Hoss struggled to see in the failing light.He’d already lit just about every lamp downstairs, but the night was going to be a long one. There wasn’t much to be done about it. He’d have to do his best. He’d already taken care of everything he could think of, but it had done little good. He needed to bring in the ice from storage before it got too dark.The Williams were good neighbors. He’d surely appreciated their effort that afternoon, bringing in a fresh supply from the icehouse in town and loading it into the Ponderosa’s cellar. Hoss had stayed clear of them. He wasn’t showing any symptoms, but there was no use in taking unnecessary chances. Instead, he’d tipped his hat to them and made sure that they saw it. “Mighty obliged,” he’d said and they’d nodded.

No other words were called for. After all, what could anyone say that was going to make any kind of a difference, given the circumstances?

He’d set himself back to chopping off pieces from the new block of ice and carrying it into the house in a laundry basin. His back ached from the effort, but it was no matter. He’d been born with a strong back and powerful arms made for just this kind of hard labor. Carefully brushing away the sawdust that the ice had been stored in, he added the ice chips to the three washbasins of water he had prepared earlier. 

One at a time, he told himself, one at a time. It’s what he’d been reminding himself for the past couple days. Otherwise he didn’t think he could bear it. He’d never get through another hour of it, let alone day after day of nothing but the same. 

As had become his habit, Hoss decided to start with Adam. He’d been the first to get sick, and although desperately ill, the fever seemed to be running its course with him. Adam stood the best chance of getting better. 

Although Hoss would never admit it, he was partially following Doc Martin’s heartbreaking advice. He didn’t think he would ever forget the doctor’s drawn face as he walked out the front door. It was a terrible time to leave, but there was no choice. The man had patients in every direction, all just as sick as the Cartwrights. He’d already checked the three men out and confirmed what Hoss already knew. All three had the fever, and there was little that medical science could do about it. The same infection had already felled folks all around the territory. Hoss would have to make do on his own. Then the doc had given Hoss his chilling advice. 

“Now son,” Doc Martin said quietly. “This isn’t easy for me to say. You need to focus your efforts on whoever seems the least sick. You might not be able to save all of them, but you have a chance of saving one.”

“What are you saying, Doctor?” Hoss asked, his voice thick with disbelief. “Are you saying I need to choose which of my family is going to live?”

“No,” Doc Martin snapped. He was tired too. It had been days and days of tending to young men and women in the prime of life and having to tell orphans that they now faced the world all alone. The bodies had piled up behind the graveyard so quickly that the rector had been forced to bury them all at once, for decency’s sake. 

The doctor had continued, “I’m not telling you to choose who lives, any more than I could choose such a thing. God is the only one who can make that sort of decision. All I am saying is this fever is the worst killer I’ve come across. I haven’t seen anything like it. Young, old… it doesn’t seem to make much difference. To me, Adam looked like he had the best chance. He might not make it, but he’s breathing easier than your father or Little Joe. I’d suggest you work the hardest to pull him through it.”

“I’m going to take care of all of them,” Hoss said huskily. “I ain’t letting nothing happen to none of them. There’s got to be a reason I ain’t sick yet. I’m still healthy enough, I can do it.”

“Hoss, do what you can,” The doctor braced him on the shoulder, gently this time, and then he was gone.

So Hoss had done what he could. There was little to be done but the usual. He gathered goldenseal and garlic to fight off the infection, used cold compresses to try to keep the fever down, and forced a tea of yarrow and elder flower into each of them to help sweat it out. None of the old remedies had helped much. But Hoss didn’t stop trying. He’d always been considered the easy-tempered member of the family, but this fever had made him mad. It stirred up the fight in him, and he’d never been one to turn tail in the middle of a brawl. 

Carefully keeping the ice water level, Hoss struggled to carry the basin up the stairs. His arms were straining with the effort of it; even his legendary stamina was reaching its limits. It wouldn’t do to have any of it splash onto the stairs. He wouldn’t be able to chop more ice until the morning, and besides, he needed to get back to laundering all the soiled cloths and blankets. He’d been piling them up on the back porch for a good part of the day, and he’d have to do some wash that night to have them ready to hang dry for the next day. 

Hoss had never so empathized with Hop Sing and the back-breaking work the man did every day. During selfish moments, he wished that their cook had come home early from San Francisco. With his heart and soul, he longed for the man’s encyclopedic knowledge of every plant and herb that grew around the ranch. Hoss had racked his brain to remember what Hop Sing had told him over the years. He knew that some herbs worked better for fever, others for combating coughing and bronchial infection, but he could hardly remember which did what. Truth be told, the ailing members of his family had been trading symptoms at a terrifying speed. He could hardly remember who was suffering with what, or who needed what, at any given time.

