what that means?”

“We follow?”

“Certainly we follow.”

3.

If the saloon girls in one saloon were going to reject them for being Confederates, there was obviously only one thing to do – go to another saloon.  And this time Little Joe was determined to find just the right one, even if they had to traipse up and down the entire Barbary Coast to find it.  Which, Hoss reflected sourly, was easy enough for Little Joe.  He wasn’t the one hauling around a big bolt of green fabric.  Not that it was too heavy or anything – it was just bulky and awkward, and he kept shifting it from one shoulder to the other or carrying it in front and nothing felt natural.  Hoss was just trying it up on his left shoulder again and almost bumped straight into Joe, who’d halted right there on the sidewalk.

“This one,” Joe announced, looking up at the saloon in front of them.  “Let’s try this one.”

“Why this one?” Hoss asked, squinting at the faded sign.  Not that he wanted to keep walking, but he was genuinely curious.  “We must’ve passed a dozen already.”

“I’ve got a good feeling about this one.”

Hoss finally made out the name from the peeling paint.  “The Mississippi Riverbank?”  Mississippi was pretty far south, wasn’t it?  He grinned.  “You figure they won’t kick us out from here for being Confederates?”

“Will you just stop talking about that?” Joe hissed.  “Come on, let’s get inside before you tell the whole city we work for Jefferson Davis.”

“Sure, little brother, whatever you say.”

The Cartwrights headed into the saloon, with its very Southern name, unaware that two men trailing casually along behind them were now certain that all their suspicions had just been confirmed.

 

Inside the saloon, there was the usual background hubbub of noise, of voices and laughter and beers thumping on wooden tables, and even a tinny piano playing in one corner.  There was also a more unusual note, though, one voice pitched to carry above the rest, and Joe thought the voice sounded familiar before he managed to parse the words or identify the source.

“And so, my friends, there I was – hanging onto the wheel as the greatest storm to ever sweep the southern half of this fine country blew itself down the river.  Rocks to the right of me – rocks to the left of me – a driving rain making visibility low, and I knew there were shallow places where a boat could run aground.”

Joe’s face split into a smile as he spotted the curly-haired man holding forth from a back table to a crowd of a half-dozen.  “Hey, look – it’s Sam Clemens.”

“What was that?” Hoss asked, adjusting the bolt of cloth into a new position again – although not, Joe noted with approval, dragging it on the floor.  You never knew what you might pick up on a saloon floor.

“You know, the newspaperman – Mark Twain,” Joe said.  He felt a kind of proprietary interest in the man’s penname.  Hadn’t he been right next to him when Sam came up with it?  That had been during Sam’s time working on The Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, and more specifically during a gun battle the Cartwrights had been fighting, after Sam’s articles ruffled up one of the more prominent figures in town.

“Oh yeah,” Hoss said, swinging the fabric up onto his shoulder and narrowly avoiding hitting a man at the table they were passing.  “Let’s say hello.”

They wove through the crowded room, and Sam broke off his story mid-sentence as they approached.  “Well—do my eyes deceive me, or are the Cartwright boys out of Nevada?”

Joe grinned.  “We do get off the ranch sometimes, Sam.  How are you doing?”

“Fine, just fine – come, have a seat and explain to me why you’re carrying around a bolt of green cloth.”

Joe’s smile faltered some at that – but at least Sam seemed more friendly on the subject than the saloon girls had been.  He dropped into a chair next to Sam while Hoss heaved the fabric onto the tabletop.

“Wait, Sam, what happened on the river?” one of the onlookers asked.  “In the storm?”

“I steered to port and we rode out the storm, it was fine,” Sam said dismissively.  “But do you know who these fine gentlemen are?  This is only Hoss Cartwright, the strongest man in Nevada, and Little Joe Cartwright, the most charming man in Virginia City now that I’ve left it!”

There was general laughter, which only increased when Hoss got his bashful look and said, “Aw, shucks, I don’t know about that.”

“I do,” Joe put in.  “I’ve never seen him beat yet.”  It would be all for the best if they could turn this conversation towards big brother’s strength, maybe start up an arm-wrestling contest, anything to distract from—

“So, tell me why there’s a bolt of cloth on my table,” Sam prompted.

“Ask Little Joe that one,” Hoss said, shaking his head.

Joe tried to rally to the situation.  “That happens to be very important fabric.  I have big plans for that fabric.  And it’s very valuable, I’ll have you know, a very worthwhile purchase that anyone would have—”

“You got rooked by a tailor, didn’t you?” Sam said succinctly.

Joe sighed.  It was hard to fool a man with Sam’s talent for spinning a tall tale.  “Yeah.  But it’s not all bad.  I got a nice jacket too.”

Sam nodded.  “I see that.  Good color on you.”

“Thanks, I thought so too.”

The onlookers, apparently finding this less engaging than stories of terror on the river, were drifting away.  This might have been why Sam chose that moment to hail a saloon girl for another round of drinks, now that there were fewer people to cover.

“Thanks, what do we owe you?” Joe asked.

“Doesn’t look like you’ve got the money to spare,” Sam said with a meaningful nod at the green corduroy.  “But don’t worry, boys, drinks are on The Morning Call.  I’m here on official business.  Investigative journalism.”

“Yeah?” Hoss said.  “What’re you investiga…tively…journal…”

“Investigating,” Joe intervened.

Sam leaned in closer, glanced around, then said in a low voice, “Would you boys believe there are Confederate spies among us?”

Hoss gave a low whistle.  “No kidding?  What’re they doing this far west?”

“San Francisco’s a very important port.  No doubt they have money to move, information to pass, all sorts of business.  Rumors are flying all around town.”

Joe shook his head.  “You’d think spies would be more discreet.  I mean, they aren’t going to walk around talking about being spies, right?  I wonder how the rumor got started.”

“Oh, I can tell you that one,” Sam said easily, leaning back again.  “I started it.  And The Morning Call believed it, which ought to be good for at least three nights in the saloons on the company tab.”

Hoss guffawed and Joe shook his head in mingled disbelief and admiration.  “You sure you don’t want to move back to Virginia City, Sam?  We could use a talent like yours around when we’re trying to talk our way out of something with Pa.”

“Yeah, like when we robbed that bank last year,” Hoss rumbled.

“With the best of motives!” Joe protested.  It maybe hadn’t been their finest moment, but he still maintained that they’d done the best thing they could, under the circumstances.  After it was all over, he had convinced Sheriff Coffee to give him one of the wanted posters, with his and Hoss’ faces drawn on it.  He figured he’d put it up on his bedroom wall, once Pa got to the point where he chuckled about the whole thing.  They weren’t there yet, but maybe eventually.

“You know you have to tell me this story,” Sam said, lifting his beer mug with an interested gleam in his eye.

The story of the entirely justified bank robbery lasted most of the way through the beer and was at one of its most interesting points when a surge in the crowd shoved a man almost as large as Hoss, but considerably drunker, up against their table.

“Easy there, friend,” Joe said, putting a hand up as a shield, the man’s back colliding with his palm.

The man turned around – and he was a lot uglier and a lot meaner-looking than Hoss too.  “What’s it to you?” he rumbled.

Joe held up both hands now, palms out.  “Hey, I’m just having a drink here—”

And next thing he knew a big fist was colliding with his jaw, and sending him and his chair over backwards with a crash.  He reflected as he went down that usually there was a little more back-and-forth before someone started hitting him, and also that he was probably lucky the man was too drunk to have much finesse.  The blow had glanced instead of connecting solidly, and that was still enough to send him flying.

By the time he got disentangled from his chair, Hoss had already set to with the big drunk, and while Joe thought about jumping in to help – well, Hoss seemed to have it under control.  He sank down to sit on the floor again, rubbing his jaw, and saw that Sam Clemens had retreated under the table, sitting quite calmly and still sipping his beer, which he lifted in salute.

“I’m a writer, not a fighter,” Sam said with a shrug.

Joe was just giving an answering shrug when he spotted two more men pitching into the fray – apparently, improbably, the big drunk had friends.  And he couldn’t let Hoss fight those odds alone.

Before the dust settled, half the saloon had gotten involved on one side or the other, to the extent that you could even talk about two sides – after a few minutes it was more of a brawling free-for-all with very few loyalties involved.  The Cartwright brothers’ instinctive and unwavering ability to back each other up may be why they were among the few still standing by the time the brawl ended – which was half due to the shouting of the saloon-owner and half due to most of the participants simply giving up the whole thing as a bad business, not worthwhile when they could go down the street for another beer at any of a half-dozen other saloons.

“Is it all over?” Sam asked as he emerged from under the table.

“Just about,” Joe said, picking up his chair and righting it again.  It wobbled a little, but had come through the fight mostly unscathed.

“Any serious injuries?” Sam asked, glancing Joe and Hoss over.

Joe was sure that he’d have a few bruises, but nothing that hadn’t happened any number of times before.  And his new jacket seemed to have come through just fine too.  He gave Hoss a quick glance, but big brother seemed to have made out about the same.  “We’ve been through worse,” he said, dropping into his chair.  “Speaking of, I was just about to tell you about the owner of the mules we borrowed…”

The words trailed away as he looked at the empty tabletop in front of him.

“What’s the matter, Little Joe?” Hoss rumbled, sitting down again too.

Joe whipped his head around, scanning the room – how something so big could just vanish – even in all the chaos, how could he have missed—

“Joe?” Hoss prodded again.

“My fabric is gone!”

The enormous bolt of green corduroy was nowhere in sight.

“Huh,” Hoss said, without nearly the amount of alarm Joe felt was appropriate to the situation.  “Maybe it rolled off the table?”

“Then it would be on the floor, and it isn’t,” Joe hissed, looking over the nearby territory again, just in case.  Nothing.

“I would have seen it fall,” Sam volunteered, “and I didn’t.  Why do you suppose someone would want to take a bolt of cloth?”

“We have to find it!” Joe said, shooting to his feet.

“Now simmer down there, little brother,” Hoss said, in his soothing tone.  “I still don’t know what you thought you were going to do with a load of corduroy to begin with.  Maybe you should just let things be, and—”

“It’s going to be bad enough explaining to Pa that I spent a fortune on fabric.  I can’t try to explain it without any fabric!”

