It’s A Bonanza-Ful Life
A Bonanza adaptation of the Frank Capra film
Ben Cartwright had never seen a bleaker Christmas Eve. Oh, there had been barer ones, certainly, especially in the early years. When he and his young son Adam, with infant Hoss in tow, had first settled this land, Christmas treasures had been sparse, but through the years the Ponderosa had prospered, and by the time the youngest boy Joseph came along, none of the Christmases could rightly be called bare. This Christmas was no exception in that regard: gifts aplenty would be piled beneath the majestic evergreen set in the alcove by the stairs—if they got around to setting one up, that is. What did a Christmas rich in gifts mean, though, when there would be no one to open them, when in place of the love they had shared was only silence and regret? Only guilt and one tormenting thought: it’s all my fault.
It had been a year fraught with problems, many of them weather-related. Spring floods had not only done damage to anything in their path, but had swept through so persistently that the grass had been slow to sprout. Ben and his boys had been forced to purchase hay from California to feed the cattle ‘til the pastures were ready for grazing and would face the same problem throughout the winter, since the shortened growing season also meant a meager hay harvest that autumn.
As if that weren’t enough, winter had come early, blanketing even the lower fields with deeper-than-usual snow. The Cartwrights had, of necessity, let their timber crews take an early hiatus, and the decreased production meant that they’d been unable to bid for a couple of contracts with the local mines that Ben had been counting on to make up for losses elsewhere. To add to the punch below the profit line, they’d lost substantially more cattle to winter kill than usual, and while the horse-raising side of the ranch had produced a modest profit, the Ponderosa had also been underbid for a large contract to supply army remounts.
The ranch was in no danger of going under. Profits from previous years had been sizeable enough to support the Cartwrights through one lean year. Still, it rankled Ben’s frugal New England soul to see the negative balance in the ledger books, rankled him enough that he determined to find some way to turn a profit, no matter how many barriers Nature or Circumstance threw in his way. Evenings normally spent in companionable games of checkers or chess revolved, instead, around endless discussions of how to boost that balance back to where Ben thought it belonged. Hoss and Little Joe, and even Adam, who normally relished a mental challenge, were thoroughly sick of the subject their father rehashed with them every night.
Then the McCauber mine fell into their laps. Amos McCauber had showed up at the Ponderosa on the evening of December 18th. “I’m pullin’ up stakes,” he told the Cartwrights plainly, “but I don’t want to leave owin’ any man, so I’m offerin’ this in payment of my debt to you, Ben.”
Ben ignored the roll of paper in the old miner’s gnarled hand. “Don’t want to lose you as a neighbor, Amos. We haven’t had a good year ourselves, but if you need help—”
Amos shook his head with determination. “I don’t. Taken help from you many a time before and ain’t too proud to do it again, but it ain’t money I need. I’ve just reached the point in life where I want a chair by the fire and my grandkids in my lap. My son Marty, over to California, is offerin’ me both, and I aim to take him up on it. Only sorry I took so long to make up my mind. Stagecoach ride sure can be miserable this time of year.” He again extended the deed to Ben. “Wish I had hard cash to pay my debt, but this ain’t no dry hole I’m givin’ you. I’ve seen good color of late. May even be close to hittin’ a bonanza, but this cold spell’s been hard on my creaky old joints and I’m lookin’ to settle in a warmer clime. Like to get to Marty’s place soon as I can, spend Christmas with those grandkids, so I’m hopin’ you’ll take this and call us square.”
Ben smiled as he took the roll of paper. “We’re square, Amos,” he said. “Still hate to lose a good neighbor, but I can understand a man wanting to hold his grandchildren in his lap—not that it seems I’ll ever have that pleasure myself.” He cast a significant glance at his three bachelor sons, who made a point of looking anywhere except back at their father. “Anything we can do to help you pack up?” Ben asked Amos.
“Ain’t takin’ much with me,” Amos replied. “Anything I leave behind in that ole shack, you and the boys are welcome to.” He stayed long enough to drink two cups of hot coffee before heading back into the cold.
Sitting in his oxblood leather armchair after the old man had left, Ben tapped the rolled deed into the palm of his left hand. “I wonder,” he mused.
Adam glanced up from the book he’d been trying, in vain, to read for the last several nights. “Hmm?”
Ben waved the deed toward his oldest son. “I wonder if this just might be the answer we’ve been looking for.”
Hoss, returning from the kitchen after taking in the tray of used coffee cups, scrunched up his nose. “A mine? Pa, you can tell by lookin’ at ole Amos that he ain’t done much more than eke out a livin’ with that mine. Some years, not even that. That’s why he owed you money, ain’t it?” He settled next to Little Joe on the settee.
“I know, but Amos did say he’d seen good color recently, perhaps bonanza color,” Ben argued.
“I don’t like mines,” Little Joe put in, mouth skewing sideways in distaste.
“You’re not overly fond of any kind of work—except horse breaking,” Adam said.
“I do my share!” Joe snapped.
“You do,” Adam agreed readily, “but whether you like a particular type of work or not is hardly germane to the question. What matters, at this stage at least, is whether or not it would be profitable to work the mine.”
“Reckon so,” Hoss admitted reluctantly. “I don’t like workin’ below ground any more than Joe does, but if you and Pa think it’s what we need to do, then that’s what we’ll do—and no complainin’, Shortshanks.”
“Do you think it’s what we need to do?” Joe asked, looking from his father to his eldest brother.
Adam pursed his lips and then slowly nodded. “We need to do something. Working a mine wouldn’t be my first choice, either, but I think it’s worth looking into. We’ll ride up there tomorrow morning, take some samples and see how they assay out. Then we can decide whether the mine will produce enough to merit our efforts.”
“Good.” Ben stood and stretched. “I have a good feeling about this, boys, and I’m glad you’re all behind me.”
Little Joe flicked a sharp glance at Hoss, who shrugged his broad shoulders. Adam noted the skepticism on his brothers’ faces and realized, somewhat ruefully, that he was the only one actually behind Pa in this venture—and even he had his doubts. Pa, however, seemed to view the acquisition of the mine as a gift from heaven, the certain sure cure for all their financial woes and was so blind to any other interpretation that he had barely noticed the conflicting opinions of his younger sons.
***********
The assay report was inconclusive. It revealed a trace of gold and a stronger presence of silver, but not at the levels Ben had hoped for, to give him a quick profit.
“It all depends on how deep the vein goes, whether it widens out or pinches off,” Adam explained after interpreting the report for the rest of his family.
“And there’s no way to know that,” Joe said.
Adam shook his head. “Not without further exploration.”
Ben took a meditative puff on his pipe. “Then we explore further,” he stated.
Little Joe sighed audibly, stifling the sound as his father’s glare fell upon him.
“How much further?” Hoss asked, his distaste for the task plain on his open face.
Adam shrugged. “I don’t know, but that really isn’t the point.” He dropped his hands between his legs and leaned forward, facing his father across the low wooden table before the fireplace. “Pa, a lot of the shoring in that mine is old, some of it rotted. It won’t be safe to work until that’s replaced.”
Ben set the pipe aside. “We’re not going to incur that kind of expense unless we decide definitely to work the mine, especially not with our timber crew already released for the season.”
“I agree. We shouldn’t.”
Little Joe looked up, his expression hopeful for the first time in days. “So we’re gonna let it pass?”
Silence ensued, long and uncomfortable. Joe squirmed as his father stared at him for endless moments and then spoke with a menacingly quiet tone. “Are you not listening, Joseph? I said we’re going to explore further.”
“But, Pa,” Hoss inserted, “if it ain’t safe . . .”
“We’ll just dig in a little further,” Ben explained, “maybe another ten feet. That should give us an idea of whether the vein is worth pursuing. If it is, then we’ll shore it up properly and proceed.”