But he missed Hop Sing. All the same, he was grateful that their faithful servant was away from the ranch. Having Hop Sing at home would likely mean one more patient that Doc Martin couldn’t do a thing for. One more good man facing death on a beautiful summer day. Besides, Hoss would have gladly spared Hop Sing the miseries of the past few days. He’d have spared himself, if there had been any choice open to him. Of course, there hadn’t been any, and he’d do what was needed. Folks had always praised him for his strength, and he wasn’t about to let this crisis be any different.

Still cradling the water, Hoss pushed open the door to Adam’s bedroom with his shoulder. The air was thick with the smell of sickness and his attempts to clean it. He could hardly see across the shadows from the moon rising outside, but he found his way to the sideboard and lit the lamp. He was almost afraid to look at the bed to see what had changed while he’d been gone. The room was too quiet. Adam’s breathing no longer rattled, and his coughing had eased over the past hour. He found his way to the bed and felt for the rise and fall of his oldest brother’s chest. 

Alive. The single word washed over him with all its implications. Every hour any of them survived was time that was hard won, and he didn’t take a single moment for granted. He had always been the one who had easiest time accepting things, both the good and the bad. How his big brother was still holding on, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t about to turn down any mercies granted them, no matter how slight or fleeting. 

Adam had been the first to fall sick. It hadn’t taken long for everything to fall headlong along with him. Hoss couldn’t remember what day it was anymore, but he would always remember the afternoon that Adam had come home feeling peculiar. The warmth of the summer afternoon had been mild and pleasant, and Hoss had been looking forward to the weekend. The Lawson’s annual dance had been cancelled, due to the fever, but Becca Mae had been letting him know that it would be fine with her if he came to call…

…and then Adam had come back from the corral. He’d felt peculiar all day, he said, but attributed it to the heavy workload. Maybe it’s old age, he said, winking at the three of them. At first, he complained of a driving headache, troublesome, but hardly cause for alarm, under normal circumstances. However, things were far from normal. Virginia City had been hit hard for weeks by a fever so violent that it left as many dead as alive. Entire families had been hit by it, parents just as likely to succumb as infants. The mining camps along the Comstock had been hotbeds of the infection, with miners often living three to a tent. Entire settlements had been decimated. After a time, the city council passed a resolution forbidding all miners to come into town at all. Saloons, the Feed and Grain, and churches had shuttered their doors. Spitting and coughing were soon forbidden in public places. The bodies were piling up, quicker than anyone could bury them. Doc Martin, still the only doctor in town, had wearied himself to the bone, riding his rig night and day across the territory.

And Adam had a headache. They all helped him up the stairs to bed, and it didn’t take long for things to fall apart from there.. He told them that he was cold. Almost before Ben could bring him a blanket, the fever rushed over him like a maelstrom, taking over his body in violent waves of sweats and chills. The coughing started by nightfall even before Joe returned with the doctor. A few hours after the doctor had left them, Ben, who had been holding his oldest son’s hand, started to cough. Hoss and Joe had exchanged looks, each knowing what the other wasn’t about to say. By the time they returned from preparing their father’s bed for him, Ben Cartwright was staring at them with glazed and feverish eyes. He practically had to be dragged away from Adam’s bedside.

Little Joe helped Hoss chopping the ice and bringing it upstairs. For hours, they worked side by side. Neither spoke much to the other. Hoss worried about Joe’s quietness. The boy was only seventeen and usually needed to talk through his fears. Between the two of them, they had enough fears to fill a hayloft, but they were each tamping down on them. There was nothing to be done about fear, anyway. Talking would have to come, when it was all over.

They were carrying a basin of steaming water to help relieve Adam’s tortured breathing, when Joe complained about a pain in his legs and back.

Hoss told him, “Rest awhile, Short Shanks. You’re just tuckered out from all this carrying.”

Hoss’ concern hardly had time to bloom into outright worry. He frowned when his little brother didn’t protest being told to rest but instead sat himself down on Pa’s blue chair. Immediately, Hoss set the basin on the table and made his way over. Joe didn’t push away from his brother’s hand, but leaned into it and closed his eyes. Hoss didn’t need the doctor for a diagnosis. He’d felt it, the fever, rising hot and virulent against the palm of his hand.

