Summary: After two years away from the Ponderosa, Candy finds work at a traveling carnival, only to encounter the familiar face of a man he’s never met. Set between Seasons 13 and 14. Written for the 2026 Ponderosa Paddlewheel Poker Tournament.

Rating: G
Word Count: 8,785

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Sometimes Candy regretted leaving his job at the Ponderosa. Six hours into trying to entice people into a gypsy fortuneteller’s tent was one of those times.

“Step right up, folks!” he called in his best imitation of a carnival barker. Which somehow was what he was now. “Learn the mysteries of the future with Madame Lupinessa! Find out the secrets of the universe for a mere twenty-five cents!”

Candy tried to offer a charming grin to a pretty girl going by, but she kept right on walking. He didn’t blame her. The Cartwrights would probably say that he was always ready with a grin, that it was one of his most notable features, but six hours in, he could feel it getting worn around the edges.

He hadn’t planned on this particular job. He’d been knocking around doing short stints at different ranches ever since he left the Ponderosa about two years back. When he found himself between jobs and between ranches, it hadn’t seemed like the craziest idea in the world to hire on with a traveling carnival. Carnivals had horses. They had things they needed lifted and carried and moved around. They even needed firewood chopped now and then, or people on night watch. He’d convinced himself and Mr. Barlow, the carnival owner, that his experience was actually perfectly suited to working at a carnival.

Which was fine, except that after a mere two days of ordinary enough work, Barlow had clapped him on the back, told him he was too charming to be wasted behind the scenes, and put him in front of the fortuneteller’s tent, with directions to get as many people inside as possible. Candy supposed it was a compliment. And it could be worse. He could be inside, squinting at a chunk of crystal and trying to make up stories for people.

The image made him snort, with a chuckle he tried to swallow. No one was likely to believe he held the secrets of the universe.

“Step right up,” he tried again, without much enthusiasm, and he wasn’t sorry when a voice from inside the tent interrupted his efforts.

“That is enough for now,” the fortuneteller said, parting the cloth at her tent’s entrance. Somehow, he’d thought gypsy fortunetellers were always old women, but this one was near his own age, maybe a few years younger. She was beautiful too, something that would have interested him more if she wasn’t constantly staring into the distance like she saw ghosts behind his shoulder. She spoke like she was a ghost too, voice all spooky and dramatic.

“Guess it’s about time we both had a break, right?” he said, stretching, because he was going to talk normally no matter how much she wanted to stare at nothing.

“Yes…even fish must rest in the current after swimming hard,” she murmured. Candy wasn’t sure how fish came into this, but he wasn’t going to ask. There was no telling what the answer would be. “We will rest now, carried on the water, until it is time for my evening performance.”

This was the other half of the fortuneteller’s job; she told fortunes during the day and then danced in the evening. He had to admit, he could understand the appeal a lot more easily of that second act. Maybe that would make it easier for him to get people in for the show.

“Right, well, have a nice rest,” he said, and turned to go.

She was quick, hand shooting out to catch his wrist. “You have not let me tell you your fortune yet, Jack.”

He had an uncanny feeling that she knew perfectly well that wasn’t really his name. He wasn’t exactly thrilled to be working for a carnival and he hadn’t entirely kidded himself that it was a perfectly normal, perfectly reasonable job, and out of some kind of instinct of not wanting the story to get back to anyone he knew, he’d signed on under a false name. He didn’t need anyone hearing somehow about Candy the carnival barker. Jack felt nice and anonymous. And if the fortuneteller could tell the name wasn’t real, well, that had to be because he kept taking a beat to remember it was supposed to be him. Not because she actually knew things.

“I don’t need my fortune told,” he said, and tried to pull his arm away. She couldn’t be that strong, but her nails dug into his arm.

Her other hand came up and caught his hand, turning it over to look at the palm. “Ah, you are a man who has explored many paths and put his hand to many trades.”

“Yeah, lots of calluses,” Candy said, offering up a smile even though he’d really rather get away from the creepy fortuneteller and go get something to eat.

She looked up at him, eyelids heavy, and murmured, “I see more than the outside appearances. I see inside of men. I see that you are a hawk, flying free and alone across the sky. But even hawks need nests, and hawks have no one to help when a storm comes in.”

He managed half a chuckle. “Haven’t you noticed?” He gestured upward with his free hand, to a sky empty of everything but the carnival’s hot air balloon, tethered a hundred feet up. “Clear sky. No clouds.”

“Have a care,” she intoned, “for one day you will awake and find you are not a hawk at all.”

“What am I then, a turkey?” he asked, because he was starting to feel decidedly foolish.

She flashed him a brilliant smile – and she really was pretty, if only she wasn’t so blasted creepy too. “A scarlet tanager, of course.”

“Of course,” Candy said, with not the slightest idea what that was. A bird? Probably another type of bird. “I’ll, uh, see you later then, ma’am,” he managed, finally extricated his arm from her grip, and fled.

What a weird job this was.

---

Candy had his meal, a bowl of stew around a cooking fire with the strong man and a magician who made his bowl disappear when he was done, because that was what passed for normal around here. Then it was back to his post, outside of a larger tent where Madame Lupinessa did her dancing.

He had barely got into his place when he heard the fortuneteller’s voice call, “You must come inside, Jack! Meet my new guitarist.”

Jack. Right. That was him. Steeling himself, Candy ducked inside the tent. “I should really be outside, getting people in.”

