NOW:
The evening was destined to be no better than the day. Secretly reeling from the disclosure of Peggy's interest in Todd Wyatt, sleep did not claim Adam easily. He spent the night tossing and turning, longing for peace that would not come. Finally, growing weary of his restlessness—or having already been worn weary from the ceaseless needs of her two youngest children—Eddie kicked him out of their bed mere hours after he entered it. Adam took to first pacing the upstairs hallway and then the parlor downstairs. He kept listening, waiting for the sound of footfalls, the slight creaking of a window or a door, telltale noises that would accompany a teenage girl who was up to no good, and alert him that Peggy was sneaking out of the house to spend time with her beau. The noises never came, and Adam never once closed his eyes to sleep.
Hours before dawn, he and Eddie looked upon each other, each seeming to mirror the other's exhaustion as Ellie and Sam began to cry. Silently, they stumbled through the darkness, doing their best to comfort and quiet the infants. Nothing seemed to work, not that it ever did anymore. Not rocking or trying to feed them. Not holding them close and walking them from one end to the room to the other. The infants' wailing was relentless. It was not long before Noah was roused, and Lil emerged from her own bedroom. The only person who remained unbothered was Peggy; the teen slept on, impervious to the noise. And a few mere hours later, while sitting around the breakfast table, she appeared to be the only member of the family unimpaired by the turbulent night. She was bright and rested, a little too eager to see herself off to school.
Clearing her plate, she smiled at Eddie, then tousled Noah's dark hair. "See you later," she said, scooping up her schoolbooks, and heading toward the front door.
Pushing his chair back, Adam stood and followed her out of the dining room and on to the porch. "Wait a minute," he said.
Hesitating on the meager front stairs, Peggy turned around and looked at him with guarded eyes.
"What's your hurry?" he asked her. "School doesn't start for at least another half hour."
"I don't want to be late."
"No, apparently you want to be early, any particular reason for that?"
Adjusting her grip on her books, Peggy shook her head.
"Do you have a new friend or something?" he asked, fishing now, testing the waters to see if Peggy would tell the truth about Wyatt if presented the opportunity, or if she was going to lie instead. "Someone to spend the time with while you wait?" If she told the truth, then maybe things weren't really as serious as Eddie had made them seem. If she lied, well, then Adam did not want to think about how urgent of a problem her fondness for Wyatt actually was.
"No."
"So, you're just headed over to the schoolhouse to stand around?"
"That's what it looks like."
No, Adam thought disappointedly, that wasn't what it looked like at all. "Hang on," he said, pointing an instructional index finger at the teen. "You just wait there for a minute."
Stepping back inside, he donned his gun belt and his hat, and then joined Peggy on the stairs. "Come on," he said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders to guide her toward the thoroughfare.
"What are you doing?" Peggy asked. "I think I'm well beyond the age of needing to be supervised on my way to school."
"Apparently, Peggy, you're not."
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"I think you know what it means."
Shoulders becoming rigid, Peggy stopped walking. Though her expression was laden with concern, she cast him a stubborn gaze. "Who told you?" she asked.
"Who told me about what?"
"Not what." She shook her head. "Whom."
"Whom?" Adam repeated flatly, fishing still. This was the girl's chance; the only one he would allot her to be upfront and honest. She would be wise to take it.
And she did. "Todd Wyatt," she said.
"The problem isn't who told me. It's that I didn't hear it from you." Arm still wrapped around her shoulders, he ushered her forward. "Come on."
"I'm not going to school," Peggy protested. "Not like this."
"I'm not taking you to school."
"Then where are we going?"
"For a ride. You and I are about to have a very serious conversation, one that I would rather not have in the middle of town."
"You're going to take me to the middle of nowhere aren't you? So that there's nobody around to hear you yell."
Adam didn't respond; he was not yet certain of what he intended to do.
