Hi, so here we go again. I love this fandom I love Adam. S1-6 are hand downs the best.

This story and all stories coming from it exist S1-6.

I do plan to write series of this story so if that's something your interested in let me know.

I do have an Fanfiction account under a different name, this story will be posted there as well in case you come across it.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine,

Please Read and Review.

And I swear in my works. If you don't like don't read.

This is part of a series, this isn't episode related. Neither is this series. Assume everything is S1-S6

Any inaccuracies please let me know.

I might add to this...I'll leave it up to you.

Please be aware...some triggers.

I have updated this to correct Adam's middle name.

Deliver Us From Evil

Chapter 2-Run Silent, Run Deep

There's no doubt it's typhoid. Now it's the question of telling the town.

Within hours of him putting the woman to bed she was dead. Within two days the first child was dead too and the second was critical. John was still standing but Charles did not know how. Maybe it was the shock. To be honest he was still in shock from it.

Typhus was a brutal, bloody illness, that robbed and took from the young as if they meant nothing, it did not distinguish from young and old it just came and took what it wanted and it was more than happy to keep burning through small towns, miners camps, communities such as this one like it was nothing. Virigina City was area of a big state, Carson City even smaller and so many people crammed into little spaces and so much work depending on whatever was dug out of the ground or farmed out of the land.

And then there was the Indians.

Fuck. He knew he would have to see them too. Maybe he would ask Ben Cartwright to do it, or Adam…one of them was better than him. Charles firmly believed that he had taken his oath for a reason and that reason was to provide healthcare and he would do it until they put him in the ground, but the truth of the matter was that was a history between both sides and a lot of distrust that was well earnt. He knew they had not always been welcoming, and he knew that he was not welcoming either. His kind had treated theirs shockingly, their kind had retaliated and on and on and on the bloody wheel went never stopping or turning. It was pointless…so pointless and yet he knew that if he did not go to Ben Cartwright (who was the only man who seemed to have the respect if not trust of the native population) then it was going to rip through their encampment as well and that was all he needed.

They might not want his help…but they needed to know what was coming.

He sighed and stood up wiping his eyes on the back of his hand. He had told John that he would dig the graves, knew that he had to get the priest out and he knew he had to warn the town but he was so scared that that little girl in there was not going to last long. He didn't know what had happened, there was no obvious signs of anything in the house that was infected and he didn't think it could come off the cattle but…

There was not enough of him he thought.

He looked out and decided.

Dig the graves, go to town. Pray that the second child would be alive when he got back.

That was his plan.

And that was what he would do.

And so he found a nice spot under the tree where the air was clean and fresh and he began to dig.

"This is dreadfully dull"

"Ivy Elizabeth, you are talking about Church!"

"She's not wrong though"

"Joesph Francis"

"Ah Pa why you gotta go middle naming everyone?"

"Adam will you please keep your offspring in line"

"I would Pa but I fear she has a point, there is a lot of work today and—"

"Boys the Good Lord set aside Sunday for prayer and for rest now march into that church and sit down and young lady if I see you roll your eyes at me I will make sure Hop Sing throws out desert. Now march"

As one his three sons and one grandchild marched into Church. Ben sighed and once more prayed that the Almighty would find it in His wisdom to give him strength because the Lord knew that he needed it. They were six weeks away from Christmas and already his granddaughter had the bit between her teeth. Also it was cold and that meant with the exception of Adam getting the other three members of his household out of bed for a reasonable time was like waiting for a Christmas miracle.

And look…it wasn't like Ben didn't like the idea of being in his own house with a cup of hot cocoa and a good book but someone had to think about his children and their immortal souls and so he took his hat off and sat down at the pew and mentally prayed that nobody would embarrass him. Father Connelley had a tendency to drone on when he knew he had an audience and he was going to boot Joe's behind back to the Pondarosa and back again if he caught him nodding off in the church like he had done the other week.

"All hacks off the stage"

"Adam Eugene…"

But Adam had already opened his prayer book and the next time Ben looked at him, both father and daughter were the very model of perfection which was to coin a common phrase. A crock of shit.

He found however that it was easy to get back into the ritual of the mass. He had grown up with this, Elizabeth and Marie had both been deeply religious—though Marie's views had tended to sway wildly from Protestant to Catholic whenever she was in the mood but he had grown up with this Sunday tradition and so when he could he'd made sure that his own boys and later Ivy had all been brought into the fold. Joe and Hoss had both been baptised. Adam refused point blank but Ben had not given up hope yet…

And more to the point he wouldn't…

He watched out of the corner of his eye Ivy shift a little. She was looking a little pink and he thought that maybe a good ride in the cool air would do her some good. He knew that Adam was the father but he could not help himself…with what had happened in the summer…he could not help sometimes but look at that little girl and pray that she would grow up as happy and normal as possible. He had always wished that but what had happened last summer had changed that.

