A businessman is tired of playing by the rules and uses Ben’s sons to manipulate Ben, himself. It falls to Sheriff Roy Coffee, Deputy Clem Foster and a very determined Hop Sing to prevent the Cartwright family from falling like a house of cards. What results is a high stakes game in which Ben must gamble his full house against his rival’s hidden aces. Key Words: SJS, SAS, ESH, ESA, ESB, action, ropes, suspense, mystery

Rating:  T   (33, 700 words)

Special summary provided by slaine89: This story incorporates the whole family in a freya-typical edge-of-your-seat, dramatically twistful plot as the Cartwrights fight to protect themselves from a man who will stop at nothing to satisfy his greed and his thirst for power.

• Old Reviews

 

Kings Over Aces

XxXxX

1

The dance was starting in earnest now. Men and women were twirling faster and faster, the band was playing louder…and Ben’s heart was beating heavier against his chest. Something was wrong. He checked his pocket watch and once more turned his gaze to the door, instantly relieved to see it open to admit new arrivals. He caught himself in a smile at the foolish worries of an old man. But then the door closed again without having provided so much as a glimpse of one of his sons.

“Ah, Ben!” The familiar voice did nothing to calm his nerves; and the companiable slap at Ben’s back only caused strained muscles to tense further. “This might be the best celebration Virginia City has ever known; don’t you think?” The smile Elijah Garrett shot toward Ben was wrapped around a cigar clenched between yellowed teeth.

“No,” Ben responded coldly. “I do not. These people are in for hard times if the bank can’t get the funding it needs.”

“Oh, pish-tosh. Stop worrying about tomorrow when today is right here. Especially when today is such a good day.”

Ben glared at him before pulling away from the hand that refused to leave his back. “If you’ll excuse me.”

The hand moved to his shoulder and tightened into a painful grip. “No,” Elijah said, still smiling though there was nothing pleasant in it now. “I will not excuse you. We have some business to discuss, you and I.”

“Whatever business we might have had with one another is well behind us.”

“Oh, no. Not at all, my old friend.”

“What are you saying?”

“We have a contract to discuss. Or, rather, I have a contract for you to sign.”

“We’ve been all through that,” Ben argued. “You know perfectly well your terms are absurd. No one in his right mind would accept them.”

“Ah yes!” Elijah pointed a finger into the air. “Therein lies the rub. What might it take to turn that right mind into a…well, a different sort of right?”

“What?” Ben shook his head in frustration and glanced at the door again.

“Acceptance might well be but a state of mind.”

Ben tried to pull away again. “We have nothing more to discuss.”

“But we do.” The grip tightened. “Your sons, for example.”

Ben froze, his impatience to get away gone in an instant. He focused all of his attention on the man standing before him. “What about my sons.”

“They won’t be coming tonight.”

“What are you saying?”

“They’ve been…detained.”

“How dare you!” Ben challenged in a booming voice that vied with the band for the dancers’ attention.

“You’d do well to keep quiet,” Elijah warned, speaking close to Ben’s ear. “This is between you and me, two highly respected businessmen in Virginia City society. Any claims you make against me will be nothing but hearsay, completely devoid of any evidence, whatsoever.” He turned toward the crowd and smiled broadly, waving his cigar for emphasis and then slapping Ben’s back again, harder than before. “Now,” he said without meeting Ben’s gaze. “Let’s talk.”

Stunned, furious and fearful, Ben allowed himself to be pushed toward the door.

XxXxX

Elijah Garrett’s office was as domineering as Elijah himself. It also rivaled him for shine and polish. Ben often wondered if some kings might work in more modest surroundings. “Tell me what you’ve done with my sons,” he demanded, ignoring the splendor of the ornate, mahogany desk that separated him from this man who would be king.

Elijah leaned back in his fine, leather desk-chair and lit another cigar. “In due time, Ben. In due time. Business, first. That mine of yours must reopen the day after tomorrow, as soon as all these irritating Independence Day festivities are done with.”

“That mine was closed for a reason! It’s not safe!”

