Chapter

Legacy

Ben rode the stage in silence. The case full of hundreds clutched against his chest. Clancy sat in the seat opposite him. Eyeing the other passengers that shared the small compartment, looking for anything that might have been out of place. A young couple sat next to Ben. An older and younger man sat next to Clancy. Each one scrutinized with suspicion. Each one passing the silent test.

~.~

Little Joe was under house arrest. Roy ordered that he be ridden back to the ranch. He was to remain there, under protective custody, with a deputy to stay with him at all times, until these men are caught.

Harper got him to the docs just like he was ordered. The doc gave him another dose and supplied him with his own bottle to take home. The headache that had been building throughout the morning had mostly subsided. There was an underlining pain to remind him he wasn't completely healed. Fortunately the doc said the worst was over. There was no more need for him to walk around with that stupid bandage which served as a beacon for conversationalist. Even with as dirty and dingy as it was starting to look.

House arrest. His family's off gallivanting around while he's stuck at home. "It's for your own protection." Hogwash. The very idea of him being left out of this didn't sit well with him. It was he that Danny protected. He more than anybody had the responsibility to get Danny back. If it weren't for his stupid head, he could be out there with his brothers. His head injury was the reason Danny's missing and he's safe. Was it a blessing or a curse?

Harper was on high alert. He'd searched the house before letting Joe get within two feet of the settee. Once he felt it was clear he let Joe sit while he searched the grounds. Hopsing was gone. He left with the cattlemen on the drive. The bunkhouses were empty too.

~.~

A three foot wooden bear marked the entrance to the Sherriff's station. Three lawmen sat around a single desk shuffling out some cards when the brothers walked in. The one with his feet up facing the door was the one who promptly stood. The dark haired man made the introductions.

"I'm Adam this is Hoss."

"Good afternoon. I'm Sherriff Sanders. We got your message. I'm going to have Deputy Lynton here ride out with you."

"You're not taking us?" Hoss asked.

"I would, but right now we've got a bit of a thing going on already. Got some horse thieves back there in the cages. Turns out they fit the description of a couple of wanted fugitives. We're waiting on some Marshall's to get here from Texas. Expecting them to arrive around noon to pick 'em up. Until then I'm gonna sit right here to make sure everything goes off without a hitch. Not to worry Deputy Lynton here is more than capable." The deputy was tall and broad shouldered. A sharp jaw and thinning blonde hair which seemed too thin for his young face.

~.~

The stage came to a stop at Silver Springs. Ben got off first. Clancy waited until the cart was mostly clear before he stepped off. There was no one there to greet him. The other passengers filed out of the stage. The young couple were greeted by an older fairer couple. The young man and his grandfather both went off down the street seemingly knowing exactly where they were headed. The stage driver went on to stable his horse. The area was clear. Ben took a seat on the empty bench and waited for the platform to fill up again. He waited for the new stage to arrive and the cycle to repeat. All the while Clancy kept his distance, sticking to the shadows. He waited for word. Something, anything. How this waiting would have killed him if it were his own son. How it must be killing the young man with him. He waited until nightfall. When the last stage came and the platform was empty for the last time Clancy broke his cover.

~.~

They were about five miles out of the bustle of the city riding along a lonely stretch of road. Within a half mile of the first ranch home they'd seen, was marked by a three foot wooden bear- strikingly similar to the one that marked the entrance to the Sheriff's station- poised on its hind legs. Similar bears, smaller in size spread themselves out along the stretch of road. Inset, a mountain lion sneaking its way down a broken log feet away from his desired prey which was stretching his wings to take flight. Both forever posed in motionless silence. A beaver chewing on a stick standing on a stack of similar sticks. Between this menagerie of lifeless creatures spread out among an open field were wagon wheels. Some upright and on display along the road side, some mere broken carcasses.

"Is he expecting us?" Adam asked.

"No, sir. Can't say that he is. Sheriff told us to expect you but gave specific instructions not to give the Milligan boy forewarning. He said per your request." Adam nodded affirmatively.

"Seeing us ride in on him, any chance we'll be greeted with a firearm?" Adam asked.

"Milligan. Naw. He expects visitors now and again."

"Even strangers?"

"He welcomes strangers. See all these creatures?" He nods to the open field. "He sells them. He's about sold something to everybody in town. Anybody that'll give him the time of day that is."

"Some people still sore about what happen to the O'Lewis's?"

"That's an understatement. The people in this town have a hard time forgettin'."

Their approach went along uneventful. They rode all the way into the yard without so much as a greeting. At least none of the verbal kind. Instead what greeted them was the sound of clinking. Metal on metal. Sizzling burning smoke, but not much. Clinking metal on metal. Deputy Lynton led the way to the face of the barn house, which in this case acted as a workshop. The startled young man looked up, then quickly turned into a smile.

