Mercy (by the Tahoe Ladies)

Summary:  There’s a shooting, someone loses their temper, and the judge’s ruling all seem right.  But are they?

Rated: T  Word Count:  38300

 

 

 

Mercy

When angels cry

The afternoon’s drizzle had finally become a steady rain. Roy Coffee, the town’s sheriff, stepped out of his warm office and spent a few moments looking up and down the street. With the evening fast approaching, the light the saloons threw out onto Virginia City’s C Street was welcoming. The tinny piano from the Bucket of Blood could be heard even above the throb of the mines underfoot and the rain on the tin roofs. The sheriff shrugged a little deeper into his jacket before he began the first of his nightly rounds, grumbling to himself about the rain..

He tipped his hat to those he met as he calmly and sedately went about his business. He checked darkened stores and shops, making sure their doors were secure. One of the tellers from the Bank of California greeted him by name as he locked up before he scurried into the darkness. At the entrance to the International House Hotel, Roy paused then went on his way. His destination, if he would have claimed to have one that fall evening, was the stage depot. As far as he knew – and it was his self-appointed responsibility to know these things – the Carson City stage had not made it in by its six o’clock arrival time. Usually that was the only run to ever make it on time as far as he knew, and it worried him a little. Just a little.

“Bill?” he called sharply at the barred window of the depot. He could hear the rustling beyond the screen partition within that spoke of the station master beginning to fix his own supper. “Bill? You in there?”

Bill Spencer poked his balding head around the corner, a slightly panicked look etched into his round face. “Problem, sheriff?” he asked, his owlish eyes blinking rapidly.

“Don’t know. You tell me. The six o’clock from Carson City hasn’t come in yet, has it?”

The other, always a touch on the nervous side, glanced at the big clock on the wall over his desk and double checked it against his pocket watch before he answered. “Just a little. It’s only half past. You expectin’ something?”

The sheriff, annoyed that the steady drip of water from the brim of his hat seemed to find its way down his collar, simply shook his head. “Not necessarily. Just this one is rarely late. Guess if you aren’t worried, it’d be foolish of me to be, wouldn’t it?”

Both men laughed weakly and the sheriff nodded then backed away from the window. On down the street he walked, taking notice of the horses pulled up in front of the saloons. Most of the horses he would recognize as belonging to this cowboy or that. More than that, he knew which cowboys favored which saloons, which group of miners favored another and he secretly prayed that tonight, the two would stay separate. Not that tensions had been running high – or higher than normal. It was just that the two groups rarely mixed well. Stopping a fight on the street was one thing. In a saloon, where it would be combined with broken glass and spilled drinks, was another.

He was about to cross the muddy street to complete his circuit when he heard shouting coming from the south end of town. A man’s shouting could barely be made out above the normal racket of the town. Roy grabbed hold of a post and leaned out into the street to get a better look and a better listen.

From the swaying lanterns on either side of the stage coach, he could see plenty. First, the horses were heavily lathered despite the rain and the cool temperatures. On top, hanging on for dear life, were two well-dressed, derby-hatted men. Their faces were white and pinched with fear as they clung to their precarious perch. Lastly, as the stage rocketed by the sheriff, he saw that inside was only one figure.

“Now that’s odd,” he thought aloud. “With this weather two men on top and only one inside the coach?”

The driver fought the plunging six horses to a halt in front of the station. Again, he shouted and this time, the sheriff understood the words.

“Get the doctor!. Get the sheriff!”

He hurried across the darkening, boggy street and around to the side of the coach, brushing by one of the gentlemen clambering down from the roof. Roy looked over the shoulders of a man trying to get into the stage but all he could see was the face of a woman, a young woman. As she went to brush back a stray lock of hair that escaped her bonnet, Roy saw a darkness on her glove that could only be blood. Telling the man before him to let him by, he shoved him roughly out of the way.

It was blood, all right. But not hers. In the swaying lantern light and the brassy glow from the lights behind him, Roy Coffee looked into the face of a friend. Joseph Cartwright. He lay half on and half off the hard bench seat, the woman trying to cradle his head in her lap. Shadows fled the interior when someone opened the other door. It was Paul Martin in his shirt-sleeves, and in an awkward position, he fumbled in his reach for young Cartwright’s throat, testing – praying- for a pulse. The doctor looked up into the old sheriff’s face and nodded once, ignoring the trickle of blood than ran down Joe’s arm, soaking into the floor at the woman’s feet.

“Move back here!” the lawman shouted as he turned. “You and you,” he chose two strong looking men. “Help the doc. You! Get down to the Sazarac. I saw Adam Cartwright’s horse there! Get Adam and bring him back here pronto!” The growing crowd burst like a covey of discovered quail but then drew back tight about the coach.

Coffee stepped aside as Paul Martin and his two designated helpers maneuvered the slim body out, the doctor warning them repeatedly to go slow and easy and to watch out for his patient’s left shoulder. Then, with the party disappearing across the street to the doctor’s office, the lawman finally grabbed the arm of the driver and held him tight.

“What happened?” he demanded.

The driver shrugged his shoulders before he answered. “Dunno, Sheriff. Found him aside the road. Face down. Looked like he’s been shot in the back. Didn’t see nothing else around him. Recognized him by his jacket so I stopped. Don’t tell the bosses on me. I’ll lose my job for sure if they found out.”

Digesting the scant information, Roy nodded and thumbed his mustache. “Don’t worry. I imagine if you did get into trouble, the Cartwrights could help you make it right.” He patted the arm he held and was about to hurry over to the doctor’s when he himself was grabbed from behind by Adam Cartwright.

“Just what are we going to make right?” Adam asked lightly, a smile dancing on his face.

“Come on. Got problems.” At the serious tone in the sheriff’s voice, Adam’s smile disappeared.

“Thank you for staying, ma’am,” Roy crooned softly, handing the woman from the stage a cup of coffee. She was a mousy little thing, he thought. Brown hair and eyes and a face that missed being pretty by a fair distance. He’d watched when she removed her gloves and seen that she wore a thin gold wedding band, and that she was shaking. “Can you tell me what you saw? What you heard?”

She sipped the warm drink and blinked twice, looked towards the open crack in the surgery door then back to the kindly face before her. “Name’s Samantha Collins. Headed to Elko to visit with my sister. She just had a baby and I was going up to help her for a while.”

Roy smiled benignly and patted her knee, encouraging her to go on. She glanced at his hand resting there and saw the thick patch of blood that stained the pale blue fabric. Shakily, she took a deep breath and plunged on.

“Halfway between the cut-off and here, the driver pulled up. I thought there was something wrong with the coach but the other two men, salesmen they were, were afraid that we were being held up. I looked out the window and saw the driver and shotgun kneeling over a body at the side of the road. The driver come back to the stage and ordered the men out, said they needed to help. I stayed put and they loaded that poor man in with me. He wasn’t conscious, not really. He was bleeding some from that shoulder wound.”

“Did you see anything else?” Coffee silently prayed she would say something about seeing a pinto horse close by but she didn’t. That fact would make finding the culprit easy. Yet he would hate to tell his oldest friend that his son had been shot and killed for his horse. “Did he say anything?”

“No. He come to for a few seconds but he didn’t say much. Just said- asked- for his pa. He was all wet so he must have been out there for a while and he was feverish-feeling. I tried to comfort him some, holding his head on my lap, but I don’t think he knew I was there.” Again her eyes tracked back to the door, the light seeping through the cracks and motions they heard from behind it grabbing her attention.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Roy rose slowly from his crouch and pushed open the door further. He knew better than to talk to the doc when he was working so he stayed back, observing what he could. At one point Adam Cartwright’s face paled and he looked up to meet the sheriff’s eyes. Doctor Martin caught the by-play and glanced over his shoulder.

“Come here and help us turn him over then I want the two of you out of here.” The doctor didn’t ask; he demanded.

As the duly constituted law enforcement for Storey County Nevada, Roy Coffee had seen lots of gunshot wounds. When faced with a shooting, he tried to place himself in the victim’s boots so that he might deduce what happened. That rainy fall night, he first had to separate himself from gut-wrenching emotion. The young man that lay sprawled naked on Doc’s white sheet Roy Coffee had known all his young life. Roy had been present at his christening, had briefly arrested him when he was eight for throwing rocks at the school house and had used his skills on many a possee. Seeing him laid out like this and remaining unemotional was nearly impossible.

“Shot in the back, left shoulder, close range. Bullet exited the front,” Doc was saying.

“How close?” Adam asked, feeling how cold his brother’s flesh was under his hands.

“Powder burns on his jacket. Besides, it takes a close shot to blow a hole in a man’s shoulder blade. I can feel it giving so it’s broken, probably shattered. That says it was real close.”

With the sheet pulled aside so that they could move him as doc requested, Roy’s mind took in a thousand facts with one glance. Not just a bullet wound. His left arm is bruised, swollen. Broken maybe? Red and raw on his right side and arm. Looks like a burn. His knee, swollen too, shifted over, out of place. Left knee is scraped up. Lots of little cuts all over him – run through a manzanita patch, boy? All this happened when?

“Any idea how old that gunshot wound is?”

“No idea exactly but he is awful cold and his clothes were soaked through so he’s been out in the weather all day would be my guess. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I need to see if I can put this boy back together again.”

Once back out in the waiting room again, Roy had more questions for Adam. What was Joe doing? Coming home from the sale of some horses down towards Genoa. Was he carrying a lot of money? No, in fact his wallet was still in his jacket pocket. He’d sold four horses to a farmer down there and had maybe two hundred dollars on him. How long had he been gone? It was an overnight trip. He’d left early yesterday morning so Joe would have been heading back that morning. Any trouble with anyone lately? None. Any idea why someone would want your brother dead?

“We both know the answer to that, Roy,” huffed Adam, his arms crossing his chest. “Did anyone see his horse? No. Find my brother’s horse, Roy and you’ll find the man who tried to murder him.”

The sheriff brushed aside the finger that had lashed out and pinned itself to his chest. “I will.”

“Excuse me,” begged the timid voice of the woman. Both men turned to the sound and for the first time, Adam caught a good look at her. There was fear in every twist of her fingers in her purse strings, yet she held her chin high. “Are you his father?”

It seemed so terribly odd to be brought back to his manners that way but Adam was. He softened his body language as he approached her. “You were the lady on the stage. No, I’m his oldest brother, Adam Cartwright. I want to thank you for what you did for him. I am gathering that the handkerchief jammed into his shoulder wound was yours?”

She bit her lip and nodded twice, her eyes not rising above the smear of blood on his jacket front.

Again, Adam took careful notice of her and saw her pale blue skirt was ruined. There was an earnest look of sorrow to her slumping shoulders that moved him and he lifted her chin. “You missed the stage out. You were going where?”

“Elko,” she replied, her voice flat as if that didn’t matter any more.

“Elko,” repeated Adam. “Let me arrange a hotel room for you. Perhaps a new outfit since this one appears to be beyond hope.” He tried to smile to lighten her spirits but he failed on both accounts.

She whispered her thanks and turned to go. She hesitated at the front door and over her shoulder, wished his brother well. Then, like a shadow in the night, she was gone.

“I sent a man out for your pa and Hoss,” Roy explained, bringing Adam back to the room.

“Did the driver say where he found Joe?”

“Halfway between here and the cut-off. Listen, boy, I don’t want you chasin’ out-”

Adam bristled, first at the older man’s calling him ‘boy’ then at inferring that he was about to…do what he wanted to do. Go out to where his brother had been found and search for clues as to who, and more importantly, why he’d been shot and left for dead. Overriding this desire was one rooted in his blood just as deeply or more so. He had to wait for his father and cushion the blow as much as he was able. He’d seen first hand the shape his brother was in. Survival wasn’t a given.

What seemed like hours ticked by slowly. Only once was the tension released for Adam and that when Paul Martin asked for his help. He’d apologized but explained that his nurse was not available and Adam would have to —. Adam’s stomach, empty of everything but fear, roiled as he looked down just once at the flesh laid open on the table. He struggled to overcome the nausea it brought and was thankful when Paul told him just to look away but hold something cold and metallic in his hand. He didn’t want to know what it was; he just did as he was asked.

“If it’ll help,” the good doctor said gently, “think of this as a side of beef. I know, it’s hard but I need you to stay with me, help me. I’ve got to get this bleeding stopped and the shoulder put back together. Can you do it?”

Again, Adam chanced a glimpse at where the doctor was working. Joe, belly down on the table, had his face turned to the left, towards his brother, toward the ruined, flayed flesh. A mask that reeked of chloroform hid the lower half of his face but a trickle of fresh blood mixed with some dried at a cut on his temple. Like steel filings to a magnet, his fingers reached for it. Paul’s bloody hand stopped him from touching his brother’s face. Adam didn’t have to hear the physician’s warning. Still, something on a gut level called to him and he finished by pushing his brother’s hair away from the cut.

“You okay with this?” The doctor asked sternly, yet with a large dose of compassion. Adam nodded slowly then took a deep breath and signaled that he was ready to continue.

Pieces of cotton, soaked red that fell now useless to the floor…the coppery smell that came from everywhere and nowhere…the slick feeling that coated his fingers…a flush of heat that made his shirt stick to his back and arms…the slice of cold that cut him deeply…the sound of the doctor’s voice, calm, steady, reassuring, directing him to hold, move, hand him something, take something away….the ache in his legs and back from standing so still for so long and so tense…the numbness he fought for – begged for- continuously in his mind that would help him not think that this was his brother…a blast of cold air that felt hot, as if the gates of Hell were opening…then, finally, blissfully, his father’s voice beside him, his hands grasping his arms and telling him to move aside.

“Glad you’re here,” Paul’s voice cut across a wide chasm to reach Adam and Ben both. “We need to roll him over so I can close the wound on the front.”

They were careful, following the directions the doctor gave and enhancing them with the care always given to a loved one, whether that loved one was conscious or not. In this case, Paul Martin knew that his patient felt nothing but it was obvious that the others did. Especially Ben

“Adam, take your father out-”

“No,” Ben shook his head as he spoke.

The doctor continued, his tone now commanding. “What I have to do now takes strength – Hoss’. It won’t be long, Ben, I promise.”

The two older men, the doctor and the father, seemed to square off with one another. They ignored everyone else in the room, not seeing Hoss helping a spent Adam out into the waiting room then coming back, rolling up his sleeves.

“It’ll be okay, Pa. I promise.” Hoss gently but firmly moved his father away from the side of the bloody sheet.

 

It was a wet dawn. The rain still beat a steady rhythm, turning the street outside the doctor’s office into an ankle-deep quagmire. As Ben Cartwright studied the street scene, bereft of all but a few hearty souls, he kept watch on the door reflected in the window pane. An hour ago, Hoss had come out and sat down heavily beside his older brother. Like him, he was worn out, his whole body stamped with sorrowful exhaustion. They exchanged a few words that Ben ignored. Adam poured him coffee from a pot that had materialized from only God knew where and he sipped it slowly.

 

Then the door opened completely and Paul Martin, wringing wet with sweat and sagging against the doorframe called to Ben. He needed to say nothing else.