Hoss considered.  “You make a good point there.”  He heaved up to his feet.  “Alright.  They can’t’ve gone too far, lugging that big ol’ thing.  And Joe – how much did you spend on that fabric?”

“Not important right now,” Joe said quickly, and headed for the door, knowing his brother would follow him.  And, hopefully, not ask further questions.

“Wait for me, boys,” Sam Clemens called, weaving through the tables in pursuit.  “This has the potential to be far more interesting than looking for Confederate spies I invented myself.”

4.

Hoss watched Little Joe charge off down the street outside the saloon and shook his head.  There was nobody like little brother when he got an idea in his head.  Sometimes that was a good thing, and sometimes…

Joe’s method of trailing whoever’d stolen his fabric (and just how much had it cost?) seemed to be to grab every passerby and ask if they’d seen anyone carrying a bolt of fabric.  And as long as he had the energy for that, Hoss was just fine with letting him get on with it.  So he hung back at an easy stroll alongside Sam Clemens, and just kept an eye out in case Little Joe grabbed someone who didn’t like being grabbed, and might decide to grab back.

“How’s life treating you, Sam?” Hoss asked conversationally.

“Oh, can’t complain,” Sam said with a shrug.  “It’s a good job at The Morning Call.  My assistant does most of the work, and that frees up my time for literary efforts.”

“You know, I’ve tried to get Joe to do my work on the Ponderosa, but it’s never quite worked out.  Pa always sees through it anyway.”

“Your father is a very discerning man, as I recall.”

“Yeah.  You know, you ought to come visit us some time, he’d like to see you.  Adam too.”

“Oh, I remember Adam well,” Sam said, rubbing his jaw with a rueful expression.

“Hoss!  Sam!”  Little Joe came back at a run, pointing wildly behind him.  “It’s this way, come on – somebody saw two men carrying a bolt of fabric in through that door!”

Hoss squinted at the blank brick building, the nondescript wooden door.  “Where are we anyway?  What is that place?”

Sam looked up and down the street.  “If I’m not mistaken, that’s the back side of the old opera house.  Much more impressive from the front, you understand.”

“Come on,” Joe urged, “they’re going to get away!”

The door, when they reached it, was unlocked.  Hoss was undecided if that was good luck or bad luck.  If it was locked, maybe they could have just called the whole thing a bad business and gone back to the saloon – but more likely Little Joe would have come up with a scheme to get inside that would have involved breaking windows or climbing on rooftops.

As it was, the door creaked open to reveal an uninspiring hallway, empty of people, with one open door visible a little way down.  All three together, they ventured down the hall.

“All right, everybody stay alert now,” Joe whispered, drawing his gun as they approached the doorway.

“Be careful with that,” Hoss warned, “you’re liable to scare someone.”

“I know, I know,” Joe said, waving at him with his free hand as he crept up to the doorway and carefully peered inside.  After a few seconds his tense posture relaxed and he reached up to scratch his thick curls, expression perplexed.  “Oh.  Hmm.”

Hoss looked over his shoulder, Sam peering around behind him.

No people, but definitely fabric.  Lots of fabric.  It took a moment to realize in the dim light that most of it was actually clothing, hanging on long racks, but plenty of bolts of cloth lined the walls too.

“Costume department,” Sam said wisely.  “There you go, then.  We know your cloth is in the building somewhere.  Consider a trade.  Pick a bolt you like, and call it a night.”

“We can’t take another bolt!” Hoss protested.  “That’s stealing!  It’d be wrong.”

“What kind of talk is that from a famous bank robber?” Sam asked.

“And I don’t want other fabric, I want my fabric,” Joe said, with a remarkable amount of attachment to something he’d owned for maybe two hours.  Little Joe always was like that, though, falling hard and fast.  “How can I use other fabric for patches on my jacket?”

“Why do you need patches on a new jacket?” Hoss asked.

“Not today, just—eventually!”

The room seemed to be empty, which made it especially startling when a bolt of cloth standing upright along one wall fell over with a thud, followed immediately by the words, “Oh, dear.”

“That way!” Joe hollered, charging off after two indistinct figures who scurried – there was really no other word for it – farther into the gloomy room, bolt of green fabric carried between them across their shoulders.

Hoss shook his head and followed Joe, because he would never be able to explain any of this to Pa without him.  The two men up ahead started knocking over racks as they went, costumes and wooden racks crashing down to the ground and spilling clothes everywhere, until they were all but wading through a sea of costumes.  Hoss got hit in the face with some big, lacy, ruffled thing that Joe shoved behind him, and by the time he got untangled from that Joe was diving through the far door in continued pursuit.

Cursing under his breath, Hoss tried to go through the doorway after his brother, only to have Joe come reeling backwards into him, backpedaling as frantically as he’d been rushing forward.  He collided with Hoss’ stomach, bounced off, slipped on some silky dress and thudded down to the ground.

“What now?” Hoss demanded.

“They have a—they—”  Winded, Joe was visibly trying to get enough air to speak.

“That’s right!” a voice called from the next room.  “Back to the center of the room with your hands in the air!  Don’t try anything or we’ll fire!”

Hoss squinted doubtfully ahead, but he couldn’t get a good view into the next room unless he stepped over Joe, and that’d probably put him in the line of fire.  “What’d I say about drawing your gun?”  Though Little Joe didn’t usually look this alarmed when someone pointed a pistol at him…

“Cannon,” Joe wheezed finally.  “They’ve got a cannon in there!”

“Huh,” Hoss said, and lifted his hands.  “That’s a lot of commitment for a bolt of fabric.”

“A cannon, you say?” Sam commented thoughtfully from the back of the group.  He had his hands up too, but didn’t look unduly alarmed.  “Are you sure about that?”

“I know a cannon when I see one!” Joe said hotly, still sitting on the ground but arms raised, his pistol on the floor next to him.

Sam snapped his fingers.  “Of course.  They’re bluffing.”

“With a cannon?” Hoss said doubtfully.

“It’s not real.  Or at least, it’s not loaded.”  Sam nodded towards the next room.  “We’re in the opera house, right?  They’re in the prop room.”  He pitched his voice louder, to a carrying tone.  “That’s a stage cannon, isn’t it?”

There was a moment’s silence in both rooms and then, from what probably was the prop room, came, “Oh, dear.”

“After ‘em!” Joe shouted, snatched up his gun again and leapt to his feet to resume the pursuit.

5.

Joe wouldn’t have admitted it to Hoss, but there was a part of him that was enjoying all of this immensely.  He was an adventurer at heart, and chasing a pair of renegades through a darkened building had all the earmarks of a classic escapade.  Of course, it would be better if they were in pursuit to rescue fair maiden, or perhaps some fabulous treasure (though with the amount he’d paid for that fabric, it did have an element of wealth to it), but still, the thrill of the chase in its pure form was hard to resist.

He ran into the next room, charging ahead with gun in hand, ready to hazard whatever came – which still didn’t mean he was prepared for it when the cannon went off.

A thunderous roar shook the entire room and Joe dove for the floor again, ears ringing and colorful spots flashing across his vision – spots which, he realized after a few seconds, weren’t in his head, but rather actual fireworks pinwheeling around the room.  And the pounding footsteps running away weren’t just his ears ringing – and neither were the other, counter-footsteps coming towards him.

“Joe!” Hoss hollered, rushing towards him.  “What happened?  Little Joe!”

“Down here.”  Joe lifted one arm, and then pointed at Sam, who was peering in from the doorway.  “You said it wasn’t loaded.”

“Well, not with a cannonball,” Sam said, unrepentant.

Hoss seized Joe by the jacket, hoisting him up off the ground.  “You all right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Joe said, brushing ineffectually at Hoss’ big hands.  “Watch the jacket, don’t rip it.”

“I ought to…” Hoss growled, words trailing off into an inarticulate groan as he dropped Joe again.

He narrowly managed to land on his feet.  “Come on, they’re getting away!”

They haphazardly made their way through the prop room, where any number of unidentifiable objects had tumbled to the ground in the chaos, vision further obscured by wisps of smoke.  Although at least it didn’t seem as though any active fires had caught.  Tripping and stumbling over random items he didn’t stop to check on, Joe made it to the next doorway, the only possible exit, and saw the two men, carrying his bolt of fabric, rushing down the hall.

This hall, though, wasn’t empty.  A cannon going off, with whatever ammunition, had attracted attention, and more people were crowding into the hall, faces and voices full of questions and alarm.

Joe shook his head.  No time for all of this!  He had to catch up to his disappearing cloth investment.  He dodged around the people in the hall, trying not to shove anyone, tossing off quick apologies as he went, dashed around a corner and—more people, but none of them carrying a bolt of green corduroy.

His heart sank, but it would take more than this to put Joe Cartwright off of a chase.  Two doors and a staircase were all possible directions the men could have gone.  He could stop to ask, but—why not keep charging on?  He grasped the handle of the nearest door and shoved it open—to confront something that could definitely put Joe Cartwright off of a chase.

It appeared he had found some sort of communal changing room, considering it was filled with women in varying stages of dress, some wearing quite elaborate costumes and some wearing – not much at all.  There were a number of glances his way and a few titters and giggles, but no one actually shrieked.  He had heard rumors that actresses were even more comfortable with this sort of thing than saloon girls…

“Do you mind?” one of the women nearest the door said, with only a lazy sort of objection in her voice and not a whole lot more than a corset and some ruffles on the rest of her.

“Ma’am,” Joe said, and flashed his trademark charming grin, “I don’t mind if you don’t—”

A big hand seized him by the shoulder and hauled him back out of the doorway.  “Little Joe Cartwright, you ought to be ashamed of yourself!” Hoss said in righteous and furious tones.  “What would Pa think?”

“Pa ain’t here,” Joe said, trying to get around Hoss and back to the so very interesting doorway.

“We’re very sorry, ladies,” Hoss said, stepping into Joe’s way and trying to grab for the door handle without actually looking inside.  “No harm meant, just an accident, we do apologize—”

“Hey, did you see anybody come through here with some fabric?” Joe called, trying to crane over Hoss’ shoulder.  “A big bolt of green fabric?”

