BEFORE:

"Don't run."

Holding his gun extended and ready with one hand, Adam Cartwright lifted an authoritative index finger with his second as he waited momentarily, silently assessing the odds of his direction being heeded.

It was not.

Decidedly cagey, his aged body shaking in a manner that could only be described as quivering, the ragtag elderly man looked between Adam and the outstretched gun. Then he began to run in the opposite direction. His strides were more shuffles than steps, more slow than fast.

"God-damn it," Adam sighed, his shoulders sinking beneath the weight of his exhaustion and disappointment. "There's nowhere to go," he told the man, his voice strong and sturdy, his eyes drifting to the open landscape which at the present moment only seemed to contain the two of them. "You don't have a gun," he added, lowering his own and securing it in his holster. "Horses are in the opposite direction of where you're headed."

The old man was not going to get far. He whistled when he talked, hobbled when he walked, and tripped and fell hard on the ground when he tried to run. Adam cringed painfully as the man groaned, laying in an immobile pile no more than a dozen paces from where he began.

"Told you not to run."

"I hadta."

Approaching the fallen man, Adam peered down at him, his eyebrows rising beneath the rim of his black hat. "Why?"

"The same reason you had to chase me, just born that way, I suppose."

It was as good of an explanation as any—good enough for Adam, at least. "Get up."

"I don't know if I can."

"Did you hurt yourself?"

"No."

"Do you usually have trouble getting to your feet?"

"Not particularly."

"Then why can't you get up?"

"I guess, I just don't want to," the man said thoughtfully. "Why don't you tell me, Marshal, what is the point of such a thing anyway? Of me running from you at my age, and you chasin' me at yours?"

"It's my job to chase you, and it's in your nature to run away, or so you say. Hard thing to believe at the moment, though, considering you can't seem to find the desire to stand back up."

"Damn fool's errand at my age." The man extended a shaking hand. "I think I will take that help, if'n you're still obliging."

Adam took hold of the man's hand and pulled him to his feet, a task that left them both stifling groans. The man was heavier than he looked, awkward to assist without proper leverage, something made impossible to obtain by the rigid way in which he held himself. Atrophy that accompanied extended age had rendered the man unable to stand up straight; he held himself in a cowering, bended stance, his vertebrae protruding through the material of his shirt to form a crooked line down his back.

Holding tight to the man's elbow to prevent a subsequent fall, Adam felt slightly bad. It was obvious the fall had impaired him; his body would demand a hefty price for his attempt to run. Adam wished his original warning had been heeded. The man was in for a painful journey. The short walk back to the small cabin hidden in the midst of a thicket of trees was not going to be easy for him.

The morning air was already hot and humid, making the rising temperature feel much higher than it actually was. The trees, sporadically stationed at first, then becoming more and more prevalent with each passing step, seemed to carry a foreboding energy; their branchless trunks soared into the air, reaching incredible heights at which they extended their lush branches full of leaves.

Trees were different in the south, somewhere in the depths of Adam's memory, lingering deep in the library of his experiences, it was a fact that had been long known. It was only recently he had become reacquainted with this knowledge. Just as soon as it had been recalled, he had resigned himself to ignoring it again. If the trees surrounding him were to be considered strange, then it was because his basis of comparison invited such a vivid, monumental picture: the land of extensive and soaring pines that had surrounded him in his youth. Months could pass without Adam devoting so much as a thought to that place now. It had been longer still since the day he had contemplated either his father or his brothers. He had his own family now, his own priorities and worries, and not a single one of them had to do with the life he had left behind. Five years ago, he had been nothing more than a son of his father, and now he was the father of two sons and a daughter. Before he had lived a completely different life, and now he lived this one.

"If I was a horse you'd shoot me," the man said as he hobbled along with Adam's assistance. "Put me out of my misery instead of traipsing me around."

"I'm not going to shoot you."

"Why not? I've outrun my usefulness."

Tilting his head, Adam smiled wryly. "Nah, you're plenty useful."

"What for?"

"Once we get back to your place, you'll see."

"I don't reckon I like the sound of that. Supposen, I don't take well to your intentions, what happens then?"

"Well, considering the current state of affairs, I don't reckon you have much of a choice."

"You gonna shoot me?"

"I already said I wasn't going to."

"Then what are you gonna do?"

Adam shook his head. He had not decided yet.

The old man was nothing more than a harmless rounder by the name of Abraham Merrill. Though the man had been rough and tough in his much younger years, the only interesting thing about him now was his last name.

"I have some questions to ask about your boy," Adam said.

"Which one?"

"Wallace."

"Wally? What has that fool boy done?"

"I think the list of what he has not done would be shorter."

"Hmm," Abraham mused as he hobbled along. "That's probably true. Dang boy was trouble from the start. Just born wrong, I suppose."

"What makes you say that?"

"He killed his momma, you know."

Adam shook his head. He had not known that. "How?" he carefully asked.

