TEN

And so it went for the next few days until they finally arrived in Virginia City-but not without incident. The two men in the back seat eventually debarked before Virginia City but were replaced by two older, big-boned women, sisters from Philadelphia who were taking their first trip to San Francisco. Hoss turned in his seat to answer the women's questions about the city, about what to avoid and they giggled and attempted flirting in response. Hoss jokingly told them to be careful not to be shanghaied on some ship headed out to China and they blushed and tittered. Hoss figured that his responses to them may have been the closest that anyone ever came to flirting with them and they appeared to adore him.

And Adam and Piper no longer tried to avoid each other's eyes but Adam did notice that Nash often reached over and touched Piper's arm or leg. It had been decided that the Jefferses would take the house on the Ponderosa. It was furnished as the previous owner had basically just up and left all the furniture and most of his belongings; he had failed at being a rancher and headed off instead to Alaska hoping to do better as a prospector so he had sold his property to Ben Cartwright for a fair amount to get him started on his way.

On the rest of the trip, Jeffers asked Adam many questions about himself and his family. Adam gave as little information as possible, especially when Nash asked again about his studies in Boston. Hoss listened to the conversation, watching Adam's face. He knew that his suspicions were true; Adam had known Piper-he was sure of that. Hoss could tell by the way Adam and Piper looked at one another, as if they had a familiarity between them and yet, there was something more, something that surpassed mere friendship; it embarrassed Hoss to see the naked emotion on Adam's face when he looked at Piper and at one of the rest stops, Hoss told Adam that maybe Nash and Piper staying on the property wasn't such a good idea after all. Maybe they should encourage the Jefferses to go on to Sacramento but Adam disagreed. It was a good idea, he had said, and they could always go on to Sacramento later should they change their minds. Hoss told Adam that if Nash and his wife were going to stay on the property, Adam had better watch himself or there was going to be trouble, bad trouble. Adam just gave Hoss an odd look and rejoined the others on the stage. But Hoss had a sick feeling in his stomach.

Almost half a day from Virginia City, it began to rain, and as it usually did in that part of the country, it became a deluge. Adam pulled down the shades over the windows of the stage, the only glass windows being the ones in the two doors, but rain still managed to flick in when the shades would puff out due to the wind. Lightning cracked in the sky and the wind blew the rain at such an angle that it fought with the air caused by the motion of the stage. Adam convinced Piper to trade places with him so that she wouldn't get rain in her face and on her clothes; the leather straps weren't as comfortable as the solid back of the seat but she would remain drier so she accepted his offer. And as Adam put his hands on her waist to assist her, Piper looked up into Adam's face and the urge to kiss her as she turned her face to him was almost overwhelming.

Hoss comforted the two matronly sisters; storms like this happened all the time, he said. The worst was if there was a flash flood but Hoss told them as the sisters held each other's hands, that there wasn't much chance of the happening because the ground here wasn't the hard clay-it needed to be hard clay that wouldn't absorb the water that allowed it to form the deep crevasses and furrows in the ground. That was how a man knew, Hoss told them, whether or not it was good, safe land or not because a flood like that could wash away all of a man's stock including cows and pigs and sometimes, a house or barn could be so undermined by the water that it collapsed and washed away too.

The stage whip slowed down the stage and then stopped, pulling the horses over to the side until the worst of the rain had passed; the horses were beginning to lose their footing and the driver, dripping wet, joined the passengers inside, Adam and Nash sliding over to make room for him. So for the next forty minutes, they all indulged in polite conversation and the driver pulled out a flask of whiskey and passed it around to all the men. With rain, the air had changed to have a crisp chill. It was spring but the weather could still vary greatly from day to day and even hour by hour.

The rain finally ended and Adam pulled up the shades on his side while Hoss did on the other side and the inner air that had become humid and dank from all the people inside, was a welcome change even with the chill. The driver debarked but was back in a few minutes.

"Have to ask you all to walk for a short ways. Looks like the rain made the road so mucky that the horses won't be able to get the needed footin' to pull the coach up the incline lessen' you get out and carry a bit of luggage with you. It'd be only for 'bout a quarter mile, maybe a bit more."

