It was a broad-shouldered man who paused at the foot of the step which led up to the small sheriff's office. Tall, broad-shouldered and silver-haired. He was a stranger in this town, but any witness observing this man's movements would have sensed a weariness to those shoulders, a beaten down impression in the bearing of the man's posture; like Atlas struggling to carry the globe on his back. But for Ben Cartwright it wasn't the weight of the world that made him hesitate, look to his feet and sigh. It was the weight of loss, of not knowing. It was the fracture within his heart that weighed him down.
As he looked at the sheriff's office in front of him, he couldn't help but think that all jails in every town, in every city, every territory, looked the same: square set, barred windows, the noticeboard with the same old wanted posters. They exuded an air of desperation. It was where frightened people went for help, where drunks and ne'er-do-wells were deposited to sleep off their weaknesses. Lawbreakers facing the noose, or a permanent prison cell, found themselves behind the bars of a claustrophobic cell, wretchedly making peace with their god or anxiously coming to terms with a forthcoming life of incarceration. No, a sheriff's office was a blighted place and Ben Cartwright had seen far too many of them over the last months. Raising his head, he squared his shoulders and putting a firm foot forward he stepped up to the entrance and walked in.
Ben could have been led into the building blindfolded and still known what furniture it would contain, and where it would be positioned. Looking to his left he could see the solid double doors leading to the jail cells. Straight ahead of him was the sheriff's desk, its in-tray piled high with papers and forms. There was the iron safe and the gun rack on the wall. And of course, the iron stove for heating and the obligatory over-boiled coffee. No self-respecting jail would be without its measure of undrinkable brew.
And there was the sheriff. Looking like every other sheriff that Ben had met since this had all began. He was bent over his desk; shoulders slumped as he fingered the countless images of men who had crossed the law for whatever reason, whether it was out of hopelessness, greed or just pure evil. As with every other sheriff he eyed Ben with a wary look, one borne of having seen too much corruption and wrong-doing in his life. He didn't expect any good to come from a visit from an outsider. He unconsciously ran the heel of his hand over his silver star as he looked up from his desk and settled back in his chair.
"What canna I do for ya, stranger?"
Ben removed his hat and said the words he'd said an infinite number of times before.
"I'm looking for my son," he took a step forward. "He may have come through here at some time in the last year."
The sheriff squinted up at Ben. "We get a lotta folk coming through here, why would your boy stand out any diff'rent?"
The description never changed. It was the first and last image that Ben thought of each day. "He tends to wear black…er black hat, shirt, pants, rides a chestnut gelding with a white blaze."
The sheriff nodded his head and pulled his chin up to his mouth. "Cain't say as I recall anyone fittin' that description, but then like I said, we get a lotta diff'rent folk travelling through." He sat forward in his chair, settling back to his papers. "Sorry, mista, I cain't help ya." Ben was effectively dismissed.
Ben turned on his heels and left the jail house, quietly closing the door behind him. His bearing dropped as his now customary worn stance settled across his shoulders. He stopped beside a bay horse tethered to the hitching post in front of the building. "So like Sport," thought Ben as he rubbed his hand between the animal's dark eyes. But this wasn't Adam's horse. Because Adam wasn't here in this out-of-the-way town.
Ben recalled the day that Adam had ridden out. It had been no different to any other. Ben and the boys had eaten breakfast, discussing the day to come. Perhaps Adam had been a touch more subdued than normal that morning, a little more hunched over his breakfast, but Ben had thought nothing of it. Adam could be a hard one to penetrate at times. He had always been a touch introspective and as Adam had grown into his thirties, he had developed a restlessness and an occasional darkness of mood that seemed to envelop his spirit. He'd risen from the table, walked to the front door, put on his gun belt and hat, and at Ben's entreaty to his sons to be careful out there, placed his hand on the door handle, and with his eyes to the floor said quietly, "Take care, Pa." And as he had opened the door, Hoss and Joe walking through ahead of him, Adam had patted both his brothers on the arm as they passed. His brothers had looked at each other with a smirk at the unexpected gesture of affection. Adam was being Adam again—unreadable, unpredictable. And then he had mounted Sport and without a backwards glance ridden away.
That was the last time Ben had seen him. He had simply disappeared out of their lives. They had searched for weeks. Every inch of the Ponderosa was scanned and dissected, over and over. Had he fallen, was he injured? They had searched the surrounding areas, asked in Virginia City, Carson City, Placerville, Reno, and every tiny flea-bitten hamlet and town in-between. They'd sent wires to Sacramento and San Francisco, even Boston, hoping someone would have seen him, could tell them where he was. But no one had. Adam had gone and whether he was alive or dead, no one knew.
And so life went on without him. They had settled back into their routines but with a shadow falling over each of them that went unspoken; a rupture formed in their lives by the unexplained absence of Adam. They'd never given up the hope that one day he'd ride back onto the Ponderosa with a story to tell. But the thought that he had left intentionally and had, for some reason, cut himself off from them, was never spoken of. That was too painful a thought to formulate. So whenever business took them away from the Ponderosa, they would keep up the pretence of searching for him. They would ask in the sheriff's office of every new town they passed through. They always received the same answer. "Sorry, cain't help you".
So Ben now carried the weariness in his body as if it was an old familiar ache, deep in his bones. As he turned from the horse that so resembled his son's and made his way to his own mount, he knew he'd carry the anguish within him until Adam returned home. And even if it meant waiting for an eternity, Ben wasn't willing just yet to give up on his eldest son. Adam was out there somewhere and one day he would return, Ben knew it. And with that thought in his mind, he straightened his back, lifted his chin and turned Buck towards the next town. Perhaps, just perhaps, they had seen a man in black on a chestnut gelding riding through.