1
Thomas Freeman had not worked for the Cartwrights for long, but he was content in his work. He enjoyed living alone in a line cabin that he had come to call his own. He enjoyed working with horses and cattle. He loved the sounds of the wind in the pines, the rain on the roof, and the crackle of a fire at the end of a long day. Following the spring round up, and the celebration that welcomed a new member to the Cartwright family, Thomas was happy to go back to his line cabin. He had his own celebration while he was there. Through a backlog of newspapers that the Cartwrights were good enough to deliver to each of the line shacks, Thomas had learned that something called the 15th Amendment had been ratified in February of that year. That meant that it was written into law that he was a citizen, free and clear. Minus a few years of a prison sentence, that is.
Thomas celebrated by going into Washoe and buying himself a new hat. A white hat with a silver ring around it. The purchase used up most of his wages, and he got many a comment as he rode back through town, headed for the Ponderosa. But he ignored all that. He sat proudly on his horse, knowing none of the comments would go anywhere. Thomas Freeman was a very big, very strong man. Bigger than Hoss Cartwright. Nobody that wanted to live would willingly go up against Thomas.
With his new hat, with his new lawful freedom, and his new job on the Ponderosa, Thomas had begun to feel like the past was leaving him behind.
Until Noah came.
Noah was a highly religious man. He had been a slave once, but an accident in the fields had crippled his back. He'd been 'donated' to the local church and found religion while he worked with the preacher. He never knew how to read nor write, but he had a good strong mind. He memorized every bit of scripture that he could, and would sometimes bring bible stories back to the plantation, and teach religion to the youngins in the slave lodgings. Then, one day, Noah disappeared. The preacher didn't have the heart to report him missing, for fear that Noah would be shot or hung. By then there was talk of war, and one crippled old man just didn't seem to matter any longer.
The last Thomas knew of ol' Noah, the man had been talking to some people passing through the town in a wagon train. They were heading west for what they called the promised land, and they had been happy to listen to Noah tell them the stories and scriptures he'd memorized, though they were insistent that he couldn't settle with them. The promised land was meant for only a certain kind of folk, they said. Not Noah's kind.
Still...Thomas had always suspected that Noah had found a way to get into one of those wagons. His suspicions were confirmed not long after the spring round up ended.
Thomas was returning from Washoe with his new hat on, on the darkest night of the month. There was no moon, and no snow on the ground to reflect even the barest light from the stars. When he arrived at his cabin he was so bone tired he couldn't think of anything but putting up his horse and going to bed. He blamed the tiredness for all the signs he missed.
The following morning he could smell it. Pine sap, acrid and sweet in the air. The smell of freshly cut trees. Softwoods, hardwoods. Thomas stepped out of his cabin with the first light of dawn, a cup of coffee pressed to his lips, and stared at an entire hillside devoid of trees. Like a fleet of beavers had come in while he was gone, and cleared everything standing, down to a nubbin.
Thomas' first thought was that he would be blamed, fired, and then probably shot or hung. That thought stuck with him even after he moved on to the next thought, that he needed to take off now before it was too late. The third thought came to him as he was going to the small corral to saddle his horse, that an honest man would head to the main house of the Ponderosa and tell his employers that someone had illegally cut all that timber.
Thomas only went with his third thought after he had swung up into the saddle. He charged over hill and dale, covering the ground as quickly as he could before he ran into Joe Cartwright on one of the main roads. Thomas barely had the words out of his mouth before Joe had wheeled his horse and shouted, "Come on!"
Together they tore up the dusty road, leaving clouds in their wake, arriving at the house just as Adam and Hoss Cartwright were saddling their horses.
"Where's Pa?" Joe shouted.
"He's changing Elizabeth inside. Where's the fire?" Adam asked.
"Fire isn't too far from it." Thomas said, dismounting.
The four of them pounded into the house, just as Ben Cartwright came down the stairs with his four-month-old adopted daughter. His smile quickly turned to a frown. Before he could say anything Thomas was standing before him explaining that an entire field of timber was somehow gone.
Ben's anger was quick to rise when the natural resources he had chosen to protect were abused. "You boys get out there. You find out where that timber went. Hoss you ride into town and get Sheriff Coffey out here right away, and then you join your brothers." He got a chorus of 'yes sirs' in response and the men left the house as quickly as they had come.
Thomas, Adam and Joe raced back out to the line cabin, taking a couple of hands with them when they encountered them on the road. Halfway to the line cabin Adam pulled the horses up.
"Joe, we need to find out if more than one stand has been taken. You, Bucky and Jimmy split up and check each of the stands, and report back to Pa. Thomas and I can track the lumber."
The men did as they were told and Thomas and Adam covered the rest of the ground to the cleared stand in less than an hour.
It didn't take long to spot the grooves that had been left in the ground by each of the felled logs. Adam and Thomas climbed around the tangle of limbs, stumps and undergrowth, rebuilding the scene as they did.
"Looks like they had sawhorses here, and two people cutting the trunks down to size." Adam said, pointing at a sizable pile of sawdust around 20 square holes in the ground. Thomas found another spot just like it, further down the slope.