“Not since yesterday,” the one in the corset and ruffles said, and Joe could just see enough to catch her wink.

“Sorry, ladies, very sorry,” Hoss continued, finally got a hold of the door handle, and yanked it firmly closed.

Joe let out a gusty sigh.  Here was a vision absolutely from his dreams, and big brother Hoss had to be along to spoil it.

“What’s the matter with you?” Hoss demanded.

“What’s the matter with me?” Joe protested, splaying his fingers against his chest.  “What’s the matter with you, not enjoying a sight like that?  They didn’t even mind!  Anybody would have taken advantage of that!  Ain’t I right, Sam?” he appealed to Sam Clemens who had been bringing up the rear of their little party.

Sam glanced from Joe’s face to Hoss’ glare, coughed, and said, “I think I’ll side with the giant here.  Sorry, Joe.”

Joe rolled his eyes, while Hoss said, “I thought you were so all-fired up about chasing down your missing fabric.  What happened to that?”

Joe cast a longing look at the closed door.  “Yeah, well, I just…”

“Because you have to explain to Pa, remember?” Hoss pressed the point.

“Yeah, yeah, all right,” Joe groaned.  He tried to get his thoughts back onto his missing fabric, and off of all that missing fabric on the ladies in their dressing room.  “You want to try the second door?”

Hoss glowered at him suspiciously, but carefully stepped up to the second door and slowly eased it open, with all the caution he might have used if he expected a room full of dynamite – or hungry lions – on the other side.

Joe couldn’t help feeling a little hopeful, that they were going to reveal new exciting sights – or at least the two men fleeing with his fabric.  Instead, the door finally swung open to reveal only another hall, empty of anyone at all.

Hoss sighed.  “Maybe we ought to just go back to the saloon—”

“No, hang on – there’s only two directions they could have gone,” Joe interrupted, “through this door or up the stairs.”  He glanced around the hall, but as quickly as everyone in it was moving through, he didn’t believe anyone was still here who’d seen anything useful.  “We’ll split up.  Hoss, you take the hall.  Sam and me will go up the stairs.”

Hoss’ glower had never entirely faded, and now it was back in force.  “I don’t know if that’s a smart idea, Little Joe.”

“I’m sure you can handle both of ‘em, big brother,” Joe said, even though he knew full well that was not what was worrying Hoss.  “And I’ll have Sam here to back me up.”  And not interfere, supposing they came upon something else that was – interesting.  “Right, Sam?”

Sam shrugged.  “So far this has had all the earmarks of an interesting tale, though I’ll more likely have to class it as fiction than an item for the news.  Still, that remains to be seen by how it concludes.”

Joe blinked at him.  Doggone if Sam couldn’t talk as fancy as brother Adam!  “So—that’s a yes?”

“Yes, I will continue the pursuit with you,” Sam clarified.

“Great!” Joe said, and clapped Sam on the shoulder.  “Now let’s go before they get farther ahead!”

“Little Joe,” Hoss began, a warning note in his voice, but Joe didn’t wait for the rest of that sentence.

“Meet out front if you don’t find ‘em,” Joe tossed over his shoulder, already scampering up the stairs.  Sometimes you just had to be firm with big brother.  He generally went along in the end.  And this was no time for arguing – he had stolen fabric to rescue!

6.

Hoss knew this wasn’t going to end well.  It never ended well, for either of them, when Joe started getting notions in his head.  But he didn’t really see a good alternative.  He could chase after Little Joe, haul him off of the stairs, and possibly throw him over his shoulder and carry him back to the saloon bodily.  Except Joe would sulk for weeks, and also find some way to blame him, Hoss, when he had to explain about the fabric he’d bought and then lost.

Or Hoss could do a quick run down this hall, maybe even catch up to the men who’d stolen the blasted fabric – and what could they possibly want with a big bolt of fabric anyway? – and then they could go back to the saloon.  It seemed likely to him that the men had come down this way.  Why would they run away upstairs, especially carrying something heavy, when they could escape across flat terrain?

Yeah, probably he could just wrap this whole thing up.  And hopefully Sam would keep Little Joe out of the worst kind of trouble.

That was how he justified it to himself, anyway, as he ran down the hall, and tried not to worry that he was relying on Sam Clemens to keep his little brother out of trouble.  He liked Sam, mind, but anybody who could come up with a story about a wild man on the Ponderosa couldn’t be the most stable fellow around.  And he wasn’t sure anyway that there was a man alive who could keep Little Joe out of trouble when he was dead-set on a thing.  Except maybe Pa, but Pa was a long way off.

Shaking his head, Hoss hurried on down the hall, which was pretty well empty of anybody or anything, including any big bolts of green fabric.  He tried a few doors along the way but all of them were locked – and why all those gals in their various states of undress hadn’t locked their door, he didn’t know.  But that was beside the point, the point was that if those two fellows who’d stolen the fabric had a key and had locked the door behind them – well, he wasn’t going to start busting doors down, not over a load of cloth, so there just wasn’t much to do if they had gone in one of those rooms.

He reached the end of the hall, opened the door at that end, and found himself out on the bustling street again.  Holding onto his hat, he looked up at the building behind him.  Sam’d been right, it was a lot more impressive from this side, with a lot of pillars and lanterns and a just-visible sign picked out in gold reading San Francisco Opera House.  He did a half-hearted scan of the street but no, not a single bolt of fabric in sight.  And if the crooks had come this way, they could be anywhere by now.

Hoss leaned one shoulder against the nearest pillar.  Joe’d said to meet here, so he’d wait here.  For about three minutes, tops, and then he was going back in to see what trouble little brother had probably got into by then.  Maybe he ought to go back in right away, at that.

He was just about fixing to do that when a woman in a long red dress and matching hat came sidling up out of the general passersby and took up a spot next to him at the pillar.  “Good evening,” she said, voice all low and drawling.

“Um.  Evening, ma’am,” Hoss said, tipping his hat.

“Your timing is perfect,” she said, looking out at the street instead of at him.

“Ma’am?” Hoss said uncertainly.  Was she flirting with him?  Was that what this was?  He’d seen Little Joe have this sort of conversation all sorts of times, but somehow when it was him, he got all tongue-tied and fumbled.

“I recognized you from the description, of course,” she continued.  There was a strangeness to how she said the words, a little like how Joe sounded when he was trying to do his boy-from-New-Orleans bit.  That almost distracted Hoss from the strangeness of the actual words.  What description?  “And of course, this is the second pillar from the left.”

He looked around, and supposed it was at that.  But so what?  “Ma’am, I don’t know if you’re really meaning to talk to me—”

“You’re right, we shouldn’t be seen together,” she said quickly, and next thing he knew she was pressing a folded square of paper into his hand.  “You know what to do.”

He really, really didn’t.  Had she mixed him up with someone else?  Maybe he was caught in the middle of some sort of secret romantic nonsense.  Or was she just plumb loco?  “Ma’am, I really don’t think—”

But she was already walking away, merging into the crowd, and though he could still spot her hat, he’d have to chase after her for any more conversation.  He looked at the opera house behind him and back to the woman walking away—and it all seemed pretty obvious that the more important thing to do was to pull his little brother out of the scrape he was surely in by now.  Strange women in red dresses would just have to take care of themselves.

He shoved the paper into a vest pocket without bothering to look at it, and hurried back inside the opera house.

 

From a shadowed doorway across the street from the opera house, two men watched the big cowboy hurrying back inside.  They were not two men with a bolt of fabric, nor had they even seen a bolt of fabric this evening.  They were entirely different men, ones who were almost comically mismatched – one was tall and broad, the other smaller with a slim build.  Both, however, were united in matching glares aimed at the building across the street.

“Just lookit that.  Ya come two minutes late to a meeting an’ some dirty rotten rattlesnake gets a hold of the message,” the big man groused.

“This ain’t gonna be good,” the small man said, nervously tapping his fingers against his gun holster.  “We need that information.  If it got to the wrong person—”

“We’ll get it back,” the big man said, loosening his own gun in its holster.  “We just catch up to the rattlesnake an’ take it back, that’s all.”

“He looks pretty big.  And he’s got kind of a mean look too.”

“We can take him, no problem.  Now come on, before he gets away.”

With that, the two men headed across the street and into the opera house.

 

Joe took the stairs two at a time, partially to try to catch up if the men with his fabric were ahead somewhere, and partially in case Hoss decided to turn back around and follow after all.  The stairwell seemed to go all the way up through the building without any landings at floors in between, but that was only to the good – nowhere else for the men to have gone, if they’d come this way to begin with.  He could hear music from somewhere, so maybe they were near the theater part of the opera house.

Sam was a good half-flight behind by the time the stairs finally opened out into a level passage somewhere in the upper reaches of the building, music swelling much louder, but Joe didn’t wait for him.  He charged out—and only realized a half-dozen steps on that he was on some sort of narrow walkway, with the brightly-lit stage very far below him.

Joe swallowed, skidding to a sudden halt.  He shoved his drawn pistol into its holster, to free both hands for reaching out to hold tightly onto the extremely flimsy railings on either side of the walkway.  He jerked his head up, gaze resolutely forward and not down.

“Something wrong?” Sam asked, slightly out of breath, as he came up behind Joe.

“No.  No, everything’s fine,” Joe lied through his teeth.

He didn’t like heights.  He’d never liked heights.  He liked admitting that he didn’t like heights even less, but he still hated heights.  He had yet to entirely forgive Hoss for launching him up in a balloon that time Pa’s old friend Major Cayley came to visit, and right at this moment, with huge depths beneath him, exacting suitable revenge for that incident suddenly seemed like a more pressing matter than it had before.

But also there was the problem of actually being on a walkway, very high up, with Sam Clemens behind him – and did he trust Sam not to make a story of it, if the man realized that Joe Cartwright, fearless adventurer, debonair ladies’ man, fast draw and expert horseman, was afraid of heights?  No, he did not.  So that left just one option.

Joe swallowed hard, and inched one boot forward.  The walkway didn’t actually sway, that was something, although the lights and the music and the swirling dancers prancing across the stage below – he dragged his horribly fascinated gaze back up again – made it feel as though the entire world was swaying.

