FOUR

oooooooooo

The tall distinguished man with thinning salt and pepper hair sighed as he closed his valise and turned toward the hotel window. It had been a long hard trip from Europe marked with both anticipation and apprehension. His success in navigating both the path to the U.S. and the tangled web his life had become had not seemed truly real until the snow-capped mountain peaks appeared in the distance and the scent of pine trees became the common currency. Now, as he was overtaken by the spectacle of Nevada's majestic landscape and a peace seldom known of late descended upon him, he was finally able to accept the fact that, after three, long lonely years, he might finally be able to put the life he had chosen behind him. As Michel de Montaigne put it. '...home...It is my retreat and resting place from wars. I try to keep this corner as a haven against the tempest outside, as I do another corner in my soul.'

He was home.

Adam Cartwright lifted his arms high above his head, stretching, pushing his sore back muscles to the limit and feeling their limit scream back at him. It felt good, but it hurt too.

Just like coming home.

For the life of him he didn't know what he was going to do when he got to the Ponderosa. Just open the door and shout, 'Hello everyone, I'm home!'?"

Somehow, he didn't think so. While his father would be happy to see him – more than happy – he had grave doubts about the reception he would receive from his youngest brother. Theirs had ever been a strained relationship. Though they loved one another deeply, they were like oil and water. No. That wasn't the right image. The corner of Adam's full lips quirked with amusement. He and Joe were like nitro and an unsteady hand.

Though he was unsure which was which.

Lowering his arms, Adam adjusted his wine-colored shirt and then reached out and opened the window on a city going to sleep. Ahead of him lay the last sleep he would have before he reached the ranch house – if he could rest, that was. If everything went according to plan, his arrival there would bring an end to his current life and the start of yet another new one. It seemed he'd lived three lifetimes in the decade and a half he'd been away. The first was spent on a sailing ship as a student of life and the world. The second, as an English professor at a British university where he had met and married Kate and fathered two beautiful children. And then there was the third – the one that had chosen him.

Ironically, it was the third life that had finally succeeded in driving his wandering feet toward home.

That, and his middle brother's death.

It still effected him deeply – how he'd found out about Hoss in such a casual manner. A friend of his father's was in Hong Kong, working on a project just as he was. They'd happened upon one another in the street and had both felt a pang of homesickness. After a few minutes they'd agreed to meet later at a local eatery, ironically run by a distant cousin of Hop Sing. They'd finished their meal and were chatting, sipping a fine liqueur and growing maudlin and sentimental, when the man remarked, "It's a shame about Hoss. He was one of the finest men I ever knew."

Was.

Knew.

What?

After that, well, the welfare of his birth family had taken on a sudden import. He'd chosen to keep his marriage a secret, hoping one day to surprise his father. He and Kate had planned to head to the states for that 'surprise' shortly after Joe and Bella's first child was born, but...things had come up. He'd been forced by circumstances beyond his control to do an abrupt about-face and disappear. Adam ran a hand over his chin as he turned back into the room. The main impetus – the reason he had made it through these last three desolate years – was the knowledge that what he was doing would keep not only Kate and his children safe, but his father and remaining brother as well. He'd always known he'd go back home one day. He'd expected, when he did, that he'd be greeted at the door by his aging father and two fat and sassy – whole and hearty – and well-contented, married brothers. Instead, Hoss was dead.

Joe could be dead and he wouldn't even know it.

Adam Cartwright stretched again and looked at his valise where it lay on the bed. He should get back to packing, but his heart wasn't in it. There was something – a presentiment – that made his feet drag like a clock winding down. He'd been completely out of touch with his family for just over three years. Joe was going to be a hard sell. Adam snorted as he pushed off the sill. No, Joe was going to be royally pissed! It had been a tough choice, but when he had signed on to do what had to be done, he'd had to agree to leave everything behind; his old life, his father and brother – even Kate and the kids.

These last three years had been pure agony.

