Story notes–
reader alert: alternate reality, character death

Be warned; this fold of the multiverse is much darker than “A Handful of Ashes.”

Not Without My Son

— I —

Well before I met the strangers on my way into town, I’d been enjoying a wonderful morning. It was the kind of day which makes life worthwhile, however hard the demands living imposes on a man. I hadn’t felt this buoyant and carefree in years—perhaps not since I’d taken my leave of schoolteaching to strike out on my own in the West.

My cheerful mood—so perfectly matched to the early autumn sunshine—hadn’t come from the ore samples I carried in my wagon, or even from my knowledge of what lay under the rocks and dirt back at camp. It was the warmth of personal achievement, of a challenge met and bested, that had melted away twenty years’ burden of fruitless struggle and bitter frustration. Vindication, too; the satisfaction of seeing one’s theories proven true. That was more valuable than gold—and no one knew better than I did how valuable gold could be. I’d spent years learning how to look for it, and years more in the looking, and now at last I was getting well-earned recompense for all the scornful dismissal I’d received during that long search. My cup overfloweth, I’d quoted to myself. Triumph wasn’t any less the sweet for being so delayed.

It was about as I was remembering that moment when I noticed the three riderless horses on the ridge above me, all with the half-asleep look ground-tied horses so often get when they’ve been standing still a time. In among them I could see two fellows dressed like cattlemen, kneeling over something that lay so flat I couldn’t distinguish it from the dusty ground, though I could guess it was the body of a third cowboy. Mostly I try to avoid folk I don’t know—people chasing visions of El Dorado don’t tend to come from the better-behaved parts of society—but I doubted these were gold-diggers in any sense of the term. I clucked softly to my mule and shook the reins to get him trotting faster, being careful to make no sudden loud noises. He was a touchy beast at the best of times and over the past few days he’d acted even more nervy than usual; I didn’t want any trouble with him now.

I suspected I’d already seen—or, more accurately, heard—these three several times lately, while they quartered the area as methodically as if they were in search of lost stock. Not that a stray cow would last long in this parched land—and even if it could, it wasn’t likely to answer to a shouted name, which was the method they’d mostly used while they searched. From this I’d deduced they were looking for a person, though of course not me. Sadly, there’d never been a reply. I’d finally begun to worry about them, since shouting loudly isn’t easy to manage for long around here; it can dry your throat out completely, which is a pretty dangerous thing to do. It seemed they’d finally discovered that for themselves, since they waved frantically at me but didn’t call for help. I waved back to let them know I’d seen them, and urged the mule on even faster. It wasn’t possible to get my cart up onto the ridge from where I was, but I maneuvered it as close as I could manage, so that, sitting on the wagon’s seat, I was almost eye-to-eye with the pair of kneeling men. One glance at the man on the ground told me what they needed most, so I quickly reached under the wagon seat and pulled out one of the canteens I always keep ready for emergencies like this.

“Thanks, mister,” the man I handed it to said. He was one of the biggest men I’d ever seen, with massive shoulders and a broad, rather homely face, which wrinkled up a little as he took a mouthful from the canteen.

“I know it tastes a bit odd,” I reassured him. “It’s a special mixture I’ve made up which helps you cope with the desert heat. I’ve tried it out on myself, and my mule, plenty of times. Go right ahead and have as much as you like; I always carry plenty extra of it, just in case.”

The big fellow nodded and passed it over to the other, who took a slightly longer swig. They both looked pretty badly in need of drink; red as boiled beets, but with less sweat than you’d expect on a day already broiling. Like responsible men, they satisfied their own needs first—if very minimally—before moving on to helping those around them. While the smaller fellow went on trying to turn his cropped green jacket into a sunshade for the older man on the ground, the first one who’d spoken took off his large hat, emptied his own canteen into it, and went to water the horses.

They weren’t livery-stable nags, worn out though they looked at the moment, and the affectionate way they greeted the man suggested these three had brought their own horses here, rather than hiring less-valuable animals for use in such dangerous land. One more sign of how important and urgent their business here must be.

Once the horses had sucked all they could get out of the big man’s hat, he put it back on and came back to the rest of us, with the tip of his tongue sticking out of one corner of his mouth to catch any drips that might fall. When he passed by the other cowboy and came up to me, I assumed he wanted some more of my special mixture, but he took the fresh canteen I held out almost by reflex; there was something else on his mind, it appeared.