Adam drew a long breath. “Pa . . . I’m not sure we should.”
“I know we shouldn’t,” Joe declared.
Ben rounded on the boy. “I have heard just about enough out of you, Joseph. You have not had one positive word to say about this project since it came our way.” When he saw that his youngest had been effectively cowed, he turned a hard glance next on his eldest. “You surprise me, however, young man. I thought I could count on you to understand the importance of turning this situation around.”
“I do understand,” Adam said tersely. “I just think there are other concerns even more important. Like lives.” He practically bit out the final two words.
“We’ll be careful, of course,” Ben said. Failing to see the support he hoped for, he squared his shoulders. “Well, if you little boys are afraid, then I’ll make the exploration on my own.”
“Pa!” Hoss protested. “We can’t let you do that.”
“You ain’t gonna do that,” Little Joe insisted adamantly, jumping to his feet. “I don’t like workin’ in a mine, but at least I can.”
“Oh, you don’t think the old man’s up to a day’s work in a mine, is that it, young man?” Ben arched an eyebrow in the direction of his youngest son.
This time, with his father’s safety at stake, Little Joe refused to be cowed. “I think the old man can’t run as fast as a young one . . . if it comes to that.” He folded his arms across his chest and stared unblinking at his father.
“He’s right,” Adam said quietly. “I don’t like this idea, Pa, but if it’s going to be done, we’ll be the ones doing it, not you. No argument.”
A smile quirked at Ben’s lips as he heard words more often used by father to son, rather than the opposite direction. “All right,” he agreed. “I’ll give in to you young whippersnappers on this, and you’ll soon see that while the old man may not run as fast as the young ones, he just might see more clearly, more boldly.”
“Maybe,” Adam conceded with a half smile of his own. “I hope so, Pa.”
“Me, too,” Hoss agreed.
“Yeah,” Joe muttered, like his brothers fearing to say what he really thought, that the hope was a slim one.
**********
All my fault, all my fault . . . Gasping for breath, Ben staggered toward daylight, only to collapse in the arms of another silver-haired man at the entrance to the old McCauber mine. He squinted in the mid-afternoon sunlight and made out the features of the family doctor. “You still here?”
“Not still . . . again,” Paul Martin said brusquely. “You’re the only one ‘still’ here, Ben, the only one who refuses to take a minute’s rest.”
Ben struggled to stand erect. “They’re my sons. Would you leave if they were yours?”
“No,” the doctor admitted, “but it’s been two days, Ben. You can’t keep going without a break. Now, you come with me.”
Ben shook his head. “No, no, not while there’s still a chance.” He turned agonized eyes to his old friend. “There is still a chance, isn’t there? They can survive two days?”
“Yes, there’s a chance,” Paul responded almost perfunctorily, knowing that each passing hour lessened the chance of the three Cartwright sons surviving the cave-in, knowing also that there was an even fainter chance that Ben would survive the deaths of all three. Not when he held himself to blame for what had happened. “You come over here and at least take a breather, Ben,” he ordered. “You’re going to fall over if you don’t.”
Having gone without nourishment and sleep for nearly forty-eight hours, Ben was almost trembling with weakness as the doctor led him to the shade of a nearby tree. “Well, maybe a few minutes,” he conceded as he sank wearily to the ground, “if the others keep working.”
“They will,” Dr. Martin assured him, “and you need to take more than a few minutes, Ben. Half an hour, at least, or so help me, I’ll get some of these men to hold you down while I shoot a sedative into you that’s guaranteed to put you out for hours.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Ben sputtered, his objection feeble despite the energizing anger that surged through him.
“I would,” the doctor stated firmly, “rather than see you kill yourself. It won’t help them, Ben.”
Nothing will. It was the thought Ben had been avoiding for hours, perhaps even days, perhaps from the first moment he’d learned of the cave-in. The wall of rock between him and his boys seemed impenetrably thick, and as far as he knew, there was no other way in—or out. Two days now—a long time to survive without food or water or fresh air, even if they hadn’t been hurt in the collapse . . . and if they had? Ben buried his face in his hands as thunder claps of recrimination reverberated through his aching heart. My fault, all my fault. Should have listened, shouldn’t have forced them to go my way. None of them wanted to do this; all of them just did it to keep me from the risk. Good boys, such fine boys. Deserved a better father. Instead, they get one who leads them to their deaths . . . just as I did their mothers long ago. Better for all of them if I’d never come into their lives.
“Don’t say that.”
Ben looked up and saw a short Chinese man dressed in loose blue shirt and pantaloons. “Hop Sing? I’m sorry; I didn’t realize I’d spoken aloud.”
“You didn’t,” said the man, “and I’m not Hop Sing. He’s back at the house, making sandwiches for the workers.”
“You’re . . . not Hop Sing? Oh, one of his cousins, I suppose. You’re as like as—”
“Not a cousin. No relation. Not even Chinese, except for this assignment.” The man shrugged. “Just a new theory we’re testing, to see if those we serve respond more readily to a familiar face.” He bowed awkwardly from the waist, as if not accustomed to the gesture by culture.
Ben blinked. Definitely not Hop Sing, however much he looked like the family cook. Hop Sing had never constructed a sentence in such flawless English. “Who are you and what do you want?” he asked, frown lines wrinkling his careworn brow.
The apparent Chinaman beamed broadly. “You may call me Sam Sung, AS2.”
The frown lines deepened. “AS2? What’s that?”
The Oriental’s proud smile widened. “Angel Second Class,” he amplified, “and I am here to help you through this hour of need.”
“Then grab a shovel and go to work,” Ben said gruffly.
The other man shook his head from side to side in a manner reminiscent of Hop Sing. “No, not that kind of help,” Sam Sung insisted. “I come to offer spiritual help, guidance, encouragement. I am your guardian angel, Mr. Ben.” He struck what he assumed to be an angelic pose and awaited the awestruck response celestial visitors were supposed to inspire.
Ben rolled his eyes. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised; you look about like the kind of guardian angel I’d get! Sort of been sitting down on the job, haven’t you? But then I guess you can’t do much flying without wings.”
Folding his arms, Sam Sung scowled, for his wingless state was a sore point. “That attitude only reveals how much in need of guidance you are! No wonder the heavens are being bombarded on your behalf this night, such a gloom-monger you are. I have been dispatched by heaven to help you, and if I can, I stand a good chance of earning my wings. So how about it? Can we work together here?”
Ben clambered to his feet. “Look, little man, I’m in the middle of a crisis.”
“I know,” Sam Sung intoned soberly, his visage softening, “a more critical one than you realize. It is your soul at stake this night, Mr. Ben.”
Ben raised his voice. “I’m supposed to be resting, but if you’re going to pester the life out of me, I’d be better off going back to work. My sons need me.” If they’re still alive. He started toward the mine entrance, but halted when the Chinaman firmly grabbed his arm. “You’ve got a surprisingly strong grip for an angel,” Ben grunted. “Let me go.”
“Not ‘til I am certain your thinking is more clear.” With irresistible force he propelled Ben into the surrounding forest of snow-flocked pines. “Better here, I think, away from that which worries you into thinking yourself to blame for all the ills of the world.”
“Not all the world,” Ben muttered. Just my world, their world.
“Their world? Do you speak of your sons this time or your wives again?” the Chinaman queried.
Ben’s brown eyes flared wide. “I know I didn’t speak aloud that time!”
“I read your thoughts in your eyes. You blame yourself for the possible deaths of your sons, just as you have always blamed yourself for the deaths of their mothers.” Sam Sung reached up to lay a compassionate hand on the rancher’s broad shoulder. “It is not so, Mr. Ben; it never was.”
