AUTHOR: Debra Petersen (Debra P.)

E-MAIL: debpet732@aol.com

RATING: G

SUMMARY: When Adam is falsely accused of murder a formidable team unites to discover the truth.

TITLE:   MURDER IN BROSNAN FLATS

PART I:  CHAINS

The two figures on horseback made their way over the rise and headed down the slight slope, pursuing their way along the trail at a steady pace under the early afternoon sun.

One was an older man on a nondescript brown horse whose vest sported a sheriff’s star.  He held a rifle in front of him with one hand while he controlled the reins of his horse with the other. 

The other was a younger man with black hair, dressed all in black, including his hat, mounted on a beautiful sorrel horse with a white blaze.  His hands were manacled, making it very difficult to hold his reins properly. 

As they rode along in silence the younger man’s eyes kept sending an angry glare in the direction of the older man.  The older man pointedly kept his eyes focused straight ahead, trying to ignore it, but his growing appearance of discomfort and unease clearly showed that he was quite aware of his companion’s attitude.  Finally Roy Coffee could endure it no longer.

“Tarnation, Adam, I wish you’d quit lookin’ at me that way!”

“And just how would you look at someone who’s supposed to be your friend who  dragged you out of your house and put you in chains even though he doesn’t really believe you committed any crime?,” Adam Cartwright responded icily.

“Now Adam, you know I didn’t have any choice about that.  I got the order from the judge over at Brosnan Flats to bring you in.  I couldn’t just wire him back and say “Sorry, judge, I can’t do it; he’s a friend of mine and I just can’t believe he’s guilty.”  Now could I?”

“But the chains, Roy!,” Adam said, shaking his bound wrists in frustration and causing his horse to toss his head, startled.

“Well I’m real sorry about that, son, but the fact is they consider you a suspect in a murder case and the chains are standard procedure.”

Adam shook his head.  “This is unbelievable!  All I did was go over to Brosnan Flats a couple of days ago to meet with a man who was thinking about buying some horses from us and get into a minor altercation with a drunk.  And now here I am being dragged back there, trussed like a turkey for roasting, under suspicion of murder!”  He shook his head again.  “Unbelievable,” he repeated under his breath.

Roy eyed him curiously.  “Just what did happen the other day?  I never really heard your side of the story.”

Adam sighed.  “After my meeting I decided to get a quick beer before heading home.  This drunk was coming out of the saloon and just about ran into a young lady who was simply passing by.  He grabbed her arm and started making some pretty lewd remarks to her.  She tried to pull away but he just tightened his hold.
I stepped in and very politely told him to leave the lady alone.  The man chose to take offense and took a swing at me.  I swung back and decked him.  The lady was very grateful.  A couple of men picked the drunk up and hauled him off while I went inside, had my drink and headed out of town.  That’s all there is to it.”

Roy’s expression sobered.  “It seems the fella you decked was found dead a few hours later in back of the livery stable with a bullet through the chest....”

“What caliber bullet?,” Adam interrupted.

“That information wasn’t in the wire that was sent to me,” Roy answered.  “Of course that’s somethin’ that we’ll have to check into real careful.  Could turn out to be mighty important.  Anyway, a number of people had seen your little fight with him and they managed to track down who you were and where you lived through the fella you went there to meet with.  It seems to me that your being seen fighting with the victim is about all they really have against ya, but they didn’t have even that much against anybody else, so they decided to go ahead and charge you. I would think it shouldn’t be too hard to convince the judge of your innocence.  You know I’ll be happy to vouch for ya, best as I can.”

“I appreciate that, Roy.  I just hope you’re right about this being easy to clear up.”
An uneasy look appeared on Adam’s face.  “I’ve just got kind of a funny feeling about this whole situation.  Something about it just doesn’t feel right.”  He paused for a couple of seconds before continuing.  “Men have been railroaded...and hung...on insufficient evidence before this.”

“I know, son...I know,” Roy answered quietly.

They rode on in silence, with only the sound of their horses’ hooves and the gentle jangling of the chains at Adam’s wrists to accompany the sobering thoughts that were passing through their minds.

PART II: PROPER PROCEDURES

It was in the middle of the afternoon when Roy Coffee and Adam Cartwright finally arrived at Brosnan Flats.  The town appeared to be in the middle of  an afternoon siesta.  Almost noone was to be seen except for two white haired old men in rocking chairs in front of the General Store and a young couple enjoying a leisurely stroll along the opposite side of the street.

Roy and Adam soon located the sheriff’s office and brought their horses to a halt in front of it.  Roy got down first, then lent a hand to Adam, whose freedom of movement was inhibited by the chains that bound his hands.  Roy quickly wrapped the horses’ reins around the hitching rail, then turned back toward Adam, who was looking up at the sign above the sheriff’s door with a grim expression.  Roy laid a hand on the younger man’s arm. 

“Now, Adam, I know you think this is nonsense and it’s aggravatin’ ya down to your boots, but you know as well as I do that it’s important to follow the proper procedures in these things.  I’ve heard you make the argument often enough, and it’s one of the things that makes me think as highly of ya as I do.  Well it’s true when you’re the one the procedures are bein’ used on just the same as when you’re usin’ them on somebody else.  So I hope you’ll just take it easy and go along without makin’ a lot of fuss.  It’ll be for the best in the end.”

Adam looked back at him with a trace of amusement in his eyes.  “You don’t need to lecture me on the subject, Roy.  As long as the procedures are proper I’ll behave myself with the utmost propriety.  I don’t intend to stir up any more trouble for myself than absolutely necessary.”

“Glad to hear it.,” Roy responded with the slightest of smiles peeking through his mustache.  He gestured toward the door.  “Well, we might as well go on in.”

Together they stepped inside the sheriff’s office which, not surprisingly, looked a great deal like Roy’s office in Virginia City.  Behind the desk there sat a muscular middle aged man with thinning brown hair and heavy eyebrows who wore a sheriff’s star.  Beside him stood a young man who looked to be in his mid twenties, more slender of build with thick, dark brown hair that fell forward over his brow and intense eyes.  As Roy and Adam entered they broke off their conversation and looked up at the newcomers.  Then the sheriff spoke quietly to the young man in a gravelly voice.  “You get on home son.  Tell your ma not to wait supper on me.  I’ll probably be late.”  With a nod, but without saying a word, the young man headed out the door, casting an uneasy glance at the chains on Adam’s wrists as he passed.

The sheriff stood up and motioned for Adam and Roy to come nearer.  “I’m Sheriff Samuel Wainwright.  What can I do for you fellas?,” he said.

“Roy Coffee, sheriff over in Virginia City.”  Roy stepped forward and extended his hand.  With a slight hesitancy Wainwright took it.  “And this here’s Adam Cartwright, who I was ordered to turn over in connection with that killing a couple of days ago.”

Sheriff Wainwright gave Adam a long, penetrating look as if he were trying to take in everything about him all at once.  “Well, Sheriff Coffee, I appreciate your prompt action in this matter.  Let’s not waste any time over this then.  Adam Cartwright, I hereby charge you with the murder of Vinny Bradley.”

“Was that his name?,” Adam cut in drily.  “I never heard it mentioned the other day.”

“His full name was Vincent Arthur Bradley,” Wainwright replied , drawing his eyebrows together, not pleased at the interruption.  “Do you have a lawyer, Mr. Cartwright?”

“My father should be here with our family lawyer fairly shortly.  When Sheriff Coffee picked me up this morning he said he was going to go get him and follow after us as soon as he could.,” Adam replied.  Roy Coffee suppressed a pained reaction as he remembered just exactly what Ben Cartwright had said.  Ben had been absolutely furious over what was being done to his oldest son and didn’t bother to hold it in one whit.  Roy was already hurting over having to take Adam into custody in the first place and Ben’s reaction only made it that much worse.
He had to keep reminding himself that he really had no choice in the matter.

“Well, in that case,” Wainwright was saying, “maybe we’d best wait until they get here before I take an official statement from you.  Meanwhile why don’t you just follow me and make yourself comfortable in one of the cells back here?”  He picked up some keys from his desk.

Roy thought this might be his best opportunity to speak his piece.  “Wainwright, before you go any further with this I’ve gotta tell ya, I have to think this whole
thing is one big mistake.  Why, I’ve known Adam here and his whole family for quite a few years and he’s as fine a young fella as you’ll find in the entire territory.  And he’s always been a strong supporter of the law, in fact he’s come to my assistance more times than I could tell ya.  Whatever reputation I have in these parts, I’d bet it all that you’re lookin’ at the wrong man.”

Wainwright gave him the same intense look that he had given Adam a moment earlier.  “Yes, Sheriff Coffee, I know your reputation, and yes, I’ve heard quite a bit about the Cartwrights.  But nothing you’ve said changes the facts in this case that point to Adam Cartwright as the one who committed this crime.”

“And just what facts are those?,” Roy Coffee persisted.  “From the information I received it sounded like about all you had against him was the run in he was seen having with the victim earlier in the day, and you know that don’t come near to provin’ that he’s the one who shot the man later.”

“Oh, I’ve got more than that.”  Wainwrights voice was low and insinuating, and the gravelly timbre was coming through again.  “Maybe the most important thing   I’ve got is a witness who can place him in the alley behind the livery stable where the body was found just shortly before the time when the murder must have taken place.”

“But that’s impossible!,” Adam retorted sharply.  “I was never there!”

“Oh is that so?”

“Yes, that’s so.  After I knocked your Mr. Bradley out and he was hauled away I only went into the saloon long enough for one quick beer.  Then I came right back out, got on my horse and headed straight out of town.  I never came back.”

“Do you have some way to prove that?  Anybody who rode with you, or who might have seen you on the trail at the time you were supposed to be back in town here?”

Adam took a deep breath.  “I can’t think of anybody.  Nobody rode with me and the trail was pretty deserted that day.”  His face became thoughtful.  “There’s one person who can confirm the time I actually left the saloon.  That’s the young lady that I saved from Mr. Bradley’s unwanted attentions.  I think her name was Francine...”

“Francine Larkin,” Wainwright cut in.

“That’s it.  She came up to me just as I was leaving to thank me again for my help.  When I rode away she was standing outside the saloon looking after me.  So she can confirm when I left.  But she won’t be able to testify that I never came back”

Wainwright shook his head slowly, looking directly at Adam..  “I don’t think Francine Larkin is going to be any help to you at all,” he said quietly.  “You see, she’s the one who claims to have seen you in the alley shortly before the murder.”

PART III: LINES OF INVESTIGATION

The back room of the Sheriff’s office in Brosnan Flats was extremely crowded that evening.  There was only one prisoner in custody, but he was evidently quite a popular young man with enough visitors to fill the larger of the two cells to nearly overflowing.  The prisoner, Adam Cartwright, paced the floor of the cell as much as the limited space would allow, his whole demeanor betraying his impatience with the situation.  On the cot in the cell sat his father, Ben Cartwright, watching his son with a look that reflected the same impatience along with an overriding anxiety.  Next to him sat their family lawyer, Joshua Armitage, a man of rather short, stout build with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and an amiable cast to the eyes that peered out from behind his spectacles.

Two stools had also been brought into the cell.  On one of them sat Roy Coffee,
his shoulders slightly slumped, his eyes moving from Adam to Ben and back again, his regret at his enforced role in Adam’s incarceration plainly evident in his face.  The other stool was occupied by Adam’s youngest brother Joe, who sat with his hands clasped tensely together, alertly attending to everything that was being said.

Joe’s arrival along with his father and the attorney had been something of a surprise to Adam.  According to Ben, both of his brothers had wanted very much to come along and see if they could be of any help, but someone had to stay behind to look after things at the ranch and after some lively discussion it was decided that Hoss should stay and Joe should come.  However it had come about, Joe’s presence had proved welcome to Adam.  Somehow his brother’s lopsided grin at greeting had managed to lift his spirits, however briefly, more than anything else could.