What he wouldn't give for the ability to see into the future. Save him from going even more grey than he was already.

They stood up to sing the opening hymn and then…

"Reverand?"

It was the Doc and everyone paused looking at him. Ben had known Charles for a while now and had liked him but he had always thought the man was too young for the job, granted he had been proven wrong before but Elizabeth's doctor had been young and had not understood that her body was not prepped for pregnancy, that her heart would not be able to take labour and so he had always eyed young members of the medical professional with a side eye that he simply didn't know how to get rid of.

But that was not the time.

Now Ben thought the other man looked old. He looked older than he was and there was an edge about him that Ben didn't need a fancy medical degree to predict meant bad news. He watched him as the Reverend paused mid speech. And he knew without looking that Adam had shifted himself closer to Ivy putting an arm around her thin shoulders as if to yank her into his lap the second that he could smell danger on the air.

"I just came from the Coulter place" Doctor Ingrahm said stepping into the room. "His wife and his eldest child are both dead"

It dropped into the room like a stone. Ben found that he was making the sign of the cross and sending a prayer for those poor people. He had known that little family, poor though they were there had always been a smile on their faces and their children had been clean and well mannered. Ivy had liked both of them, hell she had been at dinner the previous day with them both and he saw Adam flinch as if he too could close his eyes and see his daughter in the place of that child who had died before she had even turned nine. Or he.

"I don't know exactly what's wrong with them, the other one's pretty bad too. John is still standing…or he was when I left but I don't know if he will be when he gets back, whatever it is though it's killed two people and it's fast spreading. So I want everyone to stay at their own place for a while. I know I can't declare a quarantine but I want you all to be safe and I don't want this spreading. Until I have proven myself right or wrong I don't want to see more people die"

"What happens if it spreads?" Roy said from the corner. Ben looked at him and knew that he too was thinking of the towns that he had been in before this one whose population had been full of life and light and love and who had been decimated in a single heartbeat by the cruel reality of disease. This was the 1800s. There were still threats that were bigger than the threat of war.

"If it spreads then we will use the Church as a hospital and we will just have to hope for the best"

All in all it wasn't what you would call inspiring Ben thought bitterly. Then again this was the third plague that he had lived through and he supposed inspiring words didn't help when there was a mountain of dead bodies that had to be buried quick before the disease leapt from the dead to the living.

Christ (and he said that reverently) what was wrong with his brain today?

"But what do you think it is?" Adam said and his tone was tight. It was the tone that Adam used when he was worried but he didn't want Ivy to figure out that he was worried, Ben had used it on his own children enough to know what it was and out of the corner of his eye he found himself looking at Joe and Hoss both of whom were watching the Doctor both of whom could be taken from him by a fever just as easily as a bullet or an arrow or God only knows what else.

Life was precious and life was short and it was too easily taken away more often then it was given.

Ben had learnt that the hard way to.

"I'm not sure" Doctor Inghram said and his tone told Ben that actually he was damn sure he just didn't want to say it which sent another fissure of worry down his spine.

"I'm not one hundred percent sure" he said rubbing a hand down his face and then facing the congregation. "But I think it's typhus"

It shot through the congregation like an arrow Ben thought dimly. Adam shot up like an entire electrical current had gone through him from the fair. Mrs Olsen in the front row gripped her husband and shot her children a look as if she expected them to disappear right in front of her. The Reverend clutched his cross to his chest and clearly started praying. Ivy turned to look at her father clearly not having a clue what Typhus was but Ben did.

Typhus.

Of all the diseases in the world it had be that.

He'd seen a typhus plague up close and he never wanted to see it again. He never wanted to see that horror, that despair again or experience that total lack of control. It made ranching look predictable. It was painful and terrible and it didn't care for age or money or how much you loved your children or your parents. It just took and took and took and all you could do was hold on until it burnt the course.

He turned back and looked at the cross on the wall above the Reverend as the town descended into chaos and he found that he was gripping the wooden bench in front more than he should be.

He could not help it.

Typhus.

Oh God, please no.

And there you go.

Next Chapter-Quarantine is in effect, the Cartwrights are trying to cope confined to a house when Adam goes hunting and stumbles across something...horrible.