The Rogue's Company, Part Fifteen

by J. Rosemary Moss

Genre: Fan Fiction (Bonanza)
Rating: PG

Link to Part One

~

I don’t know what excuse Joe gave his father, but he managed to remain more-or-less housebound for the next three days. We had to choose our times carefully—Hop Sing was lurking about—but we strung quite a few hours of practice together.

Joe was something of a natural when it came to taking apart the lock to his father’s safe and learning how it worked. But he had no patience for the initial cracking of it. He became frustrated too quickly. But he would have to learn, wouldn't he? The lock to the Maris safe wouldn't just fall into his hands.

I shook my head at him. “Sir, you’ve got to wait for it. The tumblers will speak to you if you just give them a chance.”

He rolled his eyes. “They’ll speak to me? They’re not alive, Shea.”

I grinned at him. “Aren’t they? Just give them you’re undivided attention and coax them the way you would a frightened filly.”

“What kind of filly?” he asked as his eyes suddenly danced with laughter. “A girl or a horse?”

“Either,” I said, winking at him.

He grinned back at me and shook his head. “Adam’s going to have the devil of a time keeping you on the straight and narrow,” he commented. “If you love cracking safes the way most fellows love girls and horses…” he shrugged and let his words trail off.

I gave that serious consideration. “I’d rather coax a girl than a safe,” I decided at last, winking again, “but it’s a near thing!”

Joe laughed outright at that and slapped my shoulder. “Like I said—older brother’s going to have the devil of a time with you.”

‘Older brother’ must have had the same thought himself. He stayed up late that night, reading in that beat-up old arm chair he keeps in his room. I felt his eyes on me as I sat by the fire mending one of his shirts.

“Sir?” I said, looking up and cocking my head at him.

He gave me an easy smile. “I was just wondering what you meant to do with your tools,” he said.

I had to force myself not to stiffen at that. Hadn’t Joe and I taken every precaution? We’d fiddled with the safe plenty, but I was careful to put it back to rights. It was no worse off now than when I first broke into it. Adam couldn’t possibly tell that we’d been tampering with it.

“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping my voice casual.

“Well, you won’t need them often,” he explained, closing his book as he regarded me. “We only have so many clocks, after all.”

I forced myself to smile. “Aye, sir. And you only have one safe--and I've already cracked it. And I won't touch the new one when it arrives, I swear it. So the tools can’t do much harm, can they?”

“True,” he owned, “but—well, Shea, you’ve told me that you didn’t care about the money when you were cracking safes. You were after the challenge, not the cash.”

I shrugged. “That’s true. But I’ve promised you, sir, that I won’t break the law or go after the Maris safe.”

“I know,” he said. “I just—” he broke off to sigh. “I just don’t want you to be so eager for a challenge that you forget that promise. And I don’t want you to talk yourself into thinking that you’d be doing us a favor by cracking the Maris safe. Would you mind placing your tools in my care?”

Joe would need the tools, so that was unthinkable. But even if that weren’t the case, I wouldn’t dream of parting with them. I needed them close at hand. Even if I never cracked another safe, I wanted them near me.

I forced myself to look Adam straight in the eye. If I couldn’t do that much, he’d start to suspect something.

“I won’t forget my promise, sir,” I managed. “You needn’t hold my tools hostage.”

Strictly speaking, that was true, wasn’t it? I wasn’t planning on breaking my promise. I wasn’t going near the Maris safe, after all. And teaching Joe how combination locks work wasn’t breaking the law—what could be illegal about that?

Adam was still regarding me steadily, as if he were trying to make up his mind. I forced myself to grin at him, hoping to set him at ease.

“Sir, those tools are all I have left from O’Brady—the old clockmaker, I mean. I’d like to keep them.”

He sighed again. “All right,” he said at length. “But how would you feel about leaving them in here?”

I thought about that. I already kept quite a few items in Adam’s room—I spent most of my time there, after all. So why not leave my tools there as well?

But I understood Adam’s motive. If I left the Ponderosa on my day off, he’d feel obliged to check up on me. But he’d hate to invade my cramped quarters in order to see if I had taken my tools along. It would go against the grain with him. Better to have them in plain sight in his room.

Keeping them in his room would be an inconvenience, but I couldn’t think of a reason to refuse his request. It was fairly reasonable, wasn't it? “I don’t mind leaving them here, sir,” I said with a shrug.

He relaxed a little. “Thank you,” he said.

I shrugged again and went back to mending his shirt. He, in turn, went back to his book. But at length I stole a glance at him. It was tempting to confess the whole to him—but I couldn’t betray Joe that way. Damn.

Besides, I reminded myself, this was all in a good cause. We needed a look into that safe. In the long run, I was performing a fine service for my master...it would just take him some time to appreciate it.