XxXxX

9

Despite his plans at breakfast, Ben Cartwright had no interest in meeting with Hiram or talking about the land he’d acquired with the passing of his neighbor and friend, Micah Ferguson. His first concern–in truth, the only thing that mattered to him, the thing that had driven him to ride much harder than was his custom–was what had happened to his boy in the night. But Sheriff Coffee was not in his office when Ben arrived. Ben had to wait a full hour, his patience wearing thinner and thinner with each passing minute. By the time the sheriff returned, anxiety had grown into anger.

And then he learned the reason for Roy’s earlier absence. Taken together with the news Paul Martin had told Ben when he’d first arrived in Virginia City–news about the late night passing of Judge Harris just two days prior–it almost had Ben believing in Joe’s ghost. Almost.

“It’s not a coincidence!” Ben Cartwright said gruffly. “It can’t be.” He pushed himself from his chair opposite Roy Coffee and paced over to the window of the sheriff’s office.

“I got no evidence to say it’s anything but.”

Roy’s matter-of-fact tone further chafed at the anxiety that had already made Ben feel raw inside. He turned back to his long-time friend, feeling considerably less than friendly. “Judge Harris, the man who sentenced Frank Carver to hang, is dead. Martha Hatcher, one of two eyewitnesses who influenced that ruling, is dead. And my son…my son….” He planted both hands on the sheriff’s desk to lock eyes with the man seated behind it. “…The only other witness, has been attacked twice by a man he is convinced is Frank Carver’s ghost. You can’t possibly believe it’s all coincidental!”

“Now, Ben, you know the law don’t care what I believe. I got to have proof. I got to have evidence. As for the judge, Doc said near as he can tell the man’s heart just gave out. You want to believe he got scared to death by some ghost, you go right ahead. But if I put that in an official report, you’d better find a job for me out on that ranch of yours, ‘cause it’s a sure bet those folks outside that window there aren’t gonna want me sheriffin’ anymore.”

“Of course I don’t think it was a ghost!” Ben’s voice was nearly loud enough to rattle the windows. “But neither do I believe the judge’s death was a coincidence. Not when you also consider what happened to Martha this morning and the attacks on Little Joe!”

“What happened to Missus Hatcher was an accident.”

“Or made to look like one!” Ben argued.

“Her husband came home for lunch and found her at the foot of the stairs with her neck broken. Now that’s a pretty clear accident if ever there was one!”

“Be reasonable, Roy! Something is going on here and we have got to get to the bottom of it! Even if you ignore what happened to the judge and Martha…even if you ignore that they both died under unusual circumstances within days of that first attack on Little Joe, you cannot ignore that someone broke into my home in the middle of the night and tried to poison my son!” Ben stabbed his finger at the desk to punctuate his final words.

“Now there’s something we can finally agree on. And just as soon as my deputy gets back from Mister Hatcher’s, I intend to head out to the Ponderosa and see for myself those bruises on Joe’s jaw. Bruises like that can prove your boy didn’t swallow all that laudanum on his own. But I sure hope we can find some other kind of proof, too. Otherwise, I–”

The door opened, interrupting the sheriff’s words. And then his returning deputy changed the entire course of the conversation. “Afternoon, Mister Cartwright.” The man’s greeting was cursory; he was far more interested in talking with Roy. “Sheriff, I got to say, that Hatcher business makes for a pretty good ghost story. In fact, I’ve a mind to use it on those nephews of mine next Saturday, if–”

Ben stiffened. “What’s this about a ghost story?”

The deputy glanced at Roy and then scratched at his new growth of beard before answering. “I could tell Mister Hatcher was holdin’ somethin’ back when he told me about his wife’s fall. By the time I got him to spit it all out, well, I could understand why he’d been holdin’ it back. It was like some kind of silly ghost story. That Missus Hatcher must’ve been losin’ her mind or some like. Told her husband Frank Carver’s ghost has been haunting her.”

Feeling vindicated, Ben glared back at Roy Coffee…and was pleased to see his old friend’s eyebrows rise up in surprise.