Madame Lupinessa had added a lot more scarves to her costume, which was saying something. She sashayed forward, seized his arm again, and pulled him a few steps farther in. “Come, come. Meet my guitarist. Benjamin will play while I dance.”

The inside of the tent was nearly empty, still awaiting an audience, with only a man holding a guitar near the stage. He had his back to the entrance but turned as Candy approached.

“Benjamin, huh?” Candy said. “That’s a…coincidence.” The word trailed away, because – no, he had to be mistaken.

“What’s a coincidence?” the guitarist asked. He was a dark-eyed, dark-haired man, dressed all in black and older than Candy by maybe ten years. And Candy had never met him, but he could swear he’d seen him before.

“Just that I used to work with a Benjamin,” Candy managed, and pasted on a grin that someone who actually knew him wouldn’t have believed. He had to be wrong about this. The man was definitely older than the picture in his mind’s eye, hair receding from his forehead. But apart from that, he looked astonishingly like a photo Candy had seen on Benjamin Cartwright’s desk. His oldest son. Adam.

“It’s a good name,” this supposed Benjamin said with a smile, and it looked uncannily like the smile from the photograph too.

Adam played the guitar, but what would Adam Cartwright be doing here, playing musical accompaniment for a dancing gypsy fortuneteller? Candy could just ask, but it sounded too ridiculous, and if Adam really was here under a false name, well, there had to be a reason for it. “So, you’re new to the carnival?” Maybe he could at least find something out.

“My first day,” Benjamin-or-Adam confirmed. “Madame Lupinessa told me she needed a guitarist.”

“And we know each other from many years ago,” the fortuneteller said, smiling as she wrapped her hands around Benjamin’s arm. “We were almost family once, long ago, but the stars had another fate in mind.”

Candy’s mind was furiously running through any stories he could remember about Adam and gypsies and – wait, hadn’t Joe almost married a gypsy witch woman years ago?

He took a newly considering look at Madame Lupinessa. She was about the right age, and certainly beautiful, but also deep down spooky in a way he personally had no interest in exploring. Could he believe that Joe might have proposed to this woman some time in the past?

Of course he could, it was Joe.

All of this was just guesswork though, no more than a wild theory that might explain a connection but still didn’t explain anything at all about what Adam Cartwright would be doing here, like this. And he didn’t have time to fish for anything more right now because the show was due to be starting and Madame Lupinessa was shooing him back outside. And when a woman who always looks like she’s seeing ghosts looks straight at you and intones that the spirits require you to be elsewhere, Candy was disinclined to argue the point.

For the rest of the evening Candy spent half his attention on trying to get people in for the show and the other half sneaking looks inside the tent and wondering. He saw enough of the fortuneteller’s dance to find it even more plausible that Joe might’ve once chased after her, and he heard enough of the guitarist to confirm that whatever else might be fake, like his name, he could play the guitar. But that still gave him no satisfying answers.

Candy had wondered, now and then, about Adam. The oldest son, the one who went to college, the Cartwright who had left. Plenty of families had members who moved away, but the Cartwrights, at least the ones he knew, felt different. Joe and Hoss seemed completely unaware that leaving was even a possibility, even with oldest brother’s example. So he’d wondered about Adam. At first, how anyone could leave an empire that was surely big enough to support three sons (or a dozen). Then later, as he got to know the Cartwrights better, how anyone could leave a family like that.

Of course, he’d left. But that was different. They weren’t his family.

He’d asked about Adam, once or twice, but the only answers he got were about what, not why. Joe and Hoss and Mr. Cartwright always talked about what Adam was doing, traveling first and then settling down to build an architectural firm in San Francisco. But none of that really answered what Candy wanted to know. So wondering about Adam was not a completely new thing, but it had suddenly become a much more immediate one.

The carnival shut down close to midnight, and the crew began bedding down for the night. Mr. Barlow the manager and some of the long-time performers had wagons to sleep in, but a lot of the crew camped out, and that made it easier to keep one eye on the possible Adam.

At least until sometime just before dawn, when Candy rolled over, woke up, and noticed that in a sea of sleeping people, the possible Adam’s bedroll was empty. He sat up, cursing himself silently. Hours of talking up a fortuneteller had not made it easier to stay awake through the night.

The man’s absence could be innocent, of course. But if something strange really was going on… Candy tried to think. If he was Adam Cartwright, where would he be right now?

On the Ponderosa, probably, so that was no help.

But assuming he was Adam and at this carnival, under a false name, posing as the guitarist for the fortuneteller…well, that pointed to a possibility. Rising to his feet, Candy walked softly through the sleeping crew, headed towards the fortuneteller’s wagon. He didn’t know just what he was trying to find out, or what anything he might see would prove. So a man who looked like Adam Cartwright was maybe involved with a spooky fortuneteller who might or might not be a girl Joe had proposed to ten years ago. None of this added up to anything that was any of his business, and yet here he was, creeping through the shadows.

He tried not to examine the strange draw of anything that even might involve the Cartwrights.

He was only halfway to the fortuneteller’s wagon, just going past the currently grounded hot air balloon, when he saw a flicker of light from a different direction entirely. The curtains were drawn at the manager’s office, but the barest glimmer still shone around the edges of the window. If the office doubled as a bedroom, he wouldn’t give it a second thought, but he happened to know that Mr. Barlow treated himself to two separate wagons for those two separate purposes. A crew that was sleeping outside talked about that kind of thing. And furthermore, Mr. Barlow had not struck him as so dedicated a worker that he’d be in his office before dawn.