“Stagecoach through Salt Flats to Eastgate must come by somewhere’s near here. Think we’re close enough to the route they’d hear us if we fired off a distress signal?”

“Probably not, and I’d rather you didn’t try,” I said apologetically. “It would upset my mule. He’s funny that way.”

“Upset him?” the younger man repeated without turning his head towards me.

“If there’s a loud sudden noise nearby that startles him he goes all rigid-legged and usually falls over. Takes him quite a few minutes to get back on his feet again. It can be somewhat distressing to watch.”

“Heard tell once of a horse would do something like that,” the big one rumbled. “Goats, too, I think…poor fella.” He reached down a hand as if to stroke the mule’s nose, but prudently withdrew it as the beast showed his large yellow teeth in warning.

“Doesn’t seem to bother him much; he’s a good worker and an easy keeper, but he does like to keep to himself.”

“Fair enough,” the other man said, his attention already back on his companions. “Give Pa a few more sips now, Joe, and wet down that wrap around his neck s’more….”

“You’re in a bad way,” I ventured—a massive piece of understatement.

“Pa’s been needing more water lately than he reckoned on,” the big man explained without looking up. “An’ we can go without ourselves, but you can’t be shorting the horses.”

“No,” I agreed. That was why most desert exploring was done with mules or donkeys, after all.

“Then ol’ Buck came up lame, and that was kinda all she wrote,” he went on. I glanced over at the horses and realized that while the other two had been shifting their positions from time to time, the big buckskin still had his weight on the same three legs,  with the fourth one touching the ground only at the very tip of the hoof.

“It was after Pa got off to see to Buck that he collapsed,” the one fiddling with the green jacket went on. “And then….”

“An’ then you came along to save our bacon.” The big man slapped me on the back—I assume in gratitude. It only took me a moment or two to recover from the blow.

I couldn’t help liking the pair of them—so unassuming, so nakedly anxious about their father’s condition, so modest about their own. Two sons to satisfy any man alive, you might have thought.

Their father wasn’t their only concern, I soon found out. Once they’d decided they’d done as much for him as they could for the moment, the big one asked me as he handed back an empty canteen, “Ya wouldn’t have happened to come across a man…older ‘n us two, tall, dark hair, rides a big chestnut gelding—”

“He couldn’t have seen Sport, Hoss,” the other one snapped.

The big man passed an arm across his almost-dry forehead. “I knows that, Joe. Less’n maybe he saw Adam afore he got robbed….”

“Next you’ll be saying he’s the one robbed Adam, instead of that pair of rats from Eastgate.” And that’s how the story came out, in distracted bits and pieces, as if they’d gone over it so much in their own minds they assumed everyone else knew it equally well. As I pieced it together, I confirmed that they were brothers, and they and their father were trying to find a third brother who’d ridden out of Eastgate almost two weeks ago, planning to do some hunting over by Pyramid Lake before meeting the youngest brother again to go home. The direct route from Pyramid Lake to Signal Rock, where the rendezvous had been, led right through this patch of desert, so it made sense they thought he’d come this way.

Not that the rest of their story made as much sense to me. They seemed convinced, for example, that Adam had been trailed all the way from Eastgate by a pair of robbers who’d somehow learned he was carrying a large sum of money and were intent on getting hold of it for themselves. Pure nonsense—I knew them, unless there were two pairs of footloose theives named Frank and Jim in the area, which I doubted. Oh, they might have been in Eastgate, and the younger brother might even have seen them there, but they weren’t spending time in this part of the desert in order to stalk some well-heeled traveller. They’d been sniffing around my camp (calling them rats was apt enough, I’ll agree) for months now, trying to see if they could nose out anything they could somehow twist to their benefit. They’d made right pests of themselves, in fact; the last time I saw them I was forced to take measures to chase them off for good before they realized the size of my strike. I didn’t say so, however. Even if it were bad luck rather than bad judgment that caused their path and this Adam’s to cross, I suspected it wouldn’t make his brothers any happier to learn that.

“Only person I’ve seen in quite a while has been my partner, I’m afraid,” I told them instead. “We’ve been getting tired enough of each other’s faces—”

“Wait a minute. You’ve got a partner? Could he have seen our brother?” the younger one—Joe—interrupted.

“I don’t see how, since he hasn’t left camp since he joined up with me. Though I suppose he might say he had if he thought there was money in it for him…he’s just a drifter who wandered in from the desert a while back with the usual hard-luck story and agreed to go partners with me in developing my claim. It’s mostly hard-rock mining—underground, in fact—so I was grateful for the help.”

