XxXxX

5

“I can’t do anything about that right now, Hop Sing!” Roy Coffee went to the window of his office and gazed out over the street. “So far I got nothin’ but hearsay when it comes to Ben Cartwright’s boys.” He turned back to the Chinese man and sighed in sympathy. “Now, I’m thinkin’ maybe Clem found somethin’, but he’s either got to come here and tell me what it is, or I got to go track him down. And I sure can’t take the time to track him down when I got a whole town to look out for. It bein’ a holiday like it is, some folks can tend to make trouble. I can’t leave them alone on a day like this!”

“You need more deputy.”

Roy suppressed a chuckle at the seriousness in Hop Sing’s expression. “Yes, I do. Are you volunteerin’?”

Hop Sing gazed at him, seeming confused. “You make me deputy?”

“I can deputize anyone I like.” The sheriff took a deep breath and scratched his head, thinking hard on the implications. “It could mean trouble for you with most of the town, but if you keep to the Chinese section, that could help me out some.”

“Hop Sing deputy, then.” Hop Sing pulled his back up straighter and gave one, quick nod in acceptance.

Roy smiled. “Alright.” He went to his desk to retrieve a badge. “Now if I can just get me about two or three more deputies, I could-”

“Silver!” a shout outside drew Roy’s attention. “On the Ponderosa!”

“What in tarnation is that all about?” he said softly as he moved toward the window.

“It’s in the Hellcreek mine!” someone else shouted.

In no time at all, a crowd formed out in the street. Folks were jabbering on about a special edition of the newspaper, and clamoring to get their hands on a copy. Just about every time Roy blinked his eyes, the crowd got thicker and rougher. And then he noticed Ben Cartwright was in the middle of it.

XxXxX

“Come on, now!” Roy pushed and pulled himself through a herd of men. “Settle down!” He had almost reached Ben when he glimpsed Hop Sing trying to do the same. “Oh, for the love of….” He clamped down on his jaw, wishing for the best. It was all he could do…for the moment anyway.

“You go now!” Hop Sing’s voice called out. “Move to side!”

Men started laughing.

“What’s that you’re wearing, Chinaman?” someone shouted.

“It’s a badge!” someone else answered.

“Deputy!” Hop Sing announced proudly.

The laughter grew louder as more men joined in, and then Roy’s fears were proved true. Someone pushed Hop Sing. He fell into another man, who pushed him again. The third man pushed rougher still, and the fourth ripped off Hop Sing’s new badge.

Roy grabbed his gun and fired it up into the air. He had to pull the trigger three times before folks paid attention. “I’ll throw the lot of you in jail if I have to! Now that man has been legally deputized. That means you do as he says!”

“He’s a Chinaman!” someone complained.

“He’s a lawman and don’t you forget it!” Roy’s warnings eventually started to quiet the men, but he knew it was bound to get worse before it got better. He had to get Hop Sing off the street; only then could he try once again to clear the street itself.

XxXxX

“What did you think you were doing out there?” Ben scolded Hop Sing, who sat in a chair opposite the sheriff’s desk. “Don’t you realize those men wouldn’t think twice about…about fighting you?”

“Hop Sing deputy.” Somehow Hop Sing looked both chagrined and resolute. It was almost as though he’d taken lessons from Little Joe on how to accept punishment for an act over which he felt no remorse.

Thoughts of Little Joe threatened to pull Ben’s attention from the moment at hand, but he couldn’t allow himself to follow them. He turned away and paced toward the window. “You could have been killed out there,” he said softly.

Elijah scoffed. “What are you so worried about, Ben? If he wants to play deputy, let him play. You can always get yourself another cook.”

Ben threw the man a fiery glare. “He is my friend.”

“He’s a Chinaman!” Elijah shouted back. “A stinkin’, yellow Chinaman!”

Hop Sing rose to his feet, but Ben planted himself between the two of them. “He is a man,” he said, keeping his tone low and deadly. “A man like any other man.”

Elijah met his glare for a long moment before replying with equal ferocity, “and that, Ben Cartwright, is your weakness. You are a jack of hearts to my ace of spades.”

Ben gave his head one, slow shake, back and forth. “What you see as weakness, I count as strength.”

“I’ll remember you said that when you’re dressed in rags and I’m rebuilding that pathetic log cabin of yours into a fitting home for myself.”

“Ben Cartwright never sell you Ponderosa!” Hop Sing declared.

“Your Chinaman is speaking out of turn,” Elijah said without moving his gaze from Ben’s.