Candy crept closer to the wagon, flattened himself against the wall next to the window, and squinted at the meager line revealed by the edge of the curtain not perfectly covering the window. All he could see was shadows. And movement. But who or what, he couldn’t tell.

He ought to walk away and tried to work up any justification for why he shouldn’t. If it wasn’t Adam Cartwright at all, the most reasonable thing to assume was that there was a robbery in progress; that did give him some slight interest in the question, as an employee of the carnival who hadn’t been paid yet. But the wages weren’t good enough to risk his skin over.

If it was Adam, well, despite the story of Hoss and Joe robbing a bank that one time, Candy couldn’t really believe that any son of Ben Cartwright’s would be robbing a carnival. Which meant something else was going on, and he couldn’t begin to guess what.

But he sure would like to find out.

He sighed. The pull of even possible Cartwrights was like gravity. Irresistible and inescapable.

He eased over to the door, tried the handle, was almost surprised to find it turn in his hand. So how could he possibly walk away now?

The skills required to slip undetected into a guarded camp weren’t exactly the same as those needed to enter a darkened wagon unobserved, but there was some relation between the two. Enough that he got in the door, closed it silently behind him, and took a step away to stand against the wall and let his eyes adjust enough to observe a man in dark clothes rifling through the manager’s desk by the light of a single candle, all without getting caught.

But there must have been some significant differences between the two sets of skills, because when he tried to ease another step along the wall away from the door, his knee collided with a low table unobserved in the shadows. It tipped right over and all attempt at subterfuge was lost.

Before Candy could even decide if he should make a jump for the door or for the shadowed figure, let alone do anything about either option, the other man had turned, drawn, and Candy was staring down the barrel of a gun. It was Benjamin, answering at least that question, and if Benjamin was really Adam – well, Ben Cartwright’s sons had always been quick on the draw, so that fit.

“Don’t move, don’t yell, don’t try anything,” the man with the gun said, voice even and calm.

Candy lifted his hands. “Oh, I wouldn’t think of it. I don’t even have anything to try, I was only curious about the light. Should’ve known curiosity would get me into trouble.”

The man peered at him through the shadows, gun unwavering. “You’re the one Tirza introduced me to. Jack, right?”

The Jack still felt strange, but it was the other name Candy focused on. Tirza. He was almost sure that was the name of Joe’s witch woman. It had been a few years since he’d heard the story, but Hoss had taken great relish in telling it at length, so it stuck in his mind. And if she was Tirza, than he… The man already had a gun on him. Time to throw his cards on the table.

“Yeah, that was me, but Jack’s not really my name. And yours isn’t Benjamin, is it?”

The man was good. His face didn’t change, though something flickered in the eyes. He didn’t speak so Candy pushed on, the whole way. “I recognized you before. You’re Adam Cartwright, aren’t you?”

More tightening around the eyes. The gun still didn’t waver, but he said, “What do you mean, you recognized me?” which was maybe half an admission.

“Your father has a picture. I’m Candy, Ponderosa foreman. Used to be, I mean. I know the Cartwrights write you letters, they must’ve mentioned me somewhere.”

“Once or twice,” said Adam, because it seemed they were accepting now that he was Adam. “But that’s very convenient, isn’t it? I pull a gun on you, and you decide to announce you’re someone I should trust?”

Candy hadn’t expected to be disbelieved, even though maybe he should have. He wouldn’t have believed a story like this, but the Cartwrights, at least the ones he knew, tended to be more trusting.

“You think I plucked the name Candy out of thin air?” he protested. “I could’ve just claimed I was a ranch hand named Jack.” There’d been at least three of those during his time at the Ponderosa.

“But that’s the point,” Adam said with irritating calm. “The Ponderosa is well-known. You easily could have seen the name of the foreman somewhere, and it’s unusual enough to remember.”

Candy tried to stay equally calm, but it was harder from this end of the drawn gun. He attempted a grin. “I know you’ve never seen me, but I recognized you. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“Like I said, the Ponderosa and my family are well-known. There are any number of ways you might have seen my photo. Conmen have tried to fool my family before by claiming to know me. This could be the same kind of thing. You followed me in here, for reasons you haven’t explained—”

“I wanted to see if Adam Cartwright was really robbing a carnival!”

“And if you really are who you claim,” Adam said smoothly, “it seems unlikely you would believe that about me.”

“I didn’t say I believed it, I just wanted to…” The words trailed away in the face of Adam’s stubbornly unchanging expression, and Candy thunked his head back against the wall behind him. This was going nowhere. “You know what? Joe’s right. You really are a Yankee granite head.”

There was a long pause, and then in a different tone, Adam said, “What did you just call me?”

“A Yankee granite head, who’s too stuck in his own ideas to listen to anybody, who’s always sure he knows everything about everything, and brother, don’t get you started on Shakespeare because you sure won’t listen once you’re off on that—”

“All right,” Adam interrupted. “I believe you.”

Candy blinked. “You what?”

“I believe that you’re Canaday. Or at least…” He smiled wryly. “I believe that you know Joe very well.” Then he holstered his gun, which improved the situation dramatically.

“Well. All right then. So now that we understand each other,” Candy said, “how about explaining why Adam Cartwright is playing guitar for a gypsy fortuneteller? Not to mention…” He gestured broadly. “You know, this.”