"Born wrong," Abraham repeated as though it was enough to explain everything.

And for Adam it almost was. "What you mean to say is she died in childbirth," he said flatly.

"What I mean to say is that the boy killed her. Refused to come out of her belly for nearly three days, got himself wedged in tight and refused to budge. It was only after his momma died that he finally came out, or, I guess, the doc deemed it best to get him out with more aggressive means."

"I fail to see how any of that was your son's fault."

Adam thought of Eddie, the mother of his sons, a woman who like Wallace Merrill's mother—-and Adam's own—experienced great difficulties birthing children. Like Charlie before him, Noah's entrance into the world had been long and incredibly difficult. Unlike his older brother who had survived the experience seemingly unscathed, it was the younger one who had been destined to suffer the impediments accompanying such a thing. Charlie had been lucky; the meaning of luck where Noah was concerned was still being defined. Noah neither breathed nor cried when finally pulled from his mother's womb. In the days, weeks, and months that would follow, he would remain painfully silent, uttering not so much as a gurgle, laugh, or a cry. It seemed the boy had been born a mute. Though the specific reasons for such a thing were easily speculated upon and endlessly unverifiable, Eddie blamed herself for their son's affliction. Adam blamed no one at all.

Like the birth of his first child, he had not been present for his second son's arrival. News of Eddie's difficulty was information relegated to him second-hand, alongside a hefty talking to from Lil and strict directions that he was to spend his nights at home sleeping in a different bed in a different room than that of his wife. The instruction had been born from fear, the horrible knowledge that this time around, the lives of both baby and mother had almost been lost. If Lil's first warning had not been headed then the subsequent one would be. This could not happen again. Eddie could not bear another child, because Adam, his children, and mother-in-law could not bear to lose her.

"Then who's fault was it?" Abraham asked, seeming genuinely interested to hear the answer of the question.

"I don't know." Tilting his head, Adam adjusted his grip on the old man. "I'm thinking it's probably yours."

"Mine?"

"After all, Wallace is the youngest of your seven sons. Maybe if you would have exercised a little restraint…"

"Restraint!"

"…then maybe there wouldn't have been a Wallace Merrill walking this earth. Your wife would have lived; I wouldn't have had to chase him, and you wouldn't have had to run away, fall down, and then count on me to escort you back to where I first came upon you." Adam shook his head and sighed in an exaggerated manner. "Man, what's an old fool like you doing running away, anyhow? You had to have known it was going to do more harm than good."

"Hadta."

"I know, you were just born that way."

Finally reaching the cabin, Adam escorted Abraham inside and settled him in a chair in front of a diminutive table. The cabin was as dilapidated as the man who owned it, the inside of it composed of only one room. There was a cot in one corner, a paltry fireplace in another, one corner was empty, and the other contained the table at which the man now sat. Despite the meager furnishings, the room felt overly-full, too small, the air inside of it too thick and hot—just like the weather outside.

"You gonna tell me why you're after my boy?" Abraham asked.

Adam appraised the man. "Are you going to tell me why you really ran away from me?" he countered.

The tone of their conversation was much different now, in here, where the man was seated in a chair that he would not and could not leave. Where Adam could stand, holding himself at his full height, his thumbs hooked on his gun belt, bringing unconscious attention to his weapon as he looked down upon the man and awaited an answer. He would not volunteer any information himself, that was a lesson long learned by now. If a man wanted answers, then he had to be the one to ask the questions; he had to ignore any distractions in the form of inquiries made by the party in question. Sometimes, if the tone was different, the situation a glaring departure from the one he was currently in, he did not mind giving up a detail or two, something to make the man in front of him believe he was less intimidating and habile than he was. To make them believe he did not have them figured out, or better yet: that he was someone to be trusted rather than feared.

"I already told ya," Abraham said.

"Alright, then tell me something new."

"Like what?"

"Like the whereabouts of your boy. When's the last time you saw him? Where was he headed when he left this place?"

Abraham cast him a skeptical gaze. "You know for a fact he was here?"

"I do."

"Nah, you don't. If you did then you wouldn't be asking. You'd be telling instead."

"Oh, I can start telling," Adam warned, his voice carrying a sudden edge. "I can start doing all sorts of things."

Abraham appraised Adam, his eyes searching for something, verification of the threat, or something else. "You want me to think you'll hurt me if'n I don't tell you what you want to hear, but you ain't the type. I may have been born to flee, and my boy may have been born bad, but you were born a little too good."

"What makes you say that?"

"You warned me not to run, and when I did, you didn't shoot me. When I fell on the ground, you helped me up. You could have left me there, used the situation to get what you wanted outta me. That's what my Wally would have done, anyways. He would have used my misfortune against me; he would have used it to benefit himself. You didn't. You helped me up, brought me back here. You ain't as hardhearted as you want to be. You ain't as threatening as you pretend you are." Abraham nodded at the tarnished star pinned upon Adam's breast. "What's a man like you want with something like that anyways?"

