Adam didn't even wait for his horse to completely stop before he dismounted. He looked around at the well-kept buildings. Sawyer may be a son-of-a-bitch but he knows how to be a foreman and keep things in shape.

"Ho! Anybody here? Sawyer!" Adam called out, looking about. The trees weren't as dense around the Rocking G as they were around the Ponderosa ranch house and one could see for a good half mile except where the house stood and the barn blocked the view. "Sawyer!"

Adam had loosened the trigger loop on his holster and was ready for anything. When he heard the front door open, Adam quickly turned but it was Matilda Gregson who stood in the doorway and then stepped out on the porch. Geranium pots hung from the eaves and honeysuckle vines wound about the porch railings. He stood and waited for her to speak, admiring her. He could see Matilda standing on the porch of a southern plantation like so many he had seen burned near the end of the war, facing down Sherman's army. The two years that he served, he had often thought of Matilda, wondering if she would still be in Virginia City when he returned and if she would be overjoyed to see him, welcoming him back into her arms. But she hadn't.

"Is my grandfather all right? He shouldn't have gone. He hasn't been well."

"Your grandfather's fine. I came for Sawyer. Where is he?" Adam stepped toward the porch wondering if Sawyer was hiding inside the house.

"Why do you want Mr. Sawyer?"

"That's for me and him to settle. Do you know where he is?"

"You want me, Cartwright?"

Adam heard Sawyer's voice behind him and slowly turned. He expected Sawyer to have his gun drawn but he didn't. You don't want Matilda to know what a goddamn bastard you are, pulling your gun on me. She would tell you to put it away, wouldn't she? Tell you to "holster your gun". Does she tell you that when you're alone together?

"Yes. I'm taking you into town and turning you over to Roy Coffee for shooting my father."

Adam heard the rustle of Matilda's skirts as she came off the porch but he didn't look away from Sawyer. He could sense her standing behind him; it was as if she gave off vibrations that pulsed around him.

"Adam, you must be wrong," she said. "I'm sure he wouldn't shoot your father. Why would he? Besides, I'm sure Mr. Sawyer's been here all morning."

"You heard her. I've been here all mornin'." Sawyer nodded toward Matilda but Adam never turned to look behind him.

"I'm taking you in. Now." Sawyer's hand moved toward his holster. "Go ahead," Adam said, his hand at the ready. "Pull. Give me a reason to shoot you down. Pull it!" Adam hadn't realized how very much he wanted to kill Sawyer and he didn't even care if it was in front of Matilda.

"Mr. Sawyer." Her voice was sharp and stern. "Please go into Virginia City with Mr. Cartwright to prevent any trouble. I'm sure that you'll be shown as innocent and released."

Sawyer hesitated. "All he wants is to take me out and shoot me—'cause of you. I'll probably never make it into Virginia City—and I didn't kill anybody. If I was going to kill a Carwtright, it'd be you," he said to Adam, "not your pa." Sawyer's hand moved toward his gun.

"Go ahead. Try." Adam squared off. His pulse was thudding.

"Please," Matilda said, placing herself in front of Sawyer who also stood braced and ready. "Just let me…" She turned and looked to Adam.

"Get out of the way, Matilda. He shot my father—he might even be dead by now, for all I know."

"Then I would think you'd had enough of death." Her lips quivered; she was close to tears.

Adam relaxed his shoulders and stepped past Matilda. "Put your gun down, nice and slow, Sawyer. I am taking you in."

Sawyer looked at Matilda and then back at Adam. He gently lifted his gun from its holster with his left hand and then bending, placed it on the ground.

"Get on your horse. We're riding into town and if you try anything, even look like you might be thinking about it, I'll kill you."

"Adam," Matilda whispered, "why? Why are you so eager to have another human die? Did the war change you so much that another life means nothing to you?"

