"Pa, Pa, come quick!" Adam was unsure of what it was, who it was, that he was seeing but when he dismounted and approached, he was shocked—and sickened. It was little Amy Forrester—Adam knew her as one of the girls who followed around Joe as if he was some adolescent Adonis. Adam had given Amy a ride home a few times when he had fetched Joe from the school house and she had been a lively girl—but this corpse floating in the water, this white specter with the bare budding breasts, with the pure expression and with hair that moved in the water like a mermaid's—this was an otherworldly creature and Adam dropped down to his knees close to the body. His breath was ragged and he struggled to control his emotions; he wanted to cry and to rage against the heavens for allowing such a senseless and cruel act.
Adam Cartwright was 24. He had seen dead men—even killed two himself when faced with no other option so it wasn't so much that it was a corpse that partially lay in the creek. Adam had also known more than one woman and was familiar with the curves that lay under all the female clothing and he had seen and kissed and caressed the smooth, ivory skin of a woman—had also seen many shows in San Francisco where performers good-naturedly, teasingly, bared themselves while they danced but this sight shook him to the core as nothing else he had ever seen had.
"Holy Mother of God," Ben Cartwright whispered as he stood behind his son. "Holy Jesus!" He walked closer to the prone body. "Do you have any idea who she…"
"Her name is Amy. She's Joe's age. Just a sweet, young girl. Her family lives about two miles from the school—I've taken her home a few times with Joe." Adam sucked in his breath as he looked at the body again. There were ligature marks about her neck—a rope had been used-and there were various bruises on her thighs and arms. Adam stood up and Ben Cartwright bent over to pull the body from the water but Adam reached out and stopped his father. "I don't think you should touch her until after Sheriff Coffee sees her. He'll need to know how she's…"
"But, Adam, we can't just leave her here like that. It's…obscene. And she's so young…and lying there like that. It mean out of decency itself we should…"
"I just think you should leave her alone until Roy sees her." Adam unsteadily walked to his horse and began to unsaddle it.
"What are you doing?" Ben asked. He was shaken by the discovery of the body and having trouble concentrating. All he wanted was to pull the body from the water as he would his own child in such a state.
Adam pulled the saddle off his horse and dropped it on the ground, freeing the saddle blanket. He walked over to the body and spread the small blanket over her breasts and her lower abdomen. Ben nodded in approval.
"You stay with her," Ben said.
"Me? Why not you, Pa? I'll go for Roy."
"No. I'll go fetch Roy and you stay here—keep animals away from her. I'll stop by the house and have Hop Sing bring out a buggy to take her to town after Roy checks out the scene; I don't want Joe to find out about this, at least not yet. And Roy can be the one to tell her parents." Ben glanced once more time at the body and he shook his head in despair at the cruel ways of the world.
Adam reluctantly agreed and when his father left, Adam sat back down near the body but turned his back to it. He couldn't look at it anymore because he knew that if he did, young Amy would rise up at night while he slept and haunt him-and she did-but not just while he slept; he found himself anticipating her presence around every corner he turned for the next few months, to see her calm, almost beatific expression on every female he saw. And the next Sunday in church he glanced at one of the stained glass windows and there was Amy Forsyth's face on the image of the Madonna, rays of divine love emanating from her outstretched hands. But as time passed and Adam began to feel safe from her ghost disturbing his peace of mind, another woman was found killed in the same manner and Adam inwardly shook with dread.. And then there was another and a month later, another and no one knew what monster crept about taking their lives and people wondered who would be next..
Hoss slammed the whiskey bottle and two glasses on the tabletop.
"Here—you need another drink—and so do I." He poured both of them more whiskey. "Listen to this, Adam." Hoss swallowed his whole drink and quickly poured himself another. "Bartender told me that they got the killer of those women locked up over in Mule's Pass—a stranger—a young stranger riding a paint. Seems they wanta string him up for the murder of three women who done been killed in the past three months and all of them left in the water round there. I think it's little brother they got locked up over there and just waitin' to lynch, that is iffen they ain't already done it afore we get there."
