What the Wind Blew In
Chapter One
Joe Cartwright clung to the shadows in the alley beside the Dry Goods store. It was a hot and windy day in Virginia City. He and his brothers had come into town to pick up supplies – and maybe wet their whistle if time allowed before they had to head back home. Pa had told them in no uncertain terms that they were to be back to the Ponderosa before nightfall. There was a renegade band of Indians in the area who were bucking for a fight. So far they'd killed at least four people and had scalped one man and left him bleeding in the dust. Joe reached up and felt his thick brown curly hair. He swallowed hard. Much as he'd hate to die, surviving a scalping would be worse.
Weren't many women interested in a man of eighteen who was bald – whether he came by it honestly or not.
A sudden noise made Joe pull back deeper into the shadows. That fella who was hunting him, he sure as shooting was never going to give up. He hadn't seen anybody that hot under the collar since his pa found out he had borrowed old chief Winnemucca's daughter for that dance a month or so back. Joe placed a hand on his back, pushing against the gray corduroy of his jacket. It still hurt after all that extra work splitting wood for the new corral fence.
His pa was like a force of nature – nothing to trifle with.
The brown-haired man leaned a little ways out of the shadows to listen. His horse Cochise was tied up out front of the livery. All he had to do was get to him and ride. A glance showed him that Adam almost had the wagon loaded. He'd say 'howdy' on the way past and then beat a path toward home and wait for his older brother a little ways along.
He needed to get out of Virginia City.
As Joe stood there, contemplating his next move, halfway in and halfway out of the shadows, his slight form was suddenly eclipsed. It was as if a cloud had traveled over the face of the sun. Catching a quick breath, Joe ducked and rolled even as a pair of strong arms reached out, meaning to capture and squeeze the life out of him.
There were advantages to being small and quick.
Joe came up out of the roll and headed for the wooden deck outside the Dry Goods store. He hated the idea of running with his tail between his legs to his older brother almost as much as a day without a smile from a pretty girl, but it looked like the stoic Yankee might be his only hope.
Behind him a bellow worthy of a grizzly bear expressed in fine terms the frustration of the man he was running from. Adam heard it and turned to look at him. An expression somewhere between concern and outright amusement landed on his brother's face, lifting the corner of one lip like a shade raised at dawn.
"Joe, watch out! He'll crush you!" Adam shouted.
In spite of everything – in spite of what he'd done – he really didn't deserve to die. Really. Just... Well, maybe... Joe winced. Maybe he should fall on his pursuer's mercy.
Joe looked at the man's beet-red face with its narrowed eyes and jutting chin.
No milk of human kindness there.
Ducking, Joe just missed being caught.
"Look out, older brother! I'm coming through!"
"Oh, no, you ain't!" the man behind him bellowed. "You done deserve to be tarred and feathered and I am just the man to do it!"
As the giant shadow lurched for him Joe ducked and rolled again. He didn't get it right this time. The man with the curly brown hair felt a sharp pain in his shoulder as he struck the boards and then, even worse than that, he rolled straight into a pair of ladies side lace boots –
With the lady still inside them.
Joe heard her holler, and then a shower of packages and a bag of sweets came down around him, the caramels and peppermints pelting him like rain.
Unfortunately the lady came down too. Right on top of him.
The wind knocked out of him, Joe drew in several shallow breaths. He wanted to tip his black hat, but couldn't find it. "Sorry, Ma'am," he managed to wheeze out.
"Joe, really!"
It was Adam. His brother was charging forward. Joe didn't know if it was to throttle him or to help the lady to stand.
From the look of his older brother's face, he'd lay money on the first.
"Joe!" Adam snarled. "Where are you manners? Help ...the...lady...up."
"Well, I can't...rightly, Adam," Joe protested meekly, his words still coming hard. He looked at the woman sitting on top of him. She looked stunned. "Leastways...not till she helps me up."
"Oh, for goodness sake!" Adam stopped at his side. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine, if a little –"
"Not you!" Adam glared at him and then looked at the woman. "Madam, are you all right"
She was a handsome woman, past her prime but pretty as a waning rose. From a distance a man might have put her at the high end of her twenties. Closer up Joe could tell she was in her mid-thirties. There were tiny wrinkles at the ends of her eyes and lines dug deep around her mouth that showed she liked to laugh. She was thin and what his pa would have called buxom. Joe just called it busty.