Behind him was a man who could tell all of San Francisco, and by extension all of California, and by further extension all of Nevada, that he was afraid of heights.  Ahead of him was, maybe, the men he had sworn to capture, with the bolt of fabric that, after all this effort, seemed to be getting more valuable by the moment.

Forward.  Nothing for it but forward.

Joe forced his gaze to stay straight ahead, held onto the railings, and walked forward as fast as he could make himself move.

It took nearly all his self-control to get across the walkway, and required the last shred to stop himself from heaving a deep sigh of relief when he stepped onto solid floor at the opposite end, moving into some sort of attic space up here at the top of the opera house.  He had no self-control left to resist wiping a hand across his suddenly sweaty forehead.

“Warm up here, isn’t it, with all those lanterns below?” Sam said as he stepped off the walkway behind him, smiling sympathetically.

Well—maybe he wouldn’t tell anyone after all.  And even if he did, he didn’t have any proof.

“We’d better—keep going,” Joe managed, pointing ahead.  The men had probably done the smart thing and taken the door down below instead of going up the stairs.  He and Sam were probably up here for no reason at all.  Hopefully Hoss had already grabbed the men below, and they could just do a quick exploration up here and find a different staircase down, one that didn’t mean going back across that walkway.

All in all, Joe was a little distracted as he continued forward towards the next doorway.  With that, and the shadows, and the music from the stage below covering sounds, it wasn’t that surprising that he didn’t spot the man crouched in the darkness.  Not until the man stood up, pointing a gun at him that was all too clear despite the poor lighting.

“Hands up where I can see them,” the man said, a classic order from outlaws and lawmen alike.

Joe suddenly realized that he had not drawn his pistol again, after holstering it on the walkway.  A stupid mistake, and if he hadn’t been so rattled by the height…he groaned, and lifted his hands.  “You’re going to regret this,” he told the gunman, and hoped he’d come up with a reason why that was so before he was asked for it.

“I don’t think so,” the gunman said, pistol unwavering.

Out of the corner of his eye, Joe could see that Sam had his hands up too – and the man wasn’t even wearing a gun, so there wasn’t likely to be much help from that direction.

“Maybe you could at least try to explain to me,” Joe said, pitching his voice conversationally, “why you’re going to all this trouble over a bolt of fabric.  The resale value isn’t that high.”  He’d paid a fortune for it, but unless they were really brilliant conmen, they probably couldn’t get as high a price as the tailor had.  And if they were brilliant conmen, surely they had better schemes to spend their time on than this.

“Don’t try to fool us,” the gunman said, “we know that fabric contains vital information.”

“Vital information?” Joe repeated, baffled.

“That’s right!” a new voice joined in, and Joe turned his head to see a second man emerging from the opposite side of the room.  “We’re not going to be fooled by a couple of Confederate spies!”

“Confederate spies?”  In spite of himself, Joe began to laugh.  “Someone’s definitely confused here.”  He lowered his hands, turning towards the second man.  “Look, this is just a big mix-up.”

He barely heard Sam say, “Look out—” before a pain crashed into the back of his head.

It occurred to him, as he tumbled down to the floor, that he really shouldn’t have turned his back on the first one.

7.

When Joe opened his eyes again, he discovered that he was lying on the floor with his wrists and ankles tied.  Never a good way to wake up, but hardly the first time it had happened to him.  He used his elbow to lever himself up and look around.  Sam Clemens was sitting against the wall nearby, similarly tied-up.  They seemed to still be in the attic space of the opera house – a different part of it, but the warped boards of the wall and floor were a familiar style.  In fact – he was pretty sure he even recognized the doorway over there, only now they were on the opposite side of it.  There was some light from a lantern near them, but it didn’t reach to the opposite end of the room, where two shadowed figures were bent over a table.

Sam caught his eye as he pushed himself to sit up, and gave an apologetic shrug.  “I’m sorry, Joe.  Writer, not a fighter.”

“Didn’t you get into any fistfights on that riverboat?” Joe asked.  He didn’t really blame Sam – he shouldn’t have turned around – but his head hurt, and he did rather wish it was Hoss in this with him.  Where was Hoss, and how soon was he going to come looking for them?

“I may have exaggerated the stories slightly.”
“Right,” Joe said, and squinted into the darkness.  “Hey, you two – you want to explain what this is all about?”

They ignored him, continuing to murmur in low voices, heads bent over an indistinct shape on the table.  Indistinct until one of them bumped it, it wobbled and with sudden momentum rolled right off the table, long swathe of green corduroy unwinding as it went.  The bolt bumped across the floor and halted, still only half-unrolled, right at Joe’s feet.

Joe looked at it bemusedly.  It was almost like Cochise, trotting back to his master.  He wished he had Cochise now, but they’d ridden the stage to San Francisco and old Cooch was back home on the Ponderosa.  Joe wished he was there with him.  Instead, he was here, with a bolt of fabric and a lot of questions.

“Who are you?” Joe asked.  “And why do you think my corduroy is important?  And did you say something about Confederate spies, or is that just the blow to the head?”

One of the men finally looked their way, the taller one who’d been holding the gun before, and held up something that glinted in the lanternlight.  Since it was revealed for all of about half-a-second, Joe couldn’t have said what it was besides shiny – but the man was swift to say, “We’re federal marshals, designated to disrupt the supply of information passing through Confederate spies in San Francisco.”

Joe tried to stifle a groan.  Federal marshals?  Pa was going to have his hide for this.  “I don’t know what you think I have to do with this, but—I don’t know anything about Confederate spies.  I only bought a jacket!”

“Yes,” the tall man agreed, “a very clever disguise to aid your claim of being a rancher from Nevada.”

“I am a rancher from Nevada!” Joe said, then frowned.  “Wait, how did you know that?”

“We heard everything we needed to know in the saloon,” the second man chimed in.  He was smaller, kind of ferrety looking somehow.  “No doubt you thought you were unobserved, but we heard you confess to the saloon girls that you’re really from New Orleans!”

“I was flirting,” Joe protested.  “I didn’t mean it!  My mother was from New Orleans, but not me.”

Tall one was shaking his head.  “It’s all too easy to change a story now, after you’ve been caught.  You don’t really expect us to believe you, do you?  And how do you explain this?” he asked, gesturing to the bolt of fabric.

“I got rooked by a tailor,” Joe said through gritted teeth.

“Or you are using it to carry secret messages!”

Joe sagged back against the wall.  His head hurt, and this was ridiculous.  All he’d done was see a jacket in a window, and somehow his entire evening had unraveled into its current state.  He looked down at the jacket, at the green cuffs that didn’t quite hide the ropes on his wrists.  He did still like the jacket, though.  That was something.

Then he looked over at Sam, and realized he had another card to play.  “Hey, wait a minute – Sam here knows me!  This is Sam Clemens, the writer.”  Sam was shaking his head, but Joe pressed on.  “Sam’ll back me up – I’m Joe Cartwright, from the Ponderosa.  Sam knows.”

“Yes, we are familiar with Mr. Sam Clemens,” Tall One said, voice disdainful.  “We are also familiar with the exaggerated quality of his stories, and his propensity to tell tall tales regarding the Cartwrights of Nevada.  You can see why we would find his testimony suspect in this regard.”

Sam sighed.  “I already tried, Joe.  We may be encountering a case of the proverbial boy who cried wolf.”

“Did you tell them there aren’t any Confederate spies?” Joe hissed.  “That you made them up?”

“Of course there are Confederate spies,” Tall One continued.  “We’ve had multiple reports on them, and you and your associate from the saloon match the descriptions perfectly.”

“Sam,” Joe said in a tight voice, “tell me you weren’t thinking of Hoss and me when you started that rumor.”

Sam shook his head.  “I never even described the spies.  The story must have gained some new elements along the way.”

“And those new elements just happen to look like us?”  Joe glowered at the murky ceiling and tried to think.  Surely Hoss’d be along before too long.  He didn’t entirely fancy the idea of being rescued by his big brother, though.  At least, not without putting some effort in himself.  The knots on his wrists weren’t that tight – but with his ankles tied too, and the men right there to see him struggling with the ropes – no, that was no good.

Maybe he’d just have to sit tight and wait until they carted him off to some jail, and then send a telegram…and let Pa know he’d been mixed up in all this…but at least he’d get out of it.  And he could tell Pa how he’d been cooperating with the federal marshals.  Pa was real big on cooperating with federal marshals.

“You know what’s strange?” Sam remarked conversationally.

“It’d be easier to say what isn’t strange right now,” Joe said sourly.

“Something seems familiar about our captors there.  I’m sure I’ve heard the voices before, but I can’t quite place them.”

“Oh good, everybody recognizes everybody, except I got recognized as a Confederate spy!”

“Could you please keep quiet over there?” Ferretty said, rather mildly.  “We’re still trying to examine this fabric for secret messages.”

“It’s just fabric!” Joe hollered.  “There aren’t any messages!  That would be the least subtle secret message ever!”

“Somebody around here has got a message what belongs to me,” a new, deeper voice joined the conversation, “and I’m aimin’ to find it.”

For just a breath, Joe thought it was Hoss standing in the doorway, coming in from the direction of the walkways and the stage.  The height was right, and the general shape was right, and even the voice was pretty close.  And then the man took another step forward, more light reaching him, and—the clothes were all wrong, and unless big brother had grown a beard in the last ten minutes, something very strange was happening.  Though a sudden beard would be pretty strange too, actually.

The two men by the table exchanged glances, and Tall One picked up his gun.  “Are you—his associate from the saloon?” he asked uncertainly.  There was an extremely disturbing resemblance, but—no, that beard clinched it, definitely not Hoss.

“I been in a lotta saloons in my day,” the strange not-Hoss said, pacing forward, “but I ain’t got nothing to do with that pipsqueak sittin’ on the floor.”

“Pipsqueak?” Joe repeated indignantly.  He wasn’t that small, whatever his nickname might be.

“It’s a trick, ain’t it?” not-Hoss continued, sweeping his gaze around the room.  “You’re all in it together somehow, right?  You and that big ol’ fellow downstairs what interfered with my business?”

