by J. Rosemary Moss
Genre: Slash Fan-Fiction (Bonanza)
Rating: PG-13
LINK TO PART ONE
~
David watched Adam get up and begin pacing the room. He wanted to say something encouraging—something that would help Adam to start talking. But he kept quiet instead. It was better to let Adam take all the time he needed to begin his story.
"The first part is simple," Adam said at last. "I was robbed in the desert. Two thieves took my money and my horse and left me to die. I walked until I came across a prospector, working a claim with only a mule to keep him company. His name was Peter Kane. He shared some food and water with me—thereby saving my life."
David nodded but otherwise kept quiet.
"I told Kane that I wanted to catch the thieves,” Adam continued. “He asked me if I meant to kill them. I said I didn't—I said I was content to let the law handle them. I, uh, arrogantly let him know that no matter what those men had done to me, I couldn't be driven to murder."
He paused long enough to flash David a wry smile. "But Kane—Kane recognized my arrogance for what it was. He knew that anyone could be driven to kill, given the proper motivation. And so that’s what he set out to give me—the proper motivation.”
David felt a lurch in his stomach. He stood up and walked over to Adam, but he still kept quiet.
Adam resumed his pacing, walking back and forth from David as he continued. "Kane knew who I was; he'd heard of the Cartwrights. He was offended, I suppose, by the success of the Ponderosa when he had worked one failed claim after another. And he couldn't tolerate my smug pride—my conviction that I'd never be driven to murder. So he struck a bargain with me. If I'd work for him for a few days he would lend me his mule at the end of them."
Adam paused again, as if searching for the right words. “He worked me like a dog. I threw myself into his mine, giving him both my engineering expertise and my hard labor. But when I went to leave with the mule, Kane shot the poor animal dead.”
Adam looked David in the eye before continuing once more. “That’s when the nightmare began.”
David listened as Adam told the rest of the story in a detached monotone. Adam’s distant tone of voice almost made it sound as if he was relating someone else’s nightmare—as if he didn’t even know the man that Kane tortured.
And that’s what it was—torture. Kane kept Adam at gunpoint and forced him to take the place of the dead mule. He subjected Adam to humiliating punishments. He drove Adam harder and harder inside the mine while cutting his rations. So Adam ended up half starved and near worked to death in the blistering heat of the desert.
David swallowed hard as Adam described his wasted attempt to escape. Afterwards Kane had kept his gun on him as he forced Adam to begin binding himself—and then Kane finished the job for him.
David would have guessed what else happened even if Adam hadn’t brought himself to say it. Kane wanted to humiliate Adam, to make Adam see himself as a degraded animal easily capable of murder. A monster like that—with a starving, exhausted man at his mercy—wouldn’t hesitate to add rape to his other crimes.
But Adam did manage to describe the ordeal. Again, his voice was so detached that it sounded as if he were describing someone else’s degradation.
Adam didn’t linger over the description of the assault. He went on to tell David how Kane had known all along that his mine was worthless—Kane’s latest in a long string of failures.
Apparently that madman had been determined to die in the desert—he had simply decided to rob Adam of his cocksure arrogance along the way.
But a surge of blind rage enabled Adam to nearly strangle Kane. He stopped only because Kane taunted him, crowing that he had won by proving that Adam was just as murderous as the rest of the human race.
“I didn’t really recover from that blind rage,” Adam concluded. “Not until my family found me dragging Kane’s body behind me.”
David still said nothing. He merely put his arm around Adam and stood at his side.
“They know very little of what happened between me and Kane,” Adam managed. “My family, I mean. And I don’t intend to tell them. They would pour compassion on me and I—I couldn’t stand that. I couldn’t stand having them see me as a victim.”
David turned slightly so that he was facing Adam and gripped him by the shoulders. “They wouldn’t see a victim,” he said, speaking up at last. “They’d see a survivor.”
Adam gave him a small, wry smile. “Thank you for that,” he said softly. “But this stays between you and me.”
David nodded. “I know.” Then he sighed as he released his hold on Adam. “Do you know how distant you sound from those events? You don’t have to be so bloody stoic about it.”
Adam looked him in the eye. “I broke down once over what happened. Like I told you, I sobbed in my father’s arms. But I won’t ever break down over that again.”
He paused to lean forward and kiss David lightly on the lips. “Let’s get ready for tonight,” he said.
And that, David knew, signaled the end of the conversation. There would be no point in pushing Adam any further on it, so he decided to hold his peace—at least for now.
LINK TO PART SIXTY-TWO
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