Hi, so here we are-back again! Apologies for the delay but with work and needing some personal time to get my head straight I had to take a bit of break. I am back though so please enjoy.
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Triggers for this chapter.
To Another Heart
Chapter 6-The Judas Gun
Freddie attempts to deal with the ramifications that his father kidnapped Ben Cartwright's son...and that his father is dead. Hopefully.
He ended up in the saloon. Not quite his plan but he had ended up there anyway and now he was in deep shit.
His father.
Of course it was his father.
He gripped his whiskey glass and nodded for the bottle. He needed to think and he so he sat in the back corner and tried to think.
So his father had kidnapped Ben Cartwright's son.
Naturally.
His father who he was sure was dead.
He hoped.
Fuck.
He swallowed the whiskey and then took another glass watching the brown liquid in front of him.
He had been so sure that he had gotten out clean. Freddie had thought that he would have known it in his bones if the man had survived and now he was finding that he was not sure. He was really not sure.
He didn't know the reach of his father, had never heard of Ben Cartwright before he had come to this state and looked for work...hell if he'd known that there was some great man to stick behind who hated his father then he would have left when Mary was small and then maybe things would have been very different. Now as it stood he had to make a choice.
He could leave. It was not out of the realm of possibility. He had done it once before after all. He had picked up his family and left.
But there was a sense that even Freddie couldn't ignore that if he did that once he would be doing that for the rest of his life. If he ran now he would be running for the rest of his life and there would be no escaping his father's shadow and even if he did manage to kill the fucker then he would have won beyond the grave regardless. He would have taken another bit from Freddie and he didn't think that he had anything left to give.
And besides he was a father and he could not deny that his children loved it here. And he was a father, a father first, the kind of father that he thought Ben Cartwright would approve, the kind of father that Ben Cartwright was and so he had to put them first. They were settled and happy and full of live, the misery of their earlier years stripped away so that only he was carrying that burden.
No...he couldn't run. He swallowed down the harsh booze and winced leaning back on the chair and staring at the bottle.
He could not run.
That was clear.
So he had to stay.
Which was even worse when you really thought about it.
Because what the fuck did he do now?
Did he tell Ben Cartwright?
Yeah...he could see how that was going to go.
Hello Mr Cartwright, hope my girls didn't bother you today, by the way my father kidnapped and probably murdered your youngest son, beat up your eldest and probably helped your wife into an early grave...do you mind if I come in and discuss a pay rise?
Freddie scowled and then laughed manically to himself. The music of the saloon drowned him out. Besides...this was a saloon in the 19th century. He was not the only drunk laughing manically to himself in a dark corner.
He sat there and drank and paused.
He could not tell Ben Cartwright. He would be lucky to get away without a duel never mind the rest.
So what did that mean?
He would have to sit on this secret for as long as he lived?
Well...he thought standing up and throwing some money on the table. He had lived with worse.
He didn't ride drunk but he got into the saddle heavy and then he watched out of the corner of his eye as Roy Coffee left his station house. For a second he watched the other man slip into the hotel no doubt for his dinner and then he slid off the horse. He was moving before he was able to.
The man had left the jail open. It was shockingly trusting and not something that Freddie would have done if he was being honest. But there was nobody in the jails and no trail gangs around. The well for gold had all dried up...say what you wanted but it was a relatively quiet night.
He staggered a little as he fell into the room and he caught himself.
He managed to grab a pencil and a piece of paper and he wrote down what he needed to say. That his father was dead. Where the body could be found. That it was over.
He stared at it but the words were blurring over.
He sighed and reached into his pocket for the wad of cash. He thought he heard something clatter but he didn't notice anything and so in his drunken stupor he walked out.
He needed to sleep this off. He had till morning to get back. God knows Julia's Palace had, had worse.
It wasn't even sex...just sleep. An easy night.
And hopefully he had enough cash for books and coffee in the morning.
He sighed and stretched and staggered out and felt his back crack.
He didn't look back.
There was no need to.
And as quickly as he had been Freddie was gone and he slipped through the darkness.
He didn't know that he had left his picture.
He didn't know that the town drunk had seen him.
It didn't matter.
Well...it would...it would...but that was a story for another day.
Roy Coffee chewed his steak and read his newspaper and felt content.
It was a good night. He would do a couple of foot patrols and then if all was good he would be able to sleep in his own bed. The job of a deputy was to do more night patrols than the actual sheriff and the young lads that he had as his deputies were good sorts who needed to learn. God knows he was getting too old for nightshifts.
