"It’s a delicate situation, Mister Cartwright," the captain explained as he buttered his toast. There had been an impromptu meeting conjoined at the dining room table with Ben, Hoss, the captain and two other men that Ben couldn’t recall their names or titles. "We have the Lab going over the tape but they haven’t come back with anything yet. We’re going to leave things as they stand -"

            "My sons are being sought as murderers, Captain; one of them for supposedly killing a Nevada State Patrolman. Are you going to try and convince me that he will be treated fairly should one of the state officers find him?" roared Ben, the silverware on the tabletop dancing when he struck the solid wood surface.

            "There has never been a legitimate and substantiated charge brought against the Nevada State Police force for brutalizing a prisoner," snapped one of the others.

            Ben glared down the length of his table at the speaker. "Who is to say that some poor sap, beaten by one of yours, didn’t speak up because he figured it was a lost cause? That by doing so, he would only bring more grief on himself? And who is to say that my sons are still in the state of Nevada? By this time, they could be half the world away! What about it, Captain? Can you say the same thing about your fellow officers in Texas? Florida? After all, the plane my sons were supposedly on last night had a stop in Dallas. If they were missed there, there is a connecting flight from Miami Florida to Santa Nehia where the money was sent. You aren’t speaking now, Captain. Why? Not so sure?"

            The captain, his brush-cut brown hair making his head seem overly large, set his coffee cup back down into its saucer before he spoke again. "The Dallas police said there was no one on the plane that answered to the manifest names. The seats were empty when the plane took off in Reno. Can you think of anywhere that your sons would have run to, Mister Cartwright?"

            No longer able to contain himself, Ben shot to his feet, his chair falling over behind him unnoticed. He slammed his napkin onto the table and proceeded to stalk to the end of the table and the man there.

            "My sons would not run from the law, Captain. They would run to it. They are out there and they need the help and protection from the law. Start dealing with them as the victims, or I will do everything in my power to do so myself."

            The captain stood, straightening his already broad straight shoulders. He seemed taller than his given six foot five inches and he easily towered over the older man before him. Having spent twenty years in the Marine Corps before joining the Nevada Bureau of Investigations, he thought he was long past being cowed by any human not wearing a uniform and a superior rank. This man, this congressman, rancher, builder, whatever he chose to call himself, didn’t seem to ascribe to the same book though.

            "Don’t try to intimidate me, sir," drawled the captain.

            "I’m not. I am just telling you a few truths, Captain. Now, I have to get to the State House."

            The State House grounds were pandemonium. Even as he parked his car in its reserved spot, television cameras and reporters mobbed it. It was only due to his police escort that Ben Cartwright was able to part the throng and escape into the cold hallways of the massive building. Running his hand back over his hair to straighten it, he thanked the two men. The microphones that had been thrust at him, their wielders’ questions lost in the hubbub, the police had pushed away, clearing the path for him and for that small concession, he was thankful.

            "Maybe you shouldn’t be here today," one of them said, looking back to where the two normal door guards had been beefed up to four to control the entryway.

            "Today I am damned if I do and damned if I don’t, gentlemen. I would be vilified in the press for not being a diligent congressman if I didn’t appear to listen to the debates today. And because I show up, I am equally vilified as a poor parental role model. Which would you have me be?"

            The other men shrugged, not knowing how to answer. "Depends on what the debate concerns, would be my guess."

            "Capital punishment. The death penalty. The vote is day after tomorrow," Ben explained as he walked rapidly down the hallway to the elevators. Just as he got to them, the doors to the elevators opened and he stepped though them and punched the door-closed button, shutting his two companions out. It was the act of a petty man, he considered, but he’d had no time to himself, just to think, in what seemed like a century. For less than a minute, as the conveyance rose, he sagged against the wall, wanting to cry, to scream, to . . .

            The door whisked open and, standing there slightly red-faced and out of breath, were his two escorts.

            "Sir, you do that again and we’ll take measures," the one said as Ben passed between them, aimed now for his office.

            With them in his wake, he sailed into his office. He shouted for one of his secretaries to get him some coffee and a Danish. His office manager, Mildred Baldwin, he shouted for her to bring her pencil and tablet into his inner office. Looking a little wild-eyed, the older woman grabbed a legal pad and dashed into the large room off to one side and closed the door abruptly.

            The two policemen were left standing at the door. They shrugged as they looked at each another then pulled two chairs and sat down, their legs across the entrance.

            Inside, Ben Cartwright was stripping off his heavy winter coat, gloves and hat, tossing them to a leather recliner. He was halfway through the motion of loosening his tie when Mildred slammed the door closed. He glanced up at her scowl and smiled, gesturing for her to have a seat in front of his large dark walnut desk. She did, flicking on the table lamp.

            "I heard the news, Ben," she opened with, watching him carefully as he sat down in the high-backed leather chair behind his desk. "Saw the video, too. Something’s wrong there. I can’t believe your boys would do anything like this!"

            Ben nodded and smiled again, this time with more feeling. Mildred was as close to him as he would allow any woman to be at this time in his life. She had been his first secretary back when he was a neophyte in the political maelstrom better known as Nevada politics. Time and again, she had proven herself to be loyal, efficient and, above all, she ran his office with an iron hand. She was also his closest confidante, knowing all of the difficulties of his raising three sons. Mildred, her husband dead since before she came to work for Ben, had no children of her own and secretly, listening to his problems, had decided she never wanted any. That hadn’t stopped her from being an almost surrogate mother, particularly to Joseph. When calls came from teachers and principals concerning his behavior, it was Mildred who fielded them, defusing potentially exploding tempers before she passed them on the man she always referred to as “Boss.” She had been the one who finally helped Ben understand that Adam needed to go back east to school rather than to a college or university closer. Her advice that he needed the distance to grow up had been so artfully presented that Ben couldn’t recall where he had gotten the idea and assumed it was his own. When Hoss, and then Joe, had expressed a lack of desire to continue schooling past high school, she made Ben see the light once again. So, if any human not wearing the Cartwright name knew Adam and Joe, it was Mildred Baldwin.

            A tap on the door and Mildred brought Ben his coffee and Danish, setting them down on the desk blotter carefully. She went back and sat in her chair, ready to discuss whatever he wanted.

            "I pulled your email up already," she sighed then pointed to a disc balanced on his keyboard. "Lots of folks saw the news. Some of them are looking for an answer, an explanation."

            "You answer any of them for me?" It was her habit to do so and Ben didn’t care about her doing it as long as her answers were, sadly, politically correct, and guaranteed not to stand outside of where he actually stood. In the four years since they had implemented both the computer with the email function and the system, she had yet to fail him.

            "'Course. You got other things to do besides write notes! Gave all of them the standard line about letting the police handle things, how devastated you are about it, condolences to the families of the victims. How’s that?"

            Ben’s lips flattened even as he chewed. He swallowed then grudgingly admitted that she had probably made him out to be a bigger saint than what he was.

            "There was a couple I think you should look at." Heeding her nod, he started his computer there at his side and waited with her in silence as the machine hummed to life then gave it the disc. He booted up the program and looked at the listing it gave him from the disc. "Look at that one with the big file."

            He opened it and found himself looking into the eyes of his youngest son as Joseph made an extremely rude gesture with a single extended digit to the camera. Behind this son in the picture, he saw Adam seated on a narrow appearing shelf, hunched over. Forcing himself to look away from Joe, Ben studied the rest of the picture: white walls, another shelf that he realized was a bed by the rumpled blanket on it, a sink and the barest glimpse of a toilet. All of it white . . . institutional white. Ben scrolled down the image and found a caption at the bottom of the screen: Your sons aren’t going to like prison much. How will you vote come Friday?

            His heart stopped and he couldn’t breathe. Eyes blinking rapidly, he tried to speak but found he couldn’t. Here, he thought, was the proof he needed that his sons had been kidnapped.

            "I left it on the server, Boss. You want me to call the cops so they can see it?" Mildred asked, her voice so soft that he almost couldn’t hear her words.

            "Yes," he finally rasped out. "The police. No! Call Roy Coffee. Have him come over. I don’t want the press getting hold of this."

            "Why not?" He was aware that she was now standing beside him, a finger paused over the computer’s delete key. "Would make you look a lot better if the press knew your sons had been taken. That they weren’t murderers."

            Ben brushed Mildred’s hand away and covered the keys with his own, the fingers spread wide, protecting and shielding them.

            "No, I want the vote to go forward on the revision of the death penalty. If the press got wind of this, there would be a big hoopla and the vote might not be taken. We need to get Nevada in line with other states. That’s what this bill is all about. Whoever these people are, they don’t understand that my vote is only in case of a tie. The others, the ones who will be voting on Friday, they could be swayed by this, one way or another."

            She shook her head and picked up the phone, hitting a single digit for an outside number then, flipping open a small rolodex on the desk, dialed the number for Roy Coffee. She spoke briefly then hung up the phone, telling Ben that Roy would be here in about fifteen minutes.

            "Anything else?" she queried but didn’t expect an answer as he was staring intently at the image on the monitor.

            Roy studied the picture carefully. He had taken the computer disc from Ben and summoned one of the lab technicians he knew well. He reassured his old friend that the “lab rat,” as he called him, would keep his mouth closed where the press was concerned. Once the source of the email was clearly figured out, Roy would turn it over to the FBI, as they alone would then have jurisdiction over a kidnapping.

            The little pointed face man Roy had called the lab rat sat in Ben’s chair, prodding information from the computer. He made notes in a small notebook he carried and kept humming something tuneless to himself as he worked. Several times, he stopped and made a face at the monitor then returned to pressing keys and humming. After a good half an hour, he grinned triumphantly and called the sheriff over.