Both of them nodded, and Joe commented, “That sure wouldn’t be Adam, then. He hates being stuck underground. Ever since he was caught in that mine collapse back in ’59….”

His brother took up the train of thought without a pause. “Kinda kills your interest in that sorta place, even for a fellow like Adam,” he concluded with a shudder.

That was certainly interesting, if not much to the point. I changed the subject back to their original question. “There’ve been no tall, dark strangers through here in weeks, any way. Not even many who weren’t tall dark strangers. We aren’t exactly on the main highway here.”

Both smiled dutifully at my little joke. “We know Adam was somewheres nearby, though,” Hoss insisted. “Pa found his gunbelt not so far from here. Must have been where they robbed him.”

“Just his gunbelt?” I could see as clearly as they must the double-edged meaning that carried. A body would have brought their search to an end, however sadly. Its absence—its completeabsence—meant the robbers might have left him alive. Might even have also left him food and water enough to keep him alive a while longer—but in that case, why hadn’t he been found?

“There wasn’t any of his gear with Sport when they sold him,” Joe said softly. “No telling what they did with it….”

“Iff’n any man could survive in here by himself, Adam’s the one,” the big man declared.

But I could tell from their eyes neither one still believed he had.

Before I could think of a polite way to ask why they were continuing to put their lives at risk in a search they thought was hopeless, Joe heaved a deep breath and said, “That’s what Pa’s been telling us all along. He won’t quit looking until he finds—whatever he can find. Won’t leave without his son, that’s what he says.”

“I don’t think he’s slept any since he first heard the news,” Hoss muttered. “Reckon he’ll have to quit now, though. Ain’t nothing wrong with Buck yet that rest can’t cure, but there sure will be if he has to keep carrying Pa’s weight. Can’t ask Chubb or Cochise to carry double, either. Not any two of us, for sure.”

“Well, just tell me what I can do to help,” I said earnestly. “Whatever it is, I’ll be glad to.”

“Sure am glad of that, mister—seems meeting up with you’s the only good luck’s come our way lately. Oh—I ain’t told you our names yet. I’m Hoss Cartwright. This here’s my brother Joe, and you know that’s our Pa. We’re from the Ponderosa….” He paused, as if wondering how much more explanation of who they were he needed to give me.

“Oh, everyone from around here knows of the Ponderosa,” I reassured him.

In fact, if you live anywhere in Nevada, you probably know about the Cartwrights, though what you think of them may say more about you than about them. I’ve heard them lauded as being angels on earth, and cursed for being no better than devils. Not too many people seem to consider them simply men, if men who’ve been on their land so long they obtained their original title from Spain instead of Mexico. What makes everyone act as if they were something more than mortal is the way every twist and turn of events has always benefitted them—a sort of Midas touch without a curse attached to it. I won’t say they haven’t worked hard for their success, but hard work hasn’t been all of it by any means.

For example, back when the mines at Virginia City were just getting started, the oldest Cartwright son put a lot of effort (not to mention donating all the materials for a test demonstration) into persuading the mineowners to use a new system of shoring up their diggings. It didn’t take him long to convince them, either, since the sticky blue clay of the Comstock Lode wasn’t like anything people had been mining in the past. As a result, before a single cartload of ore comes out of a new silver mine up there, a virtual forest of prime timber has to go into it. Cartwright timber, naturally, and they aren’t giving it away any more. Whether the mines make or lose money for their stakeholders, the Cartwrights go right on piling up their profits, along with the praise for their initial vision and public-spiritedness. That’s how it always seems to be for them.

The poor devil who’d actually thought up square-set timbering? He never saw a penny for his idea.

Well, no one’s ever going to confuse sound business practice with a Sunday school morality play, but the desert’s more pitiless still, and by the looks of it old man Cartwright had overreached himself at last.

— II —

I’ve always had a philosophical turn of mind. Natural philosophy in particular—what they’re starting to call the “scientific” approach to study, with its emphasis on measurements and classifying things. In a small and limited way, I’ve often tried to harness the method for my own benefit. When I first came to the desert, I used it to work out exactly how little my mule and I could eat and drink and still stay fit and active; later, I tinkered with various formulae for the “special mixtures” I like to keep on hand until they did exactly what I wanted, and nothing else. Knowledge is power, the old saying goes. Quite true. It’s kept me safer than a regiment of riflemen could—especially since riflemen also need food and water, and aren’t any more trustworthy than men of other sorts.

