A/N: Short chapter...yay? Most of the time, I seem to be unable to make a coherent thought in less than 4000 words.

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Chapter 77: All Pride Must Have a Fall

"Turn around, and go back down,
back the way you came.
Can't you see that flash of fire
ten times brighter than the day?...
Oh God, the pride of man,
broken in the dust again."
- Tony Rice version

The eyes staring back from the mirror were his father's. That was the only thing Enos could clearly remember about the man, although people had always remarked that he was the spitting image of the one many in Hazzard had considered a brother. There were tears in those eyes and he wondered, for the first time, if his father had ever cried. Surely, he had. People had loved him because he had worn his heart on his sleeve. He had been thirty-eight when he died, only four years older than Enos was now, and had left behind a fifteen year old boy with no idea who he was beyond Otis Strate's son.

Now, he wondered again, as he had all those many years ago, who he really was. First prison, and then the wild abandon of adventure, had scrubbed him clean of all but the things that could not be changed, and the persona he had once adopted now seemed ill fitting - like someone else's clothing. He felt far removed from the happy-go-lucky man who had once been Deputy Enos Strate. He didn't even look like a police officer; Rosco had refused to tell Mr. Hogg that he had rehired him, so he wore flannel shirts and jeans and kept his badge in his pocket.

After the phone call, he worried Darcy had a finer understanding into his psyche than he did, either that or the man just thought it would be funny to ask him to meet in the one place that had brought him so much personal heartache. He had never actually been there, and told Darcy as much.

"Just park in the lot," he had told him. "There's a trail that goes up behind the sign for the building. Follow it until you see a big hole. Don't worry, I looked around. There aren't any bits and pieces left...not anymore."

If he had known where he was going, Rosco would have demanded he wait for the GBI, or at least take his gun, but his temper had a short leash around Darcy, and he didn't trust himself not to use it. He had meant it when he told Daisy that he wasn't afraid of the man. If Darcy wanted to threaten her or gloat over him taking lumps in prison, he would take whatever spit and venom he dished out - so long as he said something incriminating on tape.

He turned sideways in the mirror to look at the recorder, attached to the small of his back with several lengths of surgical tape. The wire for the microphone ran between his ribs and up his chest and was taped so that it would lay just below where his shirt buttoned at the top. He sighed and shook his head, praying that it would work, and put his t-shirt back on. The recorder and wire were noticeable through the fabric, but he hoped the long-sleeved shirt would hide it well enough. He shrugged it on and buttoned it, adjusting the microphone to where it would be concealed, but not covered.

Hazzard #2 was parked behind the Courthouse, out of sight of Rosco, who he figured was already back from the Busy Bee and looking for him. The judge's chambers were rarely used, so he went there to tape on the recorder. Darcy had been explicit about not having Rosco follow him, but truth be told, Enos didn't want him to, either. In a way, Darcy was right - this was between the two of them. Anyone who wanted could listen to the tape afterwards, but he was nervous enough without being gawked at through binoculars.

He was not, however, flying without a safety net; that was unless Rosco couldn't decipher the message he'd left him. Hopefully, he wouldn't need to find out.

Rosco kicked at the door, a corndog in one hand and a styrofoam cup of buttermilk in the other. "Enos!" he yelled through the cardboard. "Enos, come open the dang door, my hands are full!"

He waited for his deputy's hurried footsteps, but was met with silence.

"Enos!" he shouted, louder, whacking the door with his elbow. "You dipstick! Get over here and open the door! This is your superior officer, I'm gonna drop something in a minute and it ain't gonna be my corndog!"

With a growl of impatience, he sat the buttermilk down on the step and opened the door. "Enos!" He took a step into the lobby, feeling a chill go up his spine at the stillness of the room. Something seemed off, though he couldn't imagine what it would be; the man was probably just in the john. As he crossed the lobby, he noticed two things - there were papers strewn across the steps to the upper level, and the phone up by the mimeograph machine was beeping a fast busy signal. Scowling at the mess of papers, that Enos had no doubt been the cause of, he went up the stairs, thinking that he should have told him to stay at the farm and rest if he was so tired he couldn't remember to hang up the dang phone.

He didn't notice the envelope with his name on it taped to the receiver until he tried to lay it in its cradle. Pulling it off, he hung up the phone and opened it.

Rosco, If I'm not back in three hours, call the Dukes and ask Daisy where my watch was broken. -Enos

"What in the sam-hill is that supposed to mean?" he asked Flash, who had smelled corndog and waddled out for scraps. He read it three more times, trying to divine the meaning of Enos' cryptic note. Obviously, he had gone somewhere, but where, Rosco didn't have a clue. He looked back at the dog, for lack of a better audience. "Now, where would he have run off to in the middle of the day without telling anyone?"

"Woof!" said Flash.

The sheriff frowned at the dog. "Bad guy, huh?" he asked. "Didja get a look at him, Flash?"

The dog was silent, which Rosco interpreted as a 'no'.

"I wonder..." He went down to the lobby phone and picked it up. "Maybelle?"

"Hey there, Rosco!" said a bubbly, disembodied voice, "You need something, hun?"

Rosco hemmed and hawed for a minute, not wanting Maybelle, the root of most town gossip, to think something was wrong. He needed information, though, and she was the only one besides Enos who would know. "Maybelle, did anyone call the station in the last twenty minutes, or so?"