            "Look," he said and pointed at the picture. "This gentleman has no shoes on. See here at the very bottom of the image? That is his heel. No shoe. No stocking. This other gentleman," he zoomed in on Adam as he spoke, "has been hit. See how the back of his head looks flat? That’s not because of a blow but from his pressing his hand there, and, see, just above his collar? The fabric there is slightly off-tone. Wish this was color but it isn’t. And his wrist -  they’ve taken his wristwatch, haven’t they, sir?"

            Ben studied Adam’s left arm, what he could see of it. Yes, there just at the edge of his shirt cuff, the skin was lighter and had the same pattern as the wrist.  He always wore his watch.

            "What can you tell us about the room?" Roy asked.

            The lab rat shook his head sadly. "Nothing. Plain walls, light in color. But the plumbing fixtures say that it is residential, not an institution like a prison, say. See?" Again he zoomed into the digital image, this time showing some wording on the barely visible toilet bowl. "American General is what it says, I’m sure. They only make fixtures for homes. As for location, that I can help you out with, Sheriff Coffee." He pointed a blunt finger to the soda can Joe was holding. "That soda is only sold in the northwest part of the United States. Grocery store chain brand."

            "What about where the email came from? Can you trace that?" Ben asked, suddenly excited.

            "The reply to addy is The Citizens for the Repeal of Capital Punishment. But it could have come from anywhere, Mister Cartwright. When the sheriff here told us about it earlier, I contacted my source in Atlanta, Georgia. He works forensics there. He did a little nosing around. Seems this group of nitwits has an open site on the Net. Lots of chat back and forth on their emailing list but mostly it’s activists going to rallies, mailings to congressmen on both the state and federal level, that sort of thing. Nothing this radical, I can assure you."

            "But then . . . ?" Ben floundered to a stop, lost and seeking understanding that he wasn’t sure the other man could give him.

            "Mister Cartwright, if I had your password, I could hack into the Nevada Legislature site and send out a bunch of emails calling Roy Coffee here some sort of freak. Could cause all sorts of trouble for both you and him! And that’s the sort of thing we are looking at here, I bet."

            "You mean someone with a personal grudge against Ben?" Roy asked.

            The lab man shook his head. "Nope. I’d bet it’s the Anti-death penalty folks who have a problem. And whoever it is that don’t like them, are hoping for this mess to make enough trouble that the Feds will shut down The Citizens. I’m sorry, Sheriff, Mister Cartwright, but I think your boys, and you, are being used as a stalking horse."

            With a promise that he would continue looking for clues, the lab man left. Mildred, once he was gone, stepped over the crossed legs of the guards at the door and reminded Ben that the legislative session was due to begin in ten minutes. He thanked her then turned back to Roy.

            "What now?" Ben asked cautiously, afraid that somehow his office was tapped and even as he spoke, information was flying out faster than he could think.

            "I’ll get in touch with the FBI. Have these fellas out there gone before you can blink."

            "Wait." Ben touched the lawman’s arm tentatively. "There was something that little fella said. About Adam and Joe being a stalking horse, a decoy, a disguise to bring down those people in Atlanta. What if it looked like Nevada was going to do away completely with the death penalty? It would boost them, right? But what if it looked like just the opposite was going to happen? Then whoever is in control of that stalking horse loses the need for it, right?"

            Roy nodded thoughtfully. "What way is the vote liable to go, Ben? You’re in a better position to know that than anyone else, I’m bettin’."

            "Too close to call right now but I think I know a way to solve that. See you later, Roy. Make your call to the FBI but leave the state boys alone, okay?"

            As he walked onto the Assembly floor, Ben could feel eyes on him, probing, prodding. His two flankers were held at the door and not allowed entrance, a fact that made Ben smile to himself. The delegates there in the room were standing together in knots of four to five men. Their voices were muted as they spoke but, every once in a while, one would rise. Ben scanned the room, finally coming to rest on a tall, suntanned man dressed like many of the others present, in what is usually called “goin’ to town” Western: high heeled cowboy boots, suit with a definitive yoke cut into it and a bolero string tie in place of a standard business silk one. The man was Amos Stempler. Presently he was head of a series of less important committees and also the minority leader, mirroring Ben’s majority leader status.

            "Amos!" Ben called out and got the man’s attention as well as several others. He waved only Stempler over. "Need to talk to you a minute."

            In the back of the room, the two men talked privately, Amos nodding occasionally. In typical Nevada political fashion, it was apparent that a deal was struck when hands were shook and backs slapped.

            "Only because you are a man among men, Ben Cartwright. I trust your word over that of my second wife. It’s a deal . . . until Friday’s vote that is." Amos walked away, his smile and handshake headed towards another man of his party.

            By Wednesday afternoon, just in time to catch the six o’clock news, word leaked out to the press. The majority vote in the Nevada Assembly was going to uphold the death penalty as it was currently written. Ben Cartwright, majority leader of the Assembly, went home, saying nothing to the press who hounded him from the door of the State House to the front door of the Ponderosa. He apologized to Hop Sing for not wanting anything for supper and retired early.

            He knew the maneuver for what it was: the biggest gamble he had made in his entire political life and the stakes were the lives of his sons.

Day: unknown

Time: unknown

            "Let’s see," Adam turned over his words carefully, his long fingers flicking out with each one. "Vegetable, round, not light in color, little weight, nearly everyone has it, in this room . . . how many more questions do I have?"

            "Four," replied his brother from where he was stretched out on the adjacent cot, his arms folded beneath his head.

            "I had five!"

            "But you asked how many more questions you had and that counts off of your twenty."

            "Gonna play that way, huh?"

            "Three."

            Adam went back to thinking. Playing twenty questions with Joe was, most of the time, an exercise in the stupid range. Sure he would have flashes of brilliance but, well, Adam had long ago conceded that while his brother was smart, or smart enough, they just ran on two completely different levels. To win, sometimes Adam felt he had to go to Joe’s level. There were times, like once that he recalled playing Battleship with his brother that Joe proved himself to be a cunning gamester. That time, when he should have placed his battleships on his hidden ocean to be sunk by Adam’s bingo-styled calling of coordinates, he hadn’t. It had left him searching all over the small screen for a “hit” while Joe had blithely found, hit and sunk all of Adam’s boats. When the last of the older brother’s boats had gone to their theoretical demise, Adam had grabbed Joe’s board and turned it around. There were no boats on it and Joe, cackling with delight, had simply explained that his navy had stayed in port.

             Now, with three of his original twenty questions left, Adam wondered if Joe had sent his boats out at all. Even as he pondered the puzzle, he did just what he always did to win against Joe: went to his level. His brother was always a right here and now personality so Adam shifted gears. What did one of them have that the other didn’t?

            "Do you find it on the walls?" A decoy question since he was sure to be running out of time.

            Joe snorted, wiggled his shoulders into the unyielding mattress and gave a negative. "Two more," he cautioned, smiling as he felt the score slip in his direction.

            "Do you come in pairs?"

            The smile disappeared from Joe’s face as he said "yes."

            "Are you shoestrings?"

            When Joe’s pillow smacked the wall above Adam’s cot, he knew he had won.

            "That makes the score even at six all. Wonder if we have time for a deciding match before dinner?"

            Joe snorted once more and rolled to sit up on the side of his bed. "Haven’t you noticed that they never come in while we’re awake?"

            His brother had a point, Adam knew, but even as he considered it, something hovered in the back of his mind. Now that they were quiet, it seemed almost too quiet to Adam. He closed his eyes and let his senses reach out, searching. After a moment, and finding nothing, he opened his eyes back up.

            "We need to make a plan. We just can’t sit here." Adam also sat up and put his feet on the floor.

            "We studied the door, remember? No hinges on our side to take apart. No doorknob even to jimmie. At least now I don’t have the feeling that someone is watching us all the time." Joe’s foot toyed with the camera and its associated wiring, now ripped from the corner and laying on the floor. "Maybe that’s it. We’re being punished for breaking their toy. They can’t get their jollies watching us anymore."

            Adam chuckled shortly. "Guess we weren’t entertaining enough. But look at it this way, Joe. It could have been worse."

            "How?" The single word ripped through the air.

            "They could have put us in a cell with no water, no toilets, no cots and no light."

            The words were no more than out of Adam’s mouth than the bright overhead light flicked off. The darkness was complete. So was the silence that followed. That was when it hit Adam what he had been missing. When he had first come to and was leaning against the wall, he had heard a hum very, very faintly. Thinking back on it he would have likened it to the sound a computer makes but as though he was hearing it from another room. And the noise had stopped.

            "Shit," was Joe’s only comment.

            "Shh! Listen."

            When Adam reached five hundred in his mental count, he could feel his skin begin to crawl. He knew that across from him, Joe was straining to hear just as he was but the only sound that came to either of them was their own breathing.

            "Let’s try the door," whispered Adam and heard Joe move in the blackness. He followed the sound his brother’s bare feet made on the floor.

            The door opened easily inward and impulsively, Joe went to leave. Adam’s hand on his arm stopped him. His heart leapt into his throat.

            "Wait," cautioned Adam again, "and listen."

            "Nothing. I hear nothing. Course then I don’t see a whole lot either." Both were silent for a few heartbeats then Joe spoke up. "If we can’t see or hear anything, odds are that anyone else out there can’t either. I don’t know about you, big brother, but I want out of here. You comin’?"

            In the dark, Adam reached out and grabbed where the sound of Joe’s words had last been. "I’m coming but first we need what we can carry from the room."

            "Okay, you hold the door. What? Blankets? Anything else?"

            Adam thought for a moment. "My jacket. It was laying at the foot of my bed."

            As he leaned against the cool surface of the door, Adam listened to his brother moving in the lightlessness. He recognized the slap of his feet and knew that before they went far, they would have to find some shoes. Shivering with an errant breeze, he added a coat to the list he was gathering in his head. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of water hitting water. And it came from the room.

            "Joe? What are you doin’?"

