Summary:  An old short story, which I was inspired to post by the Dan Blocker Literary Birthday Challenge.  It was originally written in response to a challenge to use the word “preprandial” in a story.

Rating: K   Word Count: 770

A Tiny Preprandial Tale

            Hoss Cartwright ran his index finger under his tight collar as he and his older brother walked toward one of Virginia City’s largest mansions.  “Doggone it, Adam, I ain’t for sure it’s a good idee, invitin’ me to this shindig with your fancy friends.  You’d’ve been a heap better off askin’ Little Joe.”

            “And spend the whole evening rescuing him from the clutches of one conniving charmer after another?”  Adam massaged his throat as if to dislodge something choking him.  “No, thanks.”

“Thought Joe was the conniving charmer,” Hoss chuckled.

“Good point,” Adam admitted with an arch of his eyebrow, “but it really doesn’t matter whether I’m rescuing him from the ladies or the ladies from him.  Either way, it adds up to an evening that is nothing like the one I have planned.  You, I can trust.”  He lifted the silver knocker and let it drop.

“Yeah, but—”  Hoss broke off as the door opened, and a butler in a swallow-tailed coat admitted them.

“You’ll be fine,” his older brother assured him.  “Just relax and let yourself enjoy the evening—and if you have any doubts, simply follow my lead.”

“Follow your lead, huh?”  Hoss still looked dubious.

Walking down the short hallway, Adam gave the broad shoulder at his side a light, but supportive clap.  “Except when you’re dancing,” he chuckled.  “Then you lead.”

Hoss grinned.  “I can handle the dancing just fine, older brother.  It’s all them fancy forks at dinner I worry about.”

“Move from the outside in,” Adam advised.  “That’s all there is to it.”

Hoss took a deep, bolstering breath and followed Adam into the elegantly appointed drawing room of the mining superintendent’s home.  Adam greeted the host and hostess with suave courtesy, while Hoss stammered a hesitant howdy and kept right at his brother’s heels as Adam moved around the room, speaking to other friends and acquaintances.

A waiter passed by and extended a tray of tidbits to the Cartwright brothers.  Adam took a small dish and placed two triangles of caviar-topped toast on it.  Hoss did the same, except he took four.  “This ain’t dinner, is it?” he whispered to his older brother.

“Of course not.  It’s a preprandial hors d’oeurve,” Adam replied.  “An appetizer,” he amplified in response to Hoss’s mystified expression.

“Oh.”  Hoss still looked befuddled.  “Don’t see how them little things could satisfy any man’s appetite.”  He popped one in his mouth.  “Kinda salty, and that just makes me hungry,” he reported.

Adam rolled his eyes, wondering if, after all, he might have been better off inviting Little Joe.  “That’s the idea—to whet your appetite, not satiate it.”

“Oh!  In that case, it works right well.”  Hoss grinned and popped in another toast triangle.  “Three-inch steak would work better, but”—he choked when Adam elbowed him hard in the ribcage.

“Good evening, Melinda,” Adam said to a young lady with light auburn curls flowing over bare porcelain shoulders.  “Have you met my brother Eric?”

“Why, no, I haven’t had the pleasure,” Melinda said, dimpling as she smiled at Hoss.  She rested a slender hand on his forearm.  “My, they grow them big in Nevada, don’t they?”

“Only some of them.”  Adam attempted to nudge Hoss aside, but the big man wouldn’t budge.  He just kept staring into her luminous violet eyes.

Melinda dipped her chin demurely, cocked her head to one side and looked up from beneath long, dark lashes.  “That’s how I like them.”

Hoss flicked a nervous tongue across his lower lip.  “You had any of these pre—prepran—what’d you call ‘em, Adam?”

“Oers d’oeurves,” Adam said tersely.

“Appetizers,” Hoss explained with a broad smile at the lady.  “They’s just meant to whet your appetite, not satisfy it.  Try one.”  He held out his plate to Melinda.

Melinda took a nibble, obviously savoring the expensive caviar.  “Um, delicious.”  She hooked her arm through Hoss’s elbow.  “Perhaps we could find some more?”

“Yes, ma’am!”  Hoss scanned the room, sighted the waiter and with an enthusiastic bounce in his step steered Melinda toward culinary satisfaction—and, he hoped, satisfaction of a different sort for himself.

Left palm resting against his cheek, Adam gaped as they walked away.  “I guess I should have brought Little Joe after all,” he mused softly.  “At least, when he gets taken in by a woman’s charms, I can toss him over my shoulder and lug him home!”

The End