Back when I was teaching school, chemistry was my favorite subject, and it’s certainly something any miner benefits from knowing. Obviously, if you’re trying to raise capital to develop a claim, you’ll need official (and expensive) evaluations of your ore, but while you’re still just panning, or digging trial shafts, it’s an advantage to be able to do the assays for yourself. I have all the supplies I need for the simpler tests, plus a small flask of aqua regia into which I dissolve my best nuggets—a much safer place to keep them than letting them wear a hole in my pocket, provided I treat the strong acid with proper respect.

Lately I’ve turned my mind to studying how rock and sand—and water—interact to form the landscapes we take for granted around us. If you try to pile up dry sand, or dig a hole in it, you can’t get anything but a broad and shallow slope. Packed wet soil, as I knew from observations back East, does a better job of holding itself upright instead of collapsing. But how much water do you need to turn sand into soil?  How hard does it have to be packed, and how long will the effect last under the action of sun and wind? (Rain, of course, is not often a factor where I am now.) I found a lot of answers by trial and error; the only thing I wasn’t able to test was how stable wet-packed sand would be if its foundations were unsteady. I’d like to say my interest in this practical branch of geology was sparked by the problems of shoring up mines, or building in earthquake-prone areas, but I suspect the strange, windblown formations that keep my little claim such a secret from casual travellers were more of an inspiration. That and a sudden, amusing impulse, fit perhaps only for a small boy at the beach, with his bucket and shovel. But who was there to tell me, now, to grow up and act my age?

Not my partner, any way; that was certain.

More to the current point, if Hoss and Joe were tall, damp piles of sand, by now they’d be on the verge of collapsing into gritty pancakes. Even with all of my “mixture” they were drinking—in larger and larger quantities—they still looked little better off than their father. One good result was they were slowly beginning to pay more attention to my suggestion that they ride on ahead to Salt Flats together while I brought their father there by a less direct but smoother route in my well-shaded wagon.

The first time I proposed that plan they vetoed it outright. They couldn’t impose on me so much, couldn’t take me so far out of my way (never mind I was heading to Salt Flats myself), couldn’t expect me to take on so a big responsibility. What they really couldn’t do—or at least really didn’t want to do—was leave their father, however great the danger to themselves they were running by staying with him.

Slowly, patiently, I helped them take a more rational view of their circumstances. The first step was to get their father off the hard ground and into the relative comfort of the wagon. Knowing that the patch of shade Joe’s jacket provided would shrink as the sun rose higher in the sky convinced them, relatively quickly, that I was right about that much. I padded the wagon floor as well as I could manage, and arranged Buck’s no-longer-useful saddle as a pillow. The old man mumbled and struggled a bit when we lowered him down to the wagon’s level, but once he was arranged in the wagon he collapsed like an overtired small child. “The rest’ll do him good,” Hoss muttered to himself, probably in self-justification—the big man had winced at every protest his father had made as they moved him.

Their mounts couldn’t be gotten down the low but sheer and unstable cliff quite so easily. Certainly not Buck, at least, with one leg badly strained already. There was good reason to keep them up on the higher ground anyway; such forage as there was clung to where soil had built up in the outcroppings’ irregular surfaces, while the lower ground, which I sometimes called the “river-bed” though I’d never seen it anything but bone-dry, was wind-smoothed naked rock, slippery for tired, metal-shod horses to negotiate and utterly barren of anything green.

Besides, the direct route to Salt Flats, the closest settlement around here—the only one, really—lay on that higher ground. If you were driving a wagon and had to stay on the “river bed,” you had to travel almost twice as far, with the sun reflecting up off its polished surface almost as harshly as it beat down on you directly. It was all right in the back of the wagon, or on the wagon seat if you kept moving and were used to the heat in the first place (and if you had a good supply of fresh water), but neither Hoss nor Joe looked to me like they had that much endurance left in them. And there was only space in the wagon for one man, anyway, given everything else that was in there. It just didn’t make sense for either of them to stay with me while the other took the horses on ahead. They needed to stay together and make for safety as fast as they could.

