Clem Forster always thought of himself as good Sheriff. He was patiently, clever, fast and thorough.

Since he had taken over the office from Roy Coffee he had managed everything that came his way.

Nevertheless he was glad for this storm.

In opposite to the most inhabitants in and around Virginia City, for Clem a storm was a time out.

Equally how hard you were as a bad boy, if you had the possibility to choose you would always select the day for your bank robbery when your underpants would stay dry.

So Clem had been sitting in his office, with a nice cup of coffee and the last of the paperwork, when suddenly a very wet, very muddy Joe Cartwright came bolting through the door.

Clem had signed.

How had Roy put it: "A Cartwright never makes problems, he gets them for free."

He had spent a notable amount of time trying to calm Joe down – who told a completely incoherent story about a collapsed bridge, a new bridge (but not a real one), buyers for a mine and contract killers- but Joe was having none of it.

The youngest Cartwright son wasn´t a liar. Not in that sense. He just let himself get tangled up in strange matters and sometimes certain parts of his brain were more tangled than others.

Clem had toyed with the idea of letting Joe cool down in one of his comfy cells for some hours… a day tops, when the Cartwright said:" Look Clem, I´m not drunk. You come with me, and I´ll show it to you. If you still believe its gibberish after that … I´ll clean the jail for a month."

Clem had taken about half a second to think about it and then concentrated on the delightful view of a month without housekeeping chores:

"Just let me get my coat."

~o~

Schmied sat sulking in their room. He still hated the west. He hated Cowboys and he had a near pathological aversion to the word "Howdy"-

But something had changed. Something that never happened before.

It wasn´t that the surrounding nature suddenly looked more pleasant. It still was nature and so in principle unreasonable. Also the stillness of the ranch irked him just as much. Only a good bar fight would have made it nearly palatable.

All these little inconveniences were only suddenly less prominent because Mr. Strack had berated him.

Him!

A Pro.

If it wasn't for him the man would still be sitting in that stinking vessel he crossed the ocean with.

Of course an uninvolved observer could come to the conclusion that Strack made the plan of action. Unfortunately that was true. But it made a bad situation only much worse.

The Stracks of this world might be able to plan a killing, but what would they do if they got blood on their polished shoes?

Schmied snorted over his own joke.

Well… perhaps he was to blame too, just partly, on Strack berating him.

He should have given poisoned meat to the son and the father. There he got bogged down in details a little. And it ended with Strack serving the steaks himself.

Adam had gotten a deadly dose. So far so good. Only the poison for the father went astray somehow.

Schmied refiled his shaving brush tumbler with this awful whiskey. What had the cook called it? O yes, Bonanza Bourbon.

This yellow rat had told him he saved it for the drinker who deserved it.

First Schmied had tried to drink it out of the glasses which stood on the bedside tables. Only to learn, that this stuff ate holes in them. After some experimentation he found that his tinny shaving brush tumbler was more durable and so switched, pouring the vile stuff into that.

At least the stuff was strong. This was everything he wanted.

This room was so quite. Quite like this damn ranch.

How long would Strack need to stay on the privy?

He always did have a weak stomach.

Schmied gripped the tumbler.

At least they had done some part of the job today.

And his stomach had proven on more than one occasion that he was able to handle turpentine, if his owner didn't have enough money for rotgut.

~o~

Clem Forster always thought of himself as a sensible man. He only drank in moderation. He smoked in moderation. He didn´t fight. These were things he couldn't afford to do because he was law and order. He was the principle of right.

At this moment law was looking at a bouncing tooth and a gnome, who shouted at horses that desperately tried to pull a brightly colored carnival wagon out of a mud hole.

Order took fright when suddenly the wagon started to move and a loud scream echoed.

The principle of right noted how a figure that bore a striking resemblance to Hoss Cartwright climbed out of the mud hole, shook himself and tried to wipe the dirt from his face.

Clem was glad that law, order and right noted all of that, because the only thing Clem was able to think about in this moment, was that he would have to clean the cells himself.

~o~

Strack sat on the repugnant floor of an outhouse somewhere in Nevada. He had spent the last three hours giving back to the earth all he had eaten that day.

In all objectivity, there had been better days for him.

His stomach contracted again, but not nearly as bad as before. He spit one last time and then hauled himself up on the raw wood-wall.

He didn´t understand why people would want to live like this.

There were marvelous sanitary inventions. During his time in Sacramento he had grown accustomed to all of them, to a point where he took them for granted.