 

Ben Cartwright was a man of vast and varied experiences. He also possessed great faith – not just in God but in his fellow man as well. And in his sons. So what he was presented with that morning, he tried to take in stride, settling his faith in his son and in the doctor’s ability. It clashed head on with his experience and he was left with only hope remaining. As he placed a calloused hand on his son’s head, he heard the doctor’s words. A shattered left shoulder blade held together by wire and prayer; a broken collarbone, its splintered ends spliced; ribs broken – eight of them; his left arm, broken both above and below the elbow; his knee, twisted and thankfully not broken; both ankles swollen, speaking of sprains. There were bruises, some that must go clear to the bone and cuts that peppered his body. Burns on his right hand and arm that were not life-threatening but would be painful all the same. And lastly, a concussion.

 

“How?” Hoss stammered, his disbelief evident in the single word.

 

“I can’t say.” Paul Martin shook his head. “We need to get him moved though. Over into that room there. Can you manage?”

 

The air smelled of mud and wet horses but Adam Cartwright found it curiously refreshing after the long night. He stood, leaning against an upright of the doctor’s porch, keenly aware of everything about him. As Hoss joined him, they traded glimpses of each other’s fear and determination then went back to studying the street together.

 

“You thinkin’ the same thing I am?” Hoss asked, his words so soft that Adam could have missed them if he wasn’t paying attention.

 

“That we go do a little looking?” They needed no other words; just headed for their horses.

 

“Might not be much, considering the rain, you know,” Adam cautioned but his brother turned his big black from the hitching rail and gave it his heels.

 

They rode in silence, both trying to figure how far out along the road the stage would have found their brother. Each took a separate side, eyes scanning through the unchanging rain for some clue. The horses snorted and Adam’s Sport danced in his apparent anticipation but he held him in check, tight reins held in tight fists. Around the final bend that would then dump them onto the main route into Carson City they went. Roy Coffee stood there, his horse ground tied a short distance away, and in his hands held a familiar tan hat, now waterlogged.

 

“Morning, boys,” he greeted but there was no real welcome there. “Wondered when you were going to show up. How’s Joe?”

 

“He’s still alive, if that’s what you mean.” Adam dismounted and let his reins fall into the mud. “You find that here?”

 

“Just off the road a bit,” the lawman answered and gestured with the hat up a slope. “Heard you coming and thought Hoss could help read the signs there.”

 

They left their horses standing at the side of the road as they followed the sheriff first down the steep sided ditch then up the slope about twenty feet. Even though it had rained, there were marks that Hoss read easily. As he saw them, he told of what they said to him.

 

“Way the brush is broken down low and these furrows, I’d say he was crawling. One hand down since there’s only one depression and its on the right side.” He went further up the sage-covered slope, following a trail of bent and broken bushes. He came to a depressed spot. “Here, he fell. That rock there -” He pointed to a piece of sandstone.”Way it’s cocked, he tripped on it. Means he was hurt before he got to this spot.” Again he went on up the slope, stopping at the lone tree clinging to its growing steepness. Here he squatted, facing the road and frowned. There were threads of a dusky green fabric caught up in the rough bark. And several strands of dark curly hair. Hoss shifted around so that he could look the opposite direction. There he found what he thought he would: the haphazard broken vegetation that resulted from a body falling and rolling, careening from rock to rock. Only the tree had halted the body’s progress. “Up there,” Hoss said as he pointed. The others followed, their boots grating on the gravelly soil.

 

At the top of the slope, the ground became a level bench, no wider than fifteen feet at most. There, with massive boulders on either side of the clearing, the wind would be abated. There they found a cold fire pit. In the ashes, laying on its side, was a flattened coffee pot and a tin cup. To one side was a black glove and spilled coffee beans..

 

“He stopped here to make himself some coffee. Here,” Hoss paused, looking around the cold wet camp for other sign, “Here he was all right. Whatever -”

 

“Whoever,” Adam cut in sharply, correcting.

 

“Whoever shot him, shot Joe here. No Cochise, so whoever it was took him. Joe tried to get down to the road.”

 

“Something isn’t right here,” Adam hissed, hunching down across from Hoss over the dead coals. “I’m Joe. I’m making me some coffee out here in the middle of nowhere. How does someone get that close to me to shoot me like they did Joe? Close range. He had to have heard whoever it was.”

 

“I got a better question for you,” Roy said as he joined them. “I didn’t see your brother’s gun in his holster. Holster, yes. But it was empty. We followed his path to the road and didn’t find where it fell out. Where’s his gun?”

 

Hoss chewed his lip for a moment then stood, motioning for Adam to stay down. “You be Joe a minute, Adam. I’m the shooter.” Circling around behind, Hoss reached down and grabbed Adam’s gun. “That’s where his gun is.”

 

“And that’s also how he got shot at such a close range. Left shoulder.”

 

“Two problems though. First, Joe wouldn’t have let any stranger get that close behind him. He would have turned. Even if he turned to his left and they got the gun anyway, the bullet wouldn’t have gone into his shoulder. It would have cut across his chest or his back. Secondly, the angle the bullet would travel is all wrong.”

 

“Maybe he was standing when he was shot. Someone jumped him from behind.” Roy’s hands danced in the air as he spoke, demonstrating.

 

Again Adam shook his head. “I’m a little taller than Joe so let me move back a little. He was fixing coffee, the fire was close enough to him that when he fell, he fell into it. His right hand and arm are burnt some, Roy.”

 

“Okay but what about the angle of the shot you were talking about?” Hoss rejoined Adam beside the darkened earth.

 

” I saw his shoulder blade. For a bullet to do that, it has to hit straight on. Not at an angle. If it were at an angle, it wouldn’t have gone out his chest but down into his body. ” Adam swallowed hard at the vision his words conjured up and he fought down the urge to say that they would have found his brother’s cold body right where they were.

 

“So what have we got?” Roy harrumphed and stood. The two Cartwrights followed suit.

 

“Someone short, as short as Joe or shorter, that he trusted enough to get that close behind him.” Adam tugged at the collar of his sodden jacket.

 

“I can’t see Joe letting anyone get that close behind him with a gun.” Hoss gazed across the landscape, silently searching for some sign of his brother’s horse.

 

“That person, that short person, Hoss, used Joe’s own gun.” Adam wished it wasn’t so but he knew he was right. “And they left him for dead.”


Chapter 2:

A Gift of Faith

 

His entire world, his complete existence, was centered on a pinprick of light. It danced before his eyes, drawing him closer, closer. With leaden hands, he reached for it but the light moved away, hovering just beyond his reach. He tried to call to it, to beg it to come to him. It heard none of his pleas. It flickered and he feared it would go out, leaving him in darkness so he gathered what strength he could and lunged for it. He fell short and the tiny point of light exploded….

 

“Easy now.” The sound, the words came to him above and beyond the fading roar. He knew the voice but struggled to place a face with it. Something warm and wet crossed his brow and he was able to move with it. Then, thankfully because he could not gather his own words to ask for it, water touched his parched lips. Cold metal and a few drops were all that came, barely enough. He wanted to scream out, to plead for more but could only silently move his lips. Yet his plea was heard for the metal came back and brought with it more water.

 

There was motion, a presence that he felt that gave him comfort. Hands touched him gently on his face, his chest, one arm. There was warmth about him as a sense of security cradled him, lulling, satisfying, nourishing a secret need deep within.

 

He turned into the warm wetness that bathed his face when it returned. It felt good as it pulled at his skin even though there was some discomfort. A gentle hand held his cheek, not letting him search for the caress when it left. Then, accompanied by a low wordless murmur, it returned. He pressed his cheek into the hand as the only way he could think of to tell them that …The murmuring, the caress continued. There was pressure at his eyelids.

 

At first, the world was blurry, disjointed and out of focus. Beside him was something white that filled his narrow field of vision. He tried to concentrate, to make the dizzying waves go away. He thought of pushing at it and got his hand raised but instead of pushing away the whiteness, his hand was grasped firmly, warmly.

 

“It’s gonna be okay, little brother. I promise you. You just let ol’ Hoss here help you some.”

 

He would have smiled if he could’ve. Instead all he could do was just what his brother said: let him help.

 

In the shadowy room just off Paul Martin’s surgery, Hoss Cartwright put another stick of wood in the squat little stove. He rubbed his hands down his sides and shivered despite the fact that the room was warm. A glimpse out the window showed him that rain still fell, making silver rivulets on the glass against the dark of night. He settled himself back into the rocker pulled beside Joe’s bed and reached for the book he had been not reading for the better part of the night.

 

Earlier, it had seemed that Joe was coming around. As Hoss had washed the caked blood from his face, Joe had reached for him, he thought. The doctor had seemed to think otherwise. With words thick with caution and sorrow, Paul Martin had spoken with his father as Hoss had stood in the shadows listening. He’d started by admonishing Ben, telling him that he needed to rest. His father had brushed aside his own physical need, allowing Hoss see the exhaustion written on his face. The doctor had shaken his head, telling Ben that he would need his strength later.

 

“Later?” Hoss had asked and the other two men realized that they were not alone in the room.

 

The physician tilted his head to one side then spoke softly, yet succinctly. “Joe is in a coma. There is no way of knowing when – or even if – he’ll come out of it. And the longer he stays that way…” His trailing voice told Hoss more than any words he could have used.

 

In the end, the doctor won and Hoss had watched his father’s slumped shoulders disappear out the doorway, leaving him to spend time with his silent, battered brother. For lack of something better to do, he heated water and used the doctor’s towels. Paying careful attention and keeping his touch light, he proceeded to bathe his brother’s body. Several times he changed the water and threw aside the stained toweling. Just seeing the damage done at first enraged him yet he continued.

 

He had no idea when he started talking to Joe. It seemed like an ordinary thing to do and he did it. When Joe had first moved, excitedly Hoss had summoned the doctor. Surely Joe was coming out of the coma. The doctor had checked, then shook his head sadly, calling it a reflex action. Hoss asked if he should go on with what he was doing, clearly afraid that it was detrimental. Yet the good doctor said that he saw no harm in it as long as the room was kept warm.

 

So on Hoss went. There were times when the blood would not give up its hold easily and Hoss, afraid of causing more pain, could not scrub at it. Instead he let the warm wet towel lay there, loosening it bit by bit. With hands as gentle as a mother caring for a newborn, he went on until all the blood was gone.

 

“Wish I could wash away them bruises, too,” Hoss muttered as he wrung his piece of toweling out. “How in the name of all that is holy did you get yourself in such a mess? Never mind answering me ’cause Adam and I went out there the other morning. It was like you’d written us a note and left it there, little brother, but you forgot to tell us who it was that shot you in the first place.”

 

Getting no answer, Hoss had turned away, sadness leeching at his spirit. He picked up the book that someone, Adam most likely, had left and opened it. The printed words were there but Hoss couldn’t see them. For a while, he purposely lost himself in the growing mental list of chores that needed doing. The fall roundup would start in less than a week and it would require every man they could find and then some. This year, they had sold the bulk of their herd in the spring so there would be no drive to Sacramento. A small blessing in disguise since it would have taken a miracle to get a Cartwright that far from home, all things considered as they stood. They would have to brand the new summer-born calves and get them and their mothers into the winter haven of valley meadows where the snow levels would be less. And all that was only for the cattle. There were just as many, if not more, concerns for the horses, winterizing the ranch itself, putting up the last of the hay…more work for fewer hands.

 

He had no idea when he fell asleep. He just did because suddenly, his body jerking, he awoke, the book falling from his hands to the floor. Feeling a little silly at his own nervousness, Hoss still checked on Joe, as if he would catch him and laugh at him. There was no reaction to the book falling, or the snap of the log in the stove. Hoss rose, his body stiff from falling asleep in the chair, and stretched then went to put another log on the fire. For the first time, he thought, the room was a touch chilly so he added another log before he turned to make sure the blankets and quilts were keeping his brother warm.

 

And found two green eyes watching him.

 

Hoss nearly whooped for joy but caught himself, mindful of where he was. Instead he smiled as wide as he was able and rubbed his hands together. Slipping over to stand next to the bed, he found himself unable to not touch his brother so he let one huge hand fall gently to Joe’s good shoulder as he whispered “Hot diggedity! Welcome back, little brother.”

 

As Hoss watched, it appeared that Joe’s eyes focused slowly on his face. He knelt to bring himself closer and into his brother’s line of sight.

 

“How about a drink?” he whispered and saw the corner of Joe’s mouth quiver. Carefully, Hoss spooned some into his mouth, past lips cracked and parched. One spoonful, two, three, until almost a quarter of the glass was gone.

 

“That better?” he asked but knew the answer just by watching his brother’s eyes clearing, focusing, and brightening. “You stay put. I gotta get the doc and Pa. Stay put, you understand?” He pointed a finger at him and squinted an eye closed, playfully stern.

 

By the time Hoss made it back across the muddy street with his father, Doc Martin was finishing up his examination. Folding his stethoscope into his hands, he moved back and let Ben to the bedside. Hoss pounded him on the back as if to say ‘I told you so!’ and he smiled up into the beaming round face. Maybe, he thought, just maybe. But I certainly wouldn’t bet my last dollar on him.

 

Joe had been on verge of falling back into blissful slumber when he heard his father’s footsteps. Instead, he tried to take a deep breath, to rally his fading consciousness. The ribs, broken and cracked, sent lances of pain shooting through him, threatening darkness. Only his father’s knuckles grazing the side of his face kept him anchored in the shadowy room. Just as he had earlier, he was barely able to turn towards it. The reward was his father’s smile and voice, so deep and reassuring, telling him that he was going to be all right…that he could rest…that he could….

 

“How long was he awake for?” Ben asked, watching the lids slowly drop over his son’s eyes. He couldn’t take his hand away.

 

“Not long,” was the doctor’s answer. “But long enough. Listen, we need to take this advantage and change his bandages. I need you both so stay here while I get what I need.” He disappeared back into the other room, leaving the Cartwrights to themselves.

 

“He’s gonna be okay,” Hoss crowed – until he saw the concern on his father’s face. Only then did he softened it and allowed doubt to creep in. “Ain’t he?”

 

“I hope so.”

 

“I do, too, but he’s got an uphill battle to fight,” Paul Martin came back into the room saying. On the side table he laid out bandages, scissors, and alcohol. On top of the pile was a brown bottle that no one needed to be told was laudanum.

 

“You think you’re gonna need all that?” teased Hoss but the others knew he especially meant the painkiller. Joe had a hatred for the drug from past experiences. It always left him wooly-headed, he claimed.

 

“Maybe,” the doctor admitted. “Let me get in here beside him and change the bandage on the front of his shoulder.” With scissors chewing their way through the thickness, he worked. Layer after thick layer came off easily. That is until he reached those that had been saturated with blood. Here he asked Hoss for some of the water from the kettle on the stove he had used earlier. He dampened the bandages then began to use the scissors to lift the edges a little at a time until the whole mass came loose and he simply dropped it to the floor behind him.

 

Ben had moved to the other side of the bed and kept a hand to his son’s jaw. When the last bloody bandage came from off that mangled shoulder, Ben had to swallow hard several times. With bile rising high in his throat, he looked away then forced himself to look back. This is my child’s flesh, his thoughts whispered to him. So torn, so hurt. So much damage. He shook his head sadly, slowly, wanting to stop the doctor’s probing fingers. He was half-mesmerized by the jagged red lines with their dark stitches, the swollen puffiness the color of a stormy sea.

