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iv

Funny about traveling; the closer you are to your destination, the more impatient you become to get there not matter what is waiting for you. The book from my grandfather kept me focused, oblivious of time, but once I finished, I tucked it away and the urgency to be back on the Ponderosa rose dramatically. The book was a new copy of Paradise Lost and it had Brooksby's Books stamped inside and my grandfather had written in a large, steady hand, that it had been my mother's favorite and he hoped I would enjoy it as much as she had. I found the poem, for that's what it was, a remarkable work and decided I would read it again sometime as Milton's God was an interesting creation. The work was Milton's effort to explain why there is evil in the world, but of course, since I didn't believe in God, I also didn't believe in "evil" as an entity so I needed no explanation. Evil roams freely and wreaks horror upon mankind simply because men populate the earth. I was sure that humans have no one to blame but themselves for any evil that befalls them. I had steadfastly believed that at the time, pompous, over-educated ass that I was, but now, after all that's happened, I'm not so sure anymore. Could we all be seduced into sin as easily as Eve had been? And was jealousy and envy, not love of money as the good book states, the actual root of all evil?

And it was late, the coach lights already dimmed, when I read the part in the poem where Satan slips into the innocent, sleeping serpent and speaks through it, having possessed the reptile. I suddenly felt as if something was nearby, hovering, waiting for my guard to drop. My heart began to thud like a hammer at the possibility of evil possessing me without my invitation. And while the train cut through the darkness, the slithering serpent of my nightmare, the creature that pulled free of the rock face to pursue me, suddenly lived again. Slamming shut the book, I looked at my ghostly reflection in the railroad car's window and for a moment, I thought I saw another face behind me, grimacing and evil, but it was only my imagination as the next moment it was gone. Obviously, I'd read too much and fed my feverish imagination. I'd take the book back up the next day. In the light.

Once I reached the terminus for the New York Central railroad, I took the Pennsylvania Railroad line, then switched to the stage line heading to Gold Hill, soon to be Virginia City. Pulling into the vital town gave me mixed feelings; I didn't recognize the place and I felt the energy that rifled through the air. Once I debarked, the whip tossed down my luggage and I stared about at the new buildings, businesses, passersby-a whole new place. I needed to find the livery.

My father didn't know the day I was returning because I didn't want my whole family there to greet me. If there was going to be an emotional scene—and I feared there would be—I didn't want it to be in front of gawking strangers, at least to me they would be. And my father would want to show off his college-educated son like a prize-winning calf, perhaps even asking me to display my diploma; I wasn't up to it. Hefting my carpet bag and portmanteau, I headed to where the livery had last been. That was when I saw Dell.

"Dell! Delphine!" I stopped, waiting to see if she heard. Delphine turned and after a few seconds, smiled in recognition and started to cross the street. "Wait, wait!" I called out. "I'll come there." So, skirting a few passing wagons, riders and stepping over horse droppings, I crossed, set my bags on the sidewalk, and reached out to her. I noticed her hesitation, but then she extended her arms and we embraced. I pulled her in, but not too closely. We had never been lovers and yet, the warmth and smell of her brought back memories of leisurely Sunday afternoons and the yearnings of those days. She pulled away and I took my cue from that.

"Oh, Adam, it's so good to see you!" Dell smiled broadly but I noted there was a touch of sadness about her eyes. Had it always been there? "So, you're now a college graduate, aren't you?"

"I have my diploma in my bag," I said, grinning.

"Your father's been telling everyone, just everyone about you coming home. I'm surprised he isn't here to meet you." She glanced back at the stage depot, expecting, I'm sure, to see the family buckboard pull up and my brothers spilling out.

"I never wired ahead. I decided I wanted to spend the ride to the Ponderosa alone, just want to enjoy the day and the scenery, of which you are a most lovely part." Dell blushed at that, but I added, "Besides, his lumbago flared up."

"Oh, Adam!" She laughed. "He's been using his cane and was leaning on it at church Sunday. Hoss said your father just won't let up, injured his back at Murphy's Feed and Grain tossing heavy feed sacks into the buckboard. Hoss had to carry him to the doctor's, your father demanding to be put down and everyone else enjoying it greatly!" She laughed and so did I at the idea of my father being carried and cradled like a small child by my brother Hoss, who, my father had written me, at 16 years was as big and tall as a grown man—and then some.

