The first thing Adam did the next morning was get a wagon and a couple of horses. The way he saw it, the easiest way to get a person from Jacksonville Oregon to San Francisco California without anyone knowing was to stuff them in a trunk and forget they were there. After loading a man-sized trunk onto the wagon, Adam reined in his horses in front of the sheriff's office. Bates was waiting for him.
"Nice rig." he said.
"I'll be billing you for it." Adam answered as he jumped down.
Bates caught on to his lack of desire to talk and kept silent as they signed the contract. But he couldn't resist a little jab as Adam climbed back up into the driver's seat.
"So did you marry her?" He asked. When Adam didn't answer, Bates continued. "That pretty little thing that came between us?"
Adam stared at Bates for a minute, and an image came to mind of his fist landing squarely in Bates' face. Someday, not today, but someday, Bates was going to pay through the nose. For everything.
"I'm sure if you take my job into consideration you'll come to a conclusion about that." He finally said. He flicked the reins to the horses and the buckboard lurched forward.
Bates didn't know it, but he'd struck a nerve. Or maybe he did know it.
Leah. The name was more powerful than a blast of hot air that stirred up a whirlwind of images and emotions. He could still see her now as clearly as the day she'd left. Her eyes had been so vacant then, a stark contrast to how they usually were, how they'd been for almost five months. Warm, deep, and trusting, with a spark of mischief. He could lose himself in those brown eyes and drink them in like a man dying of thirst.
"I could stay here like this forever."She had once said.
They had been lying on their backs near the river and looking up at the clouds that were migrating across a clear blue sky. Her head was on his chest, and when he breathed in, the soft scent of her hair intermingled with the scent of spring grass.
"I know what you mean." Adam answered in a dreamy tone. He cherished these moments that were few and far in between, moments when for a while, with his arms full of angel, he felt completely at peace. He hoped she wouldn't bring up the fact that soon his work here for Bates would be done, and he'd have to move on. The thought was a chip in the glassy peacefulness of the moment, and he pushed it aside.
"That cloud kind of looks like a bull." Leah said, pointing upward. "See the horns?"
Adam frowned and didn't answer, and she glanced up at him.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"What is it?"
"Nothing." The word was harsher than he meant it to be. "I just don't like cows."
Leah was silent for several moments, and he knew that this time he'd been the one to shatter the moment.
"Why do you do this?" she finally asked.
"Do you want me to tell you why I don't like cows?"
"No, I want you to stop withdrawing into your head and slamming the door in my face. We've been together for months, and you've barely told me anything about yourself."
Adam took a deep breath. Where to begin untangling the massive knot of hurts and mistakes that was his past?
Leah seemed to sense his reluctance. "You don't have to..."
"You're right." he said. "Ask me anything."
She had paused to consider the man who her heart understood even if her head didn't. There was nothing she needed to know about him, but one thing that was always at the back of her mind troubling her.
"Why do you work for Sam Bates?" she finally asked.
It was a question that he'd asked himself constantly over the years. The question he had had a feeling she would ask, but it had still caught him off guard. He'd been glad he couldn't look into her eyes from the angle he was at; somehow he needed the privacy to think without her gaze boring into him.
"He helped me out." he had finally said. "After I lost my family."
For a moment the only sound that could be heard was the cheerful river rushing by, unaware of the somber conversation taking place on its banks. When Leah spoke, her words were soft and tentative.
"How old were you?"
"Fifteen." Between hay and grass. Old enough to kill the man who killed your Pa, not old enough to foresee or understand the consequences.
"How did it happen?"
"Pa had been gone for a week in San Francisco. When he came back, there was something on his mind, but he wouldn't tell me what."
He still remembered the conversation he'd overheard, still remembered the thoughtful worry in his Pa's voice as he spoke the name that had changed Adam's life. Harry Singer.
"He'd run into some trouble, and he was worried the man might try something stupid. He never told me what kind of trouble. Never got the chance. He and my ma were killed one day while coming back from town. Shot down like animals." Adam's voice had dwindled to a low murmur, and his eyes no longer saw the carefree clouds. Instead they traveled the road of memories. He didn't even notice that Leah had sat up and was staring at him worriedly.
"And then?" she prompted.
"I went after the man who'd done it. Bates helped me find him." Adam couldn't move his head sideways to meet her stare. He was trapped in a world of his own making and seeing it all over again. Singer had been three shots in when he'd found him, but he'd still been sober enough to knock Adam off his feet. Singer had gone back to his drink, but Adam hadn't stayed down. He'd cocked his gun, his Pa's gun, and had coolly informed Singer that they were going to the sheriff's. He hadn't been a killer then. Not yet. He'd still been an illusioned boy on a quest for justice.
"I killed him."
Singer had gone for his gun. He hadn't thought Adam had it in him. Adam stood and turned away from Leah, reliving the moment as if it was happening all over again. His finger on the trigger... just a twitch was all it took. One twitch and in a second thirty years of life was snuffed out just as easily as if it had been a candle. But that wasn't what had scared him and made him drop the gun onto the saloon floor.