"I don't see wagon tracks, and there's no sign of a tri-pod lift." Thomas called up the hill. "They must have just dragged the logs up the slope once they were cut to size."
The ruts dug into the road, and oversized hoof prints pointed to a large breed of horse, pulling logs in pairs, using a chain and rope. Most peculiar of all was the lack of boot prints.
"I figure some of them were on horseback, but they couldn't all have been." Adam said. "Aside from ours, I only see two horses."
Down the slope, Thomas had started clearing branches and piling them to the side, staring at the confusion of underbrush, dirt, twigs, leaves and needles. When he froze, Adam started climbing down to him, helping to clear more of the debris.
"There! There…" Thomas said, pointing. He squatted down and pointed at one wide, round impression, and five smaller round impressions. It was about the size of a man's foot. Adam yanked at branches, flinging them to the sides, finding more and more of the prints. In all different sizes.
"Who cuts timber barefoot!?" He demanded.
Thomas stood up and busied himself for a moment, picking at the pine sap on his hands. Adam watched the uncharacteristic fastidiousness and crossed his arms over his chest. "Thomas?"
Freeman snapped his eyes up then quietly said. "Well, some folk do just about all their work barefoot."
"What folk?"
"Slaves. Former slaves."
Adam sighed. "You're telling me that a gang of former slaves, snuck onto the Ponderosa while we were all at round up, felled a hillside of trees, barefoot, in less than two weeks and dragged the logs out with only a pair of horses."
"When you've got an entire field of cotton to pick in two days, you learn how to be fast, Adam." Thomas said, matter of factly.
"This isn't a plantation, and that isn't cotton." Adam pointed out.
"Should be easier to trace then, shouldn't it." Thomas said, pulling his new hat down low over his eyes and starting up the hillside.
Adam followed, shaking his head in wonder.
They mounted their horses and followed the drag marks down the trail, heading almost due north. When it looked like the tracks were going to leave the Ponderosa, still heading north, Adam suggested they turn around and head back to the line cabin to wait for the others.
Several hours later Joe and Bucky returned to the cabin reporting that none of the other stands of timber appeared to have been touched. Adam and Thomas explained what they had found on the hillside and the four of them worked their way down the hill, piling branches and clearing the debris out of the way. Each new footprint was compared to a stick that Adam had broken to show the size of the first footprint they had found. By the time Jimmy arrived, they had identified at least thirteen different people, based on the size and shape of their prints.
When Sheriff Coffey and Hoss arrived with Ben bringing up the rear they had counted twenty-seven. On the way north Adam and Thomas again explained their theory. They followed the tracks to the edge of Ponderosa land, then further north into the flat, dry country between the Ponderosa and Reno. They were halfway to the city, with the sun edging toward late afternoon, when they started to hear singing, and hammers.
The closer they got, the more they heard. Saws joined the hammers, and the voices began to be defined as both male and female. They could hear children's laughter under the singing, and shouted orders piercing the air every once in a while. They rounded a wide, windswept outcropping of rock, coming to a stop at the top of a shallow rise, each horse coming abreast of the one beside it, as each rider stared in wonder at what was being built below.
Like the Hebrews building the Pyramids, Ben stared at a dusty, sun cracked plateau filled with men, women and children. Patched and stained canvas tents had been erected in a great circle. Cook fires dotted the city of tents and beyond it all, towering over anything else around it, were the ribs and bow of a giant ship.
Thomas squinted at the figure of a man close to the bow of the ship. He was dressed in long robes and had a turban on his head, and his back was crooked so that he walked partially bent over. He had a long, salt and pepper beard and carried a staff, leaning on it as he directed the workers.
"Is that a boat?" Adam asked.
"In the middle of the desert?" Joe asked.
"All those people, Pa. Not a one of 'em is light skinned. They must all be natives, or Mexicans or former slaves." Hoss said.
"That's the doggonedest thing I ever did see. All them people must be plum outta their minds." Roy said.
"They're using my timber to build a boat in the middle of the desert?" Ben growled.
Thomas sighed and nudged his horse forward, walking the animal slowly and calmly down the rise and toward the encampment. Ben, Roy, Hoss, Joe, Adam, Bucky and Jimmy watched him go, flabbergasted.
Thomas rode through the camp, drawing eyes and hushed voices as he went. The children followed after him like rats following a pied piper. The parade stopped when Thomas drew up his horse a few feet from the crooked old man, and stepped down. He crossed his arms over his chest, the reins pulled tight against his elbow.
"Noah."
The old man had his back to Thomas but he froze at the sound of his name, then turned slowly. His eyes narrowed, a pair of glasses perched on his nose. A peculiar sight for a man who couldn't read. The white haired man shuffled closer, his staff hitting the dirt under him and sending up puffs of powder with each step.
"T-thomas?!" The old man said, finally.
Thomas nodded, and turned. He waved his hand at the group of riders still sitting at the top of the rise and they rode down into the camp. When he turned back to the old man, he saw tears in his eyes.
Thomas shook his head. "Pappy, you've done it this time, you crazy old loon."