Looking at Dell, I felt relief; my dream of her as a vision of horror faded away in the sunlight but she looked haggard. I calculated she had to be about 17 or 18 years, too young to have worry lines about her eyes. There had to be something wearing her down. "How are you, Dell?" People strolling by looked at us curiously as they avoided tripping over my baggage.

"Oh…I'm fine, just fine, Adam."

I knew she wasn't.

"And Ross?"

"He finally bought the last of that parcel from your father so we're getting married. Oh, Adam, you came home at the perfect time because now you can be the best man. You know Ross doesn't make friends easily. We're just…well, since my parents died, we're having the clerk of courts marry us. But if you would be there, it would mean so much to both us."

"Oh." I was slightly embarrassed I didn't already know. And why hadn't my father included it in one of his letters? "I'm sorry to hear that, Dell."

She gave an odd smile. "Yes, well, that was…my father just…" She took a shuddering breath and changed the subject. "I've been living at the house but will need to sell it now that Ross and I… well, I need to hold off the sale until after Ross finishes our house, if he ever will. But now that you're back, maybe you'll help him. He's not the best carpenter and I swear he'd be happy to live in a tipi on the property or in that mine."

"Are you and Ross having a disagreement over the place?"

Dell smiled and ducked her head. Then looked back up at me and took my hands again. "I'm glad you're back, Adam. I know Ross will be too."

I felt Dell wanted to talk, what about, I didn't know but she was edgy; I thought if we could get off some place she might open up. "We're blocking the sidewalk," I said, looking around. "Is Clancy's still open?"

Dell laughed and looked as she had six years ago when I was still squiring her about. "Of course, it is."

"Then let's go have coffee and I'd love a piece of Mrs. Clancy's raisin pie—that is if she still makes it."

"Oh, she still makes it!" Dell said, so tucking my carpet bag under one arm in order to pick up my other bag, I placed my free hand on the small of Dell's back and guided her down the sidewalk to the little restaurant.

~ 0 ~

Mrs. Clancy, upon recognizing me, claimed I was twice as broad of shoulder and ten times more handsome than before I had left. Dell only cared for coffee which Mrs. Clancy quickly poured from the pot she held, but I asked about the raisin pie and Mrs. Clancy, after winking at me, brought a huge piece of raisin pie—practically half the pie. I claimed the only reason I'd returned home was because no one in all of Massachusetts made a raisin pie like hers; they were mere aspirants. Mrs. Clancy flushed and chucked me under the chin as if I was still a kid.

Dell sipped her coffee and said, smiling, "You still have that Cartwright charm, Adam. Did it win you any hearts back east?"

I grinned and picked up my cup to take a sip while looking across the table at her. Her cheeks were a bit hollow but that could be attributed to the loss of girlish roundness and the difficult past few years to which she alluded. Or worry.

"Well? Did it?" It struck me odd; Dell wanting to know about my affairs of the heart.

"Oh, a few, I suppose." I had no intention of telling her the details of my love affairs or of Lurene whose warm bed and round hips I was already beginning to miss.

"Of course," she added, "you're still so handsome." She looked down then at the cup in her hands.

Dell was wound tight and I searched back to remember at one point in our conversation the oddness had set in. "Dell, how did your parents die?"

She looked at me. "Oh, Adam, I don't know which was worse." She bit her lip. "The doctor said my father had a stroke and died of it along with his injuries but… I shouldn't bother you with this. You've just come home."

"It's all right, Dell. You and I are friends, remember?"

"Yes, Adam. I remember. You always were a good friend. It's just that I feel so awful because if my parents hadn't died, Ross and I wouldn't be marrying yet. You see, Ross came over for dinner to ask about marrying me. That was about two years ago and my parents, they said they would need to discuss it before they gave their permission. After Ross left, my father told me he would amount to nothing on that piece of land—wouldn't be able to raise his voice on it so much as cattle. And of course, we argued, I cried and both my parents said they only wanted what was best for me and it wasn't Ross and his foolish ambitions. But I told them I loved Ross and all my father said was that I'd get over him, at least I better if I knew what was good for me. My mother still held out hope that when you returned…well, that doesn't matter. It was that very night it happened."