            From the far corner, Adam heard "For the first time I could take a leak and not feel somebody watching me. Ahh-" The toilet flushed and before Adam could make it all register, he felt Joe beside him, pressing his coat into his hands.

            Down the pitch-black hallway they went. By unspoken agreement, each took a wall and followed it, using one set of their outstretched hands to guide them while the opposite set touched his brother’s shoulder, allowing them to keep track of each other. Again, silence blanketed them, making their strained breathing loud in their ears. Only one door was found and refused to open despite their combined force against it.

            Then, without warning, Adam’s hand dropped from his brother’s shoulder and Joe whirled, half crouching, his breath held, eyes straining. He could hear the faint

sounds that seemed to put Adam on the floor but there had been no warning of an attack and no continued sound.

            "Connecting hall. Come on." Adam’s voice rose, as did the faint rustling of cloth. "Don’t lean on the walls," he warned. He took a few more steps then stopped.

            "You okay?" Joe prayed, hoping that Adam hadn’t broken anything in his sudden meeting with the floor.

            "Yeah, but is it just me or is it getting colder?"

            "You askin’ me? My feet have been cold for as long as I have been here. Never thought I would long for a pair of hunting socks so bad in all my life. I wouldn’t even care if the batteries were dead; I just want something on my feet."

            "Joe," Adam’s tone held a gentle reproof. "I don’t need you whining right now. Just tell me -"

            "Yes, dammit, it feels colder. There seems to be a faint breeze down about ankle level. Is that whining too much?" Joe snapped. To his surprise, Adam chuckled then urged him to continue.

            Without a way to measure time, neither Cartwright was able to tell how long they followed the errant breeze that kept Joe’s feet cold. At last they came to a door that, when opened, gave into a cavernous expanse. Together now in the dark, they edged along one wall, running into things that just by their feel, the men recognized.

            "We’re in some sort of garage, Adam. A workbench. Smell the air. Little gasoline."

            "No," Adam corrected, sniffing the air. "More like diesel fuel or kerosene."

            In the dark, Joe snorted and continued on. Finally, the wall with its workbench ended and a perpendicular wall met it. Joe was the first to feel the chain, running up and down and excitedly told Adam that he had found the door lift. They joined muscle but the door refused to rise. They reversed their direction of pull but the chain refused to budge.

            "Wait a minute. Let me," Adam’s voice went to floor level and he grunted mightily, something rattling along the length of the chain. "Pull now," he commanded then, "Other way."

            From next to their toes, a faint sliver of light appeared. Adam stood quickly and helped Joe, hand over hand on the chain. The errant thought crossed his mind that he wished Hoss was with them because of his strength but even as it did, he chastised himself silently. Joe had muscle enough, he supposed, since the door had started to rise on his strength alone.

            They didn’t raise the door to its full height. When it got up high enough to bend over and get under, they stopped and there was enough light filtering through that Adam easily found the hook and jammed a link of chain onto it to hold the door. He followed Joe, almost knocking him down.

            The two brothers stood, the faint light of a dying moon showing them where they were.

            Stretching out from the door, a broad apron of hard packed ground reached for towering mountains. The mountains, peak upon white snow-covered peak, unfolded before their eyes, north, south, east and west. Even as they searched for them, they knew there would be no streetlights, no house lights, no sign of civilization. Only the dark forbidding cold of a high mountain winter night.

            "Oh shit," whispered Joe, in total awe of what he saw.

            "For once, I gotta agree with you, brother. Oh shit!"

Thursday Morning

8 A.M.

            It had snowed in the night. As he stood looking out his bedroom window, Ben let his thoughts wander, seeking solace in a sight that usually gave him satisfaction. With the help of his sons, he had built a good life here . . . for them and for himself. The work was hard but fulfilling, leaving a body tired at the end of the day. He often thought that the buildings he helped to create and the laws he sponsored had made this land into a paradise but on mornings like this, with two of his sons missing, he looked for the demon-snake in paradise. Even as he watched the wind whip clumps of snow off the upper reaches of the sheltering pines, he made a list of people who may have a grudge against him for there was no more sure-fire path to a man’s existence than through his children. There were political foes, of course, but as he had spoken yesterday to Amos Stempler, his most vehement enemy, he knew that this man was not involved. Nor would he tolerate any such shenanigans for they could be used against him should the press find out. No, the more Ben thought the more he knew the little lab rat man was right: the ultimate aim was not his sons, nor himself, but something bigger.

            "Pawns," he muttered. "My sons and I are but pawns in a bigger chess game. How can I take us out of the game without throwing it completely? The state needs this legislation - badly.  It needs it one way or another. It has to be either fixed or replaced entirely. And I have no say in the matter unless there is a deadlock vote. Yes, I can talk to my colleagues and do so until I am blue in the face, but what do I tell them? Strengthen the law? I do that and I should pray that the police realize their tape was doctored and Adam didn’t shoot Officer Taylor. A son on Death Row . . . what if it was one of mine on Death Row, innocent of the crime that put him there? I would want every appeal I could get from the legal system, yes! But if it was a man there because it was one of mine he killed, I would want swift justice, too." He hung his head, chastised by his knowledge of what he was capable of as an aggrieved parent.

            "Brutal murder . . . and I would be guilty. Brutal murder. But isn’t every murder brutal? That’s what they have debated, isn’t it? Where do we draw the line? What deserves to be punishable by death and what puts a man in prison for the rest of his life?" He swallowed hard and looked again out into the white fields surrounding his home. "Would they call Mandy’s death brutal? Yes, of course they would or at least I would. Lord help me, but I know Joseph is not her killer but how can that be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that a jury would need? I doubt that it could. That would put him on Death Row, right along side Adam. NO! I can’t think this way! I have to believe in the system of justice we have!" His fists pounded the window ledge.

            Outside, another cascade of snow fell from a pine branch.

            Downstairs, the main room and the dining room were quiet. A single man sat at the desk, reading a magazine. Surrounding him and filling the desktop to overflowing, were electronics, wires, a set of headphones and a two-way radio. Ben scowled at the man when he looked up from his magazine but he was sure it had no effect whatever for the reader went back to his reading.

            Hoss sat in his accustomed place at the table, his plate already full. When his father greeted him, he nodded mutely and continued eating.

            "It snowed some last night, so I guess I need to take a look at the stock this morning."

            Ben snapped a napkin open and laid it across his lap. Meals around this table were usually noisy affairs with talk and laughter overlapping the white linen cloth like two colonies of ants at a picnic, each vying with the other. Discussions and decisions made here followed the men, changed plans, gave voice to dreams, echoed happenings. To have the silence was unnatural and both men there longed to change that fact.

            Hoss put his fork aside. "I can’t go on sittin’ here and doin’ nothing. Iffen they were kidnapped, we would have heard by now. There would have been a ransom demand, wouldn’t there?"

            Again, the emailed image of his sons, held in that room, came to Ben. He had told Hoss about it late the night before when the big man had gone to bed and Ben had slipped into his room to speak with him without the prying ears of the police. The remembered image suddenly spoke in its own voice to Ben and he laughed at what it had said. Until that moment, he had let the written caption overcome him, guide his thoughts, his actions. Now a new set took control.

            "Remember what we spoke about last night?" asked Ben, his hand holding Hoss’ arm to the table until the other man nodded, understanding the need for a confederacy of illusion. "Remember what they were doing?"

            Hoss scrunched his face, trying to follow his father’s hazy images. Of course he remembered: Joe doing what would get him in trouble, no doubt, and Adam off to the side, his head bowed.

            "Think of it this way: get Joe mad and what happens?"

            Hoss thought a moment then smiled and nodded. When Joe got mad, the odds were pretty good that he wasn’t going to sit still for one moment longer. While he might be the slightest built of the bunch, he certainly had a mean punch and could wrestle with the best of them. Not only that, Joe wasn’t above a dirty trick or two. Hoss recalled the lifted finger his father had told him about. Yep, there were no two ways about it: Joe was ticked off.

            "And Adam? Remember?" Ben pushed, his smile inexplicably growing wider.

            "He was thinkin’, wasn’t he?"

            Ben nodded. "Put that anger and that brain together –"

            "Somebody has their hands full, don’t they?"

            The magazine reader looked up at the laughter coming from the dining room.

Thursday morning

10 A.M.

            As he closed the truck door, he felt awkward, out of place but he put a scowl on his face and settled his jacket across his shoulders once more. The twin glass doors bearing the gold lettering of Cartwright and Sons Construction stood beckoning and Hoss would answer their call. Actually, it had been Rosalie, Adam’s secretary that had called. She had been apologetic but said that one of them was needed there today. Hoss, knowing his father would be tied up all day at the State House told her he would come down.

             Remembering her smile and pleasant greetings of the past, Hoss shaved extra close, put on some aftershave, combed his hair, knocked the dirt off his boots and went to the office.

            As he went through the corridors, people nodded to him. He nodded back. Most of them he didn’t know since he ran the other half of the family business: the ranch with its four-footed laborers and wooden assets that were still standing where they had for four hundred years or so. He was more comfortable there with his cows and horses. A few hands, mostly young men, helped him year round, putting up hay, feeding and managing the white-faced Herefords. Hoss worked beside them, sweating in summer, freezing in winter.

            He stepped cautiously into the elevator and punched the button for the third and top floor. It obediently closed its doors and rose steadily. When the door opened again, he was almost face to face with Rosalie.

            "Hi," he greeted and felt much like an ox: big, clumsy and stupid.

            "Hi, Mister Hoss," Rosalie likewise greeted and smiled for him. "Come on, I’ll open Mister Adam’s door." She whisked to the door slightly to one side and behind her desk and punched in a series of numbers on the pad above the handle then pushed the handle down. The door stayed resolutely closed.