After the arrival of the Cartwrights and their lawyer Sheriff Wainwright had proceeded to take Adam’s formal statement, in which he described the incident between him and a drunken Bradley.  Adam’s insistence that he had left town almost immediately afterward and never come back caused Wainwright to raise his eyebrows slightly but he made no comment.  He and Joshua Armitage had then gone over the available information related to the case, after which the sheriff had left the group alone in Adam’s cell to discuss the situation at their leisure.

“Well,” Armitage began, adjusting his spectacles to better look at his notes, “it seems the circuit judge will be back here in about a week, so we have that long to prepare your defense.”  He cleared his throat.  “The most damaging thing we have to deal with is the claim by this Francine Larkin that you were in the alley where the body was later found just shortly before the time of the murder.”

“She’s lying!” Adam spoke the words somewhat harshly.

“Of course she is,” Armitage responded mildly.  “The question is - why?  And how are we going to be able to prove it?  We’re going to want to find out all we can about that young lady.”

“Finding out all about a pretty girl - that sounds like it should be right up my alley,” Joe piped up.  He turned to his brother with a grin.   “She is pretty, isn’t she Adam?”

Adam couldn’t help smiling back.  “Yes, Joe, she’s very pretty.”

“There’s somethin’ I’ve been thinkin’ about how that body was found in that alley,” Roy Coffee interjected.  The faces of the other four all turned toward him curiously.  “I noticed the location of that livery stable when Adam and I rode into town, and it’s right on the main street of the town.  Now it seems to me that if a shot was fired in the alley behind it, somebody should’a heard it.  But Wainwright didn’t mention any such thing.  Accordin’ to him the manager of the stable discovered the body when he was comin’ back after an early dinner break at around five o’clock, and there don’t seem to be anyone claimin’ to have heard the actual shot.”

“So what are you suggesting, Roy?,” Ben asked.

“Well I’m just wonderin’ if the man was actually shot in that alley at all, or if he was shot somewhere else and the body was just dumped there.”

“That’s an interesting idea, Roy,” Adam interjected.  “And just how do you propose going about pursuing it?”

“Well, I guess what we want to do is to try and trace exactly what happened to this Vinny Bradley from the time you knocked him out up until he was found dead..  Adam, didn’t you say that there were a couple of men who hauled him away after you decked him?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t suppose you happen to know who they were?”

Adam shook his head ruefully.  “I’m afraid not.”

“Well maybe somebody who was at the saloon will know who they are.  I’d like to start by findin’ them and askin’ them exactly where they took him.  Then we can go from there.  I’ll get on that first thing in the morning.”

I’d like to go along with you on that, Roy,” Ben said.

“Happy to have ya, Ben,” Roy replied.

At this point Armitage took control of the conversation again.  “The other thing that needs looking into is the medical report that purports to establish the time of death.  It also notes the caliber of the bullet that killed Bradley.  It was apparently a .45 caliber.  For the record, Adam, you carry...?”

“A Colt .45," Adam responded, his face very serious.

 Armitage gave a little sigh.  “My agenda for tomorrow is going to be to have a talk with the doctor that filed that report and see if I can come up with anything useful.”  He glanced around at each of the others.  “It seems we all have leads to pursue tomorrow and, hopefully, one of them will lead to the truth.  For now, I’m sure we could all use a good night’s rest, especially Adam here, so I suggest we all head over to our rooms at the hotel and turn in.”

The men all rose from their seats.  Joe, Roy and Armitage each gave Adam a quietly spoken “good night” and an encouraging pat on the arm before turning to leave.  Ben lingered after the others were gone, turning to face his son with a look of deep worry in his eyes. 

“Son, you know we’ll do everything possible to prove your innocence.  I’m sure one of these lines of investigation will pan out.  The truth has to be out there.  I just wish....”  His voice faltered.

It struck Adam then how often he had seen that look of worry on his father’s face.  In fact with three sons to raise, some sort of worry was never really far from Ben Cartwright’s mind.  It must have started, Adam reflected, with Ben’s first glimpse of his firstborn son as a mere infant lying in a cradle.  And it would never stop, Adam knew, until Ben himself took his last breath.

“I know, Pa...I know,” Adam said quietly.

Ben stepped forward and gave his son a quick but firm embrace.  Then he turned quickly and hurried to catch up with the others.

A minute later Sheriff Wainwright came to lock the cell before he himself left to go home.  Adam settled himself back onto the cot and stared up at the ceiling.  It was going to be a long night.

PART IV: UNPEACEFUL INTERLUDE

The crowd strained forward with voyeuristic abandon, eager to catch the best possible view of the proceedings, but they were restrained by the row of armed men that stood with feet apart and guns drawn to prevent anyone from crossing the line that marked out the cleared space on all four sides of the gallows which dominated the center of the square.

On one side of the square a silver haired man with broad shoulders frantically tried to push through to the front of the crowd, ignoring the jeers of the people he shoved aside.  Finally reaching the line of guards, he attempted to break through, only to be roughly shoved back as others had been.  Elbowing his way back to the front he cast his eyes anxiously to his left.  On that side of the square more guards were attempting to clear a path through the milling throng.  A minute later a figure clad all in black with his hands bound in front of him could be seen making his way down the path, escorted by the executioner, who wore a hood over his head.  People on either side shouted insults at the condemned man, and the sound of it tore into the silver haired man causing him actual physical pain.

The man in black and his escort emerged into the cleared area, moving toward the steps at one side of the gallows.  The man stared straight ahead, his face set in an unreadable expression.  The silver haired man waved his arms and shouted out to him, desperately trying to attract his attention. Pausing at the foot of the gallows stairs, the condemned man turned his head, looking back to locate the voice that was calling his name, the voice that was so familiar to him.  Their eyes locked, and for a long minute they stood still amid the tumult around them while a flood of emotion passed between them.  Finally the black clad man mouthed the words “Good-bye, Pa,” then turned away and began to mount the steps to the gallows.  In just a moment he had taken position directly beneath the noose.

The silver haired man stared in dismay as the executioner slipped the rope around his victim’s neck and tightened the knot.  The man in black stood straight with no visible trembling, his eyes closed, the slight movement of his mouth indicating that perhaps he was saying some final prayer.

The watching man felt a trembling all through his body and his knees threatened to give way.  As the executioner reached to pull the lever the man strained forward one last time and a cry was torn from him - “NO!!!...ADAM!!!...NO!!!”

************************
Ben Cartwright came abruptly awake, feeling somewhat disoriented and hearing the echos of that final cry from his dream reverberating in his mind.  He wasn’t sure if he had actually shouted the words aloud.  For a moment he wasn’t even sure exactly where he was.  Then he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder and heard a quiet voice, laden with concern.

“Pa, are you okay?  Is there anything I can do?”

His head clearing, Ben found himself looking into the eyes of his youngest son, Joseph, illuminated by the light of the lamp on the night table beside him.  Glancing around he recognized the room that the two of them were sharing in Brosnan Flats’ only hotel.  And then everything else came back to him. 

“I’m all right, Joseph.”  He sighed as he settled back onto his pillows and attempted to smile.  “This is a change, isn’t it?  Me having a nightmare and you coming to ‘hold my hand’ so to speak.”

Joe smiled back at him. “Yeah, I guess it is.  You’ve been there to soothe my nightmares often enough.  Adam too.”  Joe noticed the look that passed fleetingly over his father’s face at the mention of his older brother’s name.

“You’re afraid for him, aren’t you, Pa?,” he said quietly.

Ben lowered his eyes.  He hated admitting to being afraid, but then, every man had fears, and refusing to acknowledge them was not any sign of strength or courage, but rather a denial of his true nature.  He raised his eyes again to look directly into his son’s face.

“Yes, Joe, I’m afraid for him,” he answered just as quietly.

“Well you know what, Pa?,” Joe said, “I guess I’m pretty scared too.  I hated seeing him locked up in that cell over there.  But I was just thinking.  This is hardly the first time one of us has been falsely accused of something.  Somehow it always seems to work out in the end.  And with you and me and Roy and old legal eagle Joshua all looking into this thing I’d say it’s just about a cinch that between us we’re going to figure this one out too.  So what we need to do right now is stop worrying and get back to sleep so we can be good and rested in the morning when we go out to try and find something that will clear older brother.  Right, Pa?”

Ben looked at his son with gratitude and not a little wonder. “Yes, you’re right about that, son,” A smile crossed his face.  “Now when did you get so wise?”

Joe gave him one of his spirit-lifting grins.  “I guess I must have picked it up just by being around you so much.  And Adam.”

Ben held his arms open and Joe slipped into them for a quick hug.  “Thank you, son,” Ben whispered into his ear.

A quarter of an hour later Joe was settled back into his own bed, the lamp on the night table was extinguished, and Ben and Joe were both drifting back off into sweet, peaceful slumber.

PART V:  MEETING FRANCINE

Joe Cartwright lounged on a bench in front of the bank with his hat pulled down over his eyes, his hands clasped behind his neck and his legs stretched out in front of him.  He might have appeared to an onlooker to be paying scant attention to anything happening around him, but his nonchalant appearance was deceptive.  In fact he was alertly on the lookout for the appearance of the young lady he was planning on running into.

Joe had spent a great deal of time the previous evening trying to decide how to approach Francine Larkin.  Basically, he knew only two facts about her.  She was said to be a very attractive young lady.  And she was lying about his older brother.  While the first fact was calculated to inspire his interest, the second had the contrary effect of arousing his anger.  It was strange, he thought, to be harboring such mixed feelings toward someone he had not yet actually met.  It also made it difficult to figure out how to deal with her.  Joe had great confidence, founded on experience, in his ability to very quickly work his way into the lady’s good graces.  Perhaps if he could disarm her sufficiently and then lead their conversation in the direction he wanted he might be able to surprise her into some unguarded comment that would uncover her duplicity and force her to reveal what she knew.
It seemed as good a plan as any.  Joe wanted so very much to find out something that would help his older brother.  And he hated the thought of failing at his task...of letting Adam down.

He already had some cause for satisfaction this morning.  A conversation with the woman  who ran the café next to the hotel, which took place as she served him breakfast, had provided him valuable information.  He had only to mention Francine Larkin’s name and give the impression that he was curious as to whether she was the same girl of that name that he used to know.  In response the chatty old woman had not only given Joe an excellent description of Francine which made him confident that he would recognize her on sight, but she had also revealed that Francine and a friend of hers, who both worked at the dress shop in the next street over, usually came by the café for a cup of coffee on their midmorning break.  Now Joe was sitting on the bench down the street from the café awaiting their arrival and the chance to put his plan into action.

The wait was not long.  Even as he moved his hand to adjust his hat Joe noticed two young women rounding the corner a couple of blocks up the street and heading in his direction. They were wearing very similar white blouses and long dark skirts, but the taller of the two had long brown hair which fell in soft waves to her shoulders while her more petite companion sported short, curly black hair.  It quickly became clear to Joe that the first one was the girl he was seeking.

Joe rose casually from the bench and moved in their direction, timing his approach to meet them close to the café.  The two young ladies were chatting happily and didn’t even seem to notice as he neared them which made it easy to ‘accidentally’ bump into his quarry, causing the drawstring purse which she held to slip from her wrist and fall to the ground.

“Oh, ma’am, I’m sorry,” he said, hastily bending to pick up the bag.  “Here you are,” he continued, holding it out to her with his most charming smile. “I sure hope I didn’t damage anything.”

She hesitated for a moment, seemingly not quite knowing what to make of him, but she finally took the bag and answered his smile with a demure one of her own. 
“There’s not much there to damage,” she said.  “I’m sure there’s no harm done.”

“Well, I’m glad about that anyway,” Joe returned.  He politely doffed his hat.  “I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of running into you before.  You can just call me Joe.”  He didn’t want to mention the Cartwright part of his name just yet.

“I’m Francine Larkin,” the girl stated, causing Joe to feel an inner tingle of satisfaction.  The description he had been given was right on the money.  She nodded in the direction of her companion. “And this is my friend Julie Downs.”