He was even more worried when she hesitated. "Actually," she confided, "someone called asking for Enos, not five minutes after you went into the Busy Bee."

"Well, don't leave me in suspense, woman," he snapped, "I've got police work to do. Who called?"

"I didn't get his name, Rosco, since he called from the payphone over by the bank," she said, "but it sounded a whole lot like Darcy Kincaid. What's wrong, Sheriff? Is Enos okay? I saw him drive off in Hazzard #2 just a little bit ago."

"Uh, yeah." He cleared his throat. "Yeah, Maybelle, Enos is just fine," he assured her, "and don't go starting no rumors that he ain't!" He slammed the receiver down, and opened up the top drawer of the desk. The GBI's recorder and microphone were missing, and his heart sank. "Enos, you dipstick...what've you gone and done?"

It took nearly twenty minutes to get to the meeting place from the station, partially due to the slow speed at which Enos was driving. The car barely stirred up the dust of the dirt road as he poked along, trying to work out in his mind what he would say and how the conversation with Darcy might go down. Wearing the recorder while driving was painful, smashed betwixt the seat and his spine, and he worried he would sweat too much and short something out. Wilburn said the surgical tape would hold, but between his nerves and the 90 degree weather, Enos felt like a pig at a Sunday barbecue.

When he finally pulled into the parking lot, he was shaking even worse than when he'd left the station. He switched on the recorder, and sat for a minute with his head resting against the steering wheel, until the heat from the enclosed car began to make him feel sick at his stomach, then climbed out and made his way over to the billboard next to the building. Behind it, a well-worn footpath led steeply upwards, over the ridge and out of sight.

His heart slammed against his chest as he started up the trail, trying to watch both his feet so that he wouldn't trip, and everywhere else, in case Darcy was lying in wait for him. At the top of the ridge, he climbed on top of a smooth boulder and scanned the area. Before him, the mountains rolled away in a blue haze, spreading out over a horizon so picturesque that it could have been plucked from a calendar, and he imagined how it would look under the stars.

At last, he dragged his eyes away and continued on the trail, now sloping downwards, winding around the caves that littered the Appalachian foothills. The temperature dropped as a wall of ancient granite rose steeply on his left, its cracks and pockets littered with the shells of black walnuts where squirrels had eaten. The valley dropped off to the right, lush and green with scrub brush and spindly pawpaws near the trail, then enormous pines towards the valley floor before the land rose back up to another ridge further away. Between the wall and the valley wound a path of smooth, unyielding rock, broken here and there by streams of water running through gaps in the cliff.

A quarter mile from the top, he rounded a curve and stopped still. Like a giant hammer crashing down on the mountain, the cliff face had blown away, leaving a jagged and broken rift down through the bedrock. The trail was gone, and an avalanche of loose debris spilled down the hill to his right and into the glen below. Sharp angular fragments of rock and silt lay piled like winter snow drifts amongst the broken and long dead tree trunks. He tried to reason that this was just an older part of the company's mining project, but his heart wouldn't believe the lie.

He stepped into the debris field, and knelt down. Scooping up a handful, he let it fall through his fingers.

Somewhere in this dirt is my father's blood.

The thought ached like an old wound that had never healed; that festered just beneath his skin. There was no salve that could sooth it, no balm to make him whole again, only time - and time was the last thing he had right now. He stood up and dusted himself off, realizing that he'd completely forgotten the reason he was here. He didn't see Darcy, but that didn't mean he wasn't around.

"Darcy!?" he called, thinking it was better to be proactive than stumble upon him.

"About time!" came the answer. "You get lost? I ain't waiting around all day!" Enos couldn't see him, but the voice came from the woods on the other side of the rubble.

Edging carefully around the loose rock, Enos left the path and walked down the hill. The pines grew thick here in the lee of the ridge, protected from the worst of the wind and fed by the storm runoffs.

Darcy sat with his back against an ancient oak and made no effort to stand as Enos approached. "Give me a hand, will ya'?" he complained, stretching gloved fingers towards him. "You took so damned long, I'm half asleep."

Enos frowned down at him, thinking he didn't look very tired, but grabbed his hand to help him up out of force of habit. In an flash, Darcy used the leverage to lunge towards him, wrapping him in a one-armed bear hug. There was a sharp, searing pain in his thigh and a terribly, triumphant gleam in the eyes which bore into his own before Darcy shoved him away. Enos staggered backwards, then reached down and yanked the tranquilizer dart from his leg. It was already empty.

"You...!" He lunged at Darcy, but the man spun away, laughing.

"Haven't you heard, deputy?" he jeered. "Pride goeth before a fall. All I've done to you, and you still came out here all alo—-"

For Enos, the forest abruptly took on the sickening, slow spin of a broken carousel ride, and suddenly everything was speaking; the trees, the rocks, the brook at the bottom of the valley. The sky was screaming. He clapped his hands over his ears but the sounds grew louder and louder until they became a thunderous roar, ripping him apart. He stumbled towards a tree, putting his hands out to brace himself, and stared as his fingers melted into the bark and the tree swallowed him alive.

40 minutes later

He came to with a hoarse yell, sitting with his back tied against a pine tree. His hands were in handcuffs in front of him and his feet in shackles. His long-sleeved shirt was gone, and the recorder and microphone with it.

Darcy, with a look of gleeful anticipation, hovered in front of him holding a stun gun.

A/N: To be continued...