Darkness.

Darkness had always been his friend. It started from his birth. He had been born in the dark, early in the morning, and it was only that dim, pre-dawn darkness that had saved him from being dashed against the rocks. It must have been, because he had been born deformed and he had survived his birth.

Uglier than the sins his mother had committed, or would commit when she finally abandoned him, he had found the light of day brought only jeers, hateful stares, shocked faces, and pain. Candle light was kinder, but the darkness, deep and protective, and cool. It was kindest of all.

He went to where he could stay in darkness most of the time, and solitude all of the time, and found a way to survive, and live. Making friends with creatures that had no eyes to see him, or else no words to sear him with, nor hands to throw rocks.

It was there in the darkness that the Doctor found him. It was there that he discovered his second-birth.

Camp Grant in north-western California reminded Artemus Gordon, Secret Service Agent, of the Ozarks the moment he stepped off the train. Situated on the Eel River and one of many settlements built on the profits from logging camps, it was a community full of hard men and even harder women. There was no school or church in Camp Grant, though some men chose to worship in a tent that was re-purposed every Sunday. On Saturday nights the tent was usually where the drunks were deposited if they were too sloshed to find their way home. Camp Grant was not a place where one expected to find a great deal of children, and yet that was precisely the topic of the first telegram Arte received from his partner the day he left New York City.

"Fourteen children, all male, ages 6 to 9 appeared throughout last month in mining town called Camp Grant. Rumors of similar appearances in other towns nearby. Will investigate. Children have limited recall. Some were able to give names. No relations here."

Personal matters had kept Arte in New York for a week while his partner went ahead with The Wanderer, forcing Arte to find other travel accommodations. Before his train left Vanderbilt's Grand Station Arte sent a response to Camp Grant that included his traveling schedule for the next week. He rode through the day and overnight in the discomfort of a passenger car, and the following morning found another wire waiting for him when he disembarked in Chicago, Illinois.

"Two months ago five children appeared in town of Junction City, 4 males, 1 female, ages 6 to 10. Similar partial amnesia. One child succumbed to fever, others were taken to orphanage in Eureka."

Before boarding again Arte visited the Chicago Public Library and consulted an atlas, locating the towns of Eureka, Camp Grant and Junction City. Eureka, which would be his first destination, was a coastal town providing a final outlet for the product of the logging towns in the mountains, of which Camp Grant and Junction City were two. All three municipalities followed the general path of the Eel River.

Before leaving the windy city, Arte sent a response to his partner and a wire to the orphanage in Eureka requesting that any information concerning recently inducted orphans be prepared for his arrival in a handful of days.

Out of Chicago he managed to find a berth that allowed him a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, changing trains in Kansas City for the long haul up to Denver. In Colorado he only had time to collect the two wires waiting for him, before the train was once more pulling out, headed to Salt Lake City.

In the dining car, over a cup of the finest coffee he had tasted in weeks, Arte read the telegrams. The first said; "Douglas City residents claim no children appearing in past five months. Bed Rock and Trinity Center report same. Trinity Center report disappearance of two adult males five months prior, claim bear activity at same time. No other activity out of the ordinary. Returning to Camp Grant. Will meet in Eureka in two days."

If he recalled correctly, Douglas City, Bed Rock and Trinity Center were also logging towns but farther north in the county, and following the path of a different river.

The second wire read, "Douglas City resident claims to have spotted 7 foot giant and 4 foot dwarf outside of town several weeks ago. Loveless likely to be in the area."

Loveless. That had been the Doctor's name.

He found that he liked the little man's presence. He liked the way that the Doctor didn't look the same as all other men. Nor did he SEE the same. Instead of seeing a freak, to be feared and attacked, the Doctor saw a young man with remarkable talent, here-to-for undiscovered, and encouraged him.

His appearance no longer mattered. What he could do, DID.

"And oh the things we will do!" The Doctor crowed, and his big, equally not-normal friend would laugh joyously with the little king.

He quickly stopped calling the small genius, Loveless. He found it hard to believe that the man was without love.

He loved the doctor, as a son would love the first father to show kindness to him.

From Salt Lake Gordon had two more days of travel at the least, three at the most, depending on the reliability of the local railroads once he got into the mountains. It was fatiguing, this 'public travel' and Arte realized yet again how spoiled he and his partner were with the private train Uncle Sam had been good enough to provide. He spent his evening in Salt Lake City in the good graces of the Mother Superior of a local convent; an old friend of his, who with great consideration offered him a room and a meal. There, he was reunited briefly with two of the newest novitiate, women who had come west as part of a wagon train of mail-order brides. They were good enough to share what news they had of the other members of their group.