“Pleased to meet you both.”  Joe nodded in Julie’s direction, but he was too absorbed in what he was trying to do to notice the expression of interest in her sparkling  blue eyes as she looked back at him.  He kept his attention focused on Francine.

“I truly am sorry about bumping into you the way I did and I’d really like to do something to make up for it.  Won’t you let me buy you both a cup of coffee?”
Joe gestured toward the door of the café.  Once again Francine hesitated.  She looked over at her friend, whose face clearly expressed her approval of the idea..

“Well, since we were just about to have a cup of coffee anyway, I don’t see that there would be any harm in that.  Thank you.”

Joe held open the door, allowing the two young ladies to enter ahead of him.  Very quickly they were seated at a small table near the window with steaming cups in front of them, chatting away like old acquaintances.

Francine’s conversation was polite but continued to show some element of reserve which Joe was having trouble breaking through.  Julie responded more openly and enthusiastically to any subject Joe brought up and continued to look at him in a way that might best be described as flirtatious, but on this occasion Joe did not respond with his usual verve, his attention being focused elsewhere.

Joe would have liked to sense that Francine was warming up to him a little more, but he knew that he didn’t have very much time to accomplish his mission.  Julie had mentioned that they only had twenty minutes for their break   He finally decided he had to begin to make his move.  He leaned forward, looking directly into Francine’s eyes in a way that could usually be counted on to melt any girl’s resistance.

“I’ll just bet that, as pretty as you are, you  get a lot of guys coming on to you, don’t you?,” he said in a deliberately enticing voice.

“Does she ever!,” Julie piped up. “Why, just the other day there was this fight...right in front of the saloon...and all over dear ‘Franny’ here!  That was some scene, let me tell you!”

“Oh hush, Julie!,” Francine said, her cheeks reddening.

Joe was gratified that Julie had turned the conversation in that direction.  It was just what he wanted.  “You know, I think I heard some talk about that,” he put in.
“Wasn’t there some drunk who started making trouble for you?”

Francine lowered her eyes.  “That’s right,” she said tentatively.

“And then this tall, dark and handsome stranger just steps in and lays him out cold!,” Julie babbled on.  “Just like in a book or something!”

Joe watched Francine’s reaction carefully.  Her eyes remained lowered and there was a nervous tremor in the hand that held her coffee cup.

“Sounds like that fella was a real knight in shining armor,” Joe went on, continuing to watch her intently.

Francine set down her cup   “I suppose he was,” she said softly.

“And you must have been real grateful to him,” Jo pressed her.

She raised her eyes to meet his. “Yes,” she said in a flat tone.

  This was Joe’s moment.  His gaze and his voice took on the hardness of flint.  “So why are you lying about him now?”  He saw her go suddenly pale.

“What do you mean?,” she managed to get out, the words almost catching in her throat.

“That man happens to be my brother!  The other day you made such a point of thanking him for defending you, and then you turn around and say you saw him in the alley where the man he defended you from was found dead a few hours later.  And because of that he’s sitting over there in jail charged with murder and under threat of being hanged!  Now we both know you lied about his being in that alley.  And I want to know why!”

Francine stared at him, speechless.  Julie looked over at her friend, her face a picture of confusion.  “Why, Franny, you never told me anything about that!,” she said.  Francine hushed her with a quick gesture of her hand.  She rose from her chair, her body trembling all over

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!,” she said in an unsteady voice, then she abruptly turned and headed for the door, leaving Joe and Julie staring after her.

“Hey, wait!” Joe called out, but Francine had already disappeared.  He threw some money down on the table and quickly moved to follow her with Julie at his heels.

For the next few minutes Joe felt as though he were a child engaged in a game of hide and seek.  As she hurried along Francine kept glancing around her, attempting to determine if anyone was following her while Joe kept ducking behind trees or the corners of buildings, attempting to avoid being detected by her.  Julie kept right behind him and managed to duck whenever he did.  Finally Francine reached the path leading up to a modest cottage, painted green with white trim.  As she stepped up to the door and knocked, ,Joe and Julie took their position behind a tree in the yard, from which vantage point they had a good view of what was going on.  The door opened and Francine spoke a few words to the unseen person behind it, then quickly disappeared inside.  A moment later, two figures appeared in the living room, visible through the large window that faced the front.  One was Francine, obviously agitated and upset.  The other was a slender young man with longish brown hair falling over his forehead.  The two appeared to be having some kind of argument.  Finally the young man took Francine into his arms, apparently trying to reassure or comfort her.

“Well, what do you know about that?,” Julie spoke quietly into Joe’s ear.  He looked back at her curiously.  “Don’t you know who that is?,” she continued, and Joe shook his head.  “Why that’s Sheriff Wainwright’s son, Stuart!”

Joe’s eyes widened.  He glanced back at the window where Francine and Stuart could still be seen in each other’s arms.  “The Sheriff’s son,” he whispered.  “Well now, isn’t that interesting?”

PART VI: TRACKING VINNY

Ben Cartwright’s hands grasped the bars of the cell with a force that showed how much he wished he could simply bend them by brute strength and snatch his son out.  From inside the cell Adam looked back at him with sympathetic understanding and reached a hand through the bars to touch his father’s arm.

“Take it easy, Pa.  That’s not going to do any good you know,” he said quietly.

“I know, son,” Ben replied with a resigned sigh.  “It’s just so hard to see you locked up in there.”

“Well, I can’t say that it’s my idea of a vacation spot,” Adam acknowledged drily, “but it’s really not that bad.  Wainwright promised to have the local librarian bring me over a couple of books today, so at least I won’t be climbing the walls from boredom.”  He gave his father what he hoped was a reassuring smile.  “Besides, it won’t be for that long, will it?  With all of you out there working on my behalf,  I expect to be out of here before I even have time to finish any of those books.” 

“I certainly hope so, son.” Ben’s voice was resonant with determination.

“Speaking of which, isn’t it about time for you to be meeting Roy and getting to work on that idea of his about finding the men who took Bradley away after I knocked him out?,” Adam prodded gently.

Ben glanced back at the clock over the door that led to the outer office.  “Yes, it is at that.  Well, I don’t want to keep him waiting. I’ll say good-bye for now, son, and we’ll see you sometime this afternoon, hopefully with some good news.”   He lowered his eyes and began to turn away.  Adam caught his arm, stopping him.

“Pa, thank you for coming around this morning.  You really didn’t have to,” he said quietly.

Ben looked directly back at his son with care filled eyes.   “Oh yes I did.”   He laid his hand over Adam’s and gave it a slight squeeze, then turned to leave.

Ben stood outside the sheriff’s office for just a couple of minutes before he was joined by Roy Coffee, according to plan and right on schedule.  As he came up beside Ben, Roy noticed the troubled look on his face.

“Mornin’, Ben,” he said.  “Everything okay?  How’s Adam doin’?”

Ben seemed to shake himself out of a reverie.  “Hello, Roy.  Adam’s fine...for now.  Actually,  he’s probably taking all this better than I am.”

Roy looked at him with concern.  “You really don’t look all that well, Ben.  Somethin’ botherin’ you...other than the obvious?”

Ben hesitated.  “I guess I am upset.  It’s just that I had this dream last night...a nightmare really.  I did manage to get back to sleep afterwards, and I thought I’d shaken it off, but...well, seeing Adam just now seemed to bring it all back to me.”

Roy raised his eyebrows.  “That must have been some nightmare.”

“It was.”  Ben paused.  He could sense the unspoken question behind Roy’s comment.  He finally decided to answer it.  “In the dream...Adam was being hanged.”

Roy was silent for a moment.  Then he raised his hand and laid it comfortingly on Ben’s shoulder.  “Sounds mighty frightening all right.  But it was just a dream...that’s all.  And we ain’t gonna let anything like that happen in real life...now are we?”  He spoke in an encouraging voice.

“You took him into custody, Roy.”  Ben’s eyes raked over his longtime friend accusingly.

Roy’s countenance remained steady under the accusation.  “Now, Ben, I’ve told ya before I didn’t have any choice about that.  And it hurt me to have to do it, believe me.  Adam himself understands that.  And I think the important thing right now is for us to work together to do whatever we can to help prove he’s innocent.
Don’t you agree?”

Ben seemed to visibly pull himself together.  “Of course, Roy.  So how do we get started?”

“Well, if we’re trying to trace what happened to Vinny Bradley after his little spat with Adam we need to start by finding the fellas that took him away afterwards.  And the place to start askin’ is the saloon.  So let’s go.”  Roy turned away and headed down the street with Ben following right behind. 

There was nobody at the saloon at this hour but the saloon keeper himself, a man named Dan who was busy setting up for the day, polishing glasses, wiping off the bar, setting the tables and chairs in order and so forth.  He proved to be cooperative enough when Roy explained what they wanted to know. Yes, he had been on duty at the time of the incident.  However he had been busy behind the bar at the time and had not  actually seen what took place outside and he could not identify the men who had taken Vinny Bradley away.

“But I’ll bet I know who probably could tell you,” he said.  “That would be old Pat and Ned, the two old gents sitting in rockers in front of the General Store across the street there.  They sit there most of the day just about every day, and they’ve got sharp eyes, notice pretty much everything that goes on.  I wouldn’t be
surprised at all if they could help you.”

Roy and Ben thanked him, then immediately set out to follow up on his suggestion.  Sure enough, the two old gentlemen were in their accustomed places in front of the store, rocking away and fanning themselves lazily.  As Ben and Roy crossed the street to approach them, their faces lit up at the prospect of new acquaintances to break up the dull routine of their day.  The two turned out to be brothers, one of them just a year older than the other, who were basically retired from farming while their sons now ran the family place and who chose to spend their days in this spot observing the life of the town.

When Roy turned the conversation to the incident in which Vinney Bradley had been knocked out, they nodded their heads sagely.  Yes, of course they had seen it

“Looked to me like old Vinny took on more than he could handle that time,” one of them chuckled.  Roy didn’t remember whether it was Pat or Ned.  It really didn’t seem to make much difference.  “He’s been in some scrapes before, but this is the first time I remember him having to be picked up and carried off.”

“And do you remember who it was that did that?,” Ben asked.

“Why sure,” the man replied.  “That would be Ed Lincoln and Jack Unser.”

“And do you know where we could find them?,” Ben pursued.

“Well, I don’t know about Jack.” the other man interjected, “but you should be able to find Ed at the feed store in the next street over.  That’s where he works.”

With another “thank you” Ben and Roy took their leave and set off for their new destination.  It wasn’t difficult to find the feed store.  They asked for Ed Lincoln and were directed toward a man who was hauling some bags of grain out of the back room. When he saw the two men approaching Ed put down the bag he was carrying and wiped his brow, looking at them warily. 

Roy introduced himself and Ben, then wasted no time in getting down to the point, asking Ed directly where he and Jack Unser had taken Vinny Bradley after the fight.  At first Ed seemed suspicious, as if afraid they were going to try to accuse him of something, but they managed to assure him that they were only trying to find out what actually happened in the interest of justice, and he finally opened up.  Jack and he had simply taken Vinny to his home, a little shack out on the edge of town, and left him there to sleep it off, he insisted. 

“And when you left him there what condition was he in?,” Roy asked.

“Well he had come around, which was why we didn’t think we needed to take him to the doctor, but he was still pretty drunk, and when we laid him down on his cot he fell right to sleep.  That’s how we left him.”

He gave them the directions to Bradley’s shack and went back to his business.

Roy and Ben eagerly headed on their way, feeling that they were getting close to what they were seeking.  Ed Lincoln’s directions had been clear, and it took them only bout fifteen minutes to locate Bradley’s shack off the road leading out of town.  Ben felt his heart pounding as they approached the door, as he prayed that this would not prove a dead end.

