Hi, so here is another story from me for this wonderful fandom! I am so glad to be back with a couple of stories and I hope that you enjoy this one. This is a stand alone one centring around one of Season 1s best villains.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine here.

I might have been a bit lazy when it came to the naming of the children but if anyone is a fan of Michael Landon then you will get the inside joke and you will hopefully forgive me.

I am not a spelling expert so please keep that in mind.

Please Read and Review and let me know what you think.

This is set in Season 1 as a stand alone story and I expect it to be under twenty chapters.

To Another Heart

Chapter 2-Salute To Yesterday

'Freddie' gets to Virginia City and he knows he needs a job. Adam is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or is it the right place at the right time?

It took him a day at a fast ride with two small children and then he traded horses, got a new one and rode again. He was meticulous about making sure that his children got food and sleep, had them sleeping in what was little more than whorehouse some days as he leaned against the door and dropped off them both asleep in the bed and him with his pistol in his hand being rocked by the sounds of moaning and grunting as the girls were paid…well…he didn't know how much but he assumed they were worth it.

He knew that he would have to stop running. He knew the man he had been made to call father, knew that would ride through here, he had sold the horse to a man who was leaving Virginia for California and if he was right then LaDuke would keep on following that horse. For all his talk that he was a Detective in another life, that he had hunted down men for breakfast and been back in time for lunch, he was depressingly simple when it came to the nitty gritty of it all.

He also knew that if he was to keep his head down he needed to find work. He was a single father he needed to find a roof for his girls head, he needed to be safe buried under the dust and the dirt and the rubble of a place where he could easily be forgotten, just another face in the crowd, small enough for everyone to defend him if needs be…or at the very least not give up his location…give him a chance to run if he had to.

To do that one needed work and one needed friends and he was short on both. He needed to get his girls down into something of a routine, if he could do that then maybe they would slip into town unnoticed. He was prepared if this became a one on one gunfight. He was ready for that he just…

To understand the depths of his hatred one has to understand his life and as he watches the fire crackle in the hearth he doesn't think he can explain that, he knows deep in his bones that the man he has been forced to call father for all his life is not his father, can feel it the way his knee aches in winter, he's been beaten more than once by the man, forced to do and watch as he tears families apart for money and he's found little joy in it. He's watched as the man has forced woman to spread their legs for their husband's release and then know that their husband will still swing from the gallows the next day as if it's nothing. Even his wife was not allowed that opportunity.

He doesn't have the heart to tell their girls that under God's eyes they are not legitimate, his wife had been his woman and only under the promise of the stars did they make vows, maybe to him there was a God at the end of the day in that little moment but to Caro there was no God other than the one that was found in a Church with a priest and so she had looked at him with both their daughters and as the fever had taken her told him that she knew she was going to hell which was bullshit if you wanted Freddie's opinion because there was enough hell and enough heaven on earth to keep the Lord going in his mind.

Heaven was the stars, hell was the men who walked beneath them and the land was the thing in between that kept them grounded. Untamed, virgin land that had been untouched by dirty human hands that had been here when the first man had walked across it and would be here when they disappeared at the Day of Judgement. Land was the one thing that kept going and it was only now that he could see it that he leant to appreciate it.

He knew that his girls were coping well, well enough anyway. They had been silent with his father, ghost children with their heads bowed and their eyes lowered, with him when Charles LaDuke was gone, with the rest of it they were slowly becoming more like the children that Caro had always intended them to be. Find Mary a book she was happy, find Laura a horse and she was grinning ear to ear. And that was why he knew that he had to find work, he was a pragmatist and he knew that he had to get them into school. Mary he knew would thrive in such an environment. Laura…Laura needed it too.

And he thought of the fire that billowed over the man he had shot and wondered if maybe, if he was very lucky then he would just have the role of murderer tattooed across his soul and he would challenge any man who would look that corrupt bastard in the eye and find him guilty.

The whore…young ladies he reminded himself with a grin…took kindly on his daughters and made sure that they ate while he stepped out. They didn't seem to mind two inquisitive young girls at their shoulders and on more than one occasion the girls helped fold the clean sheets that needed to be washed—they folded clean sheets, Freddie did put down some rules—and Mary would sometimes read out loud little stories that she had her book of fairytales and the girls would listen and sometimes cackle. It was better he reminded himself than the saloon where he would never get any sleep. At least this way he was able to sleep on the floor a few nights and get a few offers in, his wife had been dead a long time and Freddie was human and sometimes you needed more than a hand…well…you get the image don't you?

Either way he stepped out and looked out over the town of Carson City turned around and walked smack bang into a wall of muscle.

He rebounded upwards to see a man staring at him.

There was an odd…oddness that he couldn't describe looking at him and Freddie rebounded. The man had to be older than he was though not by much, but there was a darkness around his eyes that in some odd way Freddie thought that they shared, there was a terrible loss there that he couldn't put behind him he thought oddly. It was like watching from a dream.