            Rosalie turned back and impishly grinned for Hoss. "Guess I put in the wrong numbers. Wait a minute." She repeated the inputting of the code but the door still wouldn’t budge. "I know that this looks bad. Silly secretary can’t even open the door but we’ve had problems with the security system ever since that last big snow. Think it shorted something out but then what do I know? I’m only the boss’ secretary." After a third try, she went to her desk and picked up the phone. She had a short, curt discussion then hung up. "The guy will be up here in a minute. Can I get you some coffee? Maybe a pastry?"

            Hoss wouldn’t have told her for the world but, with the color bright in her cheeks, she sure was cute. He felt a heat surface in his own face and to hide the fact, told her he would like some coffee and a doughnut but she had to have some with him. She smiled and nearly skipped down the hall towards the break room. Hoss wondered if dating her would be breaking company policy since it was only a technicality that made him part of the construction business. He’d ask Adam.

            "Hey Weasel! I didn’t know you worked for Adam!" Hoss greeted the man who exited the elevator with a small toolbox in hand. "By golly, last time I saw you was when we graduated from high school. What you been up to?"

            The man Hoss had called Weasel had another name but for so many years he had been known by the animal epithet that most folks in the Washoe Valley area thought it was his real name. He had always looked a bit like a weasel and still did that morning: small darting features and hands, eyes that were enlarged by the thick lens of his glasses which he had the habit of continually pushing up to the bridge of his nose. His face was rather sallow and heavily pockmarked, his teeth small and wide spaced in his mouth.

            "Went to technical school after high school," he said, putting his toolbox down by the offending door. "Got a degree in electronics. Your brother hired my security firm last year."

            "You got your own business? Really?" Hoss moved closer and out of habit, Weasel took a step away from the big man.

            "Yeah," Weasel whined as he always had. "Ain’t much but it keeps the wolves from the door. Know what I mean?" He laughed shakily then turned his attention back to the door. He punched a series of numbers and tried the handle. The door swung open silently. "Tell Rosalie that she needs to hit the keys slower."

            Hoss’ head bobbed as he thanked the man who already was edging for the elevator nervously. He suggested that they get together soon and have a few beers but then had to be reminded that Weasel didn’t drink. He reiterated the suggestion and got a weak smile from the other as the elevator doors opened and he disappeared. Hoss wasn’t sure but what the little man didn’t look relieved. Thinking nothing of it, Hoss went on into Adam’s office. Weasel always had been a nervous sort of fellow.

            The floor to ceiling glass wall on one side of the office looked to the north and east. With the morning sunlight streaming in, Hoss didn’t even think to hit the light switch. The thick carpeting, a dark muted gray color, swallowed all sound but seemed the perfect foil for the sunlight. Hoss always felt out of place coming into this office, even when he had been active in the construction field. That was the difference, he always thought, he worked in the field, doing the actual building, using a hammer and nails instead of pencils and computers. Here, in this big office, building projects were planned. Even as he thought those thoughts again, he turned to the drafting table that lined one wall. Spread over them were blue prints. Below them, there were cubbyholes full of rolls of paper - jobs done, buildings finished. Balanced carefully on the edges of the slants were pencils, pens, a few rubber bands and, oddly enough, a screwdriver.

            "Guess big brother just can’t manage without a few real tools around him," Hoss said softly to himself and chuckled at the words. He wondered when the last time his brother had used a screwdriver for its intended purposes, figuring he had used this one to pry the big staples out of a set of plans. He picked it up. It wasn’t a blade like he had imagined but a phillip’s head, the plus mark its crossing fins made clear since it was well used.

            "Here’s your coffee and I brought us a little box full of doughnuts. You like the filled ones? I do." Rosalie’s voice, although tentative, still seemed loud to Hoss. She was putting the repast down on the massive desk.

            "Okay, you said there was stuff that needed taking care of," Hoss held up the screwdriver, "Where they at?"

            Rosalie laughed and Hoss remembered once again that there were benefits to working in an office.

            For the next two hours, Hoss read over papers she handed him and signed the ones he needed to. He told her that if it needed to be taken care of in the next two weeks to bring it on and she had obliged him. Only once was there any sort of personal reaction from her and that when she handed Hoss the notification of benefits to be paid to Mandy’s mother. His eyes misted over as he remembered little Mandy, so bright and energetic that it made some folks tired just listening to her talk.

            "I’m sorry, Mister Hoss. Mandy and I didn’t get a long real good but she was important here. She made people smile. I kind of envied her, you know? She was cute and . . . vivacious, I guess would be the word for her. She didn’t deserve to die like she did. Was it true? Was she pregnant? Is that why she was killed?" At that, Rosalie sat down heavily in the chair beside the desk.

            Hoss could see the glistening tears come to Rosalie’s eyes. He patted her hand, resting trembling on the corner of the dark mahogany. "We don’t know why she died, Rosalie. All I know for sure is that Joe wasn’t part of it."

            "I know that. Just like I know that Mister Adam didn’t kill Jimmy Redhawk Taylor. It isn’t in you folks." She sniffed then hung her head, ashamed of her emotion before this man who, in theory, was also her boss.

            "Thanks for the vote of confidence. We ‘preciate it. Tell me somethin’. Mandy, I knew. Shoot! Joe had her over to the house enough I’d about decided that if he didn’t marry her I was gonna!" He forced himself to laugh if only to keep her from crying any more. "But I didn’t know Taylor. I know that he and Adam went to school together. You know anythin’ ‘bout him?"

            "A little. My older sister is married to his wife’s brother. Lisa, my sister, said he was a nice fella, most of the time that she met up with him."

            "Most of the time?"

            Rosalie nodded, her fingers pulling from under Hoss’ hand. "She said that last summer, they had a big family reunion. Said Jimmy lost his temper and really walloped the tar out of one of the kids for something. Lisa said that was the first time she’d ever heard of him acting like that."

            "There were others?"

            Again, a little nod and a sniff. "At the Taylor family Christmas party, Lisa said Jimmy was acting strange. Said he’d put on a lot of weight and one of his nephews was calling him Redwhale. He didn’t like it and smacked the kid. When some of the adults got on him, he cursed them out, grabbed his wife and kids and stormed out. That cursing, she said, that wasn’t at all like Jimmy."

            "You know Jimmy’s wife?" Hoss asked, a niggling thought coming to his mind that wouldn’t completely form into knowledge.

            "Yeah, some. They just moved off the Reservation."

             Hoss nodded knowing that many of the local Indians, once they had made it in the outside world, moved off the barren Northern Paiute Reservation up around Pyramid Lake. It seemed to be a mark of success among them to have a house, maybe even a little piece of ground, somewhere else.

            Hoss gestured to the silent computer sitting on his brother’s desk. "You know how to use this thing? Can you find out where he moved to? I’d like -," he hesitated, not wanting to lie but needing to anyway. "I’d like to swing by and give her and the family my condolences in person."

            Rosalie brightened considerably and showed Hoss just how to go about getting the information he wanted. He hated to admit it, he’d said jokingly, but he and computers just didn’t do well together. That, he scowled inwardly, was a bigger lie. What he really wanted was to be close to Rosalie for a few more minutes.

            He swung his pickup truck down the empty stretch of highway. The wind had picked up and was blowing a skiff of snow over the asphalt. Hoss paid it no attention, just hunching a little deeper into his coat to ward off the effects. Squinting into the western sun, he scanned the side of the road as he drove. Finally, after ten miles from the last intersection, he saw what he was after.

            The house sat on a low rise. Reaching from the rise down to the highway on either side of the paved driveway, there were two pastures, each surrounded by a white painted plank fence. The house itself was a modest two-story affair with a garage underneath. Hoss didn’t drive up the lane but pulled over to the side of the road. From his glove box, he pulled a set of binoculars and studied the front of the house. The only thing that struck him was the fact that inside the garage he could make out a parked Lexus beside a new SUV.

            "Lotta money there," he grumbled. He ran the binoculars over the house once again and saw nothing remarkable yet that little niggling thought he’d first felt in Adam’s office came back, scratching on the door of his conscience.

            Seeing a car coming from the opposite direction, Hoss laid his binoculars aside and pulled back onto the road. He was glad he had since coming towards him was a Nevada State Patrol vehicle. It sidled across his path and Hoss pulled to a stop. There was no time to put away the binoculars. He rolled down his window as the patrolman got out of his car and advanced toward him.

            "Should have known it would be one of you," the officer spat, his lip rising in a sneer.

            "You mean to tell me that I ain’t got the right to drive down the road no more?" Hoss asked, putting on his most confused expression.

            "I saw you! Pulled up across from Sergeant Taylor’s place."

            "All I was doin’ was admirin’ the horses they got. That’s all. Didn’t know it was a crime. ‘Sides, I’d heard a while back that he was interested in sellin’ some of his ridin’ stock. Seemed he needed some cash ‘cause he was buildin’ that place." Hoss wondered if the policeman could hear how fast his heart was beating.

            "The Sarge? Sellin’ his horses? You’re lyin’. He was buyin’, not sellin’."

            Like pieces of a jigsaw spread across a tabletop, Hoss saw the information before him. All he had to do was . . .

            "...So get out of here!" the officer was saying when Hoss went back to listening. The big Cartwright smiled like he hadn’t a brain cell between his ears, touched his finger to his hat brim and rolled up the window. When the patrolman moved his car, Hoss pulled off.

            A mile down the road, Hoss pulled out his cell phone and called Rosalie. He asked her if Taylor’s wife worked any place.

            The pieces were beginning to come together. As he returned to Adam’s office, the joining rate increased. He breezed confidently into the now shadowed interior and called Rosalie in to join him. While she came quickly, Hoss was dialing the phone faster.

            "Get me some more coffee, would you? And you got something to eat?" he ordered crisply but politely. She jumped and scurried off.