As they had been led to expect, the door was not locked.  They opened it carefully and stepped inside.  The place was an untidy mess, with tattered bedclothes rumpled up on the simple cot, dirty dishes still sitting on the small table, the chair next to it overturned.  A number of  flies buzzed around noisily.  One persistent fly seemed intent on staying right in Ben’s face as he moved into the room and he swatted it away impatiently.  Roy had noticed that the flies seemed to be concentrated in one corner of the room, near the small iron stove.  Moving to check this out, he spotted a stain on the floor, which seemed to be the center of the flies’ activity.  He bent down to examine the stain and found it to consist of a red, sticky substance, which he recognized immediately.  He looked up at Ben who had come to join him and was peering over his shoulder curiously.

“It’s blood, Ben,” he said.

“So you were right.  Bradley was killed here, and not in the alley at all.”  Ben’s voice took on a note of hope, seeing this as something that could help free his son.

“It seems so,” Roy returned thoughtfully, looking up at him.  “But I’m thinkin’ there’s more to this.  Ben, Sheriff Wainwright should have found this out.  In fact he really doesn’t seem to have done much in this case other than accept what he was told.  Is it laziness on his part, or is there somethin’ more goin’ on here?  I’m just wonderin’...”

PART VII: A QUESTIONABLE CALIBER

The short, stout man with the salt-and-pepper beard tapped his foot restlessly.  Joshua Armitage drew out his pocket watch, glanced at it, and noted that the doctor was running slightly behind schedule.  Joshua was more used to keeping others waiting than to having to wait himself, and he found himself unable to hold back an impatient sigh.  Joshua was anxious to get on with his task.  Taking part in the investigation of an actual criminal matter was a far cry from the standard looking over of contracts and other routine matters related to business interests that usually made up his work for the Cartwrights.

Over this last couple of days he had been exposed to a different face of Ben Cartwright than he was used to seeing. Normally he saw the shrewd, pragmatic business man, focused on the carefully thought out building up of the  -
‘empire’ was not too strong a word in this case - that he had devoted so much hard work to for so many years.  But from the moment that Ben had burst into his office with the news of his oldest son’s arrest, Joshua had been looking at an entirely different man.  This was the anxious father, utterly determined that everything possible should be done for that son and willing to pay any price to see that it was so. 

Joshua had long known that Ben had a close relationship with each of his sons, but he had never realized exactly how close before this.  To some extent he envied that  - and he even wondered at it.  He thought of his own daughter and son, each married and with their own families, living far away from him and having very little contact with him except at birthdays or holidays.  It was not as though there were any actual hostility between him and his children, only a kind of cool reserve that stood in marked contrast to what he saw between Ben Cartwright and his sons. 

He wondered just how Ben had done it.  How had he managed to raise three boys mostly on his own, have them all turn out to be such exemplary young men, and at the same time maintain such a strong relationship with each of them?  What was Ben’s secret?  Joshua thought of the look on Ben’s face when he had come to drag him off on this expedition, and the look on his face as he had watched Adam in his jail cell.  One thing was abundantly clear.  There was nothing more important to Ben Cartwright than his sons. Could Joshua say the same about his own children?  He thought with a guilty pang of times that he had put his career and his ambitions ahead of his family.  Ben Cartwright made his sons his first priority.  And, most importantly, his sons knew it.  That, Joshua supposed, was the real secret.

His reverie was broken as Dr. Edward Gallard emerged from the back room of his office, accompanied by the patient he had just been consulting with.  The doctor spoke a few words in a low voice to the young man, who nodded his head briefly and quickly departed.  The doctor glanced around the waiting room, spotted Joshua sitting there and immediately moved to stand in front of him with his hand extended.  He was a tall, thin man with short dark hair, a sharp nose that was slightly touched with red and a pair of somewhat cloudy gray eyes.

“Mr.Armitage, I presume.  I understood you wanted to see me regarding the medical report in the Bradley case?”

Joshua rose and took his hand.  “Yes, doctor.  There are just a couple of things...”

“No problem.  Please come into my office here.”  Gallard gestured toward the door of a side room and followed Joshua through it.  The office was small and modestly furnished, with only the doctor’s desk and chair in the center, a couple of extra leather chairs in front of it, and some file cabinets along the side wall.  Joshua took one of the leather chairs and waited for the doctor to sit down behind the desk Then he drew out some papers from his briefcase.

“I have the report here, and I just wanted to confirm some of the information in it,” he began. 

But the doctor interrupted him.  “One moment, please,” Gallard said.  He drew out a bottle from his right hand desk drawer and proceeded to take a swig while Joshua looked on and attempted to mask his disapproval.  The doctor replaced the bottle in the drawer and leaned back in his chair, looking intently at Armitage.

“Now then, you were saying?”

Joshua cleared his throat.  “Yes...I was hoping to confirm the information in this report on the death of Vincent Bradley.  For example, the time of death is given as  between three and four p. m., which would be about one to two hours before the body was found.”

“That is correct.”

“And that is based on?”

“The temperature of the body, the degree of rigor mortis, all the usual indications,” Dr. Gallard rattled off.

“And the cause of death was definitely the bullet wound to the chest?”

“Oh, yes.  There’s no question about that.  The bullet apparently glanced off a rib and actually pierced his heart.”

“And that bullet was a .45 caliber?”

“Yes...no, wait a moment.”  The doctor’s brow creased and his mouth turned down in a frown.  “That doesn’t sound right.  Are you sure that’s what it says?”

“It’s right here.”  Joshua handed the paper over to him.  Gallard looked at it and his frown deepened.

 “I’m almost sure that I remember the bullet as being a .38 caliber,” the doctor said.  “This doesn’t make any sense.”

Joshua leaned forward and his eyes peered sharply through his spectacles to lock with the doctor’s.  “Isn’t that your own handwriting?”

“Actually, it isn’t,” Gallard  responded.  “You see, whenever I have to do one of these reports I always write out the original myself.  But, I have to confess, my writing can be pretty hard to decipher, so I always have it copied before I turn it in to the sheriff.  If it looks like there may be any legal proceedings in the case I have a couple of extra copies made so that the sheriff can give them to the interested parties.  That’s apparently what this is.”

Joshua gripped the arms of his chair in excitement.  “And just who is it who makes these copies for you?”

“Well, there’s this young man who does quite a bit of secretarial type work for me, helps me with my records and so forth...”

“And that would be?”

“Stuart Wainwright, the Sheriff’s son.”

Joshua Armitage was close to jumping out of his seat.  “I hope you have your original copy of this report,” he said in a tense voice.

“Of course I do.”  Dr. Gallard stood up, moved over to the filing cabinet and began to rifle through one of the drawers while Joshua watched him intently  The search seemed to the lawyer to take longer than it should.  Finally, Gallard straightened up and looked over at Armitage with consternation in his face.

“I don’t understand.  It’s not here”

Joshua felt his excitement ebbing.  “Do you mean it’s been stolen?”

“I mean I don’t know what’s happened to it,” Gallard returned with a trace of asperity.

“And what about the bullet itself?  Wasn’t that kept?”  Joshua was careful to try not to sound too accusing.

“That was kept in a small envelope... attached to the original report,” Gallard replied.  “It’s gone too.”

“When was the last time you saw it?”

“The morning after Bradley was killed.  I did the examination and wrote up the report the evening after it happened, right after the body was brought to me.  The next morning Stuart Wainwright made the copies, and I actually saw him put the original with the envelope containing the bullet into the file.  I haven’t seen him since then, actually.”

Joshua’s shoulders slumped.  “Who all has access to your files?,” he asked.

“Just Stuart and my nurse, Edna Prentiss.  They both have keys to this office and to the files themselves.   Edna’s been out of town for a week taking care of her sick mother over in Careyville.”

Joshua considered for a moment.  “Thank you, doctor.  I think I’ve found out all that I can here,” he finally said.  He got up, returned his copy of the report to his briefcase and turned to leave.

Once out in the street he turned in the direction of the Sheriff’s office.  There was a thoughtful expression on his face.   “It certainly looks like this Stuart Wainwright may have tampered with the report,” he thought to himself, “but with the original missing, can I actually prove it?  His father being the Sheriff certainly complicates the situation as far as implicating him in this in any way.  Well, maybe the others will have found out some helpful information.  I certainly hope so anyway.”  And with his thoughtful look changing to one of determination Joshua Armitage headed on his way.

PART VIII: SUSPICIONS

It was about three thirty in the afternoon when the Adam Cartwright defense team gathered again in the back room of the Brosnan Flats sheriff’s office outside Adam’s cell.  Joe, Ben, Roy Coffee and Joshua Armitage were all there and they were all eager to share what they had found out.

There was one addition to the group.  Julie Downs, the friend of Francine Larkin that Joe had met that morning, had insisted on being included.

“It looks to me like Franny may be getting herself into some kind of trouble, and I want to find out what it’s all about...do something to help, if I can,” she had said.

It had taken some time for Julie to straighten things out with the lady who ran the dress shop where she and Francine both worked for failing to return after their midmorning break.  Joe admired the way Julie sweet talked the woman into accepting her explanation of a sudden unspecified emergency and got her to agree to allow both her and Francine to take a couple of days of their vacation time without having given the usual advance notice.  He couldn’t have done any better himself he thought, holding back a grin.

Joe and Julie had been the first to arrive back at the sheriff’s office.  On being introduced to Adam, Julie had greeted him with a bright smile and a pert “Well, hello there, tall, dark and handsome!”  Adam seemed to find her rather amusing, while Joe was beginning to appreciate her lively manner in a way he hadn’t before.  

Joe had been just about to launch into an account of his day’s adventures when he was interrupted by the arrival of the rest of the group.  Since Sheriff Wainwright was not on hand to let them into Adam’s cell they had to settle for pulling up stools in front of the bars.  Not wanting either the sheriff or his son to overhear their conversation Joshua Armitage insisted on having someone stand by the door to the outer office to keep watch and warn of anyone’s approach.  Julie, eager to show her willingness to help, volunteered for the task.

Taking charge in true lawyerly  fashion, Joshua Armitage proposed that they each, in turn, discuss the results of their inquiries.  Joe practically begged to go first, and at Joshua’s nod of assent he began to pour out his account of his meeting with Francine Larkin, how she had become rattled when he had confronted her over her testimony implicating Adam, and how he had discovered, thanks to Julie, that Francine was involved with Sheriff Wainwright’s son, Stuart.  That last piece of information caused a buzz of surprise among the others.  Joshua Armitage in particular was seen to raise his eyebrows and rest his chin on his hand with a deeply thoughtful expression.

Roy was the next to take up the story, describing how he and Ben had confirmed that Vinny Bradley had been taken back to his own place after the altercation with Adam, and how they had discovered a blood stain in Bradley’s shack which would indicate that he had been shot there instead of in the alley where the body was found.  Roy also expressed his misgivings over Sheriff Wainwright’s apparent failure to discover such pertinent information, or to do much actual investigation of any kind.  More murmurs of surprise and speculation passed around the crowded room as he finished.

Then Joshua Armitage told of his conversation with Doctor Edward Gallard and the revelation that the medical report showing a caliber of bullet that matched Adam’s gun might have been altered, and that the person in position to do that was none other than Stuart Wainwright.  This brought probably the strongest reaction of all from the rest of the group.

Joshua silenced the babble with a gesture of his hand and began to speak.  “All right now, so what have we got?  We can demonstrate that Vinny Bradley was killed at his home rather than in the alley where he was found.  That, of course shows up Francine Larkin’s claim of seeing Adam in that alley as a clumsy attempt to create false evidence.  Her association with Stuart Wainwright puts them both under suspicion of being involved in a conspiracy to cover up the truth of the case.  And, given that Stuart is also strongly suspected of altering the report concerning the caliber of the bullet, his role in this whole affair must obviously become the focus of our further questions.”

“There’s one question that comes to my mind immediately,” Adam put in.  “Assuming Stuart Wainwright did in fact alter that report to change the caliber of the bullet, how did he know what to change it to?”

