I just want to say a very big thank you to all the reviewers, subscribers and guests alike, who have stuck with my story to the end and left such fabulous comments. You've probably heard this a hundred times before, but it's the readers and the comments which keep us fanfic writers going. You spur us on! You are all stars.

And now (in my best tv voiceover voice) here is the conclusion to 'The Protector'...

Five Weeks Later

Clara sat comfortably on the young mare and directed the horse with ease around the Ponderosa's corral. Joe stood in the centre, keeping face-on to the girl as she rode in a wide circle around him. He called out orders to walk, lope, canter and Clara obeyed, directing the horse's gait as commanded. Her un-braided hair flew out behind her as she rode.

Each time she neared the barn, she would call out, "Hoss, watch!" And Hoss would look up from where he was pummelling a white-hot metal bar with a hammer, thrust it into a nearby fire, and return an encouraging word as she rode by.

But when she rode towards Adam, who was resting a forearm on the top rail of the corral, she would straighten her back even further, adopt a look of intense concentration and perform whatever manoeuvre Joe asked of her without a fault. Adam would smile, raise a hand and pretend he had not noticed the look of pleasure his response evoked as she rode away.

Adam became aware of a presence beside him. There was no need to look to know it was his father. A slight wobble of the fence told Adam that Ben had rested his weight over the top rail and was also watching Clara at her riding lesson.

Clara had almost completed another circuit when the barn cat—once known as nothing more than 'the cat' and now renamed Brush by Clara on account of his large, fox-like tail—bounced up from where he had been stalking a prey by the fence and darted into the corral. The normally placid mare threw back her head and reared a short way off the ground, dancing in panic at the sudden movement. Clara closed her knees tightly around the horse's flanks and pulled back on the reins and within a few moments the animal was under control.

Joe had begun to run towards the spooked mare but halted at the sight of Clara bringing the animal to a stop, and running her hand over the horse's neck in long gentling strokes.

"Hey Adam," he called out. "She's a natural. Didn't need my help at all."

With a large grin on her face, Clara rode towards where Adam and Ben were standing. "Did you see, Adam? I didn't fall, I settled her down by myself, I didn't need any help."

Adam smiled up at her. "You did great, Clara."

She turned the mare and resumed her course within the fence line.

Ben shook his head. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear that wasn't the same girl who came here five weeks ago."

Adam's face dimpled. "She's doing remarkably well considering it's not long since she lost her mother, and had to watch it happen." His eyes followed her. "She still wakes up in the night, though, crying for Johanna."

"I know."

Adam threw his father a glance.

Ben smiled sadly. "It'll take time, son."

Adam shifted his weight away from the fence, and Ben couldn't help notice the wince as he did so, and the careful way he lowered his arm to his side.

"How's your shoulder today? Is the pain any better?"

Adam rolled his eyes. "Pa, you've asked me that same question every day for the last week."

"Well, I told you you'd taken your sling off too soon, but you didn't listen."

A slow smile formed on Adam's face. "I guess some things don't change, huh, Pa?"

Ben placed a warm hand on his son's good shoulder. "I wouldn't have it any other way." He turned back to watch Clara. "But you should have followed doctor's orders and kept that sling on."

The doctor had had to dig deep for the bullet in Adam's shoulder, but mercifully Adam had been knocked out with a healthy dose of ether. He came to lying on a mountain of pillows, feeling sick to his stomach and with a deep throbbing pain in his shoulder from the assault by the doctor's probes. After he'd had several hours of sleep, Ben allowed a freshly bathed Clara—wearing one of Joe's shirts and a pair of pants which were far too big for her—to visit. She knelt on the floor by his bed and put her hand over his.

"Please, Adam, not you too. Please don't…" And that's all she managed before tears welled up and a sob escaped her.

Adam was too dozy with sleeping powder to respond with more than a faint and fading, "I'm not going anywhere," before his eyes closed and he started to drift away. The last thing he was aware of was a soft touch on his face as Clara laid a gentle kiss on his cheek.