 

“Good, good,” muttered the doctor softly. “Not the least sign of more bleeding. Still swollen but that may work to our advantage. Now comes the tough part. I’m not exactly sure how to do this.” He stepped back from the bed and with his hands demonstrating, he explained. “I need to get to his back to clean up his shoulder blade just like I did here on the front. Problem is, with the broken ribs, we can’t lay him flat.”

 

“Sit him up?” Hoss offered but the doctor shook his head.

 

“We have to able to support that arm and side. As busted up as that shoulder blade was, I’m afraid it’s not going to withstand much jostling.” He rubbed one hand on the back of his neck, suddenly tired. Yet he would push on because he knew there was no other choice.

 

Ben had listened to them but not joined in on the discussion. He pondered it then did as he would much of any of problem presented to him: took it by the horns. Or, in this case, with his broad hands beneath his son’s shoulders, both the good one and the bad one, raised him forward, twisting him until his back was to the physician, resting Joe against his own broad chest. Hoss moved in quickly beside his father and tucked his brother’s splinted left arm between the two. The doctor snorted but wasted no time.

 

With Hoss handing him what he needed, the chore was done in short order – quicker than the doctor had thought. He nodded, the motion telling Ben that he could return Joe to the bed but it was as though Ben was suddenly deaf and blind, not relinquishing his hold on his son. With his face hidden in the shadows, he had been whispering into Joe’s ear, praying that he could hear it and know that he was not alone.

 

“Pa?” Hoss closed in upon his father. “You got to lay him back down now.” When Ben didn’t respond, Hoss moved closer yet. “Pa?”

 

Then he heard his father’s murmur. Halting and breathy were the words. “…For thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me….” Ben’s voice caught and fell so soft and low that Hoss couldn’t hear it clearly but he didn’t need to. Then, it was as though Ben heard or felt reality come back and gently he lowered him, all the while still reciting the Psalm. “…And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”

 

It was faint and faded quickly but all three men saw it: a smile on Joe Cartwright’s face then he sighed deeply and it was gone.


Chapter 3:

Almost Vengeance

 

Adam folded his rain slicker and, turning in the saddle, tied it behind the cantle. Coming back around, he settled himself in the saddle once more and picked up the reins. Sport moved forward with a quick step, eager to be out of the damp sage brush that covered the slope. Across the way, on the other side of the small ravine, he could see Hoss. Bent over in the saddle, his brother had the look of an obstinate bloodhound intent on recapturing a lost scent. Adam thought about calling out to him, telling him that they were done for the day but he knew that Hoss was not about to quit looking until the light had faded completely from the autumn sky.

 

Suddenly, Hoss sat straight up and turned his head to the side, lifting his nose into the air. Adam saw his head bob then he waved and pointed. At the far foot of the ravine rose a thin ribbon of smoke into the damp air. Adam paused, recalling that they had ridden that way yesterday and had seen no sign of man nor beast. Or was it that all these places were beginning to look alike after three days of searching?

 

Three days ago Joe had awakened for a few minutes. He’d taken some broth -a few spoonfuls- and drank about a half glass of milk. When asked what he remembered about getting to the shape he was in, his eyes had clouded over and he struggled, trying to remember. He had chanced to say that he’d fallen, but the uplift at the end of the sentence said that he was guessing. It was clear that he couldn’t recall what had happened so they had let him fall back asleep without pressing for more

 

“Yes, Roy. We promise,” Hoss’d huffed at the lawman three mornings ago. It had become obvious that whoever had shot Joe Cartwright had slipped over the magic line and out of Roy’s jurisdiction. While that hadn’t bothered him in the past, it did now. Something about getting civilized. That “getting civilized” meant that should the two brothers find anything that led them to believe they had found the bushwacker, they were now bound by their word to bring him into Roy.

 

Three days ago they had made the promise. Adam had tried to argue him out of searching, claiming it was a job for the law. Only when Roy had sadly informed them that where they had discovered what little they did know about the incident was out of his jurisdiction, only then did he relent.

 

Three days ago Hoss had insisted that Adam join him. Days of steady rain. Streams that once trickled by now pushed at their banks. The ground they rode over alternately squished beneath the horses’ hooves or slid away. Either way it didn’t help, washing away any possible signs. It muted all sounds. It crept beneath jacket collars and into thoughts, making both limp and uncomfortable to deal with.

 

Looking across his wet saddle, he had warned Hoss that they would do as they had promised if and when they found something. What that something was, Adam wasn’t sure. As far as he knew there would be only two possible “somethings”. One was Joe’s horse, of course. The pinto with its distinctive markings and the Ponderosa brand could be the most damning piece of evidence they could find. Or would it? Maybe the horse had wandered off after Joe had been shot. Not likely but it was possible. The second would be a show-stopper but harder to prove. That would have been Joe’s gun: a pearl-handled Colt .45. His initials were engraved on the butt of it and it would have the balancing needed for a left-handed shooter. Would Adam know it on sight? Maybe. He would know it when he held it in his hand, firing it, for every gun had its own particular sound.

 

So, to his way of thinking, they were looking for a horse and a gun. One would possibly put someone at the scene, the other most definitely would. The only problem was finding the two together. And just because they found them together would not necessarily lead them to the bushwacker. Would it? Adam’s head had begun to ache with the possibilities.

 

At the bottom of the ravine, he pulled up and waited as Hoss and Chub slipped and slid down the loose shale of the embankment. He couldn’t help but notice the look on his brother’s face. Normally a jovial man, Hoss Cartwright hadn’t that look about him now. Instead, to Adam, his brother seemed more angry, more hard-rock determined than he ever had. Earlier in the day, riding side by side, Adam had asked him if something was wrong but the big man had merely glared at him briefly then pulled his horse onto another trail. Adam had kept his peace after that.

 

“You see the smoke?” Hoss asked, reining up and pointing at the obvious. “We didn’t check that side of the canyon that far down, did we?”

 

“Thought we did. Probably just some old prospector,” Adam began but before he could finish his thought a shrill neigh cut the air. Both Chub and Sport pricked their ears forward and Sport returned the call.

 

Adam had to fight the chestnut to keep him from running over Hoss on the narrow trail.

 

At the end of the trail, the canyon spread out into a broken bowl shape, with the broken lip leading towards the Sierras. There, nudged up against the slope, a beggarly cabin sat, its chimney the source of the ribbon of smoke. Using one side of the cabin as its back was a lean-to and a small corral, the rails made of brush and scrap lumber. Within the enclosure a black and white paint horse strutted. Neither one of the Cartwrights had to get any closer to know that it was Cochise, Joe’s horse. Around the corral he trotted, his head tossing, nostrils flaring. If he hadn’t been tied to a center post by a long rope, the brothers were sure he would have jumped the fence.

 

Coming abreast of Hoss, Adam was smiling. Half of what they needed was right there in that corral, damn near screaming at them. He took a quick glimpse of Hoss’ face hoping against hope for some look of relief. But, as he feared, there was no smile. Just the same grim-mouthed determination. Both men swung down, their boots sinking into the muddy yard as their horses put their noses over the fence in greeting.

 

“Peter? Chris? What are you boys doin’ to that horse?” a woman’s husky voice called from the interior of the cabin. She came to the open doorway and stepped out onto the low stoop before she saw that there were two men in the tiny yard. “Oh! Can I help you?”

 

The gallant and mannerly side of Adam wanted to smile and say that he thought it should be the other way around and they should be helping her. He put her age somewhere close to his own but her years had clearly been harder ones. Her brown hair hung in dank locks.over the gray homespun dress she wore. Her feet were bare and showed traces of mud on them. Most of all, even from a distance, what caught him were her eyes. Old eyes, he thought. Seen too much of too little.

 

Hoss spoke up as he angled away from the horses and towards the woman. “This pony you got here. Where’d you get ‘im?” Was it only Adam’s imagination that put an edge to his brother’s voice?

 

“My boys brought him home. Said they found him wanderin’ on t’other side of the hills.” She came out into the yard, her arms crossing her chest protectively from the chill and damp. “Couple days ago it was. Told the boys that when we went into town next, we’d take him in. You know the horse? I do declare that it is one of the meanest animals I have ever run across.”

 

Hoss nodded shortly and was about to go on when a motion off to in corral caught his attention. Inside it, off to one side, he saw two young boys. One had his mother’s brown hair and the other’s hair was just a shade lighter. They both wore gray cotton shirts and ragged trousers . The bigger of the two had his held up with a twist of baling twine as a belt.

 

“That you fellas?” shouted Hoss. “You find this horse?”

 

Adam scowled at his brother. He knew that taking the tone Hoss was would get them no help at all and he tried to signal him to lighten up but the other simply waved away the silent suggestion as he approached the fence. Adam had no choice but to follow suit. What they saw angered them both.

 

Cochise was tied to a center post and clearly had been for some time if the droppings and churned up dirt was any indication. Out of reach a bucket of dirty water sat next to the cabin wall. The pinto’s right forefoot was now caught up in the rope. The normally silken hide showed streaks of mud, sweat and, more ominously, blood down the one leg. In less time than it would take to tell, Hoss was into the corral and with soothing voice and outstretched hand, he walked toward the black and white.

 

Any other time and it might have been thought humourous. As Hoss advanced, calling to Cochise, the horse leaned in his direction until finally he dropped his nose into the man’s hand. A groan came as Hoss ran his hands down the dirty neck, patting, murmuring, soothing. He lifted the captured foot and untangled the rope from around it, noting as he did that the leg had been burnt by the rope.

 

“You there,” directed Hoss. “Get some clean water in that bucket and bring it here.” When neither one of the boys had moved, he repeated himself. Still they stayed put, cowering.

 

Finally, Adam reached into the corral and snagged the bucket. He dumped out the water, not wanting to see what else was in it, and from the well at the front of the cabin, drew fresh water. He could feel the woman’s eyes on him as he crawled through the railings and walked up behind the horse. While he held the bucket, Cochise drank deeply but Adam wasn’t watching the horse. He was watching the two boys.

 

Softly, Adam spoke. “He okay?” Hoss grunted and gave his brother a look that spoke of pure anger and frustration. “I don’t like it any more than you do but is he okay?” He wasn’t sure but what he wanted Hoss to find something that said the horse had taken a fall and somehow that was why Joe…no, that wouldn’t explain the bullet in the back, would it?

 

He approached the two youngsters and did his best to appear non-threatening. Even squatting down in front of them and smiling didn’t seem to help. Their names, he recalled, were Chris and Peter. With a glimpse over his shoulder, he spied their mother, now at the fence, her mouth working silently over some words and thoughts unspoken.

 

“That right? What your ma said? You found the horse?” Two pair of brown eyes merely looked back at him. “Couple days ago? Right?” Still, they remained silent. “Our brother, the one who rides that horse -” Adam hesitated for the younger of the two, maybe all of eleven or twelve, gave the other a panicked look then resolutely returned Adam’s glare. “Our brother was around here. Either of you see anything? Anyone? Other than the horse, I mean.”

 

The older of the boys, Adam figured him to be no more than thirteen at the most, swallowed hard before he spoke up. “Chris and I found the horse. Wanderin’ loose. Other side of the hills.” He pointed with his chin and Adam turned toward the direction he indicated.

 

“Wanderin?” Adam repeated and both boys nodded. “Loose? And you just walked up to him?” Again, they nodded. He looked away from the boys, over his shoulder to where Hoss was tending to the pinto. “Three days ago. Loose. Saddled and bridled?”

 

The older of the boys chewed his lower lip, Adam saw from the corner of his eye, then answered. “He was saddled and bridled, Mister. Dragging his reins in the mud and all. That’s how we caught him.”

 

“Hoss,” Adam called out, not looking back at the boys. He thought for a moment then rose from his crouch and went to the pole, untied the rope and walked toward Cochise, coiling the rope in his hand as he went. Coming to stand beside the horse’s head, he turned to the boys and purposely dropped the rope. “Let’s say this rope is the reins.” He gestured to the dirt. “He was wandering, dragging his reins.”

 

Both boys nodded but the affirmation came only after they had glanced at each other.

 

Adam walked back to them and hunched down once more. “Want to try that again? Doesn’t matter if it’s reins, or rope. That horse will stay in that spot until hell just about freezes over. Want to tell me again where and how you found him?”

 

“Now wait just a minute, Mister,” their mother shouted angrily. She would have entered the corral but Hoss was there in front of her and she would’ve had to get around him and the horse she obviously feared.

 

Chris and Peter exchanged looks that any parent would recognize. They needed another story and it needed to be one they could both attest to, even if it wasn’t the truth.

 

“I’m tellin’ ya. We found the horse,” the older one reaffirmed.

 

“What about it? Where? What was the horse doing?”

 

Again the traded looks and the younger one’s eyes started watering. He tried to hide his face behind his brother’s back but Adam caught him and pulled him out in front.

 

“Just tell me what you know. What you saw.”

 

“Chris and me was playing cowboys and injuns,” he began, tugging his arm from Adam’s grasp. “We, we, we saw the horse. He was tied up.”

 

“Where? Where was he tied?” Adam pushed, his voice taking on an edge. He wanted to kick himself after the words were out for hadn’t he just thought ill of Hoss for taking the same tone?

 

“Just over the other side of the hill,” Peter, the younger of the two, said and pointed behind him.

 

“Did you see anyone? Anything?” Although he felt as though he knew the answer, Adam asked anyway. “There was a camp made there, right?” The boys said nothing so he continued. “There was a man there in a green jacket.” Peter nodded but Chris looked away, fear washing over him plainly. “What was the man doing?”

 

 

“What was he doing?” Hoss asked, his back to the boys, he concentrated on the woman before him. Her eyes had grown huge with fright and she pressed dirty knuckles to her mouth as she breathed quickly. She knew they weren’t telling the truth, he thought.

 

 

“What was the man in the green jacket doing?” pressed Adam, taking Peter’s slim and shaking shoulders between his hands.

 

It was Chris, though, who answered. “He was dead.”

 

The woman caught her breath and began to back away from the fence, shaking her head as she did. “You didn’t tell me any of this! Why didn’t you tell me? Why?” she panted.

 

Chris’ eyes filled with disgust and loathing. “Wasn’t anything we could do about it, Ma. He was dead. Stone cold dead. He wasn’t gonna be needin’ the horse and all so we just…took it.”

 

“That’s stealin’!” the mother shouted, her hands now twisting in her ragged skirt as she continued to back away. “You been taught better than that! Both you boys! Take the horse and the gear and all. Please, mister. I’m sorry ’bout your brother but -”

 

“There’s something your boys aren’t telling, isn’t there?” Adam shook the one boy. “How did you know he was dead?”

 

“He’d been shot. In the back. Now let my brother go!” Chris hissed and tried to pull Peter from Adam’s grasp but Adam was faster and he managed to get hold of Chris’ neck. The younger boy was openly crying now and his brother took every opportunity to inflict damage on the man. He was aiming another kick when Hoss grabbed him up from behind.