The tall man, whose once black hair was thinning at the top and going gray above his ears, permitted himself a tight smile. Kate was already in the States. She and the children were set to arrive in Virginia City on the fifteenth of the month, about two weeks from today. By then, he should receive word that the project he had signed on for was completed. Adam shook his head and ran a hand over his cleanly shaved chin. Those two weeks were going to feel like a century.

Which was about how old he felt most of the time.

As he drew in a breath, the scent of pine trees wafted through the hotel room, reminding him of his childhood. It was almost over. He could put it all behind him.

He was almost...free.

As the tall man stood there, savoring the scent and the memories it stirred, the door to the room opened and his traveling companion stepped in. Calling back to someone in the hall, the Englishman said in his distinct accent, "Thank you, good man. Stoddard and I will be leaving at first light tomorrow. If you could have our things ready, it would be much appreciated. There will be something extra in it for you."

Adam snorted. Stoddard. It was the name he'd gone by for the last three years. Stoddard Benjamin Eric Josephs.

The smile returned. It seemed that, even though you could take the boy off the ranch, you could never entirely take the ranch out of the boy.

As the door closed, his friend turned toward him. "Clyde will have our trunks ready and loaded on the stage by the time we finish breakfast."

Adam drew in a breath as the man came toward him. It struck him every time. That head of tousled curls, his hazel eyes; even the way he turned a phrase. All of it reminded him of his ornery little brother. But then, that had been the problem back when Joe was twelve and he had first met Jude Randolph. A man with vengeance in his heart, who hoped to destroy their father, had kidnapped Joe as a replacement for the handsome mulatto. Now, nearly fifty, Jude's head of tousled light brown curls was turning to silver.

His lips quirked.

Joe...with silver hair? Imagine that!

"That's good," Adam said as he moved across their Spartan room. The hotel was a small one, inconspicuous and – he hoped – unnoticed. "I'd like to leave before the other patrons, even if it means eating somewhere down the road. I want to travel alone on the stage if possible."

He'd run into Jude when he was in London and they'd become friends. In a way, it was kind of like having an older version of Joe with him. Jude's laugh was unaffected and contagious; another thing that reminded him of Joe.

"Garrulous, you are not," Jude remarked. "But then again, that doesn't come as a surprise. You never were much of a talker."

No. Joe had done enough talking for all four of them.

God! How he missed him.

Jude crossed to the window and looked out before heading to his bed and dropping onto it. "If you mean to be up with the lark, it would be well to have supper sent up and then get some sleep. Don't you think?"

Adam nodded absent-mindedly. "Yes, though I don't feel much like eating – or sleeping for that matter."

His friend remained silent for a moment. "You're concerned about the welcome you will receive. Don't be. It will be as if the last few years never happened."

He glanced at the other man. "But they did happen."

Jude hesitated a moment before rising to his feet. As he came to stand beside him, he reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. Inadvertently Jude, along with Bella Carnaby's younger brother Jack, had been drawn into the tangled web that was his life. The liberty to touch him was a privilege he accounted to only a handful of people and, only then, when the situation was dire enough to warrant it. It was something the other man knew only too well.

"Adam," he said, "Your brother Joseph will understand. Once you tell him why you –"

"No!" He pulled away. "I can never tell them, you know that! No matter what. The danger..."

"You know he would face it willingly."

Yes, he knew it as well as he knew his brother. If Joe got wind of the fact that his older brother's life was in danger – that even now there were men scouring the Old and New World for him – there would be no stopping him. Even if they clashed like a pair of stallions fighting over a brood mare, Joe would die for him as he would die for Joe.

It might still come to that if things went wrong.

Jude regarded him for a moment and then nodded. With a quirk of his full lips, he said, "Supper it is, then. How about shepherd's pie?"

Adam couldn't help but smile. It was an old joke between them. When he'd first come to England, he'd been offered the local dish. Being a cattle rancher, the idea of eating the entrails of a sheep stuffed with God only knew what had turned him green. He'd spent the remainder of the evening bringing up just about everything inside him.

"How about not?"

