Summary:  Adam receives the best birthday gift ever … from a very unlikely giver.  

Rated: K (4,090 words)

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.

 

 

The Tattletale’s Birthday

“Psst! Little Joe! Hey, Little Joe!”

 Little Joe Cartwright jumped a little, turning toward the sound of a whisper that was anything but quiet.

 It was his brother Hoss, beckoning to him from the doorway of the stable. Hoss was grinning and flapping his hand, motioning for his younger brother to join him.

Joe was only too happy to drop what he was doing and trot over to investigate. He had been working for nearly three hours now, ever since breakfast, and his neck and shoulders were stiff from having huddled over the strips of harness that he had been trying to repair. It was difficult to say which had been harder for the little boy: The work in untangling the harness straps, or sitting still for so long.

Hoss grabbed Little Joe’s arm as soon as he was within reach, yanking him inside and slamming the door. The sound echoed across the yard.

“I don’t want Adam or Pa to see me,” Hoss explained, chuckling.

“Yeah, that ’splains why you’re being so quiet and all,” Joe said sarcastically, but his curiosity got the best of him and he didn’t pursue teasing Hoss, who was usually about as quiet as a coop full of chickens with a fox in the doorway. “What’s up?”

Hoss still had a fistful of his brother’s sleeve and effortlessly pulled Joe across the stable, into an empty stall. Hoss was 12, six years older than his brother, but he was as large for his age as Joe was small for his.

Peeking over the wall to be sure no spies had sneaked into the stable, Hoss reached under a pile of hay, pulled out a heavy burlap sack and thrust his hand into the sack.

“I made ’em for Adam’s birthday,” he said proudly. “Whaddya think?”

Little Joe took the wooden figures from his brother and examined them in the dim light. Hoss had carved two horses from heavy walnut. No, they weren’t horses, after all: One had wings, the other had a long horn coming from its forehead.

“A Pegasus and a unicorn?” Little Joe said, turning the pieces over in his hands, admiring the skill with which his big brother had created them.

“Uh-huh,” Hoss said. “They’re on bases, see? They’re bookends. I figgered they’d go real good with that set o’ books Pa got for Adam’s birthday. Do ya think he’ll like ’em?”

Little Joe made a face and held the figures out for Hoss to return to their hiding place.

“If you wanted Adam to like ’em, you shoulda carved a mean ol’ grizzly bear insteada these things,” Little Joe grumbled. “Or a bobcat. Somethin’ always lurkin’ around, ready to bite your head off. Just like Adam.”

Hoss frowned and carefully wrapped the carved figures in their burlap bag, then tucked it back under the hay. Joe watched, pouting.

“What’s got your goat?” Hoss finally said, and that’s all the encouragement Little Joe needed to explode.

“I guess you haven’t noticed me out there slavin’ away on those harnesses all day,” he cried. “I guess Adam don’t have nothin’ better to do than to follow me around and tattle to Pa ever’ step I take.”

Hoss chuckled. “Well, Little Joe, the idea of you takin’ all those harness straps and hookin’ up those dogs to a sled … well, you got to admit. It weren’t such a good idea.”

Little Joe crossed his arms and scowled up at his big brother. “I just need bigger dogs, that’s all,” he muttered. “Patch just ain’t big enough, and them other hounds, well, when they caught scent of that coyote, it just messed things up. But you just wait. I’ll train ’em. You’ll see.”

Good-natured Hoss just grinned and nodded. “Well, anyway, you did make a mess outta them harness straps. You’re lucky Pa didn’t take one of ’em across your backside afore he set you to untanglin’ ’em an’ getting’ ’em straightened out.”

Little Joe was not in a mood to look on the bright side. “It’s all Adam’s fault. He’s the one that told me about them dog sleds they use up where it’s cold and snowy all the time. Made it sound real exciting. But instead of being glad somebody listened to his tale, he acts like I broke some kinda law. If he hadn’t’a told Pa …. ”

His smile faded as Hoss replied seriously, “If he hadn’t’a seen you and them crazy dogs about to run off that bluff, Little Joe, we’d been done scraped up what was left of you off them rocks and you wouldn’t’a had to worry about fixin’ no straps, that’s fer sure.”

