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The handle itself was hanging loosely from the door and the door was unlatched. He burst into the room, drawing his gun, but the room was dark and smelled of kerosene.
Ben ran into the hallway and shouted for help, and for someone to call the police. He went to the room next to his and pounded on the door until a harried little man answered.
"I need your lantern, please. The one by your bedside, quickly!"
"I beg your pardon!?"
"Your lantern! How long have you been in this room?"
"I just got in!" The man protested, pointing at the still unopened bags sitting by the bed. "This is preposterous, why must I-"
"Listen, my family was in the next room. Something has happened to them, and the room smells of kerosene. If I light a match in those fumes I could well start a fire. I need you to hold your lamp outside the door so that I can see to get to the window. Please, sir!"
The man was reluctant, and he groused while he did it, but Ben walked away when he saw the man reach for the lit lantern by his bedside. Ben ignored the disarray of debris and unidentified lumps on the floor, storming into the room and opening the window. The fresh air flooded into the room, taking some of the fumes with it, and Ben put his elbow over his mouth as he left again.
"Please, please leave your lamp with me, go downstairs and ask the clerk to get the police. And we may need a doctor."
The businessman nodded, clearly disturbed by what he had seen of the mess, and went tearing down the stairs.
Ben returned to the room cautiously, holding a kerchief over his mouth and nose. He heard a soft moan and followed the sound to the other side of one of the beds. Hoss was there. He looked like he'd been in a professional ring fight, and his head was bloodied. Most of the kerosene smell and glass was coming from his middle son and Ben put the light on the other side of the room before he turned up the wick and went to Hoss.
"Hoss...be careful. Go slow."
"Pa...they got 'er, they got 'Lizabeth."
Ben couldn't breathe for a moment. "What?"
Hoss was fighting tears that might have been caused by the physical pain, struggling to get up, trying to keep fighting the fight he'd lost. "There was five of 'em. One of 'em was dressed like a waiter. They busted in here with the food, pulled guns, and told us to hand 'er over. We fought 'em, Pa. We fought hard."
"Where's Joseph?" Ben asked, his throat so tight the sounds barely escaped.
Hoss looked around, his hand covering the bleeding wound on his head. "He must'a gone with 'em."
A moment later the businessman was back, and he had the clerk with him. The room became a hive of activity, filling with well-meaning men that could do nothing to help him. They got Hoss up onto one of the beds and Ben hurriedly told the clerk that he needed the police that very moment, that his daughter had been kidnapped, and his youngest son was with her, and both were in grave danger.
"That boy." Ben said the clerk. "That boy you described, he's a part of it. I need you to tell the police exactly what you told me about him, and remember every possible detail. I'm going out to look for my children."
Ben was gone before the doctor even arrived.
He followed the path that the kidnappers had to have taken for the clerk not to have seen them. He figured the sounds of the party covered the kidnapping. Behind the hotel he found a confusion of prints and evidence that a buggy and horse team had been parked behind the hotel for a while. He found the burnt out stub of a cigar near where the buggy had waited and he put it in his pocket. He followed the buggy until it turned north onto a busy street, and the wheel tracks became lost in the melee of heavy traffic.
There was a milliner's shop to his left, closed for the evening, and a restaurant to his right. Ben ran into the restaurant and asked if anyone had seen a buggy with two horses, carrying six or seven men and a baby girl, had passed by.
He got stares, comments, and no useful information. Ben crossed the busy street and asked the same questions at the saloon across the way. He moved north up the street, asking at every business until a saloon girl told him she had seen the rig he was talking about.
"Mostly I heard it, mister. That baby girl was screamin' and screamin'! They turned down that alley while I was takin' a breather."
"Down the alley? And did they stay on that road, or turn again?"
The girl shrugged at him.
Ben tore out of the saloon and went to the alley where he found the wheel tracks again and followed them. They were heading west, toward the shore, and in the general direction that the cabby had taken them the first time. Ben began to put the evidence together. Once more the wheel tracks turned back onto a busier road and Ben again went door to door begging for information.
The men and women on that block weren't as free with information and since Ben had worn better clothes that day, they took him for a man with money, money that could be traded for what he needed. Rather than start a barroom brawl in every establishment, Ben shelled out a few dollars here or there.
A man well into his cups pointed Ben toward the docks and Ben took off. He found another alley, more tracks, and a bonnet.
The bonnet was covered in mud but free of tears, rips, or any sign of trauma. When Elizabeth was upset she tended to rip things off her head, unwilling to put up with undue confinement. He prayed that Elizabeth had thrown the bonnet out of the buggy, or maybe even Joe, and continued to follow the tracks in a zigzag pattern, heading gradually west and north. He was practically to the cattle yards where his own herds had been kept after past trail drives, when he was approached by a lady of the night.
She was pale, she looked cold, and she had too much makeup on for how light her skin was. She tried her pitch, but Ben cut her off, asking instead if she had seen the buggy.
"Shore, sugah. Come right through he-yah, and headed up north. But they was all menfolk in that buggy. Don't tell me you prefer them instead'a me." She crooned.