            When she returned, Hoss was on the phone talking with the sheriff. She set the cheese sandwich down and would have left but Hoss motioned her to stay.

            "Roy, I’m tellin’ ya, what I saw out there was too much money for a State-boy. Yes, I know he was a sergeant and that he had eighteen years in, but the horses in those pastures alone would run him a year’s salary. His wife didn’t work and he had three kids. Most men I know in his position would be drivin’ four-year-old Chevies and livin’ from paycheck to paycheck. All I am asking is that you check into it." He picked up the sandwich, looked at it and frowned angrily. "And remember what I said about him changin’ too. All right, yeah, I’ll be here in Adam’s office for a while longer."

            He sat back in the chair and closed his eyes for a long moment. There were little rustling sounds that told him Rosalie was moving about. He asked her to stay put as he had something he wanted her to do. He heard her sit back down, the chair creaking as she did.

            "They said that a million dollars had been taken out of the business account and sent to some offshore account. How would Adam have done that?" he asked, still resting his body.

            "Well, first of all, I know Adam didn’t move that money," Rosalie responded and Hoss heard the heat in her words.

            "How come you’re so sure?"

            She put her elbows on the desk and glared at him until he opened his eyes and looked at her. "I have worked for Cartwright and Sons Construction for the better part of eight years. I’ve been your brother’s secretary for five of those years. I see things and I hear things and I know things that no one else outside that door does. Most of all, I don’t gossip and I don’t repeat what I hear or see."

            "Rosalie," he softened his voice and let himself fall forward in the chair until he, too, had his elbows on the desktop. "This is my brothers we’re talkin’ about. I don’t care nothin’ about nobody else, ya hear? I don’t care about upcomin’ work or mistakes that might have gotten shoved under the carpet. I am talkin’ about here and now and two men that I care more about than anythin’ else in the world."

            She raised one side of her mouth then pursed her lips together. "I know he didn’t because there wasn’t that much money in any of the accounts. Put them all together and there wasn’t a million dollars to be had. There’s a whole string of stocks and bonds and CDs where extra money goes but none of those was touched, right? Least ways, nobody has even mentioned them and there aren’t that many folks who know about them."

            His nose wrinkled. "You mean that the bank president lied?"

            "No," she sighed back then continued. "Someone with a lot of computer savvy at the bank doctored the files."

            "Rosalie, I don’t understand a word of what you’re sayin’."

            "I’m saying that, first of all, for Adam to have taken a million dollars, there would have needed to be that much in liquid assets available for him. There wasn’t. For the bank president to say that he did, someone must have told him. If Silverstein pulled the information off his computer, which I am betting he did, someone monkeyed with the bank’s computers."

            "What makes you so sure of this?"

            She smiled. "One of the things I do every Thursday morning is pull up our accounting files and make sure that there is enough in Payroll to cover Friday’s checks. I then go into our bank accounts and make sure the figures match."

            "So you know Adam’s passwords and such?"

            "That’s just it, Hoss. There are no secret passwords. All you have to do is hit the Control key twice and then hit the Enter key. I’m telling you, Hoss, that every cent of Cartwright and Sons Construction money is where it has always been - in the bank. All of it."

Day: unknown

Time: Morning

            At dawn’s first light, Adam reconnoitered outside. Their prison was actually a Quonset hut shoved halfway into a mountain. The front third of the round topped building stuck out onto the tarmac apron carved from the same mountain. The apron was half a circle, petering down to nothing on the edges as fell away into a deep chasm. Joe had been right when he had jokingly said it might be where the opening of a James Bond movie had been filmed for it did resemble that scene. There were no roads, no paths that he could see and he wondered where their captors were that morning. He returned to where he had left Joe and found him gone.

            Panicked, he began to shout. Where in the world could a man, without shoes, go in this snow-covered . . .

            "Back here!"

            Adam’s heart left his throat and he sagged, holding onto the tool-littered workbench. He followed the sound of his brother and considered pounding him good for scaring him.

            The morning light filtered into the back of the open space and glinted dully off the single prop of a small plane. In the cockpit sat Joe, a wild grin splitting his face.

            "Lookee what I found, big brother! Our way home!"

            Adam gestured to the canvas tarp covering the front of the plane from windshield to propeller. "Let’s see what we’ve got before you go heading for home in this contraption. After all, there had to be a reason for them to leave this behind . . . like it not working?"

            "Why did they leave, you suppose?" Joe asked, losing his grin as he slipped from the door of the plane.

            "They were finished with us. Uh-oh, look, some sort of wiring problem," Adam, having pulled the tarp away and raised the engine cowling, saw a jumble of wires pulled from the engine, hanging down.

            "Can you fix it?" asked Joe, coming to stand at his shoulder and fingering the wires hopefully.

            "Well, we’ve got nothing but time since we can’t walk out of here. Tell you what. Let me see what I can do. You find us some supplies. You might start with a pair of shoes for you, some food. Just be careful. Our captors might have booby-trapped the place."

            In the short space of an hour, the two brothers went from bounding joy to the depths of depression then back again. In his foray into the bowels of the structure, Joe had pulled an amazing assortment of items: a flashlight with weak batteries, a loaf of bread and an opened package of cheese slices, three cans of soda and two more blankets. He had also discovered the source of the noise Adam had sworn he’d heard. It turned out to be a generator, now empty of fuel and sitting silent. In the back of the plane’s parking space, he had located three lockers, one empty but the other two contained a pair of coveralls, insulated and - oh joy- a pair of tennis shoes. He had dropped everything and sat on the floor to pull them on. He didn’t bother lacing them up as they were several sizes too large and his feet would have slipped from them no matter what. He tore up one of the blankets and proceeded to wrap his feet in the strips, making a pair of impromptu socks.

            "What are you laughing about?" Adam asked, his head and both hands still in the engine compartment.

            "Nothing. Just getting dressed," chirped Joe and Adam turned to find him, the sleeves and cuffs of the coveralls rolled back numerous times and the overgrown shoes slapping the cement floor.

            He had to laugh. "You look like a little kid playing dress-up!" Adam teased, going back to his work. His comment got him a sharp prod in the back. "Okay, I’m sorry!" He looked over his shoulder.

            "Well, here’s breakfast." Joe offered him a cheese sandwich. "Sorry it isn’t up to Hop Sing’s standard fare but, with what we have, about as good as it’s gonna get."

            Adam scowled. "My hands are greasy!"

            "No generator means no water, no lights, no heat. Here," Joe offered the plastic wrap the bread had been in. "What about you? Any luck getting this thing put together?"

            "Yes and no," Adam answered, then took a bite of his sandwich, barely missing his plastic-wrapped fingers. "Yes, I think I have the engine back to working. No, I have no idea if it’ll get us out of here."

            "Thought you were an engineer," Joe mumbled around his own mouthful of bread and cheese. "Thought you could do anything . . . least ways that’s what you always led me to believe."

            As he paced beside the plane, ducking under the wing struts, Adam heard the edge his brother left on his words. With a raised brow, he considered that maybe some of it was rightly placed. He had always told Joe that with education, a man could do anything. Maybe he had led him to believe that he was all powerful because he had a mighty college degree. Now was not the time for arguments one way or the other.

            "Okay," he sighed dramatically and flopped down to sit beside his brother in the doorway of the plane. "I guess I must admit that there are things that I can’t do."

            "Can you get us out of here? I mean, hey, you had some flying lessons."

            "Two," the older brother pointed out. "I’ve had two lessons. Always meant to go back for more but just never found the time."

            "But can you fly this thing if we get the motor running?" Joe insisted.

            "There is more to flying than making a motor run, Joe. There is lift involved. I don’t know if I can get the plane off the ground."

            "Hey! I saw James Bond. He dropped the plane over the edge just like ours out here and it took off. We can too!"

            "That was a  movie, Joe! This is reality!"

            "Adam," Joe turned and grasped his brother’s shoulders in both his hands, nearly making him drop his sandwich. "Don’t let this go to your head but . . . I have faith in you! You can do it. I know you can."

            Shoving the remainder of the dry bread and cheese into his mouth, Adam shook his head ruefully. "Can see you’re gonna take Pa’s job when he leaves politics. Come on then, give me a hand."

            The sun was directly overhead when the time came to try the engine. A diligent search had given them no more than what they had. There were no cans of fuel for the plane but a peek into the tank had told Adam there was some there. How much, he wasn’t sure. Joe had all of their supplies loaded into a cardboard box and wedged beside the pilot’s seat. It was the only seat in the plane, the co-pilot’s having been removed and replaced by a wooden boxlike platform.

            By unspoken agreement, both knew that once the plane’s engine started, it was a given that they would try to depart. Adam’s mention of the amount of fuel made that decision. There wouldn’t be time or fuel for a second starting. The word he had used was committed and Joe crossed his fingers that it had nothing to do with being nuts.

            Once, twice, three times, the engine coughed then caught, a plume of blue smoke suddenly filling the air. Sliding the door closed, Joe pounded on Adam’s shoulder and the little plane inched forward. The plane rattled. Things not already on the floor got there and that included Joe. Adam shouted for him to stay down as the plane rolled into the bright sunshine.

            It gathered momentum, speed, heading straight for the edge. Adam pulled back on the wheel, trying to make the nose lift but even as he did, he knew they didn’t have enough speed built up. He sought for a prayer but came up without one; it didn’t matter since Joe was apparently pleading enough with God for both of them.

            He thought about aborting the take off but the edge came up to greet him much too fast and the little plane dropped over the edge of the apron.

            Again, the brothers were unanimous in their joint cry of "SHIT!"