Ferretty straightened up indignantly.  “I assure you, we are not in collaboration with these rogues.  We are federal marshals, pursuing Confederate spies in a mission of vital importance to the Union.”

“Prove it,” not-Hoss growled.

Tall One stepped forward a pace, finally moving into the light, as he lifted the same badge from before.  He barely held it up for a second, and yet—something seemed a little off, now that Joe had seen it a second time…

Not-Hoss chuckled.  “That’s nice.  I’m goin’ to have a lot more fun with this, killing federal marshals.”

And then a lot of things happened at once.

The man gave a very un-marshal-like squeak, and retreated behind the table again.

Sam snapped his fingers and said, “Wait, I’ve got it – I knew I recognized those voices – you two work for The San Francisco Herald, don’t you?”

Not-Hoss started to lumber forward, in a very threatening fashion, while the man with the gun suddenly developed a bad shake.

And Joe realized that the bolt of fabric was lying right up against his boots.

Joe kicked out hard against the fabric – with some regret for the probable boot-prints – and it went bouncing forward, crashing into the table and knocking it, the two men behind it and, crucially, the lantern, all flying.

In the new darkness and confusion, Joe lurched up to his feet.  The ropes on his ankles were just about loose enough to allow a very awkward shuffling, but he’d take it.  He started across the room – not towards not-Hoss, who was swearing loudly and stamping about, and definitely not towards that absurd walkway again, but towards the open door on the opposite side of the room.  It was barely visible in the shifting shadows, but he only just clipped his shoulder against the edge dodging through.

On the far side he made a grab for the doorhandle of the open door with both hands – no other way to do it, with his hands still tied – and was yanking it around to close when he heard a gasp of, “Wait!” and Sam Clemens stumbled through after him.  Well, good.  He hadn’t exactly meant to abandon Sam, he’d just been moving on instinct to escape.

He shoved the door the rest of the way shut with his shoulder, then pressed his back to the door both to hold it closed and for balance to slide down and reach the rope around his feet.  He’d like it off his hands, but he needed his feet free if they were going to make any kind of distance.

“You all right?” he asked Sam, as his fingers tugged at the rope.  It wasn’t too hard to undo, clearly tied by people whose fathers had not been sailors at any point in their lives.

“Oh, can’t complain,” Sam said, though he sounded slightly winded.  “The adventure continues very promising for an exciting story.”

Joe snorted and shook his head, just as the rope came undone.  “Here, let me get your feet,” he said, and reached for the rope tying Sam.  This knot was even sloppier, as though it had been done in a hurry – maybe by men who didn’t want their faces recognized.

He was just turning to the rope on his hands when a gunshot rang out from the room behind them.  Joe’s eyes widened.  The door behind him, some sort of splintery wood, was not something he wanted to rely on with bullets firing, not when he was pressed with his back against it like this.  Their hands would have to wait.

“Move, go!” he ordered, springing up and running forward as fast as he dared in the uncertain moonlight coming from some very small windows.  Which was not very fast, especially after his shin hit the edge of a crate.  He cursed, looked around a little more, and concluded they were in some sort of storage space.  There was a central path through it, but it would have been much easier to navigate with real light.

More shots behind them, but they were gaining some space at least, and then – a stairway, leading down.  Joe dove for it.  He wanted to go down, right now, as fast as possible – barring, of course, the fastest way, which would be falling off one of those walkways.  Stairs would be just fine.

8.

When Hoss went into the opera house again, he tried to retrace his steps back to where he had split off from Little Joe and Sam.  That seemed like the best way to track them, go back to their last known location.  And he hadn’t thought it would be hard, since he’d just gone down one long hallway.  But the exit door must have looked different from this side, or something, because he couldn’t seem to end up in the same place he’d started.

Or maybe it was that he was still sort of muddled by that strange woman and her strange paper, still crinkling in his pocket.  Maybe he ought to stop and look at the paper – but time was passing, and he wanted to find Little Joe, somewhere in this strangely complicated building.

Give him a pine forest or an empty desert or even a rocky expanse and he could track a horse or a man just fine.  But an opera house was a different beast entirely.

He made his way through back halls and into an elegant lobby, through rooms selling food and back into service corridors again.  There were plenty of people around, all of them seeming to know exactly where they were going.  He didn’t stop to ask for directions, because he didn’t know how to ask for directions for where he needed.  Could you point me to the hallway that the ladies’ changing room opens off of?  It gave him the cold sweats just to think of asking that out loud.  No one seemed to mind him being here, but – no, no help to be found with that question.

The situation didn’t seem to be getting better though, as he somehow fumbled his way into a darker hallway.  He had turned back around to try to decide if he should go back the way he’d come or keep going when a voice addressed him from behind.  “Weren’t you checking the upper levels?  I’m searching down here already.”

It almost sounded like Little Joe’s voice, only with an unfamiliar twang to it that wasn’t his New Orleans accent either – maybe Texas? – and when Hoss turned around he almost thought he was looking at Joe too.  Except – well, Joe might’ve changed clothes in the last few minutes, but it wasn’t likely he’d grown a mustache too.

And of course the words didn’t make sense either, when Joe had gone upstairs, but that was the least of what was strange right now.  Hoss blinked, squinted, said the not at all articulate, “You’re—who—how?”

The other man’s face screwed up and his eyebrows bunched a lot like Joe’s too, but he seemed to have a slightly better grasp on the situation.  “You ain’t Big Jack.  You’re the other one!”

Hoss was still trying to work out what that meant when not-Joe pulled a gun.  “Hey now, wait a minute,” Hoss said, raising his hands.  “I don’t know what you think’s going on here—”

“Hand over the message, or do I have to take it off yer body?”

Hoss thought at once of the paper from the mysterious woman outside, the one still in his vest pocket.  He had no particular desire to hang onto the message, but there was a nasty look in the other man’s eyes that said he was dead whether he handed the message over or not.  He did have a pressing desire not to test that out.  And there was a door on his left.

So he threw himself left, intending to smash through the door if necessary, only to have it swing open and spill him into the next room, crashing him down onto the floor.

It was a familiar room, for all he’d tried not to look before.  He was at a different angle, but he had glimpsed this room.

And apparently him actually falling into the room was a little more upsetting to the ladies inside than Joe just opening a door.

“You can’t be in here,” a redhead said from somewhere overhead, while what felt like dozens of other women drew back with exclamations and at least faint alarm.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, I really am, but I can’t go back, ma’am,” Hoss managed, scrambling to his feet and trying his best to cut through the room without looking at anything or falling over anything, two obviously contradictory goals in a room this crowded with people and clothing – very little of the clothing in the right places, on people, but instead just sort of strewn across chairs – and everywhere there were little tables and mirrors and what was this place anyway?  Well, he knew what it was, but why was it like this?

He stumbled over a chair, narrowly avoided a mirror, and charged desperately towards another door up ahead.

Behind him, he could hear that Texas voice saying, “Oh – hello, girls,” so maybe this exit route was buying him a little time.  Definitely would if that feller had more in common with Little Joe than just looks.  He felt a twinge of guilt at whether he was dragging all these ladies into whatever this mess what, but the only thing he could think of to do was to get out as fast as possible.  It definitely wasn’t going to help them to start a firefight in the middle of their changing room.

He was at the door finally, wrenched it open, and found – still not that first hallway he’d been looking for.  How many doors did a changing room need?  Nothing for it but to go out anyway, shutting the door behind him and grabbing a crate nearby to shove in front of it.  Might buy a few more seconds.  Then he looked around, and – what was this, backstage?  Curtains and boxes and he could hear music and see lights somewhere up beyond the curtains but he wasn’t going to go that way.  He hurried along on this side of the curtains, and a few of the people back here were looking at him funny now, but no one actually stopped him.  And no one hollered at him from the direction of the changing room, so maybe he’d lost that strange feller behind him.

He thought he’d gone all the way across behind the stage and out the far end when he spotted a staircase.  It wasn’t the right staircase, not the one he’d been looking for, but at least it led up.  Little Joe had gone up.  So he’d go up too, and see where that took him.

 

Joe thundered down the stairs as fast he dared with his hands still tied in front of him.  He’d gone a couple of flights and was picking up speed nicely, zipping around the turns on the stairs, when he made the next turn and collided straight into a big wall of muscle.  With anybody smaller, they probably would’ve both gone tumbling down the stairs, but as it was, Joe bounced off backwards, bumped into Sam behind him, and sent both of them thudding down onto the stairs, which was better than falling forwards but not great either.

“How’d you get down here so fast?” Joe groaned, taking in the big shape of the man in front of him before his gaze traveled all the way up to the face – no beard.  “Hoss!  You’re Hoss!”

Hoss squinted at him doubtfully.  “You get hit on the head, little brother?”

“Yeah, but that ain’t the point right now.”  Joe held up his tied hands.  “Get these off me, will ya?”

Hoss’ frown deepened, but he reached for the knots.  “What happened, Little Joe?  Who tied you up?”

“A couple of federal marshals who’re actually newspapermen, on account of they think you and me are Confederate spies.”

Hoss stared at him for a second, then looked at Sam, sitting a step behind.  “How hard did he get hit?”

“His story is in fact accurate, if not particularly clear,” Sam said, which mostly added up to agreement.

Hoss had just got the ropes off of Sam too when they heard thuds and shouting from somewhere up above.

“That the Confederate spies?” Hoss asked.

“No, we’re the Confederate spies, weren’t you listening?” Joe snapped.  “Come on, go down, we’ve got to get out of here.  At least until I can get another gun.”  As a general rule he’d rather fight back, but unarmed and with Sam Clemens in tow – what’d Adam like to say?  Sometimes discretion was the better part of valor.  This usually came up when Adam was trying to talk him out of some sort of foolishment, so he wouldn’t say this was a code he lived by – but maybe just this once.

They’d only made it a few steps down when a new figure appeared on the stairs a couple flights below.  He was on the small side and—Joe blinked, with the uncanny feeling he was looking into some sort of distorted mirror.  Except his reflection had both a mustache and a gun.

“Go back up,” Hoss ordered, “I’ll cover us.”

“Yeah, but there’s another one up there!” Joe protested.

“But this one’s aimin’ at us!” Hoss said, drawing his own gun just as the other man fired.