"I'll order two then," came the accustomed reply.

Sometimes he wondered if luck – or perhaps fate – had not drawn the two of them together and, if it had not, if he would have made it through these last three years. Jude was a tie – albeit the thread was slender – to what he had left behind in Nevada. It frightened him, what he didn't know. What else had happened in the time he had been out of communication with his family? Here he was expecting to find Joe at home with his wife, with his little nephew and maybe a niece on his knee. And his beloved pa. And dear old Hop Sing. The man from China would be in the kitchen complaining in Cantonese while he worked away. But Pa was getting older. What if...

What if everything he had given up everything for was gone? What if the man he had worked so hard to take down had somehow gotten wind of what was to come and decided to do something to stop it, like attack his family?

What if it had all been for nothing?

Adam Cartwright swallowed hard over his fears. Then he laughed. He was doing what he always accused his little brother of doing – leaping before he looked. Home was only a day away.

He'd know soon enough.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

When Candy Canady came back to consciousness, they first thing he noticed was that his knees were on fire. Or, at least, it felt like they were on fire.

Probably because two great big Chinese yahoos were draggin' him through the dust.

Keeping his eyes narrowed, Candy sized them up, considerin' his chances. The one to his left who had his mitt rammed into his armpit was about six foot tall. The other one, who was trying to tear his left arm off, was, well, taller, and frankly, built like a box car.

Who knew they bred them that big in China?

His head was still ringing like a dinner bell and the trail of fresh blood that ran down his forehead and across his lips made him think maybe raw meat had been on the menu.

Him, in other words, served up nice and cold and dead.

The only good thing was that the pair spoke English. Well, some sort of English since he couldn't make most of it out. Or maybe that was just the ringing in his head, keepin' him from hearing right. He didn't know really. Anyhow, he'd caught Joe's name and from the sound of it, his friend was probably worse off than he was right now. Apparently Joe had been...uncooperative...when questioned.

Imagine that. Joe Cartwright. Uncooperative.

Candy bit back a snort by planting his teeth in his lip, which was really stupid because it was covered with blood and he hated the taste of blood. Since he couldn't spit it out, he had to swallow it and that made him mad.

Probably about as mad as Joe had been when he was being 'uncooperative'.

Where was Joe anyway and where were these bruisers dragging him? Opening his eyes just a bit more the cowboy sneaked a look at where they were going. It was some kind of a warehouse, set between a couple of disreputable looking lodging houses. Candy frowned. He oughta know all the warehouse districts in Virginia City. But then again, the city had grown a lot in the years he'd been away. He didn't like people much, so the more people there were in town, the more he avoided it. Now that he thought about it, other than the Bucket and a few other rather er...salacious...establishments, he really didn't know much about Virginia City anymore.

And since Joe was married, he didn't really know all that much about those places either. Most nights it was just him and the steers croonin' to one another under the moonlight.

Damn. He needed to get a life.

That was, if whoever it was these two worked for didn't kill him first.

As they came to a halt, the man pinching his pit growled several low words in Cantonese that were answered by several more comin' from within the warehouse. A few seconds later the door creaked open and Candy was dragged inside, banging his shins on the threshold along the way. If he'd had any thought of takin' on the two bruisers – not that he had – it was too late now. The door slammed shut behind him, cutting off the alley and the pale light cast by the one meager street lamp at its end. He waited for someone to light a lantern. When no one did, he figured they had to be part cougar or somethin'. He couldn't see anything, but the two who were draggin' him seemed to know exactly where they were going. He was bumped up a short ladder, turned around, and unceremoniously dumped onto a wooden floor covered with stinkin' straw and debris, before being bound hand and foot with his hands behind his back. Behind him was a wall of wooden crates that loomed ominously, and in front of the crates was a man who was also bound hand and foot.

Joe Cartwright's eyes followed the pair of Chinese gargantuans as they left the loft and descended the ladder, leaving them alone.

"Shouldn't that..have been the other...way around?" Joe asked, his words slightly slurred.