"Your father died that night?"

"No, he died a few days later but it was that night it happened. My mother said a noise woke them up and my father glanced out the window and saw the rack of a huge deer above the high brush. Well, I guess what he really saw was enough meat to get us through the rest of the winter so he pulled on his boots, put on his jacket, grabbed his loaded rifle and went out." Dell paused and gathered herself before she continued. "Well, the rifle going off woke me up and my mother and I waited for my father to come in but he didn't. Finally, we went out and he was lying in the snow with a look of absolute terror on his face…oh, Adam, he looked as if he'd seen Satan himself. There was blood everywhere. He'd been trampled by the animal. His chest was busted, smashed, and one arm was broken—shattered along with his collar bone and…when the doctor came, he was appalled by the depth of injury. Between the two of us, my mother and me, we'd managed to get my father into the house and into the bed but he never spoke or looked at us, just lay there with that same expression until he finally died. The doctor didn't even charge us since there was nothing he could do but help clean away the blood and dress the wounds."

Something didn't make sense; deer don't have antlers during winter; everyone out here knew that. Mr. Watkins couldn't have seen a rack of antlers; he must have seen another creature, perhaps a bear. A bear would try to rip a man open but then, even Dell and her mother and certainly the doctor would have recognized a bear attack from the bloody slashes, and a bear would have dragged away Mr. Watkins or at least attempted to. But I didn't question.

"The strangest thing of all was that in the morning, I noticed his rifle was still laying out there. We'd forgotten it, so I went to fetch it and among all our footprints and blood, there were these huge animal prints, cloven hooves like they say the devil has. I know that deer tracks look that way but no deer was ever that big. Ever. My father was frightened by something extraordinary, Adam. Anyway, my mother never saw the prints, I wiped them out, but she suddenly became afraid of every sound and we ended up sleeping in the same bed from then on, mine. And one day that spring, I went out to deliver the finished laundry and when I came home, by the side of the wash house, the clothes line was down and the clean clothes were trampled in the mud, deer tracks all over the place, like the animal had become tangled in the line and panicked. I found my mother slumped over the wash tub, her head in the water. Adam, she drowned in the soapy water with the dirty laundry tossed about the room. And there was water all over the table and the floor. It had sloshed over the sides of the tub, soaked the front of her dress almost as if she'd tried to fight someone off and when I pulled her out and laid her on the floor, she had almost the same expression as my father had—eyes wide-open, terrified at seeing some horror."

"Did you call in the sheriff?" I wondered how much of what Dell was telling me was true and if it was, how accurate.

"The doctor did. I'd run to get him and once he saw my mother and the way things looked with the water everywhere, the clothes line, the laundry strewn about and the hair caught in her fingers, he asked me to fetch Sheriff Coffee."

"Hair caught in her fingers?" That detail piqued my interest. Why would Mrs. Watkins have hair in her hand?

"Yes, she had a few strands of long, black hair caught about the fingers of her right hand. Sheriff Coffee wanted to know where I'd been when she'd…drowned. I told him I'd been delivering the laundry but even though he asked if we had any angry customers with black hair or been threatened by any of the Chinese laundry owners, I think he suspected me of murdering my own mother. If I had black hair, I think he would've locked me up."

It felt like ghostly fingers caressing the back of my neck and I swept my hand over my nape. I didn't know what to say to Dell except that I was sure the sheriff held no such suspicion. I also said I was sorry, so very sorry to hear the news, and I asked if she needed anything.

"No, no, just your friendship is enough. I didn't tell Ross all the details of my parents' deaths, he's been so…involved in starting the ranch, the Walking M, that I didn't want to bother him. And, Adam, he was wonderful. So comforting and actually holding me up at the funerals when I thought I would faint. Your father was so kind as well, asked me to be a guest at the Ponderosa but I couldn't accept." She sighed. "Thank you, Adam, for listening. I never had any real girlfriends, never had the time with helping my mother and such, but you, you were always so wonderful, and still are. And now that you're back, maybe you can help Ross as well, and I don't mean just with the house."