"Deputy Lynton. What can I do you for? What brings you out this way?" He asked eyeing his companions.

"Chance, this is Adam and Hoss Cartwright of the Ponderosa."

"Is that right? The Ponderosa. What brings you all the way out here to my neck of the woods? You interested in doing business on some wagon wheels? This is my bread winner right here," He says slapping the one on the spool. "but it ain't the only thing I do, you know. I can widdle you up just 'bout anything. I've put together whole wagons before, but I really specialize in the wheels themselves. Tom Laughlin is the one you should go to if you want the whole wagon. I give him the wheels and he puts 'em together. I can do it though, if you prefer. I done smaller things like widdle together some shoe horns for the cobbler, mantle pieces, you name it, I've probably done it. Ain't that right, Lynton?"

"Yeah, that's right, but they ain't here for that."

"You interested in some of my finer pieces? Add a touch of elegance to your piece of land. All them animals you saw as you rode in, those were done by my own hand. Maybe a bear for your front porch would suit you?" Misreading their panged expression. "No, not a bear for you. You need something different. Something special. Something that really speaks. Something that says Ponderosa."

"Chance, they're not here to do business."

"Oh? Well, how can I help you then? I'm not in trouble, am I?" He asked with a nervous but playful titter.

"They'd like to talk to you 'bout sump'in else." The young man's eyes went from the lawman to the man in black and scanned over the large one.

"How can I help you folks?" Adam took the lead.

"We'd like to talk to you about your pa." His discomfort burgeoned. His countenance instantly changed.

"I don't have a pa." He glowered at Lynton as he brushed past to pick up a half-finished spoke in the yard.

"We know about your pa." Hoss said.

"Then you know he's dead." He snapped. His friendly air turning cold and stale.

"Yes. That's what we came to talk to you about."

"Why? What possible reason could you have for digging him up?"

"You were a young man when it happened." Adam said.

"I'm a young man now. I was a boy then. Although admittedly I've aged quite a bit since." He dropped a finished wheel from the spool and replaced it with the spoke he'd just brought in.

"On that same note, you being a man now and all, we were wondering if you'd have any inclination on settling old debts." He stopped working. He slid his hand slowly to the mallet on the stand. Adam was the only one who flipped his jacket back exposing his firearm beneath it. He was the only one who would need to. A mallet would hardly be a fair match against the multiple of men and firearms before him. Hoss touched Adam's arm, bidding him to stand down. He stepped forward. At this the man answered back.

"It happened a long time ago. I ain't fixin on doin nothin about it."

"Boy's remember. Boy's hold on."

"A town remembers."

"Excuse me?"

"These folks 'round here remember. They got long memories. That's all anybody sees any time they look at me. They see the son of a crazy man. A sick murderin' bastard."

"It ain't true. Chance."

"You think I don't know, Lynton? You think I don't see the way they look at me, or hear their murmurin's as I walk by?"

"We feel bad, is all."

"Well I guess I should feel fortunate 'bout that. Wouldn't you know half my business comes from folks like you feelin' bad. It's the other half I got to worry about. The ones who'd rather see me dead. They just itchin' for me to screw up so they can put me in the same grave as my pa. You know, I've worked long and hard to separate myself from my father's name. Get out from under his reputation. Each wagon wheel, each piece of art I put out there goes one step further to prove I ain't him. Then every once in a while, some folks like you come along telling me it's all for naught. I'm never going to be anything different than my father's boy."

"We're not here to cause grief." Hoss cooed.

"Yeah, well that's all I ever had was grief." He snapped. "If only they knew how I really felt about the bastard. You know, I was glad the day he died. Ah, I'm not glad in the way he died or what he'd done, but boy I was glad when it was over. You want to talk about his famous last words. Wanted to see if I had what it took to make good on them. Powerful stuff he said there, talkin 'bout bloodline carrying on. There's just one problem in that statement. He didn't bother runnin' it by' the boy he used to knock around. Does that surprise you? Surprise, surprise, he was crazy long before he'd gone and done what he did." Adam and Hoss locked eyes. "You didn't know?" He said at their bewilderment. "All the towns' folks around here knew. Oh they liked to act like they didn't. Isn't that right Lynton? As if my mom and I didn't wear the proof right there on our faces." He pointed to his cheek for emphasis. The deputy lowered his head and moved about some rocks beneath his feet.

"Well, dang Chance, we ain't even here about that."

