BEFORE:

Self-proclaimed rainmaker, B. Barnaby Garibaldi was a man who did not exist.

Tom Hunter and his young son, Jamie, however, were very real. They were the owners of the wagon with the marquee which announced the fictional man's arrival and presence, and traveling through treacherous wilderness, they were the people who came upon a wounded Adam and saved his life.

Jamie was a captivating boy, ardent and forthright, despite the acrimony of the world surrounding him, and a father who had chosen a life which promised great complication and difficulty. It would have been challenging for even the most capable of men to protect their child under such circumstances, but Tom Hunter was ill-equipped to protect his son from much of anything.

Traveling to towns afflicted by drought, he charged for his nostrums, prescribing seemingly worthless preparations to change elements of climate which were beyond anyone's control. At first glance, he was a fraud, a racketeer, a deceptive man who took advantage of desperate communities who had fallen on hard times. Upon a closer look, he appeared to be something else entirely.

Tom was a man who loved his son—there was no doubt about that. He was also a man who hid behind his boy, whether or not he truly intended to. Though intelligent and innovative, he lacked avenues to express himself to most, because Tom Hunter did not speak. He could not utter so much as a word.

Whether born unspeaking or otherwise, by the time Tom met Adam Cartwright, he was mute. At the age of nine, Jamie spoke both for his father, himself, and the fictitious rainmaker whose name was painted on their marquee. Tom may have been the man controlling the weather, but he depended on his boy to sell their services and respond to criticism. This was a role that Jamie took seriously as he stood stubbornly between his silent father and the rest of the world.

There were a lot of things about the boy that reminded Adam of himself. His love for and blind loyalty to his father was one; the responsibility he felt for protecting his pa was another; and the other thing was something left overlooked by most who did not take the time to see the child for what he really was. Jamie was a strange combination of old and young, a boy who had not been given the opportunity to have a true childhood. He had to think about things more deeply than his peers; he had to see things that society would prefer to believe all children were protected from: the rugged malice of men and hostility of strangers.

Jamie spoke well; he seemed a bit too intelligent for a kid his age; and he deserved a much different life than the one his father could currently provide. These were all things that upon finally waking, his fever gone, the pain of the bullet wounds he had sustained embedding itself into every fiber of his being, Adam had been slow to note. They developed over time as he first struggled to hold on to consciousness, then struggled to eat and drink, and then later to sit and stand. He wasn't certain when he had begun to take note of how the boy and his father interacted, but at some point he had as his body remained alive with pain, his heart longing for the presence of his own father to comfort him. His mind became engulfed with memories of the last time he had been injured, the horrifying aftermath of that fateful day and fall, his precarious balance deracinated by the sight of Laura and Will riding together toward the home he had been secretly building for his betrothed.

Pa had sat vigil at his bedside then, never straying for longer than a few minutes at a time. "You're going to be fine, Adam," he had said, his voice a maddening combination of gentle and firm as he leaned over the bed and stroked his son's hair. "Do you hear me? No matter what happens with your legs or anything else, I love you, and your brothers love you, and no matter what neither of those things will ever change."

Whether it was due to the immense pain, a sudden overbearing premonition that now his life was going to be drastically different than it once could have been, or the terrible culmination of both, Adam had burst into tears after the words had been said, and upon remembering them, he had wanted to cry again. But he did not. He had held tight to his emotions in the company of Jamie and Tom, not uttering so much as a groan or even a whimper no matter the intensity of his physical pain.

His composure did not go unnoticed by the boy, who was quick to give voice to anything he believed worthy of worship or praise. He called Adam a hero; he referred to him as "Marshal" too. Not Adam, or Mister Cartwright—even after Adam had found the strength to formally introduce himself— but "Marshal", as though the denomination had been assigned to him at birth. It hadn't been, of course; still, Adam wondered when exactly it had.

How had he been mistaken for a lawman? How could something so implausible be so readily believed? It took time for such questions to be answered and when they finally were a series of new ones took their place.

Jamie called Adam "Marshal" because Weston's badge had been pinned to the lapel of his shirt. Neither Weston nor the lawman's horse had been found alongside Adam and Bingo. They had been alone when Tom and Jamie came upon them.