“My friend has every right to speak the truth.”

The outer door flew open with a bang, bringing the standoff to an abrupt end.

“Oh, my!” a young woman exclaimed as Zachary Mullins and Sheriff Coffee ushered her into the office. “What in the world has gotten into all those people?” She held a hand to her chest while she pulled away from the two men, her gaze only then landing on Ben. “Oh, Mr. Cartwright! I wouldn’t have expected to find you in here. Little Joe, perhaps, but certainly not you!”

“He’s just visitin’, miss,” Roy explained. “He ain’t under arrest.”

Ben found his anger shifting momentarily away from Elijah, and toward Miss Ellie Lindstrom, the young lady Joe had hoped to impress at the dance. “And neither is Little Joe!” he said in a voice that had the woman backing away from him ever so slightly.

“Well,” she said in a huff an instant later. “I imagine he deserves to be arrested after the way he stood me up last night. Fortunately I found someone who knows how to treat a lady,” she threaded her arm into Zachary’s, “unlike that no good son of yours!”

“Did it even occur to you that son of mine might have been waylaid? That he might have met with misfortune?”

The woman shrugged, clearly unaffected by Ben’s words. “Whatever the cause, he stood me up. Now Zachary, I’m tired of this dreary place. I want to go to the picnic.”

“Yes, of course,” Zachary answered quickly. “Um, Mr. Cartwright? Mr. Garrett? We’ve already sold every copy! I was thinking about printing some more. I wonder if-”

“No!” Ben said a bit too loudly. He cleared his throat before adding, “I’d say the news has spread quite well enough, thank you. Go on to the picnic and enjoy the rest of the day.” It was everything he could do to keep his tone pleasant.

XxXxX

Those were gunshots, three of them. Adam was sure of it. He knew there would be no point to looking; even so, he rose from his chair at the table and moved to the window. All he saw was the roof of the next building over…although he realized he was seeing it a bit differently now. Maybe he was getting his bearings, or maybe his work on the plans for the mine was starting to clear the fog in his head. Whatever the reason, the pitch of that roof and the color of the shingles…it was all starting to look familiar. He still couldn’t quite place where he was, but he was beginning to believe he would soon.

The sense of familiarity buoyed his spirits and strengthened his resolve. There was nothing he could do to make that mine viable over the long term. But he might just buy them all a day or two. With any luck, that would be enough.

XxXxX

Joe’s hand was a mess. It didn’t help that he also had a slew of bruised ribs, a gash on his forehead and a sore shoulder to boot; but he figured those were all bearable discomforts compared with the pain in his hand. Clem’s digging to get the bullet out of his thumb didn’t trouble Joe nearly as much as he’d thought it might, but attempts to clean the wound and reset the bones earned the deputy a tirade of complaints Pa would have been appalled to hear. Fortunately, Pa wasn’t around to hear them.

No, Joe realized. That wasn’t true. It wasn’t fortunate at all. He wished Pa were there. Joe would welcome Pa’s displeasure over his choice of words if it meant the family was all together, in one place-or even if it just meant Joe knew where his brothers were; and, more importantly, if he knew they were okay.

“Stop talking in riddles!” Joe shouted, aiming his outburst at Hank, although it was Clem who had caused it by splashing some of the outlaws’ whiskey onto Joe’s hand to clean it.

“Didn’t know I was,” the outlaw answered. “I suppose I ought to thank you kindly for thinkin’ that. For a man to talk in riddles, means he’s got to have him a mite more under his hat than hair.”

“Oh, for the love of-”

“You’ve got to stop movin’ around so much, Joe!” Clem scolded.

Joe glared back at him, his chest heaving and his ribs protesting every breath. “He’s worse than-” he stopped himself, realizing how wrong his next word would have been. Hank was nothing like Adam, nothing at all. Maybe sometimes it seemed Adam would talk in riddles, but people’s lives didn’t depend on someone solving them. “Just get him to give us some answers,” Joe added in a low voice that could match the rumble of a prowling puma for the threat it offered. “If you can’t, I will.”

“Hold your horses. We’ll get to all that in no time.” Clem started to wrap Joe’s hand in the remains of a shirt he’d taken from Hank’s saddlebag, despite-or maybe because of the outlaw’s complaints about it being the only clean one he had.

“Time.” Hank said the word as though it was significant, drawing it out longer than might be expected in casual conversation. “Almost as precious as silver, some might say.”

