Ben Cartwright stood in the center of Malice's dusty thoroughfare. Unkempt and sporadically littered with weeds and sagebrush, the path lining the small, three building town was as narrow as the trail leading to it. Judging by the town's slatternly thoroughfare and buildings, it was a trek that was traveled by very few.
Carved in between dense mountains that seemed leviathan in comparison to those in Nevada, the road to Malice was rugged and cramped, damn near impossible to traverse on horseback. Though Ben had not been with them, he knew Adam and Joe had been forced to traverse it slowly and painstakingly. It was a pernicious trip; one that, at times, must have felt downright insurmountable given the herd of cattle they were shepherding. Had the pair arrived in Malice with as many cattle as they had left the Ponderosa with it would have been a miraculous achievement. Ben knew they had not. During their own journey, he and Hoss had come upon the corpses belonging to the cattle the treacherous landscape had claimed. Out of the eighty cows Adam and Joe had set out with a fraction of the animals had survived.
It had been a horrendous trip; Ben did not need Adam or Joe to tell him that. Standing in the middle of a town that was old and strange, in the company of a trio of townsfolk who were decidedly stranger, he desperately wished his sons would tell him something else.
He had not wanted to stray from Joe's side, or Adam's. Given the circumstances, it was impossible to remain with either of them. Hoss would do what Ben could not. Spending most of his time with his ailing younger brother, he would periodically check in on his older one throughout the day. Until his father had gathered whatever information he could from a small collection of people whom they both wondered if they should believe. There was no denying Hoss's original reaction and summation when presented with the original telegraph from the strange town had been proven true. Something was deeply wrong with this place, and the people who inhabited it.
Malice did not have a doctor. The person looking after Little Joe's medical needs was a midwife. It did not have a sheriff or a deputy. The people intent on punishing Ben's oldest son were a committee of elders, three men who were as ancient as the surrounding mountains and the jail cell Adam was being held in.
"Tell me again," Ben said to the trio of elders who had peculiarly decided to collect in front of him. "Tell me what you think happened between my sons."
Adorned in long, black robes which emphasized the whiteness of their hair and long beards, the elders were tall, thin, and cadaverous. They looked among each other, seemingly sharing in a silent discussion, the details of which they did not intend to share. The men standing at each end of their neat row, deferred to the one standing in the middle.
"What do you think happened?" the middle elder asked.
"No." Shaking his head, Ben refused to speculate. "That is not an answer to the question I asked."
"To you it isn't, but to us, it is. Your thoughts on the events are just as important as ours. Maybe more so considering they are your sons. They are your flesh, your blood. Their strengths and weaknesses were sowed by you; they will be reaped by you, too."
The only thing more infuriating than the casual, calm nature of the middle elder's tone were the things he said. The elders looked like monks and spoke with the maddingly passive certainty of Quakers. Ben had never come across the former, but he had met his fair share of the latter, and these were not Quakers. They simply could not be, not with what they intended to do to Adam.
Quakers did not hang people. They believed in treating criminals with compassion and regard so that their moral character might be strengthened, rehabilitating them to become useful to society. These men intended to hang his son but only after forcing him to live three more days in an arenose jail cell with nothing else to think about than the fact that he and his youngest brother were going to die. The men in front of Ben believed that Joe's current circumstances necessitated Adam's, but neither he nor Hoss could believe that.
"Please," Ben implored, forcing his own voice to remain civil and calm. Anger would get him nowhere with men who spoke in the way his current company did. It would not help obtain the answers he needed. It would not assist him with saving his sons. He had entered this town in the sole company of his middle son. He would be damned if he was going to leave the same way. "I just want you to tell me the truth."
"No," the middle elder said. "The first time you asked us what happened you were requesting the truth. When the truth was shared you did not want to hear it. You do not want to believe it, so now you wish us to lie."
"No, I want you to repeat your story because I'm sure it is a lie."
"Is it impossible to believe your oldest son is capable of hurting your youngest one?"
"Yes," Ben said firmly.
"I am sure he has hurt him before." The middle elder tilted his head thoughtfully. "In scrapes and grapples, the inevitable result of clashes and conflicts shared between brothers and growing boys."
"Yes." Ben shook his head, disgusted by his rash response. "I mean, no. They've fought before, all brothers do, but not like in the story you told."
"You are certain the events you were recounted are false?"
"Yes."
"You were not here to witness them, so how would you ever know?"
"Because I know my sons."
"It is not wise to mischaracterize truths that are difficult to hear as fiction," the middle elder warned.
"And it isn't wise for you to mischaracterize my sons. Like I said, you told me a story I cannot believe. So, let me tell you some truths that I hope you will. There is over a decade between my oldest and my youngest sons; they did not grow up as boys the way that you claim. Adam is my oldest son; he has always done his best to protect and look after his younger brothers. This is something that has not always made Joseph happy, especially as he's grown older. Of course, they have had their conflicts and clashes, scrapes and grapples but lurking beneath all their disagreements there has always existed a great deal of love. Adam would never hurt Joe the way you claim he did."
"A man reaps what he sows. Past conflicts can beget more. As boys become men, the winning of such things can become more important or less. A terrible crime was committed. Beating a man to the point your youngest son was is a serious transgression. In this case, the circumstances surrounding the malefaction have made the event more dire. It was not a stranger who attempted to kill your youngest son with his hands; it was your oldest son who committed this crime. If a man can do such a horrible thing to a brother, then one must consider what the man could do to a stranger."
"Adam is a calm and rational man; he thinks about things more than most do," Ben argued. "He believes in appropriate consequences for wrongdoing, fairness and justice, and there is not a soul on this earth he would beat the way my youngest son has been, no matter the circumstances."
"You saw your youngest son; you examined his injuries with your own eyes. You visited with your eldest and you saw the telling wounds marking his hands. You heard the truth and then you saw it, and still, you are keeping yourself from believing it."
"I refuse to believe it because it isn't true."
The elders looked among each other once more, the expressiveness of their eyes exceeding that of their expressions. After a time, the middle man looked at Ben once more. "We cannot force you to accept this truth now, but we pray that someday you will," he said.
"Why would I accept the lie that left my oldest son dead?"
"And how will you continue to defend your oldest son when your youngest one is dead? Joseph is gravely injured; he will not survive. As for your oldest, a man whose body bears the evidence declaring the truth of what he did, he will not survive either."
"Because you're going to hang him for something he didn't do."
If they were shocked by the curt accusation, the elders gave no indication. As they looked among themselves, Ben turned his attention to the tumble-down jailhouse, longing to be able to speak the right words to simply free Adam from inside of it. When he looked back, expecting to continue conversing with the middle elder, he found the trio had quietly left.
In Malice's tight thoroughfare, Ben stood alone, captive to the narrowness of the perilous path his sons had been forced to travel first.