You know the drill...I do not own The Big Valley nor any of the original Barkley characters. Instead of doing this in scenes I'm going to attempt it in 'chapter form'..if I switch back to the way I've been doing it? Don't be too surprised.
MISTAKEN IDENTITY
Chapter One
Nick muttered as he turned round yet another bend. How hard was it to go from Rockville to Stockton? Yet that's what he'd done...made it hard by taking a wrong turn. The sun was starting to set which meant he would have to bed down, again, on the cold hard ground. When he saw smoke rising from a cabin he smiled, maybe, just maybe, he wouldn't have to.
He had just dismounted when he heard it, the sound of a pistol being cocked. Slowly he turned around. Nick stared in disbelief as a total stranger waved his pistol through the air and yelled, "You have some nerve coming back here! I told you to stay away! I told you I'd kill you if you ever stepped foot on this land again!" What on earth was he talking about? Before Nick could ask though a dark haired woman opened the door and stepped out.
"Get back in the house!" the man barked, only the woman didn't listen. Instead she ran down the steps and put herself in between Nick and the man. That really set the man off.
"Girl! How can you stand to be near him! After what he done! Get away from him!" the man took a step forward. Nick was shocked when the woman reached behind her, grabbed his arms and wrapped them around her waist. He tried to speak only to find the man screaming again.
"He's no good, girl! He didn't stand by ya the first time; I don't see how he'll do any different this time! Besides, once Will and the others find out he's back, they'll kill him without a second thought!" Again he took a step forward, this time the woman grabbed Nick's arm and pulled him towards the cabin.
Again Nick tried to speak only to have the man continue his rampage calling the woman every name under the sun, well, any name that was down right vulgar. Once they were inside the woman slammed the door shut and locked it.
"I don't know..." Nick started to speak only to find the woman covering his mouth and shaking her head. Nick was confused. What was going on? He watched as the woman threw a few things together. Nick grew worried as he realized she was grabbing a few of her things. Clearly he'd had the dumb luck of finding himself in a place where he looked like someone else.
Nick again attempted to explain there had been a mistake made, "Ma'am. From what that fellow out there said I'm gonna guess..." again he found her hand over his mouth only this time she pointed to her ears then to him, nodded in the affirmative but then moved her hand to her mouth and shook her head. His eyes widened. "You can't talk, can you?"
She shook her head then grabbed her things. Peeking out from behind the 'curtain' (if it could be called that) she viewed the landscape out front. Soon he found himself being dragged out the front door. Before he could stop her, the woman was on his horse and grabbing his wrist.
If it weren't for the fact that the words '...will kill him on sight.' went running through his mind Nick would have argued. "Good grief," he muttered as he quickly mounted Coco, "what the he..blazes did I go and get myself into?" Before he could do a thing the woman had put his horse to a dead run.