“Tirza came to me for help when the carnival was in San Francisco last week,” Adam said, turning back to the manager’s desk and resuming searching through the drawers. “If you want to be helpful, check that cabinet for anything suspicious.”

Candy headed toward the cabinet, a massive one stretching up to the low ceiling of the traveling wagon. “Tirza’s the fortuneteller, right? And also the witch woman Joe almost married once?”

That got Adam to look back at him again. “Joe told you about that?”

“No, but Hoss did.” Candy halted in front of the cabinet and wondered what he was supposed to be looking for. “Suspicious how?”

“I’m not certain. Bank drafts under false names. Extra bank books, or writing that looks coded. Tirza thinks the carnival is part of a larger network moving money and information.”

“She told you a story and you believed her? Even though she’s…” Candy wasn’t exactly sure about the connection between Adam and the incredibly strange woman, leaving him uncertain exactly how to describe her.

Adam grimaced. “I know she’s unusual. And that she likes to express herself…poetically.”

“She told me I was a scarlet tanager,” Candy informed him.

“That’s a bird.”

He’d never heard that birds were an area of study for Adam, but this still didn’t surprise him. “I know that.” He’d guessed it, anyway.

“The point is a lot of that is part of the act.” Adam frowned. “I don’t know how much an act was years ago, but she knows what she’s doing now. I talked to her enough to figure that out. And she brought up something concerning enough that I didn’t want to risk ignoring it.”

“Yeah?” Candy said, poking at the jumbled contents of the cupboard in front of him. It was one big, cavernous space, more of a wardrobe really, with spare jackets hanging up and scattered odds and ends piled at the bottom. He still didn’t really know what he was looking for, or how he’d know it if he found it. “Who’s supposed to be moving money and information around?”

“Confederate sympathizers.”

Candy screwed up his face in consternation. “Confederate… Look, I don’t know what spiritual plane Madame Lupinessa is working from, but you must know that the Confederacy fell years ago!”

“Of course I know that. But even when you think the war’s been over for years, somehow it keeps rearing up again. There are a troubling number of people who believe the South will rise again. And I’m enough of a Yankee granite head, emphasis on both parts, that I don’t want to see that happen.”

“So Joe’s old girlfriend tipped you off about Confederate sympathizers at a carnival, and now you’re here.” Candy shrugged. It was pretty wild, but it was the kind of thing that seemed to happen to the Cartwrights. “Why pick Benjamin as a name?”

“First rule of a false name. Pick one you know you’ll pay attention to.”

Unlike, say, Jack. And of course, Adam had expertise in this area too. Oldest brother lived up to his reputation. “So, if you actually find something, what are you planning to—”

They had been speaking quietly but fell abruptly silent at the sound of new voices outside. Could be just passing by…no, definitely stopping at the door, and there was the jangle of keys too.

“Hide,” Adam hissed, but there was nowhere to go, this was a tiny office inside a travelling wagon. In fact, the only option…

The cabinet was really not big enough for two adult men to hide inside, but they somehow did it anyway. And if it wouldn’t have been a fatal mistake, Candy would have laughed at the thought of trying to explain to anyone, but mostly Joe and Hoss, about how he’d ended up crammed into a cabinet with Adam Cartwright.

“I really don’t like this early morning subterfuge,” said a voice from outside the cabinet. Almost definitely the carnival manager’s voice, which made sense in Barlow’s office.

An unfamiliar, raspy voice responded. “There aren’t many other times when we could meet discreetly.”

“Ah, but that is the entire power of a carnival!” Barlow again. “Hiding in plain sight, letting no one know just what they’re seeing.”

“Some of us prefer not to be seen at all. People very high up in the illegitimate government in Washington would be far too interested in what we are doing here. The money and information you have gathered in your travels will be vital to supporting our cause, if we can only get it safely away and into the right hands in Texas.”

Well, look at that. The wild-eyed fortuneteller was actually right. This might have been more satisfying if disaster hadn’t immediately followed. The raspy voice said something about hurrying things up already, and Barlow said he’d get the papers right away, and without more warning than that, the cabinet was opened.

Barlow jumped backwards with a little shriek, his two companions drew guns with Cartwright-like speed, and Candy tried his best to present one of his usual grins. “Hello, Mr. Barlow. I have some questions about my job duties…”

---

Trying to play this off casually worked about as well as Candy would have predicted – not at all. Which is how he and Adam Cartwright wound up sitting on the floor against one wall of the office, while Barlow and his fellow Confederate sympathizers tried to decide the best way to kill them.

“You could let us go,” Candy suggested, because what could it hurt?

Actually, it did hurt some, because the taller of the two strangers kicked his leg and said, “Don’t be stupid, you know too much.” This one had the raspy voice he’d heard from inside the cabinet.

“I don’t actually know that much. I kind of stumbled into all of this by accident,” Candy said, which just got him kicked again.

“I say we shoot them,” raspy voice said, an especially unsettling statement from a man who already had his gun out. “Our mission is too important to take chances.”

“No, no, no!” Barlow protested. “If we start firing guns, half the carnival will be in here wanting to know why they heard gunshots. And we’d get blood all over my office.”

“So, we’ll smuggle them out and then shoot them,” raspy voice suggested.

Barlow was already shaking his head. “You’d never get them all the way out of the carnival unnoticed. People are waking up by now.”

The man by the door spoke up. “What if we put them in a trunk? We could smuggle a trunk out.”

“Do you see a trunk in here?” Barlow demanded.