Ben twisted away from the comforting touch. Moving a little further into the forest, he turned, glaring over his shoulder. “No? Elizabeth died bearing the child I gave her; Inger would never have encountered Indians if she hadn’t come west with me; Marie would never have fallen if I hadn’t given her that horse. And now their sons—the precious boys they gave to me—lie gasping for the breath of life, and once again because of my decision—my foolish, self-centered decision.” He leaned his head into massive trunk of the ponderosa pine rising above him. “They’d have all been better off without me in their lives. I wish I’d never been born!”
“Don’t”—Sam Sung hesitated and stood stroking his hairless chin. “Ah, so . . . perhaps . . . yes, that might do it.” He stood as tall as the diminutive form he had assumed for this assignment permitted. “All right, Mr. Ben, you have your wish: you’ve never been born.” Directly above their heads, a large limb broke under its weight of ice and snow and plummeted down. Sam Sung pulled Ben out of the way and stared skyward, arms akimbo. “Well, you don’t have to make all that fuss about it!” he declared. “I think this just might work!”
“Work is exactly what I need to be doing,” Ben sputtered as he brushed blobs of snow from his shoulders. “Working at getting my sons out of that”—tomb, he thought, but refused to voice the thought aloud. Not that his silence seemed to preserve his privacy with this small man . . . angel . . . whatever . . . that trailed him back to the mine.
Ben came out from the trees and stared. For a moment he thought he must have lost his way in the trees, ridiculous as that notion was in a forest he knew so well, but the scene looked different, somehow. Amos McCauber’s old home was still in the same location . . . or at least, some structure was. It wasn’t a shack now, though, but a solid log building, at least twice the size of that tumbledown place. The mine entrance was just where it had been, too, but something didn’t look right. Then it hit Ben forcefully. There were no men in sight, no sounds of digging echoing down the tunnel. “They’ve all left!” he cried and began running toward the mine.
“No, Mr. Ben, you don’t understand,” Sam Sung called, plunging after the frantic father. “There is no one there!”
“I can see that!” Ben shouted. “My friends have all deserted me, but I won’t desert my sons. I’ll get them out if I have to dig them out alone with my bare hands!”
“They’re not there, either!” Sam Sung hollered back.
The loud voices roused someone in the cabin, and a burly, balding man appeared at the front door. “Who goes there?” he demanded. Seeing the small Chinaman headed for the entrance of his mine, he gave chase. “Hey, you there, yeller. What you think you’re doin’?”
Sam Sung spun around. “Mr. Ben go in mine,” he explained, pointing at the entrance. “I try stop him, that all. Sam Sung no want trouble with white man.”
“Well, you’re gonna get trouble—and that man in there, too.” The man strode past Sam Sung with determination. “Hey, you!” he called when he caught sight of the second trespasser.
Ben had come to an abrupt halt, for the differences outside the mine were nothing, compared to the changes within it. Wide tunnels stretched in all directions, all shored solidly with the square sets developed by Philip Deidesheimer for the mines in Virginia City . . . and there was no wall of rock. It didn’t look like the same mine . . . and yet it had to be. At the sound of another voice, he spun around and grasped the man by the shoulders. “Did—did you clear the cave-in? Is that why everyone’s gone?”
The other man frowned in befuddlement. “Cave-in? There’s no cave-in here, nor likely to be.” He slapped one of the uprights. “Solid,” he alleged.
“There’s no . . .” Ben babbled, trying to make sense of sights that made no sense. “Then . . . then where are my sons?”
“Sons? There’s more of you trespassing in here?” the miner demanded. “Christmas Eve’s a strange time to take up claim jumpin’, ain’t it?”
“Claim jumping?” Ben sputtered. “What are you talking about? This is the old McCauber mine, isn’t it?”
The man stroked his stubbly chin. “Well, it was.”
“Yes, yes,” Ben rushed to say. “It was ‘til he left it to me and I foolishly sent my sons in to explore and then it caved in—”
“There ain’t been no cave-in!” the man bellowed. “And this is my mine. Picked it up for back taxes after old man McCauber died.”
Shaken, Ben stumbled backward into another tall upright support. “Amos McCauber . . . dead?”
“Five years ago.”
Ben’s jaw hardened as he reared forward. “Now I know you’re lying. I spoke with Amos within the week, when he gave me the deed to this mine . . . though I wish I’d never seen it.”
The mine owner tightened his fists. “This is my mine, mister, and I’m askin’ you to leave quiet-like. I’ll only ask once, though, and if you don’t, I’ll throw you out on your head. Don’t want to do that, ‘cause ‘pears to me that head of yours is cracked already.”
“You velly smart man,” Sam Sung said, scurrying to Ben’s side and hooking his elbow. “You leave poor cracked Mr. Ben to Sam Sung, all light?” He started to pull Ben from the mine.
“Wait,” Ben protested. “My sons.”
“Where are they?” the mine owner demanded. “I want the whole kit and caboodle of you out of here—now!”
“No sons,” Sam Sung replied, tapping his index finger to his forehead.
“Oh,” the man said, his anger deflating. “Look, just get this loon off my property, will you, yeller?”
“Light away, Mr. Boss Man. Get him out chop-chop.” Sam Sung, again displaying surprising strength, yanked Ben away from the other man and out of the mine.
“What is the matter with you?” Ben cried. “I have to help my sons.”
“Mr. Ben, you have no sons,” Sam Sung said as he continued to drag the tall rancher away from the former McCauber property.
Ben jerked to a stop. “I have . . . no sons?” he croaked. “You mean they’re . . . gone?”
Sam Sung shook his head. “Not gone . . . not dead, Mr. Ben . . . never born.”
“Never born?” Ben looked thoroughly perplexed.
“You wished you were never born,” Sam Sung explained. “I gave you your wish. But a man who has not been born cannot have sons.”
Ire replaced Ben’s perplexity. “That is ridiculous—as, I might add, was your performance back at the mine. Sort of lost your grip on English all of a sudden, didn’t you?”
Sam Sung smiled with self-satisfaction. “Pretty fast thinking, hmm? Have to fit in with the locals, you know, and they expect pidgin English from the Chinese.”
“Well, maybe they wouldn’t expect it from Chinese angels,” Ben grunted.
The smile faded from the Oriental face. “That had better be our little secret, I think. If you tell anyone I’m an angel, they really will think you’re crazy.”
“I don’t care what anyone thinks,” Ben snorted, “as long as I find my sons.” His eyebrows came together. “They weren’t in the mine. Maybe they’ve been rescued . . . maybe they’re home.” His brown eyes brightened.
“Mr. Ben,” Sam Sung restated patiently, “you have no sons.”
“Bah!” Ben stood still, looking in all directions. “Where’s my horse?”
Sam Sung sighed. “You have no horse.”
Ben grabbed him by the front of his blue tunic. “What have you done with my horse?”
“You have no—” The rancher’s grip tightened, but the little angel vanished out of his hands, reappearing a few steps away.
Ben stared at his empty hands and then across the snow at the image of Hop Sing. “How did you do that?”
“By the grace of God,” Sam Sung said with an inscrutable smile. Seeing the rancher’s gaze harden, he added, “All right, all right. Heaven’s gone along so far. Maybe they’ll extend us the added grace of a couple of horses.” His left hand swept toward the trees.
Ben looked that way and saw two horses, saddled and waiting. “Buck and Sport,” he muttered. “What have you done with Chubby and Cochise?”
“Nothing. Oh, and these horses won’t answer to Buck and Sport, either. Those were names given by Ben and Adam Cartwright, neither of whom exists.” Sam Sung patted the buckskin. “This one is Dunny.” He swung into the saddle of the tall roan. “And this is Big Red. Now, where is it you wanted to go?”
“Home,” Ben said as he mounted the remaining horse. “The Ponderosa.”
“Mr. Ben,” the angel said with a sad shake of his unhaloed head, “there is no Ponderosa.”