He liked 'em busty and, come to think of it, he liked them in their thirties.
The woman's hair was the color of a brown bear's coat and her skin pale as the honey that bear liked to eat. She was dressed in expensive clothes that had once been white, but were gray now with the settling of the cloud of dust their tumble had raised.
The woman blinked several times but said nothing.
"Er, Adam," Joe asked. "You think you could get her off of me?"
"If you're in pain, you deserve it." Adam rolled his eyes and then held his hand out. "Madam?"
The woman blinked again and seemed to become aware of her surroundings. Looking down at Joe she let out a little gasp. "Oh! I'm sorry. Did I trip you?" she asked.
He'd been about to share some of the blame for the fall, but Adam cut him off. "Joe, don't you dare!"
Joe swallowed more dust than pride. "No Ma'am, the fault...was mine. I'm glad I was able to...cushion your fall, but Ma'am..." He winced. "Could you please get off of me?"
"Here, let me help," Adam offered as he glowered at him. "Are you hurt?"
As the woman assured his older brother that she was fine, Joe drew in a long gulp of air. It tasted sweet for precisely ten seconds and then was forced from his lungs as those strong arms that had been seeking to find and crush him for the last half hour found him and squeezed him like a cow's teats.
"So I finally got you, little brother!" Hoss proclaimed as his grip tightened. "If you ain't slipperier than a horny toad in a spring flood!"
"H...Hoss. About what happened – "
Adam had the woman's arm linked over his own. She had gathered up one of the boxes and it hung from her arm like a lop-sided smile. His older brother had been directing her toward one of the chairs pushed up against the Dry Goods store front when he halted and turned back to stare at him.
"What happened?" Adam demanded.
"Goldarnit, Adam!" Hoss said, holding Joe so his feet were off the ground and kicking, " if I didn't catch this little horny toad shinnying out of the second story window of the Washoe Millionaire's Club!"
Adam frowned. "The second story?"
If Joe's cheeks hadn't already been red they'd have turned it. "Now...now, it isn't what you think, Adam."
His elder brother patted the woman's hand and released her to her seat. At this point she was obviously enjoying the proceedings. A small smile quirked the ends of her rose petal lips.
"You do know who is on the second floor, don't you Joe?" Adam growled. "Who and what?"
"I know who. I'm not so sure about what."
His elder brother came right up to him. Adam made a gesture but didn't complete it toward his lower parts.
"Trouble."
"Adam, I swear, it wasn't what you think!" Joe gasped in air. "You tell this...big galoot to let me go and... I'll explain."
"You explain and I'll tell the big galoot to let you go," Adam deadpanned.
Joe hung his head. "I was with Nellie."
"You were what?"
"Nellie Makem, you know? Prettiest little filly this side of the Mississippi, with the biggest brightest blue eyes and hair like sunshine –."
"And a pa and five older brothers who warned you in no uncertain terms to stay away from her." Adam frowned. "What was Nellie doing at the Millionaire's Club in the first place?"
Hoss squeezed so hard Joe squeaked. "Let me tell you, Adam It ain't bad enough that little brother here decided to sneak away and see a forbidden gal he's sweet on. The dad-blamed smooth-talking muttonhead took her inside the Millionaire's Club!"
"Just to dance, Adam, I swear," Joe protested while testing his brother's hold.
He needn't have bothered.
"So how in all that is holy did you end up on the second floor?" his elder brother asked.
"Well, that would be when Nellie's pa and brothers came into the Washoe." Joe hesitated, "The only way out was up the spiral stair and through one of the...ladies' rooms."
"Unoccupied I hope?"
Joe screwed up his face. "Not exactly."
"I don't know about you, Adam, but much as I'd like to tan the hide of little brother here, if we don't get him out of town soon, I won't have to. I saw Mister Makem a while back and had one of the hands send him in the opposite direction. It ain't gonna be long before he figures it out and comes this way totin' his anger and a sawed off shotgun."
"As a matter of fact..." Adam nodded back along the street.
Joe looked. Five men walked abreast along it carrying pistols and rifles. The one in front was Alvin Makem. He was dragging a very sheepish looking Nellie Makem in his wake.