"Not his," Adam said as he watched Sawyer tighten his horse's cinch and then mount up, constantly looking to see what Adam was doing. "Sawyer's life means no more to me than my life meant to you." Matilda said nothing but watched Adam as he walked over, picked up Sawyer's gun and tucked it in his waistband. "Evidence," he said to her. Adam unwound a length of the rope on his saddle and pulling out his jackknife, sliced it. He tied Sawyer's hands together and then mounted his horse. He ordered Sawyer to ride ahead of him. "Goodbye, Matilda. It's always a shame that we only meet anymore when there's a catastrophe of some type. Well, maybe if the world ends in flames we can toss buckets of water on one another for old time's sake. But I don't think you'd even bother to spit on me, would you? You'd let me go up in flames."

Matilda almost flinched but said nothing and Adam immediately regretted his comment.

Adam kicked his horse and followed Sawyer off the property. He felt cruel but couldn't understand why and didn't want to examine his conscience to discover why. He knew that love often mutated into hate and he would rather have Matilda hate him than not to feel anyway at all about him. Hate was better. At least it wasn't indifference.

~ 0 ~

Adam's following statement about Hop Sing is not due to any personal bias but is a cultural phenomenon. The cross-race effect (sometimes called cross-race bias, other-race bias or own-race bias) refers to the tendency to more easily recognize members of one's own race. A study was made which examined 271 real court cases. The results from this study showed that witnesses correctly identified 65 % of the defendants which were of the same race as them. On the other hand, 45% of the defendants were identified which belonged to a different race than the witnesses. (I found this succinct blurb on Wikipedia but you can find even more information by searching "Cross-race bias."

Sheriff Coffee sat at his desk enjoying a cup of hot coffee on a quiet Sunday afternoon when Adam Cartwright burst into his office shoving the foreman of the Rocking G ahead of him. The foreman stumbled in looking as if someone had beaten him; he had a black eye and a purpled jaw and walked slightly hunched over.

"What the hell…?" Roy said as he pushed his chair back.

"A citizen's arrest, Roy," Adam said, pushing Sawyer toward the open doors that led to the cells. "Lock him up. He tried to kill my father and he's the one who set fire to our barn."

"I told you, Cartwright," Sawyer said, turning to face Adam while he stood at the open cell door. "I didn't do any of that and you got no proof anyway!"

Adam shoved Sawyer, slamming him in the chest and he man toppled backward. Adam shook his fist to ease the pain that radiated up his arm. He considered he may have broken a bone in his hand earlier in dealing with Sawyer. "And I told you to shut your goddamn mouth."

"Adam," Roy called out and then he dropped his voice. "You know that's not how prisoners are treated in here." Roy helped Sawyer to his feet.

"When I get out of here, Cartwright," Sawyer said, his eyes narrowed with hate, "I'm gonna kill you. It'll be fair and square—maybe. But once I get out, you're going to pay for this—or someone in your family will pay the debt for you. But you'll pay somehow."

"That'll be enough form both of you. Sawyer, take a seat on the cot while I take Adam's complaint. I'll bring you a fresh pitcher of water and a cloth to clean up. You want a doctor?"

"Doc Martin's not around. Must be out at a homesteader's or such," Adam said. "Hoss fetched Dr. Deakins for our father."

Roy looked at Adam, surprised. "Well, is that so? Let's talk out here." He and Adam walked out into the office and Roy closed the double wooden doors. "Adam, what evidence do you have that Sawyer tried to kill your father and that he burned your barn? I've kept up with all the barn burnings and I think we need to call in a U. —I'm familiar with Marshal Rand—he's a good man. He'll get to the bottom of it."

"I have proof—Hop Sing saw him on the Ponderosa and he left behind a tin of kerosene. I guess he figured no one would be home. I also have Sawyer's gun. Here." Adam pulled the gun out of his waistband and had it to Roy. "And it's been fired."

"Okay, Okay, Adam," Sheriff Coffee said putting up his hands in surrender, "I'll hold him until you bring in Hop Sing to identify him and the bullet old Doc Deakins digs out—you've got 24 hours. That's…" Roy pulled out his pocket watch, "until three-ten tomorrow afternoon." He dropped the watch back into his vest pocket. "If Hop Sing can't identify Sawyer, well, I've got to release him—that's the law. And just because a gun's been fired isn't any proof of anything—leastways not out here." Roy steepled his fingers, resting the heels of his hands on his stomach.