He took her to Leopard's Pond; a place he figured was mutually understood as a location which had given way to all matter of serious realizations in the past. It was where he had taken Peggy when struggling to tell her Frank Dayton had died. Where Peggy had led him when she had needed him to protect her from her stepfather, Will. And now, it was where, sitting on a fallen tree, Peggy watched him pace the bank of the shallow waters, his eyes never fully meeting hers as they absently appraised their surroundings. Taking one step after another, he struggled to work up the nerve, not to embark on the conversation he had begun, but rather to hear the answers to questions he knew he had no choice but to ask.
"Adam, if you're going to tan me for lying and sneaking around," Peggy softly ventured, "then I'd rather you just find a stick to hit me with and get on with it."
She had not called him Pa in months. The moniker had become yet another thing that had been lost the day her secret diary had been shared, the truth about what she had witnessed and endured while Will Cartwright had been her stepfather put on full display for all the town to know.
"I'm not going to tan you," Adam said, knowing that the girl's proclamation had been a ruse. He had never once lifted a hand to hit her; he certainly was not going to start now. Peggy was too old for him to deem such a thing appropriate. The abuse she had once suffered from Will had rendered such punishments downright obscene.
"Then what are you going to do?" she pressed.
"Make you sit there so I can ensure you're listening to me."
"If you want me to listen, then you're gonna have to start sayin' something. Or," she added quickly, becoming the focus of his disgruntled gaze, "I suppose, you could just keep pacing for the remainder of the morning, and allow your silence to do your talking. That would be perfectly fine, too."
"I am not pacing." Hastening his steps, Adam stood still, and planted his hands on his hips. "When did it start, Peggy?" he asked, exasperated now. "This thing between you and Wyatt."
"Why? So you can tell me you want it to end?"
"Peggy," he warned deeply.
"About six months ago," she volunteered.
"Six months ago?"
"Around the time you were shot."
"Peggy, you were fifteen six months ago!"
"And Todd was nineteen."
"If you think drawing attention to that fact makes it better, it doesn't."
"I was merely pointing out that he was a teenager, too."
"The key word in that sentence is was. He's not anymore. A man of his age ought to know better than to go chasing around with a girl of yours."
"He's only twenty."
"And you're only sixteen. It isn't seemly, Peggy."
"For who?"
"For him. For you."
Peggy sighed wearily. "Four years isn't that large of an age difference. After all, there's three years between you and Eddie, and there were twelve between you and my mother."
"That's different."
"Why? Because you want it to be? Sixteen isn't an unacceptable age to begin to be seriously courted. It's the same age Sally was last year when she married Harry. The same age my mother was when she married my father."
"And Sally is expecting her first child soon, and your mother was not much older than Sally is now when you came along. Is that really what you want to do with your life right now? More often than not, children have a way of coming along quickly after vows are exchanged."
"Or before in some cases." She cast him a knowing glance.
Adam felt a rush of fear. "Peggy, please tell me you're not—"
"Tell you I'm not what? Repeating the mistakes of those who raised me. Rest assured, Adam, I am neither as flighty or ignorant as my mother was nor as stupid and shortsighted as you and Eddie were. I have no intention of engaging myself in situations that would lead to problems that only marriage can fix." She nodded resolutely. "If I am to bear Todd's children, rest assured that they will be coming along a very long time from now.
Somehow, Adam did not feel very reassured.
"Even with all that being said," Peggy continued, "I don't want you to make the wrong assumption about my feelings for Todd. He's a good man, reputable, kind, and hardworking. Any young woman would be lucky to find themselves the focus of his attention. I suppose, becoming his wife wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Your father sure likes him. I guess, I was hoping that maybe you'd like him, too."
"What do you mean my father likes him?"
"He hired him and keeps him on, I guess that means he likes him."
"Well, he's not going to like him now."
"And I suppose now you don't like him either."
Taking note of Peggy's slightly dejected demeanor, Adam softened his expression and his tone. "Is it important that I like Todd Wyatt?" Please say no, he helplessly thought. Then tell me that you don't like him either. Tell me he's just some phase, someone to hang out with to pass time. Or better yet tell me you've decided to finally head to the Midwest and attend school. Tell me you've finally grown weary of this place, that you've decided to want something more for yourself than the things this place can give you.