Quick as lightning Adam stepped over to the wagon and threw the tarp back. On the bed of the wagon were various boxes of supplies, ropes, and several large bags of flour.
"Toss him in!" Adam ordered.
"Adam! Hoss! No!" Joe wriggled and wiggled, trying to get free. "It's gonna hurt!"
"It will hurt a great deal less than two barrels of shot in your backside. Hoss."
"Yeah, Adam?"
"Now!"
A second later Joe was flying through the air. He hit the bed of the wagon with its contents hard, driving the air out of him again – which was a good thing because all around him was a haze of flour that would have stung and made him cough had he sucked it in.
A second later everything went black as Adam pulled the tarp over him.
"Now, keep your mouth shut, Joe. If that's possible!" Adam snapped. There was a pause and then he heard his oldest brother say, "Oh, Mister Makem. How good to see you." Silence and then. "Joe? No, I haven't seen him since this morning." Another pause. "Yes, sir, he certainly is a rapscallion."
Joe frowned. He'd have to look that one up.
"Oh, just supplies," Adam said, answering an unheard question. "You want to take a look?"
Joe hunkered down in the dusty wagon bed. Scrambling, he found a blanket and pulled it over himself just as the tarp was thrown back.
"See? No brother."
A second later Adam replaced the tarp. "You do that, sir," he called out loudly. Mister Makem must be moving away. "Yes, Pa will be home tomorrow. Joe will be too." Then he added in a mutter, "Unless Pa kills him tonight."
There was another pause – this time a minute or so – and then the tarp was pulled back again. Adam looked in as Joe shifted and poked his head out from underneath the blanket, and then he and Hoss and the woman stranger all broke out laughing.
"What are you laughing at?" Joe pouted. "Can't be any funnier than what I see!"
Hoss stepped over and rummaged in the goods in the wagon, coming up at last with a bright shining new grub pan. He handed it to him.
"If you don't beat all, little brother. You act like a devil and come out lookin' like an angel!"
Joe looked in the pan. He was covered in white flour dust from head to toe with the exception of two big circles around his eyes.
"Or maybe a coon!" Adam laughed.
Joe looked at them. Then he looked back at himself. Then he fell against the ruined flour sacks and laughed until he was exhausted.
When the merriment subsided, the poor woman who had been drawn into their childish interplay rose from the chair where Adam had left her and began gathering up her things. Adam and Hoss went to help her. Joe stayed put, sure she didn't want white dust all over everything. Besides, his shoulder was hurting pretty bad and, though he wasn't going to tell his brothers, he doubted he could lift much of anything at the moment. Leaning over the side of the wagon, he said, "Ma'am, I apologize again. Sorry you ended up between Hoss and Adam and me."
The woman had been leaning over, picking up a wrapped package. He saw her start. When she straightened up, she looked them over one by one. "Adam? Hoss?" The woman paused. "So you must be Little Joe?"
He nodded. "Yes, Ma'am."
"It's Miss," she corrected, "Miss Belle Babylon."
He exchanged a glance with his brothers. That name was a brow raiser.
"Welcome to Virginia City, Miss...Babylon," Adam said. "May I ask what brings you here?"
"You," she answered.
Adam touched his chest. "Me?"
She shook her head. "No, all of you. That is, if you are Benjamin Cartwright's sons."
"That we are, Madam...Miss Babylon. How can we help you?"
The lady had gathered all of her goods. She stood holding them. "Well, first of all you can help me take my things to the hotel where I'll be staying."
"Certainly, Adam answered. "And then?"
"Then you can take me to see your father."
"Does Pa know you?" his older brother asked.
She hesitated ever so slightly. "He knows my mother. I have a...gift to deliver to him from her."
"Would we know her, Miss?" Adam asked.
The woman's blue eyes narrowed. "How old are you?"
His eldest brother frowned. "Thirty-one."
"Then no, you wouldn't know her. Your father met my mother before you were born." She looked at them again. "Before any of you were born."
"When he was a sailor? " Hoss asked.
She nodded.
"How come he never told us about her?" the big man asked.
"That's another question I intend to ask your father."