Clem pulled the wrappings tight to hold the bones in place, and Joe shouted out another tirade he wished Pa could grumble about. Anger prevailed over pain in that instant. “Just say what you mean for once!” he hollered at the outlaw while Clem was tying up the loose ends.

And then Joe was up and moving before he even gave conscious thought to what he was doing, the pain having washed away in his flood of rage. It wasn’t until he had Hank’s collar twisted up in his right fist that he started to recognize the strain on his ribs and the way the world began to float dizzily around him. But even then he refused to give in to it. “Tell me where my brothers are, or I swear I’ll kill you,” he warned.

In poker, it wasn’t so much about having the winning hand as it was about making everyone guess whether you did or not. And Joe was darned good at poker. But Hank looked to be pretty good himself, at least when it came to bluffing. Joe was having a hard time reading him. Did he wonder, somewhere behind those still eyes of his, whether Joe might make good his threat?

“Kill me and you’ll never know,” Hank said, his gaze as calm as ever. His breath smelled like old coffee.

“Oh, I’ll know, alright,” Joe answered, his tone low and cold. “Your friend, Randy, won’t hold quiet without you keeping him that way.”

They glared at each other for a long while, with Joe twisting the collar a little tighter against Hank’s neck every second, even while the world began to fade at the outer edges of his own vision.

“Deputy?” Hank called out finally, calmly, without taking his eyes from Joe. “Ain’t ya’ gonna tell this pup to back down afore he falls down?”

“Why should I?” Clem’s voice sounded farther away than it should; but Joe didn’t turn to look. “He deserves a chance to get back at you somewhat, after what you did to him. Frankly, my money’s on him. Of course, I’ll stop him before he kills you. I sure wouldn’t want to have to charge him for murder.”

“He don’t know!” the other outlaw, Randy, called out, clearly more concerned about Hank than Hank was himself. “All we was told was what to do with you.”

“And what was that, exactly?” Joe asked without loosening his grip on Hank’s collar, without even moving his gaze.

“Just to do what we done in Virginia City, and then to get you out to that mine.”

“What mine?”

“Hellcreek.”

Seeing Hank’s gaze give a brief hint of concern made Joe consider his own reaction. He realized his grip had relaxed and he’d allowed his confusion to show. Angry now at himself, he twisted Hank’s collar as tight as he could. “Is that where my brothers are?”

But Hank was as calm and quiet as he’d been moments earlier.

“I told ya’!” Randy said. “No one tol’ us, and we didn’t ask!”

“Then I guess we’d better ride out to that mine and find out.” Joe held Hank’s collar for a moment longer before finally letting go, and then he almost wished he hadn’t. Somehow loosening that tight fist he’d held caused him to sway on his feet, as though Hank’s collar had been enough to keep him standing. He reached for the tree limb above him until he could catch his breath.

“I don’t think so, Joe,” Clem said then.

Startled, Joe stared at him.

“Hank and me, we’ll ride out there. You can take Randy into Virginia City. Let Sheriff Coffee know what’s goin’ on, then he can send a posse out after me.”

Enraged again, Joe let go of the tree, standing firm once more. “If there’s any chance my brothers are up at that mine, then that’s where I’m going.”

“Joe,” Clem sighed, giving Little Joe one of Adam’s own infuriating looks, the kind that said Joe was too young and stupid to know better. “I did what I could for your hand, but you gotta know it’s infected. It’s just gonna get worse if you don’t get it fixed proper.”

“It can wait.”

“No, it can’t. Not unless you don’t mind losing it. And besides, your pa’s in Virginia City. Least you could do is let him know you’re okay.”

He can wait, Joe almost said. But he held his tongue, realizing the retort was more instinctive than realistic. He didn’t even know for sure his brothers were at that mine.

“As worried as you are about Adam and Hoss,” Clem went on, “don’t ya’ think it’s worse for your pa right now? He doesn’t even know if any of his sons are still alive. He knows these yahoos didn’t hang you; but how can he know for sure you didn’t die in that explosion?”

Joe felt himself swaying again, but he couldn’t seem to grab that limb.

“And if your brothers are up at Hellcreek, we’re gonna need more guns than just you and me.”

Especially since Joe’s gun hand was useless, not to mention the fact he could hardly stand up straight. Clem didn’t need to say what Joe already knew to be true. More frustrated now than enraged, Joe accepted the deputy’s help setting himself down on a nearby boulder. He had some decisions to make, but he sure wasn’t going to agree to anything until he could get his head to stop spinning.

XxXxX