            Within minutes, Ben found himself leaving the building. The press was waiting. Microphones were thrust at him and he had to push them out of his way to make it to his car. A camera there pushed at his shoulder as he unlocked the door to the Lincoln and he used the door to move the man out of the way. The questions shouted all amounted to the same thing: how did he feel about having put his sons on Death Row? As he cranked the big motor to life, he wanted to shout back but didn’t dare. How ignorant, he thought of them. The bill needed to get through the Nevada Senate and be signed into law. Sure, it was a slam-dunk that it would pass easily and the governor had already promised a quick signing and implementation. Even if his sons were bound over for trial, would it happen fast enough that the old law would still be enforced. Or would the date be set so far out . . . ?

            He yanked the gearshift into reverse and looked in his rearview mirror then nudged a cameraman standing there with the bumper. My sons are innocent, his mind shouted but he held his tongue. He would not make himself a spectacle for the media’s benefit.

            The drive to the county courthouse was short, mercifully so. Yet the crush of the press was there as well and one of Roy’s deputies, recognizing the black Lincoln, directed it around behind the building, telling Ben through the closed window that he could park back with the county’s vehicles and use the back entrance.

            Ben entered the doorway that took him through the basement then up the cement steps to the floor that housed the sheriff’s department. A quick glance showed him that Roy’s office was empty. A young woman there saw him and hurried over to inform him that the sheriff wasn’t back yet but would he have a seat there in his office and wait? He smiled grimly and settled into the darkened office, thankful for the solitude. Normally, he liked lots of people but lately, since this had begun, he had sought peace and quiet, time to be by himself to think through the situation. It had been in short supply.

            He glanced at the clock on the wall. A little after noon. By now, he figured, the plane bearing his sons would be nearing the Reno airport. He had done as Roy had asked and stayed away even though every fiber of his being screamed that he wanted to be there. After a short discussion with John Mears, the attorney who would be defending his sons, at daybreak this morning, Ben had consented but Hoss had wisely stayed out of all the discussion. Without a doubt in his mind, Ben knew where his middle son was at that very moment - pacing the open area of the airport if only to get a glimpse of his brothers.

            "Oh excuse me," a timid voice piped up and Ben opened his eyes, not remembering having closed them. At the doorway stood a man whose physical appearance did not match his voice. The man, built along the lines of a professional football player, was well dressed in a dark business suit and tie. His voice, though, was painfully bashful and very hesitant in tone. "Are you Sheriff Coffee?"

            "No, I'm not. He isn't here and I don't expect him here for another hour or so," explained Ben, standing so that he could guide the man to someone on the floor who could assist him.

            "Oh," the other said, chewing his lip, then seemed to come to a decision. "I'm Walter Ludkinski. From the FBI. I have some information for him concerning one of the cases we are working on jointly."

            Now was Ben's turn. "Oh?"

            "Yes. We've tracked down the hacker. Man is in Arlington Virginia. His name," Walter rifled through some folders and loose papers," Oh I can't recall his name but with the information Miss Baines and Mister Johanssen up in Idaho gave us concerning the plane, we can finger him for more than just computer hacking."

            At the mention of Idaho, Ben had the urge to press the fellow for more information but just as he was about to, loud noises came up the same staircase he had used and it drew their attention. He wasn't aware that the county had that many deputies but then he noted that some of the uniforms he saw were State Police. He didn't have time to count but there were enough that Ben didn't even catch a glimpse of either of his sons before the conglomeration moved into the holding area, the double doors which led to it swinging wide then closing with a resounding authoritarian thud.

            The one of the uniformed officers put out a hand and stopped Hoss from trailing along. Disgusted, he turned and followed Roy Coffee across the room. Over Roy's head he could see his father and another man waiting at the doorway to Roy's office.

            "Did you get a chance to talk to them?" Ben asked him as soon as Hoss got close enough, his hand grasping his son's forearm ferociously.

            "No, I didn't but I saw them and they looked--well, okay." Noting his father's raised brows, Hoss decided to clarify his statement. "Adam's got himself a fair beard goin' and Joe looks like he's been dragged through a knot hole, backwards. There ain't no bandages or anythin' like that I could see but they were both walkin' in chains so I couldn't really tell beyond that, Pa. Is Mister Mears back there already?"

            "Should be. Oh, Roy," Ben turned but saw that the sheriff was already deep into consultation with the FBI man.

            When Roy heard his name, his hand brushed Ben off and while Ben didn't appreciate being dealt with in that manner, he knew better than to push the sheriff. Pushing gently on Hoss, the two of them went into the wide-open area among the empty desks that took up half the floor space.

            "That man I was talking to, Hoss, he's with the FBI. They've found something out about a hacker and an airplane. I think it's connected with Adam and Joe but I don't know how. You?"

            Hoss shook his head that he had no idea but then pointed as he spoke. It was Mears and he was headed into a side room, coat tail flapping.

            "Looks like things are gonna happen fast," Hoss muttered then saw as the district attorney, Turk Henderson -Turkey, he had been called since childhood - sailed like a huge cloud towards them. He weighed every bit and more than Hoss Cartwright did, and while they had been in the same grade at school, they had never been friends. Even now, while neither man would claim to be the other's enemy, they certainly wouldn't admit to friendship either. Under his breath, Hoss muttered a mild curse and wondered why they had drawn Henderson but then was able to answer it himself. This was a high profile case involving the sons of the most influential man in the Tahoe area. It would be a feather in Henderson's cap if he should secure the convictions. Hoss wanted to tell him that it wouldn't keep people from calling him Turkey to his face.

            "What are you doing up here, Cartwright?" he demanded, coming to a sloppy halt in front of Ben. He mopped his sweaty brow with a handkerchief already limp with dampness. "Heard about the vote. I'll tell you right now.  We're going to ask for the death penalty in both these cases." His fat finger punctuated his statement, bouncing off Ben's chest. "Better get you a better lawyer than Mears. I'll have him for lunch."

            His temper simmering just below the boiling point, Ben grasped the pointing finger and held it tight in his grip. As he spoke to the district attorney, he kept his voice low and his eyes narrowed on the corpulent young man in a dirty gray suit with a trace of mustard on his tie. "My sons are innocent, Henderson. If your investigators do their job to the very best of their abilities, there will be no need for you to make these empty threats against my sons or their legal counsel. And should I catch any hint that the investigators are not turning over every stone looking for evidence, I will personally make sure that you are sanctioned before the Nevada Bar. In short, I will have you for lunch."

            "Are you threatening me?" the man bellowed and the two women at the far end of the room looked up at the sound.

            "Not at all, Mister District Attorney. If I were, I would have broken that finger."

Friday

1:30 P.M.

            The courtroom was crowded despite the facts that outside, snow was beginning to fall. As Ben and Hoss entered, various people turned to watch the two men make their way to the front of the room. There was a knot of business dressed people that Hoss recognized as some of the employees he had seen at Cartwright and Sons Construction over the past few days that he had spent there. Catching his eye primarily was Rosalie and her timid smile warmed his heart. On the other side of the aisle were people that Hoss thought he knew but then decided he didn't; his father did, stopping as they went to say a few words, touch a hand and thank them. As the two men settled into their chairs, Hoss heard his father take a deep breath and hold it for several long heartbeats. When he let it go, it came as a rush.

            "Them folks you work with?" Hoss asked, ashamed that he didn't know the important people that his father associated with.

            "Yes," Ben whispered, "Door guards, secretaries, pages, some of the cafeteria staff, my research assistants. Not a politician among 'em, though. But they are the important people in the long run, I guess."

            "Why don't that surprise me?" the other asked, not expecting an answer.

            Before Ben could answer, a door to one side of the room opened and Turkey Henderson came in, dropping a heavy thick file on the table before he sat down behind it. Turning in his chair, he spotted the two Cartwrights in the front center and glared at them both. In a few moments, John Mears, with another man trailing him, hurried into the room. He also spotted Ben and Hoss but, unlike his opponent, he leaned over the railing to speak to them.

            "I'm sorry, Ben but things are a bit rushed. As you know, this is an arraignment hearing. Bail will be set but I have the distinct feeling that Turkey isn't going to go for that, claiming that they have already run once and have the capacity to do so again. Either way, once this is over, you can see them. I know this will be hard but, please, when they're brought in, don't try to lean over the rail. The bailiff will think you are trying to give them something. Okay?"

            "What else can we say but okay? Are they all right?" Ben asked.

            Mears nodded and started to say something in reply but the bailiff called the court to order and he became all business again.

            As the black robed judge entered, Ben felt his stomach clench tight again. The honorable Herbert T Webster was a straight arrow magistrate if there had ever existed one in the State of Nevada. He tolerated nothing untoward in his courtroom and would, Ben was sure, go by the book. He had the sinking feeling that his sons would not be going home any time soon. As Webster sat down, the bailiff read out a long list of numbers and pronounced it as "the People of the State of Nevada versus Adam Cartwright."

            When the door opened to their left, Ben's heart leapt. Yes, he was rather more disheveled than normal, his dark beard giving him an unkempt appearance along with the wrinkled shirt and jeans. The manacles chained to his waist did not allow him the freedom to even finger comb his hair but all that didn't matter to Ben Cartwright. Adam's dark eyes flashed and his lips half lifted into a tiny smile when he saw his father. With shuffling steps because of the additional leg irons, Adam came to stand beside the lawyer, his shoulders back, his spine ramrod straight.

            The list of charges was read and with each charge, Turkey Henderson seemed to grow more confident until at the end, he was grinning with some wild inner pleasure.

            "How do you plead to the above charges?" the judge asked.

            There was no hesitation. His voice rang out, clear, succinct, firm. "Not guilty!" There was no one in the courtroom that afternoon that didn't hear Adam Cartwright plainly.

            "I am going to assume that the District Attorney has recommendations concerning bail?"

            Turkey Henderson fairly exploded. Point after point he made. Adam had the means to escape financially so that even should he relinquish his passport, there was nothing to keep him from making a dash over the Mexican border where he could live well for the remainder of his days. He had supposedly already tried once and been summarily captured in Idaho while hiding out. Most damaging of all however was the fact that he knew he would be looking at the death penalty.