Having had enough of angelic nonsense, Ben turned the buckskin toward home. He knew where the Ponderosa was, and no angel or man or figment of his imagination was going to keep him from going there and hopefully finding his sons, safe and sound. As he rode, however, he noted a change in the landscape. Where before regal pines had swept up and down the snowy slopes, now barren stumps dotted a water-gutted hillside. Ben stopped, stood tall in his stirrups and gazed at the devastation surrounding him on all sides. The halt gave Sam Sung time to catch up, and Ben rounded on him as soon as the Chinaman reached his side. “What have you done to my land?” he demanded.
Sam Sung, too, gazed with sorrow on the ravaged environment. “It isn’t your land, Mr. Ben. That’s the problem. You were never born, so this land was settled by men who didn’t give your care to it, men like Mr. Potter back at the mine, who care more for profit than conservation. They destroyed the watershed, cutting timber for that mine and others.”
Ben swallowed hard, still not quite believing the explanation, but having no other for the evidence of his own eyes. “The house?” he asked.
Sam Sung shook his head. “Never built. The land there looks just like this.”
Ben slumped in the saddle. “And Amos McCauber? He’s dead, like that man Potter said?”
Sam Sung nodded. “He died five years ago. That was the first time you bailed him out of his financial troubles, remember?”
“I remember,” Ben said.
“But you weren’t there to do it and no one else would. He tried to get across the mountains to his son, but froze to death in an unpredicted blizzard.” Sam Sung blinked back a tear, for heaven took note of all needless deaths.
Ben shook himself. “No. I can’t accept that. Amos is safe in California with his son, and I still need to find mine. Maybe they took them to Virginia City . . . there is still a Virginia City, isn’t there?”
Sam Sung shrugged. “Of course. You had nothing to do with its settlement, but you won’t find the boys there, Ben. They don’t exist.”
“They do!” Ben shouted and took off at a gallop, quickly leaving Sam Sung behind.
***********
Virginia City was in festive swing as Ben rode into town. Evergreen garlands, decked with red ribbons, hung looped from all the second-story balconies; candlelit boughs, drooping with tinsel, glimmered behind frosted windows of private homes; a merry tintinnabulation trickled through the batwing doors of a hundred saloons, where men without families celebrated the season with one another. Ben rode past them all, tying up his horse in front of the sheriff’s office. He burst through the door, crying, “Roy, you’ve got to help me!”
The grizzled sheriff of Storey County rose to his feet. “What’s the trouble, mister?”
Seeing no sign of recognition in the eyes of one of his oldest friends, Ben felt his jaw drop open. “Roy, it’s me—Ben Cartwright.”
Roy Coffee shook his head. “Don’t recollect the name, but the way this place is growin’, that don’t surprise me none. Now, you said you needed help? That’s my job, but you got to tell me what the trouble is.”
“You know the trouble,” Ben scolded, “well, most of it. You know about the cave-in at the old McCauber mine, my sons being trapped inside.”
Alarm flared in the lawman’s eyes, and he reached for his hat, ready to respond to the community crisis. The old McCauber mine wasn’t exactly in his jurisdiction, but Roy Coffee always figured that any place where human life was in danger was his civic responsibility. “Hadn’t heard a word of it. You work for Potter, do you? He sent you with this message?”
“No,” Ben growled.
“Your boys work for Potter?”
“No, they work with me—on our ranch.” He stopped short of naming the ranch. On that point, at least, Sam Sung appeared to have been right: the Ponderosa was no more. That didn’t matter now, though; his sons did.
The sheriff slowly dropped his hat back onto its peg and turned to eye the stranger with suspicion. This report bore investigation before he ran off and left his town undefended. “Then how do you know there’s been a cave-in?”
Ben took a deep breath. “I was there,” he said, determining to stick to simple facts, “and my three sons were trapped inside. Now the cave-in’s been cleared, the mine shored up like it never happened, but my boys are missing.”
“They didn’t find their bodies?” Coffee asked, his sympathy aroused.
“No. I—I hope they’re still alive.”
Roy nodded. He had no children of his own, but easily identified with this distraught father. Of course, the man hoped his sons were still alive. “Are you sure they were in that mine?” he asked.
“Positive!” Ben cried.
“And they didn’t come out—alive or dead?”
“That’s right, and I want you to help me find them.”
“Easy now, easy, mister,” the sheriff soothed. “Let me take down a description. Three boys, you say?”
“Yes,” Ben replied tersely. “Adam, Hoss and Little Joe. You must remember them, Roy.”
“No more than I do you, mister, for all you keep callin’ me by my first name.” The sheriff took out a pencil and paper and sat at his desk. “Three boys. Cartwright, you said the name was?”
Ben took a deep breath. “Yes, Cartwright. For the love of mercy, you’ve known me for years and the boys practically all their lives!”
That remark brought a peculiar look to the sheriff’s eye, but he just wrote down the first name. “Okay, let’s have a description, starting with Adam.”
A dreamy look came over Ben Cartwright’s face. “Adam—he’s the oldest, soon be thirty. Tall, dark hair and hazel eyes, high forehead. Dressed in black shirt and pants. Highly intelligent, a college graduate, studied architecture back East. A bit aloof at times, but a better friend no man could find, dependable no matter what the—”
“Mister, that’s a mite more information than I need,” the sheriff interrupted to say. “Your second boy—Hoss, you said? Unusual name.”
“For an unusual boy,” Ben returned with a fond smile. “Built big as the mountains with a heart larger still, brings home every stray man or beast in the territory and can’t turn his back on any living soul in need.”
Coffee sighed. “Mister, what I need is a physical description. Think you could be a trifle more specific than just ‘big’?”
Ben shook himself. “I’m sorry. Adam is over six feet tall and Hoss taller yet, and he’s a big man in every other dimension, as well. He has straight, sandy hair and eyes as blue as Lake Tahoe. He was wearing brown pants, a light shirt and a leather vest when he went in the mine.”
“All right, that’s better, and the third boy—the youngest, I take it?”
Ben nodded. “Youngest and smallest. Joseph—his friends call him Little Joe—comes to about Hoss’s shoulder, curly hair, bright green eyes that twinkle with mischief, always laughing and smiling, smart as a whip, a bit of a trouble magnet, but a magnetic personality in all the right ways, too. Handsome enough to turn the eye of every woman within view and—”
“Mister,” the sheriff protested.
“I know, I know, too much information,” Ben said, rubbing his aching temple. “It’s just that I miss them so. It’s been two days now, and I’ve been half out of my mind with worry, and—”
“Two days!” Roy Coffee threw down the pencil. “If this cave-in happened two days ago, I’d’ve been told long before now. Two days is long enough for it to show up on the front page of the Enterprise, if it happened! Sounds to me like your youngest came by his penchant for mischief honestly if his old man can spin a wild tale like this—and on Christmas Eve, too! You oughta be ashamed of yourself. Now, get out of my office before you find yourself behind bars for the holiday.”
“This is no wild tale,” Ben protested. “I need your help—to find my sons.”
The sheriff bounded to his feet and pointed toward the door. “Out!”
“It’s your sworn duty to help citizens at times like this!” Ben emphasized his point by pounding his fist on the sheriff’s desk. Then he pointed a long finger in the sheriff’s face. “See if I serve as your campaign manager next year, you miserable excuse for a lawman!”
“That does it,” Roy Coffee growled ominously. He came from behind the desk, but before he could throw his irate visitor out bodily, the door creaked open timidly and a small figure in padded blue cotton shuffled in on soft slippers.
“Excuse, please,” Sam Sung said deferentially, again throwing himself into the role of nineteenth-century Chinese emigrant.
“What do you want, boy?” the sheriff demanded. “I hope you ain’t come to lay more troubles on my doorstep, ‘cause I got me a situation here.”
