7
They piled themselves and the luggage into the carriage and deposited their bags with a clerk, showing their tickets and indicating which train the baggage should go to. Ben asked if Adam had been there to drop off his luggage and he got confirmation that soothed some of the fear and anger.
He took his family to the restaurant, hoping that Adam was there, sitting at the table, wine already poured, wondering why his family was so late. Ben looked forward to dressing his son down, just a little, if only to get the irritation out of his system. Before they could get in the doors a young man ran up to him. The little boy couldn't have been more than nine. He carried a pound of newspapers under one arm, but what he had for Ben was much smaller.
The boy looked around the group, as if he were counting in his head, then he walked up to Ben and saluted him, waiting until Ben responded to the gesture. "For you, sir." The boy shouted, handing over the small trinket. When his palm was empty the boy stood waiting. Ben put a nickel in his hand, and the boy ran off.
"I don't know much about newsies, but that little guy has a lot to learn…" Joe muttered.
Ben looked down at the small tin horse. It had been pressed over an iron mold to look like it had a saddle, stirrups and bridle, and the painting marked the horse as United States Cavalry. It was the cheapest army mount Ben had ever bought. The newspapers the boy was carrying were worth more than the five cent tip Ben had given the boy.
Joe was right, it wasn't something a newsie would waste time selling, unless he had been given even more money to do it.
"Someone paid that boy to give me this horse." Ben said.
"Yeah...that was weird." Hoss agreed, his hand resting over his belly. Ben suspected his boy was hungry and he had every reason to be.
"You..you boys take your sister and Sarah, go on inside and order us something to drink. I'm going to...run a quick errand."
"Pa...one of us can go with you." Joe started, both he and Hoss catching on to the change in the air.
"No...no you boys, go on in there. I'll be back in a jiffy." Ben insisted, his eyes hardening as he met his boys' faces.
The minute he walked away, Elizabeth started calling for him, but Ben did his best to close his ears to it. If only for the moment. He walked the few blocks to the police station but was told that the detective had gone home for the night. Instead he found the young patrolman, O'Hara working a double shift. The boy looked strained and tired, but he was respectful and eager when Ben asked to speak to him.
"I...I wanted to...well, first of all. That sailor you went after, did you find him?"
The boy looked down, then to the side, then straight at Ben's face. "No, sir. I didn't. But I planned to go out to the inn in a few hours, when such a man might be...ah...patrollin', ya know."
Ben nodded and tried to smile but it was a tired gesture at best.
"Listen...I know...that I might have a reputation here for being somewhat peculiar, but I need you to listen to me and take me very seriously now." Ben held up the small toy. "This was given to me, out of the blue, only ten minutes ago by a young newspaper hocker. I don't know him, he doesn't know me. But he clearly recognized me, and my sons, and he gave me this horse, as if someone had instructed him to do so."
The young man looked at him with a raised brow, then took in a deep breath and gingerly took the horse. Ben sighed, beginning to understand that he was talking to a brick wall with preconceived notions.
He put his hands on his hips and looked away, but instead of facetious comments, he got silence in return. When Ben looked back he realized the young policeman was inspecting the toy. He'd turned it over, looking at the belly of the animal where the tin pieces met. After holding the horse, belly up, to the light, the young man got a letter opener and slid it between the two edges. He pried the tin apart and pulled out a rolled piece of paper.
Ben took it from the young man, barely whispering a "please". There was an address on the paper. Ben turned and started toward the door that led to the street.
"Mr. Cartwright!" O'Hara called. "That's evidence, you can't take it out of here."
Ben slowed but he didn't stop.
"Mr. Cartwright!"
Ben went out to the street and hailed a cab. He had read the address to the cabby and the horses had begun to pull away when they gave distressing whickers, and the cab jolted hard.
"Mr. Cartwright! You can't take that horse. I'll need you to hand it over, and that piece of paper, too." O'Hara said, his hand sticking into the carriage.