            "Mister Mears?" the black robed judge said when the DA had finished making his case for holding the prisoner without bail.

            "My client's assets have been frozen, pending a completion of an examination of banking records. He couldn't raise the funds for a pack of gum, much less escape the state unless you think he would walk to California in the snow. And I am sure the next thing Mister Henderson will bring up is that his father would certainly advance him funds to make a getaway. That, your honor, I sincerely doubt, as do you, I am sure. My client has family in the area. As for his previous escape - and I use the term my colleague did even though it doesn't fit the facts - he was taken by force, as we will demonstrate to the court's satisfaction."

            Herb Webster adjusted the collar of his robe and studied not only his notes before him but also the persons presented to him. Everyone could tell when he had made up his mind because he ceased fiddling with his pencil.

            "Taking all of this into consideration, I will grant bail but in the amount of ten million dollars. Cash or bond, Mister Cartwright."

            The murmur went through the room like a flash fire. It was as though suddenly everyone was assessing the value of all of the Cartwright holdings. The Ponderosa Ranch, the construction company, livestock, machinery, everything right down to the silverware and china.

            The greatest impact fell on Ben directly. Yes, the family holdings probably amounted to that much and he would put it all on the block to free Adam from jail. But there would be nothing left to back Joe's bail. Even though John had warned him otherwise, Ben leaned forward over the rail to grab the attorney's attention. The bailiff moved quickly and he was shoved back with a warning glance.

            "The defense asks for an early trial date, your honor." Mears called out over the hubbub.     

            Henderson was snickering and commented "I bet you do!"

            With a rap of his gavel, Judge Webster brought the beginnings of a verbal sparring match to an end, threatening both parties with a little time spent in county facilities to expedite the cooling off. The lawyers both sulked.

            "Let's get on with it!" shouted the judge and again struck his gavel and demanded silence. "Return Mister Cartwright to the holding cells until which time he will either be freed on bail or committed to incarceration awaiting trial."

            He had to do it. Adam turned when the bailiff came towards him. Gone, Ben saw, was the arrogance of moments before. Adam shook his head and the father could see the pleading in his son's eyes. Don't! Not at the expense of my brother. Then his chin lifted and a spark of defiance showed through. I can make it, it said.

            Again, with his head held high, Adam left, the bailiff's hand shaken from his arm as he made his way to the door.

            When the door opened the second time, Ben's heart stopped cold. Manacled and chained the way Adam had been, Joe was shoved into the courtroom. His clothing, while wrinkled and worn like his brother's was also smudged with dirt along one side. There was a deepening bruise on the same jawline. What held his father's attention was the bold defiance Joe displayed and even as the whole room watched, John Mears did his best with his hand gestures to tone down the young man's attitude. While one bailiff had escorted Adam, two held to either side of Joe, hands wrapped biceps while the others rested on their service revolvers.

            Again, the voice called out a docket and case number, this time referring to it as "The People of the State of Nevada versus Joseph Cartwright."

            Standing beside Mears, his associate was clearly uncomfortable, his feet shifting, not knowing what to do with his hands suddenly. As Ben watched from behind the railing, the two bailiffs remained directly behind Joe as he stood next to his defense. As the charges were read, Ben couldn't see any more than the back of his son's head and even at that, the very top, since the bailiffs were in the way.

            "How do you plead?" the judge asked, his voice tired.

            "Not guilty! Why won't any of you -" Joe exploded and again the bailiffs had him held.

            "Please excuse my client. He has had a hard couple of days."

            The court's double doors opened and four men, dressed in a variety of styles, from suits to jeans, entered and went to stand at the rail behind Turkey Henderson. One reached over and pulled at Henderson's jacket tail just before the DA was going to ask for a high bail again. A short conference, spoken in whispers, took place. It irritated the judge.

            "A moment's indulgence please, your honor. Something has come up that pertains to this case," Turkey begged then returned to the whispering men. Ben recognized the one doing the most talking as the young FBI agent he had encountered in Roy Coffee's office.

            As the entire room strained to hear, the whispers continued. A paper was pulled from a file that Hoss saw had the heading of "fax" printed on but could make out nothing else. Turkey took the page and read it then asked another question. This time Walter, with the Polish last name, nodded and pulled another sheet from his file. A second man said something and everyone heard the words "bank audits found nothing." Again the DA asked a question but this time he was growing red in the face as he did. The four men, in response, and as if they were one being, shrugged their shoulders.

            Turkey, his cheeks puffing out and red, turned back to face the judge. "You honor," he huffed then glanced quickly to where Ben and Hoss sat waiting, "Some information pertaining to this case has been brought to my attention by these gentlemen from the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

            An audible wave, very faint but there, washed over the court while Turkey Henderson grew redder in the face. He fiddled with some of the papers before him before he continued. "At this time, you honor, the State of Nevada does not have the necessary evidence to hold Joseph Cartwright for the charges presented this day. We ask that he be released on his own recognizance, pending further investigation into the case."

            The people behind the railing as one cheered. Judge Webster, looking a little put out, slammed his gavel and shouted for order several times before everyone settled down.

            "Are you telling me, Mister District Attorney, that you --no, never mind. I don't want to know. Tell me, sir, in light of this new information, the other young man, what about him?"

            Henderson swallowed hard and wiped the beads of perspiration from his face with the soggy handkerchief. "I was just getting to that, your honor. The same new information brought to me by these men would also apparently have some bearing on that case as well."

            "Enough that I should toss out the charges brought against him the same way I am this young man?" The vexation in the judge's voice was plain to hear. The gallery began to shift and murmur but only a little since they all wanted to see Turkey Henderson's upbraiding.

            The DA looked down at his feet then took a moment to glare across the aisle to where John Mears was bouncing on the balls of his feet. "Um, yes, your honor. Own recognizance because we may need to talk with him as well later on concerning some of the happenings in this case."

            His scowl plain, the judge banged his gavel once then leveled his eye to where the bailiffs were removing Joe's manacles. "Your attorney will explain all this, young man but as for now, you are free to go. Mister Henderson, my chambers, please. Court is adjourned."

            Once free of the chains, Joe launched himself over the railing to his father.

Friday evening

6 P.M.

            The remains of the meal, the dirty plates, the empty glasses, spread across the table. The four men around the table seemed reluctant to leave, as though to leave would be to break the spell the meal had woven. Again and again, they had laughed and not always because something funny had been said. No, it was more relief that made them joyful.

            "Well, I ain't never seen a more hangdog look on your face, Adam, as I did when we walked back into that holding area." Hoss sipped from his mug of coffee again.

            "I could hear the loud noise from the courtroom but I couldn't tell what was happening. And considering the short fuse on our youngest brother here, I was afraid he had taken to fighting with Turkey." Adam pressed his napkin to his lips, hiding his smile but unsuccessfully.

            "I would have too!" Joe boasted.

            Ben's chuckle lasted the longest. When he finally stopped, he leaned forward and holding the arm of his youngest to the table, said, "You never did tell me where you picked up that bruise on your face. Fighting with the authorities is never a good idea. I seem to recall telling you that numerous times."

            A sly grin came to Joe's face and his eyes slid towards his brother at the end of the table. "Yep, you've told me lots of times. Don't fight with the cops."

            Adam cleared his throat. "I believe the word Pa used was authorities, Joe. But in this case, Pa, I don't see any police brutality charges being worthwhile." As he spoke, he once more rubbed his own whiskered jawline, knowing what the beard covered. He wondered how long it took a bruise to fade; he would shave then and not before.

            No sure what was happening, Ben finally stood and suggested that they move into the living room.

            The knock on the front door was answered by Hoss, still holding his coffee. There on the covered porch stood the sheriff, his shoulders coated with snow. A glimpse into the front yard showed that the snow was still falling, covering Roy's silent four-wheel drive vehicle.

            "Thought I'd best come out and tell you all the good news myself. Thank you, Hoss, yes I would love a cup of coffee."

            The hot beverage procured and Roy warming by the fire, he finally began to unroll his reason for coming out on such a miserable night.

            "Seems it all hinged back on a plane that you and Joe stole, Adam." Ben's brows rose questioningly. Adam only replied that he would tell them later and Joe snorted. "One of the ladies you met up in Idaho, a Linda Baines, went out, found the plane and copied down the call numbers written on the tail. Said she had to dig it out of the snow. That don't make sense but anyway she reported the plane's being there to the FAA. Seems the plane belonged to a man in Virginia. Gave the owner's address there and they sent someone down to talk to him. They found stuff in the plane too and traced it back to a mailbox in Winnemuca, Nevada. Same man."

            Confused looks circled the room but Roy continued. To an uninformed individual, it would have been heard as rambling but Roy Coffee never rambled. He might take a while coming to his point, but he would get there.

            "'Bout this time, them folks in Atlanta along with the Georgia police, figured out who had hacked into their computer website. Tracked it all backwards, I don't know how since I don't use the fool things much myself but, lo and behold, guess where it went to?"

            "Up to Winnemuca," Adam said. He sat his cup down on the stonework and hunched forward.

            "Yep. Well, you know the Post Office has to have a physical address to go with a post office box so the FBI went lookin'. I guess they got their hands full of computer equipment, and telephones and all that sort of such since that was all that was in the house. Except that all of them lines and such went back to Virginia."

            "It was a blind, wasn't it?" asked Joe, but Roy claimed he didn't understand what a blind was and let it drop.

            "So by now the FBI is really interested. Seems that Walter fella is a puzzle wizard. He started putting things together that his other boys were bringing him. Like the bank auditor. You were right, Hoss. That million dollars was never there and was never sent to the Caribbean. A clerk at the bank is being held on fraud charges over that. The tape from Homeland Security and the FAA finally came through and while the man buying that plane ticket was as tall as Adam and, I would guess, dressed like he was like you, he might pass from afar but up close, he turned out to be a small time hoodlum. He is currently squealing like a stuck pig for the benefit of anyone who cares to listen. And you wanna guess whose name he first said? Yep, the fella in Virginia."