The three of them looked at each other. Your pa was...well, your pa.. It was hard, say, to think of him being eighteen years old once upon a time. Joe leaned back in the flour, thinking about it, wondering if his pa had ever shinnied up a porch post and visited a girl against her family's wishes, or if he'd ever been chased off with a shotgun and a threat. Or if...
The woman was staring at him. She smiled when she realized he had become aware of it.
"Yes, Miss?" he asked, sitting up.
The smile deepened. She laughed as she answered.
"You'll find out soon enough."
"Joseph Francis Cartwright!"
Joe winced. "Yes, Pa?"
"Have you ignored every single thing I have ever taught you about proper behavior and about being a responsible human being?"
Joe shook his head. "No, Pa. I got that last part down."
"The last part?" His father's voice was rising like a river toward flood stage. "About being responsible?"
"About being human, Pa."
His father began to pace. "What am I going to do with you, boy? Hog tie you? Lock you in your room like I would an ornery child? No, wait." His father approached. Joe was sitting down. The older man towered over him. "I'll just have Roy Coffee lock you in a cell and throw away the key!"
"That wouldn't do any good, Pa," Joe answered with a smile. "I'd just break out."
"Oh, you would, would you? And how would you do that?"
"He'd sweet talk the cleaning lady, Pa," Adam chimed in.
"Or that girl that brings the meals for the prisoners," Hoss suggested.
"You two," their pa whirled to look at his brothers who were seated in front of the fireplace, "be quiet! When you go to town you are responsible for seeing that your brother," he threw a glance Joe's way, "behaves."
"Pa," Adam protested. "Joe's a grown man."
Their father folded his arms over his chest. "That isn't what you told me a moment ago."
"Well, it's just Joe doesn't act like a grown man."
"More like a ornery bronco if you ask me," Hoss added, nodding.
Ben Cartwright fixed his middle son with the stare that would have taken down an army of masked robbers.
"I didn't," he said.
"Didn't what, Pa?" the big man inquired.
"Ask you."
"Oh, yeah...sorry, Pa."
"Joseph, Joseph, what am I going to do with you? Last month you almost started a war with the Paiutes. Now this." Ben stroked his beardless chin with his fingers. "Maybe I'll send you over to the Makems to help Alvin and his boys with their chores."
Joe's eyebrows shot toward his considerable hair. "Pa, they'll kill me."
His father shrugged. "It might be a relief."
"Pa!"
Ben Cartwright approached him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "All levity aside, Joseph, it is time you grew up and accepted the responsibilities of a man. You want me – you want your brothers to treat you as a man – prove to us that you are one by acting responsibly and facing up to what you have done."
Joe swallowed over a lump the size of Texas in his throat. "You want me to go and apologize to Mister Makem?"
"That would be good for a starter."
"A starter?"
"Joe, think of the way your brothers look out for you. Now, imagine if you were a girl –"
That elicited snickers from his brothers.
"You call that 'grown up', Pa?" he protested.
"Adam. Hoss." His father continued. "Nellie's brothers are looking out for her, just like your brothers do for you, Joe, only she's a girl and as such has to worry about her reputation far more than – "
"Pa, I kissed her! And danced with her. I swear I never – "
"It's different with a girl, Joe. Just seeing Nellie going into the Washoe Club could ruin her reputation and make it impossible for her to find a good man to marry." His pa paused. "Unless, of course, you mean to marry her."
Joe blinked. "Pa, I'm only a boy. You said so yourself. I'm not old enough to marry anyone."
"Your pa's right, Joe," Belle Babylon said as she appeared on the stairs. "A woman has to be ten times as pure as a man and twenty times as careful. One wrong word – one wrong act, and it can mark her for life." She arrived at the bottom and turned toward their father. "Isn't that right, Benjamin?"
Joe could tell his pa was puzzled. "Miss Babylon?" he asked.
The woman walked over to them. When they arrived with her earlier their pa had insisted Adam and Hoss go back into town to retrieve her things. The least they could do, his father said, was provide her with lodgings to make up for the trouble his boys had caused. Since her arrival Belle had changed and freshened up. She was attired in a moss green dress now. Her long brown hair hung loose and free and fell near to her waist. It was wavy like his if not quite as curly.