By the time I’d reached that point in my argument, Joe was even paler than he’d been just minutes before, and there was a definite tremor in his hand as he lifted the canteen to his lips. I glanced over at Hoss to catch his eye, then indicated Joe with a quick tilt of my head and an eye roll. Fortunately, the big man caught my meaning. After a moment’s examination he gave me an equally wordless nod of confirmation, and settled himself to the task of getting Joe back on his horse and riding away. The younger man was reluctant still, but, as I’d suspected, when Hoss stepped up to take command his decisions carried a lot of weight—oh, dear, that does sound like a joke, doesn’t it? But seeing the big man in action was like watching a force of nature, like a grizzly bear or a tidal wave.

I made them feel easier about “abandoning” their father by pointing out they could arrange in advance for a place to take him where he could be cared for properly, and that alerting the doctor would help him prepare whatever he needed to treat his soon-to-be patient. That sweetened the bitter pill for them a little—oh, dear, another joke—and they seemed almost resigned to their situation when they finally took their leave of me.

Hoss was, anyway. Joe was still obviously reluctant, almost a little hostile about it, but Hoss would take good care of his brother, I was sure. And it was Hoss who was clear-headed enough to ask, just as he swung back into the saddle with a groan, “What’s the name of this doctor, anyway?”

“I can’t remember,” I sighed. “I don’t go into town all that often. Just ask around; it’s a small place. Tell them I sent you.”

“But you ain’t told us your name yet, friend,” Hoss reminded me gently.

This was no time for being sentimental. “Paul,” I said, almost with reluctance. “Just say Paul Abel sent you.”

They rode off, keeping to the higher part of the landscape as they followed the straight track to Salt Flats. I trailed after them until they were nothing but a distant cloud of dust, then drew rein and went to the back of the wagon to check on my cargo.

Old man Cartwright was fast asleep now and not quite so hot to the touch as before, but he still looked far from healthy. I reckoned he might well not have much longer to live, if things went badly for him, and there was something at my camp I was sure he’d want to see even if he was dying. Despite my promises to his two sons, the man’s own fervently expressed wishes as good as compelled me to turn my mule-cart around and head back the way I’d come.

— III —

Once I was on the familiar route back to camp, my mind turned naturally to thinking about my partner and the state he should have reached by now. Serious as the Cartwrights’ situation might be, I’d only met them for the first time brief hours before. My partner and I had been working together considerably longer—enough longer that at times “together” seemed the last word to describe anything we did.

Our partnership was a little more complicated than I’d let on to the Cartwright boys, and if he were telling the story I’m sure it would sound somewhat different. They’d probably have believed his version, too. He could be both charming and convincing, when he was in his right mind; I’d seen that for myself, especially when we first met. It had been the business of the mule that showed me how much the desert had got to him. Only a few days after he’d arrived he’d become restless and decided to take himself off somewhere else—and take my mule along with him. When I discovered him dragging the mule out of camp I did the first thing that came to mind to stop him, which was firing my pistol well over the beast’s head. Of course the mule promptly went into that strange rigor mortis-like faint of his and fell flat on his side, putting an end to my partner’s intention to steal him. The strange thing was that my partner seemed convinced I’d actually killed the beast, long after he’d scrambled back to his feet and I’d prudently removed him to the far side of camp where my partner didn’t go.

Up until then I’d had my partner mostly sawing up timber for mine supports; afterwards, I decided he’d better be somewhere more safe, or at least more secure. I’d already learned he was the kind of man who took pleasure—or at least satisfaction—from doing a job well, even if it didn’t benefit him and he hadn’t wanted to do it, so I set him to “mining” some barren rock on the far side of camp. It wasn’t for his satisfaction I’d decided to keep him alive, as I began to make clear in a variety of little ways at every suitable opportunity. It amused me to see, clever though he thought he was, how slowly he recognized what I planned to do with him.

I’d been making those plans from the moment he first sat beside me, bright-eyed and confident and so certain his great ordeal was behind him, talking so arrogantly about what he’d never do, no matter what. As if only monsters ever refused to turn the other cheek, instead of exacting what was due to them. As if a day or two without water or food was the same as enduring years of grinding punishment, barely one step up from being slave labor. The Cartwrights knew nothing of what it was like to be dismissed as worthless, repulsive, a waste of breath.

It was almost my duty to teach this one otherwise. Is it my fault if I found that duty pleasant?