Joe frowned and scuffed the dirt floor with the toe of his boot. He would not admit to anyone how his exhilaration had turned to terror as the dogs, out of control, had plunged toward the bluff. With the dogs barking and Joe’s frantic screaming, Joe had not heard the hoofbeats as Adam had thundered up and leaped out of the saddle before his horse even stopped. Adam had snatched Joe off the sled just as the dogs had reached the very edge of the bluff. The sled had crashed over the edge, smashing the wood into splinters, and only Adam’s strong hand on the leather straps had kept the dogs from being pulled over the bluff as well.

“Well, what about last week?” Little Joe continued, frowning even more deeply. “I skip school one day – one day! – and you’d think it was the end of the world. If Adam thought it was a pretty enough day to come by that fishing hole, why wouldn’t he understand that I felt the same way?”

“Aw, come on, Little Joe,” Hoss complained. “You know Pa don’t want us skippin’ school. It ain’t like you ain’t been warned about that before. It’s not Adam’s fault. If you hadn’t been doin’ it, you wouldn’t’a got into trouble.”

Little Joe knew he was being unreasonable, but he didn’t care. Still sulking, he glared at Hoss. “If Adam didn’t have to run and tell every little thing I do, then I wouldn’t always be in trouble,” he insisted.

Hoss just shook his head and tried to change the subject. “What are you gonna give Adam for his birthday, anyway?” he asked, but his younger brother just snorted.

“I’d like to give him what he gave me: A hard way to go!” he grumbled, then added grudgingly, “I dunno. Why don’t you let me paint your bookends and let that be from both of us? I could paint ’em up to look like pintos, real pretty.”

Hoss just laughed. “Pegasus an’ unicorns ain’t pintos,” he chuckled. “I reckon you better find your own idea. But you better hurry. You’re runnin’ out of time. We’re havin’ the cake after supper tonight. Chocolate, too. Mmmmm…. ”

Little Joe just sniffed and said airily, “I prob’ly ain’t gonna give Adam nothin’ this year. He wouldn’t want nothin’ from me anyway. And I don’t want nothin’ from him. Except just to be left alone. I’ll be glad when he leaves to go back East and go to school. Hope he finds some Yankee to tattle on.”

He glared up at Hoss, his smoky green eyes smoldering, lip thrust out in defiance.

Hoss wasn’t smiling now. He looked at his younger brother for a moment, his blue eyes narrowed. When he spoke, his voice was quiet; Little Joe had to lean forward to hear him.

“I reckon you need to think about what you’re saying, baby brother,” Hoss said, and without another word, he brushed past Little Joe and walked away.

Little Joe opened his mouth to yell, “I ain’t a baby!” – but the words caught in his throat and he didn’t make a sound. He watched Hoss bang the stable door open and stalk toward the house.

“I don’t care,” Joe muttered.

But he did care. Hoss almost never took Adam’s side against his, and this unexpected turn of events puzzled him and upset him more than he would have cared to admit.

“I don’t care,” he said again, stubbornly, and kicked a pile of hay to prove it. His father’s horse, in the next stall, lifted his long nose over the wall to see what all the commotion was about. Little Joe glared at the horse, who seemed to be reproaching his childish behavior, and stomped away. He dared not look toward Paint, his own pony, fearful that he, too, had turned against him and would be looking at him with disappointed eyes – as had Hoss.

Little Joe returned to the pile of tangled leather straps and groaned. He’d been working forever and still had a long way to go. He picked up a buckle and tried to thread it back into place, but it would not slide smoothly into position. It hadn’t been nearly so difficult nor taken half as much time to dismantle the harnesses; why was it such a headache putting them back together?

He worked for another two hours, fuming the entire time. He would not give Adam a birthday gift. Adam would look at him expectantly, and Little Joe would put his bossy big brother right into his place. “Don’t look to me for a gift,” he would say. “You got all your kicks out of tattling and seeing me in trouble every day for the past two months. That’s all the gift you’re getting.”