At the start, Clara rarely left his side. She insisted on taking all his meals up to his room, not letting anyone else carry his tray. She sat with him as he slept, and read to him when he was awake. Other visitors were tolerated but quickly shooed out, much to their amusement. And it was only when Ben made her eat a meal at table, or when it was her bedtime, did other members of the family have a chance to talk at length with their newly returned relative. That Clara didn't trust anyone but Adam was clear to all. He tried to explain to her that she could count on his father and brothers through thick and thin—hadn't she put her faith in Hoss when he had rescued her from the lake?—but his words fell on deaf ears. She let them feed her, tell her when to go to bed and when to bathe, but she didn't trust them with her heart.

After a few days of bed rest Adam insisted on getting up, despite his father's protestations. He placated Ben's worries with the promise he wouldn't go farther than the porch. But when Clara began to spend less time with him, and calling from the sofa didn't bring her hurrying to his side, Adam ventured out beyond the confines of the house. He found her in the barn, where she had been spending more and more time talking to and petting the horses, or trying to make the barn cat play with her. Adam suspected that by fussing over him whilst he was injured, and now directing her attention on her new animal friends, she could avoid thinking about her mother; her grief was held at bay. She had cried on numerous occasions when they were alone in the wilderness, but here, surrounded by new people, she was locking her grief deep inside where no one could witness her pain.

The day Adam threw off his sling—literally; the despised piece of material was tugged loose and tossed unceremoniously into one of his drawers—he took Clara on a drive to his favourite spot on the Ponderosa. He hadn't been there in six years and as he pulled the buggy's team to a stop and climbed down from the rig, he felt a sense of overwhelming love for the land he had not seen in so long. He placed his hand on Clara's back, gently leading her to a rocky outcrop where they sat on the hot stone and looked out over a view that his father once said approached heaven itself. A carpet of pines filled the slope beneath them, all the way to the lakeshore. A circle of low mountains stretched out on either side. No words were spoken, the panorama was too magnificent to describe.

Adam looked down at his young charge whose expression, though filled with awe, held a sadness in the cast of her eyes and the set of her mouth. He withdrew from a vest pocket Johanna's powder-blue pendant. Hoss had ridden out several days previously to retrieve it from her mother's grave. She took it from his hand, turning it over and over in her fingers, her face a mask as she studied the item her mother had worn everyday of her adult life. But then she braved a look at Adam and he couldn't keep the pity from his eyes. Clara burst into tears and with Adam's comforting arms around her, she cried long wailing sobs into his chest. She cried herself to sleep with her head on his lap and when it was time to go, Adam cursed his still tender shoulder that he didn't have the strength to carry her to the rig.

On their way back to the Ponderosa, Adam told her how Hoss had travelled all those miles back to where her mother had been laid to rest, just to retrieve the pendant for Clara. He had camped overnight near her grave and planted a wooden cross at the head with her name inscribed across it. "He did that for my mama?" Clara had softly asked. "But he didn't even know her." And Adam had smiled and put his arm around her, drawing her close to him as they rattled down the road towards home. "He did it for you," he replied.

Hoss was working on one of the window frames which had become warped in the previous winter's temperatures as they pulled into the yard. Clara walked up to him and, to his amazement, she reached up to kiss him on the cheek. She then looked down at the pendant in her hand and turned to enter the house. Hoss's cheeks had bunched as he grinned his gap-toothed smile at his brother and with a touch of blush to his cheeks, he resumed his work on the frame.

After that day, Clara gradually came out of her shell. And when Adam suggested Joe teach her to ride, she jumped at the opportunity. The sound of a child's laughter once more sounded around the Ponderosa. She spent every moment Joe could spare in the corral and when Joe was tied up elsewhere, this duty fell to Adam or his father. They would lead the horse with Clara sitting straight in the saddle and her confidence grew every moment of every day.