Before Arte boarded the train the following morning he had been sent a final telegram from his partner.

It read: "Will rendezvous in Eureka tomorrow. Have found orphan aged 16, last memory is of cave in northern mountains. Investigating today."

Arte arrived in Eureka to find it brimming with the logging trade, kissed by sea spray and turning itself into the beginnings of a fine hub city. Arte asked after The Wanderer at the station but was told that it had not yet arrived, nor had anyone been given news about the train's arrival. It was early yet in the day and Arte decided to check in at the Eureka Home For Wayward Children.

There was little to the home, but the head of the orphanage, Father Uriah Gregory was good enough to introduce Arte to the four orphans that they had received from Junction City. The three young men, and the one young woman, regarded him with open curiosity and some trepidation but could tell him next to nothing about how they ended up in a logging town, who their parents had been, or why they had been abandoned.

Before he left to return to the train station, Arte spent an hour in private with Father Gregory discussing the behavior of the children.

"Nothing out of the ordinary, certainly, Mr. Gordon. The children are quiet, and well-behaved. Lonely. The eldest, who says he is 10 years of age, shows remarkable aptitude with carpentry, but I would hardly consider that strange."

"And the other children, Father. Were you aware that there had been more discovered before these, and since?"

The Father nodded, clasping his hands in front of him, "Yes...there was mention of a pair of children appearing in the town of Guerneville, California, but...that was some time ago. Almost a year. Ours is not the nearest orphanage but it is the biggest. There was talk of having the children sent here but I understood that they had been adopted. I hardly think their case would be related to yours."

Arte opened his mouth to correct the Father's assumption, then closed it, realizing that in essence his question had been answered. He thanked the man and left, promising to return once he had answers.

When he returned to the train station, The Wanderer still had not appeared. Surprised Arte tried sending a wire, but got no response.

Some persuasive swindling got him a seat on a train heading into the mountains and Arte spent the next two hours anxiously urging the train to move faster as it climbed to 1,000 feet above sea level.

Their work began quietly. Much secrecy was necessary and for that reason he was permitted to stay in his cool and dark home. He worked day and night, expanding his sanctuary like a mole expecting a new litter, and the Doctor would come to visit, bringing equipment, or boxes stuffed with paper and fragile vials of chemicals.

He wasn't permitted to touch the equipment, not until the Doctor had arranged it just so, and his rapidly evolving home was soon stuffed with the things that a mastermind needed to change the world.

But what would they do to change the world, he wondered?

The Doctor responded to the question with a dazzling smile, and a hooting laugh that rang through the open darkness, then held up a gloved finger and pointed to the latest shipment. It had been marked on with charcoal, a single phrase in Latin that he could not read.

The Doctor spoke it, relishing in the words the way a child lapped up melting ice cream. "Fons adulescentia." He said, then giggled lightly, drawing in a breath that encompassed a wonder he could not yet comprehend. "The font of youth, my dear boy." The Doctor said, grinning so hard that his bright white teeth creaked. "The font of youth."

The narrow gauge line took Arte to Camp Grant, where he found Orrin and The Wanderer, but no Jim. West had left with the teenaged orphan two days ago and had not returned.

Together Arte and Orrin searched through the maps and papers scattered over the desk in the varnish car, squinting at Jim's scribbles and another set of handwriting until Arte had a fairly good idea of where Jim had gone.

"He said 'a cave in the northern mountains', that has to be this river valley here. That's...almost fifty miles away. He took both horses?" Arte asked and Orrin nodded.

"He full expected to be back by now though, Mr. Gordon. The only thing I could figure was weather maybe, or somethin' happenin' to one of the horses."

"We'll give him until tomorrow..." Arte said after a long moment of thought. The case had seemed benign enough at the beginning, even with the knowledge that Loveless was likely involved.

Of course the idea of Loveless and children together in the same nefarious plot seemed peculiar at best.

"What would the Doctor want with children?" Arte muttered aloud. Orrin gave him a mildly panicked, wide-eyed look and cleared his throat.

"Children...uh...perhaps he...wanted their parents?"

"Perhaps, but separating children from their parents does not cause amnesia, at least not in so wide-spread a case. And these children are appearing in all of these towns...not even towns, logging camps. You just don't find children in logging camps. These are redwood forests, are they not?"

"The giant reds." Orrin said crossing his arms over his chest.