It missed anybody, but Joe turned and hightailed it back up the stairs, Sam Clemens in the lead and Hoss behind them, firing back.  Maybe they’d get lucky and the one up above wasn’t actually to the stairs yet.

“What’s it all about anyway?” Joe demanded as they climbed.

“No idea,” Hoss said, firing again.  “Something about a message.”

“Yeah, the one up here said that too.”

“I think we can safely conclude they’re in collaboration with each other,” Sam contributed.

With Hoss covering, they put some flights between them and the one below, but when Sam opened the door at the top of the stairs, he slammed it shut again immediately.

“The big one’s coming,” Sam announced, pressing his back to the closed door.

“That’s not going to hold against that big ugly gunman in there,” Joe groaned, and scanned the area for options.  A stair landing didn’t provide many.

“What big ugly gunman?” Hoss asked.

“The other one’s partner – he’s the one up there, looks kinda like you.”

“Gee, thanks,” Hoss said sarcastically.

“I just meant – hey, that’s a trapdoor,” Joe interrupted himself, spotting it up above.  “Boost me up, will you?”

“I might’ve known you’d get me up on a roof somehow,” Hoss grumbled, but squatted down to give Joe a hoist up.

The statement was blatantly unfair.  Joe did not want to be on a rooftop, but with angry men with guns coming from both directions, what choice did they have?

9.

The trapdoor opened with a simple shove, and while it took some scrambling and maneuvering, they all managed to get up through it.  Joe was just swinging it closed again when not-Hoss and not-Joe both appeared from opposite directions on the landing below.

“They’re coming!” Joe announced, looking for a way to latch the trapdoor from this side.

“Here, move,” Hoss said, and dumped an armful of planks somebody’d left up here across the trapdoor.  Must’ve been doing some roof work some while ago.

“That won’t hold long,” Sam said.  “May I suggest we find another exit?  Or at least a defensible position?”

Joe looked around the roof, which was big and flat so he didn’t have to think too hard about how high up it was.  There was no obvious door in sight, but there were several big chimneys, wide ones that looked big enough to shelter three people, provided they didn’t try to stand up.  “Over there,” he said, pointing to the nearest.

They all scrambled that way, crouching down behind it.

“I may have been mistaken,” Sam said, sitting against the chimney.  “I should have spent the evening looking for fictitious spies in the saloon.”

“Hey, Joe,” Hoss said as he peered around one edge, “do you remember that loco town down in Texas?”

Joe was ready for the question, since the memory had been on his mind too.  This was just the first moment he’d had a chance to really stop and focus on it.  “You mean the one where they thought we were hired gunmen?”

“Yeah – what was the name of those fellows they thought we were?”

“The Slade brothers,” Joe supplied.  “You think that’s who’s here?  The real Slade brothers?”

Hoss scratched up under his hat.  “I mean, you saw somebody who looked like me, and we both saw somebody who looked like you, and how many can there be, right?  Only I thought the Slade brothers got killed after we left town.”

Joe shrugged.  “We just heard a lot of shots.  Reckon we don’t really know what happened to them.  Only it looks like we’re finding out now.”

“This bit of history is fascinating and I’m sure I’d love to hear the story another time,” Sam interjected, “but what are we going to do now?”

“Right, you’re right.”  Joe nodded.  “We’ve got to find another way off of this roof, and we need to get back around to where we left my fabric—”

Hoss groaned.  “Little Joe, don’t you think it just might be time to let the fabric go?”

“Hoss!” Joe said indignantly.  “Do you know how much I paid for that fabric?”

“No!” Hoss exploded.  “Because you won’t tell me how much!”

“Oh.  Yeah.  Well, let’s just say it’d be much better all around if I have the fabric next time I see Pa.”

“Little Joe,” Hoss began, and it was that tone, the one that meant he had pushed good ol’ good-natured Hoss as far as he was going to go.

So it was lucky there was a distraction ready to hand.  “Hey, there’s another trap door opening!” Joe said, pointing across the rooftop.

“What?” Hoss said, turning to look.  “The planks’re still shaking over here on the one we came through.”

“It’s gotta be somebody else…”  Joe frowned, because didn’t that look a lot like…  “Whoever it is has my fabric.”

“Oh, you’re kidding,” Hoss groaned.

He wasn’t, though.  That was definitely a bolt of green fabric pushing up through the trap door, and just behind it came, sure enough, the two newspapermen.  When they saw the group behind the chimney, they headed this way.

“I wonder what they’re doing here,” Sam mused.  “If this is still about pursuing their story, I must admit they have more dedication to journalism than I would have anticipated.  I applaud them for it.”

At nearly the same moment there was a crash of lumber from the opposite direction, and Joe glimpsed the original trapdoor pushing open just before he ducked behind the chimney again.  The first shot was immediate, and Hoss leaned around one edge of the chimney to fire back.  The two newspapermen, still dragging the fabric, scurried across the roof to dive for the same cover as the rest of them behind the chimney.  It was getting crowded.

“What are you doing up here?” Joe demanded, yanking the fabric out of their grasps to inspect it.  The outer layer had picked up some scuffs, but it seemed mostly all right.

“We had to get away from those madmen downstairs,” the smaller, ferrety newspaperman said, eyes wide with fright.  “We didn’t know where else to retreat!”

“Does this mean you believe we aren’t Confederate spies?” Joe asked.

“Well – we believe you’re the less hostile ones,” Tall One said.  He had his gun out, pointing at nothing in particular, and his hand was still shaking.  A bullet hit the corner of the chimney nearby and he flinched.

“Oh, just—here, give me that,” Joe said, snatched the gun out of his hand, and leaned around the chimney at the opposite corner from Hoss to fire back.

“Joe, this ain’t gonna work for long,” Hoss hollered across the heads of the rest of the group.  “We ain’t got enough bullets to keep this going.”

“They’ve fired more shots than we have.”

“Yeah, but don’t they seem like just the sort to be wearing ammunition belts?”

“Yeah, probably.”  Joe frowned.  “We still don’t know why they’re shooting at us.”

“Might be the paper I got from some woman out front,” Hoss said, and every other head turned to stare at him.

“What paper?” Joe asked carefully, as another bullet thudded into the brick of the chimney.

“I dunno, some strange woman handed me a paper,” Hoss said, fumbling in his vest pocket to pull it out.

Hoss handed the paper to Sam Clemens, who unfolded it and held it where everyone – they were all crowded pretty tight here – could see.  The paper was covered with closely-written numbers and letters, utterly incomprehensible.  It couldn’t have been more obviously a coded message if it had been labeled that way.

“You really are Confederate spies!” Ferrety said in tones of wonder.

“No, dadburnit,” Hoss scowled, “I said, I got it by accident!”

“But the Slade brothers may be Confederate spies,” Sam said thoughtfully.

“Last we heard, they were in Texas,” Joe contributed.  He shook his head.  “But none of this is getting us out of here.  If we try to break for another trap door, they’ll shoot us, but if we stay here we’ll run out of bullets.  And then they’ll shoot us.”

“I could try and cover you while you make for the door,” Hoss suggested.

“They’re too quick on the trigger,” Joe said.  “We’d never make it.”

“I dunno, maybe.  Let’s see.”  Hoss reached a long arm past Sam Clemens and the two newspapermen and snatched Joe’s hat off his head.

“Hey, what are you going to—” Joe started, as Hoss held the black hat out beyond the edge of the chimney.

It took at most a half-second before another bullet fired.  Hoss drew the hat back and handed it to Joe.  “You may be right that they’re too fast,” he acknowledged.

Joe moaned, looking at the bullet hole right through his hat.  “Aw, Hoss!  I already spent a fortune on fabric, and now I have to buy a new hat too!”

“Just how much did you—”

“No, on second thought, you have to buy me a new hat!  You’re the one who got mine shot!”

“All right, all right, I’ll find you a new hat.”

“Maybe a lighter-colored one,” Joe mused.  “That might go better with the jacket.”

“Excuse me,” Sam interrupted, “is any of this leading us to a solution about how to get out of this predicament?”

“Right, he’s right, we still need an answer,” Joe said, looking around.  There was nothing close enough, not the roof’s edge or another trap door.  No other opening to get them off this roof…

And then it occurred to him.  They’d still need some covering fire to make it, but it was right here, the fastest option for getting away.

“The chimney,” he said triumphantly.

“Little Joe, no,” Hoss groaned.

“It’s the only way, Hoss!  We go down the chimney, we get out at whatever fireplace it leads to—”

“I ain’t St. Nicholas!”

“Suppose there’s a fire in the fireplace below?” Sam pointed out.

“We’ll have to risk it,” Joe insisted.  “Big building like this, probably has interconnected chimneys.  We’ll find a way—”

Hoss was shaking his head.  “We’re gonna get lost, I’m gonna get stuck in some narrow passage, you’re gonna get soot all over your new jacket you’re so pleased about—”

“Oh, you’re right, that is a problem,” Joe said, briefly stymied.  The jacket would probably wash, though…  “Well, what if we—”

“Hands up where we can see them!”

That voice didn’t sound like the Slade brothers who, Joe suddenly realized, hadn’t fired again since the shot at his hat.

He took a cautious look around the edge of the chimney, and saw to his surprise that the Slade brothers were standing on the rooftop, hands raised and furious expressions on their faces.  Three other men had come up out of the trapdoor behind them, rifles trained on them.  When he looked around, he counted another four men, popped up out of other trapdoors around the roof.

“Huh,” Joe said, and raised his hands.  “Who do you reckon?  Union spies?”

“I think we’re about to find out,” Hoss said, setting down his gun and lifting his hands too.

Pretty soon everyone had been herded together near the center of the roof – Joe and Hoss, Sam Clemens, the two newspapermen, and the Slade brothers too.  The apparent leader of the new element approached, and lifted a very shiny badge.

“I am a federal marshal,” he announced, “in pursuit of Confederate spies.”

There was a moment’s lingering silence.

Then the ferrety newspaperman said, “Oh, dear.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling this one’s real,” Joe sighed.

“And Pa ain’t going to like this at all,” Hoss muttered.

