Category: What Happened Next/Later
Episode inspired stories.
Lies (by A-P)
Summary: WHN for The Truckee Strip and an extension of a Pinecone. It’s the anniversary of Amy’s death and Joe can’t live with the grief.
Rating K+ Word Count: 1,053
The Best Proof of Love (by McFair_58)
Summary: This piece is a WHN and WHB for season thirteen’s ‘Bushwhacked!’. Even as a child I was troubled by Joe’s fever dream image of his beloved brother Hoss pulling out a pistol and shooting him. I have read a lot of fan fiction’s based on Bushwhacked and though a few have tackled the issue, none have to my satisfaction.
This is my idea of how and why Joe might have thought his big brother was trying to kill him.
Rated PG-13 for angst, some violence, and vile characters
Word count: 13,660
You’ve Got a Friend (by Annie K Cowgirl)
Summary: After the scandal surrounding his fiancee’s death, Clem Foster isn’t sure if he has anymore friends left in Virginia City. So he’s determined to do the one thing he feels he can: leave town and never come back.
Rated: T Word Count: 995
Love For A Moment (by JC)
Summary: Love comes unexpectedly to Hoss Cartwright, leaving a bittersweet memory. A poem inspired by “The Newcomers” (Season One) written by Thomas Thompson. (Written for the World Poetry Day 2018 Challenge)
Rating: G (550 words)
I Met a Friend of Yours Today (by Annie K Cowgirl)
Summary: When Joe Cartwright drags Candy over to the doctor’s office after a bar fight, he bumps into one of Hoss’ old friends.
Rated: K+ for brief mentions of violence Word Count: 1,189
The Falling Out (by MissJudy)
Summary: The Cartwright family should have returned to normal after Señor and Delores Tenino left for Mexico, but it hasn’t. Hoss, Adam and Joe have been surly and avoiding one another since the lovely young woman left, and Ben can’t understand what’s driving it. He senses that what had started as a competition to win the young lady’s heart, had left some unexpected wounds behind. When circumstances and harsh words fracture his family even more, Ben decides he must force his sons to take stock of what they’re about to lose, in the one way he thinks will work. A What Happened Later story, for Ponderosa Matador.
Rating: K Word Count: 22,960
Never Quote Me the Odds (by McFair_58)
Summary: Ben Cartwright had thought the worst thing that could happen was that his son, Hoss, was shot in back by mistake. But like the other time Hoss was shot – by Red Twilight – Little Joe was in danger too. His brother could be dying and Joe is nowhere in sight. What’s going on?
Rated PG – references to drunkeness
Word Count – 4406
Lesson of Family (by Lizabeth)
Summary: A lesson of family, learned earlier, comes full circle.
Rating: T (for mention of off-screen violence) word count= 2835
The Darker Angels of Our Nature (by McFair_58)
Summary: An angel. A messenger. Sent to bring news, sometimes good, often bad. Which was this, the one who gazed at me? Had she come to reward or punish me? To return me to my family or cut me down as I deserved? Forgive me, Adam, Pa. Mama, forgive your little Joseph. If only, I had known….
Rated PG-13 for brutality and violence, minor torture, and some uncomfortable language. Story contains words in use by some people in the South during the 1860s such as ‘dusky’, ‘bright’, and so on when referring to African Americans.
Word count: 71,074
A Howl in the Night (by Annie K Cowgirl)
Summary: A WHN/WHIB for the episode My Brother’s Keeper. Joe finds himself lost and alone in a forest, but is he really as alone as he thinks he is?
Rating: T – (1,300 words)
Trust and Tight Spaces (by PSW)
Summary: WHIB/WHN for The Silence at Stillwater; or, a wrongful arrest and its aftermath, as told by the reluctant arrestee.
Rating: K+ Word Count: 17,757
Reflections (by Hart4Ben)
Summary: A series of episode based reflections and life lessons by the Cartwrights.
Rating: T Word Count: 5923
Something About Amy (by JC)
Summary: Tennyson said, “It’s better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” What would Joe Cartwright say? (WHI/WHN for The Truckee Strip and part of the Ties That Bind AU series)
Rating K+ (1782 words)
Ties That Bind Series, links to stories within the series are included.
The Burden Of The Oath (by Hart4Ben)
Summary: Hoss struggles with how to help Doc Martin in the aftermath of the epidemic and Julia’s Bulette’s death. A WHN for The Julia Bulette Story.
Rating: K+ Word Count: 1493
More Than a Memory (by JC)
Summary: Adam re-assesses his life in the aftermath of his broken engagement to Laura Dayton. (WHB and WHN for “Triangle”, written for the 2017 Ponderosa Paddlewheel Poker Tournament)
Rating: T Word Count: 4,221
More than a Memory Series, links to all stories included within.