That would show him, Little Joe thought, pleased with himself and his plan. Adam would know then – everyone would know – that Little Joe wasn’t a little kid who could be bossed around and tattled on, and take it sitting down. No, he was nearly grown, almost seven years old, and he could stand up for himself. If Adam didn’t like it, too bad.

Adam had always treated him like a baby, Little Joe reflected, picking up the last piece of leather.

“And I’m tired of it,” he mumbled to himself. Why couldn’t Adam treat him the same way he treated Hoss? Adam never picked on Hoss, but seemed to go out of his way to get his youngest brother in trouble.

Little Joe mentally ticked off the many transgressions Adam had tattled on in just the past couple of weeks.

The dog sled, with Joe’s dog Patch leading a team of hound dogs hitched up to a sled Little Joe had painstakingly made out of lumber Pa had intended to use in repairing the corral fence – that is, before Little Joe’s adventurous ride had left the wood in splinters and the harness in knots.

That beautiful day just last week, way too pretty to spend cooped up in school, with the fish in the pond practically calling his name, just wanting to be caught.

The broken dishes. The torn pair of pants. The spilled paint. The new boots he’d accidentally dropped into the well. The adjustment – he wouldn’t call it cheating – during the checkers game. The shelf he’d propped up, hoping nobody would notice it had been broken. Was it Joe’s fault the stupid shelf hadn’t been strong enough to hold one small boy who had to climb the lower shelves to reach the higher?

Whatever the transgression, Adam always managed to show up.

“Know all, see all, tell all,” Little Joe muttered. He stood up and began collecting the pieces of harness, groaning a little over the stiffness in his back.

He carried the harnesses into the stable and hung them carefully on their pegs. He made sure to do it correctly. He knew that if even one strap were crooked, Adam would be sure to come snooping around and would make sure Pa knew about it. Pa always took Adam’s side, too, Little Joe thought darkly. First Pa, and now Hoss. It just wasn’t fair.

It wasn’t fair that he’d had to miss lunch, either. But Pa had been mad. Once Adam had finished his narration of Little Joe’s latest adventure, Pa had hardly given Little Joe a chance to say a word before he’d sentenced him to the day’s labor of restoring the harness straps to their original condition. “And don’t stop until it’s finished,” Pa had thundered.

Little Joe’s tummy rumbled and he pressed both hands against his stomach, wondering if Hop Sing would give him a sandwich to tide him over until supper. Unless, of course, Adam had turned Hop Sing against him too.

Little Joe decided it might be safer to sneak into the kitchen and find his own sandwich, rather than risk asking and being rejected. He opened the front door slowly and carefully stepped inside, avoiding the floorboard that he knew to be creaky – having been caught during a previous transgression, betrayed by its sound – and started inching toward the kitchen.

He heard voices coming from his father’s study, paused and listened. It was Pa and Adam. Good. So they were safely out of the way, Little Joe thought.

He wasn’t interested in anything Adam might have to say – surely even Adam had run out of things to tattle about by now – but Little Joe couldn’t help but overhear the conversation.

Ben was speaking in somber tones as he said, “Well, Adam, if that’s your decision. But are you sure? This is something you’ve talked about for a long time.”

Adam’s voice was also serious. It always was, Little Joe reflected. “Pa, I think it’s best. There’s so much to do here. The Ponderosa is growing. With the timber and the herds, there’s more to oversee than you can do alone. Hoss is growing up but Little Joe is still so young. Maybe in a few years.”

There was silence for a few minutes. Little Joe, easing toward the kitchen, rolled his eyes and pressed his lips together tightly to keep from hollering a retort to Adam’s remark about his youth. Then Ben spoke again.

“Adam, I’ve always depended on your assistance. Perhaps too much. You have proven yourself time and again to be a man of careful deliberation. I’ve come to respect your advice and your opinions. But – son – won’t you reconsider? Going back East to continue your education is a worthy goal. It’s a goal you deserve to pursue. I don’t want you to look back in years to come and regret this decision.”