"What?" the two women in the back seat asked. "Are we going to have to walk?"

" 'Fraid so, ladies, the driver said. "Them horses need a lighter load to keep their footin'. Don't want them fallin' in the traces or for the stage to become mired in the muck." Piper and Adam smiled at one another; the two elderly ladies combined were probably over three hundred pounds alone.

The travelers disembarked and the driver handed valises and portmanteaus randomly to the passengers to carry, not quite emptying the rear leather boot. Adam pulled Piper and Nash back, telling them that when the horses started, they would flick up mud.

"Does it matter?" Piper asked. "I'm practically up to my ankles in mud anyway."

"Now, Piper," her husband said, "Aren't you enjoying this grand adventure? Here, in the most unlikely of places, you meet an old acquaintance of your beloved father's and perhaps, if your memory improves, a friend of yours."

Piper and Adam looked at one another.

"What is it, Piper? Have you nothing to say? Or are you and your old friend exchanging glances, longing glances but also ones of complicity?" Nash turned his head with the odd upward way he had as if searching for light, toward his wife who was holding his arm with one hand while she carried her small valise in the other. Adam was on his other side, a valise tucked under one arm and a portmanteau in his hand while he supported Nash Jeffers with his other. Their feet were slipping slightly in the mud and Hoss, who was practically loaded down like a pack mule with valises, was helping the two sisters who held up their skirts and fussed and bemoaned the now dirty hems of their dresses and the mud that would end up drying and caking on their patent leather short boots.

"Watch your step," Adam said brusquely while he pulled up on Jeffers' arm.

Nash laughed, not one of amusement but a sardonic laugh. "I could interpret that remark literally or figuratively, Mr. Cartwright. You could be telling me to watch where to place my feet on this slippery ground or you could be telling me that I may be going too far in my comments about a relationship between you and my wife. She is my wife, you know. A married woman."

"I know she's married. Why are you insistent on reminding me?"

"I noticed that earlier, she slipped. You know what I'm talking about, Piper, and you also know that I'm not talking about the ground. You started to refer to him as Adam and you and he never said to refer to each other by your first names. That would have been presumptuous of him to do so-would hint at a certain familiarity. Are you a religious man, Mr. Cartwright?"

"Depends on the situation," Adam dryly answered.

Nash gave a small laugh. "Thou shalt not cover thy neighbor's wife. And we are going to be neighbors, aren't we? Or are you going to renege on the offer?"

"It's primarily up to my father if the offer stays." Adam trudged on ahead and glanced at Piper who stared directly ahead of her, not even looking down at her footing as she struggled with the unsure ground. She had stopped caring about any mud clinging to her skirts and coating her shoes.

"So," Nash asked, "I may be blind but Piper and I were married for four years before this-before I lost my sight, so I know her. Actually, I know her better now than I did before. She is so long-suffering, such a martyr to stay with a blind man she doesn't love anymore-if she ever did-just due to some vows she took. Has she always been so noble, Mr. Cartwright?"

Adam considered pushing Nash down, face-first, into the mud, to let him breathe in the thick, viscous soil until it choked him and he drowned. But instead, it was Piper whose footing gave and she fell into the mud, dropping her elegant valise and falling onto her hands and knees. Adam let go of Nash and hurried around him to pick up Piper who began to cry.

"It's too much, it's all too much," she sobbed. She pulled off her gloves and left them in the mud. Her sleeves were filthy to above her elbows and the front of her skirt was begrimed with mud up to and over her knees. She couldn't stop the sobs that shook her and Adam crooned consoling words to her. Nash couldn't see them so Adam held her close, comforting her. Hoss and the two sisters turned to watch and the sisters exchanged quick glances with one another. Hoss looked down in embarrassment.

Finally, they were all over the rise and the driver reloaded the luggage and helped the sisters and Nash in. Hoss and Adam were the last ones in after they helped Piper who was almost limp, back into the coach. They rode the rest of the way in silence except for Nash telling his wife that he was sorry for distressing her; he hadn't meant what he said about her and Mr. Cartwright. Piper told him it was of no matter; not much mattered anymore, she said and the sadness and hopelessness in her face and voice broke Adam's heart.

