A/N: Kind of everywhere in this chapter. This story is starting to get ahead of itself! It's got a little too much momentum for me to keep up with lol. I guess that's what happens when you pick something up from two years ago and just try to roll with it. Thanks so much for tagging along for the ride, guys. I appreciate every one of you.

Chapter Six: Fraud

Tom rested his head on the bars of his cell. His gut felt hollow and a little queasy, and he had yet to shake the horror that sprang for his throat. Sleep came for him in short, fitful snatches, and he dreamt in these brief moments about Robles, and Davey, and his mother. The sheriff's clock tolled out the 8 o'clock hour. Adam Cartwright appeared as if summoned. Tom hadn't so much as glanced the man's way for the duration of the ride into town, or the booking, or the brief explanation of his charges and the evidence against him. He hadn't looked at anyone, or anything, besides his horse's ears which had seemed to flick out a message for him in the building tension.

He looked at Adam now. Adam looked at him. They were mirrors of one another, separated only by time and age. Hooded hazel eyes burned out from beneath thick black brows. Their lips found and pursed in the same sardonic pout. Tom felt he could raise one hand and the lawman would mime him. Too sick to process whatever was bubbling up in him at the sight, Tom pressed his forehead to his bent knees and covered his head in his hands.

"Did a number on him, eh?" There was a dry humor in the mimic's voice.

"For what it's worth…" Candy started, but didn't finish. Tom could picture the mix of pity and distrust that might have crossed his face. He didn't say goodbye before pushing out the jail door and into the darkening streets of town.

Adam sat at the sheriff's chair with cracking knees and reshuffled the game of solitaire Candy'd played halfway through.

"I hear you've made a good hand," the Marshal opened. Tom didn't reply. "You pretty close to everyone then?"

"I would never harm one of our own men."

"You've fought with Canaday before." Tom looked up from his knees. "Broke his nose, I heard." Adam kept his attention on the shuffling cards. "And you are close to him."

Adam laid out his hand thoughtfully, straightening each pile before continuing to the next.

"What about the barkeep?"

"There were twenty other men in the bar that might have killed him."

"Actually there were fourteen." Adam found an ace and stacked it. "And three women. The three women noticed that you, over the others, were more drunk and more disposed to violence."

"I'm not disposed to violence-"

"You were kicked out of the bar for starting a brawl."

"The jackasses that came in and ruined our game started the fight!"

Tom rolled through waves of anger and emptiness. He was the prime suspect- the only link between Davey and the nameless bartender. The only link without an alibi. The only one that would have known where Davey lay sleeping. But the Marshal was watching him intently.

"What jackasses?"

Tom hesitated. "Some dirty ass buffoons. I didn't know them. They hadn't been in the bar all night but came in and called us out for running a bad game."

"How's the Montana Territory this time of year?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?"

There was honest bewilderment on his face. Or at least he hoped there was. Adam leaned back in his chair, thrumming his fingers on the sheriff's desk. Tom held his stare with one of frustrated energy, though the will and the strength behind it waned as the quiet stretched on for several hard minutes. There was radio static between his ears. The Marshal seemed to have forgotten his cards. Just when the Marine was ready to sag in defeat, the door to the jail came swinging softly open. Adam glanced toward it and his face softened.

The Marshal rose and met the stranger near the door, kissing her and speaking softly but sternly near her ear. Tom couldn't make out what they were saying, and it took him too long to realize they weren't even speaking English. Adam lifted something off and away from the woman, leaving her free to wipe her hand on a floral apron that reminded him of-

His mother. Christ, he was looking at his mother and she at him, and a cold pit was forming in his stomach because his mother's eyes weren't brown, and his mother's jaw wasn't so delicate, and she never looked at anyone with such easy, open love, not even her own son- and the woman who wasn't his mother was speaking softly to Adam in French and bouncing a baby they called Mon chou, Amelie-

The baby was watching him. It had a rosy birthmark that kissed its brow, the same birthmark his mother had kissed when they left Granny in California to die alone. There was a ringing in his head but it was empty noise. Shock and alarm sent pulses down his spine and through his fingertips, but he felt them only as an afterthought of stimulus. Tom flexed his tingling fingers, and a cold and senseless feeling crept into his belly. He was looking into the eyes of his infant grandmother, forty-six years prior to the date of his own birth, and for the first time in his life he felt nothing. The grief, the shock, the panic and despair that had rode his back for half of his life was gone; all that remained was a hollow ache.