“Oh, no, honorable sheriff,” the Chinaman assured him, bowing subserviently from the waist. “Sam Sung no bring trouble; he take situation off your hands. Velly good, yes?” He bowed again, this time to the red-faced rancher. “Please to come with me, Mr. Ben.”
“You know this fellow?” Roy inquired, jerking a thumb over his shoulder in Ben’s direction.
“Oh, know him velly well,” Sam Sung proclaimed. “He no make mo’ trouble for honorable sheriff, Sam Sung promise. I take him home.”
“I don’t have a home, remember?” Ben sputtered. “The Ponderosa is no more.”
“Please, Mr. Ben,” the almond-eyed angel implored urgently. “Is best we leave—now.” He took Ben by the arm and headed toward the door.
Roy moved to block their path. “Nobody’s going anywhere ‘til I get me some answers.” Since the one calling himself Ben Cartwright wasn’t making much sense, the sheriff turned toward the Chinese man. “This fellow says there’s been a cave-in at the Potter mine. You know anything about that?”
“No cave-in. Mr. Ben just a little mixed up, is all.” Sam Sung tittered nervously.
Coffee folded his arms across his chest and eyed the pair with severity. “I guess he’s mixed up about having three sons trapped in there, too, huh?”
Almond skin blanching to pasty beige, Sam Sung gave a sick nod. “No sons there; no sons anywhere. He a little—”
“Mixed up,” the sheriff finished flatly.
“For the love of mercy, I am not mixed up,” Ben shouted, “though it’s a wonder, with this imposter switching from English proper enough to have come from my college-graduate son to this mangled up mess of good grammar and back again at the blink of an eye.”
The Chinaman sniffed loudly. “Sam Sung try best he can talk like good ‘Melican. Is hard when new to country.”
“You’re doin’ just fine,” the sheriff consoled. “Good as any Celestial I’ve ever met.”
Ben laughed wildly. “What you don’t realize, my fine badge-toting friend, is that you’re dealing with a whole different kind of celestial here.” He waved his hand toward the ceiling to indicate Sam Sung’s true origin and added, “He’s not even Chinese!”
Roy Coffee stared at the small man’s golden skin and slanted eyes. “He’s not? Then what is he?”
“No, Mr. Ben!” Sam Sung cried.
Ben laughed again. “He’s afraid you’ll think I’m crazy if I tell you where he’s really from.”
The sheriff slowly licked his lips. “Uh-huh. I was just thinkin’, mister, that it might be a good idea if we walked down and talked to this doctor friend of mine.”
“No,” Sam Sung moaned, hiding his face in his hands.
“Hush up, boy,” the sheriff hissed.
“Dr. Martin?” Ben asked. A smile spread across his face. “That’s good thinking, Roy. If the boys were hurt, they would have been taken to the doctor. Of course! That’s where they’ll be. Should have thought of that myself.”
“Well, you’ve been a little—uh—mixed up, haven’t you?” Roy asked, keeping his voice calm and soothing.
“Yes, yes. It’s been a most confusing night,” Ben admitted.
Roy nodded soberly. “Right. Maybe a little talk with the doc will clear things up.” He took his hat from the peg on the wall and put it on his head. “We’ll just walk down to his office together. My job to look into disappearances like this, you know.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Ben stated with unmasked irritation.
“Right, right. My sworn duty, like you said.” Roy Coffee turned a hard gaze on the Chinese man. “You comin’, boy?” It wasn’t really a question.
Eyes filled with misery, the celestial Celestial bobbed his head and followed the other two men. He had a dreadful premonition about what was about to transpire in the doctor’s office and would have preferred to skip the experience. Guardian angels were never accorded the luxury of jumping ship in the middle of an assignment, however, no matter how difficult their charges seemed determined to be.
Hands thrust into the wide sleeves of his tunic, Sam Sung skittered along behind the larger men, using them for a windbreak against the piercing gusts that blew icy pellets into their uncovered faces. He resolved at that moment to request that his next assignment be some frazzled soul in the Sandwich Islands, but as the sheriff opened the door to the doctor’s office and set the bell above it tinkling, a look of positive delight crossed the Oriental face. “Fantastic!” he cried. Then seeing the way Ben, Sheriff Coffee and Dr. Martin stared at him, he quickly rectified the out-of-character expression. “Uh—I mean, velly good, velly good.” He pointed at the bell above the door. “Ancient Chinese saying: every time bell ring, angel get wings.” He smiled broadly, proud once again of his quick thinking.
Roy Coffee cocked his head, staring at the Chinaman with suspicion. The other fellow had said there was more to the little man than met the eye, and Roy was beginning to think there just might be. “Didn’t know the Chinese went in much for angels,” he said. “Thought ancestor worship was more in your line.”
Sam Sung scrambled for a way out of the pickle he’d just talked himself into. “Oh, no, honorable sheriff. Not this Chinaboy. Sam Sung is velly good Baptist. He believe in angels.”
“Kind of easy when you are one, isn’t it?” Ben scoffed. “That has nothing to do with why we’re here, though. Paul, have you—”
“Hold on a minute,” the sheriff interrupted authoritatively. “You think this Celestial is an angel?”
“Yes, of course,” Ben snapped. “I told you he was a whole different kind of celestial, didn’t I?”
“Sure did,” Roy acknowledged with a knowing nod, “and I think it’s got a whole lot to do with why we’re here.” Turning toward the doctor, he tapped his index finger to his forehead two times.
Paul Martin cupped his chin, one finger stroking his cheek as he assessed the two unfamiliar faces before him. “I see,” he intoned slowly. “And do you think you’re an angel?” he asked the Chinese man.
“Hah! Get out of that one, if you can,” Ben snorted, planting his palms on his hips. “I assume Heaven frowns on outright lying.”
Sam Sung gulped. Heaven did frown on lying—outright or otherwise—but he couldn’t afford to tell the truth, either. Trying to make light of the idea, he looked first over his right shoulder and then his left. “Not see wings,” he chuckled a trifle edgily. “Angels have wings, yes?”
“Not ‘til they earn them!” Ben roared. “You don’t get yours ‘til you help me find my sons, remember?”
Sam Sung shook his head. Finding the sons was not his assignment; helping Ben Cartwright find himself was, and the emissary from heaven decided that assignment would be best served by keeping his mouth shut at this point.
Ben grabbed the doctor by the lapels of his white coat. “Paul—you know me, don’t you, Paul?”
Eyes grave with concern, Paul Martin shook his head. “No, I—”
Ben clutched the coat more frantically. “My sons—Adam, Hoss, Little Joe—Paul, you must remember Joseph, at least. You brought him into this world.”
“I don’t think so,” Dr. Martin said gently. “I think I’d know if I had.”
“This is why I brought this fellow here, Doc,” Roy explained. “Been ravin’ about these lost boys ever since he came to my office, but this other fellow—you know, the angel?” Roy winked. “He says there ain’t no sons, ain’t never been no sons.”
“I have sons!” Ben bellowed. “Three sons—or, at least, I did ‘til he came along and fixed it so I was never born.” He pointed an accusative finger at Sam Sung, who was cringing back against the wall. How on earth could he help Mr. Ben if the man persisted in sounding like a blithering idiot? All hope of earning his wings on this assignment was melting like the snow on the street outside.
“You were never born?” The doctor uttered each word as if it had been a separate sentence. “I see. Well, I think I have just the place for you, a place where you can find the help you need, sir.”
“Just what I was thinking,” Roy said, nodding his agreement, “but it’s gonna be kind of hard to get him all the way to Stockton.”
“Stockton!” Ben roared. “I’m not going to Stockton. Why would I . . .” Suddenly, he recognized the reference to the state mental facility in that California town. “You think I’m crazy.” He struck his head with open palm. “I admit I sound that way, but, no, I’m not. I don’t need to go to Stockton; I need to find my sons. If they’re not here, I need to look elsewhere.” He started toward the door, but Roy Coffee grabbed him on one side and Dr. Martin on the other. “Let me go!” Ben yelled, struggling to break free.