"I don't know," Candy replied as he worked his way to his feet and kind of hopped over to his friend's side. Joe was seated with his back against the lowest tier of crates. He was half-hidden in shadow. "Personal delivery to your parlor. Who could ask for...more..."

"You got...a...problem?" Joe snarled.

Candy winced. "You remember what I said this morning about you lookin' awful?"

"Yeah..."

"Let's just say, compared to what you look like now, you could have won a beauty contest."

Someone had beaten the hell out of him.

Candy lowered himself to the debris strewn floor and looked right into Joe's eyes. "You okay?"

Joe winced as he shifted. "Couple of busted...ribs, I think."

"Didn't Doc Martin say you'd broke all you had?"

His friend's curly head nodded. "Several times."

"If you're gonna do somethin', you may as well do it right, I always say." Candy's eyes roamed his friend's lean form as he kept up the banter they used to create a barrier for their emotions. Plain and simple, they loved each other as brothers, but they were both too damn stubborn. They never let it show.

Well, almost never.

Candy looked away, partly to give Joe a break from his gawking and partly to see if he could make any sense of where they were. The fact that they weren't gagged meant there wasn't anyone close enough to hear if they shouted.

After a second, he looked back at his friend. Joe's left eye was swollen shut. His lower lip was split in two places, one of which was bleeding pretty badly. The shirt he was wearin' had been ripped so his left shoulder was exposed and what skin showed was turnin' black and blue. But those bruises had nothin' on the ones on his throat.

"That's gotta hurt," he said quietly.

Joe shrugged – and then cussed.

"That's what I thought," the cowboy snorted. "They want somethin' in particular?"

Joe looked at him and then leaned his head back and rested it against the crates. The one above them groaned ominously as he did, but his friend didn't seem to notice.

"It was before...your time. I...was just a kid. Fourteen, fifteen...can't remember." Joe sucked in air. "A pair of tong leaders out of the Sacramento area...decided to make the Ponderosa their...battlefield." The curly-haired man shifted again, this time pressing his bound hands against his left side. "One ended up...killing the other. For some reason these thugs...think I did it. Wanted me to admit it." Joe moved again. This time a gasp escaped his lips.

Candy sized him up again. Joe was really in pain. "You mighta considered it," he said softly.

"Dead...either way. This way...I get to live longer. Maybe have a chance..."

A chance to get back to Bella and their children.

"Damn," he sighed.

"Don't...go all mushy on me," Joe said, tight-lipped.

"Who's goin' mushy? Not me."

Joe smiled that cocky smile he had, the one where his cheek went up and his eyebrow went down. "Well, it sure...ain't me."

After that, they fell into a silence, both lost in their own thoughts – Joe thinking about his wife and children, and him thinking about the fact that he didn't have either.

Thinking about the fact that he had a lot less to lose.

"Don't you go doin'...anything stupid," Joe growled as if reading his mind.

"Who me?"

"I...know that look. You just...get it out of your eye."

"What look?"

Joe winced again and sucked in air. He was breathin' hard. "How long have...we known...each other? Ten years?"

" 'Bout that. Why?"

"And how many times...have we...raised hell in those ten years?"

Candy had been looking around for some means of creating a distraction. He was eying the crates above their heads. They'd work great – if they didn't all come down at once and crush both of them before they could get out of the way.

Joe wasn't lookin' like he'd be movin' fast anytime soon.

"Don't know. Ain't done it for a while, what with you bein' a married man and all." Candy had wiggled his way to his feet again. He'd hopped to the edge and was looking over. "Joe?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't you think its kind of funny that they put the two of us up here together and didn't leave a guard at the bottom of the ladder?"

"What?"

Candy nodded. "Not a soul in sight. Now that means one of two things."

"Bein'?" Joe asked as he began to work his way to his feet.

"Either they're damn sure of themselves – "

"Or they want us to try to escape."

"Or..."

Candy's eyes were scanning the warehouse below. It was as dark and still as a tomb.