Ben and Joe were waiting for the stage as it pulled into Virginia City. Hoss and Adam stepped out, handing down the two sisters who thanked Hoss profusely for his kindness and insisted that if he were ever in Philadelphia that he must come to visit them. And they informed him, that their brother had the loveliest unmarried daughter and they would adore for Hoss to meet her.

But Ben and Joe were both distracted by the blind man with the burned and scarred skin and his beautiful wife whose dress' skirt and its sleeves up to the elbows were caked in dried mud. She looked weary and moved almost as if in a trance.

Adam introduced them as Mr. Nash Jeffers and his wife. Ben shook Nash's hand while his wife barely nodded. Ben noted that Adam stood protectively by her side although she barely noticed how Adam watched her. Hoss, after the sisters went off to spend the night in the hotel until the next morning's stage, told his father how Nash Jeffers had come to take up the offer of renting the old Franklin house. Ben agreed that it was a wonderful idea but told them that tonight, they were welcome to stay at the Ponderosa.

Joe pulled down his hat and Adam noticed the odd look on Joe's face. He wondered what it was for, if it was due to Nash's blindness.

"Joe," Ben said, "drive Mr. and Mrs. Jeffers to the Ponderosa, would you? Settle them in the downstairs bedroom. I need to talk to Hoss and Adam about our other guest. We'll hire a rig at the livery."

At that, Piper Jeffers turned; she seemed to become aware of her surroundings suddenly. "Mr. Cartwright, we, my husband and I, will stay here in the hotel. We don't want to be an intrusion. Actually, it would be better if we stayed here in town. I…it's been a trying journey for both of us and I actually would have preferred to have already reached my destination, to be finished traveling. At least for a while. Please."

"Piper," Nash said, "if the Cartwrights have been so kind as to offer…"

"No," Piper said with a sense of finality. "Thank you, Mr. Catrtwright. And I do mean that. I don't want to seem ungrateful but if you would care to be generous, if you or your sons would assist with our luggage, that's all I require and that would be enough largesse. We can discuss the house some other time-perhaps tomorrow after my husband and I have both rested or the day after that. Whatever would be most convenient for you."

Ben was slightly stunned. The woman had seemed so passive and then she became the one to set the boundaries. "Well, if that's what you would really like." And Ben looked back at Adam because he and Mrs. Jeffers were looking at each other, both of them with their jaws set, determined. "Joe, would you take Mr. and Mrs. Jeffers to the International House. Just drive the buckboard over since the bags are already loaded and then join us at the Silver dollar."

"I'll drive them, Joe," Adam said and he started to assist Piper onto the seat.

"Adam," Ben said, "I really need to talk to you and Hoss about another matter. Let's go have a talk." Then Ben was afraid that Mrs. Jeffers might incorrectly assume that he had a problem with her and her husband as renters. "And Mrs. Jeffers, I assure you that this matter is entirely exclusive of you and your husband. I am pleased to have someone to live on the property. Nothing is sadder than an abandoned house. I look forward to having you and your husband on the Ponderosa as neighbors."

Ben and Nash exchanged a few more words while Adam helped Piper up. She quietly thanked him and smoothed down her mud-stained skirts. "It'll all work out, Piper," he said quietly but she just looked at him with vacant eyes. She was so very weary with life and its struggles; fighting fate was vain, that she knew, so she just wanted to give in to the winds that were blowing her around as if she were nothing more than a fallen leaf from a tree. And Adam stepped back while Joe and Ben helped Nash up and then Joe drove the few blocks to the hotel.

"C'mon, Adam, Hoss," Ben said. "Let's go. I may just have a whiskey as well as a beer."

Hoss and Adam looked at one another. Their father hadn't yet asked them about the sale of the cattle and here, he had mentioned another guest and Adam thought that his father looked drawn, as if he hadn't slept well for many nights. And he hadn't.