If Jamie had been an adult, Adam may have pressed for more information, and he may have taken a firmer tone when he did. He did not have the heart to challenge a child's memory, or refute something the boy so fervently believed. He did not tell Jamie he was not a marshal; he did not advise the boy that his assumption about him being a hero was simply not true. It was more for the boy's benefit than his own, because he still remembered what it was like to be young, fiercely loving his own father while desperately wishing he was someone else. Someone more patient and less angry. Someone who always listened as well as they spoke. Someone who understood his oldest son more than Ben Cartwright pretended to.

There had been times in Adam's youth when he had found himself enthralled by the gallant nature of men whose lives differed greatly from that of his own father. There were occasions when he could have been accused of hero worship. As a boy, he was not actively seeking outside influences; as a man, he understood that noting and admiring the favorable traits of surrounding men was a part of growing up—not all the lessons or traits a boy would bring with him into manhood were modeled to him by his father. He himself had grown into an interesting mixture of things. He was courageous, loyal, intelligent, and perceptive; he was not afraid to stand alone in anything, and he never let the opinions of others influence his own. He had always been his own man, even more so than Pa had ever been, even more so now that he had left his family and Will was gone. For the time being he was alone.

Well, not quite.

He had Tom and Jamie in his immediate company, Eddie, Peggy, and Lil waiting for him in San Francisco, and the memory of Ed Payson appearing to him in a dream—or was it a nightmare? A premonition. Or both? Either way it did not matter, because either way his friend had been heard; his warning would be heeded.

Once healthy enough to travel, Adam intended to ditch Will's trail and return to San Francisco. He intended to make peace with and find comfort in the life he had found. In the meantime, he resigned himself to let go of the past, of his father and brothers, the mystery surrounding Ohio and his cousin Will. That was not to say such a thing was easy. It was not. Everything inside of him was demanding he follow Will, if not to discover the truth about Ohio and the distant past, then to learn more about recent events.

Will was the key to something—he was certain of that—a key to the figurative lockbox of memories Ben Cartwright carefully guarded and pretended did not exist, these faraway events directly influencing why he had chosen to protect his nephew over everyone else. But none of that mattered anymore, or at least it should not have.

But it did.

To a man such as Adam, who valued verity over all else, it always would. There would not be a day he would live without sadness and bewilderment regarding how things between him and his father had changed. He would continue to mourn the loss of what had been, and he would struggle to let go of what could have been had Pa, Will, and even himself been different men. Things did not have to be this way. Laura could have lived. Peggy could have never been neglected. And Adam could not have been forced to leave home in the manner he had. It was quite tragic when he thought about it—not that he really wanted to.

Still, rumination was a hard thing to avoid when a man did not have anything else at his disposal with which to distract himself. When he found himself injured, weary, and in the company of strangers.

"Tell me about the rain," Adam said. The words aimed at Jamie were a late-night bid to distract from the spasming pain engulfing his torso and his afflicting thoughts. Lying flat on the ground, his neck and the back of his head propped up by his bedroll, he looked between Tom and Jamie who sat in front of the campfire, the warm illumination casting light on a conversation they seemed to be engaged in by using various motions of their fingers and hands.

One hand falling on his lap, Jamie reached for a long stick with the other. Poking at the flaming logs, he shrugged. "We're in the business of atmospheric manipulation," he said.

To Adam, the explanation sounded a little too forced and rehearsed. "You make it rain," he simplified. "Yes, I know, but how do you do it?"

Frowning, Tom did not appear pleased by the question. Jamie stared at Adam momentarily, his eyes seemingly searching for something he couldn't immediately ascertain. Whether he should be trusted with such information perhaps? Or if he was truly interested in the topic at hand or merely pretending to be. Whatever had fostered the boy's hesitance was eventually silently rectified, as Jamie opened his mouth and finally answered the question.

"Me and Pa, we build a tower that reaches into the heavens, and…well, maybe it don't reach that far," Jamie qualified, taking note of his father's deepening frown. "But it is tall, eighteen feet, two inches exactly, taller than the height of four men stacked on top of each other."

"If the men are short."