"No. Of course not. Why would you be? You didn't want to talk about it then. Why should now be any different? The town's dirty little secret. Nobody ever wants to talk about that. No. The murderin' my pa did, that's what people like to talk about. Well you know what I think? It's your all dangs fault that it happened." He pointed an accusing finger. "Every dang one of you. Everybody in this stinkin' town. You all saw how crazy he was. The evidence was right there before you. You had the chance to stop him before it got that far and you did nothin'. You did nothin'."

"Geez, Chance. I was just a kid. Same as you. What could I do?"

"That's right. You were. What could you've done?" There was weight in that question and the deputy felt it. "Even me. I'm just as guilty. I had a chance to stop him too and I did nothin'." He grew sullen. "I kept waiting for me to get big enough to fight back. Turns out you ain't gotta be all that big to pull a trigger. But then if I had it'd be me hangin' there in them gallows instead of my pa. Wouldn't it?"

"We wouldn't a hung a kid."

"Wouldn't you?" Lynton couldn't answer. "Ah, what does it matter? Point is, I was a coward too." Whatever was going on between Lynton and him had to wait for another time.

"Does your father have any other kin around here?"

"No. I'm it."

"What about your ma? You think it'd be okay if we talk to her?" The deputy shook his head cautioning Adam but the words were already out.

"My ma's dead. Lynton should have told you that."

"They didn't ask."

"She died a couple years ago. One big blob of grieving wreck. She could never quite get over what happened. I guess she was his final victim."

"Well, we came here to see if that were really true."

"What? What do you mean?"

"About her being his final victim."

"Yeah, I get it. What are you talking about?"

"We're here about one of the O'Lewis boys." He lowered his head.

"Oh? Which one?"

"Daniel. You remember him?"

"We didn't hang out as kids or nothin' but I remember him. He and Simon disappeared. Nobody really knew what happened to 'em. Didn't know if my pa killed 'em or not. He never said. You find his body?"

"They didn't die that day." He shook his head.

"How do you know?"

"Daniel took Simon away. They lived together just a couple towns over for quite a few years."

"Oh." Relief washed over him. "I'm glad. I'm glad they got away." But it was short lived. "Why are you here then?" He asked as it dawned on him. "What do you mean, my ma's not the final victim? Why you asking about the O'lewis boy, if he's okay?"

"He's not okay. Daniels been abducted." Horror shot through him.

"What? By who?" Then it hit him like a punch in the nose. "You don't know who. You thought it might have been me. You thought I might have had sump'in' to do with it." He pushed past them again and made his way outside. He sought out his firewood log standing on end and sat into it before he collapsed plum clean to the ground.

"We didn't know what to think. We're just trying to find some answers." Adam said. "Did your father have any friends? Anybody that might wish to see his words carried out?"

"No. My pa didn't make friends. He was a hard man to like."

"Thank you for answering our questions. I'm sorry for coming here like this. Opening old wounds. Clearly it was a mistake."

"You had to know, right?"

"I guess we did. Anyways, for what it's worth, I'm sorry." They turned back to mount up.

"What do you know?" He asked aloud. Hoss and Adam exchanged glances. "So far. What do you know?"

"Not much. As it stands now, everything we have leads in another direction. At least it did, before it dried up. We came here on a whim."

"Where did it lead you? What do you know so far?" He asked again.

"At least four men. Could be more. They're asking for a ransom.

"A ransom? How much?"

"50 thousand."

"50 thousand? From who? Simon?"

"No. Not Simon."

"Simon died last year." His eyes lowered as he thought about these words. Then asked.

"So that would make Daniel the last of them."

"That's right." He closed his eyes pushing away his father's ominous portent.

"Who are they expecting to pay the 50,000?"

"Us. My father."

"Why you? What are you to him?"

"He's a hired hand."

"I don't get it. They kidnapped a hand hoping you'd pay."

"It's complicated."

"It's possible they thought he was someone else." Hoss offered.

"Who?"

"Daniel told his abductors he was our little brother."

"Why would he do that?"

"These are all questions we're trying to find answers to."

~.~

"I don't suppose you know how to cook." Little Joe asked his house guest. He hadn't really had a chance to get to know this one and now they were going to be stuck in the house together for a while. Until tomorrow would bring a new deputy. Bright and refreshed.

"I thought you had a cook."

"He's out on the drive."

"No, sorry. I'm afraid if you let me anywhere near your kitchen, I'm liable to burn your house down. How about you?"

"I'm no cook either, but we can't starve."

~.~

"We went to school together. I'm a couple years older than him." The deputy explained as he rode them back to town.

"I figured you all knew each other."

"We weren't really friends. I didn't hate him or nothin'. He was just a hard kid to like. Hard… It wasn't him so much that was hard to like. He was as sweet as they come. The hard part was facing ourselves. Like, liking him would be forcing ourselves to admit what was happening. To see it. To really see it."