"My mother told me a story of a young man she met long ago. It must have been in eighteen twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He was just about your youngest's age and just as handsome with brown hair and brown brows set over a pair of deep brown eyes." She stopped by Joe. "You look like him, you know?"
Joe frowned. "Like who?"
He glanced at his pa and noted the way the older man was standing had changed. He seemed anxious, uncertain even. As Joe watched, his pa took a step forward and caught the back of one of the leather chairs in his hand. A second later he asked, "Belle, just exactly who is your mother?"
She smiled. "I thought you'd never ask. Babylon, of course, is my step-father's name. My mother's name is Persuad. Jasmin Persuad."
Their father had gone pale. "Jasmin..."
"I see you remember her." Belle smiled. "I told your boys I had a package to deliver to you from my mother."
"Yes?" Ben asked trepidatious.
She spread her arms wide. "You're looking at it! It's me!" Belle laughed.
The older man scowled. "What do you mean?"
The stranger walked straight up to him, going toe to toe. "I mean, Benjamin Cartwright, that I have come to stay."
"What, here, on the Ponderosa?" he asked.
"Yes, here on the Ponderosa," she said, reaching out and cupping his cheek with her hand. "With my pa."
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Chapter Two
It didn't take long.
If there was one thing Adam Cartwright had learned in his life it was that – after a typhoon – a woman was one of the most powerful forces in nature. He was standing in the middle of the great room, hands on hips, surveying Belle's 'improvements' to the ranch house. She'd been with them a little over a week and, slowly, with grace and charm and apologies here and there, taken over – much like he would have expected a sister to do. She said she wanted to help them, to make their lives pleasant. His father had laughed when he complained just a little bit and told him to give the young lady her head for a while. 'Don't you remember Marie?' he asked. 'It's what a woman does. She can't help herself.'
Adam pursed his lips and hung his hands on his hips as he looked around. There were antimacassars on the backs of all their chairs – small circles made of stiff white crochet work that were meant to protect the leather or fabric from the Roland's macassar oil both he and Joe used in their hair. Flowers decorated every open surface. She'd added pillows to the chairs and somehow located several sets of white curtains and managed to hang them in place of the heavy red ones. He'd come in the day before and found Joe buried under a mound of white fabric, his mouth shut for once since he had a whole paper of pins clenched between his teeth.
The look out of Joe's eyes had been worth the fuss it caused when he had suggested to Belle – politely – that flowers, frilly lace curtains, and little white doilies were perhaps not the best way to convey strength and potency when meeting with bankers, lawyers, mine owners, and other power brokers of the West.
She'd pooh-poohed his concerns, of course, and put a pin cushion on his arm and told him to hold still or the next pin would go into his arm instead of the filly white valance she was hanging.
He'd tossed a coin with Hoss to see which of them got to ride out with their pa.
He was sure Hoss had cheated.
Adam closed his eyes and drew in a deep breath. It brought both pleasure and the furrowing of his brow. The scent of Hop Sing's cooking made his mouth water – the idea of what Belle was doing to their cook made him want to cry. While his father might be willing to give the eager young lady her 'head', Hop Sing had quite another take on the situation.
A sound made him open his eyes. It took a second, but then Adam noticed the door had opened a crack. Joe's curly brown head poked in. "Is it safe?"
Adam approached him. "If you mean by 'safe', is 'sister' Belle still in the Nevada territory? No, it's not safe."
"Where is she?" Joe asked as he stepped in.
"She's in the kitchen."
"With Hop Sing? No, Adam! Last night he threatened to return to China if she set foot in his kitchen again."
"By 'she', would you mean the woman who might be our sister? The one Pa told us to handle with kid gloves?"
Joe scrunched up his nose.
"Well, she's in there now." Adam turned toward the kitchen and listened. It had gone quiet. A shiver ran through him.
Maybe Hop Sing was dead.
"Should you or I go check and see if there's a body?" he asked his little brother, his lips quirking ever so slightly.
"Tarnation, Adam! What are we going to do about her? She pinched my cheek today and called me 'cute'."
Adam shrugged. "Well, you are, kind of."
Joe slapped his arm. "Have you figured a way to get shy of her yet?"
He shook his head. "Once again, you know what Pa said."
His little brother looked like he'd swallowed a bad egg. "We gotta be nice to her?"