Adam’s voice was firm when he replied, “I’ve thought about it, Pa. My place is here. At least – at least, for now.”

Little Joe stopped, just short of the kitchen. Had he really heard Adam’s voice waver at the end?

But he discarded such a thought almost immediately. So Adam wasn’t going to go back East after all? And all because he thought Little Joe was a baby who needed someone to look after him?

Little Joe stood still, blood boiling. Why, he ought to march right into that office and tell Adam what he thought of him and his babysitting. He almost yelled, “Go ahead and go back East, and leave me alone!”

But he knew Pa would be furious, and Adam would suggest that this additional transgression would surely require more long hours of penance, and Joe had had quite enough of working toward redemption.

Joe was standing next to the dining room table, which suddenly reminded him of something he’d nearly forgotten. Now that he thought of it, Little Joe realized that Adam had not said a word about Little Joe’s feeding Patch under the dinner table. Little Joe knew Adam had seen him slipping turnips to his small dog – Hop Sing was a great cook, but nobody could salvage turnips – but Adam had merely reached for another biscuit, winked at him – and said nothing.

Adam didn’t like turnips either, but Little Joe had nevertheless expected to find his own solution to the turnip situation trumpeted to the world, and was surprised that Adam was silent.

Nor had Adam told Pa about catching Little Joe outside after bedtime a couple of weeks ago. It had been a beautiful night, with a full moon. The coyotes up in the hills had just begged for someone to come outside and see the stars, and Little Joe had been all too happy to oblige. The tree outside his bedroom window had finally grown a branch tall enough and strong enough to support the weight of a little boy who had finally grown tall enough and strong enough to hoist himself onto the roof from that branch. The roof at night had proven to be a wonderful perch from which to see things that looked so different than they did during the daylight hours.

He had been so enthralled by the sights and sounds of the night that he had failed to notice Adam coming up the road. Adam had been to Virginia City to take care of some business for their father, and the transactions had taken longer than he’d expected. But Ben never worried when Adam was late; he merely left a lantern burning on the porch and went to bed, secure that his oldest son would be home as soon as he could.

This particular night, Adam had arrived home to see his younger brother stretched out on the roof of the porch, his white nightshirt fairly shining in the moonlight. Adam had climbed up onto the hitching post, then hoisted himself onto the roof next to Little Joe, who stared at him in surprise as Adam merely motioned for his brother to scoot over.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Adam had murmured, reclining next to Little Joe.

Little Joe had mumbled some kind of reply, then finally, suspiciously, settled back onto the roof next to Adam.

Adam shifted his shoulders to find a more comfortable position among the shingles, then pointed up at the sky.

“Do you see those stars there, right in a row? That’s Orion’s belt. Orion is ‘The Hunter.’ If you follow those other stars, you’ll see his dog, Sirius; see, there, the North Star?”

Little Joe had followed his brother’s finger and nodded. Yes, he saw it.

Adam and Little Joe had lain on the roof for quite a while. Adam’s voice was quiet so as not to alert anyone in the house, and he directed Little Joe’s attention to one constellation after another, and told the stories that had been told centuries ago, when man had first observed the heavenly figures in the sky and imagined their stories.

Adam’s voice was gentle and soothing… and then Little Joe realized that his brother was gently shaking his shoulder and coaxing him awake. Little Joe had fallen asleep to his brother’s words of legend and mythology, and had cuddled against Adam’s warmth in the cool of the night.

Adam had guided his brother’s bare feet back onto the tree limb – he had whispered, “Wear your boots next time, boy” – and had leaned over the edge of the roof, holding Little Joe’s hand until he had stepped safely over the windowsill and into his bedroom. Then Adam had leaped from the roof to the ground in front of the porch, as lightly as a cat, put away his horse and gone to bed.

The next day, Little Joe had wondered if it had been a dream, but during breakfast, Adam had seen him yawning – and winked at him.

But he had not told Pa about finding Little Joe on the roof.