The man looked around the room. “Hey, you don’t have any trunks. I thought carnival people always had lots of trunks.”

“In the costume wagon, yes, but this is my office!”

“Your best option is simply to give yourselves up,” Adam said, and Candy narrowly avoided rolling his eyes. This couldn’t possibly work, though he was willing to admit that Adam presented it with such a confident, calm tone that it almost sounded reasonable. “The federal government has been alerted to your activity, and the marshals are already closing in.”

If it was Joe or Hoss, Candy reckoned he could probably tell if they were lying. He couldn’t tell with Adam Cartwright. But he did kind of think this was the sort of thing that Adam would have mentioned sooner, if it was actually true.

The Confederate sympathizers believed him, judging by the small scale panic the words set off.

“If the marshals are closing in – what are we going to do?” Barlow asked, voice rising noticeably. “We’ve got to get them out of here!”

“We’ve got to get us out of here,” raspy voice countered. “We’re too important to the cause to hang.”

Barlow threw up his hands. “Both, then, we’ve got to get them and you out of here.”

“You could smuggle us out in a trunk,” the man by the door suggested.

“There are still no trunks in here!” Barlow snapped.

“We have to kill them,” raspy voice said. “There are quieter ways than guns.”

“But then,” Barlow protested, “the marshals will find the bodies!”

“Wait,” raspy voice said, holding up a hand. “Wait just a minute. The marshals are looking for the two of us. We have two enemy agents we need to get rid of.”

“I really don’t know enough to be considered an enemy agent,” Candy tried, but was ignored.

“What if,” raspy voice said, pacing up and down in the four feet of space available, “what if, the federal marshals find our bodies?” He pointed dramatically at Candy and Adam. “We just have to kill them so they won’t be recognizable when they’re found.”

Horrible visions of fires and explosions came to mind.

“But why would they assume two bodies are us?” the one by the door asked. “I still think if we found a trunk—”

“We’ve just got to work out the details,” raspy voice said, still pacing furiously. “If we could somehow get them killed looking like us trying to escape…”

“The hot air balloon,” Barlow said, snapping his fingers. “It’s right behind my office. We present the appearance of a daring, airborne escape—”

“Which ends in a fiery crash, killing both valiant fighters for the Southern cause,” raspy voice said triumphantly, “putting the federal marshals entirely off our trail as we leave quietly.”

So the plan was as bad or worse than anything Candy had conjured up for himself. The day was not improving.

“How do we make them think it’s us in the balloon though?” the one by the door asked, which seemed a reasonable question about a very unreasonable plan.

Barlow waved a hand. “Oh, we’ll just do a lot of shouting about thieves and spies while we shoot the balloon down. Set the stage nicely. It’ll be a pity to lose the balloon, of course, but it’s never been the money-maker I thought it would be. And the publicity of dramatically preventing the escape of spies will make up for it.”

“That just leaves the timing,” raspy voice said, resuming his pacing. “We want to be sure the federal marshals are here.”

“And enough witnesses,” Barlow agreed. “Probably going to be a slow day, with that storm blowing in from the east. We’ll be in a downpour in a few hours.”

Raspy voice grinned, very unpleasantly. “That’s our timing, then. We wait for the storm, it’ll give time for the marshals to arrive, and a bit of rain will help confuse anything going on in the sky. Ought to make it easier to bring the balloon down too, right?”

“Well, it won’t make it harder,” Barlow allowed. “We’ve got to do something with them in the meantime, then.”

“If we could find a trunk,” the one by the door began.

“Why not,” raspy voice interrupted, “keep them hidden in the balloon?”

“Too much traffic going by,” Barlow pointed out.

“But that,” raspy voice said, “depends on where we put the balloon.”

And so, in a disturbingly short amount of time and over all objections, Candy found himself with his hands and feet tied, sharing the space of a balloon basket with the similarly tied Adam Cartwright, as the ground dropped out below them.

---

“This,” Candy announced to the world at large, “is a ridiculous way to die.” Once the balloon stopped actively rushing upwards, he had squirmed into a sitting position against one side of the gently bobbing basket. He hadn’t attempted standing up to see over the side so he couldn’t say for sure exactly how high up they were, but the sounds of the carnival had grown disturbingly distant below them.

“At least it’s in a good cause,” Adam said, sitting in a similar position at the opposite side of the basket.

“Your good cause, not mine,” Candy said sourly. “Not that I’m against it or anything, but this wasn’t my plan for the day. We’re not accomplishing anything for the cause either. Are there actual federal marshals coming to investigate?”

Adam, who had been presenting an unyielding calm, looked faintly surprised at this. “Of course not. If federal marshals had been willing to listen to Tirza, she wouldn’t have needed to talk to me. I was hoping to gather enough evidence to get them involved.”

“Right.” Candy sighed. “So we’re dying as part of an elaborate plot to misdirect federal marshals who don’t actually exist, so that a group of delusional Southerners can try to raise the Confederacy again. Like I said. Ridiculous.”

He should have known he’d end up dying alongside a Cartwright. He just hadn’t expected it to be this one. But he’d been in enough fire fights and brawls, been trapped in enough mines, had death almost happen with a Cartwright enough times that Tirza would probably say it was his fate. In classic myth fashion, he’d left the Ponderosa only to have the world throw another Cartwright in from an unexpected direction, just in time to fulfill destiny in a tragic hot air balloon crash.