"How bad was it?"

"Let me put it like this. I'm a firm believer in 'spare the rod spoil the child.' All kids get knocked around by their pa. It's the natural order of things. Kids start straying off, sometimes a good butt whooping is all they need to put 'em right back in line. Not like that though. What was happenin' to him, there was nothing natural about that. That kid was livin a nightmare. Even as a kid I knew it. I knew it to the depths of my soul. I knew it and I did nothin', but what could I do? If my parents wouldn't do nothin', if the other grown-ups in town weren't gonna do nothin', what could I do? I never told him this, but he's the reason I became a lawman. I never again wanted to feel so helpless. When I see it happenin' again, I can do sumthin bout it."

"Why don't you tell him that?"

"Awe shucks. What does it matter to him? Why would he care?"

"It might surprise you just how much that matters to him."

~.~

"You think we missed him?" Clancy finally worked up the courage to come out of the shadows.

"I don't know."

"Maybe we were supposed to go to the telegraph office. You think we were supposed to go to the telegraph office?"

"The instructions didn't say that."

"Maybe we should go. Maybe they left something for us there."

"The office is closed now."

"I should have gone there first instead of waiting here. What if it's too late for him? What if we screwed this up somehow?"

"We'll just keep waiting."

"How long should we keep waiting here?"

"I do believe we're stuck here at least for the night."

"Do you think he saw me?"

"Clancy, there's no use in doing this to yourself. We don't know what happened and there's no use speculating." He talked the good talk, but truth was he had the questions in his mind as well and was trying to answer them himself. He was just doing it a bit quieter. He didn't need Clancy blaming himself for something that was outside of his control.

"He knows. Daniel. Daniel knows." Clancy said glaring a hole ten yards beneath the floor board." Knows what? You were wondering if Daniel knew Milligan's dying words." He brought up the conversation Roy had with them last night after Clancy had stormed out of the room. He didn't know Clancy could hear them from outside, though he had been there himself, and himself able to pick up on bits and pieces of the conversation. He didn't connect that Clancy might have heard about Milligan. "He was there." He explained. "He came back to watch the hanging. To see it done. Get some sense of closure. Feel some sense of justice. He said: it was a mistake to go. Said: Milligan saw him there. Spotted him in the crowd. He's the only one that did. When he spoke those words, he was staring at him as he said 'em. He cut through the whole crowd, and spoke directly to him. What's in that paper was summarized but he said a lot more than that. He told him how his family wasn't fit to walk this earth. Told him how it was God's will the earth be wiped clean of them. He tried to discount it as the ravings of a madman, but a piece of it, like the plague, crawled it's way in and got stuck right there in his soul. I guess cause when he was hearing these words, most of his family was already dead. But he and his brother weren't. If he and his brother could stay alive, they would prove Milligan wrong. They just had to say alive long enough to conceive. When his brother got sick those words haunted him. Chased him, but he fought back. He tried his darndest to keep Simon alive. To prove the dead man was a liar. When he died, those words crushed the world around him like an imploding mine. He got it in his mind that it was only a matter of time before death would be comin' for him too. That just like his kinfolk, he wasn't fit for livin'. It's taken a lot of work to try to convince him otherwise and we're still not completely there. There's still a part of him that's holding on to those words. Their haunting him." He broke his gaze from the floorboard and looked around at the silent night. "If I believed there was an ounce of truth in those dyin' man's words, I would have cut my ties with him a long time ago. I would have let that boy fall into oblivion, just as God bids it. But I know in my heart that ain't the way it is. God wouldn't have called me to save him if it was. God want's that boy to live. I know it. I know it so deep it hurts. He may not know it of hisself, but I know it. If we don't get him back then Milligan, doin the devil's work, will win."

~.~

They ate a pitiful dinner that couldn't hold a candle to Hopsing's fine cooking. It might have even settled a little raw in their bellies. It was hard to tell what was the food and what was the stress of the day. Little Joe decided he was going to turn in early for the night. Truth be told, that bang on the head combined with everything that had happened had made him want to stick his head under the covers and return back in a few days.

He offered the deputy the guest bed. The deputy took it graciously, but told him he was going to stay up a few hours more before turning in.

~.~

It was twilight by the time they made it back to town. The brothers talked about making the trek back home. It was hard to admit but the last couple of days had caught up to them, hard, and neither one felt like they had what it took to make the ride back, not without a good night's rest however. With as hard as they've been pushing their horses, they would need to rest as well. Lynton set them up at the Hotel Hacienda where they bedded in for the night.

They had hardly gotten off their boots before they hit the bed and crashed into a heavy slumber.

Authors Note:

Sheriff Sanders comes from The Sisters 1x14