With trembling fingers he sorted his cloth.

Equally where he was, or how less his stomach might contain, it was necessary to keep a distinctive appearance.

It was bad enough as things were. This Cartwright scion just took off. Was it too much to ask for one, only one of them to die where they were intended to?

Instead they rode through world history.

At least the young street dog was dead.

And Adam Cartwright would be dead soon too. It didn´t matter where he tried to hide.

Strack opened the outhouse door.

Dusk had already started creeping in.

Strack breathed deeply to get rid of the frowst that had settled in his lungs. The cool evening air refreshed him and for the first time in hours the need to strangle Schmied lessened. Sometimes it surprised Strack how completely unencumbered with dexterity Schmied was. Of course, he had his uses and knew nearly every way to get a human flat on his back, six feet under green turf. He was even passable with poisons – Strack got to know that first hand. But there was no fines, no esprit, no flair for the noble art of killing. Schmied would thump a man over the head and leave him lying, if the job didn´t come with more detailed instructions.

Strack sighed deeply.

It lacked style. And in their business you were nothing without style, least of all a professional.

A strange noise made him look up. With growing suspicion Strack watched the Forman dragging his horse into some bushes, far away from the stables. He seemed to have tied it somewhere to the impenetrable leafage, because he stumbled out of the bushes without the horse.

"Mr. Canady?" asked Strack, silent amusement in his voice. The Forman flinched.

"Oh Mr. Strack… I..ahm… didn´t want to scare anyone."

"By rummaging around in the bushes?" asked Strack.

The Forman looked like a little boy with his hand in the cookie jar:" I have to round up two or three of the boys, without Mr. Cartwright knowing." He added quietly.

"But why?" asked Strack oddly puzzled.

Candy´s expression changed and became something so dark that it made Strack take a step back.

"Mr. Canady? Is something wrong?"

"What?" Candy looked up and the darkness drifted out of his eyes:" No, sorry, I… Adam is dead." Candy said it like he couldn´t believe it himself.

For a couple of seconds Mr. Strack stood frozen:" What did you just say?"

Candy shook his head:" He suddenly started to cramp, I tried to get him home, but…. I left him at a cave near the river, so nothing could… could reach him. I couldn´t bring him back. Not like this. Couldn´t let his father see him like this. Thought perhaps Al could help with that. He somehow manages to… make them look friendly. Even the guy who got stuck in this mineshaft…" he stopped to seemingly ask himself what he was doing there:" I´m sorry I bothered you with this."

He was half on his way when he stopped, quickly coming back to Strack he added:

"Please don´t tell his father. I can´t tell him like this. Not with his heart." He interrupted himself.

Strack listened up:" His heart?"

"Yes his heart. Doc tells him regularly. Shouldn´t be drinking coffee or alcohol, no stimulants… the usual. So if YOU were to meet him..." Murmured Candy, busy with something else.

"Oh I see, a massage like this..?"

"Yeah, it could kill him." Candy took off his hat to brush a hand through his hair:" I can´t tell him like this. Perhaps when Joe and Hoss are back."

He disconnected himself from the bright window squares of the bunkhouse und looked Strack in the eyes:" Promise me, that you won´t tell him. Please."

Strack laid a hand on his shoulder, the gesture nearly fatherly:" Don´t fear. I will be very careful." He squeezed Candy´s arm one more time and tactfully withdrew. As soon as the front door slammed into its lock he started to run.

Candy watched the assassin walk back to the house and shrugged when a voice out of the leafage asked:" You think he swallowed it?"

~o~

Clem Forster always thought of himself as a man who had seen it all before. But now he stood behind the living room curtains in the Cartwright household to witness a German industrialist confessing a murder.

Mass hysteria. That had to be it.

Clem didn´t see another solution that would explain why everybody on this ranch had gone nuts.

He really wanted to believe it. Because the only other explanation made this whole mess real.

Unfortunately the two battered bodies, which he had seen in the carnival wagon, had been all too real. He didn´t recognize Griff at first. His face swollen and discolored. Adam was deathly pale. Both were sleeping.

But it had been Joe's reaction that made Clem believe for real.

The youngest Cartwright son, normally constantly moving, stood rigidly by Adam's bed.

For a long time his eyes only followed the moving chest of his brother.

When his eyes finally traveled to his brother's face, Joe's expression was a complete blank. Clem feared what would come. He had seen it before.