His lips tried to form the words, but they wouldn't come out. He felt arms around him and knew he couldn't tell her what he'd felt that day. Or rather what he hadn't felt.
There was no regret. He couldn't feel regret as he stared at the dead man at his feet because somehow he couldn't see him as a man. All he could see were two fresh graves. Now there would be three, and only one of them was deserving.
He'd bent to pick up his gun, and Bates had stepped forward.
"Don't worry, Adam. You did what you had to do. He was going for his gun."
"I... I'm glad he did." As he realized the emotion he had to admit it to someone.
"Anyone would feel the same."
"My Pa wouldn't." But he wasn't sure. How could he be? It wasn't like he could ask him. He'd glanced back at the body, and regret finally flooded through him, but it was only regret that this had had to happen, and that his Pa wasn't there to explain what he was feeling to him.
"I'm sorry, Adam." Leah's voice pulled him out of his mind like a rope. He had leaned against her and breathed her in, letting the scent of her skin chase the memories away.
He dreamed of her that night. Her hands on his neck, her breath on his cheek. But when he reached out for her, his arms met with cold emptiness. Her image was gone; her voice lingered for a second longer.
"I don't blame you, Adam." she said.
He opened his eyes.
"I do." the words came out as barely a whisper. He blamed himself for everything: her brother's death, the death of his own brothers… everything. And it seemed to only way to ease his guilt over those he blamed himself for killing was by killing more.
Adam got up and stirred the ashes of his fire with a stick. The blackened charcoal tinged with red made him think of how it had been the day he'd returned from San Francisco. Fire was a funny thing. It could reduce a house that had taken months of labor to build into a pile of coal just as easily as if it were nothing more than firewood.
He had helped his Pa build that house. Of course he hadn't been able to do much, but he'd been a shadow every step of the way. And when it was done, he had stepped back and put his hands on his hips just as if he had built it single handedly.
"Have you ever seen a finer looking house, Adam?" Pa had asked, putting his hand on his young son's shoulder.
He hadn't, and he didn't think he ever would. But it wasn't the burning of the house that had left him feeling guiltily hollow. It was the burning of the lives inside. The lives that had depended on him to protect them now that Pa was gone. He had promised he'd be back, only he'd come back too late.
Too late to do anything. Too late to save the house or anyone inside.
"There wasn't anything you could have done, Adam."
How many different people had told him that in the space of the few short hours he was there? And each time they said it, the same question flickered back into his mind.
How do you know?
If only he had been there.
He watched a tiny flame lick its way around the edge of a piece of wood and wondered what it would be like to have that flame eating away at his flesh. He shivered and rubbed his arms at the thought.
It should have been me. I was the one who did the killing. Not Hoss. Not Joe. They were innocent.
Why was it always the innocent ones who died?
"Life's not fair, Adam."
Bates's voice was there again, in his head, smooth at butter.
"You just have to make the most of it."
"I guess." Adam had run his hands over the grips of his Pa's gun. It seemed like the only tangible link between them now. And what a poor one it was.
"You headed home now?"
"Yeah. I've got two brothers that need me. Thanks for your help." Adam held out his hand.
"You sure you don't want to reconsider my offer?"
He'd offered Adam a job. Adam still didn't know why. He didn't really care either. It wasn't that he wasn't grateful; it just didn't make a difference. His place was with his brothers. They would need him more than ever now. He shook his head.
"Thanks though."
"Well, if you change your mind, you let me know." Bates shook his hand.
"I will." Adam had turned to go when Bates reached out a hand to stop him.
"You sure you want to go back now? You're liable to fall off your horse what with how tired you look."
"I'll be alright."
Bates studied him for a moment. "I guess I can't convince you to get a good night's rest. How about supper though? What are a few hours? Especially if it'll keep you in the saddle. You've got a long trip ahead of you."
Adam hesitated, but he knew Bates was right. A few hours couldn't make that much of a difference.
"Not that much of a difference at all." He muttered. Instead of coming home to his home and brothers, he'd come home to ashes and two more losses.
"I thought I'd put out the fire in the stove, Adam. I'm so sorry." Mrs. Halloway, the neighbor who had been staying with Hoss and Joe had been practically hysterical. Adam had looked at her and didn't feel anything. No anger, no pity, no sorrow, nothing. Just numbness.
"It's not your fault." He had mumbled. Then he'd put on his hat and rode back the way he had come. The numbness didn't wear off until he was back in San Francisco, knocking on a familiar hotel door and hoping he hadn't checked out yet. When the door opened, Adam had nearly collapsed inside. He hadn't cried when he'd found the bodies of his mother and father on the road, or when he'd buried them, or even when he'd stood in front of his burnt down house, but now the tears had been building up, and he couldn't hold them back anymore.
Adam glared at the coals and wished it had been anyone else that night that had helped him to the sofa as he'd given way to pain and exhaustion. Anyone except Bates. He stirred the coals again and watched a couple of solitary sparks leap upwards as if they were trying to become stars.
"You can only go forward in life. Some people never realize that and spend their whole lives trying to go the other way."
Adam stirred the coals again. Sometimes it's easier to try to go back than to go forwards, Pa.