"Joe," Adam's tone was serious, "she may be our sister."
"But Adam, Pa couldn't have been more than eighteen or so..."
Adam's dark brows peaked. "So?"
"But Pa, he's... Well, he's not that sort...he's...pa."
Adam laughed. "But he wasn't 'pa' thirty-three years ago. You know what he's told us about his 'misspent' youth."
Joe sighed. "Not much."
"He's probably worried about giving you ideas." Adam shifted his weight from one foot to the other and stared at his brother. "I suppose you have been a perfect gentleman with every girl you've ever romanced."
"Course I have!"
"You've never gone beyond kissing? Not once?"
"Adam," Joe's cheeks were turning red, "isn't that kind of a personal question? What if I asked you the same thing?"
"I'm a bit older than you."
"And that makes it right?" his baby brother exclaimed.
Adam tugged at his collar. "Weren't we talking about Pa?"
Joe laughed. "We sure were."
A sudden crash made them both turn their heads in the direction of the kitchen. Two seconds later Hop Sing burst into the room, his arms and cook's apron a flutter.
"Hop Sing no cook for Cartwrights anymore!," he proclaimed. "Hop Sing no set foot in kitchen while woman is here! Go live in bunkhouse!"
Adam approached the Chinese man. "Hop Sing, calm down. Belle's just trying to –"
"That woman trying to take over ranch! She worse than claim jumpers, robbers, and Paiutes combined!"
It was kind of hard to argue with that. "You just need to be firm with her."
"Firm? Firm!" Hop Sing shook his head. "I tell her no touch pans. She touches them. I tell her leave pans where they are, she rearranges them to look 'good'. She tell me what herbs to use, how to prepare the meat, how to fry it on the grill!" The Chinese man paused. He reached out and took hold of Adam's arm. "Please tell Hop Sing, Mr. Adam, that she go away soon."
"It's kind of up to Pa, Hop Sing."
Their cook's face fell. "Your father nice man." He gazed back toward the kitchen. "Too nice."
"It's not that Hop Sing," he hesitated. "Belle may be..."
Hop Sing shook his head. "That woman no Mister Ben's girl. She no your sister."
He exchanged a look with Joe. "Pa told you?"
The cook nodded solemnly. "You think it could be true?"
"No, it isn't, Hop Sing," Joe assured him.
"Joe, we have no way of knowing that. It's possible. That's why Pa took off for Virginia City to see if he could find anything else out about her, maybe from the people she traveled with on the stage. Pa's not denying he knew her mother." Adam paused. "You saw his face when he heard her name."
The three of them stood in silence for a moment, contemplating this act of God, wondering what sin they had committed to deserve such a punishment.
The Chinese man was the first to stir. "Hop Sing get clothes. Maybe sail back to China. Crazy lady cook for you."
"Adam! Joe!" Belle's voice rang out.
Like the pestilence in the Bible, the darkness was drawing near.
Adam drew a breath. "Yes, Belle?"
"What happened to that little man? I didn't finish instructing him on how to prepare the beef."
Hop Sing threw his hands into the air and, without his belongings, headed out the door leaving a blistering trail of Chinese words of dubious meaning behind him.
Adam could guess what some of them were. He's used them often enough himself since Belle had moved in three days before.
A second later Belle came around the corner. At the sight of her, Adam had to suck in air. He hadn't seen her today. She'd swept up the most of her hair and locked it in place with a beautiful rhinestone encrusted ivory comb. The upsweep and the brunette curls that tumbled from it onto her forehead accented her large dark eyes and unusual skin. It was really the color of honey and he didn't think it was from the sun. Her lips were full and slightly pouty but broke readily into a smile. She was wearing a gold locket and was dressed in a dark blue silk dress that fit her form better than any dress ever had any dressmaker's form in a ladies' shop.
Adam shook himself. What was he thinking?
This could be his sister.
Better derail the train of his thoughts on that track right now.
"Where did he go?" she asked innocently.
"Who?" Joe asked. "Oh, Hop Sing? He...he went out to cook for the men in the bunkhouse."
"Yes," Adam agreed. "Hop Sing said he thought you wanted to cook for us tonight."