“Oh, I suppose Franny must have told him.”  It was Julie who had spoken.  The heads of everyone else in the room turned toward her as she stood by the door to the outer office, a slight blush coming to her cheeks.  “You see, Franny’s father was a gun maker.  The poor man died of some kind of fever a couple of years ago.  Anyway, he had taught Franny all about the different models of guns.  I think maybe he wished she had been a boy so they could have gone hunting together and so forth.  I’m sure she would have recognized what kind of gun you had on that day, Adam, and she would have been able to tell Stuart all about it.”  Something in her tone indicated a certain regret at having come out with this information that could be damaging to her friend.

“That’s very helpful, young lady.” Joshua spoke to her in a sympathetic voice.  “It can only be for the best that the truth should come out, whatever that truth might be.”

“I realize that, sir,” Julie replied quietly.

“There are a number of other questions that I have,” Joshua continued.  “Did Stuart Wainwright himself shoot Vinny Bradley, or is he orchestrating a cover-up
to protect someone else?  And what about his father’s role in all this?  What exactly does Sheriff Wainwright know about any of this?  Is his failure to properly investigate the case due to a desire to protect his son?”

Ben Cartwright shook his head with a trace of impatience.  “All this speculation may be well and good, but what I’m most concerned with is how all of this affects Adam’s situation.  Surely what we have ought to be enough to get the charges against him thrown out?”  He looked at Armitage with an open plea in his eyes.

Joshua Armitage looked back at him and gave a sigh.  “Ben, I wish it were quite that simple.  Think for a minute.  The person we would normally go to with this information would be the sheriff.  But since we have such suspicions about Wainwright’s own involvement in all of this...well, you can see the problems.”

“But what if we simply presented the information to the circuit judge directly when he returns?,” Ben persisted.

Armitage shook his head.  “Judges tend to rely pretty heavily on the word of the local sheriff in any questionable situation.  And Wainwright would be sure to fight any attempt to implicate his son.  He could well try to imply that the blood stain found in Bradley’s shack has been planted there.  And he could try to cast doubt on Dr. Gallard’s statements that suggest the medical report was altered.  I’ve seen some indication that the good doctor may be developing a slight drinking problem, and given the fact that the original of the report and the actual bullet are missing, he could be put in a very vulnerable position.”

“So just what do we do now?,” Ben challenged him.

Joshua leaned forward.  “I’m thinking that it may be necessary to bring the U.S. Marshall into this case.”

“I agree,” Roy Coffee spoke up.

“But before I do that I would like to have a surer grasp on just what is going on here.  I’d like to find out the answers to some of those questions we have so that I can present a completely convincing case for the Marshall to intervene.”

“And how do you expect to get those answers?”  Ben was not happy with the direction this was taking.

“By going back to the person who knows them.”  Joshua looked over at Joe.  “It’s clear from her reaction to your questioning that Francine Larkin knows a great deal more than you were able to get from her this morning.”

“I’m sure she does!,” Joe agreed.  “When I saw her with Stuart Wainwright I was really tempted to break in on them and force the truth out of them, but then I thought that I could just be causing a lot more problems if I did, so I resisted the temptation.”

“And that was very wise,” Joshua told him.  “But I believe that  Francine Larkin is still the key to the truth of this case.  The question is how to turn that key.”  Armitage looked up and peered through his spectacles at each of the others in turn, then his eyes finally focused on Julie Downs. “And I think I may just have an idea as to how to go about it.”

PART IX: BETWEEN FRIENDS

Francine Larkin was alone in her room on the second floor of the modest boarding house where she lived.  She was hurriedly packing a few clothes and other necessities into a worn traveling bag that lay open on her bed.  Her manner showed a distinct air of nervousness, and a couple of times she paused, tensing up and turning her ear toward the door as if she had heard something.  But there was nothing there.

Finally she closed the clasp on the bag, sat down on the edge of the bed and took a handkerchief out of a pocket in her skirt.  In her abstraction she twisted the handkerchief in her hands, hardly seeming to know what she did, as she cast her eyes toward the window, perhaps trying to guess the time by the position of the sun as it’s rays streamed through it, showing up the particles of dust in the air.

And it was at that moment that there was actually a sound at the door...the sound of a gentle knocking.  Startled, Francine looked up, but she did not rise immediately to answer it.  The knocking was repeated, and finally Francine got up and moved slowly toward the door.  Hesitantly she reached out her hand to grasp the knob and turn it.  The door opened with a creak and Francine’s breath caught  as she recognized the person waiting outside.

“Julie,” she said in a low voice, “what are you doing here?”

“I need to talk to you, Franny,” Julie Downs replied, looking at her with a serious expression in both her eyes and her voice.  “Can I come in?”

“Of course.”  Francine stepped back to allow Julie to enter and gestured toward the chair next to the bed.  “Sit down.”  Her voice betrayed a touch of reluctance that was at odds with her actual words.

Julie took her seat on the chair and Francine sat down on the edge of the bed facing her.  They looked at each other in silence for a moment, neither one apparently willing to begin the conversation. 

Finally Francine could take it no longer.  “Just what did you want to talk about, Julie?,” she asked.

“That young man we met this morning...Joe was his name, wasn’t it?”

“What about him?”  Francine’s answer was abrupt and her voice had turned harsh.

“Now don’t get all snappish on me, Franny,” Julie replied.  “It’s just that, from what he said, it sounded to me like you might be getting yourself into some kind of trouble, and I wanted to see if I could help.”

Francine’s expression softened.  “I’m sorry, Julie.  I didn’t mean to snap at you.  But there’s really nothing you can do.”

Julie, however, would not just let the matter drop.  “But, about what Joe said, that you claimed you saw his brother in the alley where Vinny Bradley was found...”

“As I said then, I just don’t know what he’s talking about, and that’s all there is to it,” Francine insisted firmly.

“Franny, we’ve known each other too long for you to lie to me that way.  And you can’t simply try to bluff your way out of this thing.  That man who’s been accused...Adam Cartwright...his family and friends have all been looking into the case and they’ve found...well I can’t say exactly, but I know that they think they can show that you weren’t telling the truth.”  Julie went down on her knees in front of Francine and took her friend’s hand in her own.  “Franny, giving false statements to the authorities in a murder case is a very serious thing.  Do you have any idea of the kind of trouble you could be getting yourself into?  And think of Adam Cartwright.  He tried to help you, Franny.  And now he’s in jail, charged with murder!”  Julie looked up at her friend with pleading eyes and tried to focus all her persuasive powers into her voice.  “I’ve always thought of you as a very honest person, Franny, and it really hurts to think I could have been wrong about you all this time.  Whatever you know about this, you have to tell the truth...for your own sake...for Adam Cartwright’s sake...and for the sake of doing what you know is right.  Please, Franny....”

Francine looked down at Julie with troubled eyes staring out of a pale face. Her mouth was beginning to tremble.

“You didn’t really see Adam in that alley, now did you?,” Julie prodded her gently.

“No, I didn’t,” Francine whispered.  She drew her hand out of her friend’s grasp and buried her face in her hands, beginning to cry softly.

“Thank you, Miss Larkin, that’s just what I wanted to hear,” a strong, masculine voice intruded.

Francine looked up suddenly to find the source of the voice and spied the short, bearded man of dignified demeanor standing in the doorway and looking at her with a stern but not unkindly gaze. 

“Who are you?,” she asked in a slightly shaky voice as the man moved into the room.

“He’s Adam Cartwright’s lawyer, Mr. Armitage, Franny,” Julie told her.  As the implications of that hit Francine she sent a wordless, accusing glance in her friend’s direction.  But Julie Downs did not flinch.

“Mr Armitage wanted me to try to surprise you into telling what you knew by making you think we already knew more than we really do,” she said.  “But I didn’t think that was quite fair.  All I would agree to was to urge you honestly to tell the truth.  It’s really for the best, Franny.  In the end the truth has to come out, and if you tell it willingly, things will go a lot more easily for you.  Believe me, I’m only thinking of what’s best for you.”

“She’s right about that, you know,” Joshua Armitage chimed in.  “Things will go much better for you if you are cooperative...and perhaps also for your friend, Stuart Wainwright.”

At that Francine gave him a look of surprise.  She began to dab at her eyes with her handkerchief and try to compose herself.

“Now, are you ready to tell us what you know?,” Armitage said gently as he rested his hand on her shoulder.  Francine looked into his eyes for a moment, as if trying to determine his trustworthiness, and finally nodded her head.

“Very good.  Now, if you don’t mind, there are some other gentlemen who will be very interested in hearing this.”  Armitage stepped over to the door and gestured to the people standing in the hallway outside.  In a moment three men had entered the room.  Francine recognized Joe Cartwright, and Armitage quickly introduced the other men to her as Ben Cartwright, Adam’s father, and their good friend, Roy Coffee.  The men gathered in a half circle around Francine and Julie, looking at Francine with expectant expressions.

“Very well. Miss Larkin.  We’re ready to hear what you have to say,” Joshua Armitage said.

Francine glanced quickly at each of the others in the room.  She swallowed a small lump in her throat and took a breath to steady herself.

“The other day wasn’t the first time Vinny Bradley had bothered me,” she began
“Vinny Bradley was a nasty old man who spent just about his entire life in a saloon.”  A trace of anger crept into her voice.  “And when he was drunk, which was most of the time, he was capable of just about anything....”

PART X: NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH

The eyes of the people gathered in Francine Larkin’s room focused on her with intense interest and curiosity as she shifted her position on the edge of her bed, lowered her eyes, and began to speak in a low voice.

“Vinny Bradley came across to a lot of people as a lovable old coot, but I, for one, saw a darker side of him.  He had made unwanted advances to me a couple of times in the past, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle. Then, a couple of Saturdays ago he came onto me right in front of...the man I’m involved with.”  She seemed to hesitate.  “Stuart Wainwright and I were having  lunch at the café next to the hotel when Vinny passed by and noticed us through the window.  It was too early for him to have been patronizing the saloon, but he was already well on the way to being thoroughly sotted.  He must have been into his own private store.  You could tell it on his breath when he came up to our table and started talking to us...or, rather, to me.  He was making crude propositions to me and totally ignoring Stuart, who was sitting right there.  Well, Stuart just got livid.  He jumped up from his chair, grabbed Vinny by the front of his shirt and yelled at him to get out of there.  He said If Vinny ever bothered me again he would pay for it.”

“So he actually threatened Bradley.  Was there anyone else who witnessed this?”  Joshua Armitage was making careful notes of everything Francine said.

She shook her head.  “Stuart and I were the only ones in the café at the time, and the lady who runs the place was back in the kitchen at the moment.  If she heard anything she didn’t bother to come out and check on it.  Well, Stuart pushed Bradley backwards.  Vinny was pretty unsteady on his feet, but he just managed to avoid falling down.  He snarled something that I didn’t quite catch and stumbled his way back out the door.  Stuart was looking after him with a kind of anger in his face that I had never seen there before, and it disturbed me.”

Francine paused in her recital, her demeanor showing a reluctance to continue.

“And what happened next, Miss Larkin?”  Armitage attempted to bring her back to the point.

“Nothing right away,” she replied.  “I didn’t even see Vinny Bradley again until the other day when he almost ran into me as he was coming out of the saloon.  And, sure enough, he started behaving obnoxiously again.  Of course, Stuart wasn’t there at the time, but it turned out there was someone else who was ready to stand up for me.  A man that I had never met before intervened, telling Vinny to leave me alone, and when Vinny tried to take a punch at him, the man sent him sprawling on the sidewalk.  I found out afterwards that the man’s name was Adam Cartwright.”

“And you thanked him for what he’d done,” Roy Coffee put in.

“Of course.  I was just thankful that Stuart hadn’t been there.  I hoped he would never find out about the whole thing.”

“But he did, didn’t he?,” Joe Cartwright interjected.