“Here now,” the doctor soothed. “Let us help you, my good man.”
Sam Sung came forward, hands folded together as if in prayer. “Please, honorable sirs, Mr. Ben only little mixed up. Please let Sam Sung take him home and he be all light.”
“I don’t have a home!” Ben cried. “People who weren’t born never build them, remember?”
“My home,” Sam Sung suggested quickly. “I take him my home. Safe there.”
“Your home? You mean heaven?” Ben shook his head. “I’m not ready for that! For now, the thousand square miles of my Ponderosa would be heaven enough for me, so long as my sons were there.”
“Thousand square miles?” Roy asked weakly. “You think you have a ranch of a thousand square miles? I sure never heard of it.”
“That’s because this second class excuse for an angel vanished it!” Ben shouted, pulling against the men holding him.
“You had a ranch of a thousand square miles, but . . . it . . . vanished.” Roy shook his head, apparently finding it hard to believe that even a raving maniac could come up with a story that wild.
“Because he was never born—don’t forget that part.” Paul looked past Ben to Roy. “Let’s get him into the examining room, and I’ll give him a shot of a strong sedative, so you can get him where he needs to be.”
“Not sure I can hold him by myself while you get that ready,” Roy warned. Ben was still struggling against his captors, and for a man who had never been born, he was putting up quite a fight.
Dr. Martin looked back at Sam Sung. “You there, can you help us?”
The Chinaman’s head bobbed frenetically up and down. Help. Yes, he absolutely had to help, though not quite in the way the doctor meant. Having his charge end up in an insane asylum would do absolutely nothing toward his acquisition of wings! He followed the trio into the examining room and took Ben’s arm when the doctor released it and moved across the room to prepare the syringe. Then Sam Sung also released Ben’s arm and, lowering his head, rammed Sheriff Coffee in the stomach, knocking him to the floor. “Run, Mr. Ben!” the angel cried, as he stretched a leg out to trip the doctor.
Ben needed no urging. He turned and barreled through the still-open door to the outer office. The door to the street was shut, but that barrier slowed him only a moment. Then he was free and running down the street before sheriff or doctor could disentangle themselves from the arms and legs Sam Sung flung recklessly to impede their pursuit.
Roy Coffee finally got upright and clasped tight hold on the Oriental. “All right,” he snarled. “Man or angel, you’re going down to my jail, and then I’m gonna track down that crazy man, if it takes ‘til Christmas morning! Come on.” He pulled the smaller man along roughly.
As soon as they reached the street, Sam Sung looked both directions. Mr. Ben was nowhere in sight. Good. He was safe, for the moment, but he was still in need of help. And Sam Sung could not render it from a jail cell! He sent an imploring glance toward heaven and spoke a one-word prayer. “Please?” The answer came swiftly, and to Roy Coffee’s amazement, his prisoner simply disappeared.
*********
The slopes of Sun Mountain were sparsely covered with stunted piñon pine, much of it cut down to feed the fires of Virginia City. The scant vegetation offered little cover to Ben Cartwright as he fled, but the descending blanket of darkness aided his escape. He’d quickly concluded that his best hope of eluding Sheriff Coffee, whom he personally knew to be diligent in the pursuit of either lost boys or lawbreakers, lay in getting outside town—fast. He’d run hard ‘til he reached rough terrain and had finally collapsed, thoroughly winded, behind a man-sized boulder. Drawing his knees up, he laid his throbbing head on the arms folded across them. How had he gotten himself into a bind like this? All he’d done was give in to despair and make one silent wish that he’d never been born. Now no one recognized him and he was running for his life from men he’d counted friends, men he’d counted on for help. He might not be crazy, as Roy and Paul thought, but the world sure seemed to have turned that way.
“Ah, here you are.”
Ben raised his head, scowling as he recognized a familiar face. “I don’t suppose there’s a snowball’s chance that you’re the real Hop Sing this time,” he grunted.
“No, still Sam Sung,” the angel replied. “Besides, there is no real Hop Sing, not anymore.”
Ben staggered to his feet and gripped the man’s shoulders with iron fingers. “What have you done with Hop Sing?”
“Nothing. It’s what you didn’t do.”
Ben threw his hands into the air. “Crazy as it sounds, I’m beginning to believe that I really wasn’t born, but what on earth does that have to do with Hop Sing? I wasn’t his father; he can be born without me.”
Sam Sung nodded, but said sadly, “He can be born, but he cannot live without you, Mr. Ben. Remember how you met?”
“Of course. I was riding home when I overheard sounds of a struggle. Four white miners were beating this little Chinese man, barely half their size.”
“You fought those four men,” Sam Sung reminded Ben. “You saved Hop Sing’s life that night and earned his undying loyalty.”
Ben shrugged off his heroism. “He repaid me many times over.”
“In the life you knew, yes,” the angel continued, “but in this new reality you have chosen—the one in which you were never born—those four men beat Hop Sing to death because you weren’t there to stop them.”
Ben stared at him, aghast. “Hop Sing . . . dead?”
“Many years.” Sam Sung’s expression saddened still more. “And there are others, Ben Cartwright, who lie in lonely graves because you were not there in their hour of need. You see, you really did have a wonderful life.”
For the first time that night Ben seemed to consider the idea. “I can’t complain, I suppose,” he admitted. “It’s been a hard life, full of loss, but . . .” Slowly his head rose. “My wives!” he cried. “If I wasn’t born, I couldn’t have led them into the dangers that took their lives. Are they . . . still alive . . . in this new reality?”
Sam Sung backed away. “Some questions, perhaps, you should not ask.”
Jaw rigid, Ben stalked toward him. “Well, I am asking. They are alive, aren’t they? Alive and well. That’s why you’re hedging the question; you don’t want me to know. But I have a right to know! Now, tell me: my Elizabeth, my Inger, my Marie—did they live?”
Sam Sung swallowed hard. “Each lived beyond the time she would have if she had met you. Each married and bore a son.”
“Hah! I knew it! Then they were better off without me.”
“Not necessarily. Please, Mr. Ben,” the angel pleaded. “Haven’t you seen enough yet to choose life over nonexistence?”
“No,” Ben declared. “Not ‘til I know the world is really better for having me in it, and for me, the world revolves around my wives and my sons. If I spare the lives of those wonderful women and save my sons from a horrible death by not being born, then that’s my choice.” His manner softened. “Could I see them, just once, the loves of my life?”
“You might not like what you would see,” Sam Sung warned.
Ben shook his head in denial. “If you think it would hurt me to see them happy without me, you’re wrong. I’d rejoice in that.” He paused and pleaded again. “Please? Is it possible?”
“I don’t know. Heaven might not approve.”
“Ask!” Ben demanded.
Sam Sung looked heavenward, and after a long pause his gaze returned to the face of Ben Cartwright. “You have been granted a great gift, Mr. Ben, a chance to see the world as it would have been without you. We cannot journey so far in a single night, however, without my transmitting special powers to you, and that, too, Heaven has granted. Come; take my hand and let the journey begin!”
Ben hesitated only a moment before taking the small gold-hued hand in his. Suddenly, he felt himself rising, higher and higher into the air as his stomach plummeted earthward. The ground below rushed past at an alarming speed, and he closed his eyes against the dizziness that assaulted him. He had a sense that they were moving east, back toward the New England town where he had first met Elizabeth Stoddard. When he felt the movement stop and opened his eyes, however, he found himself standing on the deck of a ship in the midst of a turbulent sea, with no land in sight. His legs, long unaccustomed to the roll of the sea, buckled, and he reeled against the railing. Then his muscles seemed to recover the once familiar feeling, and he stood upright, his eyes scanning the line of the ship, which was also remarkably familiar. “It’s The Wanderer!” he cried. Facing the angel, he asked, “But surely Elizabeth isn’t on board.”