"Huh..."

"Mr. Gordon?"

Arte glanced up then took a breath and sat down on the chair behind the desk, his hand laying against the overlapping maps stacked on the desk. "Our dear nemesis, Doctor Loveless has many quirks about him. He is not purely evil necessarily, but he always has a plan. A motivation. Usually that motivation is dominance...over California, the United States, the world. His other most prominent concern has always been for the environment. Saving it from...the evils of mankind."

Arte searched through the papers on the desk, not finding what he was looking for. He stood, walking to the small library that covered one wall with recessed shelves. He scanned the titles of the brown, leather-bound volumes, tipping one from the shelf with a single finger laid against the top of the binding.

"This is the botanical survey done for northern California in 1850. Redwoods then were just beginning to be harvested by industrial entrepreneurs, most of which are millionaires by now." Arte brought the book back to the desk and leafed through it, poking at a page halfway through. "Redwoods are massive trees, in girth and height, slow to mature. Slow to grow." Arte paused, taking in a deep breath as he realized, "Much of the old growth forest in the area, according to this map...is already gone."

Arte felt Orrin lean in over his shoulder and both men stared in surprise at the markings in the book from thirty years prior, as compared to the most recent map of the area. "There should be hundreds of thousands of trees where Camp Grant sits now." Arte said quietly. Conservation had never meant much to him in the past. He was intelligent enough to know that progress came at a cost, but he had not fully considered the price until a few years ago when Loveless' own maniacal campaign to save the forests, came to light.

Since then he'd begun to lean just a little in the direction of the diminutive doctor. Now, he thought, he almost agreed with the man. There was little doubt in his mind that the Doctor's goal had something to do with slowing the almost unstoppable progress of the lumber mills in the Redwood forests. Arte didn't know how, though, or how the children were involved.

He gnawed at his lower lip for a few seconds, feeling the urge to get out there, building in his chest.

"How long has Jim been gone?"

"Two days, sir." Orrin repeated, after thinking for a moment.

It was just after noon but the more Arte thought about it, the less he liked the idea of letting another night pass without making some effort to find his partner. "Orrin, if you would be good enough to find me a horse and a supply mule. I think it's time I went looking for the wayward Mr. West after all."

"Be happy to, sir." Orrin acknowledged.

Over the next month he, the giant known as Voltaire, and the Doctor, worked day and night, by flickering candlelight to ready defenses around his home.

Boy, that was the name that the Doctor called him, and so he adopted it, was quick to ask the question 'why' at the first opportunity. Boy knew that the Doctor liked questions when they were cleverly and quickly asked, and he listened as the Doctor happily explained.

"There are those, my Boy, who don't understand Nature as you and I do." The Doctor began, then paused, pursing his lips. "You know the difference between right and wrong?" The Doctor asked, opening his eyes a little wider and ducking his head as he looked earnestly into Boy's widened eyes.

The deformed man nodded, one eye rounder than the other, but both completely focused on the diminutive scientest.

"There are some..who don't." The Doctor said, clenching his teeth together behind lips that were suddenly pressed white. "There are some, who no matter how many times they have been warned, continue to interfere, time and time again. They fool around in matters that are not their concern and despite much trial and error, refuse to be waylaid, or defeated...these...ENEMIES..." the Doctor bit out the word with such venom and hatred that Boy shrunk out of the immediate circle of light cast about the Doctor, taking comfort from his rage in the shadows of Boy's childhood.

The Doctor, his eyes for a moment cold, distant and hard, finally took a breath, compassion entering his gaze, which beckoned for Boy to return to the light. "They are the evil, my Boy. But we, we are the good. We are here to do what we must to stop this terrible blight upon nature, and restore her former glory."

Boy's smile, cracking over uneven and badly decayed teeth, one corner of his lips melting into his cheek as though he were made of wax that had been laid too near a flame, never the less was met by a look of patriarchal pride from the Doctor. "Yes." The Doctor agreed, nodding, "But for now...we've much work, and much experimentation to do."

An hour later Artemus Gordon had packed supplies enough for himself and two other men for four days, most of it in the saddle bags draped over the back of the mule Orrin had procured. The horse Orrin had bought was a little more spirited...no to be honest the horse was green, barely green broke and docile only because the man who sold it had been plying the animal with whiskey for the past two days. But it was the best Orrin could do on such short notice in a town that did not see much in the way of business in November.