 

For a few moments, the boys fought bravely, squirming, kicking. Outside the corral, the woman continually shouted “stop” again and again but strangely, did nothing to obtain their release. Eventually, adult muscle won out. Their energy spent, the children fell into a heap when the men turned them loose.

 

“I don’t understand,” Adam said quietly, turning his back to the boys now huddled together at his feet. “Why the fighting?” He gazed into Hoss’ face, searching for the answer. The ugly expression he saw there gave him pause for it was unlike his brawny brother to look that way.

 

“Ma’am?” Adam angled across to fence, patting Cochise on the rump as he walked behind him. He ducked between two rails and called to her once more. She stood there, shaking and trembling, begging them to stop over and over again but whispering it to her upraised hand.

 

“Would you let us take the boys – you come, too – up to where they said they saw the dead man?”

The five people stood silently between the large boulders that bracketed the camp site. Despite the rain, the blackened wood within the ring of rocks still was visible. The coffee pot and the tin cup were gone of course, but in Adam’s mind they were still there – mute reminders of a life nearly taken.

 

“Show us where the dead man was at,” Hoss asked – no- demanded forcibly.

 

Peter, running a hand beneath a runny nose, just pointed at the fire ring. That wasn’t good enough and Hoss said so. Finally Chris stepped up and in an angry tone gestured, his hands showing how “The body was stretched out, cross the fire some.”

 

“Was the fire still burning?” Adam asked.

 

Chris nodded but Peter shook his head no. When the question came again, neither answered, riveting each other into silence with their eyes.

 

“Well, tell me something else,” prompted Adam. “If the man was dead, how did he get away from here? I don’t see any body.”

 

Again, the boys refused to comment.

 

Watching them, Hoss Cartwright felt his emotions boil over. He could see Joe laying there, bleeding from the gunshot. In the same instant, he could see the wounded ugly flesh swollen as Paul Martin had changed that first set of bandages. He could hear his father’s prayer, the words struggling to be heard, to be answered, and feel his brother’s flesh beneath his hand, motionless, cold. With a rush of hot anger, he grabbed Chris and forced his thin body to ground beside the dead fire.

 

“He was here. Layin’ part way in the fire. We know because he’s got burns on him. But he wasn’t dead.” He yanked the boy to his feet but didn’t turn him loose. Instead he headed down the steep slope, following the trail he’d laid out for Roy Coffee three days before. “He wasn’t dead, though. No, he managed to get up, get to his feet. Hurtin’, bleedin’, he needed help. He headed this way,” Hoss forced the youngster forward, intentionally pushing him into the sagebrush, making him stumble. With his grip tightening on the boy’s shoulder, he pulled him this way and that. “No, he might have cried out for help, but there weren’t no one to hear him, was there? Long about here, he fell.” Hoss pushed him hard, tripping him then grabbing him back up, only to push his face and body into the tree. “Slammed into this tree. Broke his collar bone. Some ribs too. That’s how hard he hit it. But there wasn’t anyone to help him, was there?” Yanking the boy upright once more, they continued on. “See this here shale rock? Mighty hard to walk on when you ain’t in pain. Harder yet when you’ve lost a lot of blood. See here where it’s all roughed up. Here he fell again.” He felt the thin muscles stretch tight beneath his hand and even though he wanted to shove the boy down, he didn’t. Instead he ran with him, slipping and sliding, until they got to the bottom of the slope. Only there did he push the panting youngster into the grass face down. “There’s a road up there and he knew that but he had to get to it. But how? He was out of strength, bleedin’, hurtin’ awful. How did he get up there, Chris?”

 

The tear-stained face that looked up to Hoss showed only belligerent fear. Hoss leaned down and put his face to the boy’s.

 

“He crawled.” Hoss gathered the thin shirt back into his fist and dragged the protesting boy up the grassy slope then dropped him. “Then, completely spent, he laid here. From the size of the stain we found on the grass, he must have laid there most of the day until the stage driver saw him. All that from a man you said was stone cold dead when you took his horse. Now what have you got to say?”

 

The sound of silence stretched thin then finally broke when Peter, the woman and Adam joined them. The little one knelt beside his brother, searching for a way to give him some sort of comfort while their mother only stared at Hoss with stark fear holding her mute.

 

“It was an accident,” little Peter said, the only one brave enough to look Hoss in the eye. “We was playin’. The man, the one in the green coat. He talked with us some as he was making some coffee. Told us how he’d played the same way when he was little. Chris got behind him. Then…then…Chris grabbed at the man’s gun and it just went off. We were playin’. We didn’t mean nobody to get hurt. It was an accident..”

 

The words, the admission, the whole of it made Adam sick to his stomach. With a hand covering his mouth, he turned away, unable to face any of them, least of all Hoss.

 

“We were scared, Ma. We’d kilt a man, we thought for sure. Chris said we had to take his horse or it’d starve, tied up there like that. We weren’t lyin’! We found the horse.”

 

“What now?” the mother whispered, her words silencing her sons. The awful impact of what her sons had done – accidently shot a man then left him to die by stealing his one hope, his horse- was beginning to hit her and she had no strength, no words, nothing left.

 

“It ain’t up to us. Got to take them into the law,” Hoss got out but from the strain he heard in the simple words, Adam knew he was just as appalled. “Your husband-”

 

“He’s over to Hangtown. Said there was work over there. He left us back in the Spring. Ain’t heard from him yet,” she explained in dull, lifeless words. “I want to go with my boys. I got to. You ain’t the law and you can’t take my boys away from me.” Reaching out, she gathered Peter to her, then called to Chris. He stayed where he’d fallen in the grass. She called to him again.

 

“You answer your momma, boy!” spat Hoss as he lifted him to his feet.

 

Chris glared at him but slowly backed up to his mother, never losing sight of the big man.

 

“You need to get something together while we take care of the horses?” Adam asked but none of them answered him. Once back at the cabin, he saddled Cochise and shushed Hoss’ growl when the boys and their mother mounted the black and white. There was no other way for them to get to Virginia City.

 

And the law.

 


Chapter 4:

A Plea for Understanding

 

Ben Cartwright stirred in his chair. The lamp at his elbow shed a buttery glow around the room, fading into deep shadows in the room. A book in his hands had captured his attention earlier but now was nearly forgotten. Drawing a deep breath, he rose stiffly, putting the book aside to press a hand into the small of his back. He took the single step that took him to Joe’s bedside and placed a hand to his son’s brow. He nodded and smiled for there was no fever present. But when that same son turned from that touch, the father’s smile faded like the lamp’s light, losing itself into the shadows of worry.

 

As if coalescing from those same shadows, Adam quietly stepped into the room, leaning down to rest his tired, aching body on the brass rail at the foot of his brother’s bed. He waited to speak. Let his father first acknowledge his presence in the room, he thought. To bide his time, to give his father that extra moment of solitude, he looked to his feet, allowing the water dripping from his hat to fall silently to the thick carpet.

 

“Anything?” came his father’s deep voice, muted to match the light. There was no animosity, no anger, nothing except to Adam’s ear the fatigue of a man pushed to the limits of his endurance by forces he was unable to battle against.

 

Now he would have to tell him. Adam looked up but couldn’t meet his father’s eyes. Instead he addressed his sleeping brother. “We brought them in. Both of them, Joe. They’re brothers. They had Cochise. He’s a little roughed up too but he’s gonna be all right.”

 

Ben’s attention was now fully riveted on his eldest, sensing something unsaid and his expression alone begged Adam to go on.

 

Adam swallowed hard before he continued, this time speaking to his father. “Two of them. Brothers. Said it was an accident.”

 

“And you believe it?” An edge came to Ben’s whisper that echoed disbelief.

 

“Yes, I do.” Once more he couldn’t face his father and he wondered why since nothing he had to say… “They’re kids, Pa. Ten, twelve years old maybe. Hardly old enough to know what they did, much less be a danger to someone.” Unlike your middle son, he almost said aloud.

 

“Kids? Boys? Where are they?”

 

“Took them to Roy Coffee. Hoss is still down there.” I tried to get him to come up here but something’s taken him over. He’s like an angry dog, snapping and snarling at everyone and everything. He won’t talk to me about it and I can’t understand why he’s like this. You talk with him. Maybe he’ll tell you why he’s… the only word Adam knew to describe his once kindhearted brother was “possessed”.

 

Without another word, Ben had gone, his eyes narrowed as if it would help him to see what was not there: logic and reason. Adam, left to his own devices, shook his head, shrugged out his damp coat and put it and his rain-soaked hat over next to the low-burning fire. Sitting in the chair his father had kept warm all afternoon and into the early evening, he toed off his boots. He wiggled his toes, wincing at the wet socks across them. He sighed deeply and picked up the book, glancing at the spine for the title.

 

“Can’t imagine you picked this.” He chuckled as he spoke then thumbed it open, turning the pages to the lamp as if see the words. Without seeing the printing, he recited what was in his heart, not on the yellowed page:

 

“Oh that the world would return to yesterday on the morrow;

To set us back before this painful loss, before this wasting sorrow.

Bring back to us the dancing bright and joyful summer flowers

And to never have cried these useless, tearful showers.”

 

“That ain’t Shakespeare.”

 

Just the sound, those breathy, barely audible three words made Adam smile. Gesturing with the now closed book, he raised his head to steady that same smile for his brother. “Would that I could write poetry as well as the Bard.” He leaned forward, his elbows coming to rest on his knees. “You do get a passing mark for knowing some Shakespeare then. But you aren’t going to convince me that this, “and he raised the book for Joe to be able to see,” was your choice. You and Macbeth?” Adam shook his head and laid the volume aside. “One of his comedies, maybe.”

 

“Double trouble; Boil and…something else.” There was still that damning weakness in his words, despite the effort but Adam heard the determination, the strength that lay just beneath them.

 

“Knew you weren’t as dumb as you look,” Adam teased, easing onto the side of the bed and turning up the wick of the low burning lamp on the bedside table. “You know where you are?”

 

Joe grunted and grimaced, clearly sorting through muzzy thoughts and memories. “Ain’t home. Moved me yesterday. Hotel?”

 

“Not bad. It was actually day before yesterday but it is the International House. You need anything?”

 

“Beer?”

 

He pulled his mouth into a tight smile and squeezed his eyes closed then Adam shook his head once. “Predictable as always, brother. Next you are going to tell me that you feel fine.” Seeing Joe try to moisten his lips, he lifted the glass and silently asked if he wanted some. He didn’t wait for an answer but poured the water and helped him to drink. He’s doing the swallowing and it hurts me?

 

“I am fine,” Joe answered when his head was back on the pillows. He caught Adam’s raised brows, the expression stolen from their father. “Shove enough laudanum into a body and it’s true.”

 

“True,” Adam echoed. “And you know that medicine and beer don’t mix. So, besides the beer you can’t have, you need anything?” Without waiting for an answer, he rose and pulled the bell pull beside the bed. Somewhere in the bowels of the grand hotel, someone heard the chime and would send a bellhop to the door. Politely they would ask the same question Adam had just asked and summoning the doctor would be the request. So until the doctor appeared, Adam figured he had a good ten minutes.

 

“Read me some of that what you were just reading,” were Joe’s words. It was puzzling that Adam said he couldn’t.

 

“It’s not in that book. That’s all I remember of it,” Adam lied. He did remember the whole of it. They were the outpourings of a young man’s soul -his- when his step-mother died suddenly and he had been thrust into the role once again of easing his father’s grief. In his mind’s eye he saw them on the plain coarse paper of his journal; they were written in the strong bold copperplate script of an eighteen-year-old’s hand. Yet there on that same page were the tear-stains of a child. His? Yes, he had to admit, and those of his youngest brother that he’d held close that horrible night and tried to explain what neither understood – a world lost. The words, the wish, never revisited without chest-tightening pain. Why then had they come to him this night? He shook his head.

 

“Macbeth, huh?” Joe whispered and through the bruises and puffy lip, Adam saw the faint smile.

 

“Macbeth.”

 

“Macbeth” came with a resigned sigh as Joe pressed his pounding head into the downy pillow.

 

Adam sat back in the chair and flipped the book open and began to read aloud, his voice taking on the occasional Scottish burr required of character. He hadn’t gotten far when a tap on the outermost door preceded the doctor into the room.

 

He shrugged himself deeper into his coat and pulled his hat down firmer before he stepped off the hotel steps and across the street. The bright lights of another busy, raucous Virginia City night showed Ben the way to the sheriff’s office a few blocks away. Before he went in, he paused at the hitching rail and Cochise. He spoke lowly and soothing to the horse, running his hands over the wet black and white hide. The animal leaned into the touch and it made Ben chuckle briefly. He promised that it wouldn’t be long before the horse was in a snug stable, fed, watered and cleaned up. The horse’s nose dipped, accepting Ben’s pat to his shoulder as part of the promise.

 

Ben hurried up the steps and into the sheriff’s office. There within was over-done warmth and the smell of damp wool, coffee and things not clean. Hoss sat in the chair before the desk, the sheriff’s words coming through the door to cells as he chastised someone.

 

“Joe okay?” asked Hoss, coming to his feet, then, “Adam tell ya?”

 

“He’s doing better this evening. And Adam did, but I wanted to see for myself. Said they were two brothers. Boys.”

 

“They are and they’re mine.” The woman came into the room, Roy Coffee pushing her before him. “I got the right to be with my sons, don’t I?”

 

“No, ma’am. Not right now. Ben, this is Karyn Clements. Got her two boys, Chris and Peter, locked up back there. Miz Clements, this is the father of the man your boys shot and left for dead.”

 

“My name is Ben Cartwright, Mrs. Clements. Is it true what I’m hearing? Your sons-”

 

“My little boys,” she hissed then seemed afraid that he would strike her and took a step away from him. “They said it was an accident.”

 

Hoss’ hat slapping onto the desk sounded like a gunshot dulled by distance. “Accident? An accident that they left him like that?” Only Ben’s hand against his chest stopped Hoss from advancing on the woman. When his father’s dark eyes warned him off, he gave in grudgingly but did not return to the chair. Instead he paced the room.

 

“Mrs. Clements, you need to get a lawyer. Right now I am going to charge those little boys of yours with attempted murder and horse stealing. Might be other charges later but those are enough.” Roy slid into the chair behind the desk and pulled writing paper from his desk drawer. Dipping the pen into the inkwell, he began to write, the pen’s scratching the only noise in the room.

 

“A lawyer,” she said flatly as though there were only two words in her existence. She roused, her head now lifting as she regarded the white-haired man before. She barely came chest-high to him but she took him all in and assessed him with that one glimpse. “You’re a rich man, Mister Cartwright. A powerful man, too. You’ve got sons, same as me. You tell me, Mister Cartwright. If those were your sons locked up in that jail cell, accused like mine, and someone told you to get a lawyer, you wouldn’t have no trouble doin’ that, would you?”

 

Ben regarded the trembling woman closely. Her blue-gray eyes were lined by more than fatigue and fear. He saw hopelessness there. The threadbare coat she wore hung to her knees and the battered hat she held in one hand was a long way from being new. As he looked down on her, he saw her bare feet just beneath the ragged hem of a gray homespun dress. Yes, hopelessness that now blended with despair.