If he was a different kind of man, then he might have been relieved that a young man had taken interest in the girl—given everything that had happened, all of the things Will had done, and all the things Adam had not. As Eddie had previously advised, it wouldn't be the worst thing to see Peggy married. To entrust her to a man who would love, honor, and take care of her. It wouldn't be the worst thing, but somehow it felt like it was. Because she was too young to become a wife, and Adam knew next to nothing about Todd Wyatt. He was not yet ready to relinquish his protective grip; he wasn't ready to allow Peggy to be anything other than what she currently was.
"Your opinion of him isn't unimportant," Peggy said carefully.
"What does that mean?"
"I suppose… that means that it is important."
Legs feeling weak beneath him, Adam sunk down to sit next to her on the fallen tree. If Peggy wanted him to like Wyatt, then that meant the boy was much more than a phase or someone to pass time with. "Do you love him?" he asked.
"I…" Peggy began and then stopped. Grinding her boots into the ground beneath them, she nervously clasped and unclasped her hands. "I don't know," she admitted, the words almost too soft to be heard. "I guess, maybe I like his attention. Maybe I like that he doesn't seem to care about the things the people of Virginia City have to say about me. He gives Sally and I something else to talk about other than, you know, all the things that everyone else never seems to tire of speaking about, like what you did or what Will did, mommy's diary or my own."
"You like that, too."
Peggy nodded. "You know, when Todd looks at me, I'm not sure what he sees, but I am glad that he seems to see something different than what everyone else around here does."
"And what does everyone else see?" Adam hated to ask the question. They had gone this long without discussing such things and they could go longer still, but to ignore the opportunity that had been presented would be remiss. It was better to know what he was dealing with upfront. He needed to know how much gossip the girl had heard, how much the damning narrative she had internalized, and how much her new outlook of herself was informing her fondness for Todd Wyatt.
"A little girl who was orphaned by her parents, abandoned, and abused," she said. "A girl who is damaged beyond recognition of polite society, one who cannot be rehabilitated or repaired."
"And what do you see?"
"I don't think I see anything of value, not anymore. Life isn't fair, I think a part of me always knew that, but I guess I didn't realize that my whole life was going to become the sum of everyone else's mistakes. Mommy and Daddy's, Will and yours, and Eddie's, too, I suppose."
"A person isn't the summation of their parents' worst behavior. Folks can say all kinds of things, and they can even believe them too, but that doesn't make any of those things true."
"It doesn't make them untrue, either. Especially not when the basis of the talk comes from something valid. Frank Dayton was my father; he was a philanderer, a cad; he married Laura who was my mother, a flighty, vapid thing. Together they brought me into the world, and just after that, they decided that they didn't love each other; in fact, they came to find that they didn't much like each other at all. So, Frank wandered, and Laura took to hating him. He died an inebriate, and she died a variable tart. Laura's second husband died an abuser and murderer, hung in the gallows by the man she truly loved."
Adam shook his head. "Your mother never loved me."
"You loved her."
"No, I loved the idea of her."
"No, Adam," Peggy disagreed. "You loved the idea of me. You still love the idea of me. You cling to the lies you told yourself in the past as though they'll somehow protect you from the pain of the present or the truth that the future will demand you see. You do see it, don't you? The way you regard me. You look at my potential in a way not unlike the way your father once looked at yours, as though my future successes will be enough to justify your past mistakes, as though my achievements are meant to help ease all the pain that still remains because of them. It's too much, you know, to be responsible for righting so much wrong, for easing so much remaining pain. And there is somuchremaining pain, so many complicated feelings to sort out, so many difficult decisions still to be made. Just because certain struggles end, that doesn't mean we are immediately granted the understanding of why they had to take place. Just because we have removed ourselves from harm's way, that doesn't mean we have been left uninjured. When I was a little girl, you scooped me up and took me away from this place; you saved me from Will and the nightmare my life with him had become, but in doing so you destroyed your own. You spent six years wandering and searching, grasping for remnants of all the things you weren't prepared to lose: your understanding of your father, of Will, or even yourself. Life happened and things changed along the way, but you can't say you actually chose anything."