“Gentlemen, I’m relieved to see you,” Big Jack Slade rumbled.  “My brother and I have been pursuing Confederate spies who stole our identities.  You see, we’re ranchers from the Ponderosa in Nevada.”

10.

As a general rule, Hoss tried to look on the bright side of things, to take the most charitable view of everyone he met, and to really believe that people were doing the best they could and that most situations weren’t all bad.

About the best he could come up with on the positive side here was that they’d been put in a separate cell from the Slade brothers.

The federal marshals, the real ones, had hauled everyone off the rooftop and back to the nearest jail.  And now they were all in a row of cells – the Slade brothers, the Cartwrights and Sam Clemens, and the newspapermen.  Though it would have been a whole lot better if the federal marshals had been clear on all those identities.

Johnson, the top man among the marshals, was pacing back and forth in front of the row of cells, frowning at all of them like they were all surely equally at fault for this difficult situation.  “Perhaps we should take this again from the beginning.”

A groan from Little Joe, standing by the bars, and Hoss pulled his hat down a little farther where he was slumped sitting on a bench at the back of their cell, next to Sam.  Ol’ Sam had pulled a notebook out of some pocket and had been making notes ever since they got in here.

“We saw those two confess to being Confederate spies,” the smaller newspaperman piped up immediately, pointing at Hoss and Joe.

“Do you have to keep saying that?” Joe demanded, glaring at the newspapermen.

The smaller one scowled at him.  “You’re the one who told them we were impersonating federal marshals!”

“Because you were!”

“And we’re just telling them what we saw too.”  The newspapermen had been very eager to tell everything, ever since they realized that impersonating federal marshals was a crime, and things might go easier if they provided valuable information.

“You did not see us confess to being spies, you saw me flirting!”

“Those seem like very strange things to confuse,” Johnson observed.

Joe’s face screwed up, eyebrows bunching together.  “All I did was tell the saloon girls I was from New Orleans.  It’s a bit, all right?  It doesn’t work, but I try it sometimes.”

“And then, out on the street,” the newspaperman jumped in again, “you said you work for Jefferson Davis!”

“I was joking!”  Joe shook his head, and pointed at the two Slade brothers.  “Look, you’ve been tracking the Slade brothers, right?” he demanded of Johnson.  “Can’t you see that that’s them?”

“Well, it’s not so simple,” Johnson said slowly.  “This isn’t the kind of thing we want to make a mistake on.  We trailed them from a distance only, you see.  And you can observe for yourself that there’s a stunning resemblance.”

“That must be why they decided to pretend to be us,” Big Jack Slade rumbled.  “Us being the Cartwrights, you know.”

“They have Texan accents,” Joe said with a wild gesture of one hand.  “And beards!”

“Beards can be shaved – or false ones taken off,” Johnson countered.  “How can I say the Cartwrights aren’t bearded?  And as for the accent – well, that does point to them as Confederates, yes.  But you—”  And here he pointed to Hoss.  “—were the one carrying an obviously coded message.”

Hoss heaved a sigh.  “I done told you already, I got that by mistake.  A pretty gal gave it to me outside the Opera House.  She must’ve thought I was Big Jack Slade, which I ain’t.”

From his raised eyebrows, Johnson obviously found this a very implausible story.  “Yes, but you can’t tell us anything else about the woman?  You didn’t ask any questions when she handed you a mysterious paper?”

Hoss shrugged awkwardly.  “I tried, but—it all happened real fast, you see?”

“Hoss gets tongue-tied around pretty women,” Joe contributed.  “If it was me, I’d’ve found out her name and why she was passing me a paper and whether she was married and what her plans were for dinner tomorrow, but…it wasn’t me.”

“You were the one carrying a bolt of fabric around the Barbary coast, though,” Johnson observed.

“Obviously hiding secret messages!” the newspaperman jumped in again.

“It’s just fabric,” Joe groaned.  “For patches.  For my new jacket.”

Everyone, from the Slade brothers to the newspapermen to the federal marshal, stared at him.

“No one,” Johnson said slowly, “needs that much fabric for patches.”

“I got rooked by a tailor, all right?” Joe snapped.  He dragged his hands through his hair.  “Look—what if we sent a telegram back to Virginia City…”

“What good will that do?” Hoss interjected.  “So they confirm that the Cartwrights came to San Francisco.  That doesn’t prove if it was us or them.”

“Oh.  Right.”  Joe frowned, and Hoss did sympathize with the problem.  Generally sending a telegram was the thing to do when wrongly arrested.  It left them a bit at loose ends that it wouldn’t work now.

“Perhaps we could telegraph Ben Cartwright of the Ponderosa,” Johnson said, tapping his chin with one finger.  “Ask him to come out to San Francisco to identify his sons.  It would take a few days, but surely he would know who is who.”

Hoss felt queasy at the idea, and he knew Joe did too by the moan.  “You can’t drag Pa all the way out here,” Joe said.  “He’d have our hides for that for sure.”

“He might identify us as Confederate spies, just to teach us a lesson,” Hoss muttered.

“Aw, Pa wouldn’t do that,” Joe protested.  “Adam, maybe, but not Pa.”

Johnson pounced.  “Then your own father knows you’re Confederate spies?”

“To teach us a lesson, I said,” Hoss said hurriedly.  “We aren’t really!”

“Gentlemen,” Sam Clemens spoke up suddenly, closing his notebook and standing up, “I may have an idea to solve our little problem here.  It appears to me that what you need is someone to confirm your identity – to distinguish between the Slades and the Cartwrights.”

“And if you’d just take Sam’s word for it,” Joe said, “we could clear this all up!”

“But I am too well established as a teller of tall tales,” Sam continued, “making me not the most reliable of witnesses.  We need someone else.  Now, I further understand that the confusion really comes in quite late in the evening.  The federal marshals lost track of the Slade brothers, what, an hour ago?  They only caught up again when reports came out of a gunfight at the opera house.  And there we have our problem, because all four of you were inside, and the confusion then becomes who was who when you came out again.  Correct so far?”

Johnson frowned.  “I can’t tell if you’re trying to tell a story, or to perform some sort of courtroom drama.  You know this isn’t a courtroom, right?”

“Oh, I’m very clear on that,” Sam said with a lift of his eyebrows.  “But I do have the story right so far, yes?”

“So far,” Johnson acknowledged.

“And we further know that earlier in the evening, while the Slade brothers were still under observation, Joe Cartwright bought a jacket from a tailor.”

“And I’ve got the jacket,” Joe jumped in, clutching his lapels in demonstration.  “There, doesn’t that prove something?”

“He stole my jacket,” Little Jim Slade said quickly.  “You can’t prove he didn’t!”

“Actually,” Sam resumed, while Joe glared at the Slades, “I had a different suggestion.  You need someone to identify the Cartwrights.  Preferably an upstanding businessman of impeccable character.”

“You’re still not talking about you?” Johnson said.

“No.  But what about the tailor?”

There was a moment of considering silence.

“Perhaps,” Johnson said.  “Do we know the name of the tailor?”

All gazes swung around to Little Joe, who gave a slightly sickly smile.

“Hoo boy,” Hoss breathed out.

“His name?” Joe repeated.  “Well, ah – no.  But I know where his shop was!  It was – let me think, it must’ve been – I was on North Point Street, so it would be…North Point and Hyde!  The corner of North Point and Hyde.”

He looked around triumphantly, while everyone else looked blank.

And then a voice from the next room said, “Must’ve been William Brown.”  The policeman on duty at the desk out front stuck his head in the doorway back towards the cells.  “Brown’s had that tailor shop for years.  Impeccable reputation.  Contributes to the Policemen’s Fund for Widows and Orphans every year.”

“There, you see!” Joe said, as proudly as though this had been his idea.  Joe did like to take credit for things.  “Just the man to identify me.”

“Lot o’ nonsense,” Little Jim Slade protested.  “This is all some sort o’ trick, ain’t it?  And you’ll never find him anyway.  It’s the middle of the night by now.”

“I believe he lives above his shop,” the policeman volunteered.  “I could dispatch a man over to bring him right now.  Explain that it’s official business, see, and I’m sure he’d oblige.”

And so, they settled in to wait.

11.

The way things had been going, Joe half-expected the wrong tailor to show up.  But no, the man who walked into the jail, as neatly dressed as though he hadn’t been summoned out of his bed, was the same one who’d just as neatly maneuvered him into buying that bolt of fabric.  Though the man did make a nice jacket.

“Welcome, Mr. Brown,” Johnson said.  “Perhaps you can clear some things up for us here.”

The tailor gave a polite nod.  “I am always happy to assist our city’s fine law enforcement officers.”

Yeah, probably so they wouldn’t look into his sales practices.

Brown scanned the jail cells, giving a visible start of surprise on seeing the Slades and the Cartwrights.  The resemblance was pretty unsettling, and sharing jail space for an hour now hadn’t made it seem less weird.

“You remember me, right?” Little Jim Slade said quickly.  “I bought that jacket from you, that one he stole!”

“I bought the jacket, the same one I’m still wearing,” Joe snapped.

“I recognize the jacket, yes,” Brown agreed, and studied Joe thoughtfully.  “It is a perfect fit, isn’t it?”

“Right, yes, and that’s just what you said when you sold it to me,” Joe agreed, giving his best charming smile.  Worked better on women, as a rule, but it couldn’t hurt here.

“Of course,” Brown said, turning to glance at Little Jim Slade, “he appears to be the same size.  But you…”  He turned his attention to Joe again.  “You may be Joe Cartwright.  And obviously Joe Cartwright would remember that fine bolt of fabric he also purchased from me…and the second payment he still owes me for it.”

Second payment?  Joe stared at the tailor – and found looking back at him the face of a man who knew he was holding a handful of aces.

“Hoss,” Joe said evenly, “pay the man.”

“What?” Hoss said blankly.

“I, Joe Cartwright, of course remember that I owe this very discerning, very trustworthy tailor a second payment on the truly valuable fabric he sold me.  I find myself rather embarrassed for money, however, so you, as my brother, Hoss Cartwright, would obviously be very happy to pay the man the fifty…?”

The tailor’s eyes narrowed.

“Excuse me, the hundred and fifty…?”

That one got a smile.