 

“I am a rich man,” he admitted for there was no denying the obvious. “But my greatest riches are my sons, Miz Clements. And I would move heaven and earth to get them what they needed in any circumstance. There is a difference between my sons and yours, though. Even if it truly were an accident, my sons would not have left a man to die. They would have done what they could to help him.”

 

“But they had no way!” she wailed, scalding tears coming now and tracking down her weathered cheeks.

 

“The same horse they stole would have taken them to find help. They could have said something to you about it but they didn’t, did they?”

 

Ben turned at the sound of Hoss’ words. For the first time since this had all begun, he saw him clearly. There was nothing about him except for the body and the clothes that he recognized as his son. Hoss’ face, his pinched features and narrowed eyes, showed only anger where Ben would have expected to see…to see at least a modicum of his renown compassion. It wasn’t there. Only the frustration he had dealt with for three days. Only the anger.

 

“They was afraid. Like now. Sheriff, this here man, he hurt my boy, my Chris. Lock him up too!”

 

“Enough!” Roy shouted, his fist pounding his desk. “For tonight, Miz Clements, your boys stay locked in my jail cell. Ben, you and Hoss got somewhere else you need to be. I’ll talk with these boys and if what they say is true, Hoss-.”

 

“All I did was-” Hoss began but the little woman turned on him with sudden ferocity of a mother lioness.

 

Beating her fists against his chest she began to shout at him. “You grabbed him and threw him to the ground. Then you pushed him into that tree. All down that slope you treated him like he was some rag and you were a mad dog. You hurt my boy! Sheriff, go in there. Take a look at Chris. I’ll bet his shoulder is black and blue.”

 

Hoss didn’t wait for Roy. “Yes, ma’am. I did that. I did, Pa. I showed that boy – and you too, Miz Clements- just exactly what my brother went through, trying to get to the help your boys denied him by running away. You wanna see bruises, Miz Clements? Let me take you over to see Joe right now. Let me take the bandage off his shoulder and show you the bullet hole they put in him. Doc said it broke his shoulder blade so he may not be able to use that arm right ever again. Bruises?! Any bruises on that boy in there will heal in no time at all. The scars on my brother will last a life time. You go ahead and lock me up, Roy. That’ll give me some time to -”

 

“I am not locking you up, Hoss, even though I’ve half a mind to so’s to simmer you down some. Now, you and your pa get out of here before I change my mind. If I decide to, I know where to find you.”

 

Mrs Clements went back on the attack. “Is that how it is? One law for the rich and another for us poor?”

 

Roy huffed into his mustache. “I know where to find Hoss if and when I decide he’s done something wrong. Now, Miz Clements, I suggest you get yourself out of here before I completely lose my temper.”

 

Out on the boardwalk, Ben stopped Hoss with a hand to his arm. “You go on, son. Joe will want to see you if he’s awake. He truly is doing better.”

 

“He remember how he got shot yet?”

 

Ben paused, his keen hearing catching the sounds of bare feet striking the floor just on the other side of the door. “Not yet. Go on. I’ll be along after I see to the horses.”

 

Hoss was moving across the muddy street, his white hat catching the light when Mrs. Clements came out onto the boardwalk behind Ben. He didn’t turn to her but addressed her as he went down the steps to the waiting horses.

 

“Do you have a place to stay tonight?”he asked, slipping the reins free from the hitching post and backing the animals up.

 

“Probably same place you’re taking these animals.”

 

“Oliver’s Livery doesn’t allow people to sleep in their stalls. Just horses. Occasional dog, maybe. Or a cat. But not people. That’s why there are hotels, boarding houses, and the like here in Virginia City.” He tugged on the reins and the horses fell into a slow, tired walk behind the man and woman.

 

“Them places take money. If I ain’t got the money for a lawyer-man to help my boys, where am I goin’ to get it to spend a night in a hotel? Nope. Hotels, like lawyers, like the law, are for rich folks.”

 

“No,” Ben sighed as they came to a stop before the wide doors of the livery stable. She reached for the handle, to pull the heavy door open but Ben stopped her. “Hotels, like the law, and like lawyers, are for people. Doesn’t matter if they are rich or poor. You help me get these horses settled and I’ll see to it that you have a roof over your head tonight, Mrs Clements.”

 

“I don’t take no charity!” she spat and pulled her hand from under his. Glaring at him over her shoulder, she opened the door, sliding it to the side.

 

Once he had the horses pulled into the stable, he found a lamp and lit it, rousing one of the barn cats that went skittering off into the night. The motion of the animal frightened the woman and she let out a half-strangled cry of fear. Ben heard it but decided to ignore it as he pushed Sport into the first stall. Cochise pushed Chub aside and made it into the next empty space. With a gentle slap to his withers, Ben let the big black go into the last stall. There were no other spaces left.

 

Standing with his hands planted firmly in his hips, Ben stared at the woman until she finally faced him. She was chewing her lip and staring up toward the overhead loft. The idea of staying up there in the dark held her in fear. Yet when she came full circle and found him watching her she bristled. “What?” she barked.

 

“When I said that I would move heaven and earth to help my sons, I saw the same in your eyes, Mrs Clements. Am I right or did I make a mistake?”

 

“Mothers are no different from fathers.”

 

“Then help me with these horses. After all, unless I missed something, you had to have ridden one of them into town. That animal deserves care. Care I am willing to pay for.”

 

“How?” Her tone had softened but not by much.

 

“You help me and it will be enough for a room at the hotel and a meal tomorrow. Maybe after a good night’s sleep, we can come to some sort of understanding.”

 

Her eyes narrowed but she moved towards Chub. “I’ll take care of this ‘un. Them other two scare me.”

 

How odd, Ben thought as he pulled the wet saddle off Cochise, that she would choose the horse of the man who seemed to despise everything about her and her sons. No, the odd part was Hoss’ continuing anger. If it had been Joe – or even Adam – who had stood there and admitted to hurting a person they way Hoss had, Ben, while appalled, would have thought it within them. Those book-end sons of his, as different as night and day sometimes, still had a streak within them that didn’t shy away from violence the way Hoss did. And that’s what it had been – violence. It brought Ben back around to the one question he needed an answer to. Why?


Chapter 5:

Misunderstood Justice

 

The next morning dawned bright and sunny. Cold, for winter was coming. The sky though, washed by the rain, was a brilliant cloudless blue. Having seen nothing but gray mist and rain for several days, the sun now gave sharp contrast to colors and shapes.

 

Ben stepped away from the sun-streaked window, the pulled-aside drapes now allowing the brilliance into the room. Shafts of light lay like bars across Joe’s blanketed legs and the lamp at his head was extinguished, un-needed. The fire still burned low in the fireplace there in the room and it was there that Ben went. He prodded the few logs there and added the last of the supply to the struggling flame.

 

“You didn’t answer me,” his son said and it drew Ben’s attention. Not for the accusation but for the still breathy and weak sound of it. Paul had said that Joe would be weak for some time but a part of Ben had refused to believe it. Yet every time Joe spoke, he proved it. The loss of blood, the unrelenting pain combined with shock had severely depleted his strength. Only with time, the doctor had assured them, would the strength come back. Until then, rest, good food and a large dose of patience were in order.

 

“Yes, I did. You just didn’t like the answer so you pretended not to hear it.” Ben’s reply was given with a large dose of the patience Paul had prescribed. “But to tell you again, no. We are not headed back to the Ponderosa just yet. It’s only been three days -”

 

“Four.”

 

“Three days,” the father continued. He leaned on the same brass rail at the foot of the bed the same way Adam had the night before. “You will leave here when – and only when – Paul Martin says you can.”

 

Joe grunted in response. Okay, so it was all bravado and bluster. There wasn’t a square inch on him that morning that didn’t ache. And he was tired -oh, lordy- he was tired! Earlier, when the doctor had been in, checking bandages and doing all those things that doctors loved to do, he’d put on a good face. Hoss knew the difference, of course, since it had taken his tender strength to move him. When it was all over, and he was settled back into the mound of pillows, a simple half-nod had thanked his brother who’d just touched the back of his hand with his fingertips in acknowledgment.

 

“If I’m gonna get better, Hop Sing’s cooking -” he began, struggling to get the words all strung together without panting but his father cut him short.

 

“Hop Sing has his hands busy out at the Ranch. Round-up, remember?” Ben didn’t dare tell Joe that Hop Sing had been there two nights running, against Ben’s expressed direction to the contrary.

 

“All the more reason to be home. You, “- grab some air– “Adam,” -another half lungful- “and Hoss need to be there too.” He would have said more to make his case but each and every word seemed to require an exorbitant amount of energy and breath.

 

All his father would say was that it was more complicated than all that. He offered him some breakfast but Joe declined with a shake of his head. With a stern look, he relented but asked that it be light. “Coffee, some toast.”

 

“How about some tea instead?”

 

Joe rolled his eyes at his father’s patent insistence. He would have complained but the eye rolling had made him slightly dizzy so his father got his way – but only through chance. Left alone as his father went to place the order with the hotel staff, Joe was able to take a mental inventory of where and how he was. He began with the obvious: the left shoulder that lay on something padded yet hard. It extended half way down his back; he could feel it. There was considerable discomfort when he tried to rotate his shoulder under the thick bandages. There was no mistaking the splint on his arm. Doc Martin had readjusted it this morning and muttered about it looking better with the swelling down. It was broken, Joe was sure. And the pain in his side and chest when he took a deep breath said ribs were broken too. There were burns on the other hand and arm that he thought were odd since he couldn’t figure out how he could have fallen and burnt himself. Then came the other puzzles. His knee and ankle pulsed and throbbed with every beat of his heart but he could move them. Not a lot and certainly without making himself do it so they weren’t broken. He didn’t need a mirror to know that one eye was blackened and was only now coming open enough to see out. But how had this all happened?

 

The last thing he remembered was…what? He’d been down below Genoa. He’d sold some horses and been headed back to the ranch. There his memory stopped until he’d awoken in pain, disoriented and confused and found Hoss bathing him, for God’s sake! Even now, to himself, he couldn’t make it all fit. He’d fallen or had he been in a fight? The bruises could have come from either. The knee and ankle said ‘fall’ clearly but the rest of it? The answer, he thought, had to be under the thick bandages on his shoulder. There on the night stand were a pair of scissors that came to his hand easily. Gritting his teeth against the pain it brought, he began to cut awkwardly.

 

“What the. . .?” exclaimed Ben, dropping the tray he was carrying. He took long strides and pulled the scissors away with more force than he intended to use. “What are you doing?”

 

Joe looked at him and past him to where Adam and Hoss were at the open doorway. He shook his head, confused by their expressions as well as his own. Finally he got the words out. “I have to know and I don’t. What happened to me?” He saw the resignation come to Adam’s face even though he bent his head, turned it and let his hand run over his mouth and jaw. Hoss’ face went to stone with his eyes becoming cold blue ice chips. His father, the man he relied on for all his answers, seemed to start to say something then changed his mind.

 

“Please?” he whispered and let the hurt fill his face, his eyes, pleading for the answer to rid his body of the pain.

 

“Tell him, Pa,” was Hoss’ unbidden advice and Ben turned slightly as if to silence it.

 

“You were shot, son.”

 

“Shot?” The answer had not brought him understanding; only more questions.

 

“By accident, apparently,” his father continued and now moved closer, pushing at the pillows, trying to resettle Joe but he would have none of it.

 

“By who? Is that where Adam and Hoss have been?” he tried to ask but couldn’t get his mouth to make the words.

 

His father seemed to understand and he just said, “Yes,” and tried to let it end there.

 

“Accident?” Joe echoed, trying to come to grips with the idea but as he did, he saw Hoss turn away. Of the other men in the room, only Adam met his eyes. “Adam?” he begged, wanting someone to tell him all that they knew. He felt his father stiffen when Adam told him that they would talk later, when everything was over. He promised.

 

Exhausted beyond his meager strength, confused by what had and hadn’t been said and what he’d seen, Joe sagged back into the pillows. His eyes told his brother that he would hold him fast to that promise.

“I asked the judge here today. Seems the best thing to do, all things being what they are.” Roy’s no-nonsense tone left Ben, Adam and Hoss Cartwright no room for negotiation as they entered the sheriff’s office. As they entered, they saw Judge Owen Taylor, a retired circuit-riding judge they knew and respected. He was seated behind Roy’s desk. On a bench pulled from the wall and now placed before the judge were the two boys and their mother. Roy gestured for them to take the other chairs, those against the wall.

 

Unsure of what was about to take place, Ben opened his jacket and let his hat dangle in his hands. The boys, he studied closely. The youngest one, slim of build, his mother kept nestled close to her side. He watched Hoss fearfully, his eyes growing large. The other boy, the one Ben understood had pulled Joe’s gun out of its holster and shot him sat at his mother’s side as well but with his arms crossed in defiance. When he caught Ben’s eyes on him, he lifted his chin in defiance. His mother dipped her head to speak to him but he gave her an ugly silencing look that made Ben’s blood simmer.

 

“Okay, then. Let’s get this rolling. First of all, what happens here is just as binding as if we were in a courtroom. We’re all agreed on that?” He waited until all the adults at least nodded their agreement. “Which one of you boys is Peter?” the judge asked, his voice rolling like gentle thunder around the room. He nodded when Peter raised his hand timidly. “That makes you Chris, right?” The other boy gave no sign that he’d even heard the man. “These charges here are pretty serious charges, fellas. Attempted murder in the state of Nevada can get you seven to ten years in the state penitentiary. Horse stealing is a hanging offense.”

 

“That’s for men, your honor,” Mrs. Clements spoke up sharply, her pinched and pained face paling. “These are just little boys.”

 

“How old are you, son?” he asked of Chris.

 

Chris had to be prodded by the sheriff before he answered. “Thirteen.”

 

“And you, Peter?”

 

“Almost twelve.” No prodding was required.

 

“Thirteen and almost twelve,” repeated the judge and adjusted his little half-lense glasses. “Yet they pulled a gun and shot a man, Mrs. Clements. It doesn’t matter to the law how old a shooter is, just that he did it. And you did shoot Joe Cartwright, did you not?” This last he directed to sulking Chris.

 

But it was Peter who spoke up. “It was an accident. The gun went off by accident.” He emphasized the word accident twice then looked up into his mother’s face, looking for understanding and consolation.

 

“Now how can a gun go off by accident?” the judge asked and leaned forward, studying the Colt pistol that lay on the desk before him as though proximity and the gun itself would give him the answer.

 

It was Adam Cartwright who spoke up. “They can and they do, your honor. Granted, not often but I would suggest that if you are going to pick up the gun there before you, you do it carefully. That’s my brother’s gun and I know for a fact that it takes very little pressure on the trigger to fire it.”

 

“Hair-trigger, huh?” For the next few heartbeats, Owen Taylor studied the weapon. It was indeed a fine piece of craftsmanship, but as he would comment, it was still just a machine and you had to make a machine kill.

 

“Either of you boys ever handle a gun before?” the judge asked.. He nodded when both of them replied that they hadn’t. “Your pa ever take you huntin’ with him? Maybe let you hold the rifle for him?” Again, the answer was no. Then a thought came to him. “Where is your pa?” The two of them looked at once to their mother.