"Piss on the law. He shot my father and he tried to burn down what's left of our barn—to finish the job. I guess you have to admire a man who hates to leave a job half done" Adam was irritated with Roy's "old man" ways, being slow and sure so as not to make a mistake. Adam had learned as a captain in the Union army that sometimes there just wasn't enough time to be certain—a man often had to act on gut feeling and Adam had a deep-gutted bellyache where Sawyer was concerned.

"And what if my pa dies? What then? You going to let that bastard go free just because Hop Sing didn't get a good enough look at him? Besides, you know that Hop Sing sometimes has difficulty discerning one white man from another."

"I can't do anything about that—that's the law and, Adam, you know the law about as well as any lawyer hereabouts. And you don't even know how things are with your pa, do you? Maybe he got a good look at the man who shot him and can say who it was. Just get Hop Sing here and don't put pressure on him to say Sawyer was the man; just let him decide on his own."

"Of course, Roy," Adam said, the sarcasm thick in his voice. "You know I wouldn't use any undue influence on Hop Sing. I have the fullest respect for the law and the judicial process."

"One more thing—how'd Sawyer get beat?"

"Don't know what you're talking about. If you mean his face, well, he fell off his horse. I guess having his hands tied interfered with his balance. I had a helluva time getting him here—he kept falling off." Adam tipped his hat at Roy and walked out.

Roy stood in thought, his lips pressed together; he recognized the disdain in Adam's remarks. He also wondered how badly Ben was wounded. He and Ben had been friends for many years and in the past, Roy had come to think of Hoss and Joe as titular sons but not Adam. Roy had always had the greatest respect for Adam's keen intellect and had found Adam as a boy to be serious and mature for his years—something Roy put down to Adam's past and all the hardships he had experienced and deaths he had witnessed at such a tender age. But since Adam had returned from the war, Roy sensed that his soul had been scarred and having Matilda Mallory married to someone else, well, Roy wondered how much a man should have to endure.

He himself had been through Indian wars with the army when he was younger and had seen men tortured by the Apaches and other ruthless tribes. One man had been staked out on the sand, his eyelids cut off so that the burning sun would fry his eyes and turn him blind while he slowly died of thirst. Roy had thrown up in the sand when he had seen that. And then there was his fellow soldier who had been captured by the Shoshone. He and two other soldiers tried to rescue him but it was too late. He had been bound about the throat, wrists and feet with wet rawhide strips that, as they dried, constricted and became tighter until the soldier was eventually throttled but not before his hands and feet went dead and turned black.

That experience made some men cold and cruel but for Roy, it made him avoid cruelty at all times; there always had to be a peaceful way to handle everything—he knew it but alas, he couldn't always find it. So Roy wondered what horrors of battle Adam had seen, and how it had changed him deep in his soul. From what Roy had read in the papers and from talking to travelers stopping off in Virginia City while the war progressed, corpses of men and animals often littered the fields that once grew crops; it was as if the ground was poisoned with blood from the fallen on both sides who had bravely fought and died.

Roy picked up Sawyer's gun and went to lock it up in the file cabinet. He weighed the heft and balance of the pistol and then pulled open the bottom drawer and dropped the gun inside, turning the key in the lock. He put the key in his desk drawer. Adam worried him. Roy considered that he would have to visit the Ponderosa after Adam's return visit. Yes, after Adam's and Hop Sing's visit, Roy would know if he was going out to the Ponderosa to see an old friend or to offer condolences to the Cartwright sons.

Roy sighed and opening a desk drawer, he pulled out an evidence intake form and sat and began to fill it out but his mind kept going back to Adam and Sawyer. Being a conscientious lawman, Roy wondered what he would have done had Adam dumped Sawyer's lifeless body on his office floor and claimed self-defense. Roy shook his head and reached for his mug of coffee but after one sip, he grimaced and put it down and went back to writing—the pen nub scratching across the paper's surface. His coffee was now cold.