This time he winced. Bad choice of words.

"Candy, come on...help me. I can't..."

He looked. Joe was halfway up, beet-red in the face and sweatin' like a freshly branded steer.

"It's not like you're gonna miss anything," he said as he hopped over to him. "Ain't nothing goin' on...below..."

Joe's eyes went wide. "Do you hear that?"

He nodded. Yes, he heard it. A cracking, a popping and hissing sound, kind of like when you tossed a sappy pine log into the middle of a campfire. It did that – just before it exploded.

Candy swallowed hard.

He guessed maybe they didn't try to escape fast enough.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Adam Cartwright was awakened from a deep sleep by the sound of someone screaming.

It took a moment to realize it was him.

Jude was on his feet and moving. The Englishman caught hold of the oil lamp on the desk and turned up the wick, casting light as well as weird, disturbing shadows on the walls. Adam stared at them for a moment, completely lost, and then he remembered.

The Ponderosa had been on fire.

He sat up in bed and dropped his head into his hands and shuddered.

"Would talking about it help?" Jude asked.

Adam looked up and smiled weakly. Jude knew all about nightmares. In the stillness of the night Jude frequently traveled back to the dark dank hole on the ship Independence where Wade Bosh had held him captive a little over thirty-five years before; the hole from which his own father, Ben Cartwright, had freed him. For Jude, sharing the stuff of his night terrors eased his pain, as if bringing his fears to light had the power to chase the demons away.

It was different for him. He supposed he had been influenced by Hop Sing's beliefs since, as a boy, it had been the Chinese man who had often tended to him and his brothers when they had a bad dream. He remembered his father's s friend saying 'When man dream, soul speaks.'

If that was true, just what was his soul trying to tell him?

"You and I," Adam hesitantly began, his breathing ragged, "we were coming over that low hill, you know the one right before the ranch house? It was you who spotted it first – smoke rising where it shouldn't have been. Not like the smoke that comes out of a chimney, but great black billows of it, roiling and rising and riding the wind like a string of hellish stallions with their tales and manes flying." The tall man drew in a breath. "The house was engulfed in flames. Pa was out front. Hop Sing was with him. They were both looking up. Up to where...in the bay window..."

He couldn't go on.

In the bay window he'd designed for the new wing Joe and Bella occupied, he'd seen his brother.

Joe had been on fire.

Jude took a seat on the bed next to him. "Night terrors have no more power than that which we give them," he said quietly. "Perhaps, your anxiety at returning home..."

Adam's smile was tight-lipped. "I did say there'd be hell to pay when I had to face Joe." He thought a moment and then added, "Hop Sing's people believe that dreams can be prophetic."

Jude's hazel eyes were dark pools in the light of the single lamp that lit their room; his curls, a halo of spun gold framing a pensive face

"And what do you believe, Adam Cartwright?"

Adam sat still for a moment, then he tossed off the covers, placed his feet on the floor and reached for his pants.

"I believe it's time to go home."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Roy Coffee wasn't exactly a lawman anymore, but then that didn't matter. He found plenty to do. After about six months of retirement, he'd come back to lend Clem a hand. After all, someone had to keep the boy in line! When Clem was away, like he was now, he passed his time sortin' wanted posters and keepin' an eye on the drunks sleepin' it off in their cells.

Or, truth to tell, snoozin' in Clem's fancy new chair.

So, it had been kind of excitin' today when Candy Canaday had shown up all worried about Joe Cartwright bein' missin' and he'd been the only one around to take up the chase. Clem had left for Carson City that mornin'. He had to testify at a hearin' and wouldn't be comin' back for a week or more. So that left him officially 'in charge'.

Just like the old days.

Not that he wanted to go back to them. Bein' a lawman in a pretty much lawless town had been about as thankless a job as he could have thought up. Still, if someone he knew right well asked him – say, like Ben Cartwright – he'd have to admit he was a little sorry to see those old days go. Virginia City was right prosperous now. All kinds of nice, civilized people had moved in durin' the heyday of the silver mines and most of them were still hangin' on even though the silver was dwindlin'.