“You and I both know it is far from played out. What this town needs right now is a new silver strike. That mine of yours can provide just that.”

“We’ve been through this all before. However much silver is in there is meaningless if we can’t reach it!”

“But we can, Ben! We can reach it! All it will take is a little hard work.”

“Hard work at the expense of lives! No amount of silver is worth that kind of risk!”

“Nothing of any value is ever achieved without risk.” Elijah waved his hand dismissively. “That’s all beside the point, anyway. You will sign that mine over to me, allowing me to reopen it. Whether or not it’s safe won’t even be your concern anymore.”

“Sign it over to you?” Ben bellowed. “That’s outrageous!”

Elijah came forward in his chair, leaning into the desk to gaze intently-coldly-at Ben. “I’ll admit, the terms were better for you before. You would have had at least fifty percent of whatever our miners can haul out of there. But now, the stakes have changed. Now, it’s all or nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

“The clock is ticking, Ben. You sign this new contract by noon tomorrow, or one of your boys will die. It’s as simple as that.”

“You’re asking me to save my son at the risk of someone else’s!”

“I’m telling you a son of yours will die. That is a certainty. As to anyone else,” he shrugged, “that is a risk, but not a certainty. Surely you can see the difference.”

“Why?” Ben asked in a strangled whisper, his throat closing from the intensity of his growing fear.

“Why?” Elijah parroted. “You said it yourself. The bank is failing. Virginia City is floundering on the verge of economic disaster. That mine can put men back to work.”

“At-what-cost?” Ben’s words were clipped, his tension palpable.

“I suppose that’s for you to decide, now isn’t it?

XxXxX

Adam tried to pull himself free of a fog. He rolled his head to the side, awakening a throbbing at the back of his skull as he turned away from the cushion of the lush pillow cradling him. The pillow was too soft, as was the mattress. He felt himself sinking into it too deeply, feeling more trapped than comforted.

This was not his bed.

Awareness struck him as effectively as the beam of sunlight escaping from a small gap in the thick curtains on the window of this room that was not his room. They’d been bushwhacked, his brothers and he. On their way into Virginia City for the dance meant to kick-off Independence Day festivities, they’d been stopped by nine gunmen.

“We don’t have much,” Adam had warily told them. “But what we do have is yours. We won’t fight you for it.” He’d caught his brothers’ eyes, getting a hesitant nod back from Hoss, and an angry glare from Little Joe. Only after Adam’s gaze narrowed in warning had Joe finally provided his own nod of acceptance. There would have been no point to fighting. The few dollars they’d carried among them had no value at all compared with their lives. Besides, they would have been facing three-to-one odds against men whose weapons were already cocked and ready, while their own were still tucked safely in their holsters.

Yet as Joe pulled his hands away from his gun-belt, making it clear Adam’s words would be heeded, one of the gunmen fired. The bullet had ripped into Joe’s left hand…his gun hand. Even now, Adam could hear his young brother crying out in shock and pain, and then cussing like a cowboy after round-up.

“I told you we won’t fight!” Adam had hollered, as angry as Joe had been moments before.

His retort had been answered with the butt end of a rifle slamming into his jaw. He could remember watching a spray of his own blood splashing across Sport’s saddle while he fell to the ground below.

“Ain’t no cause for any of this!” Hoss had shouted while Adam caught his breath, spitting the metallic taste from his mouth. “Just take what you want and get on out of here!”

“Oh, we will,” one of the gunmen had said. “We surely will.”

And then Hoss had somehow ended up on the ground beside Adam, doubled over and fighting to catch his own breath.

The rest seemed a blur. Their hands had been tied-even Joe’s, despite the wound-and they’d been dragged onto fresh horses. Two of the gunmen had ridden away, toward the Ponderosa, with the Cartwright brothers’ own horses in tow. And then Adam had watched helplessly as his brothers had also been taken away from him, and away from each other as well, each moving in the opposite direction. The only other thing Adam could remember between then and now was the feel of something hard crashing down on the back of his skull.