He helped his little brother up the stairs, laying him down on his bed and removing his boots as gently as he knew how. By then, the coughing had already started, first dry and hacking. Hoss stood back from the bed, wiping sweat off his own non-fevered brow. He heard Adam moaning down the hall and his pa’s coughing echoing from the adjoining room. Joe was already breathing like a man drowning from inside out. It was all happening so fast, and Hoss felt himself drowning in his own desperation. He looked wildly around the room, as if something or someone would miraculously appear and tell him what to do next.

He was alone.

He made his way down the stairs and ran out into the yard, hollering for someone, anyone at all to come out and help him. James Calhoun, a young man of not more than twenty, walked out of the stable, wiping his hands on his trousers.

“Get the doc!” Hoss shouted,, ignoring the startled look on the cowhand’s face. “Tell him they’re sick, all of them, and tell him to get back here as quick as he can!”

“Yes sir, Mr. Cartwright,” James said and started back towards the stable.

“James,” Hoss said, not fully aware of what he was going to say until he said it. “Don’t you come back here, you hear? Tell the other hands to stay away too.”

“But Mr. Cartwright – ”

“Stay away, Calhoun, or you’re fired.” Hoss’ voice sounded fierce, even to himself, and he didn’t try to temper it. Understanding settled on the cowhand’s face and he nodded.

“Yes sir,” he said. “God be with you, Hoss.”

“And with you, Jimmy,” Hoss said and turned away, looking back at the house that was waiting for him. There was work to do, more than one person could possibly handle all alone. How could he possibly do it? From outside, he heard his little brother’s voice crying out from a fever dream. Hoss turned tail and ran into the house. He mounted the stairs, two at a time. He’d always taken what life laid on his doorstep. How could he take this on? There but for the will of God, he’d try…

And Adam was moaning under his breath, almost too quiet to be heard, but Hoss was waiting to hear it. He lifted his older brother’s head, pulling away the drenched linens to be replaced with fresh ones that had dried all day in the sun. The new linens smelled like pine sap and the warm wind. It had proved to be a fine summer day. 

Hoss couldn’t get used to seeing Adam this way. His older brother was rarely sick. In fact, he was notoriously healthy. While he and Joe were always getting laid up with one bad cold after another, Adam hardly ever got sick. It practically took his breath away how quickly he had passed from being the picture of good health to being so desperately ill.

“Hoss?” 

He’d turned to get the tea ready and had hardly heard Adam calling for him. He turned in time to see Adam’s eyes leveled in his direction.

“Hey big brother,” Hoss said. “You gave me quite a scare there for a while.”

“The others?” Adam asked, his voice weaker than Hoss had ever heard it.

“They’re resting. Everything’s going to be all right, I promise.” Hoss replied uneasily. How would it help Adam to know the truth? The doc had told him to do what he needed to. He would never take to lying to his brother under normal circumstances. But what did it matter if it helped Adam got better. 

Unfortunately, Hoss had always been a terrible liar.

Adam’s eyes narrowed at his brother’s promise, and he said, “Go help them, Hoss. They need you. I’ll be all right.”

“You all need me,” Hoss answered miserably, and it was true. The night was pressing in on him, and even from Adam’s room he could hear his father’s tortured breathing. 

He lay the cloth across Adam’s forehead and whispered, “I’ll be back.”

Already sleeping, Adam didn’t hear him. Hoss backed away, and carried his supplies to his father’s room. He opened the door and shuddered in the oppressive air of the sickroom.

Ben Cartwright had always been a formidable man. His bulk came both from his stature as well as the fortitude of his character. Tangled with the drenched sheets and blankets, it seemed to Hoss that his pa was folding up into himself. Fading. His father had once seemed immortal to him. The strongest man he had ever known. It seemed impossible that anything could ever make him less than that.

He was awake, his lamp still burning from the last time Hoss had been in to see him.

“Son,” he whispered and patted the side of his bed for Hoss to come near. “Your brothers?”

Hoss was sick of lying. If Adam didn’t believe him, then his pa never would.

“They’re sick, Pa,” he said, his voice sounding like it belonged to a child, rather than to a massive twenty-three year old man. “I’m trying to help them, but I don’t know what to do anymore.”

Another minute longer, and he’d be crying like a child. There was something about sitting next to his pa that did it to him. But Ben placed his hand over his son’s and let it rest there. Too weak to talk for the moment, he let his touch say what it needed to. But there was more, and his pa summoned every bit of his strength to say it.

“Son, all any man can do,” he whispered, his voice a ghost of what it had been just a moment before, “is do what he can and pray for what he can’t. It’s not your job to save us.”