 

“My husband, he’s gone over to California. Lookin’ for work.”

 

“How long has he been gone?”

 

“He left last summer. Headin’ to Frisco. Said there was plenty of work there. Said he’d come back for us before Christmas.” Her words tumbled out quickly, chasing one another like frightened rabbits down a hole.

 

Adam cocked his head and felt Hoss nudge his side. Earlier, yesterday, she’d said that he’d left in the spring and that he’d gone to Hangtown. Now, she was lying. Or had she lied yesterday?

 

“You mean to tell me that he left you and the boys? Didn’t take you with him? Why’s that?” prodded the judge.

 

Her shoulders straightened and her chin lifted before she answered. “Don’t matter. He just did. Me and the boys got along just fine.”

 

The judge settled back in the chair and let his fingers drum on the desktop. “I talked with the sheriff here and this morning I took me a little ride. Know where I went?” He didn’t wait for an answer but still studying his moving fingers, went on. “I rode out to an old log shack on the edge of Silver Gulch. Think you would know the place, Mrs. Clements since you’ve been squatting there since last spring. Place actually belongs to a friend of mine. My friend owns a lot of land and that little place, well, he probably hadn’t been by to see you living there. Besides, it wouldn’t have bothered him much to see you and the boys living there.”

 

When the silence stretched thin in the warm room, he cleared his throat and went on. “I went into the cabin. Didn’t need to open the door because there isn’t one. Yes sir, I just walked right on in. Know what I found? ‘Course you would because it’s where you’ve been living. You and the boys.”

 

“And my husband,” she asserted quickly but the judge shook his head slowly from side to side, his attention still on his own fingers.

 

“Wasn’t a single sign of a man ever having been there, Mrs. Clements. Two narrow beds, one with a pillow on either end so I figured that was the boys’ bed. Some tinware for cooking and eating. Some cornmeal and a few other things but nothing that said a man had ever been there. You gonna tell me now that he took it all with him to California when he left? Of course you are. Right down to your wedding band, right?”

 

“I gave it to him for luck.”

 

He chortled and looked the woman in the eye as he did. “Funny thing about rings. Ones that you wear for thirteen years or so.” His gaze swept back and forth between her sons. “They leave an indent on your finger, Miz Clements. An indent I don’t see on your’s if you took it off not long ago. Where is your husband? Or maybe I should ask where is the boys’ father?”

 

She crumbled apart. Bit by bit, she sagged. She hid her face between Peter and her shoulder. Her sobs came to the men muffled. Peter, his thin arms trying to hold her up, reached for his brother with his eyes, pleading.

 

“We ain’t got a pa,” Chris finally said. “At least not one I ever knew. When Peter and I were little, Momma and us started to California from Kansas. Walkin’ cause we didn’t have no horse nor wagon. When we got tired enough and hungry enough, we’d stop. Ranchers sometimes would let Momma work for ’em so we could eat. She can cook real good. Couple of times, I wished we’d stayed like the man wanted us to but Momma said we had to keep goin’. Had to get to California.”

 

“That’s why we took the horse,” Peter’s spoke up, barely able to be heard. “If we had the horse we could get to California.”

 

“And there was a fine blanket on behind the saddle that would keep us all warm come winter. And food in the saddle bags. There was a shirt there that Momma said she could make fit me but I told her that Peter needed a shirt more than me.”

 

“So you shot the man to take those things?” asked Taylor.

 

“No. It was like Peter said. It was an accident. Yes, I pulled the gun out of the man’s holster but it went off almost as soon as I touched it. When the man fell, I saw the blood on him. His eyes were closed and he didn’t look like he was breathin’.” Chris had turned by then and sought Ben Cartwright but he ended by looking at Hoss. “I thought he was dead. I thought I’d killed him. I got scared.”

 

“And you and your brother ran away,” finished Adam, sympathy filling his voice. He remembered being a little boy with a brother, wandering across the country with a parent. Like Chris, he recalled places of kindness where they’d stayed, his father working just long enough to get them what they needed to get back on the road to his dream. There were times, yes, when they’d walked because there had been no other way to travel. If the same had happened to him, wouldn’t he have done the same thing? The man he was answered ‘maybe’; the child he had been answered ‘yes’.

 

“Ben? You been mighty quiet over there. Got anything to say before I go on?” When Ben shook his head and said no, Owen Taylor began again. “Hoss Cartwright, from what I understand you took it upon yourself to be judge and jury with these here boys. Am I right?”

 

“Now just a dog-gone minute, your honor,” began Hoss’ protest but the judge smacked the desktop and ordered him silent.

 

“You, Chris, stand up and come here.” Reluctantly the boy obeyed, searching for his mother’s face as he did. She watched but from the corner of her eye, peeking over his brother’s head. He started to shake as he neared the old judge, his feet suddenly stumbling on the smooth pine floor. When the man ordered him to take his shirt off, he bit down on his lip but did it anyway. There were bruises on his arms and shoulders. Bruises in the shape and configuration of a large hand.

 

“How’d these get here?” the judge asked, his stern voice now soft and caring as he spoke to the boy. “That big fella over there, the one with the white hat, he put them there, didn’t he?”

 

Chris shivered from the cold. And the fear. Yet he didn’t answer.

 

“Put your shirt back on, son and go sit back down. Hoss Cartwright, I’m sure you’ve got a very reason for doing what you did to that boy.”

 

“If you could see what that boy,” Hoss spit the word out contemptuously, “What he did to my brother, you’d see that it pales by comparison, Judge.”

 

Taylor raised his hand and gestured Hoss silent. “I’ve known you nearly all your life, Hoss. Never seen you hurt a child before. Never. Why is that? I’ll tell you why. Because you were taught right from wrong. And deep in your gut, you know what you did to this child was wrong. Doesn’t matter what the provocation was. You were wrong, weren’t you?”

 

Hoss didn’t answer but Ben did. Even though it was barely above a whisper, it carried across the room. “Yes.” Ashamed, Hoss looked to the floor, all fight stripped from him by his father’s single word.

 

“Who taught you right from wrong? Don’t bother, Hoss. I know the answer. Your pa did but what if your pa hadn’t been around? Put yourself in these fellas’ shoes a second. Your pa working at whatever he could to put food on your plate? Shame chasing you and your brother because of what people thought of you? Then an accident like this happens. What would you have done?”

 

“It doesn’t matter what Hoss would have done, Judge. It’s what Hoss did that matters. Am I not right?” Adam added his voice to the quiet.

 

The judge leaned back in the chair and nodded. Then he waited for he knew that Hoss would speak and he was right. He was surprised by what the big man did say, though.

 

“You’re right, Adam, but not for the reason you think you are. Judge, right here and now I plead guilty to losin’ my temper. I knew, down deep in my soul, I knew what had happened to Joe. I’d replayed it again and again in my head. And every time I’d come round to the thought that someone had left my baby brother to die. Didn’t matter how he come to be shot. He’d been left to die. Alone. In the cold rain. Then I see this fella here, ” He gestured to Chris. ” This young’un, bein’ disrespectful to his momma, trying to tell me that it didn’t matter because it was an accident. He had no idea what he’d done to someone and didn’t seem to care. I wanted to make him care.”

 

“You were there, Adam?” Taylor asked and saw Adam nod slowly. “And you did nothing to stop what was happening? Why? You certainly could have.”

 

“Yes, Judge Taylor, I could have stopped Hoss but I didn’t. In truth, I wanted the same thing Hoss did. I wanted these boys to know what it felt like to have their lives in jeopardy. I wanted them to feel the fear and terror that I thought Joe must have felt. To feel some of the pain, maybe.”

 

“And now?”

 

“Now? I don’t know.”

 

“Hoss? What about you?”

 

“I want this all to be over with.” There was no defiance in the words the big man said, just sorrow and reluctant misgivings. He looked at Chris, meeting his eyes. “I’m sorry I lost my temper with you, boy.”

 

Judge Owen Taylor thumped the desktop twice for attention. “Ben? You got anything to say before I pass sentence here?”

 

Ben paused, trying to pull his wavering thoughts into coherence. “Pass sentence? For an accident? I truly believe that it was an accident. Like Adam said, that pistol has a hair-trigger. Something I have warned Joseph about more than once. Pass sentence for stealing a horse? For being scared by what happened? The horse was returned. A little dirty and a little hungry but those things are being taken care of. The same way that Joseph is being cared for. With love and attention.

 

The bruises will heal, young Chris. So will Joe’s wounds. For better or worse, he doesn’t remember how he was shot. Does he need to know the whole truth? Yes, but I am not sure when. Maybe after his body heals and he’s stronger, I’ll tell him. Maybe.” Ben paused again but then picked up a new thread and this time, he spoke to the man who was the sole judge and jury that morning. “My son was wrong in what he did. Something, like your son, Miz Clements, he admitted to. They were both wrong and we all understand that two wrongs don’t make a right. Not under any circumstances.”

 

For the first time since her sons had stood accused, Karyn Clements raised her head and stared at the other parent in the room. She saw the lines on his face that told of sorrow and she wondered why there had been no talk of his wife, the mother of his sons. She had simply assumed that the woman would be with her wounded son, caring for him as she would have cared for hers. Yet no one had spoken of her even in passing reference. Was she dead? Was that why his deep voice spoke so lovingly of his sons, because of the loss of her life? She’d seen him briefly touch his sons, the eldest on the arm and the other, the big one, on the back. They were men, she argued with herself, and men didn’t show that sort of affection – for that’s what those small touches were- not in public, assuredly. Yet he had and they had not bristled at the contact, scowling and reasserting their maleness. Why even Chris, at his young age, had begun to resist her caresses and open affection. And she knew why she continued to try. Because she loved her son. Truly deeply and without hesitation or qualification, she loved them both. And why now her heart was breaking. Is his? she asked herself then, looking at his hands knotted before him, knew the answer was yes.

 

“So, it seems to me that there is a debt owed here, your honor, ” Adam was saying when she decided to listen once more to the words flowing around her.

 

“Yes, a debt. Those of us who have so much owe it to those who have so little. Not of money but of other things. My father and my brothers and I are rich men, Mrs. Clements. Not just in land and cattle and material things even though we have them in abundance. No, we are rich because of the things we have learned from our father. Something your sons have never experienced. Like milking a cow. Fishing. Cutting and stacking hay. The right way to use a gun. Can your boys do any of that?”

 

Even little Peter took his head from his mother’s embrace and shook his head no.

 

“Seems to me that there’s the sentence I need to pass. Chris and Peter Clements, stand up here before me.” With reluctance and a prod from the silent sheriff, the boys stood. “For the accidental discharge of a firearm causing bodily harm, I sentence you, Chris to thirty days. For the borrowing of a horse without permission, I sentence you, Chris, and you, Peter to thirty days. Peter, for the covering up of both crimes and not telling your mother about what happened, I sentence you to another thirty days. That’s sixty days for the pair of you. Now then, Mother Clements, don’t go getting teary eyed and wailing on me. I didn’t say where they were gonna spend the next sixty days at, did I? Hoss and Adam Cartwright, stand up!”

 

The two Cartwright brothers looked shocked at one another but automatically did what they were instructed to do.

 

“Hoss Cartwright, for losing your temper and causing bodily harm, I sentence you to sixty days. For not stopping him, Adam Cartwright, I sentence you to the same time. Now, you Clements boys, you’re gonna go with Ben here out to his Ponderosa. You’re gonna learn all those things boys your age need to learn. Choppin’ wood, cleaning barns and the like but Ben, you’re sentenced to teach them some of the fun things too. Like fishin’. Maybe even swimming. Ridin’ a horse just to feel the wind in your hair. No, hush up, Ben. That’s your sentence for letting these boys of yours get out of hand.”

 

Ben’s brows shot clear into his hairline. It was on his lips to remind the judge that he had a ranch to run, a round-up to get through. Yet the fresh memory hit him that he had agreed with everyone else that the ruling given here was legally binding. He would have to take on the task regardless of any other commitment he had.

 

“You Cartwright boys. You’re gonna spend the next sixty days putting that cabin out to Silver Gulch into livable condition. I want to see the chimney restacked so the fire burns better. A door on it. Fix the roof. While you’re at it, make proper fencing. Gonna need it because your pa is gonna hand over a milk cow. Maybe build a chicken coop for the chickens too. Shameless the way you let that place go to ruin. Not you, Miz Clements. You don’t own the place and ol’ Ben does.”

 

To cover her shock, she asked what her punishment would be. The old judge thought for a moment. This was a wrinkle he hadn’t considered.

 

“If I may, Judge Taylor?” Ben found his voice and petitioned softly. When Taylor turned to him, he spoke again. “If I am going to be teaching these young fellas, I’m going to need help. Joseph needs caring for and I’ll have to part with Hop Sing to cook for the fall round-up. How about it, Mrs. Clements? And the ranch house is big enough that you won’t have to sleep in the stable.”


Chapter 6:

 

Home, Heaven and Hell

 

It wasn’t what he’d had in mind. Not in the least but he was stuck with it and to reach his end objective, he would have to get through it. So he let his father think that it was his fear of enclosed places that made his body tremble as the Rising Room, that was what the International House called its lift, took them to the ground floor. He didn’t want him to know the truth about his continued weakness; it was a forgone conclusion that if he had, his father would have him back in that upstairs bed faster than Hoss could eat a flapjack.

 

Ben and Paul Martin had made it clear. Joe could leave Virginia City for the Ponderosa when he could get from the bed to the wagon on his own. Not until. Joe had it figured he could do it – with a little help from Brother Hoss’ strong arm to lean on. Hoss wouldn’t have told how much of it was his doing, he was sure. But then Hoss and Adam hadn’t appeared this morning. When he had asked, slipping his one good arm into his shirt, his father had brusquely told him that they did still own a working ranch. That implied to Joe that his brothers were off working. And that he was trapped in a snare of his own making.

 

“Okay?” Ben asked, feeling and hearing Joe take a deep breath once the wrought iron railing door was pulled aside. Whether it was from an inner need unconsciously presenting itself or from lack of physical strength, Joe was leaning heavily on his arm. Even though he had nodded his answer, he waited for Ben to move first.

 

Through the frosted front door glass, Joe could see the team and the wagon waiting outside in the street. In grim determination he locked his eyes on the back of the wagon, refusing to let anything deter him from his goal. He forced down the screaming pain each tiny jolt of a step brought to his shoulder. He fought the urge to pant, the exertion demanding more air than he dared take into his lungs at once. That same exertion brought a sheen of sweat to his face and neck – sweat he had no chance to wipe away and hide with his father helping him at his one less-damaged arm and side.

 

There were three steps down to the boardwalk then another, a bigger one, that ended in the dust of the street. Joe studied them carefully, plotting how to take each one with a leg that throbbed. If Hoss had been there, Joe knew what he would have done. An arm wrapped nearly around him completely would have lifted him almost from the porch, would have left the soles of his boots barely making contact with the broad walk. A show, a ruse, of ability and Joe would have “walked” down the steps – all the way to the wagon- on his own.