The Marshal was murmuring to his wife but had his eyes on Tom. She seemed to bicker with him. With a sneer of annoyance, adjusting a metal lunch pail in his hands, Adam addressed his prisoner.

"She's asking if you've eaten." She added something else in a chiding tone. "She says you look unwell, and that I must be starving you."

"No," the answer came out of him before he could catch it.

His last meal was yesterday noon, and the thought of even maggoty rice made his mouth water. Adam's wife hadn't brought much but the Marshal dutifully offered Tom a meager cut of his own dinner: amounting to a fatty vegetable broth with odds and ends thrown in, a wedge of cheese, and a palm-sized hunk of dark bread. Tom stuffed cheese and bread in his mouth like a dog, but despite the taste and despite his hunger, the food turned to dry ash on his tongue. Adam's wife was still watching him, or he might have pushed it aside. But with her brown eyes boring into him, Tom shoveled bite after bite to chase away the nothing-feeling in his gut. The couple's eyes never left him. He wondered if they'd poisoned him, if they were offended by his table manners. He met their eyes with some hesitation and wondered if they could see themselves in him.

When the French woman deemed her husband and the prisoner had eaten enough, she collected the dirty dishes and whisked her way out of the jail in a flurry of skirts. The Marshal watched the empty space she left for some time.

Doc Martin's eyes were bloodshot and rimmed in blue-black bruises. Davey wasn't going to wake up. Candy felt the proclamation like a rock through a glass window. He rested his hip on the boy's cot and watched the shallow rise and fall of his chest. He asked the doctor if he was sure. The doctor told him to say his goodbyes and take word to the Ponderosa.

"He's not dead yet," Candy objected.

"He's not going to wake up, Candy. I've done all I can. If he's still alive in the morning, I'll reevaluate. But I don't think he'll make it that far."

Candy hung his head. He offered to stay and sit by Davey's side, but Martin gave him a severe look and told him to go home and rest. The doctor wouldn't let up until he left the room and was halfway down the hall. On the street, in the dark, alone, Candy let the day fall into place. Davey. Tom. Adam Cartwright. They dropped on his thin shoulders like so many stones, but there was nothing left for him to feel. He tried to summon the anger he knew he should have. All he managed to conjure was the image of a dying boy, and his suspected killer who was only a sick and shattered shell of a man. Tomorrow, the crew would be mourning Davey. Tomorrow, the Cartwrights would still be buzzing over Adam. Tomorrow, Candy alone would bear the weight of Tom's confession.

He refused to think about that. In all of Candy's good-sense- and he was a competent, logical, even-minded man- he couldn't wrap his head around the things Tom told him. God may have rained frogs down on Pharaoh, but he never sent anyone back to keep Eve from eating the apple. But it wasn't a lie. Candy knew the bitter taste of lies on his tongue, and he knew the way a man's expression had to twist to accommodate it. With confusion in his heart the young foreman picked his way home to the Ponderosa.

Candy knew what a lying man looked like, and it wasn't Tom Lawton.

The Cartwrights were buzzing. Hoss and Joe had a spat about whether or not it was good to see Adam again, whether they even wanted him back- "of course we do, Joe, he's our brother-" and "well if he felt all that brotherly maybe he'd have written more often." Ben looked eight years younger. Hop Sing had even cleaned Adam's old room until it glittered, as if the same man that left it empty were moving back in tomorrow. They didn't know about his little wife. They hadn't seen his big-eyed daughter. Candy watched them through a somber lense as they chatted over breakfast, and after a few glowing comments about the eldest Cartwright boy found himself feeling almost jealous.