Ben plunked the horse and paper down and called for the driver to go, leaving O'Hara standing on the sidewalk, staring after the cab.
The address he was taken to was one of a hundred public docks. This one held a fish market, a ship's chandlery, and a half-dozen fishing boats. The boats had candles lit in the cabins, but no life or noise coming from onboard. The fishery stank of day old catch, and the chandlery was locked up tight for the day. The sun had set in the time it took Ben to get to the docks, and he squinted at the darkness.
"Adam!"
Ben waited and listened, searching the shadows for movement. He scanned the decks of each of the boats, and tried to see into the gloom of the fishery stalls.
"Adam!"
Ben ran down the length of the pier, testing every door that he came to, and peering into every darkened corner.
He was close to the end of the pier when he heard sputtering and splashing.
"Adam!"
Ben jogged back toward the shore, straining for the sounds, until he heard a cough, a gasp for air, and his son, calling his name. Even then it sounded more like a gurgle than call.
Ben ran to the boardwalk, then dove down into the sand, struggling through the reeds and loose dirt, and splashing into the freezing water. "Adam!"
"Pa-"
Ben could only see the top of Adam's head in the building surf. The tide was coming in, and despite Ben knowing that his boy was an excellent swimmer, Adam didn't appear to be able to keep his head above the surface. He was choking, coughing, struggling to breathe.
Ben took a few seconds to rip his coat and vest off, tossed his hat to the sand, then charged into the water. He swam when he could no longer keep his feet, feeling the pull of the waves as they swept back to sea, then the push as they came back to the shore. Each wave pulled Adam under before he was able to come back up sputtering and desperately reaching for that next breath.
Ben reached Adam, got his hand behind Adam's head and pushed upward. Adam's head came out of the water and he gasped hard and loud for breath, spitting up salt water, then gasping for more air.
"My hands...tied to the...pier."
Ben slid his hands down Adam's arms, found the knots underwater. They were tied so tightly they felt like they'd turned to stone. Ben dove, digging hard with his hands and diving straight down, holding the rope until he found where it was connected to a horizontal strut on one of the pier supports. The knots there were just as tight, Adam's desperate struggle to survive, making it all the more impossible for Ben to free him.
When Ben reached the surface he had to hold Adam's head up, straining his boy's arms, but buying him oxygen.
"Have you got a knife?" Ben demanded. Adam shook his head, unable to speak for the coughing. Ben searched the hulls of the boats, the smooth wood of the pier supports, spitting out mouthfuls of ocean water, and struggling to keep himself at the surface even while fighting the waves. "I'll get one. I'll get one." Ben promised, kicking tiring legs, and flailing his arms as he headed back for the shore.
The water was cold. He couldn't imagine how long Adam had been in the water, how long he'd been struggling to get free, to breathe. Ben already felt exhaustion creeping in, he couldn't expect Adam to last much longer.
When he got to the shore he tripped on the sand and went down hard on his hands and knees. His left hand fell on his coat, and the hard lump of his wallet. Then Ben remembered where he had decided to put Adam's gift. A gift that had hard, sharp flanges on it. Flanges that just might be enough to fray a rope with a great deal of tension on it.
Ben dug his wallet out, yanked the amber stone off, bent the flanges open and charged back into the water, holding the ancient tree resin so tightly that one of the flanges cut into his palm. He got to Adam, pushed him above water level long enough for him to breathe again, then dove down and started worrying at the rope. Ben felt the first strand snap, then the second. His son responded, kicking hard with his legs and giving a last ditch effort to pull free before the final strands snapped and Adam kicked back to the surface.
Ben grabbed his boy and stroked desperately for the shore, dragging Adam into the sand and laying him on his side before Ben went after the knot still closed tightly around Adam's wrists. His boy was breathing, weak and exhausted, but he was breathing. Ben broke fingernails trying to get at the knots. He snapped one of the flanges off the amber stone before the rope finally came free and he was able to rip it away from Adam's wrists.