Francine nodded.  “Things had been slow at the dress shop that day, so the owner had let us go home about one o’clock.  The incident outside the saloon happened as I was walking home.  I got back here at about one thirty and was doing some reading.  At a little before three o’clock Stuart turned up all in a huff.  A friend of his who had been at the saloon had told him something about the incident and he was all on fire to get every last detail out of me.  He seemed just as angry as he had been at the café that day.  I hated seeing him that riled up.  I tried as best I could to make light of it, but he was in no mood to let it go.  I think he was upset that he hadn’t been there to defend me...or maybe it was because somebody else had to do it in his place.  When I mentioned how a couple of men had dragged Bradley off, he demanded to know where they had taken him.  I told him I thought I had heard them talking about taking Vinny back to his own place.  Stuart just turned around and headed out the door, down the stairs and out into the street.  I set out to follow him, but at the pace he was walking I had an awful time trying to catch up to him.  Pretty soon we had made our way right to the edge of town.  It must have been about three thirty when we found ourselves in front of the door of Vinny Bradley’s shack.  Stuart pounded on the door and called out to Bradley to let him in.  There was a muffled sound from inside, but noone came to the door.  It wasn’t locked, so finally Stuart just opened the door and barged right in.”

“Bradley was sitting up on his cot looking hung over.  Stuart went right over to him and started yelling down at him, saying he’d warned him what would happen if he bothered me again.  They shouted at each other for a couple of minutes while I stood there in the door, watching, and wishing there was something I could do to stop it.  Finally, Vinny reached under the pillow on the cot and pulled out a gun that he had there.  He got up, swaying on his feet, and started waving the gun in Stuart’s face.  Stuart grabbed his wrist and tried to turn the gun away.  They struggled over the weapon, and I turned my eyes away, hardly able to look.  And then, the gun somehow got pressed between their bodies, and I heard it go off.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so frightened.  For a moment they just stood there without moving, and I wasn’t even sure which one of them had been hit.  But then, Vinny Bradley’s eyes went blank and he slumped to the floor with the blood streaming out of a wound in his chest.  Stuart was looking down at him in shock and I guess I must have been in shock too.”  She paused, as the remembrance caused her to start trembling.

“Stuart hadn’t brought a weapon with him, had he?,” Roy Coffee asked, and Francine shook her head ‘no’.  “Well then, it looks like he didn’t go there with any murderous intent,” Roy continued.  “Probably meant to beat Bradley up some, nothing more.  And if Bradley was threatening him with his gun, it seems to me Stuart could make a good case that he wasn’t doin’ nothin’ more than defendin’ himself.  Anyway, the two of you ought to have come clean about what happened, but neither of you did.  Why not?”

“That was what I thought too,” Francine insisted.  “But Stuart couldn’t stand the thought of going to his own father with something like this.  His own father was the sheriff!  Can you imagine how difficult that made it for him?”  Her voice pleaded for her listeners not to be judgmental.

“Actually,” Joshua Armitage spoke up, “when it began to look as though Stuart was involved in this, our suspicion was that Sheriff Wainwright knew all about it, and might even be manipulating the investigation of the case in order to protect his son.”

Francine shook her head adamantly.  “Sheriff Wainwright doesn’t know anything about what really happened.  Stuart has been terrified of his finding out.”  This statement caused the others in the room to look at each other with various degrees of surprise.

“So you decided to make it look like somebody else did it,” Roy said, an edge of anger coming into his voice as he thought of the deception that had been practiced.

“It was the only thing we could think of.”  An obvious nervousness could be seen in Francine’s manner as a feeling of guilt washed over her.  “We knew Adam Cartwright had been seen fighting with Vinny, so it would be believable that he had somehow snuck back into town to finish off the fight, and if I claimed to have seen him we thought that my word would be taken over the word of a man who was a stranger in town.  There didn’t seem to be too many places where they might reasonably have run into each other, and where we would be able to move the body without being seen.  The alley was the best place we could think of at the time, and we just hoped that people wouldn’t ask too many questions about exactly how either of them wound up there.”

“The fact that Stuart copied the medical reports for Dr. Gallard must have seemed like a gift to the two of you,” Joshua Armitage opined..

“Yes,” Francine agreed.  “Stuart could make sure the information matched the story we wanted people to believe.  And he could  make sure the original report went missing, so that if Dr. Gallard later tried to claim that the information wasn’t correct, there wouldn’t be anything to back him up.”

“You saw the gun Adam Cartwright wore that day and told Stuart the right caliber to put down, didn’t you Franny?”  Julie Downs’ voice was sad.  Francine nodded. 

Ben Cartwright had sat listening to this recital with a stony expression.  Now he spoke up in a deadly cold tone.  “And it didn’t bother you that a completely innocent man, a man who had defended you, could be hanged because of all this?”

Francine seemed to cringe at the accusation in his voice.  “It bothered me a great deal, Mr. Cartwright. And I’m sure it bothered Stuart too.  The whole situation has made us feel like outlaws and both of us have hated that. In fact, I’ve been trying to figure out some way for your son to avoid being convicted without causing Stuart to get into trouble.  I’d thought that if Stuart and I just disappeared, went somewhere else to start a new life, the case against your son couldn’t stand up without my testimony.  I’d tried to persuade Stuart to go along with the idea, but I wasn’t having any luck.  Until today, that is.”  She looked over at Joe.  “When I told him what you said this morning about knowing my story wasn’t the truth, he finally agreed that it would be a good idea for us to leave...before everything came out.  Only, now it seems that we weren’t fast enough.”

Julie glanced at the packed traveling bag that lay on the bed, then back to her friend in disbelief.  “You were actually getting ready to skip town?”

Francine nodded.  “Stuart was going to come by as soon as it got dark.  We were planning to head for San Francisco.  We thought there would be good opportunities there for us.”

The room was silent for a moment as everyone absorbed all that had been said.

It was  Joshua Armitage who broke the spell.  “I think it’s finally time to approach Sheriff Wainwright about getting the charges against Adam dismissed.  And if he feels like causing any trouble I’m sure the threat of bringing in the U. S. Marshall  will be enough to make him see reason.”

None of them had detected the figure who had stood silently listening outside the open door during much of this scene.  Nor had any of them noticed when the figure slipped noiselessly down the stairs and out into the late afternoon shadows.

PART XI: THROUGH THE OPEN DOOR

Adam Cartwright stretched out on the cot in his jail cell and stared up at the ceiling.  He had been attempting to pass the time reading one of the books that Sheriff Wainwright had arranged to have brought in for him.  The one he picked up was a collection of short stories by an actual Nevada author, taking a comic look at life in the Territory.  One of them was an amusing fantasy about a grizzled old prospector and his two talking mules, Gabe and Cocoa.  When Adam found himself rereading a line and realized that he didn’t know who was saying it, the prospector, Gabe or Cocoa, he wisely came to the conclusion that he was not going to be able to concentrate on reading and abandoned the attempt.  He just had too much else on his mind.

Had it really only been a matter of a couple of days that he had been locked up here?  Certainly it felt much longer than that.  The real question was how much longer it would be.  And that, at least to some extent, depended on what was happening in Francine Larkins’ room even as he lay here unable to take part.  Adam smiled to himself as he thought of his staunch defenders.  He considered how fortunate he was to have people who believed in him so firmly and without reservation. He felt a warm rush of gratitude for that, but at the same time he couldn’t help feeling somewhat uneasy as he wondered how their plan to get information from Francine Larkin was progressing.  Would they really be able to get what they needed out of her?  He fervently hoped so, not just for his own sake, but also for his father’s.  He could tell the toll this whole affair was taking on Ben,  and he was resolved that when this was over he would find some way to make it up to him.

Adam’s reverie was interrupted by noise in the outer room.  There was the sound of hurried footsteps, then a drawer being pulled open and the jangling of keys.  Finally there were more footsteps which ended right outside the door to the outer office.  Adam sat up on the edge of the cot and waited, curiosity aroused, for what would happen next.

The door opened and Stuart Wainwright hastily came through it...holding a gun in one hand.  He brushed the thick brown hair back from his forehead with a nervous movement as he came  over to Adam’s cell. Then, to Adam’s surprise he inserted a key into the lock.

“Get up, Cartwright,” Stuart said in an edgy voice.  “You’re coming with me.”

Adam stood up slowly with a questioning expression in his eyes.  “May I ask where?,” he said slowly.  Stuart Wainwright was not only armed, he looked like he was just about ready to jump out of his skin.  His sudden appearance, in this condition, made Adam extremely wary.

“You’ll find out soon enough.  Right now we’ve got to get out of here.”  Stuart entered the cell, leaving the key in the lock, as he brought out a pair of handcuffs. 
“Hold out your hands,” he demanded.

Adam hesitated.  What kind of trick was young Wainwright up to now?  Whatever Stuart’s intentions might be, going off with him didn’t sound like a very good idea.  But with Stuart’s gun being held on him, refusing could be downright dangerous.  He had only seconds to decide how to respond.

“I don’t think so, “ Adam finally said with great deliberateness.  “At least not until you do some explaining.  Don’t you think your father would be a little upset if he knew you were running off with his prisoner?  Just what is going on?”

“We don’t have time for this!,” Stuart burst out.  His eyes looked frantic, and the gun in his hand waved menacingly.

“Now, take it easy.” Adam spoke in a soothing voice in an attempt to calm the obviously agitated young man.  “There’s no need to threaten.  I can be pretty cooperative...provided I have some idea what I’m getting myself into.  I assure you it will be worth your while to give me that much.  You’d rather have me cooperative than otherwise...wouldn’t you?”

Stuart stared at him for a moment, then his shoulders sagged and his head bowed.  “I have to get away,” he said in an unsteady voice.  “I have to...before they come for me.”

“Somebody’s after you?” Adam had a good idea of what Stuart was getting at.

Stuart raised his head, and now there was anger in his eyes.  “It seems your friends have stumbled onto the truth about Vinny Bradley’s death.  A little while ago I went up to Francine Larkin’s room.  She was expecting me, but not until quite a bit later.  I found them all in there with her.  And I stood outside her door and I overheard her...the woman I trusted...the woman I loved, and who I thought loved me...giving them the whole story.  Can you understand how that feels?  And once they present that story to my father the sheriff...my father the sheriff...how’s that for irony?... he’ll be coming to take me into custody...that is if I’m still here.”

 “So you did shoot Bradley?,” Adam interjected.

Young Wainwright wiped his brow with a shaking hand.  “I heard about the incident in front of the saloon that day and how he had come on to Francine.  Well, I had warned him about that and I was determined to make sure he didn’t do it again.  I went to his place to confront him, and Francine followed me there.  Bradley and I argued, then he drew a gun. We struggled over it and he got the barrel pointed at him just as it went off.  He was dead before he hit the ground.”  Stuart paused.  “When I heard them talking about it somebody was saying that they thought a case could be made for self defense.  For myself, I just didn’t know if that argument would have gone over.   In fact I’m not really sure of what my intentions were at that moment when the gun was between us and I sensed that it was pointing at him.  Maybe I actually wanted to kill him then.  In any case, I  couldn’t take the thought of my father finding out about it.  I was more afraid of that than of anything else.”

Adam gave him a quizzical look. 

“I can tell you don’t understand,” Stuart continued.  “Maybe you even think my father would have tried to protect me somehow.  Well, in that case, you don’t know Samuel Wainwright very well.  There are certain things my father is very adamant about, and one of them is doing his duty as he sees it.  And that’s true even if it means bringing charges against his own son.  My involvement in an incident like this would be something that he could never accept.  It  would always be there between us...things would never be the same.  He might even  disown me.  I decided it had to be made to look like someone else had been responsible.”

“Namely me,” Adam cut in, not without some bitterness.

Stuart was unable to look directly at him.  “Mr. Cartwright, I’m sorry.  All  I can say is that, at that moment, it seemed to me like the only possible alternative.”

“So now you intend to leave town...and go where?”

“I figure San Francisco would be a good place to disappear.  Francine and I had planned to go together, but I guess she won’t be coming along now.”

“And I’m to be your hostage in case anybody tries to stop you?  Or did you have other plans for me?”

Stuart finally looked straight at him. And Adam caught a glimpse of something strange in his eyes.