Now he lifted a shaking hand to explore the bandage that had been tied around his head, feeling both comforted and sickened by the attention he had apparently received. Had his brothers received the same? It was more likely to assume he had been left on the road. His brothers had been taken, and here he was, safe and secure, a guest in someone’s home.

He tried to rise…too quickly. His head throbbed, the room tilted and his stomach lurched. Pulling himself to the edge of the bed, he held himself still until he could find some sense of balance, his hands gripping the mattress to either side of him in fists not even Hoss could have pried open.

Hoss. Where was he now? How was his awakening? And Joe…. Had anyone bothered to care for that wound in his hand?

Ignoring his own, small troubles, Adam pushed himself to his feet, and then maneuvered his way to the window, walking like a sailor in a hard sea with the floor moving every which way beneath him. When he reached the sill, he held onto it, making another tight fist, and then pulled the curtain aside.

It was impossible to tell where he was, exactly. The window-glass was thick, his view through it as wavy as the imaginary sea beneath him; and all he could glimpse was the slanting roof of a neighboring building.

A shout from the unseen street below drew his curiosity. He tried to listen, searching for words that might indicate the location-a street name, perhaps, or reference to a particular merchant’s shop. But before any words came clear, the crack of gunfire startled him. His shoulders tightened; he nearly lost his grip on the windowsill. And then came another crack, and then what must have been ten more. No, Adam realized. That wasn’t gunfire. That head-pounding, heart-pumping cacophony coming from below was the sound of firecrackers. It must already be the Fourth of July. He had slept through the night, thanks to that head wound he’d received. Hours had already passed. His brothers could be anywhere by now. Anywhere.

It was high time he found out why.

He crossed the room, still wobbly but at least starting to find some equilibrium. Reaching the door, he braced one hand against the molding and then pulled on the latch only to discover the door had been bolted from the other side. Frustrated, he kept pulling, though his efforts did nothing except to rattle both the door and his own worn nerves. Finally, deciding it was a useless drain on energy he didn’t have to spare, he started to pound on the door, first with one fist, and then two.

“Open up!” he shouted. “Let me out of this room! Why am I locked in here?”

His shouts, his pounding, none of it seemed to matter. Maybe his ruckus was drowned out by the continuous pop of firecrackers. Or maybe no one cared. Whatever the reason, no one came.

Defeated for the moment, Adam rested his forehead against the dark wood and forced his lungs to take in air while he waited for the worst of his shaking to subside. Then he went back to the window, determined to leave this strange room one way or another-until he discovered that route had also been rendered useless. The window had been nailed shut.

XxXxX

Ben was running out of time. If he’d had his say, he would have been on the road before dawn. But Hop Sing had insisted he wait.

“I go without you,” Hop Sing had told him, “no one notice. But I go with you, everyone look!” He’d spread his arms wide for emphasis.

It had been a point Ben could not argue. Men like Elijah would pay no attention to a lone Chinese man wandering into town at daybreak. And Hop Sing had needed time to put things in motion. Neither Ben nor Hop Sing could get word to Sheriff Coffee directly; Elijah Garrett’s threats had been too severe to risk calling his bluff. But Roy Coffee needed to know what was happening, and Hop Sing’s Chinese connections would see to it he found out.

And so Ben had waited. He’d tended to his sons’ horses, all three having been delivered right to his own front door at some point in the night. And then he’d taken his time saddling his own, his heart sinking whenever Cochise nickered, or Chubb stamped his foot, or Sport swished his tail.

“The clock is ticking,” Elijah had warned him. “You sign this new contract by noon tomorrow, or one of your boys will die. It’s as simple as that.”

Ben had found traces of blood on both Joe’s and Adam’s saddles, enough to leave him feeling cold-enough to force him to believe Elijah’s threat would be proved true if he failed to do what he’d been told. But it was mid-morning already, and Ben was still a few miles from town. First a stranger had flagged him down to help with directions. Then Buck had picked up a stone. It seemed like the world was conspiring to make him late.

XxXxX