She spent the first couple of weeks in the clothes she had been given on her arrival. Joe's pants only stayed up with the help of a pair of braces and a belt, and they had to be turned up many times at the ankle. Her shirt was a baggy affair with the sleeves rolled up and the front tails knotted together. With her hair tied back in a ponytail she looked like a tomboy. Once Adam was up and about, he insisted on taking the buckboard into Virginia City to buy her some suitable clothing. Accompanied by his father, it didn't take long before the return of a long-absent Adam Cartwright, with a young girl in tow, set tongues wagging and the gossip-mongers had the juiciest subject they'd had to enjoy in a long while. Is this why Adam Cartwright left? To claim a daughter from an illicit affair? Did he get married and this was his step-daughter? So where was the wife? The child couldn't be yet another Cartwright stray, surely, that was way too dull.

And now, five weeks after Adam had returned home with a child whom the Virginia City gossipers would be disappointed to learn was a stray, Clara stood taller, her eyes shining as bright as the gloss that had come to her white-blonde hair. She had even filled out a little with help from Hop Sing who loved nothing more than feeding the 'little Missy' all his favourite meals. Truth be told, Hoss was starting to fill out a little more, too, as Joe endlessly teased him.

Adam ignored his father's comment about his sling and turned back to the corral. "Time to call it a day, Clara."

Clara stayed on her course. "Oh, Adam, just a little longer."

Adam hung his head.

"Yeah, Adam, don't be a spoilsport."

Adam looked up to see Joe's lips pursed in amusement. He still couldn't believe how different his little brother looked now. The grey mop of hair, the larger frame. If Adam didn't know better, he'd say he was a different person to the slight boy he'd left behind.

"Okay, one more turn and then take Holly to the barn for a rub down. And then it'll be your turn for a scrub down before dinner." His raised eyebrows and slightly cocked head had the desired effect. Clara seldom refused anything Adam asked of her.

Ben grinned. "You're a natural, Adam, you know that."

Adam's eyes followed Clara as she circled the corral. "She's a good kid; she makes it easy for me."

Ben frowned. "Don't put your abilities down, Adam. She responds to you because you know how to talk to children; how to talk to her. You treat her with kindness, respect. And you listen." He chuckled and leaned his back against the fence. "I learned the hard way, with you, that listening to what you were saying, what you were really saying, was the most important thing I could do. You wanted me to hear you."

"And you did, Pa. Even when I didn't want to open up."

"It became a lot harder when you were grown."

Adam dropped his head. "I told you I was sorry, Pa, about the last year, before I left."

Ben twisted to face him. "I know, son, and I'm not criticising."

It had been a long and difficult conversation. The two men had sat up late into the night, long after the rest of the house had turned in, and Adam had confessed to his father why he had left: how the Laura affair had rocked the foundations of his life, making him believe he would only find what he wanted if he left the secure boundaries of the Ponderosa and branched out on his own. How he felt he would always be second fiddle if he stayed. He shamefully apologised for his behaviour that year, admitting he had intentionally caused friction so his departure would be easier for everyone. But he was unable to look at his father when he admitted he had been a fool to not share his concerns with him.

"Just more of that damn Adam Cartwright pride, I guess. Don't admit to what's hurting, else you'll look like a weak fool." And he had looked up into the anxious eyes of his father. "But better a weak fool than someone who runs away from their problems."

His father had lent forward and rested a hand on his knee. "But it takes a strong man to face up to his past mistakes." And Adam knew then he was forgiven, and that he had made the right decision to come home.

Ben watched Clara approach the end of her final lap, bringing the mare to a stop by the barn doors.

"You'll make a good father, son."

"Doesn't look like I'll get the chance to find out."

Ben looked from Clara to Adam.

"A child doesn't have to be one's own flesh and blood for a man to be a father...or grandfather...to her."

Adam leaned back against the fence, staring at his boot as he kicked his heel into the dusty earth. "I know." He paused. "I've grown very fond of her."

"Fond?" Ben's tone was one of disbelief.