“…which I still owe him,” Joe concluded.  “Now pay the man.”

“I don’t believe this,” Hoss muttered, but dug into his pocket for his wallet.  “Hundred and fifty…bolt of fabric…how we’re ever gonna tell Pa…”

Once he had the money in hand, Joe pushed it through the bars at the tailor.  “There you are, and thank you for your excellent service,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Very good doing business with you,” Brown said, smiling widely.  “Mr. Johnson, I am quite certain that this is in fact the man I sold that elegant green jacket to, and thus Mr. Cartwright – leaving those other two your Confederate spies.”

Big Jack Slade sighed.  “Aw, dadburn it.  It almost worked.”  And he sounded so much like Hoss that it was downright spooky.

 

As Hoss, Joe and Sam stepped out of the jailhouse, Hoss could practically feel the emptiness of his wallet.  The lightness there only made worse the heavy load of the green fabric weighing down his shoulder.

“I must say, gentlemen,” Sam remarked, “that was certainly the most exciting evening I’ve spent in months.  Thank you for bringing me along on your adventure.”

“Hey, any time,” Joe said, playing the gracious host, just as though they’d spent a pleasant evening in a saloon and lost all their money at poker.  Which would at least make sense.

“But not for a long time,” Hoss said sourly.  See if he followed along on one of Joe’s wild schemes again after this!

Well…even in the moment he knew that yeah, he probably would.  There was just something about Little Joe, when he got that look in his eye and started spouting something that seemed reasonable in the moment, and then kept them running too fast for Hoss to stop, and pick it apart, and realize he was talking a lot of nonsense.  And someone had to go along and keep Little Joe from getting himself killed anyhow.

“I expect,” Sam continued, “I’ll be able to have a drink on the good people of San Francisco in the saloons for months on the strength of this story.  People are so apt to buy a round for the table when an enthralling tale is afoot.”

“Glad this worked out for your wallet,” Hoss muttered.

“There’s just one piece of the story I don’t understand,” Joe commented, which was interesting because there were a whole lot of pieces Hoss didn’t understand.  “How’d the Slade brothers know about us anyway?  They popped up with the claim to be us before we did.”

Sam fidgeted with his collar.  “Oh, everyone knows about the Cartwrights.”

Sometimes that seemed to be true.  Other times, usually when someone wanted to accuse them of robbery or murder or some such thing, it didn’t.  Hoss squinted at Sam suspiciously, because he didn’t think that was all of the story.  “You sure they might’ve just sort of generally heard about us?  Like in the news maybe?”

“Well, maybe,” Sam acknowledged.  “And I do possibly tell a few stories of my good friends the Cartwrights in the drinking establishments of the city.  You’re part of my regular repertoire, and if the Slade brothers have been spending time in the saloons recently…”

And they did seem the type that would’ve been.  But it was hard to get too upset with Sam – it wasn’t like he’d intended any of this.  And it was all more Joe’s fault anyway.  “Maybe at least keep us out of your published stories, Sam?” Hoss said.  “Just the saloon stories caused enough trouble.”

“Oh, certainly, certainly,” Sam said, looking relieved to be let off this easy.  “Nowhere will Mark Twain write a tale of the Cartwrights.  Saloon stories only.”

Hoss wasn’t sure that solved everything, but Sam had come up with the tailor idea that got them out of jail, so he supposed he’d let it go.

“Aw, cheer up, Hoss,” Little Joe said, giving his arm a push.  “Everything worked out in the end.  The Slade brothers are locked up, we’re in the clear, and the federal marshals thanked us for helping them capture their spies.  And I got my fabric back!”

Maybe Hoss would have felt less like wiping the grin off of Little Joe’s face if he hadn’t wound up with that last one.  “Yeah,” Hoss said, smiling back at him.  “But don’t forget, little brother.  You still have to explain it all to Pa.”

And that cleared the smile off of his face right quick.

12.

Joe tried to put the story in the best light he could.  He had had years of practice at this, after all, trying to explain things to Pa.  He stood by the fireplace next to Hoss, and spun a tale that, he flattered himself, was as artistic and beautifully put together as Mark Twain himself might have come up with.  He presented himself and Hoss as innocent victims of circumstance, trying to do the upstanding thing, and ultimately successfully aiding a grateful federal marshal.  Pa was big on cooperating with federal marshals, after all.  In the end, he made the whole interlude involving Confederate spies sound downright heroic.

There was just one crucial piece of the whole trip he couldn’t talk around quite so easily.  The amount of money they had not come back with.

Ben Cartwright paced up and down the living room, stentorian voice raised to echo off the ceiling beams.  “Two young men alone on the Barbary Coast – I can understand how you might spend too much money on drinks, or lose too much money gambling, or throw too much money at saloon girls.”  He wheeled to jab a finger towards Hoss and Joe, both standing guiltily by the fireplace.  “I wouldn’t approve, but I would understand.  I don’t understand how you spend a small fortune on green corduroy!”  The jabbing finger moved to the bolt of fabric resting on the settee, gleaming in the firelight.

“Weren’t my idea,” Hoss muttered, the traitor.

Joe didn’t quite understand why the fabric seemed to bother his father this much.  Maybe it was the sheer unlikeliness of it.  His father was a man who liked to make sense of the world, which sometimes was a challenge when it came to the antics of his younger sons.  “But see, now, that’s a real practical purchase, Pa,” Joe tried.  “Not foolish expenses like, ah, saloon girls.  See, I bought this jacket – and ain’t it a nice jacket, Pa?  Don’t you think so?”

“It’s fine,” Ben said icily.  “But what do you plan to do with dozens of yards of fabric?”

“Well, that’s for—well—”  Joe gulped.  “For patches.”

His father stared at him, and out of the corner of his eye he could see Hoss edging another step away.  The amused glance oldest brother Adam was giving to the heavens, from his spot behind the settee, didn’t help either.

“It’s, uh, a difficult fabric to match,” Joe managed.  “And I’m very hard on my clothes, it’s a fact of ranching, you know, Hop Sing complains about it and so…really I was just planning ahead, and, uh…”

“Patches,” Ben repeated.  “You have enough fabric there for an entire second jacket!  For ten more jackets!”

Joe spotted an opening and dove for it.  “You’re right – you’re right, Pa, and that is a good idea, I’m glad you thought of it!  I’ll have more jackets made.  Why mess around with patches?  Why not plan ahead, have another jacket already ready if anything happens to the first one?  Why not have three?  Or—ten?”

“You’re planning on wearing the same jacket for the next twelve years?” Ben asked icily.

“Well—that’s just it, not the same one – because I’ll have lots of them!”

Adam spoke up with something useful finally, to remark, “Leta Malvet has a nice little tailoring business going these days.  She could do the job.  Probably appreciate the work.”

Leta Malvet was real pretty too.  Joe could see some definite advantages in taking his business to her, not that it would help to mention those advantages to his father.  “There, you see, Pa!  I can give some business to a local woman trying to better herself in the world.  It’s practically a good deed, and—and real practical too.”

His father just stared at him for a moment, then turned to Hoss.  “I can’t see why you didn’t stop him from making the fool purchase to begin with.”

“I wasn’t even there,” Hoss protested.  “I was—waitin’ in the saloon…”

Now Pa was rolling his eyes to the heavens.  “I don’t know why I ever let the two of you off the Ponderosa together.”  He turned and stomped off to the front door, letting it slam closed behind him.

Joe let out a breath.  That was probably the worst of it over.

“Well, that could have been worse,” Adam remarked, then with a glint in his eye said, “Didn’t I warn you about the Barbary Coast?”

“You didn’t warn me about Barbary Coast tailor shops,” Joe countered, shoved the bolt of fabric over and flopped onto the settee.

His oldest brother just chuckled, then followed their father out the front door.  Hoss let out a big sigh and sat down heavily in the opposite corner of the settee, bolt of fabric between them.

Joe frowned moodily at the fireplace.  “You get the feeling we’re starting to get a bad reputation?”

“How d’you figure?” Hoss asked.

“Oh, Pa seems to think we get into trouble every time we go somewhere together.”

“Well…” Hoss said slowly, “we got mistaken for the Slade brothers before, in that feuding town in Texas.”

“That wasn’t our fault!”

“And you nearly got hitched to that little Spanish senorita when we went to Mexico.”

“Also not my fault,” Joe said automatically, considered, winced, and amended, “Well, mostly not my fault.  And anyway, I didn’t end up married to her, so it was all right.”

“And there was the time all we did was go to the carnival and your girl got abducted…”

“We rescued her, didn’t we?  And that was Jennifer’s own fault anyway!” Joe insisted.  “We’re just—victims of circumstances!”

“Yeah,” Hoss said.  “Sure.”

“Well—we’ll just have to do better in the future,” Joe said firmly.  “We’ll be extra careful and responsible, and think twice every time, and—we’ll pretend Adam’s with us, that’ll keep us out of trouble for sure.”

“Yeah,” Hoss said again, and they both stared into the flames of the fireplace for a moment.  “You think that’s gonna work?”

Joe sighed.  “Not a chance.”

“Yeah,” Hoss repeated, and they went back to staring at the fireplace.  “You know,” he said after a moment, “it really is a nice jacket.”

“You think so?” Joe said, holding up his arms to inspect the sleeves.

“Really is.  Brings out yer eyes, like you said.”

“Thanks, big brother.  I appreciate that.”

The End

Author’s Notes: For those who enjoy knowing episode references…Joe has a fairly inexplicable French accent and references New Orleans quite a lot in the first episode of the series, “A Rose for Lotta;” likely this was a case of the character still being defined, but I like to imagine it was an odd phase Joe was going through.  The Cartwrights first met Sam Clemens/Mark Twain in the Season 1 episode, “Enter Mark Twain.”  Hoss and Joe robbed a bank (with the best of motives!) in “The Bank Run.”  The Slade brothers first appeared in “The Gunmen.” Major Cayley launched a balloon in “The Dream Riders.”  Leta Malvet appears in “The Outcast.”  Joe nearly married a Spanish senorita in “El Toro Grande” and went to the carnival in “The Abduction.” The photo at the top comes from “The Many Faces of Gideon Flinch,” one of the great hijinks episodes.