"That's not true. Peggy, I chose you."
"No." Peggy shook her head sadly. "I don't think you really did, because, even after all this time, there is one thing that has never changed."
Adam's expression became pained. Given her age, it wasn't right for Peggy to be so wise; it wasn't seemly that he himself should be so transparent, his faults and plights so easily seen and aptly acknowledged by her youth. It wasn't right for her to look upon him and so clearly see all the things he was trying not to see himself. Of course, Peggy had always been so good at seeing things adults around her would rather be left concealed. She had known her father was dead long before her mother summoned the courage to tell her. She had silently borne the brunt of the kind of man Will Cartwright was long before the adults surrounding her had been forced to recognize his abounding sins. And, when Adam had snatched her up, taken her away from the Running D to Aunt Lil's home in San Fransisco, it was never Peggy who had struggled with the realities of what such a thing would do. All the things the decision would come to signify—and all that it would not.
"I'm not your daughter, Adam," Peggy said. "I never was, and I never will be, not really. I became a Dayton by blood and a Cartwright by law, but you aren't the man who gave me either of those names."
Adam turned his attention to the choppy waters in front of them. "So, you're looking to Todd Wyatt to provide you with another?"
"No…" She faltered, took a deep breath, and began again. "I guess, I don't rightly know what exactly I'm looking to Todd for. I do know that I was born to Frank, and I was adopted by Will; they were my fathers. Now, I'm not saying that they were good ones, but they were what I had."
Then what was I? Adam wanted to ask. What am I? The answer arose from the back of his mind a little too quickly: he was the father of others now. He had three small children who needed him much more than Peggy wanted to believe she still did.
"What are you saying, Peg?" he asked. "What are we really talking about here?"
"You were the one who took me away from this place, but you weren't the one who brought me back. From the moment I stepped off that stage with Noah in tow, you've been trying to send me away again. From here. From you. You cling to the hope that I might one day suddenly wake up and decide to go to college as though such a decision is so innately important and good that it would negate all the bad that has already taken place. As though it would spontaneously mend all that has been broken. But it won't because it can't. You and I both know time and space has never helped anything or anyone. Just as I know that when you look at me, you don't really see me as I am. You're too busy seeing the same things that the townsfolk see, a little girl who's been abandoned and abused."
"I don't see that."
"Yes, you do."
"I don't."
"But you do." She surveyed their surroundings. "Adam, you may have been the one who brought me to this place today, so that I could listen to you, but now that we're here, I really need you to listen to me."
"I am listening."
"When you look at me, I need you to really see me."
"I see you perfectly fine."
"And I need you to do for me what your father failed to do for you. I need you to be strong enough to accept the things I want for myself, instead of trying to force the ones you want for me."
"And what are those? What exactly are the things you want for yourself? Is Todd Wyatt one of those things?"
"See? That's how I know you aren't really listening, because I already told you I don't know how I feel about Todd. I don't know if I love him, really, but I do know he loves me. I know I like how he sees me, and I like how his love for me can fix how others see me, too."
"Oh, buddy," Adam groaned, his stomach turning. Planting his elbows on his knees, he leaned forward, and rubbed his hands over his face. "That…" he began and then stopped. The bit about him not being her father notwithstanding, it was just about the worst thing he had ever heard come from her mouth. "You can't just…" Faltering again, he lowered his hands, and looked at her. "Being afraid of the kinds of stories folks choose to tell each other about you to entertain themselves is no reason to decide to marry someone."
"I'm not talking about marriage," Peggy said. "Not yet at least. I'm just talking about being legitimized—"
"You're talking about making a legitimate mistake, that's what you're talking about."