“No,” Sam Sung admitted. “Elizabeth is no more, Mr. Ben.”
“But you said . . .”
“That she lived beyond what she would have as your wife,” Sam Sung explained, “but in Elizabeth’s case, it was only a year longer. She married and gave birth to a son and died soon afterward. It was the plan for her life, Mr. Ben, not something you made happen. An internal weakness made her incapable of surviving childbirth, whether your child or that of another man. I warned you that you might not like what you would see.”
“Then why bring me here, if she’s gone?”
Sam Sung sighed. “To see her son, if you insist, but I implore you, Mr. Ben: let me take you home now. Just say you want to live!”
Ben searched the deck with eager eyes. “Adam’s here? Where? Let me see him; let me know he’s well and happy, not trapped in some slow, suffocating death . . . like my boy.”
Sam Sung offered a wry smile. “It’s Milton, not Adam. Named for the poet, the one concession her husband made to her romantic nature.”
Ben coughed out his shock. What had possessed his first love to name her son Milton? Oh, he knew her love of poetry, of course, especially that of John Milton, but how could she? Didn’t she realize the trouble a name like that could cause a boy, from his school days through adulthood?
“Oh, it did,” Sam Sung agreed, again reading Ben’s thoughts, “but she never lived to see the beatings he took in the schoolyard. It made him tougher, though.”
“Made a man of him, strong of purpose, able to defend himself.” Ben nodded in satisfaction. “And he’s here, sailing with his grandfather? A good life, then.”
Sam Sung shook his head. “Abel Stoddard died a broken man.”
“Captain Stoddard . . . gone?” Though he had hoped for a different future for his old captain, Ben realized that Stoddard had been an old man when last he saw him. He would be dead by now, with or without Ben Cartwright in his life. “Yes, he would be . . . but you said broken?” Before the angel could respond, a tall, olive-skinned man with windswept raven hair came on deck. “Adam!” Ben cried.
“Milton,” the angel corrected, “and he can’t see or hear you. We’re nothing more than shadows to him and the others you’ll see.”
“But he looks the same,” Ben whispered in amazement.
Sam Sung smiled. “There are subtle differences, but your sons all took more after their mothers than after you, Mr. Ben.”
“I knew the younger boys did, but I always thought Adam looked like me.”
The angel nodded. “More than Hoss and Little Joe, but as you see, there was much of Elizabeth in him . . . and now in Milton.”
Ben proudly noted the captain’s hat on his son—well, hers, at least. He saw also Milton’s smile of complete self-content and wondered if he himself were the reason that expression had so rarely crossed the face of his Adam. “He looks well . . . fit . . . satisfied with his life,” Ben mused, “though I would have thought he’d choose a scholar’s path.”
“Why? He didn’t in your reality.”
“No, I suppose not.” That his eldest son had chosen to return to the Ponderosa after his college years was one of the joys of Ben’s life. He smiled as he watched this alternate incarnation of Adam stride the deck with forceful confidence and then turned to the angel. “He’s a man among men, a leader. If you’re trying to convince me that this young man would have been better off with me as his father, you’ve failed completely.”
“Then you haven’t seen enough,” Sam Sung said harshly. “Keep watching, Mr. Ben.” He pulled the man back to the railing, as if inviting him to a seat in a theater. Sailors, oblivious to their presence, moved back and forth on the deck as they tended to the normal routines of life at sea.
“Have you checked the condition of the cargo this morning, Thompson?” the captain, the man Ben knew only as Milton, asked his first mate.
“Just going there now, sir,” Thompson said. He touched his forehead in a cursory salute and moved toward the hatch to the hold.
As the first mate threw back the hatch and descended to the deck below, an unbelievable stench, an acrid odor reminiscent of vomit and diarrhea and rotting flesh, arose from the dark depth to assault the nostrils of Ben Cartwright. What on earth? What kind of cargo was Captain Milton, last name unknown, hauling? A dark suspicion surfaced in his mind, but he quickly threw it aside. It wasn’t possible.
Grim-faced, the first mate reappeared after several minutes below and went directly to the captain. “Well?” the captain demanded, dark eyes flashing. “More lost?”
“Five more, sir,” Thompson reported. “The air’s foul down there with their filth, and we’re like to see similar losses every day unless we take action. Much as it goes against the grain, sir, I think we’d better get ‘em all up top and hose down the entire hold.”
Captain Milton exhaled with disgust. “Very well, then. Turn out all hands and see to it.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” Thompson saluted, more crisply this time and began to bellow, “All hands on deck!” When the crew had assembled, he ordered some to move the cargo up from below and others to man the hoses.
Ben watched, appalled, as naked, ebony-skinned men, women and children, chained in groups of three, stumbled out onto the deck. Dark eyes widened at sight of the roiling sea—or, more accurately, at sight of nothing but sea in every direction; women and children screamed in fear; men blazed with indignation and fierce anger. “A slaver?” Ben sputtered, brown eyes snapping in outrage at Sam Sung. “My son would never command a slaver!”
“This isn’t your son,” Sam Sung reminded him sharply.
“Keep your eye on them,” Milton shouted. “Some of them look ready to bolt. Drive them forward and hose them down, as well.” His nose wrinkled in distaste. “The filth of these savages is unendurable.”
“Aye,” the first mate agreed readily, “and costly, too. Cleanin’ ‘em up and gettin’ some fresh air in ‘em should cut our losses, sir.”
“It had better,” Milton snarled, “or I won’t have enough to meet the contract with Rodriguez by the time we reach San Paulo.”
“Could put some salve on them sores,” the mate suggested. “Extra expense, but might be worth it in the end, sir.”
Milton cursed and spat on the deck. “All right, try it, but only on the strongest bucks and best potential breeders. Not worth the expense on the others, especially not the little pickaninnies, so I’ll waste none there, understood?”
“Aye, sir. Understood and in full agreement.” Thompson hurried off to put the economic measures into operation.
“This isn’t possible,” Ben protested. “Adam has always believed in the equality of all men; he could never be party to enslaving men or so heartless as to treat them like—like cattle—no more than a notation in the profit or loss column.”
“This isn’t Adam,” Sam Sung said again.
“I know that!” Ben barked. “But Elizabeth believed just as firmly in the rights of all men to equal treatment and justice, and this is her son.”
Sam Sung laid a consoling hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Elizabeth died before she could pass on her values to her son.”
“But Captain Stoddard . . . he would never . . .” Ben stopped, for suddenly he remembered that there had been a time when, in his despair over never going to sea again, a drunken Abel Stoddard had signed on as captain of a slave ship.
Eyes grave, Sam Sung nodded. “You begin to see, don’t you? Because you were not there to prevent it, Abel Stoddard did sign that contract with Mandible and, without help, could find no way out. He did become captain of a slave ship, and though he earned enough to purchase The Wanderer, for him that first voyage was a living hell, a hell whose flames he could only drown in whiskey and Jamaican rum. He tried to take on other cargoes after that, but his reputation was ruined.”
Ben swept salt water from his face, not all of it put there by the spray of the sea. “That’s what you meant when you said he died a broken man.”
“Yes,” the angel acknowledged sorrowfully. “Unable to face the wretchedness you see on this deck, he drank himself to death. His first mate, however, was able to harden himself and, in fact, came to relish the traffic in human misery . . . although not as much as his son.” He inclined his head toward the new captain of The Wanderer.
“Milton was . . . that man’s son?” Ben asked. “Elizabeth married the captain of a slaver? I can’t believe she would!”
“No, he was just first mate of The Wanderer when they married,” the angel explained. “He was a decent enough man then, and he did love her, though not with the affection she would have received from Ben Cartwright, had he been born. It was the slave trade that changed him, hardened him, even to her, and destroyed the love they once had known. Her grief over that and over her father’s demise contributed to her death when Milton was born.”