Like the time a five year old girl had been overridden. Her father had waited at her bedside until she slept, for good. He came, with this exact blank face into the saloon and had asked the rider very calmly to come outside with him. He shot the rider on the open road. The storekeeper had been fast enough to prevent the father from following the rider and his daughter into eternity. To this day Clem couldn´t say if this had been for the better. He didn´t remember too much of the case, but he remember the face.

The face of a man who had been pushed too far.

~o~

Strack reached the first floor slightly disheveled and panting. Normally this would have bothered him, but right at this moment, he hadn´t the time for such vanities. Now he had the opportunity to finish this job, pack their bags and get the hell out of there.

He stormed into the room and was right in the middle of the sentence before he saw Schmied. He sat, his eyes buried in the depth of his shaving tumbler on a chair at the window.

He was swaying while sitting.

"Maurice?" Strack used Schmied´s real name rarely. He only did it, when he absolutely reached a point beyond every good intent.

"What is it, Eugen?" asked Schmied back in his mother tongue.

"Are you drunk?"

"No!" Schmied seemed earnestly indignant.

He put down the shaving tumbler with a dumb "klank" and rose from the chair, still swaying:

"I am." He explained, one finger pointing at Strack:

"canopy-fall-smelling-plastered." He giggled. (Editor´s note: This is a German term, here translated literally. It´s just as rude as it sounds. In case you want to include it to your active vocabulary: Himmel-sturz-stink-besoffen. There you go. )

For a brief second Strack considered throwing him out the window.

As drunk as he was, no one would question it.

But it wasn´t professional. One just didn´t kill ones partner on a job. Unless the partner was the job.

And the damn window wasn't high enough to securely kill him anyway.

So, instead of getting rid of his pillion, Strack got Schmied´s case out from under the bed.

Gasping he hoisted the monstrosity on the bed and fiddled a little with the locks.

"What are you doing?" Schmied asked interested.

"I´m searching for the opium." Strack answered.

"Opium?"

"Yes, Maurice, Opium. The father has a weak heart, any kind of hypnotics and he´s over the Styx." He stopped himself, studied the alcohol induced smile on his partners face and decided that any more explanations would only burn his lifetime.

"You were right." Schmied said nearly purring.

"Oh yes?" Strack shot him a glance.

Schmied, again dangling alarmingly from his chair, pointed to the window: "That ghost", he hiccupped: "Was here again."

"Really." Strack focused his attention back on the suit case, he didn´t have the time for liquor-hallucinations. Swearing to himself he kept piling the case's contents out on to the bed.

Schmied watched his partner, blissfully smiling, stacking banknotes in bundles on the comforter.

"Still don´t know, why we took them with us." Schmied stated dreamily.

"Because." Strack answered without taking his eyes from his task: "We had to go quick and I don't feel like banking thirty thousand dollar in one piece and without explanation somewhere. That's screaming for attention. I don´t intend to beg for trouble."

Schmied muttered something under his breath.

"What?"

"How?"

"How what?" Strack visibly lost patience.

"How do you beg for trouble?"

Strack shook his head and decided that this comment never happened.

"What are you searching for?"

"Opium. Still." Strack snapped.

Schmied surprised him with the answer:

"In the outer pocket. Has a..." he interrupted himself to belch:" a double bottom."

And really there was. And there was a nice little bottle. Strack plugged the money back in the bag, went to the wardrobe and returned with his special suit. It was tailor-made, which was always an advantage in comfort. But the key feature with this extraordinary peace of garment was another one. Strack straightened the lapel of the vest and made sure the two turrets were neatly hidden in the lining. They were tiny, with a caliber of just six millimetres and six shots each. Useless for outdoor shots, but on close proximity they could kill. While he righted his tie and buttoned down the vest he hoped to have no use for them today.

Reassured by his now flawless appearance he took one of the glasses from the nightstand and dipped it into the washbowl. It leaked but he had no time to complain about that. He threw the water in Schmied´s face and waited patiently until his partner stopped spluttering: "Are you with me?"

Schmied wiped the water from his eyes and groused: "That wasn´t necessary."

"Hey, stay with me here." Strack snapped a couple of times in front of Schmied´s face until he looked up annoyed.

"We kill the father."

"Now?" asked Schmied, slightly lurching he added: "What do I have to do?"

Strack breathed deep before he said:

"Only keep sitting upright."

~o~

Strack had waited by the window and now came back bolting around the chaise longue into the living room with an agility you wouldn't imagine in such a small, chubby man.

He sat down opposite to Schmied to carry on with a conversation they seemingly had been engaged in for some time:

"And then he says to me, Adam is dead! Just like that. Started cramping and died. Can you imagine something like that? We mustn´t tell the father of course." He raised his voice when he heard the door open and continued:" Poor Mr. Cartwright, his oldest son, dead just like that. You know, I think we should really depart."

The sound of a door falling shut made Strack turn around. As soon as his eye fell on the Cartwright patriarch his whole behavior changed. He paled and seemed to sink into himself. He imitated the embarrassment of someone severely caught out, and he gave the performance of a lifetime.

Ben just looked at his guests, the hat still on his head, one hand at the holster, frozen in the movement of opening the buckle.

Strack jumped to his feet:" I´m so sorry." He came deliberately over to his host, took hat and holster while he led him over to the plum-blue colored, velvet covered armchair.

"You´re sorry for what?" asked he, befuddled and irritated as Strack pushed him into the cushions.

"The case of death. So sudden. You have our deepest sympathy."

Ben nodded absent mindedly. He had been deep in his own thoughts while entering the house. He had heard voices but blended out the meaning of them completely. Believing his guest talked about Griff he was taken by surprise by the sympathy that went out to him.

He watched Strack bringing over three glasses of brandy:" This has to be a terrible blow."

"Sure." Ben answered and took his glass.

"We talked about departing, to come back at a more suitable time. Perhaps when you had the time to come to terms with… everything. Sorted out what you need to." He sat down gingerly on the sofa.

"Sort out?" Ben's thoughts still focused on the question what he should do with Candy. The Forman had just stopped and turned, before he went off again. But he took Adam with him and that had been a relief for Ben. His oldest son could tackle everything, and at least Candy wouldn´t be alone.

But Lucas had acted just as strange. Lucas had nearly dragged him out to show him something that looked just like any other hole in any other fence on this ranch. If he hadn´t known better he had thought Lucas was stalling, but what for? Outside in the rain during a storm Ben couldn´t come up with an explanation for this weird behavior. When they finally came home Lucas was limping, he said his leg fell asleep. Ben had lost his patience and made him go back to the bunk house with the firm order to lay down. This whole ranch had gone crazy.

"As soon as you find a new engineer for the mine." Strack´s babbling made it through his thoughts.

"A new engineer?" asked Ben surprised.

"Well yes, now after your son…" Strack seem lost for words.

"My son?" Oh God, what had Joe done now?

"After your son's death I mean." Strack tried to proceed.

"My son is dead?" Ben interjected.

"Yes, well…"

"Which?"

"Which what?"

"Which son?"

"The oldest"

"Adam is dead?"

"Yes."

"Nonsense." Ben put down the brandy and rose from the chair.

"For God´s sake – He´s dead." Strack visibly lost momentum, he too rose:

"Take a sip. A little Brandy will help to get your spirits up."

"I should get my spirits up? Because my son is dead?" Ben eyed his guest suspiciously:

"Are you alright?"

Strack wasn´t more than ten minutes away from biting the table.

Nothing was going according to plan.

The father was supposed to come in, accidentally overhear about the tragic destiny of his first born son, brokenly take the brandy with the opium and die. Preferably still sitting in this armchair.

Strack would have called for help, this damn cook would have come.

Heart failure. Oh how tragic.

We don´t want to intrude any further on this mourning family.

We feel with you. Bla, bla, bla.

And off to Sacramento, to real streets and functioning toilettes. But this damn family.

Strack sighed deeply and made a decision.

The head of the Cartwright family would, overcome with grief over the death of his son, commit suicide with his own pistol. Whether he wanted to or not.

Of course it was somehow terrible that Strack had sat with him while he did it. He, of course, tried to stop him, but everything happened so fast….

"Schmied, make sure this cook isn´t in the kitchen", Schmied got up clumsily and tumbled through the Livingroom.

"And lock the front door on your way back." Strack shouted after him.

Schmied muttered something and then added: "Nobody there."

Strack waited for the reassuring snap of a lock before he reached for Ben´s gun.

"What are you doing?" Ben frowned, still eying his guest.

"It´s nothing personal." Strack said, and pulled the holster up nearer to him:

"Beautiful weapon, may I?"

"Sure." Ben said.

Strack drew the gun and admired it for some seconds, he slung the holster away from him. The heavy leather strap and buckle hit the curtain. Strack froze as the curtain expelled a painful gasp.