Adam flicked his father a look. "Okay, more than fond. I…" Adam looked up to see his father's head cocked, breath held. "Look, I'm more than fond, okay?"

Ben smiled and drew in closer to his son.

"That child already heeds your words as though you were her father. So what's stopping you?"

Adam sighed and kicked at the ground once more. "Pa, she's a twelve-year old girl, for goodness sake. What do I know about raising a twelve-year old girl?"

Ben angled his head so he had Adam's attention.

"Adam, being a father is not something you instantly know how to be once your child is placed in your arms; it's learned through hard knocks and experience. It's learned through doing it. Yes, things won't be easy for you, especially with a girl of her age and all that will soon entail. But in the last few weeks alone you've shown more paternal instinct and wisdom than a lot of fathers show in a lifetime. You can do this, son."

Adam met his father's dark intense gaze.

"She needs a woman in her life, to help with…" Adam shrugged, "...womanly things."

"What that child needs is you."

"But—"

"But, what? Are you saying you'd rather pack her off to a home somewhere, an orphanage where who knows what will become of her?"

Adam winced. "No, of course not, but…"

"Adam, we can give her a life here. No, we don't have a woman around the house to help her, but she'll have us, all of us, you, me, Hoss, Little Joe. We'll face each obstacle as it comes." Ben's voice softened. "I've lived with three women, son; I think I can remember a bit of what's required."

Adam's smile was rueful. He didn't respond.

"But there's something else troubling you?"

Adam turned to his father.

"It's not only a question of me being a father to her." He bowed his head. "Pa, we're gonna have to leave."

Ben's face dropped. "What do you mean, leave? You've just come home. You went through hell and high water to get here, in some cases literally."

"I know that." Adam snapped. "And believe me, I don't want to go. But Pa, Clara's not safe here. Her father is obviously rich. He paid for a team of men to track his wife and child down for nearly a year. If he can do that, then he's not going to give up. He'll send someone else. All they have to do is find one of Cordell's gang, hear the name Cartwright, and…"

His words trailed off as he looked to his father.

Ben recalled the day after the incident at the lake. Joe and Hoss, along with Deputy Clem Foster and a small posse, had ridden out to where they had left Cordell's gang. The young drunk was gone, along with the entire remuda, but the gang were still tied up and hadn't moved from where they had been left the previous day. They were in a sorry state: hungry, cold and angry at their treatment at the hands of the Cartwrights and, 'that traitor, Corky Wood', who had left them without a by-your-leave at the first opportunity. Their plight was not to improve though. For after a few days spent in the cells of the Virginia City sheriff's office, they were charged with aiding and abetting in a kidnapping and incarcerated in the Nevada Penitentiary.

"But Adam, where would you go?"

Adam shook his head. "I don't know. All I know is staying here puts Clara and everyone else in danger. I have to take Clara to somewhere no one will find us. We'll change our names, stay hidden, until her father is no longer a threat."

The expression on Ben's face changed to one Adam had seen many times before. It was the face he wore when he wouldn't take no for an answer; when his back straightened and he seemed to grow several inches in height and a finger rose to point in Adam's face.

"And when will that be? Adam, you've spent six years traipsing all over the country doing goodness knows what. I can't just let you walk away again."

Adam pushed away from the fence and whirled to face his father. "Pa, this isn't about me, can't you see that?"

Ben took a step closer to his son. "No, you're right. It's about that little girl over there who's just lost her mother and has spent the last year running from one place to the next. She needs a firm ground beneath her feet, not to be constantly on the move."

Adam dropped his head, his hands rising to his hips.

"Son, if you run, if you take Clara and leave, then you'll spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, not trusting a soul. The stranger who stops at your door asking for help, the new family in town, the school-teacher, I don't know." Ben paused, shaking his head. "And when a few years go by and you let your guard down and something happens. What then? We won't be there to help you."