 

But Hoss wasn’t there. Even Adam would have done just about the same thing, a smile playing on his face, in his eyes, that everyone else would’ve taken as delight in helping his brother get home. The truth would be held between them, as close as his father now held him as he managed that first step down. He swallowed hard and took the next then almost fell to the boardwalk with the last. He bit down on the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out in pain and longed to wipe away the sweat pouring into his eyes, stinging them and the cuts still healing.

 

Before he knew it, he was sitting on the tail of the wagon and his father was glaring into his face. He struggled to produce a convincing smile and used the free bandaged arm to take the sweat off the side of his jaw. Nervously, he told Ben that he was a little out of shape, just a little winded. That earned him a harrumph from the older man that certainly agreed with the statement.

 

He finally settled himself, reclining on the thick, straw-filled mattresses . His father gave him a thick quilt, intending for it to lay over him, but Joe pushed it to the side. Seeing the expression on his father’s face, he relented and pulled it over his aching knee, praying that it would satisfy that overbearing parental concern that he would freeze to death before they got out of town. It was chilly, but not that chilly.

 

With the sunshine beating down on him, Joe would have almost expected to be hot but winter was waiting not far from that early autumn day and the air was still. Any other time, working, he would not have felt the chill in the air but riding in the wagon, doing nothing but grinding his teeth at every pothole and rut, Joe felt it. He could also feel his father turning every once in a while to look over the seat and check him out. It was irritating and comforting all the same. Yawning and trying to stretch the body parts that didn’t ache, he settled back, content to make the ride home, slow as it was.

 

Two weeks, he thought, scratching down his jawline, pleased that it didn’t hurt to touch it anymore. Laid up for two solid weeks. Bet Adam and Hoss are fit to be tied, having to run the round-up on their own and do the chores. Guess being that busy is why they haven’t been in to see me. Hop Sing too. Pa said he was having a high old time out to the round-up camp, cooking and bossing men around. Hmmm, even going home I’m gonna miss Hop Sing’s cooking. Pa said he’d brought someone on to help. A Mrs. Clements. Said she was a good cook, and a passable housekeeper. Ha! Now you know he didn’t say that where Hop Sing could hear him. Would have sent Hop Sing packing for San Francisco. Wonder what Hoss and Adam told Hop Sing?

 

Hoss, damn. Could have used you this morning, Big Brother. I know that you’re busy and all but I sure hope you can make a little time for me once I get home. Can’t understand why you haven’t been around but…Ouch! Wish Pa’d just put them horses into a trot and not worry about the ruts and holes. Just get home. Home. Hadn’t thought about all those stairs there. Well, maybe Hoss’ll be there by the time we get there. Lord knows, as slow as Pa is driving, it’ll be dark – midnight even- before we make it.

 

Despite his determination not to, he fell asleep, the quilt pulled to his shoulders.

 

“We’re home,” Ben called in a silly little voice, one that he had used on a much younger Joseph in years long passed. For emphasis, he wiggled a booted toe that poked from beneath the quilt. It got the desired effect. Slowly, green eyes showed above the edge of the covering, blinked twice, almost closed again then flipped open to stay that way.

 

If anything, Joe was stiffer, more tired and in more pain than when he had made it down to the wagon. Ben made a few choice comments about knowing it was a mistake as he virtually carried him up the stairs and into his room. To prove his point, Joe yelped in pain when his shoulder was barely jostled. He wanted to push his father away, to tell him he could manage on his own but both would have recognized that as an out-and-out lie. So he was forced to tolerate his father treating him once more like he was a fragile baby, finally settling him into his own bed.

 

“I’ll have Mrs. Clements make you up something hot to drink. Supper will be in an hour or so.” Ben finished by straightening the corner of the blanket at Joe’s bandaged left shoulder, making his son want to slap his hand away in frustration.

 

“A hot rum?” he asked. From the frown on his father’s face he was certain it would not contain alcohol in any form so he let it go.

 

He was about to fall back asleep when there was a faint tap at the door. No one he knew would knock on the door so he figured it must be the new lady. He called out for her to enter and she did, balancing a small tray before her.

 

She wasn’t a big woman, he saw, but there again, she wore her attitude like a shawl about her shoulders. Timid, came to his mind. Timid and fearful of something he couldn’t as a male understand. She wore a gray dress that did nothing to help her already sallow coloring and with her hair pulled back into a loose bun, her face looked pinched and sharp. Her eyes were gray. That is what he could see of them because she couldn’t seem to look him in the eye. Once she had set the tray on the night stand, her reddened and callused hands didn’t know what to do with themselves so she tucked them behind her back.

 

“Hi,” he said, making the word as soft and non-threatening as he knew how. “I’m Joe. And you must be Mrs. Clements.”

 

For a brief moment, she looked up and met his gaze. Only for the briefest of moments, though, then she was back to looking away, gnawing indelicately on her lower lip. She muttered an uh-huh.

 

“I understand that you’re taking care of things while Hop Sing is out to the round-up.” If he’d hoped for an answer, he didn’t get it so he went on. “Sorry to cause you more work. What with my coming home and all. Guess Pa forgot to mention to you that–”

 

Whatever it was that she feared washed over her and he could see that she was fighting it yet not being very successful. Her face had paled as she now studied something he couldn’t fathom there on the floor. Her feet, clad in shabby, run-down shoes, began to move in tiny steps backwards.

 

He had to halt her impending flight. “Listen,” he said softly and tried reaching for her but she saw the bandages and stifled an outcry with a fist to her mouth. He plunged on. “I’m gonna do my best to get out of here and out working just as fast as I can. You don’t need to worry one bit about me. I know that Pa has this idea – “. He stopped. Nothing he was able to say seemed to lessen her fear.

 

“Ah, Mrs. Clements!” His father’s booming voice preceded him into the room, making the timid and frightened woman jump to attention as if she were a soldier and his father a general. He placed one of his huge hands on her shoulder as though to hold her one place and went on as if nothing was wrong. “I see that you’ve met Joseph. Joseph, this is Mrs. Clements. I told you about her. She’ll be staying here for a while, taking care of things. Now then, Mrs. Clements, let me inform you that this young man is known for not following doctor’s orders very well. He has been told that he needs rest and plenty of good food. We,” he gestured with a blunt finger pointing at each of them, “are going to see that he gets just that. Aren’t we?”

 

The last he clearly addressed to his son and that son sighed and nodded. From long past experience he knew that when his father got into that kind of role – that mother hen brooding over her chicks- that he may as well give up and give in. You could only fight so long before he would wear you out.

 

The nod gave Ben satisfaction. “Now then, supper will be?” He let the question dangle, hoping she would pop up with a long list of items on the menu for the evening.

 

“Right soon,” was her whispered answer and she ducked from his hand and escaped – the only word for it- out the door.

 

Father and son exchanged shrugs – or in Joe’s case an attempted shrug.

 

“What’s got her so scared?” Joe asked as his father handed him the cup of tea she had delivered.

 

Pulling up a chair to the bedside, Ben wavered mentally, wondering if he’d made the right decision. Brusquely, he pushed it aside as he rubbed his hand down his thigh. “She and her sons have had a hard go of it lately.”

 

“Sons?” Joe sipped the cooling tea and grimaced. No sweetener in it and he so liked his tea sweet.

 

“Two of ’em. Eleven and thirteen.” He watched for any sign of recognition but saw only the grimace and misunderstood it. “Good boys. They’re doing chores while your brothers are working the roundup.”

 

“Speaking of brothers, when are mine gonna show up again?” He put it as lightly as he could.

 

“Speaking of brothers,” Ben repeated, ” and roundup-” He heavily accented the word before he went on. ” They are rather busy so don’t expect to see them for a while yet.” He didn’t want to mention that all of their off time was being spent on their “sentences”. As the battered cabin was closer to the main roundup site than the Ponderosa’s sprawling ranch house, it had only made sense for them to stay there when they weren’t needed at the roundup. From what Ben had last heard from them about a week before, the fixing was slow going. Adam had been all for ripping it down and rebuilding it but Hoss had countered him, saying again and again that they could repair the ravages of time on the old building. Adam had caved in finally but, as he had told his father firmly, since his crime had been to not stop Hoss, he would be the one to do the fetching of supplies. From the load of dressed lumber, nails and other building supplies Adam had hauled off yesterday, Ben wasn’t sure but what they weren’t completely rebuilding it.

 

While he had been careful to word his answer, Ben had missed his mark. A darkness came to his son’s eyes. Was it the mention of his brothers that had spurred a memory into his thoughts? Scrabbling through his own, he couldn’t comprehend why that would cause this reaction in his youngest. Perhaps, he considered, the best idea was to let it all alone, as Paul Martin had suggested. Soon enough Joe would remember what had happened and he as a patient father would let time take its course.

 

Ben Cartwright had missed the mark widely.

 

The darkness that had chased across Joe’s face came not from a memory but from a fear, an imagined memory of a brother who seemed angry with him and was now staying as far from him as he could. Joe had come to the conclusion that Hoss had been the one to shoot him. And that his father had called it an accident. From the deep recesses of his mind, half formed by bits and pieces of returning memory, he recalled being left on his own, to live or die. Was that what his father was keeping from him? Or did Pa not know?

 

“You heard what Mister Cartwright said. When you come in the house, you gotta behave. No runnin’ around like wild animals. No shoutin’ and such.” Karyn Clements softly fussed, scrubbing at Peter’s face with a damp cloth and trying unsuccessfully to remove a dark smudge of dirt -oh Lord, let it be just dirt!- from his forehead. He squirmed in her grasp. “And you got to be cleaned up before you sit at that fine table.”

 

Chris, behind his mother’s back at the kitchen sink, dabbed his fingertips into the pan of water then dried them on his shirtfront. While she was busy with his brother, he slipped behind her and went into the main part of the house. Unlike Peter, he had no trouble being still as he stood once more in the vast room. Like the very first time, it awed him. He’d been careful when he touched things. Not from fear of breaking something but from the idea that it wasn’t real, that it was a dream and should he touch it, the dream would end and they would be back in the gulch, trying to survive.

 

This time he stopped at the dining room table. Unlike anything he’d ever imagined, the big slab of wood with its graceful legs, was covered with a snowy white cloth. On its top, dishes that weren’t made of tin sat waiting. There was a plethora of silverware that made no sense to a boy who had grown up with only a spoon and fingers to eat with. Crystal glasses prismed the light from the overhead lamp, making colors dance on the white tablecloth. He edged forward and let one still dirty finger trace the intricate scrollwork on the chairbacks. Only then did he realize that there were four places set, the same as there had been last night when they had come. That night there had been Mister Cartwright and his other two sons and the sheriff to eat the meal. He and his mother and brother had eaten in the kitchen, served by a little Oriental man with an attitude. But he’d overheard the big man tell the other man that they would be out to the roundup for the next week. So who would sit at these places tonight?

 

A throat clearing beside him made Chris jump, tottering the chair before him. He didn’t have to look up to know it was Mister Cartwright. He’d heard the same sound earlier in the day when he’d been roused from sleep at dawn and put to work cleaning the barn.

 

“I didn’t mean to do nothin’,” he pouted defiantly.

 

The white head bowed momentarily then the dark eyes speared the boy’s hands. “In this house, it doesn’t matter who you are, you wash your hands before you come to the table to eat.”

 

“I washed ’em!”

 

Ben grabbed a small hand, bent down to study it closely then raised a brow in silent question. When Chris merely repeated that he had washed the questioned limb, he was surprised to see a smile come to the older man’s face.

 

“In that case, young man, I do believe that we need a lesson in hand washing. Come along.”

 

Chris had no choice but to accompany him into the kitchen. The hand grasping his insisted. At the sink, with fresh warm water poured into the deep pan, he got a lesson in hand washing. At first he resented the man’s direction. After all, he was almost thirteen years old. Did the old coot think he’d never learned a thing in his life? Apparently not! Both lost their defiance and their attitude at the same time they lost the bar of yellow soap and had to sink elbow deep on Chris to find it – only to have it jump from his grasp.

 

Peter, now out of his mother’s grasp joined them at the sink to see what they were laughing about. Before long, Ben had to step away as the boys played there, the soap fishing in and out of grasps. Finally though, he cleared his throat and told them that dinner was waiting – if their hands were clean. They held up remarkably cleaner hands and laughed. That is they laughed until he made them clean up the small mess they had created. Chris started to complain that it was woman’s work but Ben’s stern look silenced it.

 

“We gotta clean off the table too?” Peter asked cautiously, eyeing the worktable now covered with the remains of the meal’s fixings. That was the table that they had eaten at last night.

 

Ben laughed and told them not at that particular moment. Then he pointed them toward the dining room. “We eat dinner in there.”

 

It had been many years since Ben had dealt with young boys like Chris and Peter. Though he dared not show it, he felt a little out of practice, a little rusty, and feared that his temper would fray at the wrong moment. Yes, it had been a long while since he had cleaned out his own barn but that morning he had managed to give clear and concise directions, going so far as to show the boys the right way to pitch straw. While riding into town to get Joseph he had come to the conclusion that he could do it, could survive the sentence Owen Taylor had laid on his shoulders. He was just a little out of practice. When he had inspected the barn, he recalled clearly having the same conversation with a young Hoss who wanted to go fishing more than he wanted to do chores. The repeated reasoning why it had to be a certain way came easily to his lips – along with a hidden indulgent smile.

 

With the admonition to help their mother in the kitchen, Ben had taken the dinner tray up to his son. Joe was sleeping so deep that Ben’s repeated calls didn’t awaken him. He set the tray aside and checked but everything seemed in order.

 

“Just tuckered you out real good, did that ride home? Well, I suppose missing one meal won’t hurt you. Might hurt Mrs. Clements feelings that you didn’t eat this, this….whatever it was she cooked. Should have kept Hop Sing home to teach her how to cook!” He chortled at his own words, turned the lamp down low and took himself and the tray away. Making a mental note to have Mrs. Clements fix Joe’s favorite breakfast in the morning, he slipped out the door and down the stairs.

 

“Will there be anything else, Mister Cartwright?” The woman’s tired voice asked as she placed the coffee service on the table before Ben and the fire. He’d settled there, intent on doing some reading but had fallen into a light doze. Her unexpected words awakened him like a gunshot.

 

He fumbled for a moment for words. “No, no, Mrs Clements but I would like a word with you. Your sons are in bed?”

 

She smiled shyly as she lowered herself to the settee. “Yes, sir, they are. Mighty tired after the work you had ’em do today. They will be all right out in that bunk house, won’t they? I mean, I know it was my idea and all but…”

 

“They could have a room here in the house, you know. We have plenty of room.”

 

The woman shook her head. “No, sir. I don’t think that would be proper. Besides, your son needs his rest and I don’t want my boys interferin’ with that. They get wild sometimes, you know.” There was the barest self-deprecating laugh to her final words.

 

“Mrs. Clements, I am very aware of what boys like yours are like. I raised a few of them myself, you know.” Ben handed her the cup of coffee he had just poured and noted that she took it without comment. Almost as if she felt at ease with him now.

 

“You and your wife did a good job, sir. They’s good men, your sons are.”

 

Ben settled back in his chair and sipped his coffee. “How do you think they got to be good men, Mrs. Clements?”