He didn’t break easily. Oh, not in the sense that he ever refused any of my commands, however pointless or degrading. He was tractable from the start, a necessary consequence of having chosen to play the little game I set before him. What he held on to, long after he’d surrendered his body to me, was his mind—his confidence in his own judgment, in his vision of how the world should be. It wasn’t hope, as such; that faded away with the echoes of his father’s voice when his searching family came its closest to us and he couldn’t, by word or action, reach out to them. But even tethered like an animal or collapsed in despair at my feet, he went on thinking his own thoughts. I could admire that last futile independence even as I systematically undermined it, rather like the emperors of old who wrote tributes to their enemies’ courage once they’d triumphantly dragged them back to Rome in chains.

And after all that, when he finally saw the first thin crack in his private sanctuary, he pulled the whole thing down, Samson-like, with almost no prompting from me. He couldn’t stop himself. It was all or nothing for him by then, which left him…nothing. From the moment he put his hands around my throat, there was nothing he could do that wouldn’t prove my point. He was no better than the worst of us.

What’s more, his vanity had outlasted his virtue—that was the last, the crippling revelation I made him face. He’d really believed that, even after all he’d been through, he still had the strength of body or mind to overpower me. I let him think he was squeezing the life out of me for long enough that his triumph turned into horrified recognition, let him choke on what he’d discovered about himself another moment or two, then broke his grip and kicked his feet out from under him as easily as if he’d been a child.

Maybe the fall hurt him more than I’d intended, because his resistance dissolved as fast as his self-control had. He didn’t struggle when I picked up his feet and dragged him, head bouncing, across to the side of my camp he’d never seen, to the narrow coffin-shaped space I’d recently elongated from the top of a blocked-up, barren test shaft. He didn’t protest as I stripped off everything that might have identified his body—the clothes would go in the fire later, and anything metal be melted down and added to my stash. He didn’t move when I tipped him into the trench and rolled him onto his back, didn’t stir as I lowered in a number of good-sized rock slabs to pin him in place. I finally had to splash some moisture on his face to get him even to open his eyes.

That once-sharp and confident gaze was clouded with confusion and self-loathing. His mouth was working, and I bent closer to hear what he was trying to say, but he didn’t have any words left, just a sort of questioning look.

“I never said you wouldn’t be punished once we’d established you could murder,” I said to him softly.

I swear I saw a flash of gratitude before he closed his eyes again.

I went about the business of setting up my final experiment very carefully. Other people might have minded the extra work it required, compared to the simpler alternatives, but I was determined not to waste any opportunity to add to my observations.

Given the value of water here, there could be only one source of damp sand to spare for my private projects, and I’d located that source well inside another false start to my mine, so it lay in shadow all day long where it wouldn’t dry out. For obvious reasons, my current construction, like my earlier experiments, was in full sun quite a fair distance away, so I was back to the heavy manual labor I’d hoped having a partner would spare me—but, after all, it was labor with a purpose, just as my long months of single-handed mining had been. Under the circumstances, I found the work more invigorating than tiring, as I piled up the sand into a steep cliff overshadowing the face of the man who had thought—if briefly—he could master me.

Finally, to make sure he was well and truly secure, I brought out my flask of gold-bearing aqua regia and spared one valuable drop to splash on his half-exposed neck, wrinkling my nose as it ate through a mat of curling beard down to his skin.

His near-soundless howl and desperate spasm did nothing but bring a clot of damp sand down onto his face. After that he lay still again, except for trying to suck some of the moisture out of the sand into his mouth. When I reminded him of why it was wet, his jaw muscles twitched but he didn’t try to spit anything back out. For all my amusement, I couldn’t blame him. After all, it was the closest thing to wholesome drink he’d had since his arrival.

I put some final squirts on my experiment and stood back to assess it one last time, taking particular note of its angle of inclination and alignment with the sun. If my theories were right, in about eleven hours the sandpile would be dry enough to start collapsing over the shoulders and face of my partner. By happy coincidence, that was approximately two hours before I reckoned he’d stop being aware of what was happening around him, given he’d be getting no more liquid of any sort. Moreover, my observations also suggested that the most unpleasant effects of nothaving his “special mixture,” once you had become accustomed to it, took between eight and ten hours to develop.

In other words, I had time and to spare for tracking down the other three and still be back for the denouement. Whistling as I worked, I harnessed up the mule, loaded my most recent ore samples into the wagon together with a goodly supply of “special mixture,” and set off.