Now, sandwich forgotten, Little Joe retraced his steps and slipped out the front door again. He had a lot to think about. He was uncharacteristically quiet for the rest of the afternoon as he went about his chores, reflecting on his own thoughts and feelings.

Later, when Hop Sing rang the supper bell, Hoss hurried over to Little Joe as they washed their hands.

“You, uh, you all right?” Hoss whispered.

Little Joe nodded and combed his unruly brown curls back with damp fingers, but his eyes were without their usual sparkle. Usually chatty, he said nothing as he followed Hoss to the dining room table.

Hop Sing had prepared all of Adam’s favorite foods for supper in honor of Adam’s birthday. Little Joe almost grinned when he realized this meant he wouldn’t have to risk getting caught feeding turnips to Patch.

When the meal was over, Pa, looking pleased but somehow subdued, left the room and then returned carrying a box that was obviously heavy.

Adam opened it and gave a little cry of delight at what he found inside: A set of leather-bound books.

Adam read the titles aloud: “Pilgrim’s Progress,” “The Odyssey,” the complete words of Tennyson, Shakespeare ….

Little Joe wrinkled his nose and hoped Pa wouldn’t give him a similar gift when his own birthday came around.

Hoss stood now and retrieved his burlap sack from its hiding place in the corner, almost dancing with glee as he hurried around the table toward Adam.

Adam grinned at the Pegasus and the unicorn and pronounced them perfect replicas of the real creatures.

“I’ll treasure these, Hoss,” Adam said sincerely, and Hoss, blushing, hurried back to his chair.

Adam fingered the unicorn’s delicate horn, then opened the cover of one of his books.

Pa and Hoss, however, were staring at Little Joe, who had never felt more uncomfortable in his life.

Finally, Little Joe cleared his throat and stood up.

“Um, Adam,” he said.

Adam looked up. His brown eyes were kind. “Yes, little brother?” he said, and his voice was also gentle.

Little Joe shoved his hands in his pockets. “I have a gift for you, too,” he said at last.

He could feel himself beginning to sweat. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. He could feel his jack knife in his pocket. Maybe he could just give that to Adam and pretend it had been his gift all along.

Little Joe stared at his boots, then glanced up at Adam. Adam was sitting quietly, patiently. There was a slight smile playing about his lips and he seemed, somehow, to be giving encouragement to his younger – and obviously nervous – brother.

“My gift is me,” Little Joe finally blurted. “I know you want to go back East to go to school and you won’t do it because you think I’m too young to get along without you. Well, I – I’m not. I’ve been thinking about it, and, well, I want you to go.”

Adam lifted an eyebrow in surprise and pursed his lips; Little Joe realized what he had said and hurried to explain.

“I mean, I don’t want you to go away, I just mean I want you to go to school,” Joe said quickly. He didn’t dare glance at his father or at Hoss, but plunged ahead, eyes locked almost pleadingly on Adam’s. “I’ll do my chores and mind what Pa says and I won’t play hooky. And I won’t try to ride a dogsled no more. Any more. And I’ll eat my turnips and I won’t stay up past my bedtime and I won’t sneak Patch up into my bedroom at night and I – ”

Little Joe ran out of breath and stopped talking, panting, staring at his big brother.

Adam was smiling at him, really smiling, and then Little Joe was running toward his brother, flinging his arms around his neck.

Adam stroked Little Joe’s hair. Little Joe buried his face in his brother’s neck, embarrassed to look up now because everyone would see that he was crying.

Adam had to know it; hot tears were running down his neck. But when Adam spoke, he didn’t tell anyone that Little Joe was crying.

He whispered, so that only Little Joe could hear him.

“When I look at the stars in Boston, they will be the same stars you see shining over the Ponderosa,” Adam said softly. “I’ll always remember this gift, Joe, for the rest of my life. Thank you for a wonderful birthday gift, the best gift anyone ever gave me.”

Little Joe nodded and turned his head a little, wiping his snotty nose on his brother’s shirt. Adam laughed and hugged his brother even more tightly.

And he didn’t tattle, then or ever.

The End