"This isn't about me."

"Ain't it? Marshal, my son has been a wanted man since before he became of age. You ain't the first lawman to come looking for him, but something about the glint in your eyes declares you intend to be the last. Something about the way you're standing in front of me now, asking rather than telling makes me think you're a man who's gotten used to taking responsibility for and righting other people's wrongs. You don't want to, but you have to."

Adam refused to comment upon such things. "Where is Wallace?" he asked firmly. "When did he leave, and where did he go?"

Abraham was silent for a moment. Looking at his crooked fingers, he tented them on his lap. "He left nearly a week ago," he finally admitted. "Headed North. I'm not sure where, or why. He was careful not to say, at least to me. He said you were after him. That you were gonna show up looking for him. That's why I ran when I saw you. I didn't account for falling, or for you helping me, and, I guess, that's why I'm telling you what I am now."

"Why did he come here?"

"Said he felt as though the past was finally catching up with him. He said he wanted to see me one last time before it did." Abraham shook his head mournfully, his aged face contorting with guilt. "It ain't his fault he's bad, Marshal. Like I said he was just born that way, and like you said that was my fault. It's my doing that brought him into this world to grow without a mother to soften him, make him caring and moral like your mama did for you. Boys raised up by men are just different, I suppose. Harder than rocks, more unkindly than feelin'. But you ain't like that are you, Marshal? You had a mama to love you and soften your heart, so you grew up to be good." Tilting his head back, he stared up at Adam with pleading eyes. "You'll be kind to my boy when you catch him, right? You'll try to help him the way you helped me."

Adam stared at the man for a minute, his gruff expression unchanging. Then he turned around and wordlessly left the cabin and Abraham Merrill behind. He had no interest in making vows he had no desire to keep. What would happen when he finally caught up to Wallace Merrill was up to fate, the mood of the day, and the other man's reaction to him. What would happen afterward was damn near etched in stone.

"I can't do this anymore," Eddie had said. "Buddy, I know I said I would support you in whatever you needed to do, but that was a long time ago now. Things have changed. You've changed, and I've changed, too."

Most men would have denied it—both her request and her claim—but Adam was not like most men. He understood her; he was certain she understood him, too. She was right, after all. The people they had become were not the same as the ones they had been when they first met. Their respective lives could not have been more different if they had tried to make them that way. Somewhere in the depths of his heart, Adam knew that husbands and wives should not have respective lives; they should do things together. He and Eddie, it often seemed, rarely did anything together at all.

With his current appointment as a U.S. Marshal, he was away from home more than he was there. He was absent when he was there, his stays usually so brief and fleeting that he felt like a guest in his own home. During the last go around, the one which ended with Eddie's ultimatum, one year-old Noah had not recognized him; nearly thirteen and long lost to the deep throws of adolescent angst, Peggy had not spoken to or looked at him; and Charlie—beautiful, beloved Charlie who had inherited the best attributes of both of his parents, his mother's blonde hair and his father's eyes—had greeted him as though he was the best surprise in the world.

As a son, Adam knew fathers were not supposed to favor one of their children over the others. Even so, sometimes they did. This was knowledge he had only acquired during the duration of his last stay in San Francisco. That dreadful, fateful stay. The one that began with a gigantic bear-hug from his four-year-old son and ended without so much of a smile from the woman he had promised to love forever. She had said she did not want to continue with things the way they were, and Adam had not said anything at all.

He had done something, however. In the hours which followed his eventual departure from their house in San Francisco, he had pulled a list from the breast pocket of his shirt, and set his attention on finally crossing the last name off it. Wallace Merrill was only one of the men his predecessor, Marshal Weston, had been tasked with finding. There had been others, men who Adam had already tracked down and caught. Merrill was the only one remaining; the last thing standing in between the man Adam had become and the one Eddie now wanted him to be. The father he himself wanted to be, really, or at least that was what he told himself.

A man could not raise his children when the majority of his time was spent alone, traveling roads and following trails blazed by the men they were chasing. He had had nearly five good years holding this job—five lucky years, if his luck were to be defined by remaining alive and able bodied—and once he found Merrill he would cross his name off Weston's list and destroy it, setting it on fire as he sent the man a silent prayer of thanks. It was Weston's kind words that had given him the opportunity to become what he was, but the real gift was how it had changed him, the person being a marshal had allowed him to become. He had left his father's home grief-stricken and uncertain about a great many things, and now he was certain about damn near everything except for one.

He did not know how he was going to walk away from marshaling. Without it, there was no predicting who he would be or what he would do. He was never the kind to respond positively to ultimatums—no matter how well-intentioned they were. He had never been the kind to want to stay in place for long, no matter how nice of a place it was. His return to Eddie and the children was a given.

Their happiness together, however, was not.

TBC