“I don’t understand, Pa.” Hoss choked on his words. “Why am I the only one who ain’t gotten sick?”

“Had to be you,” Ben mumbled, his eyes beginning to close. “You’re the strongest one, you’ve always been. Go to Joseph, son. He doesn’t like to be alone…”

Hoss looked away, as his father’s tired body convulsed into another fit of coughing. He knew he should go downstairs and boil some water. He should bring it up so the steam could help the congestion in his lungs. But his father had told him what he should do, and for once, Hoss wanted to follow someone else’s orders. He tamped down the fear at the back of his throat and ran his hand along his father’s shoulder.

“I’ll see to Little Joe,” he said.

Outside his little brother’s door, Hoss paused to gather himself together. In some ways, this was the hardest stop of all. The boy was only seventeen, and he loved life. Every day for Joe contained a world of possibilities. He lived for his family, for the smile of a pretty girl, and the simple joy of riding a horse faster than anyone thought sensible. There was no surer sign of a fallen world than to see such a vibrant young man struggling for every breath. Hoss ached for the life they’d had and didn’t know how he could continue on alone in it.

The doctor didn’t know why Joe had been hit the hardest. This fever didn’t follow the rules. It seemed to hit its healthy, young victims even harder than its oldest. Old Man Hopkins was already out and about and butchering his hog, less than two days after being infected. On the other hand, young Pete Williams, recently engaged to Marcy Brown, lay cold and dead on the pile of bodies waiting to be buried. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it. And Joe was very sick.

Hoss paused at the door, full of self recrimination. His pa was right; Joe hated to be alone. He’d hated it since he was a boy, and Hoss knew it. He should have found more time to have stayed with his little brother, even though he didn’t know how it was possible. He shouldn’t have left him alone for so long.

Hoss remembered Joseph at five years old, crying and lost the night after his mama died, standing at his big brother’s threshold, a goose down pillow tucked under his arm.

“Hoss,” the little boy had said. “All I want is to sleep in a big, comfy bed with someone who loves me.”

What could he do? He made room. Hoss had always made room, for Joe or anyone else who needed him.

He was exhausted. In all honesty, he didn’t know if he had strength enough to cross the room and go to his brother. It had been days since he’d slept, and for once he understood the doctor’s admonition. In trying to save them all, it was entirely likely he wouldn’t save any of them. But what else could he do? It was like Pa said. He was the strong one. If he couldn’t save them all, then who could?

He staggered across to his little brother’s bed. Joe thrashed with fever and pain. He just couldn’t get comfortable. Joe had always been restless. Adam used to say he was always fighting the bit to get to the next place. Hoss lit the lamp next to the bed and frowned to see a bluish tint to the boy’s lips. They said that was the last stage of the fever, the sign that the fight was almost over. Joe’s lips were moving with words that made no sense. Hoss drew the cool cloth across his forehead, but Joe shrunk away from it. Everything hurt him, no matter how well it was intended. His fever raged through the cloth, warming it almost immediately. Hoss tried propping him up, desperate to do anything to ease the violence of his labored breathing. Joe struggled. Hoss wondered at the fight left in him and held him through it. At long last, he eased up, and Hoss laid him down again, placed another cool cloth against his forehead.

“I’m sorry, Joe,” he whispered sadly, and he was startled when his brother’s eyes fluttered open in response to his name.

“Hoss,” Joe gasped, looking wildly around the room. “Where’ve you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

While it was only the smallest part of what he was afraid of, it was too much, and Hoss couldn’t take much more of anything. He felt terror rise up suddenly, shadowed with something like rage. This was too much to ask of him. He couldn’t watch them all die, he just couldn’t. He couldn’t do it anymore. Joe closed his eyes, lost again to the fever, and didn’t see as his big brother’s face crumpled. Hoss couldn’t allow himself this weakness. He had to be the strong one, but he couldn’t take any more of it. He pulled the blankets over Joe’s shoulders, pushed his brother’s hair of his forehead, and stumbled out the door. 

It was a wonder he didn’t fall down the stairs. His legs weren’t working right at all. They were so weak they barely supported him, and he only made it as far as his father’s chair before collapsing altogether. If he weren’t such a large man, he would have folded himself into it. He would have given up and cried. Instead his eyes fell upon the worn leather cover of his father’s Bible. It was always kept next to that chair, and it had often been a comfort to him to hear his father reading from it. Now it seemed a mockery to him. He couldn’t imagine what God was thinking.

He could feel the anger rising again, and he demanded out loud, “Why them? Why take them? Why didn’t I get sick instead? Why me?”