Adam sipped his whiskey, his mind working. Then he put down the glass and stood. "Let's head for Mule's Pass."
"Fine by me. I can't get there fast enough."
Adam corked the bottle and then grabbed it by the neck. As he passed the bar, he reached in his pocket, looked at the coins in his palm and then slapped them on the counter.
"You come back," the bartender said, scooping up the coins as Adam and Hoss strode out. Strange men, he thought, buy they bought his show bottle of Irish whiskey and he did make money off them. But they were odd.
~0~
Mule's Pass was larger, busier than Waterside, bragging three saloons in the west end of town. And there on the left side of the street was the sheriff's office.
Hoss was in a foul mood. He wished that Adam had just kept his thoughts to himself as they had ridden the rest of the day and the night to reach the town of Mule's Pass. Now he was disturbed and couldn't get that image of Amy Forsyth out of his mind. Damn that Adam! Always makin' a man look straight at truths and not blink—always showing the ugly side of life—shoving it in your face.
It had been a dark night—seemed to be darker to Hoss than any other night when there was no moon out—and Adam had started talking. Up to that point they had been silent except for stopping once to make some coffee and rest the horses. Even then, Adam hadn't really talked but Hoss was used to that, familiar with Adam's tendency for contemplation. But this time Hoss wished Adam had kept his "contemplations" to himself.
"You remember Amy Forsyth? The girl Pa and I found dead about 9 years past?" They rode at an easy canter.
"Yeah, I remember but I try not to-memories like that ruin your sleep. I drove the buckboard to the creek-brought them blankets Pa tol' me too. Why you thinkin' of her?"
"How was she lying?"
Hoss felt a chill run through him. His heart beat loudly for a few seconds before he hoarsely answered. "Half in and half out the water."
"That's right. And how about the woman Joe's accused of killing?"
"Half in and…. We don't know that it's Joe they got locked up there, right? I mean just 'cause it sounded like it might be…. Ain't you always saying that no one knows anything unless they see it with their own eyes and even then you better still be careful? So how come you're sure' it's Joe?" Hoss wanted Adam to comfort him somehow, to be his usual logical self and say like his always did not to jump to conclusions.
Adam gave Hoss a withering look. "Some things a person does know when all the pieces fit. Little Joe and a woman—complementary elements. A stranger passing through—Joe's traveling alone and he's never been this way before—a stranger to these parts. And then there's the paint pony. It's Joe." They were silent for a few heart beats. "Hoss, did you notice anything odd about those graveyards we visited along the trail? Anything out of the ordinary about the graves?"
"Damn it, Adam, don't play no guessin' games with me—just tell me whatever the hell it is you're thinkin'."
"Well if you were a bit more observant, look at things instead of just over them, you'd have noticed too. Each one had recent—and by recent I mean within the last two years or so according to the dates—a spate of women's graves, each one about a month apart. Seven of them. Each one had seven graves of women."
"Women die just as much as men do—if not even more with all they got to deal with out here."
"I'm not talking about those who died in childbirth or of the fever—those facts are usually on the markers. I read on two tombstones in Rio Blanco that two girls' lives—they were sisters-that their lives were stolen — those were the exact words they used. One girl was 15, the other 18. They died a month from each other almost to the day."
"You sayin' that those girls, those women killed in Virginia City—what? Nine years ago?-are by the same person who did those?"
"I'm just saying that they have elements in common, that's all. There are just too many similarities. I don't believe in that many coincidences."
Hoss glanced at Adam who pulled out the whiskey bottle he had tucked in his jacket pocket and drained it. He had been taking swigs of it all night. Adam looked at the empty bottle and then tossed it aside and Hoss heard the hollow thud of emptiness as it hit the ground.