“Your family will find it pretty strange when they find our bodies together,” he commented, shifting his wrists behind him only to confirm that the ropes were very tight. “Wonder what they’ll think about how we ended up in this.”

“We won’t be identifiable. That’s the whole plan, remember?” Adam pointed out.

“Oh. Right. Well, they would have found it strange.” Candy squinted at the sky beyond the rim of the balloon basket. An increasing number of clouds were piling up. “Instead, no one’ll even know what happened to us.”

“Tirza might tell someone.”

“No one’ll believe her. And she doesn’t know my real name anyway.” Candy grimaced. “At least someone will figure out you’re missing. No one’s even going to notice that I’m gone.”

“I’m sure that isn’t true,” Adam said, in a patient, slightly patronizing tone that was not at all helpful and, Candy could just imagine, had probably driven Joe crazy on any number of occasions.

“It is true. Candy the drifter. People might wonder what ever happened to me, but they’re not going to know that I’m gone.” The Cartwrights might wonder sometimes, if they ever still thought about him, but they weren’t likely to lose sleep or anything. Not like they would over Adam.

“Why’d you leave the Ponderosa anyway?” Candy asked, because why not satisfy some curiosity before he died? “I’ve always wondered.”

“It can’t seem that strange,” Adam said. “You left too.”

“Yeah, but that’s different. They’re not my family.”

Adam raised one eyebrow, half-smirking in a look Candy didn’t know how to read. “Sure.” Adam tipped his head back, looking up at the balloon above. “If you really want to know…it was the ‘boys.’ You know – you boys go round up the horses, or have you finished your chores yet, boys?”

The sentences were familiar; said with an inflection Candy could recognize too. “I always figured that was just Mr. Cartwright’s habit. He didn’t mean anything by it.”

“You still call him Mr. Cartwright?”

Candy shrugged. “He was my boss.”

There was a pause, then Adam repeated, “Sure. Anyway, it was probably a habit, but that’s not the point. And it wasn’t only Pa. Sheriff Coffee, Dr. Martin, people around town – we were always the Cartwright boys, or Ben’s boys.”

“Doesn’t sound so bad.” It just meant belonging to someone.

“It is if you want to stand on your own. If you want to be an adult, in your own right, living your own life.”

Candy didn’t actually see the two things as incompatible. But he’d been an adult, standing on his own, all by himself alone, since he was all of sixteen. Just about the only time he hadn’t felt on his own was the three years he’d spent on the Ponderosa.

A gust of wind rocked the basket, but Adam continued steadily enough. “I finally figured out that if I wanted to be treated as an adult, or to really feel like one, I had to do it somewhere else. So I left, to make my own life.”

Candy could see the theory of it. He just wasn’t sure it was a good trade, family for independence. “It won’t destroy your independent life if you visit sometimes, you know.” The rest of the family had visited Adam in San Francisco but, at least as far as he knew, Adam had never been back to the Ponderosa. It was something no one ever said bothered them, but he was pretty certain it did.

Adam didn’t argue the point, just said, “It doesn’t look like I’m going to have the chance now.”

Oh. Right. He’d actually forgotten about their impending doom for a minute. He frowned at the ropes tying his ankles, tried to shift his feet but they were tied too tight. Would’ve been nice if he could have at least spread his feet to balance better in the swaying basket. It was getting windier, more clouds blotting what blue remained in the sky.

“What about you?” Adam asked. “You left the Ponderosa too. Why’d you go?”

“That’s…hard to explain.” He’d never said it out loud to anyone. He’d barely tried to explain it to himself. Might as well try now, though. Nothing to lose at this point.

Candy attempted to martial his thoughts into something that even slightly made sense. “Your family, they’re like gravity. Or maybe a hurricane. Just, this huge force that impacts everyone around them, and they don’t even know they’re doing it.”

“Sounds about right,” Adam murmured.

“I knew who I was, before I met them,” Candy continued, warming to the subject. “A loner, a drifter, plenty of ‘hail, fellow, well met’ but just as much ‘see you down the trail.’ Relying on nobody, nobody relying on me. All I did was slip into a camp looking for a horse and some canned peaches, and pretty soon the Cartwrights are giving me a job. And that’s fine, because I told them, right from the start, that they could let me go any time and also, I might pick up and walk any time. And I tried to go, once or twice, but somehow, I never got very far. Then next thing I know, weeks and months and years go by, and then…”

Candy shook his head, squeezed his eyes shut as he remembered. “And then I wake up one morning and realize I don’t even know who I am anymore. Because somehow, along the way when I wasn’t looking, I became the person Hoss Cartwright wakes up when he needs an Easter Bunny suit buttoned up.”

“Wait,” Adam interrupted, “go back a bit…”

Candy was too intent on his own thread now to waste time on clarifications. “It’s not even like that’s a bad thing, necessarily. It’s not like I was unhappy. But I didn’t know how I got there. Somehow, I became a person who stayed, without ever deciding to stay, and that was – well, I didn’t light out the next day, but I started to get an itchy feeling like I hadn’t had in a long while. I stuck around through the next round-up, but I decided if I was ever going to go, I’d better go. Before I stopped even noticing that I hadn’t gone, you know?”

“Did you…not want to stay?” Adam asked slowly.

“I don’t know! That’s the whole point. I don’t know if I wanted to stay, I just did.”

“So we’re not really that different. We both wanted to direct our own lives.”

Somehow, something didn’t feel right about that. “It’s not the same. You left your family. I left a job.”

