Lars Petersen came to see me once Dr Jenkins was allowing me visitors. He was nervous, scared, and I couldn't blame him. He paced up and down as he spoke what was on his mind.

"Murdoch, I think Joe was right about getting a top gunfighter on our side. We can't handle Pardee on our own, that's been more than proved. I don't know how we should get in touch with this Johnny Madrid..."
"Pinkerton's can find him," I put in. Lars looked a little surprised at my speedy answer, but went on.
"And maybe we should think about what Joe said, offering some of our land to Johnny Madrid. Why not? We're both getting to be old men, and it's not as if either of us had sons to pass our land onto."

Lars had no idea of the irony of his words. He'd come to the San Joaquin about ten years earlier, long after the scandal of my second wife leaving me had receded into the past, and the gossip faded out. He had probably never heard of the son she'd taken along with her, or the son my first wife had given me, dying in childbirth in doing so. Certainly he had no idea who that younger son was now. And yet, in one sense his words were perfectly true. For all practical purposes, I had no sons.

My elder son, Scott, lived in Boston; had lived there, in the care of his maternal grandfather, since he was a baby, growing up in the world of Boston's best society, enjoying the place in that society that his grandfather's wealth and standing gave him. A society, a world, a life far different from a Western ranch. He'd never expressed any wish to come to California, even on a visit; never so much as replied to my letters. We were so far apart, in every sense, that to him, apparently, I meant nothing at all.

And as for my younger son, John...

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Johnny Madrid: I had first heard the name almost three years before, when I was in Yuma on a buying trip. I was coming out of the hotel with Jack Wilson. We'd had a productive discussion over lunch and I would be taking some quality stock back to Lancer. As we stepped into the street, we heard a voice call out, "Valenzuela!" A man turned around. The speaker drew his gun, shot the man, holstered his gun, mounted a horse and rode away. It was over in seconds; a man's life taken in the most feelingless, cold-blooded act I had ever seen.

I stood there appalled for a moment, too stunned by the speed and callousness of the act to move. Then I turned to Wilson.
"Where's the sheriff's office? He'll be needing a posse to go after that man." I was prepared to join the posse myself. A cold-blooded killer like that had to be brought to justice, and the sooner the better.

"Oh, I don't think so," said Wilson. "Sheriff Mitchell will have enough sense to be very busy about something else for the rest of the day. That was Johnny Madrid, the half-breed gunfighter from Mexico. Any lawman stupid enough to go after him ends up dead. He'll be across the border in a few hours and no business of Mitchell's any more. Besides, Valenzuela had it coming. He's cheated more men than anyone can count, and I suspect he's created a few widows and orphans along the way. It was only a matter of time before someone hired a gunfighter to go after him. There'll be no mourning for Valenzuela. The town's well rid of him."

I felt like there was a band of steel closing around my insides. Madrid. Johnny Madrid. It was coincidence, I tried to tell myself. John was the commonest name there was; how many Johnnies were out there? But Madrid, that was the apellido materno of my wife, Maria, and the two names together ...

I tried to bring the turmoil in my mind under control. I would pass this on to Pinkerton's to investigate. Find out for sure – I could well be jumping to conclusions. But deep down I knew: there could only be one person with that hired killer's name. Johnny Madrid was my son.

It took Pinkerton's only a few weeks to confirm that Johnny Madrid was indeed the son I had lost sixteen years before. Pinkerton's was good, very good. If it had been operating when Maria first left with Johnny, things might have been very different. As it was, all my efforts to find her came to nothing. Now, through tracing back Johnny Madrid's history, they found she had died about four years earlier.

Maria was the niece of my neighbor in the San Joaquin, Don Alejandro Madrid. He was from old Spanish stock; the Madrid family had come to New Spain in the 1790s, fiercely proud of their aristocratic background. The land that Don Alejandro's father, Don Pedro, had been granted in Alta California, had come to be known as Estancia Madrid.

But like many other Spanish landowners, Don Alejandro had slowly been pushed out by the Anglo settlers. By one excuse or another, his landholdings had been whittled away and given or sold to the incoming Americans. When I bought the first stretch of land in what would eventually become Lancer, I didn't realize that Don Alejandro had effectively been cheated out of it by the consortium who sold it to me. When I found out, I approached him, wanting to make some sort of reparation, but he wouldn't hear of it. I had bought the land in good faith and I shouldn't have to pay a penalty for what others had done. But my action, as I realized later, earned his respect. He regarded me as a man of honor.