She looked a little startled. "Well, I hadn't thought about it. I was just trying to give him some help, poor man. You know he doesn't know Cayman from Coriander?"
"If you're done in the kitchen, Miss, I can go get him and bring him back," Joe offered.
Belle smiled at him. "Little Joe. I'm your sister. You can stop calling me 'miss'. It's just Belle." She looked from one of them to the other.
Joe nodded. "Belle."
Adam seconded. "Yes, er, Belle, perhaps you should go and freshen up in your room?"
"I just came from my room."
"Well, a woman can't ever be too fresh," Joe said and then blanched. "Sorry..I didn't mean that...I..." He paused "I think I'll freshen up myself after I get Hop Sing." A second later his little brother hightailed it faster than he had ever seen and scooted out the door while tossing another 'miss' after him.
That left the two of them alone.
"Where's Pa?" Belle asked.
That still grated on him. Still, he had to admit, it could be true, and as such, he would treat it as true until he knew for certain otherwise. "He went into town with Hoss."
"What's he doing in town?"
"Oh, the usual stuff," Adam said as he moved toward one of the chairs in front of the fire, "checking the wire to see if there have been any posts, picking up mail and supplies. Visiting friends."
"Is he checking up on me?"
Adam's hazel eyes flicked to her face. "Should he be?"
Belle shrugged. She planted herself in one of the chairs and spread her skirts wide. "I guess if I had a stranger land in my house who claimed to be my daughter or son, I would want to check them out."
"So the thought doesn't make you nervous?"
She shook her head. "I am what I said. Jasmin Persuad's daughter."
He sat too. "That doesn't prove Pa is your father."
Belle touched the gold necklace she wore. She looked at it for a second and then reached up and undid the clasp. Holding it out, she offered it to him. "Here," she said. "Look inside."
Adam shook his head.
"I insist."
Reaching out he took it. The black-haired man hesitated a moment before opening it. What he found inside made his breath catch. The locket contained the portrait of a handsome brown-haired man in a sailor's coat. The mass of hair and the shape of his face looked like Joe. Adam could see himself in the eyes.
There was no mistaking that it was their father.
"It was my mother's. She gave it to me before she died."
He started. "Your mother is dead? Did you tell Pa?"
"No." She accepted it back from him. "Not yet."
"Is that why you came out West? Are you all alone?"
Belle nodded. "My mother was not rich, but she left me enough to live in comfort." The beautiful woman rose. "I should leave. I am causing nothing but trouble here. I should never have come and expected –"
"Belle." Adam stood. He crossed to her and took her by the hand. "You have to understand, this is a household of men – Pa, me, Little Joe and Hoss, Hop Sing, and dozens of hands. It's been a long time since we've had a woman around. Joe's mother, Marie, died thirteen years ago." He smiled. "It will just take a little getting used to."
There were tears in her eyes. "Really? You don't want me to go?"
Adam hesitated. If Joe were here would he say what he was about to say?
"No, I don't want you to go."
A smile broke on her face, lighting it up. "Oh, Adam! That is the sweetest thing anyone has said to me in the longest time. I could just kiss you!" And she did, right beside his mouth.
He felt her eyelashes flutter against his cheek as she did.
"Belle, I..." Adam stared at her. Then he did something inexplicable.
He kissed her – and he meant it.
The funny thing was, Belle wasn't horrified. She just looked at him with a curious look in her eyes and then, after drawing a deep breath, rushed past him and flew up the stairs.
Adam remained where he was. He was disgusted with himself. This woman could be his sister, for God's sake!
A second later the door opened and Joe's head popped in again. "Psst."
He sighed.
"Adam, is she gone?"
He turned toward his brother. "Belle went upstairs."
"That's good. I talked Hop Sing into finishing the cooking. I snuck him in the side window. You think she's gonna come back down tonight?"
He shook his head. "I doubt it."
"You mean we can eat our supper in peace and take a drink without crooking our little pinkies out like they're broke?"
"Yes."
"How'd you do it Adam?" Joe asked as he came along side him. "Did you do something?"
Joe never knew why that question brought him a slap upside his head.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Ben Cartwright closed the door to the telegraph office. He'd just wired a message to Dayton, Ohio, seeking further information on Belle Babylon. It seemed her story, so far as she had told it, was true. She had come into town looking for the Cartwrights and told at least three people that they were related, even if she hadn't gone into exactly how.