"Ross? Is something wrong with him?"

She shook her head and looked down at her coffee. "I know it's silly and I'm sure it's just my imagination, but something's changed about him. If I didn't know better, I'd think he had a woman up there. And then the land…"

"The land? Something wrong with it?"

"Yes…it's… Adam, I have my parents' house and although it needs work, we could live there. Ross even put extra bolts on the doors for me and fixed the windows so they could be secured, but Ross is…he has this obsession…maybe that's too strong a word, but Ross has built the house in front of a huge rock face where there's that…cave or mine. It's like an entrance into a world of darkness. But that's not all. Carved in the rock are all these…" She seemed to be casting about for the term.

"Petroglyphs?" Obviously, Ross hadn't told her about the pull the drawings had on him.

"Yes, I guess that's the word he used. Petroglyphs. Indian carvings of all these queer creatures. I don't like them, Adam. They're pagan, not Christian—strange looking animals and snakes and all sorts of freakish people. We had a huge argument when he started building the house there. He says that it's good to have the back of the house protected by the rocks. I said I wouldn't marry him if he built the house there."

"But he is and you are." I smiled as my uneasiness subsided.

"Yes. Oh, I love him, Adam, and I worry about him so."

"Dell, stop worrying so much." I reached across and took her hand. "Maybe it's just wedding jitters on your part."

"Yes," she said and laughed lightly. "If only I'd fallen in love with you instead."

I was taken aback. I had cared for Delphine as I told you, but we had never talked love, never did more than hold onto each other the way you do when young. That was why, when I introduced her to Ross, I didn't feel betrayed when they chose each other.

"Well, things turned out differently," I said. "And I hope, for the better for you and for Ross."

She chuckled nervously. "Oh, you know what I mean, Adam. It's just that sometimes Ross… Adam, he doesn't go to church anymore. For a while there, we went every week but then, he just stopped. I'd have to wait for him to come to town to see me and sometimes I wouldn't see him for a week or two. I'd have to ask your father about him, if Ross was okay and then it just became too embarrassing. And then, once Ross quit working at the Ponderosa…"

"He quit?" The forkful of raisin pie made it halfway to my mouth. Dell suddenly gripped my free hand as if drowning and desperate to be saved. Her face twisted with fear. "Promise me you won't tell Ross about today, that you saw me and about all that I told you... Promise me."

"All right, Dell," I said calmly, "I won't."

She seemed to relax then and released my hand, smiling and laughed awkwardly. "I didn't tell you, I'm clerking at Gillis'. I have to earn my way as a single girl."

"Well, congratulations on being an independent woman. You ought to read all that's going on now—talk of women's voting rights, how antiquated the institution of marriage has become and the concept of free love…" I stopped myself. The girls back east only wanted to talk about bohemian ideas and such but Dell wasn't one of them; she was very much for the values of hard work, marriage and motherhood.

"Adam, I really have to go. This is my lunch break and Mr. Gillis will be expecting me back; his wife, with her big, fat face, doesn't like covering for me at the front counter. She'd love nothing more than to have reason to fire me." Dell pushed back her chair before I could play the gentleman, and stood up. I did the same and picked my hat off the table to leave with her, one hand in my pocket searching for coins to leave behind.

"No, Adam. You stay and finish your pie. Please." She grabbed up her reticule. "I shouldn't have come here with you. I don't know that Ross… Why don't you go see him."

Still holding my hat, I said, "Yes, Dell, I will. Promise. As soon as I can. But I believe my father would appreciate if I saw him first."

Dell laughed but quickly turned serious. "And you won't say a word about today."

"No, not a word."

"Thank you, Adam." She hurried toward the doors. Something was wrong and I was going to find out what; Ross was my friend and if he had a problem... I looked down at the slice of raisin pie and then back at the door. I was a bit surprised I still had an appetite so I sat back down and finished while my mind wandered, first going over the conversation with Dell, then how she and I used to kiss on warm summer days, and then to Lurene and her consistently unmade bed that I so enjoyed. And the simmering heat of desire rose again.