Adam was smirking again. “You’re not serious about that, are you? About it just being a job, and calling Pa Mr. Cartwright…”

“What else was I going to call him?”

“What’s wrong with Ben?”

Mr. Cartwright had said that too, more than once. And yet, somehow…

“And it wasn’t true, what I said earlier,” Adam continued. “About them mentioning you in letters once or twice.”

Candy squinted across the rocking basket at the other man, and didn’t know what he was supposed to make of those words or why Adam was saying them. “They must’ve mentioned me somewhere, or you wouldn’t know my name.”

Adam shook his head. “No, I meant it wasn’t once or twice. It was all the time. Especially Joe. Every letter was Candy, and I got mixed up with a miners’ union or Candy and I won a stamp mill in a poker game or Candy and I got arrested again. Did he ever do anything without you? You even went courting together.”

“Not every time,” Candy said, although the images of Meena Calhoun and Kathleen Kelly swam into his mind.

“And Pa, his letters have always talked about ‘the boys,’ and somewhere along the way I realized he didn’t just mean Hoss and Joe, he meant you too. It obviously wasn’t only a job.”

“I was never one of the Cartwright boys.”

Adam’s expression was profoundly unimpressed. “Weren’t you?”

“My name’s not Cartwright!”

“Sure. But in every other way that mattered.”

Candy shook his head. “You weren’t even there.”

“Doesn’t mean I can’t tell,” Adam said, with the absolute confidence that, Candy was sure, had made Joe want to punch him more than once. Or maybe it was just that it made him want to punch him. Except, of course, his hands were tied, and before he could think about other options, or even come up with something else to say, Adam announced, “I think that’s done it,” and pulled his hands from behind his back, shorn ropes dangling from his wrists.

Candy gaped at him. “How did you…”

“There was a nail head sticking out from the side of the balloon behind me,” Adam said, pulling the ropes off his wrists. “I’ve been rubbing the rope against it since we got in here.”

“And you didn’t think to mention that?”

He looked faintly quizzical. “What good would it have done?”

Candy stared at him, then growled, “Independent, uncommunicative, granite head – untie me, will you? Think that’ll do some good?”

“Depends on what we decide to do next,” Adam said, but untied his own feet and then lurched across the swaying basket to untie Candy too.

It felt better getting the ropes off, but their prospects weren’t actually hugely improved. Standing up, with a tight grip on the side of the basket, only confirmed that the carnival on the ground below them had dwindled to a terrifyingly small size.

“I don’t suppose you know anything about flying a hot air balloon?” Candy asked doubtfully, looking up at the complicated mechanism above them.

“Just enough to know that all I’d be likely to do is crash us. That’s meant to happen anyway, but there’s no hurry,” Adam said, leaning farther over the side than Candy was completely comfortable with. “We’re attached by a rope still, a pretty thick one. Possibly someone could get down it…”

Candy shook his head. “Don’t look at me. I’m not Joe, I don’t go in for crazy stunts.”

“Joe wouldn’t do it either. He hates heights.”

Candy’s eyebrows rose. “He does?”

“I’m surprised he managed to hang onto that secret. More to the point, we may not have a choice about the rope.” He turned to look upwards. “Those storm clouds are getting thick up there, and we can assume our Confederate sympathizers will be acting soon.”

“There has to be something we can do. Maybe we can try to signal someone, or—hey, is the balloon moving?”

“The wind’s picking up,” Adam said briefly, gaze fixed now on the balloon mechanism.

Candy leaned cautiously over the side, stared at the ground, far too far away…but getting closer. “No, we’re going down. Something’s happening down there.” He followed the line of the rope with his gaze, squinted. A large man, and a woman in bright colors. “Tirza might’ve got help.”

“We’re going to be in trouble when we get to the bottom,” Adam said, joining him to look over the side again. “Our Confederate sympathizers can’t miss noticing an entire balloon descending.”

“Your Confederates, not mine,” Candy said absently, scanning the area for more disturbances. “And how’d you miss out on the noted Cartwright trait of unfounded optimism?”

“Someone in the family has to be a realist.”

They almost made it. They were close enough to the ground to clearly see the carnival strongman working the winch to bring the balloon down, Madame Lupinessa standing at his side.

They weren’t on the ground yet when a shout went up from the direction of Barlow’s office. Possibly he had just looked out the window. A few seconds later Barlow came running out of his office, waving a pistol and shouting, “Spies! Confederate spies!”

Apparently, the show must go on, which only became really alarming when gunshots started going off. The real Confederates were converging too, what daylight remained in the gathering storm glinting off of their guns. They were still ten or fifteen feet from the ground when a neat round hole punched through the balloon basket inches from Candy’s hand, and he decided he’d had enough of this.

Throwing caution to the wind, he scrambled up and over the side of the basket, leaping out and trying to aim for Barlow below.

He didn’t calculate how far it was, and he was lucky the man didn’t shoot him as he fell, but perhaps the sight of a person leaping towards him from above was too much for the carnival owner. As it was, Candy crashed solidly into Barlow, knocking them both to the ground. Which provided some cushion, actually.

Barlow shrieked, a surprise since Candy’s own breath had been thoroughly knocked out of him. He managed to grab for the man’s gun anyway, as Barlow flailed about beneath him. He felt the metal of the gun, grasped the muzzle and wrenched it away. Then he rolled off of Barlow, gun clutched in one hand and tried to take in the situation.