It hadn’t taken me long to find them. They’d kept to the same search pattern as long as the old man could stay in the saddle, and they certainly weren’t trying to hide from anyone. So now I was headed home again, and all the little lucky pieces were falling together for me, instead of for the high-and-mighty Cartwrights.

Thing is, Salt Flats doesn’t have a doctor, but it does have a pretty wide-awake sheriff, and almost as soon as I turned up signs of a big strike at my camp I made an arrangement with him. He and a few of his cronies are busy raising the capital we’ll need to develop the claim, and, in the meantime, when people came into town saying “Paul Abel” had sent them for a doctor, it meant I thought they were nosy enough to be a menace. Judging by the youngest Cartwright’s account of what happened to Frank and Jim, the sheriff wasn’t taking any chances on having our secret leak out. That pair of skinflints weren’t ever the sort to waste their ammunition shooting up the town.

Unless, of course, they’d first drunk dry the canteen I bestowed on them that last time they happened by, as payment for carrying my request for medical assistance into town, the way I asked them to. Seemingly they’d stumbled across their last robbery victim not long after leaving me, and then headed straight on to Salt Flats, pausing only to dispose of the superfluous horse that had later put Joe Cartwright on their trail. Yes, a bellyful of that particular “special mixture” most likely contributed to the uncharacteristic, ill-advised behavior that led them to their deaths.

And before sending the Cartwright boys on their way, I’d watched them finish off between them three canteens full of “special mixture,” except for the few careful mouthfuls they’d tipped down their suffering father’s throat. Just that amount of raw alcohol wouldn’t have done them any good, never mind the extra ingredients, some of which are there to settle the stomach so it can absorb everything that’s been dumped in it—and some of which, like the fée verte I’d picked up in New Orleans and a few interesting native medicinals, do rather different things, more slowly. Not so slowly I hadn’t seen the first small changes in Joe’s behavior. It would take longer to affect Hoss, but he’d drunk twice as much as Joe or more…no, with that inside them there was no chance they’d reach Salt Flats, but at least they were together. There was a certain mercy in that—if they didn’t turn on each other, of course.

I’ve always been a belt-and-suspenders sort of fellow. The more protection you can make for yourself, the better. In fact, that was why I’d taken such an indirect approach with the first Cartwright I’d happened to net. I’d been careful to keep everything between us a private arrangement, a wager of sorts between partners. There’d been nothing to justify outsiders’ involvement until the moment when he’d come at me with murder in his eyes, and—even though I’d put the murder there—everything after that was only self-defence on my part. Spoilsport prudence had insisted I protect myself that way, just as it had prompted me to send the younger pair off to Salt Flats to be disposed of. It couldn’t be helped, and I didn’t even much regret the necessity. I’d landed the two big fish by myself, after all; what did it matter how the small fry died?

From behind me in the wagon, the old man’s voice rose in a whiny mumble, disturbing my reverie. “Not without my son….”

Since he was that set on finding his eldest boy, I’d be happy to grant his wish. I threw back my head and let out a hearty guffaw, and Epicene—as if sharing my mood—joined in with a vigorous bray.

* * * * *

To my surprise and mild annoyance, when I got back to the mine I discovered I’d been mistaken in at least one of my calculations. The drying cliffs of sand had just started to crumble, as I’d expected, but the upturned face below them looked oddly peaceful beneath its thin crust of subsidence, and statue-still. Old man Cartwright would be sadly disappointed.

He was still snoring peacefully in the back of the wagon, sleeping sounder now, without mumbles or restlessness. I wondered briefly how long he really had kept himself awake—longer than most men of any age could, I was willing to concede. His color was almost back to normal again, and when I woke him with a touch he was briefly confused but not inclined to panic. Once I’d helped him out of the wagon he could walk on his own, almost steadily, so I hung back to watch as he made his way over to what I’d pointed out to him. For a moment he stood frozen before dropping to his knees to get a closer look.

“Adam, Adam…oh, my son!” he wailed in a high cracked voice, and then he began to scrabble at the sand as if he thought he could unbury and revive the corpse barehanded. He was so intent on his purpose he didn’t notice me come up behind him with my shovel; didn’t duck or dodge as I brought it down and split his head in two.

The blood stopped flowing sooner than I expected, but enough of it had pooled over both their faces that I could be very certain  neither one still breathed.

“Sic semper tyrannis,” I smiled down on them, and settled myself to making a second grave….