They was all hopin' for one more strike like the Comstock Lode to set it all right.

Roy pulled at the end of his mustache as he stood in the shadows waitin' for a pair of Chinamen – bullies by the look of them – to make their way past. Thing was, nice civilized people brought their own kind of trouble with them; a kind that was a little harder to see and a lot harder to prove. There's been somethin' kind of, well, simple about a town where the worst thing you had to worry about was two hard-headed drunk as a skunk cowboys drawin' on one another in the middle of the street. Now, Clem said they was dealin' with all kinds of intrigue, graft, corruption and the like.

Sounded like the boy was describin' a cesspool 'stead of a city.

Anyhow, a lot of that there intrigue went on in places just like the one he was in now. Once upon a time the Chinamen who came to Virginia City were just lookin' to make a place for themselves like everyone else. They wanted to settle down and raise a family, make a livin', go to whatever they called church, and die and be buried in a nice place with a fence and maybe a tree or two overlookin' some pretty meadow or stream. Chan Junjie told him that was all changed too. Junjie'd had word of one of them there tongs, like the one Ben Cartwright had to deal with ten years back or so... Roy paused. No, that weren't right. Little Joe'd been in his teens, and gosh-darn it if the boy didn't have his own young'un who was comin' up on five. Must of been some fifteen years back or more. Well, never no mind, Junjie had told him one of them there tongs was thinkin' of movin' into Virginia City and settin' up shop.

Roy shook his head and let out a sigh. Imagine Virginia City bein' big enough to look good to the likes of them Chinese devils!

Junjie was right upset about it. He said all kind of malcontents and disorderly persons would trail after them tong members like a dog sniffin' offal. They'd bring in the kind of cat houses that had cribs behind them, and that meant disease would follow as surely as the sun rose after it set. Then they'd start threatenin' the store owners, makin' 'em pay protection money or else.

What was the world comin' to?

He'd had a pleasant enough time of it talkin' to Junjie. It was about an hour later that he realized Ben Cartwright's foreman weren't nowhere to be seen. Candy'd just up and left and gone off on his own, probably to look for Joe Cartwright. Now, in the old days, most like you would have found Little Joe bellyin' up to the bar, sippin' a beer, and flirtin' with some pretty thing. But that was in the old days. Marriage had been good for that boy. Sobered him up right away.

Why, he'd even attended one of the city council meetin's on his own the other night!

Roy stepped out into the street and started on his way again, only to stop and turn back to look at the pair of Chinamen who had walked by. They was stopped on the other side of the street, talkin' fast and gesturin' back along the way they'd come. He didn't like the look of them.

Couldn't say why. He just didn't.

They wasn't locals, he was sure of that. He'd beat this path often enough. He had a favorite shop way down at the end of the main street of the Chinese part of town, run by a sweet little old man and his wife, who sounded an awful lot like Hop Sing on a spree and, come to think of it, looked like him too.

Ugly or not, that woman made the best donuts this side of San Francisco!

Roy smacked his lips as he began to walk, his hunger propelling his old legs at a pace that would have surprised anyone who knew him. Why, he'd just mosey on down there and see if he could get himself some. It was near dawn and Po would be up bakin'. Matter of fact, he could just about smell the smoke from her chimney right now.

Matter of fact, he could smell smoke. Roy coughed.

A lot of it!

As the thought struck him, several Chinamen came runnin' along the street, wavin' their hands and yellin' in that there language of theirs that twisted a man's tongue to try it. The first got past him, but he caught the second one's arm and drew him to a halt.

"What's wrong?" the retired lawman demanded. "What's all the yellin' about?"

His answer was more yellin – and pullin' and shovin'. The man was doin' just about everythin' he could to get free, all the while shoutin' at the top of his lungs and lookin' like the Devil himself was after him.

And maybe he was.

Roy let the man go as his mouth fell open.

The west end of the city was ablaze.