Adam's interjection was ignored by the boy. "We set some explosions," he continued, carefully eyeing his father for any sign of disapproval. Seemingly seeing none, he looked at Adam once more. "Pa doesn't like me to talk about what with, and then we wait."

"For what?"

"Rain. It can take hours for it to come, or sometimes it can take days, but it always comes, because Pa knows exactly what to do."

"With the explosions and such."

"Yep."

"Atmospheric manipulation," Adam repeated. "I think, I understand."

"You do?"

"Sure, I do. You and your pa, you plant seeds for rain."

"Seeds?" Jamie laughed, his nose wrinkling. "Rain don't come from seeds."

"Are you sure? The way I see it, a man doesn't make corn grow from the ground, but he plows it and plants the seeds, he makes the environment tenable for such a thing." Adam nodded at the marquee on the side of the wagon. "You're the Doctor of Precipitative Practices," he read. "Master of the Atmospheric Arts. You give the sky what it needs to rain. You plant your seeds, increasing the likelihood of the result you want. I'm sure someday an educated man will think of a name for what that kind of experimenting is called; they'll publish books that contain the facts to back it up."

Grinning, Jamie's eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. "You do?" he asked earnestly.

Adam smiled, the boy's exuberance reminding him of Joe as a youth. "I do," he said, feeling a pang of homesickness. He wondered what his brothers were doing, what they thought of all that had happened. If they missed him as much as he sometimes missed them. If any of them were aware of how much the distance between them was going to dictate they miss.

Remaining at the Ponderosa beside their father together, Hoss and Joe would continue to work hard, joke, and fight. They would discover new love interests and hobbies, things that would bring them joy, things that would bring them pain. They would love and support and challenge each other. They would grow and change, experiencing success, trial, and the occasional failure, and Adam wouldn't be there with them as they did. He wouldn't be there for anything, because he did not belong alongside them anymore.

He belonged with Peggy and Eddie, and even Lil too. He belonged in that house full of women, a place where once healed enough he would return to and call home. He did not know what the future would hold once he got there, for work or anything else. He had always been worried about who he could be—or what he would be—without his father to hide behind, without his father's success and money to make him a bonafide suitor in the eyes of society, but suddenly that didn't seem to matter anymore.

Will had shot him and he could have died, but instead he lived. And though Ed had come to visit him in a dream, imploring him to open his eyes and survive, Adam lived because he wanted to; just as he had left his father's home, he would return to Eddie and Peggy for the same reason.

He would marry Eddie, and, with Lil's blessing, he would raise Peggy alongside her, and his family would remain unaware of these monumental changes in his life. They would remain unaware of anything he experienced after leaving his father's home. It was such an odd notion when he thought about it, feeling so illusory when considered outright. He and his father had engaged in an argument, then he had left, and then not a single person in his family—not his father, Hoss, or even Joe—had bothered to come after him. And so, finding himself alone, he had gone after someone else. He had gone after Will, and his cousin had tried to kill him for it.

"Marshal?" Jamie asked.

"Adam," Adam corrected absently. Misunderstanding or not, he had a name; he wanted Jamie to use it.

Jamie ignored the bid for amendment and continued as though it hadn't been said. "What do you think you'll do? When you're well, I mean. Are you gonna go after him?"

"Who?"

"The man that shot you."

Casting his son a disapproving glance, Tom extended his hand and clenched Jamie's shoulder, the gesture a clear instruction to abandon the sensitive topic at hand.

"It's okay," Adam said to Tom. "I don't mind." The boy didn't mean any harm by the question, and there was little purpose in avoiding the answer. He did not speak again until Tom nodded, signaling his agreement for the conversation to continue. "No, Jamie, I am not going to go after the man who shot me."

The boy's confusion was immediate and palpable. "Why not?"

"He already shot me once—twice," Adam corrected, taking stock of his current wounds. "I'm not interested in giving him the opportunity to do it again."

"But you have to go after him."

"I don't have to do anything."

"Yes," Jamie insisted. "You do. It's your job, ain't it, Marshal? To get the bad guys? If you don't get him then who will?"

Adam's lips curled into a small smile. "You know, I used to ask myself that same question. I used to think it was my job to defend everybody, make all wrongs right."