            "Sounds to me like a one-man conspiracy, Roy. Have they arrested him?" Ben asked, fear again nibbling at his stomach.

            "Yep, and you want to know what they found in his computer? You weren't the only politician going to be used, Ben, but you were going to be the first. Seems this fella had an axe to grind with the Citizens for Repeal of the Death Penalty, that group in Atlanta Georgia. He was set to pull the same stunts in Vermont, Maryland, even Alaska. Anywhere the death penalty was getting ready to be examined by the state legislature. The Fed-boys said they've got enough to put him away for the next two hundred years. So you boys are safe."

            "What about Taylor? Any track on who pulled the trigger on him?" softly, Adam asked. He'd heard a little about what was suspected but without proof, without reasons--.

            Roy looked at his hands a long while before he answered. "I talked with Jimmy's wife. We were pretty much right. He sold himself, so that his family would be taken care of. As it stands right now, the only ones who know the truth about what happened are Jennette, his wife, and us here in this room. Officially, the case will never be closed as we are going to say that he was murdered by person or persons unknown. You will be exonerated, Adam, because of our little loudmouth in the slammer said clearly that you were incapacitated when the shooting occurred. The Lab boys can prove without a doubt that the tape was doctored. You can call it a cover-up if you want, but we are going to give Jimmy just what he was looking for: a hero's death."

            "And Mandy?" Roy heard the shaking in Joe's whisper.

            "She was a victim of happenstance. Thanks to what you told a gent by the name of Johanssen in the jail in Idaho, we're pretty sure that someone was following you, Joe. When you went to her house, they caught the pizza delivery guy, told them they were part of the party going on in her apartment, paid for the pizza and the rest is history. I'm sorry, Joe."

            "How did they know to do to her what they did? I mean about the baby and all?" In the stillness of the room, Hoss' words were loud and brash even though they were soft. Across from him, he could see the pain in Joe's face, his eyes.

            "Same way I did," Roy confessed. "I saw what you and she were putting together, Joe. At first I thought that it might be for a baby shower or the like but then I figured no. Too big to wrap, to move so it had to be hers. In her mail the next day was a letter from a soldier over in Iraq. Said he was glad he met her and would like to see her again when he came home. We contacted him and he said that yes, he could have been the baby's father since the time was about right. And he was mighty sorry Mandy had never written and told him. I'm sorry, Joe. Mandy was a sweet girl."

Monday

Early afternoon

            Joe stood beside the newly dug grave, the flowers from last week's funeral mostly snow-covered but all dying in the bitter cold wind. He hunched deeper into his winter coat but the cold that chased him was inside him. With a gloved hand, he rubbed the marble stone and again read her name aloud. "Amanda Lydia Roberts. In all the years I knew you, girl, I never knew your middle name." The pain of her loss welled in his chest and he couldn't think straight.

            As his son stood there, Ben came up behind him softly, the new snow muffling his footsteps. Since Joe's silent breakfast, he knew, with the instinct of a parent, where his son was going and had followed discreetly. Now, watching, he approached.

            "She was a nice young woman, Joseph."

            He turned at the sound of his father's voice and quickly dashed a hand across his eyes, trying to hide the tears forming. "That wasn't what you said about her when I was dating her."

            "In the end, she was. I know that she was well loved by everyone in the office and Adam had her pegged for a promotion. And…" he paused for a little then went on, "she was your friend. A good friend. One that you thought enough of to go and help her put together a baby crib. You've always been a good judge of people, Joseph, and you thought highly of Mandy."

            Ben's steps had finally brought him to the side of his son. Together they stood silent, Ben pulling his son to his side under an outstretched arm.

            "You know that she wanted to raise the baby by herself." Ben grunted so Joe continued. "I was gonna talk her out of it. I had it in my head that before the night was out, I was gonna ask her to marry me just so the baby would have a father. Knowin' Mandy, though, she'd have turned me down. The people who did this, will they get the death penalty, Pa?"

            "I don't know," Ben answered honestly. "Do you want them to die for what they did?"

            Joe bowed his head and when he looked back up, he didn't bother trying to hide the tears from his father. "For killing Mandy and her baby just because they got in the way, I don't know. Because they took away her dream, maybe. But then maybe the best punishment would be keeping them locked away from all their friends and family for the rest of their lives. Maybe that would be better, I don't know. Nothing will bring Mandy back."

Later in the week

8 P.M.

            "Let me have a beer Cosmo, will ya?" Adam smacked the bar between where his two brothers sat drinking. Seeing the glowing black cloud that passed for Adam's expression, Hoss moved down a place.

            As Adam took his place and his beer, he clutched the back of his little brother's neck in his grasp. "You and I need to have a talk, young man," he hissed and, for all the world, it sounded like the beginnings of a really good tussle to Hoss, so he leaned towards them to listen.

            Joe, on the opposite side, shrugged his brother's hand off and laughed loud enough that other patrons in the Bucket of Blood turned to see what was funny. A bold smirk on young Cartwright's face wasn't anything exciting so they went back to their drinks.

            "What did you do, lil brother?" Hoss asked, a picture of innocence himself. He'd been in the offices of Cartwright and Son Construction earlier in the week and caught a bit of the talk.

            "Because I decided to take a few days off, to recuperate from my ordeal, he spreads a malicious rumor," Adam declared, sipped his beer then carefully sat the mug back on the bar in the same wet ring it had left before.

            "Now, Joseph!" spouted Hoss, having more than a little trouble keeping a straight face. "Why would you do a thing like that? After all you and Adam have been through? Would have thought the bonding experience - that's what them fancy doctors on the radio call it, ain't it? A bonding experience?"

            "Bonding? He runs the plane out of gas and flips it over landing it. Of course, he is the only one with a seatbelt. I get bounced around like a ping-pong ball. Then he nearly gets us caught when he decides to play ET and to call home! Next thing I know and I am having to dance the night away with the Geritol Generation to make us some cash to rent a room. Does he stop there? No!" Joe paused after dragging the last word out for four syllables and had a long swig of his beer. "Then he takes all the hot water and tells me I would make a good wife for someone named Bubba."

            Hoss was having trouble staying on his stool but it wasn't necessarily because of what Joe was saying because he had heard the full version of the adventure. No, it had more to do with the steely expression Adam was having trouble maintaining on his face.

            "Bubba. You know, Adam, I really wanted to thank you for setting me up like that. He tells the cops that I am violent so they put me in the same cell with this guy who makes you and Turkey look like midgets."

            "I told them you were violent, hoping they would put you in a solitary cell. So that maybe you wouldn't meet a real pervert." Adam's explanation was ignored by both brothers; Hoss because he thought it was all funny and Joe because he was on a roll with his own version.

            "Well, this Bubba turns out to be a really nice guy. Only problem was that he kept reading religious tracts to me all night when all I wanted to do was sleep. But, because older brother here has told this to the cops, they manhandle me, manacles and leg irons -"

            "I had them on too!"

            "- and two burly cops, one on either side. Hell, I couldn't have tripped on those chains since they were holding me up."

            "But you tripped anyway," the elder brother pointed out, again picking up his beer.

            "Great, yeah! The cops think I am trying to make a break for it, so what do they do? You know, Hoss, I never played football except in gym, but I know what you felt like every Friday when the game was over. I quit counting when I hit four guys piled on top of me."

            "Well, come on now, Adam," snorted Hoss, also preparing to take a long swallow of his drink. "What did Joe do to you that was as bad as all that?"

"He told Lisa.  You know Lisa Benning, Hoss? The horse faced blonde in Accounting? She is also the biggest gossip monger in the whole office. You know she has the nerve to even have a little saying on her cubicle wall about spreading rumors? Well, Junior here, " a stiff thumb flicked in smug Joe's direction, "tells Lisa that I am taking a few days off because I have had a boil on my ass lanced and drained."

            Hoss had to hang onto the bar to keep from falling off his barstool. On the other side of Adam, Joe was also having difficulty and was doing the same. Adam sat stone-faced, looking straight ahead.

            "I'll bet it made the rounds in record time," Hoss finally wheezed out then went back to laughing. "Is that why Rosalie put that pillow in your chair?"

            "It isn't that funny."

            Wiping the tears from his eyes, Hoss allowed that it was. He finished his beer then said he was heading home and advised his miscreant brother that if he wanted to ride home with him, he'd better get to the truck. With a nudge to his oldest brother's shoulder and a smile half a mile wide, Joe left.

            "Cosmo," the remaining Cartwright called out after the other two had left. "You still got that Volkswagen Beetle for sale? Joe's gonna need a new vehicle to drive since they wrecked his Jeep and that might just be what he needs. No, doesn't matter if the clutch needs work. You did mention in your ad that the heater didn't work, as I recall. The fenders? You put some on it? Good. No, it doesn't matter that they don't match colorwise. I'll have a check ready for you first thing in the morning if you want to drive it down to the office."

            Feeling much better about himself, Adam swallowed the last of his beer and got up to leave, pulling his coat around him to ward off the cold of the street.

            "Park right next to my car when you get there, just not too close. That's Joe's parking place and I want to make sure everyone knows about his new car. Thanks. See you tomorrow."

            As he cranked the engine of his Jaguar, his cell phone rang and by rote, he answered it.

            "Oh yeah, hi, Lester!" he greeted his caller as he smiled and checked the mirrors. "I called because I want to continue with those flying lessons." He shoved the gearshift forward and nosed the car out onto the snowy street. "Tell me, when do I learn how to land?"

Finis

The Tahoe Ladies

November 2003 to February 2004