The last question, with all its underlying self pity, took everything he had left. He cried. The crying took him by surprise. He couldn’t remember crying like that since he was a child. It was a mockery of the big, strong man he had become. It wasn’t what anyone expected of him. It wasn’t what he expected of himself. 

Almost against his will, he reached for the Bible. Angrily, he fingered the fine old leather and the pages fell open, as if from their own volition. The passage was a familiar one, and the page was so well read the ink had faded from being fingered so often. His father had obviously read the words many times, but that night they were meant only for him.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness… for when I am weak, then am I strong.

He could hardly breathe, as the full force of the words settled over him. Like most revelations, Hoss immediately understood what it meant. He understood his father’s words, why he had called him the strong one. His mistake came to him at once. He was not a complicated man, but he had got the simplest thing all wrong. He had believed he’d been spared because he was the only one strong enough to save his family. That kind of strength was almost more than he could bear, but the truth was a whole lot harder. 

He had been spared, because he was the only one strong enough to let them go.

It took weakness to know it, and there was work to be done. He could sense the fever was still rising. Like an apparition, it rattled its chains in the troubled halls of the ranch house. But there was nothing to be done, not by him anyway. He was very, very tired, and he had done what he could. Despite all his intentions, Hoss Cartwright closed his eyes, gave in to his own weakness, and sacrificed himself to the hardest work of all. The work of letting go.

**********

It had been a good dream, so warm and peaceful around the edges, you could watch the rest of your lifetime pass you by and not really mind. It was that kind of dream. They were fishing at the lake. Their work was all done. Sunlight glinted off the blue waters. The wind was warm and easy against his face, and he’d never been able to breathe more deeply. The dream was ridiculously perfect. His father was dozing in the sun. Joseph was laughing. Adam had just caught a fish and was holding it up for all of them to see. And someone was calling his name…

“Hoss, Hoss… come on, wake up. I can’t make it back on my own.”

Hoss’ eyes opened to an intense shaft of sunlight. Morning was well underway. He resisted, fighting to remain in the dream a little bit longer. But the voice from his dream continued, and waking up violently, he realized it belonged to his little brother.

“Come on, Hoss, I need you to help me.”

“Joe?” he whispered, hardly daring to believe it was true. He turned his head into the light and squinted. Joe was right in front of him. He was collapsed by the chair, and Hoss could hardly see his brother’s veiled face with the sunshine haloed around his head. 

“I’m awful tired, Hoss,” he was saying. “Can you get me back to bed?”

Joe coughed harshly, reminding Hoss that he wasn’t dreaming, and it roused him out of his fugue.

“Little Joe! What do you think you’re doing, boy?” he gasped. He reached for his brother, half carrying him over to the settee. 

Continuing to cough, Joe couldn’t answer, and Hoss felt his forehead. His panic eased considerably when he realized that the fever had mostly broken.

“I need to get you upstairs,” he fretted. “Check on Pa, Adam…”

“They’re sleeping,” Joe said with difficulty, trying to control another spasm of coughing. “I checked on them before I came down. I think they’re getting better.”

Hoss stared at him incredulously and exclaimed, “You shouldn’t be walking around, Little Joe! Are you trying to kill yourself?”

His little brother shrugged and closed his eyes. His sojourn downstairs had clearly taken just about everything out of him.

But then he opened his eyes and whispered, “I was dreaming you needed us. When I woke up, I had to find you. I was worried you were all alone.”

Hoss fought the grittiness that lingered at the back of his throat. He would never be able to explain how tired he had been or how afraid. They didn’t need to know. It was not a burden easily shared by others, no matter how much they loved him and wanted to help. 

Reaching under the boy’s shoulders and knees, Hoss lifted him. He weighed a lot less than Hoss remembered. He’d picked Joe up just last month and tossed him into the lake for teasing him about a gal. Joe had surfaced, tossing his dripping curls around and threatening his older brother, while laughing at the same time. It felt like a lifetime ago, and Hoss wondered how long it would take before they would take life for granted like that again. Even if they did survive, the fever would surely demand a toll. 

But Hoss wasn’t going to worry about that. He understood why people were only meant to see what was right in front of them. It was enough making it through the moment without worrying over the next. His arms, holding Joseph, were trembling in a way that had nothing to do with weakness. He could easily hold his brother’s weight and a whole lot more. He would lay Joe down and then go and check on the others. He would do what was needed, like he was supposed to. It no longer felt like his burden, but instead it was his gift.

He had always been strong.

THE END