For a second the two of them stared at each other and then the other man offered him a hand. Freddie took it even though such actions used to get him a beating for needing help and he allowed himself to be pulled up in one fluid motion.

"Thanks" he said brushing down his pants.

"No problem" the man said quietly. "You new here?"

"That obvious?"

"That you don't know where your going yeah, plus the whole saloons been ago that the whorehouse let two young girls and their father stay here"

Shit.

"Shit" he said not bothering to hide his language. "And I was supposed to be finding respectable work as well. You know any ranches that are hiring?"

"Might do but not many that are hiring whole families, your not here for the Bonanza?"

"What the fuck is a Bonanza?"

The older man laughed at his expression and Freddie thought it lightened up his whole face. It certainly took years off him.

"Alright then. It just you and the girls?"

"Yeah" he said not commenting on how everyone had known it was him and two little girls. He didn't dare ask if news got around here, small towns were small towns and he knew that too. But then again…

He sighed.

This was not working well.

"You okay kid?"

He shrugged and looked out over the town. "Was kinda hoping to keep a low profile for a bit to be honest" he began and then he clamped his mouth shut. He didn't know what on Earth had possessed him to say that he really didn't. There was something about this place, about this man about the way he was looking at him that made him want to tell him everything that had happened to him but he could not. Freddie was many things but stupid was not nor would it ever be one of them.

Not again. .

"Carson City's not the best town to be doing that" the other man said. "You a rancher?"

"No, can handle horses though and all I ask is that I can take my children to school and raise them well. I'm not asking for much, a lot of it I can do myself"

"How'd your wife feel about that?"

"There isn't one"

It was very clear that the answer that he had given was not satisfactory to the older man but politeness made sure that he did not say more. Or maybe it was the look on his face, maybe it was…well…what did it matter? Either way here they were.

He chewed his bottom lip for a second and then the older man nodded his head and then.

"How old are your kids?"

"Six and three, well…five but she'd want me to tell you that's near six"

"You know if I was looking for farm hands I'd tell you that kids that small would get into trouble"

"And I'd tell you mind wouldn't. My eldest is quite happy to sit there with a book while the world burns and my youngest…hell if you've got a puppy and a puddle she'll be happy. God knows I gave up on getting Laura to keep her clothes clean before she was even in em"

For a second the other man smiled for a second as if he too found that interesting but again he didn't comment. Freddie got the impression that he didn't need to say much to get his opinion across. Even now he had the look of someone who too had read more than he had worked.

"Alright, if your sure"

"Wait are you offering me a job?"

"Wasn't that obvious?"

"Not really man no"

The other man laughed for a second and then stuck his hand out.

"Adam Cartwright"

Cartwright. Cartwright…Cartwright…the name rang in his head like the sounds of a church bell and for the life of him he could not place it. It must have had something to do with LaDuke but he didn't…couldn't place it and it frightened him somewhat.

"Freddie" he said when he realised he was supposed to be saying something back.

"You got a surname Freddie"

He did but he didn't want it and that was the problem. He smiled and then came with the first one that he could think off. It was Mary who was the imaginative one not him. fortunately Charles LaDuke had never let his children out of his sight long enough for Freddie to even dream of giving them surnames.

"Spencer" he said at random. "My daughters are Mary and Laura, I just ask for privacy"

"Well we give you that, privacy, thirty a month, bunk and beans, we have a smaller house if you want it for the girls. They get easily offended by rough language?"

"They've been living in a whorehouse for three days what do you think?" he said dryly and this time Adam Cartwright gave a deep booming laugh that seemed to make him sound and look as if he was a young boy again.

"Funny" he said dryly. "Saddle them up and be ready to go" he said with a nod. "I'll be done in the hour"

He nodded and he watched Adam go and then.

"Adam?"

He turned and Freddie jumped over the railing and landed neatly on the other side in front of the other man.

"I ask man to man if someone comes looking for me you tell me. I'll shoot you as straight as I can but I ask that of you anyway"

There was a pause and then the other man nodded.

"Fair enough."

"And where are we going?"

"My family ranch, my Pa, my brother, farm hands and a Chinese cook."

"Aha"

"Called the Pondarosa"

Freddie nodded but again there was that thumbprint at the back of his neck. He tried to ignore it, there was no need for the slither of recognition that went down his spine, there was no need for it because what did it matter?

He didn't know the Pondarosa, didn't know the Cartwrights, didn't know much of anything at all.

But he did know that he had a safe place to put his head down tonight.

Call him a trusting fool but oddly enough…

Oddly enough he was sure about that.

And there you go, hope you enjoy.

Next Chapter-Freddie Spencer and Ben Cartwright meet for the first time. It is not a happy ending. Not yet...anyway.