"Candy, you riding the East Fork today?" Joe asked through a mouth of bacon and biscuit.

Candy felt a pull of annoyance. "I'm going into town to check on Davey."

The room dimmed instantly. Candy looked to Ben. "Doc said he wouldn't make it through the night. We need to write his mother and make funeral arrangements."

"Of course," Ben returned. He stirred his eggs around his plate without looking at them. "Did you get anything out of Tom?"

Too much, Candy refrained from saying. "No," he said instead. "He was real tore up about it, though."

"But no alibi?"

Candy breathed a long sigh. "The doc said there was a slim chance he could have been attacked in the morning, before housekeeping found him. Lars was too distressed to give an accurate description of the scene, and Paul said the bloodstains didn't seem to be more than three hours old when he got there."

"So there's a chance?"

"A small one."

Hoss's voice was low and sad when he said, "I don't think Tom were the one that did it. I don't want to believe it, at least. But the man weren't all there. And he was easy to get spooled up."

"None of us want to believe it was our own man, son," Ben said. "But if there's a chance it was, he needs to face justice the same as anyone else." He offered Candy a particular look when he continued, "we can't let the fact that he was a good hand cloud our judgement."

Davey's funeral was two days later. Ben paid for him a plot in town and the cowboy's friends made him a simple cross. He was nineteen years old and nearly three-thousand miles from his home. Lars, Candy, his best friend Marks, and a couple other hands bore his pall and the new Baptist preacher gave a sermon mourning the death of a young, true servant of the Lord and said a prayer that may Almighty God stretch out His hand against the murderer. There was a murmur in the ranks, and not a few hard eyes turned toward the jailhouse.

Tom hadn't spoken since the night he was imprisoned. He ate mechanically. Drank sparingly. If he had a smoke and a deck of cards he might start thinking he was on a staging island waiting to be shipped back to Hell. His ancestor didn't smoke, and anyways didn't come around now that Tom had taken a vow of silence. Sheriff Coffee and his deputies smoked but wouldn't share with a murderer. If he thought too hard about it he'd get shaky. He thought about it often.

"Suppertime, Lawton," called a nameless deputy, slinging a tray of corn beef hash and a slim slice of buttered bread along the floor of the cell. Three meals a day for nearly three days had given the deputy a particular accuracy- the food inched to a stop a hair away from Tom's boot. "You're gonna have company after the funeral."

Tom looked up but said nothing. Company consisted of Mr. Cartwright, Candy, the Marshal, and Major Compton. It wasn't exactly a trial, but it was more of one than he expected. He was being given a chance to defend himself, at the very least, but every small piece of testimony painted a brighter target on his back. Marks and Davey had been closer than brothers- Marks knew about his brawl with Candy, about a fight that nearly broke out once between he and Davey while riding herd, he knew about the scandalous meeting in the barn Tom had with the Widow Shannon. Lars had seen him eyeing the bartender's golden ring the night of the murders. These accounts fell leaden in the air as Candy read them off. He looked sorry.

Adam didn't have anything on him really, besides being the unfortunate man in the way of his cross-country investigation. He hadn't an alibi, but Adam didn't have even a description that matched Tom's.

Major Compton was the nail in his coffin. He single-handedly unraveled Tom's backstory with only a few papers and a grin. A windbag, like all officers, he was halfway through the story of his time in Korea when Tom caught a lie.

"Compton's a fraud." Six heads snapped around to his cell. His voice was rough with disuse, and his joints groaned when he stood and approached the bars.

"What?" Adam's eyes shone.

Compton balled his hands into fists that shook. "Bold words from the man being tried for murder."

Tom was undeterred. "He just claimed to have commanded the landing in Korea, " His pulse thrummed quick enough to make him feel dizzy. "But the landing force was commanded by a Naval Commander."

"You have no way of knowing that-"

"He could have been a company leader," Adam cut in. He cast a narrow eye at the reddening Major.

"They were lieutenants."

"He's been promoted since then. I've seen his service papers, Lawton, I haven't seen yours," the Marshal snapped. "You're grasping at a thin thread."