“I’m not quite sure about that.  I do need a hostage in case they try to follow me.  But, now that I think about it, you could cause me trouble if I simply let you go after I get far enough away.   I’m going to have to consider that whole subject some.”  Stuart’s manner changed abruptly to belligerence and he raised his gun again to point directly at Adam.  “We’ve wasted too much time talking about this.  It’s time to get going.  Now put your hands out!”

The look in Stuart’s eyes convinced Adam that it would not be wise to cross him at this point.  He held out his hands and young Wainwright secured the handcuffs around his wrists.

A moment later the cell stood empty, and the sound of horses hooves could be heard moving away from the jail.

PART XII:  MY SON...MY SON

As Adam Cartwright rode down the trail out of Brosnan Flats he felt the sun, now low in the western sky, beating warm against the side of his face.  He raised his hand to rub the back of his neck and fingered the short damp curls that almost brushed against his shirt collar.  He was grateful that he had been able to persuade Stuart that it wasn’t necessary to keep him handcuffed.  Idly he remembered that he had intended to get a haircut when he went into town to get supplies...that is, before Roy Coffee had arrived to place him under arrest for murder.  Since that time it seemed that he had been walking through some kind of dream.  A dream that he wished fervently that he could awaken from. 

Behind him Stuart Wainwright rode in silence on a thin bay horse.  Without even turning his head Adam could somehow sense Stuart’s eyes boring into his back and the gun that remained leveled at him.  Up ahead he could see the spot where a path branched off from the main trail, winding it’s way up a gradual rise in the direction of  the nearby foothills.

As they neared the place Adam reined in his mount, a tired grey gelding, and shifted in the saddle, turning to face his abductor.

“Which way?,” he asked, almost casually.

Stuart considered for a moment, his eyes darting in one direction, then the other, while the gun in his hand remained trained in Adam’s direction.  Then he nodded his head toward the path that led up into the hills. 

“That way,” he said in an unsteady voice.

“If you say so,” Adam returned, and he moved the grey in the direction indicated and headed up the rising path with Stuart right behind.

************************

At about the same time the whole group that had been involved in the scene in Francine Larkin’s room had made their way back to the sheriff’s office.  Ben Cartwright was the first one through the door.  He glanced around quickly and, seeing noone in the outer office, he made his way quickly toward the door that led to the back room and the cells.

“Adam!...Adam!...,” he called out.

He reached the door...and stopped abruptly, his eyes widening.  The cell where his son had been confined stood open...and empty, the key dangling from the lock.  In a matter of seconds he was joined by Joe and by lawyer Joshua Armitage, who looked over his shoulder with the same bewildered expression coming to their faces.

“What’s happened here?,” Joshua said in a low voice.  He looked Ben, his brows drawing together in puzzlement.  “You don’t think Adam...?”

“Adam did not break out of jail!,” Ben declared flatly.  “He would never do such a thing!”

“Not of his own will, anyway,” Roy Coffee spoke up.  He had entered the back room in time to hear Joshua’s and Ben’s exchange, with Francine Larkin and Julie Downs following him.  “Obviously, someone else had to have brought that key in here from the outer room and unlocked the cell.  As to what happened then...well I just don’t see Adam trying to force his way out. That’s just not like him.  ‘Specially since he knew we had good hopes of getting the information  to clear him.”  Roy shook his head.  “But as for that other person....”

“Well it seems pretty obvious to me,” Joe chimed in somewhat impatiently.  “How many people are there who would have any reason for taking Adam out of jail?  Actually, there’s only really one that I can think of.”   There was a moment of silence as the others attempted to absorb what Joe was implying.

“Just what is going on here?”  Into the silence a demanding, gravelly voice inserted itself.  Everyone turned their heads in the direction of the sound.  It was the powerful figure of Sheriff Samuel Wainwright that stood framed in the door to the outer office. 

“That’s exactly what we’re trying to figure out, Sheriff,” Ben said as he moved over to confront Wainwright directly.  “We came in here just minutes ago and found the cell opened like this.  Evidently someone has unlocked the cell and taken Adam out.”

“Or he somehow overpowered whoever came in with the key and escaped,” The Sheriff retorted.

Ben’s expression became angry.  “If you even think that’s possible it just means that you know nothing of my son, Sheriff,” he declared.

“Well, how do I know that one of you didn’t get access to the key and let him out...help him get away?,” Wainwright demanded.

“Because, Sheriff,” Ben replied, “there was no need for us to do any such thing.  We were well on our way to getting him freed...legally.  It seems we’ve been doing a good part of your job for you.  Let me just tell you what we’ve found out. First of all, there was a blood stain in Bradley’s shack.  He was killed there, not in the alley where he was found.”  Ben pointed to Francine Larkin.  “That young lady lied about having seen my son back in town at the time of Bradley’s death.  She’s admitted as much.  In fact she’s told us the whole story of what actually happened.  You’re not going to like this, Wainwright, but the truth is that your son went to confront Bradley about his behavior toward Miss Larkin, they struggled over a gun and it went off.  That’s how Bradley died!  Then Stuart and Miss Larkin joined together to put the blame on my son!  That report showing that the bullet that killed Bradley had a caliber matching Adam’s gun had been  altered by Stuart in his work for Dr. Gallard...and he also stole the doctor’s original copy of the report so that the alteration could never be proved.  That’s what we’ve discovered, Sheriff.  So you see, none of us had any reason to try and help Adam escape.  We expected he would be exonerated soon.”

 Ben’s voice had taken on more and more intensity as he gave this narrative.  Wainwright was staring at him, his heavy brows raised questioningly, struggling to take in everything that was being thrown at him so rapidly and not wanting to believe it.  Finally the sheriff spoke, his own voice vibrating with controlled anger.

“This is a conspiracy!”  He glared at Ben.  “You’re trying to get your son off the hook by framing my son...you and your friends!  Well, I can assure you, you won’t get away with it!”

At this, Joshua Armitage spoke up.  “We’re perfectly prepared to present our information to the U.S. Marshall.  I ask you to believe me when I say that I’m certain he will find it credible.”

Francine Larkin stepped forward and spoke in a quiet voice.  “It’s all true, Sheriff, everything Mr. Cartwright said.  I couldn’t stand the guilt of the deception any more.  That’s why I told them everything.”  She looked over at Ben.  “Mr. Cartwright, I told you that it did bother me that an innocent man could be punished because of what we did and that I tried to think of some way to keep that from happening without hurting Stuart.  Well, I have something here...”  She pulled some folded papers out of her purse.  “When Stuart stole the original copy of Dr. Gallard’s report he gave it to me and asked me to get rid of it somehow.  He said he didn’t want to know what I did with it.  That way he could truthfully say that he didn’t know what happened to it.  But I held off doing it.  I thought that maybe I could figure out some way to use it so that Adam Cartwright wouldn’t be convicted.  But no matter how I thought about it I couldn’t figure out how to do it without getting Stuart into trouble.”  She held the papers out to Sheriff Wainwright.  “You recognize Dr. Gallard’s writing, don’t you, Sheriff?  And you can see that the caliber of the bullet is different than in the copy of the report that Stuart gave you...the copy in his own handwriting.  The bullet itself is in that little envelope there.”

Wainwright took the papers from her and stared at them long and hard.  He removed the bullet from the envelope and examined it carefully.  Finally he moved over to one of the stools that had been pulled up in front of the cell earlier in the day and sat down heavily on it.

“I can’t believe it,” he said huskily.  “My own son...involved in something like this.”  He looked up at Ben.  “Whatever the circumstances of the shooting were, the attempt to divert the blame to someone else is...reprehensible.  Mr. Cartwright. I am deeply sorry for what my son has tried to do to yours.  I promise you he will be held accountable.”

Ben couldn’t help feeling some sympathy for Wainwright’s distress at the discovery of what his son had done, even though he felt that the man’s own hardness had helped to bring it on.  But there were more urgent concerns on his mind at the moment.  

“Sheriff, I think the important thing right now is to find out what’s happened to Adam.”  Ben glanced over at Joe, who nodded in understanding.

“I was just sayin’ before you came in that I thought there was only one person who might have any reason to take Adam out of jail,” Joe said.  Then he hesitated.  The next part was going to be hard to say. “We know Stuart was afraid of your reaction if you found out what happened.  If he somehow figured that it was all about to come out, well maybe he got scared enough that he just wanted to get away.  And in that case, he might think it was a good idea to take Adam with him, just as insurance in case anyone tried to come after him.  Anyway, that’s what I thought.”

Wainwright sat there with his head bowed and his eyes blank for painful moment.  Then he raised his head and straightened his shoulders as a gleam of grim determination came into his eyes.

“I think you’re right, boy,” he said in a voice that also showed a new determination.  “Let’s get out there and find them!”

PART XIII: ON THE LEDGE

Sheriff Samuel Wainwright knelt down wearily and examined the mark in the dust.  He reached out a hand and his finger lightly traced the outline of the mark without disturbing it.  He got to his feet and brushed the dirt from the knees of his pants.  He cast his eyes farther down the trail, then turned his head and looked up the path that broke off from the trail and led up gradually to higher ground.  Finally he glanced over to Ben Cartwright, who stood close by with an anxious look on his face.

“No question about it,” he said.  “That’s definitely the trace of the special shoe that my son’s horse is shod with.  There are marks of another horse too.”  He moved a few steps in the direction of the branch off, keeping his eyes on the ground.  Then he stopped and nodded briefly to himself, as if satisfied.  He pointed further up the path.  “And they head off in that direction.”

“Can you tell how long ago they came through here?,” Ben asked.

Wainwright looked back at him pointedly.  “We already know  they didn’t head out of town very long ahead of us. This doesn’t really tell us any more than that,” he said with an edge to his voice.

Ben ignored the implied rebuke to his impatience.  He was well aware that he had been peering over Wainwright’s shoulder perhaps too closely ever since they started.  And he didn’t really care if Wainwright found him irritating.  He wanted only one thing at this moment...to find his son.  And if his prodding and urging  contributed toward that end in any way, whatever annoyance it caused would be well made up for.

It had taken longer than Ben thought it should for everyone to ready their horses and be prepared to set out.  Then they had to figure out which direction to start out in.  It was Pat and Ned, the two old gents who spent their time sitting outside the General Store, who told them that they had seen Stuart and another man riding out of town in the westerly direction.  The other man’s description fitted Adam.  Sheriff Wainwright turned out to be a good tracker and it hadn’t proved too difficult for him to pick up the tracks of their quarry.  He and Ben forced each other to a brisk pace, while Joe and Roy Coffee followed closely behind them.  Farther behind trailed Joshua Armitage, who was not that strong a rider, and the two young women, Francine and Julie, who had taken the time to hurriedly change into riding skirts before setting out.  They had ridden hard with only infrequent pauses to examine the trail until they reached the spot where the path branched off.  At that point Wainwright and Ben had dismounted while the others had held back to avoid confusing the tracks.  Now that they had determined which direction to go, Ben didn’t want to see any time wasted.  Unconsciously, he was making restless movements with his hands.

Wainwright noticed.  He came back to face Ben directly.  “Take it easy, Cartwright,” he said in his distinctive gravelly timbre.  “They aren’t that far ahead of us.  Believe me, I want to catch up to them as much as you do.  Let’s move on.”

Once again, Ben saw the dark determination in the sheriff’s eyes.  He nodded, and they both quickly moved to remount their horses.  In almost no time they were well on their way up the path that led up into the hills with the others hurrying to keep pace with them.

*************************

As Stuart and Adam continued to wind their way farther up into the hills, Stuart found it increasingly difficult to shrug off his growing fatigue.  He had slept very little for the last few nights, and it was catching up with him.  Adam noticed this and hoped that it might provide an opportunity that he would be able to take advantage of at some point.  Stuart finally acknowledged to himself, reluctantly, that it was necessary to take at least a brief rest stop.  Finding a place where the path widened out as it ran along the side of a hill, forming a kind of ledge that provided an excellent view of the trail behind them, he decided that would be as good a spot as any.  He called to Adam, who was riding just ahead of him, to stop,
and they both got down from their horses.  Adam wondered if this might be the opportunity he was watching for, but, weary as he was, Stuart was managing to keep his defenses up and his gun pointed.