"You don't think that anymore?"

Shaking his head, Adam did not know how to respond. Some things were easier to think about than they were to speak of or do. He thought about Laura and how he had found her body after she died; the poor saloon gal Will had hired and then left dead in the tiny coastal town; and the countless other nameless and faceless women Weston had declared his cousin responsible for killing. How many were there? And how many more would there be if Will was not found and stopped?

Ed was right: walking away was going to be damn hard. He was going to fight himself every single step of the way. Ed had said to go back, not backwards; he had made it clear chasing Will or the past would only hold more pain.

But was that enough of a reason not to? He could not help the question as it awoke. He could neither answer it nor provide the earnest boy staring at him the explanation he so desperately craved.

"You should be more careful who your heroes are," Adam warned. "I could be anyone, you know. You don't know me. You think you do, because someone pinned a star on me, and I took two purposefully aimed bullets and then lived when I should have died. Neither of those are things you should admire. You don't want to be like me. If you want to look up to someone then look up to your pa. He's the one you should emulate. Think about everything he is. Look at everything he's done and can do, and he can't even talk. Me? I've been speaking for what feels like the entirety of my life, and half the things that come out of my mouth are wrong."

Jamie's eyes flickered, his conviction not wavering. "Then I can't trust what you say," he said simply. "Because you say you ain't a hero, but I know you are."

Adam nearly rolled his eyes. Honest disclosure and good advice would be lost on an audience so susceptible to blind glorification, it seemed. "What else do you know?" he asked, the question leaving his mouth almost absently. Maybe it would shape the conversation into one that would

prove how naive the boy really was. Maybe it would prove something else.

"More than you think. Do you miss him, Marshal?"

"Who?"

"Your pa."

Blinking, Adam cast the boy an uneasy gaze. "What?"

"The first time you came to, the one I know you don't remember, you was cryin' out for him. You was beggin' him to tell you the truth. Is that why you're so eager to push yourself around? Because your pa lied and then left you?"

Though Adam was certain the boy had not intended for his statements to be quite so ominous, it did not change the fact that they were as they hung in the darkness surrounding them. He looked at Tom, not able to hold the boy's prying gaze any longer. Surely, Jamie had not meant for his gaze to be quite so intrusive. He was just a kid. A little boy. What did he know about anything or even Adam himself? So what if he had cried out for his father? If captive to pain and fever, he had slurred a slurry of things he never should have shared? It did not mean anything. It did not make anything he had uttered true.

Or false.

"My pa didn't leave me. I left him. You said yourself you weren't going to trust me. I reckon you should be cynical of anything you heard me say since the day you came upon me."

"Why?"

"I just told you— "

"No," Jamie interrupted. "Why did you leave your pa?"

Tom extended his arm, his hand settling on his son's forearm as though to warn the boy to cease his probing. The man held Adam's gaze, his dark piercing eyes shining with a thousand unvoiced questions. Adam could not help wondering: if the man could speak, what would he say? Like his son, would he push for more information? Or would he ignore such things completely, because it was not wise to interject oneself in the affairs of a father and son—no matter their ages. Some things were better off left alone.

"I ran away once," Jamie said, taking hold of and diverting the conversation in a way only a child could. He looked at his father. "I did," he added remorsefully. "I was mad at you, sick of moving from place to place, sick of talkin' for you, havin' people mad at me or asking me to say the things they couldn't hear from you. I guess I wanted to be somebody else. I guess I wanted you to be somebody else too."

Though he did not say a word, Tom's feelings were made clear by his tender expression and the understanding glint in his eyes. Pulling Jamie closer, he enveloped him in a half-hug and held him tightly. Even to Adam, the father's silent response to his son's confession was clear: it's alright. I love you and I understand. I'll always understand you, even when it seems like I won't or don't.

Adam felt a surge of pain, his heart pulsating with a wave of overbearing grief. He had lived so he would heed Ed's advice. He would not go backwards, returning to Virginia City and his father and brothers, but, lord, in this moment he wanted to. He wanted to so badly. Suddenly, he was thinking of Pa again, how he had been in the time following his son's fateful fall. Presenting himself as a much-needed mixture of gentle and gruff, in his son's darkest moments, he had always known what to say to soothe. When Adam had become stubborn and dispirited, wielding an angry tongue, Ben had always known when to push him to change his attitude or frame of mind. He had always known what Adam needed to hear—right up until the moment he suddenly did not.