Several years later, when I was planning a trip south, he urged me to visit the home of his sister in Matamoros. Out of courtesy as much as anything else, I did. I had lost my darling Catherine two years before and didn't think I would ever truly love again. A year after Catherine's death I had started courting Marcie – she was an attractive young woman and I was anxious to make a home for my son. But Marcie yielded to her parents' wishes and married the man they considered more suitable. I felt little real regret but my pride was hurt, perhaps more than I realized at the time. Perhaps the evident approval and encouragement from Don Alejandro's sister influenced me more than I knew. However it was, on that trip to Matamoros I fell in love with Doña Jacinta's beautiful daughter and when I returned to California, I brought her with me as my bride. Don Alejandro was delighted, so delighted that he insisted on giving us twenty thousand acres of his dwindling holdings as a wedding gift. Don Alejandro had no surviving children of his own but it never occurred to me that he may have had matchmaking intentions when he sent me to his sister's house. It never occurred to me that he was looking for a way to keep the land that had been Estancia Madrid in his family. And it never occurred to me that Maria might have been pushed into a useful marriage by her mother and uncle.

It never occurred to me that she might be unhappy until I got back from a trip to Boston and found her gone.

Paul had been ill with yellow fever when she left. He didn't even know she had gone until days afterward and by the time he was well enough to try to go after her, she had vanished. Doña Jacinta had died the year before, Don Alejandro had gone to Spain, and Maria had no other close relatives she might have gone to. People in Green River said that she'd been seen driving off with a man, a gambler who had been in town for a few weeks, but no-one knew where he'd come from or enough about him to guess where they might have gone. I never gave up trying to trace Maria and Johnny, of course, but by the time Pinkerton's started operating, the trail was old and all their searching, and mine, came to nothing until that day in Yuma.

Nogales was where Pinkerton's believed Johnny Madrid was making his headquarters, so I travelled down there as soon as I could. My hope was that I would be bringing my son home, but there was dread mixed with the hope whenever I thought back to that cold, calculated murder in Yuma. In the largest saloon, I started throwing out feelers, casually mentioning Johnny Madrid. Presently a young, startlingly pretty girl came to my table and started a conversation, smiling sweetly. I wasn't vain enough to think it was my personal allure that had attracted her, so I answered her questions, told her my name and where I was from, feeling pretty certain that the information would find its way to Johnny. It was no surprise to me then that, as I walked down the main street after leaving the saloon, I heard a voice say,
"You're looking for Johnny Madrid?"
I whirled around and peered in the direction of the voice.
"Yes, I am," I answered, then said, "Johnny?"
"Yeah, it's me," he said. "What do you want?"
"My name's Murdoch Lancer," I told him. "I saw you in Yuma and realized who you were. As soon as I was sure, I came to find you."
"Why?"
"I'm your father, Johnny."
"Yeah, I know," he answered. "So what do you want? You're wasting my time."
I felt stunned.
"I have a ranch in California, near Morro Coyo..."
"I know where your ranch is," he interrupted me. I was a little surprised at that, but continued.
"I want you to come home, Johnny, back to Lancer with me."
"What for?" I couldn't answer – I suppose I stood there staring like a fool – and he went on, "You got a job that needs doin'? Tell me the details and we'll talk price."
I shook my head, trying to clear the bewilderment, then said again,
"I'm your father, Johnny. I want you to come home. You're my son."
"That don't mean you get any favors," he said. "Nothing for nothing. You want Johnny Madrid's gun working for you, you pay Johnny Madrid's price."
"No, Johnny, that's not what I want..."
"We got nothin' more to say, then." He walked off.

LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Now, as Lars was ushered out by Dr Jenkins, I wondered if the time had come when I did have 'a job that needs doin' '. I'd had no word from Joe Barker but somehow I balked at sending for Johnny. I kept hearing the words, 'What for?', kept seeing him walk away. More than that, I kept seeing the cold, passionless face of the killer on that street in Yuma. I'd give it a little longer; maybe I'd hear from Joe yet.

It was when I heard that Lars Petersen had been bushwhacked and killed on the San José road that I faced the truth. There was no 'little longer' to give. I had a job that needed doing by Johnny Madrid.