When it came to drinking, to becoming drunk, Adam was a mystery to Hoss. Most men slurred their words or became mean or overly sloppy and relived all the emotional tragedies of their pathetic lives. But not Adam. He just became quieter and darker than usual while the fire ran through his veins. Hoss avoided his brother when he was in that rare state, rare since Adam seldom drank to excess-because Hoss sensed that his oldest brother became a dangerous man when his senses were either sharpened or dulled by alcohol—Hoss was never sure which it was. And if Adam suffered hangovers, the crushing headache and nausea that was a companion to excess, he never showed it, just went about his day's work. Hoss had a grudging admiration for his oldest brother, so intelligent, so clever and knowledgeable and so able to control himself—at least so far.
When Hoss was 12 and Adam 17, the two brothers had watched an archery competition on a Founder's Day. The archers, many of them ranch hands and young men from the area who figured that since ignorant Indians could use a weapon like that, well, any white man who everyone knew was superior to an Indian any day he took a breath, could use a bow and arrow with accuracy. They found it wasn't necessarily true and their arrows missed the padded target set up a few yards away and landed in the ground or just dropped to the grass after losing momentum. Two contestants had earlier lost a strip of pale skin off the inside of their left arms above the wrist to the bowstring.
Hoss and Adam had stood together and watched, Adam with a sarcastic grin, his arms crossed, Hoss eating a freshly-made funnel cake.
"Think you could do that?" Hoss asked as he chewed.
"Maybe. They're not aiming correctly."
"How do you know?" Hoss asked.
Adam turned to look at him and Hoss knew that look—it meant he had just said something stupid.
"Because they're missing the target."
Hoss sighed. "Well, I know that but they's aimin' at the target."
"You ever watch an arrow fly? I mean actually watch the trajectory?"
Hiss wasn't sure what "trajectory" was but knew he hadn't watched it. "No, but I guess you have."
"Actually, I have. White Elk taught me how to shoot and although he didn't know the physics of an arrow, what happens when it's released from the bow, he did know it doesn't fly as straight as a bullet. That's what everyone thinks and that's why they miss. It actually wiggles side to side as it flies and drops slightly—it's the feathers that keep the arrow going straight for a longer distance; they're not there just for decoration. You have to counter the drop by aiming slightly higher than you would a gun—a bullet doesn't lose trajectory as quickly as an arrow does. They don't realize it."
"I tell you what," Hoss said as he licked the sugar off his fingers and balled up the brown, greasy paper that had held the funnel cake, "ifen you hit the target, Mr. Know-it-all, I'll do your chores as well as mine next week. If you miss, you do mine." Hoss emphasized by pointing his thumb at himself.
"Deal." Adam walked over and paid the small entry fee and took up the proffered bow and arrow. There were a few hoots from the crowd from Judson Brink's friends. Judson was just about to be declared the winner as he had come closest to hitting the bull's-eye and scoffed when young Adam Cartwright stepped up. The men considered Adam just a kid still wet behind the ears but he carried himself as if he thought he was better than everyone else and that put off many. But Adam seemed not to hear any of it or see any of it and Hoss felt proud of his brother even though he still wanted him to lose; Hoss didn't want to have to do Adam's chores.
Finally silence fell as people waited. Adam had Hoss wrap his bandana about the area between his left wrist and elbow and then Adam nocked the arrow and drew back the bowstring. Hoss watching, saw the muscles tense on Adam's arms—his right arm starting to quiver as he waited for the exact moment to release the string. And then it happened and the arrow flew with a "shoosh" through the air and with a "thuck", sunk in closest to the center of the padded bulls-eye.
Clapping broke out and Adam turned to Hoss who shook his head, admitting defeat, but also clapped for Adam's success. Hoss stood by and watched the men congratulate Adam who, to Hoss, didn't seem that comfortable with his victory. But it was from that experience that Hoss came to think of Adam as a taut bowstring just waiting to let loose a deadly arrow. And when that happened, Hoss dreaded who would be the target.