"You're not listening to me."
"Am not listening to you? You don't want to go to college; you don't want to be my daughter; and you want to marry Todd Wyatt because you don't like how the townsfolk see you. Did I miss anything?"
"You just proved to me that you listened, but I don't think you actually heard any of the things I said."
"I heard you."
Shaking her head, Peggy was dejected. "No, you didn't, and you missed something, too."
"What?"
"You missed the part when you finally say what it is you brought me out here to. You're going to tell me I can't see Todd anymore, then I'm going to tell you that I'm going to see him anyway, and then you're going to send me back to the schoolhouse, knowing damn well that it's an instruction I won't follow. You'll still pretend I did, though, and tomorrow it'll be like this conversation never happened at all. I'll go back to avoiding you, and you'll go back to avoiding me, and we'll all go on pretending that everything is just fine and that what little is left of life as we once knew it isn't crumbling beneath us."
"Peggy…" Adam hesitated, reaching for the correct words and the right way in which to say them. "Don't say damn," he finished lamely.
Peggy nodded as though his lackluster response had been expected. "I hate you now, you know," she said forlornly. "Not for what you did to Will, but for everything you weren't, and everything you can't be now."
And there it was: the horrible, terrible sorrowful truth, the one they had each avoided drawing attention to for so long. It was the omission that had kept them from speaking to each other as of late, the reason they carefully avoided talking to each other about anything of value. It was what she had been afraid she'd slip and say, what he had been afraid he would be forced to hear. And upon hearing it, Adam realized it didn't hurt as much as he thought it would. It hurt more.
"I know," he said.
"If you know and I know, then I guess there's nothing left for us to talk about."
"Sure, there is. I still have yet to say what I intended to when I brought you out here. I love you, Peggy. I always have, and I always will. I only want what's best for you, something that only time can really sort out. Fortunately for you, you're only sixteen, so you have a lot of time left to decide what the best thing to do is. Now, I can accept the idea that you don't want to go to the Midwest, but I can't stand by and allow you to keep carrying on with Wyatt, at least not in the manner that you have been."
"What does that mean?"
"It means no more moonlit rides. No more sneaking around. If you and Wyatt want to spend time together then you do so during daylight hours and in surroundings with other people in them. I can bide you allowing your dream of college to die out, but I won't bide you marrying Todd Wyatt, at least not right now." Maybe not ever, he thought, if her reasoning for wanting to do such a thing never changed.
Brows knitting, Peggy stood, crossed her arms, and pressed her palms into her sides. For a moment, she seemed angry, then she seemed sad, and then as she looked down at him, her eyes shining with an unsettling gleam, Adam realized he had misread her completely.
"You didn't hear me," she said.
"I heard you."
"You were never any damn good at hearing anything other than what you wanted to."
Adam was as taken aback by her response as he was by the pain in her eyes; both seemed so incongruent with how their conversation had unfolded. "Peggy, I heard you. I think you're the one who didn't hear me. I'm not saying you can't see Wyatt; I'm saying there needs to be rules—"
"You're not my father. You can't tell me what to do."
"I can."
"You can't."
"I can."
"You can't."
"I can," Adam said emphatically, firmly.
"Don't you understand?" she cried, her expression pinched and pained. Tears pooled in her eyes as she began to move away from him, taking one single backward step at a time. Her sudden shift in disposition was confounding, her level of agony disturbing. In that moment, she reminded Adam so much of Laura that it stole his breath away. He shouldn't have been so surprised, so taken aback. She was Laura's daughter, after all, a detail that was more easily ignored when Peggy was still little. But she wasn't little anymore. And Laura was gone. Adam was the only one left behind to bear the brunt of her daughter's frustration.
"You ruin everything!" Peggy shouted, tearfully. "You've ruinedeverything! You took me away from this place and then you pinned a badge on yourself and spent the next six years chasing Will and running away from the truth. You missed so much, and you left so many things undone and ignored!"