For Ben Cartwright, the wisdom to comfort an injured son came easily. It was what to do with one whose wounds could not be readily seen that was difficult. It was dealing with one who seemed intent to permanently misbehave that was downright impossible.

Adam had never been afraid of his father. Still, as a boy he had learned to be direct with the things he felt could be fixed or changed, and he had learned to hide those he knew could not. Pa was good with words. He was well spoken and he knew a lot about a great many things, but there were things he knew little about and others he would never understand. He was different—he acted and expressed himself differently—when faced with something he refused to appreciate or recognize, or something he flat out did not want to see.

And really wasn't that the problem between them? Adam thought sadly. The thing that was always destined to tear them apart? He had always embraced truth at all cost, and Pa was sometimes selective about what he wanted to know and see.

Ben had never really understood his oldest son. He had loved him, wanted him close, of course, and those things were fine when Adam had been a young man, adolescent, or little boy. But they weren't fine now. In fact, they had not been fine for years. Deep down, Adam had known that, and he knew Pa could have known it too. But Pa hadn't wanted to know it; he hadn't wanted to see it, and so things had gone the way they had.

Ben could not see his son for who he was. He had no concept of what he really needed, and that was why things would have always ended up like this. The events and conversation leading up to it might have been different, but the result would have always been the same. One day, one way or another, Adam would have left his father's home no matter what, and now that he finally had…

"I came back, though," Jamie whispered as he leaned contentedly into his father's embrace.

I never will, Adam silently vowed. There simply was nothing that could ever happen that would make him do such a thing.

Adam stayed in the company of the Rainmaker and his son until he was well enough to sit in the saddle without falling off. Jamie tried his best to convince him to remain in their company for a while longer. Tom's sentiments regarding Adam's intentions to leave were made obvious by his disapproving stare; he thought Adam was rushing his journey, embarking on a road he was not yet well enough to negotiate on his own.

Mounting Bingo with shaking legs, Adam sat atop his ride feeling lightheaded and weak. His torso still protested movement, engulfing him in a ferocious and fiery pain which declared his trip would neither be easy nor enjoyable. It would have been wiser and safer to remain with his current company a bit longer. But he would not be deterred. He did not want to delay the inevitable any longer. Heeding Ed's warning, he would go back—not backwards but back. He would not waste any more time than he already had.

He was tired of running away from the pain of the fallout with the family he had been born into; he was tired of allowing his apprehension to run rampant, keeping him away from the new family he had found. And beyond that, he was just plain tired. He was ready and willing to find himself sleeping in Eddie's bed once more, anxious and eager to see Peggy again.

Nudging Bingo forward, he guided his mount to stride in the direction that would finally lead them to the place they would call home. They had not gone far before he was compelled by a prodigious conviction, a profusely besetting thought. Going back to San Francisco was the wrong thing to do. Abandoning Will's trail was a terrible mistake.

There ain't no point in chasing after ghosts of the past, do you hear me? Ed Payson's words echoed in his head, rising from his memory to contend with his doubt.

Ed, Adam closed his eyes and prayed. You were my friend, and I trust you, but you better be right. God help me, this better be the right thing to do.

It wasn't. He knew that then. He did not know why he knew it, though, which is why he chose to trust Ed over himself.

Ushering Bingo forward, he kept going, despite how much he wanted to stop and turn around. No matter how horrifyingly wrong it felt. It was all wrong, every last bit of it. Adam was doubtless, choosing the road to San Francisco over Will's trail was without question, the wrong thing to do. But he did it anyway, in the moment not realizing what it would mean, not understanding what it would lead him to do, not knowing how much he would eventually long to be allowed to take the fateful decision back. To be allowed to go back to this moment and take the path with the most resistance, following Will down the bleak road his cousin had forged. He went to San Francisco anyway, not knowing how much he would want to be allowed to go back.

He just wanted to go back.

TBC