XxXxX

Joe stared at the door, listening for signs of the men outside but hearing only the heavy beat of his heart and the much slower tick of the grandfather clock. Every quick glance to that clock showed him that seconds passed like minutes, and minutes like hours. By the time five minutes had come and gone, Joe was ready to accept that he would rather deal with the pain in his leg than the torment of waiting. He licked dry lips, took one more glance at the clock…and then noticed the front door was coming open.

Joe couldn’t breathe. The beating and the ticking were silenced by the barely discernable creak of hinges as the door swung wider, the motion so slow he would have run across the room to pull at it if he could…if his leg would allow him to.

He heard Adam in his head, from a time when he’d used that very door to teach Joe about geometry. There, it reached forty-five degrees. And there, fifty. He started to count them out, desperate to turn his thoughts away from ghosts even while he readied the shotgun in his hands.

Sixty. Sixty-five. He lifted the gun.

Seventy. Seventy-five. He aimed it at the door, forcing his count to stop him from reliving that moment on the stairs when he’d aimed a pistol at his father.

Eighty. Eighty-five….

And then he saw the shadow…a shadow that gained substance as it silently stepped forward, the geometry cast by the sun slowly revealing it to be…

…The ghost of Frank Carver.

Carver stood quiet and still for a long moment, unconcerned by the shotgun targeting his chest. “You won’t do it,” he said in a voice deeper than Joe remembered. “You can’t.”

Joe rested his finger lightly on the trigger. But he was afraid to pull it. If Pa and Adam were right, the shot would hit a man. It would hit him, and it would stop him from hurting Joe…or Hoss…or anyone else. But what if…? What if Joe had been right all along? What if it really was Frank Carver’s ghost?

“You can’t,” Carver had told him.

Why couldn’t he?

Because the shot would pass right through him; wouldn’t it? It would pass through and hit something outside. Or someone. Maybe even Adam.

“Y–you hurt Hoss.” Joe’s intended accusation sounded like nothing more than a quietly stated fact.

It was a fact Frank Carver’s ghost chose not to argue. “Figured it was time to get them chasing ghosts. You and me, we’ve got business of our own.”

Joe tried to brace himself, but the fact was there wasn’t much more bracing he could do. So he waited…and he watched Carver’s ghost watching him…and he thought about Adam’s angles and how much damage his gun would do to the house once Carver moved inside–where it wouldn’t matter if Joe’s shot passed through him or not, where it couldn’t hurt anyone else. He wondered if shooting a ghost would make it go away or just make it angrier. And he wondered how a ghost could feel as real as Carver’s hands had felt around his neck the night before. He wondered and he worried and he waited.

And then Carver’s ghost turned away.

“Hey,” Joe said softly, confused. Why was Carver walking away? “We’ve got business of our own,” he’d said. What sort of business? And how could they do it if Carver walked away?

“Hey!” Joe repeated, loud enough to reach the porch. But Carver had already moved out of sight.

“No,” Joe said to himself. “No!”

Joe couldn’t let Carver go like that. The ghost was real. He had to prove that to his family. He had to prove it to himself.

He reached for the crutch propped up beside him, laying the shotgun down on the settee so he could maneuver himself to his feet. Then he realized how useless that shotgun would be, with one arm as preoccupied as it now was. Probably just as well. Joe knew he wouldn’t use it anyway. He needed answers. Is that what Carver had meant? “You won’t do it. You can’t.” Had Carver known it before Joe did, himself?

Maybe he had. Maybe ghosts knew things regular folks couldn’t know…things that maybe regular folks aren’t supposed to know. And maybe that meant Joe should stay right where he was. But then what? Carver could keep coming back whenever he felt like it; and Joe would never get another decent night’s sleep–at least, not until the night he knew was bound to come sooner or later…the one he would never wake up from.

He was scared half out of his mind, but Joe knew what he had to do. He hobbled to the door as fast as he could, stepped out onto the porch, and then, taking a long, shaky breath, glanced around for any sign of his brothers.

All he saw was Frank Carver walking past the barn, slow as can be.

 

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