Adam looked away. His face was a mass of contradicting emotions. "Pa, I've…" He took a breath. "I've never felt this way before. It's as though my one reason for living is to protect her. Nothing else is important anymore. All I want to do is keep her safe." He looked up at Ben with pleading eyes. "But, Pa, I don't know how to do it."

A firm hand gripped his shoulder. "Welcome to fatherhood, son. The most wonderful, painful, fulfilling thing you'll ever do. And you've jumped in head first."

There was the sound of the barn door banging and then Clara raced past them on her way to the house.

"Slow down!" hollered Adam. "You're a young lady, remember."

Clara ground to a halt, spun around to grin at Adam, and then turning back walked as fast as she could into the house.

The two men's eyes met and they both shook their head, smiling.

"Son," Ben's smile faded. "Stay. You said yourself Clara's father will stop at nothing to get her back, and if that is so then he'll find you, no matter how hard you try to hide. Here you have me, you have your brothers, and together we can take on anything. We've done it before, and no doubt we'll do it again." He angled his head to catch Adam's eye. "Do you really want to go?"

Adam flicked his head towards the comfortable old ranch house and a smile dimpled the side of his face. "No."

"Then we're agreed. You'll stay?"

Adam looked down at the ground, and slotted his hands into his rear pockets. After a moment he met his father's eyes. "We're agreed."

He didn't show it but relief flooded through Ben. He slapped Adam's back, and began to steer him across the yard.

It had been six long years without his oldest son, and Ben wasn't going to let him go without a fight. He knew exactly what Adam was feeling. He had felt it himself every day since the doctor had placed Elizabeth's squalling newborn into his arms. And it didn't matter how big they got, the need to protect, to keep them safe and close, never went away. Adam was home and Ben could sleep easier at night. But for Adam, with a child he had grown to love, the sleepless nights were about to begin. The unseen spectre of the child's father would linger over their lives until it was settled once and for all, whenever that might be. But together they were stronger and they could face, square on, anything that was thrown at them.

As Adam walked across the yard in that familiar slow and steady gait Ben had missed so much, he paused and smiled. And throwing a glance of thanks upwards, he rejoiced. His family was complete once more.

~8~

Epilogue

The Ponderosa, Nev.,
Aug. 12, 1871.

The Count Friedrich von Falkeberg
Schloss Falkeberg
Hanover
Germany

Sir,— It is with regret I write to inform you of the death of your wife. Johanna, Countess von Falkeberg, was killed while trying to escape from the men hired at your behest to track down both she and your daughter. Such was your wife's dread of turning custody of your daughter over to you that she spent the last year running from her pursuers. I was privileged to know her in the final days of her life. I found her to be a loving and protective mother, whose sole reason for living was to provide happiness and security for her daughter. She died a courageous death, and I was honoured to have known her for the short time that I did.

The men hired by your New York agent to find your wife are also dead or incarcerated, having failed in their mission to return your daughter to you.

With regards to Clara, I can report that despite the ordeal your hired men subjected her to, she is safe and well and in my care.

Sir, I have grown to love your daughter as though she was my own, and I am gratified to impart that my feelings for her are reciprocated. My greatest wish is to legally adopt her, and as a first step towards this goal, I have become her guardian ad interim. To this end, I beseech you to give up your claim on the daughter that you have not seen in over ten years. The child has no wish to return to a father she does not know and to a land that she no longer recognises as her own.

I fear, however, that my plea will be dismissed, and so, understand this. If you want your daughter back, then you and you alone must come to Nevada and claim her. Do not send proxies or bounty hunters. I will not hide her from you. I will not evade any future search. Clara will reside with me on the Ponderosa ranch, near Virginia City in the state of Nevada. I will feed her, educate her, and be a father to her. Do not think I am interested in your money or your title. It is Clara I am invested in. I love your daughter as though she were my own flesh and blood.

I recognize that legally I may have no claim over her, but know this. I will fight for her until there is no fight left in me, or until one of us is dead.

Yours respectfully,

Adam Cartwright

~The End~