“Then she wasn’t happy, even for that one extra year,” Ben concluded with a sigh.
“She wasn’t happy,” Sam Sung confirmed, “and she had no impact on her son’s life. He lived with his paternal grandparents ‘til he was old enough to serve as cabin boy on The Wanderer, which his father inherited, but he spent most of his tender, formative years seeing sights like this every day.” His hand swept toward the bow of the ship, where dark bodies writhed as cold salt water surged onto them from the hoses held by laughing crewmen. “When his father died, he became captain, and he is, as you said earlier, completely satisfied with his life’s work, an active participant in the enslavement of human beings that your Adam would have fought to prevent.”
Ben buried his face in his hands. “No. Dear God, no,” he pleaded.
Sam Sung again placed his palm on Ben’s broad shoulder. “It’s time to go,” he said softly. “We have two more stops to make.”
Ben looked up. “Yes,” he said urgently. “Take me from this pit of hell. Take me to Inger. Surely, her life and that of her son will be better than this.”
“Judge for yourself,” Sam Sung urged, his hand slipping down to grasp that of the man in his charge.
Again Ben felt himself rise into the air, and even though he was prepared this time, the velocity with which they moved through time and space again made his stomach lurch and his senses reel. “Can’t we slow down?” he implored, eyes squeezed shut.
The angel made no response, but soon Ben felt himself descending again, felt his feet touch solid earth once more and breathed a sigh of heartfelt relief. He opened his eyes and smiled in recognition at the scene before him. The Illinois House stood directly across the street, and to his left was the tree in the middle of the dusty road, beneath whose verdant boughs, now stripped bare in winter’s grip, he had proposed to his love, Inger. Instinctively, he turned toward the store where he had met her, and his brow wrinkled, for the sign above it read “McWhorter’s Emporium.” He pointed it out to Sam Sung. “It should say ‘Borgstrom’s Emporium,’” he chided. When the angel only folded his wide-sleeved arms across his chest and stared back at him, Ben felt his face flush, first with embarrassment at his continuing forgetfulness and then in anger at the man whose name Inger’s store now bore. “That scoundrel,” he growled low in his throat. “He took it from her, didn’t he? Tricked Gunnar into selling it, just as before.”
“Of course,” Sam Sung stated flatly. “There was no Ben Cartwright to stop him.”
Ben shrugged. “Well, I couldn’t then, either.”
Sam Sung thrust his index finger at the other man’s chest and added, “And no Ben Cartwright to rescue Inger from the fate that awaited her.”
Ben’s gaze narrowed. “You said she lived, married, had a son.”
“All true,” the angel replied. “Do you want to see her?”
Ben’s eyes brightened. “She’s here?”
Sam Sung nodded. “Where you first met her.”
Ben moaned. “She works for McWhorter?” Poor Inger must have married a man as penniless as he himself had been if she were still working outside the home. Not a pleasant prospect, of course, especially for a homebody like Inger, but money wouldn’t matter, so long as the man loved her. At least, unlike Elizabeth, she was alive . . . and he could see her; all he had to do was walk through that door. “Will she see me or will I be a shadow, like on the ship?”
“A shadow.”
Ben nodded. That was best, he supposed. Since she was married to another man, it wouldn’t be right for him to embrace her and kiss her, as his heart longed to do. No, it would be enough for him to see her sunny smile once more, to see again in her eyes the love that encompassed all of humanity. Licking his suddenly dry lips, he approached the emporium with tentative steps and, turning the handle, entered.
His heart leaped; his breath stopped.
She stood behind the same counter where he’d first seen her, her blonde head bent as she wrapped a loaf of bread in brown paper for a customer huddled inside a frayed gray flannel cape. “Are you sure this is all?” she inquired, concern in each soft Swedish accent.
“It’s—it’s all I can afford,” the other woman sighed. “Thank God we still have our cow, though bread and milk will make a poor Christmas dinner.”
Inger looked as though her heart would break. “And the children? Have you nothing to put in their stockings?”
“No,” replied her customer with a sad shake of her head. She held out a protesting hand when she saw Inger turn toward the jars of candy lining the counter to her left. “I can’t pay for that . . . and you mustn’t.”
“No, you mustn’t,” a loud voice announced as a wheat-haired and blue-eyed giant of a youth strode vigorously from the back room.
“Hoss,” Ben whispered in awe, for the young man was almost a carbon copy of the son he and Inger had sired, except for the fancy suit and shirt.
“No one calls him that,” Sam Sung inserted, “though she did still name the boy after her father.”
“You know Papa wouldn’t approve, Mama,” the young man scolded.
“But it is Christmas Eve, Eric,” Inger pleaded, her alpine eyes shimmering with unshed tears, “a time for giving.”
Eric clapped the lid back on the apothecary jar of peppermint sticks. “It’s never a time for charity. Charity does nothing but take from those who deserve, to squander on those who don’t.”
“I—I must be going,” the customer said. “God bless you for your kindness, Inger, but please don’t quarrel on my account. The last thing I want is to cause you trouble.” She tucked the bread beneath her flannel cape, to keep it warm, and hurried out the door.
“Oh, Eric, they have nothing.” Inger almost sobbed. “Nothing but bread and milk for Christmas dinner and nothing at all for the children, when we have so much. What would it hurt to give them a little candy?”
“It would hurt you, Mama,” Eric said, “when Papa found out. A disobedient wife deserves to be chastened, but I would not like to see him hit you again.”
“He hits her?” Ben glowered. “This miserable excuse of a man makes her work to support him and then he”—Ben stopped, for an unspeakable thought had just crossed his brain. Why would Inger’s husband care if she gave away candy . . . unless . . . he owned the store? “McWhorter?” he croaked. “She married McWhorter? But why? She didn’t care anything about him.”
“McWhorter was most persistent,” Sam Sung explained, leaning on the counter, “and she had few options once Gunnar sold the store out from under her. No Ben Cartwright to carry her off to a new beginning, remember?”
“And he beats her?” Nostrils flaring, Ben clenched his fists. “I’ll kill him!”
Sam Sung snorted. “Hard task for a shadow.” He looked sadly at Inger. “It’s more a case of occasional slapping than brutal beating—at least, so far.”
“Slapping is brutal enough!” Ben cried. “She’s a gentle soul; she should never be touched but in love.”
“No woman should,” Sam Sung agreed. “Even discounting the violence, though, hers has not been a happy marriage . . . nor a happy motherhood.”
Ben’s gaze snapped back to the young man still arguing with his mother. “He’s not as loving as my Hoss, but he seems to care for her,” he said.
“He does,” Sam Sung admitted, “to the extent he’s able to care about anything but money, that is, but he doesn’t have her tender heart. His father saw to that.”
“Mama, I have no more time to argue,” Eric was saying. “It is time for me to work with Papa now.”
Inger grasped his forearm. “You will not tell him?” The importunity in her voice wrenched Ben’s heart. His Inger, begging her own son for protection from her brute of a husband. The sight was unbearable.
Eric frowned in strong rebuke as he pulled free of his mother’s clutching hand. “I will not tattle, Mama,” he promised, his voice harsh, “but you must not foolishly give away our stock in trade. If Papa misses anything, I will not lie to protect you. It is my future you give away, too!”
“Oh, Eric, a handful of candy will not threaten your future,” his mother pleaded, though feebly, for her heart ached too sorely for stronger words. “And God would bless you,” she added almost in a whimper.
“Enough, Mama!” His broad palm struck the countertop, only inches from her slender hand, and she flinched away. “One more word, and I will tell Papa, and you know what will come of that!”
Inger drew back from him, and the young man, face flushed with anger, left abruptly, slamming the door behind him. She peered through the window until he disappeared from sight. Then