"You get done what you wanted to, Pa?" his son Hoss asked.
Ben nodded. "Yes, I sent the message. From what the stagecoach driver remembered, Belle's point of origin was Dayton, Ohio. He said she told one of the passengers that her parents moved there in eighteen-thirty, shortly after she was born."
Just the thing a young woman would do if she had a child out of wedlock.
She had married Lucius Babylon the next year.
"Are you trying to prove she ain't who she says she is?"
"Son, I am seeking to verify that she is."
Hoss removed his hat and ran a hand through his dark blond hair. "Pa, you think Belle's really our sister?"
Ben let out a sigh. "I don't know. It's...possible, I suppose."
"You and her mother, you...?"
He started to tell his son that that was none of his business. The problem was – with what was happening – it was.
"I hope you boys are wiser than your old man when it comes to women," he said with a note of chagrin.
"Did you love her, Pa?"
Ben nodded toward the bench that was butted up against the telegraph office's wall. "Let's sit down, son." Once they had, he began. "I was very young, Hoss. Just like your baby brother, I thought I was in love with every pretty face I saw – and I knew they were all in love with me." He smiled, thinking of his rakish third boy and how alike they were in many ways. Ben leaned back. Closing his eyes he thought of Jasmin Persuad. She had come into Boston on her brother's ship out of the West Indies to meet her American kin. He had been a simple sailor then, not advanced yet to first mate as he would be by the time he married Adam's mother. Jasmin had been like a warm breeze from the islands. Her father was white, but her mother was a native of Barbados. She had looked like a gypsy and had woven a spell from which he had found it nearly impossible to free himself. In the end it had been Jasmin that had cut it off. Their dalliance had lasted one week.
It had happened only one time. Only once.
"I was foolish, Hoss. If Belle is my child, then I did her mother irreparable harm."
"But you didn't know, Pa. She didn't tell you. She coulda."
Ben shifted. "Yes, Jasmin could have. I have to respect her choice whether or not it makes sense to me. It seems, from what I have been able to find out, that she married this man, Babylon, shortly after Belle was born. He was a businessman. Something to do with imports."
"He musta been a good man, Pa, to accept her and her baby."
"Yes, Hoss. That's some comfort, I suppose." Ben patted his son's shoulder and then rose. "Come on, we should get back to the ranch. Belle's liable to have your brothers wearing their Sunday best and sitting with their elbows off the table."
"It sure is funny," Hoss held his hand up and extended his pinky finger, crooking it like an open 'C'. "What's this got to do with drinking tea?"
"It's got nothing to do with drinking tea, Hoss, and everything to do with a civilized world. Now, come on. Let's get home."
ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
As Ben and Hoss rode out of town they passed the stage coming in from the east. If they had looked back, they would have seen it roll up and stop and a man step out of it. It was obvious he was from the city. He wore a fine tailcoat of dark gray wool and matching trousers with a pair of Contract Brogans. The Bell Crown top hat on his head was black and beaver with a fine silk band wrapped around it. His cravat was black as well, the shirt underneath white as snow, and there was a fine silver stickpin decorating his lapel. He was not a young man, but neither was he old. He looked to be sixty, but was in reality closer to fifty.
The choices he had made in life had aged him prematurely.
The man waited as his bags were removed from the stage. His first order of business would be to meet with the man he had hired through an agent and give him further instructions. The man's campaign was already underway, but Jarvis thought it needed direction. It appeared, from the wires he had received on his way to Nevada, that McRae was losing his focus. What the man had done had been, for the most part, necessary, but it was time to go for the prime target.
Oh, yes, it was past time.
In a slow and leisurely manner, to show the inhabitants of this rough, raw, nascent city who was who, he made his way across the street. These were self-made men here. Men who thought they were better than the men who had chosen to remain in the east whom they said had done nothing for themselves, but benefitted from hard work of the ones who had come before them.
The stranger paused on the stoop of the hotel and turned south, toward the Ponderosa.
Ben Cartwright was such a self-made man. Or, rather, the former Yankee had made himself a bed thirty years before that he was going to have to lie in.
Until he put him in the grave.