"Peggy—"
"I am not your daughter!"
"Peggy—"
"I never really was, and now I never will be!" Shaking her head furiously, she continued to take backward step after step. "You weren't the one who added Cartwright to my last name! You weren't the one who removed it!"
Adam was taken by an exponential uneasiness. "What do you mean?"
"You never wanted me, Adam! And that's just fine because I don't want you either!"
"What are you talking about?"
"You can't tell me what to do, because I'm not a Cartwright anymore!"
"Then what are you?"
Oh, Lord, Adam thought, if the girl opened her mouth and said her last name had already become Wyatt then he was going to ride straight to the Ponderosa, drag her newly found husband into town, and hang him from the gallows he had once built for someone else. Having foolishly summoned the nerve to marry Peggy in secret, Todd Wyatt would simply not be allowed to live another day. Peggy was not old enough to become anyone's wife; she was not yet equipped to make such a serious decision or permanent choice. Though Wyatt was the last name he wanted her to say, that did not keep Adam from anticipating the response. There was no other explanation. No other name she could possibly speak.
But then she did.
And when she finally opened her mouth and declared the horrible truth, Adam simply was not prepared to hear it.
Xx
Adam entered the house on Kay Street in a fury. "Lil!" he bellowed. Storming through the sitting room and into the kitchen, he found it as empty as the room he had just walked through. "Lil!" Turning around, he retraced his steps, making his way to the stairwell only to be confronted with his disgruntled wife.
"Adam," she hissed. "Stop yelling. I just got Sam and Ellie to sleep."
"Where's your mother?"
"Out."
"Where?"
"The International House. I think she was meeting an old friend for lunch."
Adam regarded her, his expression clouded with pure rage. "Did you know? Were you in on it, too?"
"Know about what?" Eddie asked, exasperatedly. "Adam, what is wrong?"
"I'm going to kill your mother, that's what's wrong."
Stepping off the staircase, she grabbed him by the arm, stopping him in place as she struggled to hold his furious gaze. "What is going on?" she demanded.
"Peggy isn't a Cartwright anymore, that's what's going on. Your backwards and backhanded mother adopted her. Congratulations, you have a sister!"
"No!" Eddie said, her blue eyes wide with disbelief. "That can't be. My mother couldn't have… Adam, she wouldn't have—"
"Oh, she did."
Letting go of him, Eddie sat heavily on the staircase. "I just can't…believe she would do a thing like that."
Disregarding his wife's confusion, Adam strode angrily out of the house. He was finally losing it, he thought, his asinine sense of decency and decorum, his overwhelming desire to remain eternally calm and poised. He was losing it. He could take Lil's meddlesome personality, her persistent presence, and her all-too-often germane opinions, assessments, and advice. But he could not take her tampering with Peggy, making an already difficult situation worse. What was the woman thinking when she had decided to make the girl legally her own? Did she think he would never find out? Did she actually think he would do nothing about it once he finally did?
Captive to fury, he charged through the Virginia City thoroughfare, ignoring the confused glances of the townsfolk he blazed by. He came upon the entrance of the International House only to be intercepted by an equally disgruntled party.
"You said you'd talk to him!" Jamie said as he stood a little too close for comfort, his blue eyes blazing.
"Oh, no," Adam groaned ferociously. "Don't you even start with me, kid." His mood was much too volatile to deal with his melodramatic youngest brother. He was too worked up to ensure his words remained kind. If he was forced to engage much further, he would speak too harshly and rashly. He doubted he and Jamie's rapport could sustain such an interaction, at least not with the way his youngest brother was currently looking at him, as though he was his worst enemy—well, second worst only behind their pa.
"You promised you'd talk to..!"
"This isn't the time, Jamie."
"… Pa about me leaving school!"
"Or the place."
"Peggy comes and goes from the schoolhouse as often as she pleases! You let her cut all the time, and she's a year younger than me!"
"I said drop it."
"I'm seventeen! The oldest person in that schoolhouse! Do you know how embarrassing that is?"