In the hour that Orrin had been gone Arte had tried to track down the fourteen children that Jim had mentioned in his first telegram. So many youngsters, appearing over the period of a month, was impossible to ignore. The children had each been put on trains days after they were discovered and sent to Eureka, but no one in Eureka could confirm their arrival. Either the children had left the train themselves on one of the stops between Camp Grant and the coast, or they had been removed from the train.

Arte had sent out a telegram to each of the train stops along the line asking if anyone had spotted men answering to the descriptions of Loveless and Voltaire. By the time Orrin had returned, Gordon hadn't received any responses...beyond sarcasm and disbelief that is. He told Orrin to keep track of the telegraph, as always, and took the maps, mounting the fidgety horse and heading into the mountains.

It was cold, but not bitterly so, and there was little wind. The sun was bright enough overhead to warm the day, and Arte soon found himself enjoying the trip to a degree. The horse settled the farther they got from civilization, and Arte was left with nothing but hillsides full of saplings, redwood stumps and overgrown weeds and thorns to stare at for miles. Only after he turned away from the logging roads and through a narrow pass wedged with pines, did Arte begin to see the forest as it had been created. The contrast was remarkable and devastating.

Arte found himself drifting into the mind of Doctor Migelito Loveless. A man convinced that the state of California was his birthright. Watching as mankind plundered it for its riches, scrambled over its surface for land, and power. Loveless had once referred to his own henchmen as nothing more than ants, and Arte imagined that the dwarf felt the same way about all of his enemies. Insidious, infectious bugs that he could squash one at a time, but couldn't stop in a swarm.

And Gordon and West were the two cockroaches that wouldn't die.

By 2 pm Arte had covered very little ground, most of the time spent climbing. The elevation ahead would remain relatively steady at just over 2,000 feet, however, and after feeding himself and allowing the animals to drink, Arte continued along the trail, faint as it was, that his partner had taken only days ago.

Night fell quickly around five pm and Arte was forced to stop early to hunt down shelter and firewood. It wasn't eight o'clock before a storm rolled in over the mountains dumping cold rain mixed with sleet. The overhang that Arte had claimed for the night became crowded with the mule and the horse under the shelter with him. By 1 am the rain had stopped but the constant snuffle of a bear nearby, finding food in the final days before hibernation, spooked both animals enough to keep Arte awake the rest of the night.

By first light Arte had eaten breakfast, doused his fire and packed both animals for travel. A few hours before noon Arte found the cave. Sixty yards away, and thirty feet down in a river canyon buried in fall leaves and a crust of frost the sun hadn't reached yet, the cave was dark and deserted. There were no horses, nor signs of them, that Arte could see from where he crouched behind a rock on an overlook. He hadn't smelled any smoke from a campfire, or heard a single human voice but his own.

It felt like a trap, and Arte imagined that his partner had gone through the same calculations in his mind before approaching the cave. Something that Gordon knew he was going to do regardless of the danger. When he finally made the decision to approach it was after he had done everything he could to prepare. Primarily he unloaded the supplies from both animals and loosely ground hitched them where they could reach water that pooled on a flat expanse of rock. If a bear or other predator approached the animals, he wanted them to be able to run, but didn't particularly want to lose the supplies as well.

Arte armed himself, grabbed a lantern, candles, matches and a coil of rope and took his time descending into the valley. He startled a handful of deer and two river otters, but found no large predators in the area. The cave might have housed something preparing for winter, and Arte was cautious as he entered, lighting the candle in the lantern and holding it high over head.

The cave was deep, extending far beyond the reach of the candle light. Arte scanned the soft sand that made up the floor of the entrance of the cave. There were boot prints, one set belonging most definitely to his partner, and another probably to the teenager he had taken with him. Deer tracks, bird tracks and paw prints likely belonging to timber wolves peppered the rest of the sand, but none looked as defined or recent as the boot prints. His partner had entered the cave...Arte felt his stomach turn, and the first hint of fear peppered his mind.

What had kept his partner from leaving?

It was a cave mouse that alerted him. They had been trained to race through their tiny tunnels whenever a visitor was near the cave entrance and Walter, his favorite mouse, did precisely as he was trained, ringing a dainty bell and receiving a treat of cheese and butter for a reward. Someone at the door. A visitor. A prospective patient?

A few more moments of watching an amber liquid boil, watching as the color deepened and the liquid became more viscous, and Boy would be free to investigate the disturbance himself. The Doctor would be pleased, oh yes. A very important part of the plan had gone perfectly, and the Doctor would be getting even more practice soon. The little man would dance and sing tonight!