"Pa!"

Come dawn, it was Hoss's frantic exclamation that jolted Ben awake. Lunging forward, he almost fell out of the chair he should not have dared fall asleep in. His back muscles felt stretched taut; they protested his wrenching movement, enveloping his lower body in an astounding, fluttering pain. There was little time to think about it, however. As Hoss called out again, his voice more frantic than it had been before, Ben had no choice but to stand and rush over to the open window.

Hands clenching the windowsill, he leaned out the window, and found his middle son standing alone in the street below. He was not sure which chilled him more: the frigid morning air, Hoss's grim expression, or the animals which were clogging the narrow thoroughfare.

Standing amidst the braying once mysteriously missing stock, Hoss looked up at his father, his body set with agitation. "Pa," he said, the words purposeful yet slow, as though he was a child struggling to compose an acceptable explanation for something he'd done wrong. "Adam's gone. Those men… I think, they came in the night and took him away."

"What do you mean they took him away?" Ben demanded.

He couldn't reconcile what he was being told. The elders could not have taken Adam anywhere. There was simply no place for them to go, save for back down the calamitous trail—an option that seemed incredibly unlikely with the cows crowding nearly every available inch of walking space. Ben was certain Hoss had been forced to fight for each step he took when he walked the short distance between the jail and the place he currently stood, his body swaying slightly as the cattle stepped forward and back, grappling for whatever space they could obtain. Where the cows had been was anyone's guess. What could be done with them now that they were here was equally confounding.

"He's gone, Pa," Hoss repeated, his voice thick and pained. "And I don't know how or where because I didn't see anybody take him. I didn't see him go. I… I fell asleep. I didn't mean to, but I did. He was there, sitting next to the wall on the floor of that nasty cell when I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, he was gone."

"I don't understand," Ben said. Hoss did not need to reply for his father to apprehend his shared confusion. "Where would they take him?"

Hoss shook his head. "Not where, Pa," he sadly corrected, repeating what had become Adam's final message to either of them. "If."

If "if" really was meant as a message at all, Ben thought grimly. Maybe it was nothing more than a nonsensical rambling of a man who knew he had been condemned to a fate no one could save him from. Stepping away from the window, Ben looked at Joe, his heart pulsating with irrepressible agony. If Adam was really gone, then what would he say to Joe? If Joe's life was taken away, too, then what would he and Hoss say to themselves? Or to others, if they returned to Virginia City alone.

Shaking his head, he dismissed the thought and willed the pain in his heart to dissipate. He would not do this; he simply would not entertain such matters until fate or whatever god had dictated their presence in this hellscape decreed it necessary. He would not give up on his son—he would not mourn the loss of any of his sons until he had damn good reason to.

"Pa," Hoss said, the seriousness of his tone summoning Ben's attention once more. He did not continue until his father leaned back out the window, and neither the seriousness of his tone or expression changed when he finally did. "Adam isn't all that's missing." He pointed at the empty holster wrapped around his waist. "They took my pistol, too."

Oddly, Ben thought, that was, perhaps, the most unsettling detail he had heard yet. Instinctively, he glanced down at his own holster and found it as empty as his son's. "Mine too," he said.

"If they took Adam," Hoss began, now fully reliant on interpreting questions in the manner which Adam had implored them to, "how did they get him to go quietly so I didn't wake up?"

Unable to answer the question, Ben posed his own. "If the cattle was not truly missing, then when did they bring it back, shepherding it from God only knows where without either of us noticing? If they think Adam was the one responsible for harming Little Joe, then why would they take our guns?"

"If they took our guns and Adam," Hoss reiterated, "but they brought the cattle back, then what are they expecting us to do?"

Ben looked at the cows, roughly forty-five head which had been used to successfully obstruct nearly every inch of the town's narrow thoroughfare. If leaving had been a difficult endeavor before, it seemed downright impossible now. He leaned further out the window, his neck craning so he could look between the two ends of town. One was blocked by colossal boulders which rendered it impassable. The other led away from this place, the end of the thoroughfare forming a hellacious path. If the trio of elders and the midwife had disappeared during the night, taking Adam with them, then Ben was as sure of the direction they had headed as he was uncertain of what they intended to do with his oldest son.

"I don't really care about what those people think we're going to do," Ben warned, his tone deep and gravelly, as he was consumed by a fury too violent to ignore. "Because I can guarantee it isn't what we're going to do."

And suddenly, even in the absence of answers, there did not seem to be any more questions. A group of vile certainties had taken their place.

If the elders intended to hang Adam, then they would not have taken him down the hazardous trail. If a town this size needed cattle, then they would not have requested so many be brought up a path which promised to claim the lives of nearly half of them before arriving at a place which had no room to accommodate even the smallest herd. If Malice were a real town, it would have been home to more people. Its buildings would not be decrepit, their interiors rotting beneath thick layers of dust.

He looked at Joe, then as the appalling nature of his son's injuries awoke a woe that threatened to dampen his anger, he turned his attention elsewhere and absently appraised the room. It didn't take long for him to notice something awry. Once hanging off the bottom of the beds, Adam and Joe's saddlebags had been moved. They sat open on the floor, their insides brimming with what, as he walked closer, Ben recognized as copper alloy half-cent pieces. Pinned to the worn leather of Adam's bag was a note which had been penned with blood.

Please repossess the animals outside and accept this copper for payment of all that was lost. If you're still wondering why we asked for cattle, it was the only way we could obtain what we really needed.

Ben could have asked when the copper had been left, and how the note had been written. He could have asked what the elders and midwife had obtained and why they had wanted it in the first place. But he didn't. Captive to an all-encompassing, fiery rage, he tore the note off his missing son's saddlebag, clenched it in a tightly balled fist, then aggressively tossed it on to the floor, and swore. He had played by the rules of this town long enough. He had no intention of abiding this.

Taking a series of purposeful steps, he was determined to join Hoss in the thoroughfare to fight their way through the cattle obstructing the pathway to the trail. He would kill every last one of the cattle with his bare hands if it meant getting to the cruel road quicker. He would do the same to the trio of elders and midwife when he caught up to them. Someone was going to die by the end of this day—he was certain of that—and it was not going to be his first-born son—he was certain of that, too.

"Pa?"

It was the weak, raspy voice that first halted and then prompted him to turn back around. He looked at the bed Little Joe occupied with wide, disbelieving eyes.

His youngest son had finally awoken.