Somehow, Adam was already on the ground, on his feet, and throwing a punch at the raspy-voiced Confederate. The man tumbled backwards, hitting a conveniently placed horse trough, and tumbled into it with a splash. Adam plucked the gun from his frantically waving hand without so much as ruffling his own hair. Candy had missed how he got down from the balloon, but he definitely wasn’t going to ask. He could already tell that Adam would be unbearably smug explaining it.

The carnival strongman was holding the last Confederate upside-down by the ankles. So that was all right too.

Madame Lupinessa, or Tirza, sashayed over towards Candy, looking down at him with a smile. “I see the forces of light have prevailed once more over the darkness.”

“Sure,” Candy managed, and struggled up to his feet. He dragged a breath into his lungs, used it up to ask, “How’d you know we were up there in the balloon?”

“The spirits spoke to me in a vision of—”

“You overheard something, right?” Candy interrupted. “Or you could see us from below, or…something?”

Her smile grew wider, a glint in her eye. “Or something,” she agreed. “Don’t doubt the power of fate, my scarlet tanager.” Her glance slid to Adam, then back to Candy. “I see you have found your proper feathers again.”

“Why a scarlet tanager?” Candy demanded. “Why not, I don’t know, a bluebird?”

“Scarlet tanagers are red birds with black wings,” she said calmly. “And they travel in flocks, unlike hawks. Now what are we doing with our Confederate spies?”

“Uh – do you have a ghost you want to hand them over to?” Candy said, giving up on making any sense of this conversation.

“I thought the sheriff would be more appropriate,” Tirza said. “Don’t you agree, Mr. Cartwright?”

“I should think so,” Adam said. “Our testimony and the evidence in Barlow’s wagon should be enough to bring charges of espionage and smuggling.”

“So happy ending all around,” Candy concluded, then glanced at the furiously glaring Barlow again. “I’m probably out of a job, though.”

And that was probably just as well. He had a feeling the carnival life wasn’t really for him.

---

Since there weren’t actually any federal marshals ready to hand, it took a little time to haul the Confederates over to the sheriff’s office, where Adam Cartwright proved remarkably adept at convincing the sheriff to take seriously an admittedly strange and unlikely situation. It was going on towards evening by the time they got out again, and the storm had well and truly arrived, rain pattering in the dirt of the road.

“What do you suppose we ought to do now?” Candy asked, as they stood under the overhang outside the sheriff’s door. A hotel for the night, probably, since he wasn’t in a hurry to sleep out in the storm. And after that, it was an open question.

“I should be heading back to San Francisco,” Adam said.

Candy nodded slowly. “Right. I’ll have to hunt up another job. Preferably a ranch this time.”

Silence hung for a long moment.

Candy cleared his throat. “I might…head back towards Nevada. You know. Virginia City area. See if there’s any positions available.”

Adam wasn’t exactly smirking. Maybe just around the eyes. “Good plan.”

“There might not be any jobs open.”

“It won’t matter.”

And Candy found he could just about admit to himself that that was true. “I could use some company on the trip.”

The smirk, whatever there was of it, disappeared, and Adam didn’t say a word.

Finally, Candy said, “You wouldn’t have to stay, you know.”

Adam exhaled slowly. “I guess that’s true. And I’ll agree to it, if you admit something else.”

“What’s that?”

“You wouldn’t have to leave.”

---

Candy knocked on the heavy wooden door of the Ponderosa ranch house and shifted from foot to foot as he waited for the response. The door creaked open, and light spilled from inside, lighting the dark porch. In the doorway stood Ben Cartwright.

The hair was a little whiter, but otherwise he seemed unchanged, especially his welcoming smile. “Candy! It’s good to see you, boy.”

“Hello…Ben.” Yep, felt weird, but it made Mr. Cartwright—Ben smile wider.

There was a glimpse of green somewhere behind Ben, and then Joe was bounding over, looking around his father. Still wearing that same green jacket. “Did you say Candy, Pa? Hey, it is Candy. It’s about time you came back!” He turned to shout towards the stairs. “Hey, Hoss, Candy’s here!”

An exclamation from somewhere above. “What? Candy’s home?” Thumping on the stairs, so loud that it could only be one person.

Candy found himself grinning. They were like a hurricane, and in another few seconds they were going to pull him in the door and into the middle of it and he was probably never going to get out again…and it was amazing how good that sounded.

But first, he put a hand on the doorframe, holding onto the threshold for just a few more seconds to say, “Hey, I hope you don’t mind, I brought a friend with me.”

There was a shift in the shadows behind him, black clothes blending into the night, face not yet visible to anyone inside.

That didn’t seem to bother any of them. “You know any friend of yours is welcome, Candy,” Ben said, with that classic Ponderosa hospitality.

Candy grinned even bigger. “Well, he’s a bit of a Yankee granite head, but I think you’ll like seeing him anyway.”

And then it was into the hurricane.

THE END

A/N: Written for the 2026 Ponderosa Paddlewheel Poker Tournament. The words/phrases dealt to me were:

• Yankee granite head
• Guitar
• Hot air balloon
• Confederate sympathizer
• Gypsy

Tirza made her appearance on Bonanza in the Season One episode “Dark Star.” The series never showed us a photo of Adam on Ben’s desk, but since he has photos of his wives and of Hoss and Joe (in Season 14), it didn’t seem too unlikely. And I recommend looking up a picture of a scarlet tanager, because their markings are amusingly reminiscent of Candy’s usual red shirt and black vest outfit.