As they rested themselves against a couple of the large rocks that were there, Stuart continued to eye Adam warily.  He took a long drink from his canteen, then moistened a handkerchief with a little of the water and wiped his face.  Reaching  over cautiously he handed the canteen to Adam, who accepted it gratefully.  After satisfying his own thirst, Adam set the canteen down beside him and closed his eyes.  He was a little tired himself, but mostly he was thinking.

After a moment, Adam spoke in a quiet, level voice.  “Do you really expect to make a clean getaway?,” he asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Stuart returned.

Adam shook his head.  “Your father strikes me as the kind who never gives up.  Even if you manage to slip away now, that won’t be the end of it.  Wherever you wind up, he’ll have the law there on the lookout for you.  You’re going to have to live constantly looking over your shoulder, keeping low.  That’s not a very nice prospect, now is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Stuart answered.  He seemed to shiver a little.

Adam leaned forward to bring himself a little closer to the other man.   “You know, I’m not really sure how a judge will look at your part in Vinny Bradley’s shooting.  But all the effort you made to cover up the truth, and now the attempt to flee...these things would certainly work against you if you ever were caught and brought to trial.  And you must realize that with every extra mile you go, with every extra minute that you stay on the run, you’re just making the situation that much worse.”

Stuart turned his eyes away.  “It isn’t a matter of what a judge would think...not really.”

“No, it isn’t, is it?,” Adam responded thoughtfully.  “I guess you’re more concerned with what your father will think, aren’t you?  You talked about how you feared he’d react to finding out you were involved in Bradley’s death. Well what do you suppose he’s thinking about your trying to run away?  Will that make him think any better of you?”

“No, I suppose not,” Stuart replied in an unsteady voice.

“And you really would like to gain his respect wouldn’t you?  I think you’d like that more than anything in this world.”

“But it’s too late!  How can I do that now?”  Stuart was beginning to sound desperate.

“Maybe not.  There’s one thing I can think of.”  Adam leaned close enough to Stuart to be able to lay a hand on his arm.  “You go back to him and admit the whole truth. You tell him you’re ready to accept the consequences of your actions.  You show him that you’re willing to take responsibility like a real man.  That’s what you do!”

Stuart looked at him hard, and through the fear in his eyes there could be spied a glimmer of dawning hope.

“Do you really think so?”  It came out as almost a whisper.

“It’s the best way to resolve the situation,” Adam said in his most encouraging tone.   “And there’s one other thing.  This way nobody gets killed.  I would really rather that neither of us winds up in a grave over this.  And I think you would too.  Now, why don’t you just give me that gun, and we can head back to town together...all right?”

At that moment Stuart seemed almost mesmerized.  He began to raise the hand that held the gun as if to hand it over.

And then they heard the sound of horses’ hooves approaching.  Startled, they both looked down from the ledge and spied a group of riders advancing rapidly up the path toward them.  The two leading riders were Ben Cartwright... and Sheriff Samuel Wainwright.  Stuart and Adam both scrambled to their feet.

“No!!,” Stuart cried.  With a sudden move he got behind Adam and reached up to get an arm around his neck.

The approaching riders caught sight of the two men standing on the ledge and hurriedly reined in their horses.

“Don’t come any closer!,” Stuart shouted.  “Anybody gets any closer and I’ll shoot him!”  He cocked his gun and raised it to Adam’s head.

Ben Cartwright looked on in horror.  He was suddenly reminded of the dream that had so disturbed him, in which his son was being hanged.   It was not a noose around Adam’s neck here, but his captor’s arm, and a gun at his temple.  But the threat to his son’s life was the same, and the feelings that it invoked were the same.   He drew his gun and attempted to take aim,  then realized with a sick feeling that he had no clear shot.  Any bullet fired from his position would be more likely to hit Adam than Stuart.  He glanced around frantically, and saw that Joe and Roy both also had their guns drawn, but the looks on their faces seemed to show that they were coming to the same realization.

Meanwhile, Sheriff Wainwright had dismounted.  “Stuart, put that gun down!  Put it down now!  Don’t do this, boy!,” he called out.  And he moved a couple of cautious steps forward on the path.

“No closer I said!,” Stuart called back. “I mean it!  I’ll shoot him!”  He appeared to be preparing to pull the trigger.

Ben felt dizzy with fear.  As in his dream, his mind was crying out “No!!! Adam!!! No!!!”.   Unable to bear looking., he squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head.  And then he heard the report of a gun.

PART XIV: I  THANK YOU FOR THAT

The sound of the shot reverberated in Ben Cartwright’s mind, contributing to his sense of disorientation and leaving him with the feeling that somehow the whole world had turned upside down.  As the dizziness began to fade he became aware of muffled gasps and cries coming from behind him.  He forced himself to open his eyes and felt his own breath catch sharply as he looked up to the ledge where Adam and Stuart had been standing and saw that they were both down on the ground.  A little way ahead of him and to the left, that is, slightly farther up the path, stood Sheriff Wainwright...with a smoking gun in his hand.

Ben spied Joe and Roy Coffee scrambling up the path as it wound off to the left and rose steeply.  That sight galvanized him into action.  He too got down from his horse and quickly hurried after them, almost bumping into Sheriff Wainwright as he brushed past him.

Joe and Roy had reached the point where the path turned back sharply to the right and opened out onto the ledge.  For a moment Ben lost sight of them as he struggled up the steep grade.  Finally, breathing hard, Ben turned the corner himself and hurried out onto the ledge.

Ahead of him, Joe and Roy had reached the two downed men.  Ben breathed a sigh of relief as he saw Adam rouse himself and begin to get up. Joe held out his hand to help his brother to his feet.  Looking on, Ben’s anxious eyes detected no obvious sign of injury on Adam.  In the meantime, Roy was kneeling down next to Stuart Wainwright.

Ben arrived at the spot where his sons were standing and reached out his hand to grasp Adam’s shoulder.

“Son, are you all right?”

Adam looked at his father and nodded his head tiredly.  “I’m OK, Pa.  I wasn’t hit.  When Stuart went down he dragged me down with him.”  He lightly fingered the back of his head.  “I guess I was knocked out for just a minute, but I don’t seem to have any more than a small bump to show for it.”

“Thank God,” Ben breathed. 

By this time the rest of the group had made their way onto the ledge.  Sheriff Wainwright approached with a determined stride and a tense demeanor, his eyes focused on his son as the young man lay there motionless, his wide open eyes staring blankly up at the sky.   Ben looked down and noticed the wound above Stuart’s right eye.  He sent a questioning glance toward Roy Coffee, who was kneeling by Stuart, checking for any signs of life.  Roy looked back at him and shook his head solemnly.

At that Sheriff Wainwright bowed his head and clenched his hands as his body trembled all over.  After a minute he seemed to gain control of himself.  He looked over at Ben.  “I couldn’t allow him to kill your son, Mr Cartwright,” he said in a husky voice.  “I just couldn’t allow it.”

Ben stared back at him.  “Sheriff, I...”  Somehow he couldn’t think of anything to say.  He could only be grateful that the sheriff’s action had saved his own son’s life...and yet.  There was something about it that disturbed him greatly. He tried to imagine himself in a situation where he was forced to shoot one of his own sons...and he simply could not do it.  The very idea of a man shooting his own son was just beyond his comprehension.

Adam had also bowed his head, clearly upset.  “ I almost had him,” he said in a voice touched with bitterness.  “I almost had him convinced to give himself up.  If we only had a few more seconds.  Just a few more seconds.”   He stared at the sheriff with a piercing gaze.  “That poor, frightened boy wanted your approval more than anything.  Everything he did was to try to gain your approval...or, rather, to escape from your disapproval.”

The sheriff did not respond.  He simply continued to gaze down at his son, glassy eyed.

Francine Larkin had come up to join them, moving timidly and staring wide eyed at the figure on the ground.  Now she gave out with a sobbing cry of “Stuart!” and threw herself down on his body, weeping heartbreakingly.

Standing a little ways apart stood Joshua Armitage and Julie Downs.  Joshua shook his head sadly.  “You know, if that young man had only been up front about what happened from the beginning, a good lawyer might actually have gotten him off the hook.  But he was simply too frightened of his father to take that chance.  A real shame, I’d say”

Julie was looking on sympathetically at her friend’s distress.  “What do you think will happen to Francine?,” she asked the lawyer.

“I’m not sure,” Armitage replied.  “She may have taken part in obstruction of justice, but somehow judges are often rather lenient in such cases when the person involved is a woman.  They tend to assume that the woman is under the influence or control of the man in the case.   I’m not sure how fair an assumption that is, but I’ve seen it at work many times.  I don’t expect that the law will treat her too harshly.”

“I’m glad of that, anyway,” Julie said in a low voice.

The group gathered around Stuart’s body was looking on in pity as Francine’s weeping started to subside.  Ben Cartwright laid a hand on Sheriff Wainwright’s arm to draw his attention.

“Sheriff, the sun is about to set and it will be starting to get dark soon.  I think we had better be getting  back to town as quickly as possible, don’t you?”

At the sound of Ben’s voice, Wainwright shook himself out of his almost trancelike state.

“Of course.”  He paused.  “Stuart’s body will need to be turned over to Dr. Gallard as quickly as possible.  As soon as that’s done I’ll take care of the formalities to get the charges against your son officially dismissed.”  He looked over at Adam.  “There are still a few of your things at the sheriff’s office for you to pick up.  Once the formalities are complied with you’ll be free to go.”

That was what Ben Cartwright had been waiting to hear.  He felt the tension of the last few days draining out of him, leaving him feeling a little weak.  He turned to his oldest son with full eyes.

“How about it, son?  I imagine you’re more than ready to head home.  By the time the loose ends are tied up it will be too late to leave tonight, but the local hotel isn’t too bad.  Do you think you can stand to spend one more night in Brosnan Flats?”

Adam smiled at him.  “I suppose I can manage, as long as it’s not in the jail!”

Ben turned to Joe.  “And what about you, son?  Are you eager to get home too?”

Joe looked over to where Julie Downs stood and smiled at her.  She smiled back and began to move toward him.  “Actually, pa, I was kind of thinking it might be nice to spend another day or two around here.  If it’s all right with you, that is.”

Ben looked at his son in surprise, but then he saw Julie Downs come up beside Joe and slip her arm through his, and Joe’s intention became clear.

“Well, I’m not sure about this, son.  What do you think, Adam?”

“Oh, let him do it, Pa.  He deserves it for all the help he was in clearing up the case.”  Adam smiled at his younger brother. 

“All right then, Joe,” Ben said.  “You can stay for two more days, but no more than that.  Understood?”

“Sure, Pa.”  Joe and Julie grinned at each other and moved off to chat together privately.

In the meantime Roy had helped Francine Larkin gently to her feet and he and Sheriff Wainwright had picked up Stuart’s body to carry it back down to where the horses were,  followed by Joshua Armitage with his arm gently around Francine Larkin’s shoulders.

That left Adam and Ben alone together for a moment.

“I’m sorry for what you’ve been put through these last few days, Pa,” Adam said quietly.  “I keep thinking about Stuart Wainwright and how he never thought he could count on his father’s support.  I just want to say that I’m very grateful that his  problem is one  that neither I or my brothers have ever had to worry about.  You’ve always been there for us, Pa.  I thank you for that.  And I just hope that if I should ever have a son, he’ll be able to say the same about me.”

To hear his usually reticent son say so much moved Ben deeply.

“I have no doubt of that, son. None at all.”

He moved to take his son into an embrace, and Adam permitted it.  They stood there together for a long moment with the light fading around them, simply being grateful for each other’s presence.  When they finally stepped apart neither one said anything, but with an unspoken understanding Ben put his arm around his son’s shoulder, and together they headed back down the path to join the others.

THE END  

RETURN TO LIBRARY