"Right now, I don't really care."
"Do you have any idea what all the other guys are saying about it behind my back? They say I'm stupid. Simple Jamie, that's what they call me. They say I'm just some charity case that Ben Cartwright—!"
"I said, drop it!" Adam's frustration and anger hit a tipping point as he stood tall to rigidly loom over the boy. He had had his fill, heard more than enough from short-sided teenagers who preferred to think of themselves as adults. "I have a realproblem to deal with right now..."
"Oh, so now my problems aren't real?"
"…I'm not in the mood to be forced to stand here and listen to your childish bullshit!"
"Well, that's no way to talk to a young boy," a familiar voice interjected from behind them.
Gaze turning upward toward the sky, Adam expelled a muttered, exasperated swear, then turned around and cast Billy Buckley a savage look. "I don't see how the manner in which I talk to my brother is any of your concern," he spat.
"I don't see how it isn't."
"It's not."
"It is." Smirking, Buckley shoved his thumbs between the top of his gun belt and the waist of his pants, drawing attention to the gun nested in his holster. "I reckon I can't abide you talking to another citizen of our fine town in the manner in which you are, even if he is your brother."
He evaluated Adam bluntly, his eyes running the distance between his boots and the top of his hat as he measured him up. The bad blood that had been created between them years ago combined with more recent events and Roy Coffee's sudden, seemingly unexpected retraction of his support of one of them in favor of the other had sullied whatever forced good graces could have existed between them. On his breast, Buckley had prominently pinned the badge that declared his authority over this situation and any other he wished to interject himself into. The power that came with his position was not for everybody, and it was obvious it was not for him. It had exaggerated his already inflated ego, gone to his head.
"Consider this your warning, Adam," he said. "I don't want to see nothing but the best of behavior out of you from here on out."
Scowling, a deep seething anger bubbled in the pit of Adam's stomach. Though he and Buckley could never have been accused of being friends, now they were nothing short of enemies. Who the hell was Buckley to pass judgement on him anyway? "Are you going to make yourself a problem for me, Billy?" he asked.
"Only if you make yourself a problem for anyone else."
The pair stubbornly stared at each other, each not willing to break the other's gaze. The tone between them was firmly set, the challenge lurking in Buckley's aggressive stance so clearly displayed for anyone who wanted to see it. But Adam would not be frightened away. He would not be dissuaded. If Buckley wanted to bait him into a fight, then he was only too eager to give him what he was asking for.
"Adam," Jamie tried. Grasping his brother's arm, he struggled to pull him away from the caustic interaction. "Come on, let's just go."
Staring Buckley down, Adam stood firm and tall, unwilling to be pulled back or away. "Are you threatening me?"
"No, man," Buckley said. "I'm just telling you how it is."
"And just how exactly is it?"
"I don't take kindly to murderers living in my town."
"Well, then you better pack your things and get the fuck out."
Buckley bristled. "So, that's how it is, huh?"
"No, Billy," Adam growled. "That's how it's always been, ever since you shot Ed Payson down."
"That's not true, and even if it was, it's still not half as bad as all the things you're responsible for."
"Adam," Jamie urged. "Please, let's just go."
Buckley looked at Jamie and then at Adam, his lips curling into a sardonic smile. "Yeah, Adam, go," he taunted. "Run home and hide behind your pa, or better yet, go stand behind your whore wife—"
Something inside of Adam snapped. He felt it happen, intuited that something inside of him had finally shifted. Changed. Broke. He thought of nothing and everything as his fist connected firmly with Buckley's jaw. Buckley blinked stuporously, taking one staggering step backward to keep himself afoot. Then, shaking his head, he stepped forward again, lifting a fist that connected squarely with the Adam's left temple. Forehead cracked open and bleeding freely, Adam did not stagger or step back as he lost what little control he had left. Through a haze of fury and blood, he lifted his fists and advanced on Virginia City's newly minted sheriff as all hell broke loose between them.
TBC