"Ask him how many Marines participated in the landing," Tom challenged.

"What do you expect him to say?"

Tom clenched his hands till his knuckles ached. There was a sparse, sparse hope in his heart. All eyes turned to Compton. Without hesitation he answered, "Three-hundred."

"The real number is only 109. Fuck, give me a pencil and I can draw the line of assault for you- whoever Compton is, he doesn't know his command from his asshole."

If he weren't behind bars, Compton would have struck him. He turned his red nose to Adam and the sheriff and spat that the word of a prisoner shouldn't be held over the head of a Major.

"Simmer down, Major," Coffee waved the younger man out of his space. "That's an easy enough thing to check out. If the boy's wrong, it won't hurt anyone for him to gain a few pounds to help him swing a little better." There was a question in his eyes though, and he turned to face Ben and Adam, shoulder to shoulder like a pair of stone statues. "Marshal, Ben."

"I'll send a telegram," Adam promised lowly.

Ben turned to face Tom. His face was unreadable. He opened his mouth, but whatever words he had died there. Compton, shaking, threw his hands out. He fixed a deadly glare on Tom and approached the cell so that he nearly touched the bars.

"You're pulling this out of your ass so that you can live another day, but I swear to God I'll be the one that puts the noose around your murderous neck. "

"You're not the one on trial here, Major," the Marshal assured. He put firm hands on the Major's shoulders and twisted him toward the door. "Go to your hotel room. We'll send for you."

When the jail door slammed shut, silence filled the Major's absence.

"Tom, if you're lying-" Ben ground his teeth in indecision.

"If I'm lying you'll still hang me," Tom returned. "You can't hang me twice. You can't hang me extra hard. But if I'm not lying, you just let a man impersonating a military officer walk out of your jail uncontested."

"Candy."

The order didn't have to be spoken. Candy straightened from where he was leaning against the Sheriff's desk, but paused as he turned. He found paper and pencil and approached Tom.

"Draw the line of battle for the assault on Korea." Tom reached, but his foreman held the items away. "Marshal, if this comes back accurate, will he be set free?"

"Not without stipulation."

"That's a lawman's maybe if I ever heard it."

Candy didn't hang around to watch Tom scribble. He stepped out into the early dusk and followed Compton's boot prints in the dirt.

Ben followed his son to send the telegram. No words passed between them. Over the last three days they'd had little time alone together, and Ben tried to savor it while it lasted. Adam seemed on edge. Time had made his face alien to Ben. Where once he saw every thought that crossed those hazel eyes, he now saw only a guarded suspicion. He wondered if travel, hardship, or the life of a lawman had put that in his son.

"Have you eaten?" There was tension in Adam's voice. They stood like strangers outside the post office.

"No," Ben tried not to sound too eager. "Have you?"

Adam shook his head. "Have dinner with me."

"Are you put up at the hotel?"

"No."

Ben's chest swelled with a childish anxiety as they threaded their way through the streets and toward the edge of town.

"You're staying with Mrs. Hager?" Adam cocked a brow. "That woman is old enough to be your grandmother, and you're-you're shacking up with her instead of sleeping at the hotel?"

His son held up a finger for silence, or maybe to count a point. "She's renting the home. It takes a lot of money to be a dowager in this economy," Adam's grin, at least, was familiar- even if age had made it look a bit like his own. "I needed a little extra space."

"Space? Space for what?"

"Papaaa!"

A black-headed girl about two shot out of the half-open door of the house. A soft-featured woman of thirty stood in the door. Ben stood in the yard as if he'd grown roots there, hearing but not understanding the words that passed between his son and the child and the woman.

"Pa," he hadn't called him that in years. "Meet Amelie and Eloise."

Ben swept his hat off and kissed the woman's hand. "Eloise. How wonderful to meet you, I'm- I'm Ben Cartwright-"

Adam cut him off, translating. Ben wondered if the woman spoke English at all. Whatever his son's wife responded, Adam only gave Ben a grin and a wink. "Come inside. She's got dinner ready."