He sighed and scoffed a little. He was not the most political man and they were far from it here but he had to concede that reading the paper the twits in Washington were getting worse. Businessmen (and not very good ones by the sound of it) becoming politicians was something that he thought should be stopped. But then again when did anyone ever listen to him.
He paid the bill and went back to the station to make sure all was well before he retired and then paused.
He had left the station open for the night...it had been a quiet day and he'd been able to leave it open. The gold rush that dominated this part of the world was drying up for the winter and so it was getting easier to leave the station open. Trail gangs tended not to come through here in winter and soon there would be a chill in the air.
He had done that in the knowledge that nobody would disturb him and there was nobody to disturb. There was nobody to break out after all. Hadn't been in three days.
But the door was open and it looked like someone had been in the station. Been in the station or perhaps stumbled drunk through it.
He paused looking around.
There was a portrait on the floor and he bent to pick it up and felt his eyebrows climb to the top of his head.
He knew this photograph.
This was Marie Cartwright.
He had seen Marie when she had first arrived...had seen her when her son had gone missing, had watched the dignity in her bleed onto the floor...the life seep out of her...and that was before she had died.
He ran a finger down the wooden frame. It looked old...Ben...Ben had not been here surely? The idea of Ben Cartwright stumbling through the station drunk was something that he did not see coming. Ben had his moments...mostly on the day his son was taken and the day of his birth but he was mostly contained about it.
Certainly he was not one to stumble through the streets drunk.
He'd never seen Ben do that in his life and he thought that if he did it would shake the foundations of Virginia City never mind their little plot of it.
He stared at Marie Cartwright's face. There was no way that this was Adam's or Hoss's. Hoss had been a young boy back then and Adam...well...call Roy a cynic but he got the impression back then that Adam had not been impressed when his father had shown up with (to put it mildly) an ex-showgirl who was pregnant and who was closer to Adam's age than his own. He sighed and ran a hand down his face and then looked down at his desk.
There was a note scrawled onto the desk in a hand that looked very unsteady. Roy picked it up and then twisted the old gas light so that he was able to see more clearly. His eyes were not as good as they once were he didn't mind admitting it.
He stared down at the paper and then.
CHARLES LE DUKE DEAD. FOUND AT HIS HOME HOUSE ON FIRE IN THE NEXT STATE OVER. BURNED DEAD. SON MISSING. SON DOESN'T WANT TO BE FOUND SO DON'T BOTHER LOOKING FOR HIM. TELL BEN...
And then it trailed off.
Roy stared at the note suddenly wide awake all traces of sleep gone. He stared at it and then swore softly under his breathe. He didn't know what he was looking at but he knew that he was looking at something bad...even if it wasn't bad he was sure that it was not good.
So Charles Le Duke was dead? According to this note anyway but he didn't know who had been there when he had been out...and what...he had a son?
It felt like a puzzle game that little children did. A complicated maths problem that he couldn't see clear.
Charles Le Duke was apparently dead. But he had a son. He had kidnapped Ben's son a long time ago but now he had one...a son that didn't want to be found...and someone here...someone here knew of him?
Was the son here?
Was the son in Carson City?
He tried to think if there had been anyone else knew in town...
Well...there had been the kid that Ben had hired. The one with the two children who seemed to be glued to the whorehouse whenever he came into town and who didn't seem to look at a respectable woman.
But even so...how did that explain the portrait of Marie.
He needed to speak to Ben.
He was loathe to do it. He really was...but it was clear that he had to speak to Ben. Ben might know what was going on but...but Roy thought it was cruel to give the man false hope.
He sighed tapping his fingernails against the edge of his desk and then he made a decision. Pulling his writing paper towards him he began to write.
First things first he would check that Charles Le Duke was dead. A man in a house burnt alive would no doubt be of some knowledge to a Sherriff even if he was mildly incompetent. God knows Roy would want to know about it.
He calculated...three weeks if a Sherriff was smart to reply to him.
Then he would see Ben.
Once he knew for sure. At the very least maybe he would be able to give his old friend a bit of closure when it came to Charles Le Duke's death.
If that was all that came out of this then maybe that would help...
Hell...Roy didn't have children. He didn't know.
He sighed and then began to write.
He put the picture of Marie in his desk.
He'd take that to Ben when he was ready.
God knows nothing was going to happen tonight.
And there you are-see you next chapter
Next Chapter-Roy gets conformation. So does Ben. And then...well...then there is a shock.