— IV —

The wagon bounced from one set of ruts to another with a larger than usual jolt, and instead of breaking up bedrock I found myself struggling to keep my balance on the wagon seat. Epicene was still ambling placidly back to camp, unconcerned that my hand on the reins had gone slack. He seldom paid much attention to my directions even when I provided any, as I’d found out long ago. All the same, the moment’s violence had brought me back to where I truly was; what I was really doing. It was a cruel awakening, but….

Everything had gone wrong just at the very end, right as his fingers had been tightening on my throat. No matter what splendid fancies my ingenious brain could devise in self-congratulation, that wouldn’t change the essence of the matter.

He’d beaten me. Despite everything I’d done to him, he’d won.

Oh, I had a brief moment to savor what I thought was my victory. I really did, at the last, put a crack in his most private defenses, and he really did react just as I’d predicted he would, by starting to tear them down the rest of the way. He stumbled towards me with all and more of the raging animal passion I’d ever hoped to rouse in him, and less strength than a tiny baby’s to implement that fury. Lacking any other weapon, he grabbed for my throat just as I’d expected—just where his fingers would leave ugly bruises for everyone to see as I told what had happened. He closed down as hard as he could, tight enough I really did have a little trouble breathing—though I only took one more breath, so he’d see me begin to turn purple.

And then his hands came loose again suddenly, and he said in a wondering undertone, “Someone put you through this once, didn’t they?”

That realization as good as washed away everything I’d forced him to recognize. He looked down and dared to pity me instead—as if he were my judge and advocate in one, rather than something allowed the breath of life itself only by my sufferance. It almost seemed that  he could see the disgruntled parents whose gossip had led to my dismissal from teaching school, and the robber who’d taken all that I’d scraped together to start a new life with a sneer at how meager it was, and even the prison guard who’d singled me out for special attention from the day I’d arrived to the day I’d gone free again. It was almost as if he knew everything I’d suffered, and everything I’d resorted to in response…and as if, once again, he was himself above such petty behavior, able to shake his head sadly at everything lesser men did to each other.

“Yes! You did!” I shouted back. I couldn’t have hated him more if he’d been gossips, robber and prison guard combined, and I put all that hate behind the blow that killed him. He had no chance to avoid it, no time for surprise or fear. When I struggled up at last to stand over his fallen body, my fists clenched, my chest heaving and my heart pounding like an unregulated engine, all there was for me to see was a face whose expression had relaxed into purest serenity.

And I recognized, with a slowly growing shiver, the difference between intention and achievement.

He didn’t move again—that detail remained unchanged, in the fanciful narrative I’d told myself as I drove home, from the truth of what took place. He didn’t respond when I pounded on his chest, trying to make it empty and fill again. He was dead weight in my arms as I carried him across to the place where I’d decided to bury him alive. He didn’t stir—no cry of protest, however muffled; no instinctive jerk of outraged flesh and nerves—after my final desperate attempt to shock him back to life with that drop of aqua regia. He was gone. Murdered by my hand, as my earlier tormenters had never been, despite all the times I’d rehearsed their suffering and death with malicious satisfaction.

While not so very far away, three men were still searching for him, voices grown cracked and broken from their calls. Three men who would call down Heaven’s judgment—and that of the state of Nevada—upon me for my crime, once they exposed it….

I did what I could to protect the body from scavengers, but I left the face uncovered, though I made arrangements so that if for some reason I did not return it would not stay unshielded for more than a few hours. I loaded my wagon with canteens of my first “special mixture”—the water with beneficial herbs I’d refused to share before—and the ore samples I’d promised the sheriff of Salt Flats, then set out to track down the would-be rescuers while they could still be rescued.

I’d found them—not with much time to spare, I judged. I’d sent the younger ones off for help (it was my real name, naturally, not the pair of antonyms I’d given Hoss, which would have carried a secret message to the sheriff). And I’d brought the old man where he needed to go, to find what he needed to find.

The sheriff knew roughly where my claim was staked, and if he and the two youngsters weren’t able to find the exact location, old man Cartwright would devise some way to signal to them, I was sure. A man who’d buried three wives wouldn’t be rendered helpless by the death of one son, however beloved. Once he had found what was lost, once he knew the worst, rest and water would rekindle his strength for living again.

I parked my wagon near the mound of crumbling sand, laid wood in the firepit ready for strangers to light, gave Epicene a final drink and a nosebag of oats, and walked out of camp along the track he’d made coming in, heading away from Salt Flats, into the heart of the desert.

End Notes: