Chapter Twenty-Nine

A week before their trip to San Francisco, Shiloh and Etta were slowly getting everything ready they would need for themselves and the children. When Shiloh told Etta they would be traveling by private coach, she was quite happy, almost excited about the trip. It seemed past stagecoach travel had frightened Rachel fairly severely, and because of that Etta's own strength during trips had been badly worn.

The ladies had taken a break for a few hours, giving Shiloh some time to add to a new song she had been working on. The song was a duet meant to be sung by a man and a woman. She could easily sing through both parts, but she needed to hear them together. She knew no one near who would be able to sing the man's part...except maybe one man, and he would likely say 'no'. If she could just convince him to sing it just so she could hear it with the female part.

She turned back to her piano, and when Adam walked through the door, she glanced over, but continued playing. She knew he would be coming over, and she would patiently wait.

Dropping a kiss on the top of her head, he waited and listened until she stopped playing.

After the last note, she sat still for a moment, savoring the fading resonance, then stood and greeted her husband properly. Just as he moved toward her lips for a second kiss, she said in a seductively sweet voice, "Adam, would you...do...something for me?"

Lingering at her lips, he said, "Anything."

"I have this new song, you see," she said, stroking the muscles of his arms. "It's a duet, and I need to hear how it sounds with both voices."

He gave her a full-on kiss, slightly moved away, and with a smile on his lips, he said, "No," then turned to walk away.

"Wait. Can't we even discuss this?"

Looking back over his shoulder, he said once more with a smile, "No," and continued away.

She plopped down on the piano seat. "I've been working so hard on this song. I might as well tear it up."

Adam halted his escape, hung his head, and looked back at her without turning. He didn't think he'd ever seen as sad a look as the one she was wearing now. Closing his eyes and breathing in deeply, he folded his lips into a line knowing she was performing, but he just couldn't resist turning back.

Her woeful look didn't change. "I'm not asking you to perform it in front of anyone...except me. I just need to hear both parts together, and there's no one else anywhere close who can sing this. Except you." She stood and walked to him, moving her hands to his chest and leaning against him while looking pleadingly up into his eyes. "Please?"

He watched as her eyes got bigger little by little, and when it seemed they couldn't grow any larger, her brows crooked, her chin quivered, and he chuckled.

Her head cocked as her earnestness turned to injury while she struggled to untangle herself from his hands, and as much as she tried, his hands always found purchase, preventing her from backing away. Though she struggled, he held her, finally pulling her firmly against him. Exhausted, she slumped so that he was the only thing holding her up.

He hadn't taken his eyes away from hers, though she tried not to look at him, and when she became motionless, he arched a brow. "Are you done?"

He received a whimper in return.

Moving his hands to each side of her face, he turned it up to his. "This is the first time and the last." Before he could finish, she was bouncing on her toes excitedly, though he was still holding her face. "Do we understand each other?" Now with her face bobbing up and down in his hands, he couldn't hide a grin that ended in a loud laugh at her antics, behavior reminding him of a time long past.

Shiloh went over the music with him, taking time to point out specific areas in the music. "Can you roll your 'r's?"

"Of course, I can r-r-r-r-roll my 'r's."

"Good. Now, when we get here," she said, pointing, "don't worry if you can't hit that high note. Not many baritone's can. It's more of a low tenor note." She had turned toward the piano and didn't see his narrowed eyes.

Once she played their beginning notes, they began to sing, starting and stopping a few times to discuss the notations. It was during this time that someone knocked on the door, though neither Adam nor Shiloh heard. Ming Lin and Etta had come out of the kitchen when the singing began. It was Ming Lin who answered the door, motioning for Ben, Hoss, Joe and Annie to enter.

Still Adam and Shiloh, who were facing each other, heard nothing, both concentrating on complementing the other's voice while everyone else was mesmerized by the stunning harmonies.

If it were possible, Shiloh found herself falling in love all over again listening to Adam's rich baritone. She quickly realized his musical education involved more than he'd ever let on. And then when he effortlessly hit that high note and held it, her mouth dropped open as she staggered backward and dropped hard on the piano bench. When he stopped, there was total silence in the room. Little did Shiloh know that every other person present looked as stunned as she.

Adam's eyes twinkled as he smiled down at his wife who managed to do no more than tilt her head and open and close her mouth, unable to come up with anything to say.

He held the music out to her, and she grabbed it, shooting up off the piano bench. Just when she found her voice, he said, "We had an agreement."

"But..."

Again, he took her face in his hands and kissed her. "A deal is a deal," he said, turning away, but stopping when he saw he had an audience who seemed just as speechless as Shiloh. The next thing he heard was paper ripping. He spun around and watched the torn pieces floating in the air around her.

"No."

Shaking her head, she threw her hands in the air and let them fall to her side. "It's no use, Adam. No one will ever be able to sing it to that...level. And I don't want to sing it with anyone else." His brows curved as his mouth opened slightly. Shiloh answered his look. "Maybe I'll let some other duo sing it, but I...I can't." Looking into his eyes, she smiled. "You were perfect. We were perfect together." She motioned to the others standing in the entry of the house. "I don't think I'm biased."

Adam turned and saw the bewilderment on all their faces change to expectation. Without looking back at Shiloh, he said to all of them, "We had an agreement."

Ming Lin and Etta hurried back to the kitchen while Annie made her way past Adam to Shiloh, giving her a long hug. As Adam reached the entry, Hoss extended his hand first, followed by Joe.

Facing his father, the two men's eyes locked. Everyone held their breath until Adam said, "Why don't we all have a drink?" He stepped to one side and waited for his brothers and his father to move into the living area. "To what do we owe this visit?" Adam asked, looking to the music room, beckoning Shiloh to him with his eyes.

When she and Annie arrived, Adam moved his arm around Shiloh and held her at his side as Annie sat in a chair Hoss indicated.

Upon hearing Adam sing, easily keeping up with Shiloh, sudden realization hit Ben like a ton of bricks giving him a feeling of shame at what he was only just understanding was selfishness. He cleared his throat. "Adam, Shiloh, I don't think I've ever heard anything quite so beautiful. Adam...I had no idea you could sing...that...well. I suppose there must be quite a bit I don't know about you... or your time at college." He finally looked up at his son. "You could very easily have chosen yet another direction."

Looking down at Shiloh apologetically, Adam answered, "But I didn't. And I don't intend to now."

She closed her eyes disappointedly.

"Adam, I've been a fool. I've been so focused on leaving everything to you boys, I neglected to ask if you wanted it. I didn't think that, perhaps, you'd want to build something that was your own...that you didn't inherit."

Adam kissed the top of Shiloh's head, then brought her hand to his lips before he went to sit next to his father. "That's not it, Pa." He smiled, remembering when he asked Shiloh to marry him. "Before we were married," he said, looking up at his wife, "Shiloh said she wanted to leave her children a legacy of something tangible...the Flying W...just like you were leaving a legacy for us." He glanced over at Joe and Hoss.

Shiloh finished the story. "He asked me 'What if the Ponderosa was part of their legacy?' It took a minute for what he was asking to sink in."

Moving a hand to his father's arm, Adam said, "Pa, I never considered leaving the Ponderosa, at least, not for good. Other business may take us away for a while, but we'll always come home. But like it or not, things are changing, and if we don't change with them, everything you've worked for...everything that all of us want for our children will be eaten away until there's nothing left. I couldn't just stand by and watch that happen."

"Adam, we've always made promises...promises to the land," said Ben.

"We don't have to change what we do best, Pa. We stay committed to the land. After all, there's just so much you can do with cattle, mines and timber. We keep doing what we do...better...smarter. We improve the feed, we improve our breeding practices, we improve our planting and irrigation. We diversify."

"Diversify?" said Ben, surprised. "We've never needed anything else."

"Pa, if two of the three things we do well collapse, the third won't hold us. We've gotten too big."

Ben studied his son...this man he'd always thought of as his inquisitive boy, this man he knew could do anything he set his mind to do, this man who was in touch with things he himself had never bothered considering. "What are you suggesting?"

"Well, for starters, we should hire a foreman for each separate venture, so we can pay attention to the business side of things. That doesn't mean that Joe or I can't keep breaking horses, if that's what we want to do. It doesn't mean that we don't ride out every day to make sure the work's getting done. But we make sure we have men on the payroll who can do the physical work we've always done when we don't have the time or inclination to do it. Next, we need to invest in the railroad. Crocker and his business partners are going to build that railroad if it kills them, and once they do, our cattle, our timber and even our ore can be clear across the country in only eight days. If we invest, our costs will be lower, and we'll make a profit in the overland shipping business."

Ben sat back and crossed one leg over the other, patiently listening.

"I'm also going to build the dairy next year. Besides being able to ship butter and cheese all over the country, it's an investment in women like Annie and Shiloh, who won't be satisfied without time for other pursuits. For the short term, there isn't another dairy in these parts that can supply large amounts of butter or cheese for the region, so wives and daughters make it for their families. And there's Shiloh's horses. She turns buyers away every year because she doesn't have help to train which is something Hoss wants to learn. And now men like Ben Haggin are interested in her horses even though he has his own horse breeding operation at Rancho Del Paso in the Sacramento Valley. That alone says a lot about the quality of her horses."

Ben closed his eyes as if his head was spinning. "Do you realize what it will take to put all of this in place?"

"I do, Pa. It certainly can't all be done overnight."

"Pa," said Hoss. "You should tell 'im why we're here."

Ben grunted as he pulled the lawsuit paperwork out of the inside pocket of his vest and handed it to Adam. "We're already behind on the Ponderosa. I can't leave, and I can't afford to send Joe or Hoss. But Hiram says we need to be represented."

"We thought since you were leaving for San Francisco, you'd consider representing the Ponderosa," said Joe with his usual easy-going smile.

Shaking his head, Adam looked over at Hoss and then Joe and smiled. "So you managed to talk him into coming over here to ask if I would take care of it."

Raising his brows, Ben said, "Well, if it isn't too much trouble…" It didn't take long for a smile to steal across his lips.

Chuckling, Adam said, "Of course it's not too much trouble. But what needs to be caught up here that none of you can go?"

"We've got our own timber contracts with the mines to fill," said Ben. "Hoss is taking care of those. Joe's been taking care of breaking horses for an Army contract, and I'm getting us ready for our second cattle drive. On top of all of that is the normal paperwork that has to be done, plus I've got requests for bids on two more timber contracts that I haven't even been able to look at."

Adam rubbed his hand over his chin. "Where are you taking the cattle?"

"Joe went south with the first drive," replied Ben. "This one will go to San Francisco."

"The Flying W drive is going east, so no help there." Adam scratched the back of his neck. "What if I take the timber bids with me and work on them in San Francisco?"

"Well, it won't help with the work, but it will ensure we get those bids in. If you can do that, Adam, the boys and I will manage."

Adam smiled. "I'll come by and get them before we leave for San Francisco then. And I'll see if Micah can help with the paperwork. He's already seen most of it, so he shouldn't have a problem with it."

Ben stood. "Micah's help might just keep our heads above water."

Standing with his father, Adam moved his hands to his hips. "He can also start looking for candidates for foremen, Pa. You need to get that in place as soon as possible. Once you do that, the work will start easing up a bit for you, and then you can start thinking about what you've got available to invest in the railroad. After that, I'll arrange a meeting with Crocker and the others."

Shiloh had left to tend to Abel, and now came down the stairs with the baby in her arms. Passing Abel to his grandfather, she said, "Why don't you all stay for dinner? It will be nice to have the whole family around the dinner table again."

Ben was grinning at his grandson. "Joe, ride back over to the house and tell Hop Sing we won't be home for dinner tonight."

"Yes sir," Joe said, winking at Adam and Shiloh.