"Young lady, I prefer that my infant daughter and son are not harmed." Ben said forcefully. "If you want to avoid being jailed for propositioning me you will report what you saw to the police and send them here."
The girl's jaw fell open and she stared at him a moment then said, "What do I get out of it?"
Ben turned on her fast enough that she jumped and backed away. He could have only imagined how his face looked based on the girl's reaction.
"I'll go now, Mistah." She said in a horrified whisper before running off. Ben turned in the direction she had pointed him and stormed on.
The surroundings were familiar, not just because he had done business here before, but because this was where the cabby took them. Ben still had the name of the hotel on a piece of paper in his pocket. When he arrived he found it was an old sea tavern, sitting out on the docks. There might have been rooms to let on the second floor, and the name included the word "Inn".
He had stayed in places like this ages ago. Before his children were born, before he had even met his first wife. Dressed as he was, Ben knew he was sorely out of place. He watched the tavern for a few minutes before he spotted a man leaving, wearing a peacoat and watch cap. The man was about his size, if shorter.
Ben approached him, gave the man five dollars and his own hat and coat, and pulled on the whiskey stained peacoat and watch cap. Ben stooped and got some mud from the street, streaking it over his face and into his beard, before he pulled the watch cap down low, stuffed his hands into the grimey pockets and sauntered into the tavern.
Not a soul looked up. When Ben walked to the bar and ordered a jigger of rum, there were no questioning glances from the tender or any of the other men in the place. Ben took his drink and found a quiet corner to sit in.
He watched the tavern for an hour, sipping at his rum and trying to look like he was already drunker than a skunk. He watched one kid in particular. He was young and was there to serve drinks and mop the floor, but he spent more than the reasonable amount of time going up and down the stairs to the rooms above.
Ben swayed his way to the bar and asked about renting a room for the night.
"No rooms, bum. Get lost."
"What d'ya mean, no rooms! You gotta have a room."
"No...rooms." The man said. "Sides, the way you been nursing that jigger, you ain't got the money to pay for one no how."
"I got money. Lots of money." Ben insisted. The tender put his hand out.
"I ain't got it with me. There's thieves about."
"Get lost." The man said, taking Ben's empty jigger, and moving down the bar to tend to someone else.
Ben went out to the short pier jutting out toward the water. A rough built outhouse stood there and the stink of what it left in the water clung to the pier supports. From there he could see a single light lit on the second story. He watched two shadows moving back and forth. One walked with a stiff gate, and the other hurried about, head bowed or nodding.
Ben bided his time, knowing that at least one of them would have to come out to use the outhouse. Even if it was only to empty a chamber pot or be rid of a diaper. When the young boy who worked in the tavern left through the back door carrying a bucket that he held as far from himself as he could get it, Ben waited for him to empty the load, before he moved in behind the boy, slipped an arm around his throat, and his hand over the boy's mouth and dragged him deep into the shadows.
"I want you to understand that the only thing keeping you alive right now is that I want answers. You give them to me quickly and quietly and you will go on living. If you lie…" Ben tightened his grip, "Even once...I will squeeze the life out of you slowly and painfully. Do you understand?"
Ben felt the boy nod. He could also feel him trembling from his head to his toes, and his breath coming so rapidly through his nose, Ben thought he might faint from hyperventilation.
"You're going to nod or shake your head, understand?"
The boy nodded.
"Are there a group of men staying up in that second story room?"
The boy nodded.
"Do they have a baby girl with them?"
The boy nodded again.
Ben felt his heart tumble in his chest and was suddenly afraid that he was about to faint. "Is she alright?" he asked, desperately trying to shake the fear out of his voice.
The boy didn't seem to notice. He nodded.
"And the man with the green coat and the tan hat."
The boy wasn't in the least surprised by the description. He nodded.
"Is he alright?"
The boy shook his head.
"Is he alive?" Ben said, shaking the boy.
The boy nodded his head.
"Are you one of them?" Ben asked.
The boy panicked for a moment, like he didn't know how to answer.
"Are you one of them? Are you a part of their plan?"
He started shaking his head and Ben could hear and feel him weeping against his hand.
"Now listen, you're going to save your own life now. Are you ready to do that?" Ben asked.
The boy nodded hastily, wriggling in his grasp.
"Do you know where the stock yards are?"
Again he got a nod.
"You're going to go there, and you're going to wait for the police to arrive, and then you are going to lead them back here and you're going to tell them...exactly...what's going on. Do you understand?"
The boy was quivering so hard that all Ben got was a whimper. Ben shook him and asked the same question again, and this time he got a nod.
"Good. Now run."
Ben let the boy go, but to his astonishment the young man only skittered away a few steps before he turned.
"Who are you?" The boy asked, his hand over his throat, while the other still carried the bucket.
"Benjamin Franklin Cartwright." Ben hissed.
Author's Note: I took liberty with Ben's middle name. My internet search didn't turn up a middle name so if he was ever given one, I'd love to know it. I will say, given my fondness for Ben Franklin, I figured it was a suitable name for our favorite patriarch.
Onward!