Ben pulled Adam up to a sitting position, wrapping his coat around his oldest boy. He hadn't noticed the fishermen, hadn't realized they were there, but no sooner had he wrapped his coat around Adam, then a blanket was wrapped around his own shoulders. A second blanket descended toward Adam's head and Ben helped the bearer wrap it around his boy. The fishermen spoke Italian, spitting consonants rapidly at one another as they collected Ben's things, and guided both men to their feet, walking them back onto the pier.
They were helped onto the rolling deck of one of the boats and guided into a warm galley. Adam was given a bucket, a towel, and instructions he couldn't understand. It wasn't until the suntanned, gray haired man mimed pulling his clothes off that Adam understood, and nodded wordlessly. He couldn't have pulled his own hat off, and Ben stood, helping him pull off the wet clothes.
Ben was given the same direction, and he tried to dissuade the older man, who was likely the captain of the vessel, but he was given no quarter, and finally gave in. He was ordered to sit next to his son, wrapped head to toe in blankets. Cups of coffee were pressed into their hands and their clothes were taken away.
Adam's coughing fits produced salt water, amongst other things, that ended up in the bucket at his feet. When the sickness finally passed, Adam was pale and trembling. His eyes were watering and his nose was running, but he sat up under his own power and leaned back against the bulkhead, pulling the blanket tighter around his shoulders, his hands crossed over each other, holding on to opposite sides of the blanket.
Ben waited for Adam to recover, one of his hands resting on Adam's shoulder. Adam's throat felt raw, his stomach burned, his head was pounding from the pressure of emptying salt water out of his belly, and being without oxygen for so long. His wrists and shoulders ached from the tension the rope had put on them, and whatever he had been drugged with was still coursing through his system, although far less potent than it had been before.
The combination of discomforts made him feel like he'd willingly laid down in front of a stampeding herd of cattle and begged them to run him over. When Ben asked how he was, Adam croaked out exactly what he'd been thinking, and would have smirked at his father's gentle laughter, except that it hurt too much.
Their rescuers and hosts came back onto the boat along with a familiar redheaded patrolman. O'Hara doffed his cap out of habit as he stepped down into the galley. He stood for a moment, looking the two men over before he said, "I followed the note."
Ben nodded tiredly, sighing and closing his eyes. "Someone tied my son to the pier out there, and tried to drown him to death."
"They drugged me first." Adam said.
Ben sat forward, studying his son.
"I was grading those essays. One of the boys had used a tavern and inn just down the road. When I got there, the kid was there. Told me his father owned the inn, and they offered me a drink. A toast to the end of the class." Adam looked chagrined as he explained.
"Would that be the same tavern and inn where-" O'Hara asked.
"More than likely." Ben grumbled. "Only instead of trying to kidnap my boy, this time, they drugged him and tried to kill him."
"Will you swear out a statement then, Mr. Cartwright?"
Both Ben and Adam agreed at the same time.
"What are the names of the father and son, then?" O'Hara asked, pulling a small pad of paper from his pocket, and jotting the names down as Adam told them. He also gave the address of the tavern. "I'll look into it, then. You two gentlemen should come by the police station for those statements."
"We two gentlemen, and the rest of my family, are catching the morning train to Reno." Ben said. "We'll send the statements by post. If you don't mind, I'd like to get my family back home before I lose anyone else. Speaking of which, I left your brothers and sister with Sarah at that restaurant. We'd best be getting back to them."
Adam kept his father from standing. "Pa...our clothes."
"Oh...oh. Well..I don't know what those men could have done with them. Could...Mr. O'Hara, would you be good enough to get us some clothes please."
The mick raised a brow and noted that this was the second time in as many days that Ben Cartwright had lost his clothing. Ben gave him a perturbed look but chose not say anything. Their clothes were brought back, presently, a sight dryer and warmer than they had been. Ben and Adam dressed and Ben guided his son off the boat. He noted the name of the vessel and thanked the fishermen, promising them, and himself, that he would find a way to reward them.