 

Her expression became a puzzled frown. “I guess you start with good breedin’.Man like you must of had your choice of all the well-bred society ladies.”

 

“My wives were not well-bred society ladies. Not in the way you think of them.” He went on, telling her and filling the night with the memories of his beloved wives. She listened in rapt attention as he described the educated Elizabeth, the loving and compassionate Inger and the fiery, headstrong Marie. As he told about them, she could see them through his eyes and knew, above all else, that they were loved by him. Even though he claimed that they were not the bastions of society, she knew different but she would not speak of them that way to him. She couldn’t.

 

When he finally finished speaking of the three women, she finished her coffee and went to rise, to leave him with his long-gone but present wives. Yet as she did, she knew she had to speak now or forever hold her peace. ” Your sons had something mine never did, Mister Cartwright. My boys didn’t have much for a father and he disappeared before Peter was even born. Your boys, for however long it was, had both a ma and a pa. You said you raised them on your own. You didn’t. You raised them with at least a memory. My boys didn’t even have that. That makes a difference. Good night.”

 

He let her go, feeling the sting of her sullen anger.

 

Finding Reasons to Believe In

 

The morning was one of those rare autumn mornings when the air is so crystalline and the sky so blue that it seems too perfect to be real. There was the barest hint of a chill that disappeared by the time the sun was fully risen. The smell of pine smoke mixed with the smell of sap from crushed needles, cleansing the air with its sharp tang. The squirrels, sensitive to the ever-so-slight changing of the seasons, chattered in the trees at one another as though complaining about having to work that day. The pastured horses and cattle seemed so intent on grazing in the last green fields of summer that they gave no notice of the passing of the man and two boys.

 

“Now this is just because you did such a fine job this morning in cleaning out the barn and for bringing in the firewood without being told.” As he spoke, Ben refrained -but only barely- from ruffling Peter’s brown hair as he walked beside him. On the other side, Chris had opted to carry the fishing poles so that his brother could carry the all important tin can of worms. Their destination was on the opposite side of the pasture, just down from the Ponderosa ranch house and one that had been the preferred fishing spot of Ben’s own sons in years past.

 

Peter, concentrating on walking and carrying the worm, didn’t lift his eyes. “I brought in the firewood,” he explained far too matter-of-factly to keep Ben from smiling. He had indeed brought in the firewood, a few sticks at a time. Ben figured it was because that was about all he could carry and was pleased that, while it took him far more trips than it should have, Peter had stuck with the job.

 

Chris, on the other hand, had needed his brother’s help to finish the morning clean-up of the barn. The older man had checked on his progress at least three times and wasn’t sure if the boy was being lazy or not. He did know one thing for certain: Buck and Cochise were well fed, watered and groomed. Ben took that into consideration, figuring that was where the lion’s share of the time had gone. He decided he would speak to Chris privately and let him know that while the horses did need grooming on a regular basis, at the rate he was doing it, the animals might very well be hairless soon.

 

“This creek really have some good fish in it?” Chris asked.

 

“My boys have pulled many a fish from it over the years.”

 

The boy snorted. “I’ve met your boys, remember? They ain’t boys, Mister Cartwright. They’re men. Full-growed men.”

 

“Yes, but they weren’t always men and they did go fishing in this creek. As boys and as men.”

 

By this time they had made it to the small creek that watered that pasture. Not very wide, it did run deep during the spring and fall when the surrounding mountains watered it well. The water was nearly always cold – too cold for swimming but that had not stopped at least two of his sons from trying it repeatedly. The willows that edged the creek were more like bushes than trees because the most promising sized wands always wound up being impromptu fishing poles. At various times, various sons had named the creek but as far as anyone ever knew, it had no real name and the given names always dwindled down into just “the creek”.

 

Ben, after showing the boys how to bait their lines and giving them some of the finer points of the art of stream fishing, sat down on the bank and watched his own line with its wine-cork bobber drifting in the current. How many times, he wondered to himself, had he done just this? Not many in recent years. In recent years, with his sons grown, he had spent his time running the ranch, doing the necessary paperwork, making and then following plans that all had to do with work. Any leisure time he had granted to himself would find him reading the paper, or if the occasion warranted it, having dinner at the Washoe Club. Rarely even did he and Roy Coffee play cribbage anymore. As he let his thoughts meander, he couldn’t even recall the last time he had done something with one of his sons that didn’t involve work.

 

A whoop and a holler preceded a splash that snagged his attention and he looked up just in time to see Chris pull in a fat fish. The boy’s face was positively aglow with pleasure and Ben thought that it had to be the first time he had seen Chris smile. His brother, intent on helping and encouraging him, was jumping up and down as though it was his accomplishment as well. The fish was firmly landed a good six feet from the bank in the grass.

 

“Peter!” Ben shouted and pointed to the creek where he’d seen from the corner of his eye that the younger boy also had a fish hooked.

 

Wide-eyed, Peter seemed transfixed by his fortune and if Ben hadn’t helped him might have lost his pole when the fish yanked on it. But with help, his fish joined his brother’s in the grass and the three knelt to examine them.

 

“Gosh,” Peter all but whispered, so great was his sense of awe. “They’s pretty things.”

 

“That they are, young man. And fat ones, too! We have to take the hooks out of their mouths and put them on this line. Then we drop them back into the water while we fish some more.”

 

“Won’t they get away?” the youngest asked, his finger tracing the sunlit patterning on the iridescent scales.

 

“Not if we put them on this line. We call it a stringer. Now if we didn’t want to eat them, we’d let them go.”

 

“Just throw them back in the water?” he asked, his young brow furrowing.

 

Ben nodded and waited.

 

Chris spoke up first. “I want to keep mine. Ma can cook him and we can eat him, right?”

 

“Yes, after we clean them for her. What about you, Peter?”

 

He could see the answer in the young man’s eyes even before he spoke the words so Ben wasn’t surprised that Peter’s fish was set free. His brother started to argue but Ben would not allow it. Patiently he explained that if all the fish that were caught were kept and eaten that before long there wouldn’t be any fish to catch at all. He also explained that the fish wasn’t really hurt too badly but he would think twice that day or any day in the near future about grabbing another hooked worm.

 

So it was that the morning was spent with Chris catching four fish and learning to competently remove the hooks and place them on the stringer. Peter, on the other hand, became the master of catch and release of the three he caught. Ben, having not paid the least continued attention to his own line, caught one. When the sun stood high in the cloudless sky, they returned to the house and had a difficult lesson on preparing the fish for cooking. Difficult because Ben was stern in the correct use of the knife and particular about the amount of scales removed. After all, he reasoned to himself, he was going to be eating them too!

 

That afternoon, the three settled down to lessons of a different type. Ben wasn’t surprised to find out that the boys’d had no proper schooling. Chris could manage with great difficulty to write his first name but couldn’t read it from a list. Wanting activity instead of sitting still, he became surly and hard to deal with.

 

“I don’t need none of this,” he pouted and sat back in his chair at the table and crossed his arms defiantly. Unfortunately, his brother imitated him.

 

Ben tapped the table with his own pencil and, his face screwing itself into a question mark, tried to figure a way to convince the boys otherwise. As he had found himself doing more often, he harkened back to the days when his own sons were this age. Adam had been no problem when it came to learning. In fact, he’d been just the opposite; having more difficulty spending his time on manual labor. Hoss, while not as eager to learn as his brother, was not a slouch but by then he’d had his step-mother Marie to reward his scholastic prowess with cookies. And last but not least, when Joseph was the age of Chris, he’d been in a proper school. Not a stellar student, he did manage to pass his courses so Ben’d had little to do with his actual learning except for insisting that homework be done properly.

 

So what was the key to open the locked minds behind the crossed arms?

 

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” he finally asked.

 

They looked at him as though he were speaking a foreign language.

 

“When you get to be bigger?” He’d forgotten that boys their age often considered themselves grown up already.

 

“Dunno,” answered Peter. “Maybe a rich rancher.” That prompted a chuckle from Ben as he was beginning to realize that Peter was very apt to tell you what he thought you wanted to hear.

 

Likewise, Chris had no idea. So it was that Ben launched himself into a long dissertation about how education allowed a man to be anything he wanted to be; that education was important no matter what life’s work he chose. The boys sat silently through it all, feet swinging under the table and elbows propped on the table. After a good five minutes, Ben realized that he was talking to himself and ended it weakly and badly.

 

Chris was the first one to raise his eyes and study the big rancher. He half-feared the man and that made him all the more defensive around him. The fact that his little brother seemed to falling under the aura cast aggravated him. There was one sole salvation to the whole set-up as far as he was concerned. The horses. It wasn’t exactly what he wanted – this barn cleaning and caring for the beasts but he’d have to be a fool to not realize that at some point, riding them was going to be the next logical step. That was the prize he was after and he would endure much to get to that point. Besides, while he was cleaning out the stalls, feeding them and watering them daily, he was pretty much out of the old man’s sight, and -hopefully- out of his thoughts. But this business of school-type learning? It just didn’t fit.

 

“Mister Cartwright,” the boys’ mother called softly, snagging his attention as she came down the stairs, a load of linens in her arms. “If you don’t mind, I’d like the boys to help me this afternoon. I noticed that there were still some apples on that tree out back. They can climb up the tree and pick ’em so we can have stewed apples with supper. That is if you don’t need them right now.”

 

Ben never got a chance to answer as the boys exploded from their chairs and disappeared like puffs of smoke out the kitchen door. From the house, he could hear them happily shouting back and forth at one another out back. Smiling, he spread his hands as if to tell the woman that it was beyond his control. She thanked him with a nod and hurried after them.

 

He didn’t take long to make up his mind how he would spend his time that afternoon. Since the morning fishing expedition, his own sons had laid heavily upon his mind and it occurred to him that he had one upstairs that probably needed a man’s help. Or at least he hoped so. To buy his way in, even though it wasn’t necessary, he picked up a bottle of brandy and two glasses before he climbed the stairs.

 

“I bring a peace offering,” he said lightly as he pushed Joe’s bedroom door open with one foot.

 

His son was propped up on the bed, a book now held closed over a finger as he faced his father. “Peace offering? You needing a peace offering has got to be one for the record books, Pa.”

 

Ben chuckled and poured short slugs of the brandy into the glasses and handed one to him. With a nod of thanks, Joe accepted it, holding it awkwardly in his bandaged right hand after flopping the book down on the bed.

 

“Well, I’ve just been so tied up with things that I haven’t had much time to spend with you.” The brandy burned his throat the same way the admission did but Ben drank it anyway.

 

Joe almost snorted his disbelief. Hadn’t had time to spend with him? As far as Joe was concerned, over the last two weeks his father had spent too much time with him. If there was a Cartwright that needed to apologize for not being around, he felt it should have Hoss but he couldn’t lay that on the big man. Especially if…Joe let all thoughts of the accident wither and die, burned away by the bite of the brandy. A little voice within him cried out. Change the subject, change the subject, change the subject.

 

The young Cartwright set his glass aside and cleared his throat. “Well, if that’s the case, I wish you’d brought the bath tub and some hot water up.” As soon as he’d made the request, he could see that his father would make it so and he felt a little ashamed that he had asked such a strenuous thing of him. Hauling buckets of water both up and down? “Or help me down to the wash-”

 

“No!” Ben said sharply. “Yes, a good hot soak will probably do you a world of good. Have to be careful with your shoulder and arm.”

 

“I will,” he promised, “but if you help me, I can get down to-” By then he was talking to thin air.

 

Within the course of thirty minutes, Joe was soaking in hot water up to his armpits. It felt wonderful to be able to scrub away the smell of Paul Martin’s medicines and salves. He held his splinted arm high and slid down until he could drop his head back, wetting his hair. In the process, he’d painfully rubbed the incision on his back but once it hit the warmth of the water, it felt so much better that he wondered how long he could stay like that – his arm extended, waving over the surface of the soapy water. He eased back up, careful not to slosh the water over the edge. At the edge of the tub, his father had pulled a chair over and left towels, soap and a wash cloth. One handed – and the wrong one to boot- he proceeded to wash, luxuriating in the process. He caught himself laughing softly. Others thought that Adam was enamored of cleanliness but Joe was the Cartwright son who was liable to spend more time in the tub.

 

“More hot water?” his father asked then didn’t bother waiting for an answer before he poured it in. He set the bucket aside and stoked up the fire before he turned back to his son and saw the wet hair. “You slip?” Worry tracked a crease in his forehead.

 

“Not exactly. More like kind of oozed down.” Joe smiled, running his free hand through the wet locks. “Haven’t figured out how to get enough lather on one hand so I can wash it.”

 

“This way.” Ben didn’t demonstrate; instead he did it for his son, accompanying the act with admonitions that he needed a hair cut.

 

His hair now clean, Joe grinned up at his father. “Does this mean I get to go into town on Saturday?” he teased only to get a playful splash of water in his face.

 

He eased back into the gentle embrace of the pillows, both invigorated and drowsy. He’d surprised himself and won the argument with his father when it had come time to rebandage his shoulder, claiming that fresh air would take away the itch from the stitches. However, the same battle had been lost when it came to his burnt arm. Slathered with some horrendously odorous salve, his father had been firm and dressed the wound silently, half scowling even. When he’d finished, Joe’d had the presence of mind to merely lift it and inspect it carefully, the tips of his fingers all that was to be seen, wiggling as if they were butterflies emerging from cocoons. But now, the bandaging and fussing over with, Joe fought the pull of his eyelids and a nap.

 

“When are Hoss and Adam going to be home?” he asked, pushing his head further into the pillows.

 

“When the round-up is finished. Probably another week or so. Slow going this year. This good weather has the cattle wondering if we have lost our minds and that summer is going to go on.”

 

“What’s for supper?” Joe pushed himself, his eyes now closed but he could hear his father moving about the room.

 

“Fish. I took Mrs. Clements’ sons fishing this morning and they caught some nice whitefish.”

 

Joe merely grunted but Ben read far more into his son’s questions than was actually there.

 

Taking up a place on the side of Joe’s bed, he fought the urge to shove his son’s unruly hair back from his face. He wanted his son to open his eyes and smile at him but he didn’t. Surely the bath and all the accompanying…. Maybe there was something else hovering there between them that Ben could barely make out.

 

“Been a long time since you and I went fishing,” Ben began, his restless hands finally settling on smoothing the coverlet and adjusting the sling that supported Joe’s left arm as well as bound it to his chest.

 

“Been a long time since I went fishing with anybody.” Joe sighed and flicked his eyes open, wondering when they had closed. “Spent most of the spring and summer working, remember?”

 

There was a smidgeon of complaint that any other time Ben would have ignored but now he chose not to. “When you’re better, perhaps we can change that.”

 

Joe took another deep breath and grunted softly when the motion brought him a twinge of pain. “By the time I’m better enough, the creek will be frozen under two feet of snow.”

 

With his hand resting now on his son’s leg, the father heard the rebuke plainly in the words. It blistered him, stung him even though part of him wanted to deny any and all of it. But Ben Cartwright was a man willing to face his own shortcomings. Gently, slowly he began to rub the blanketed leg beneath his hand as he pondered how to speak with his son. He could, of course, point out that work was part of their existence; that things had to be done on a ranch the size of the Ponderosa all the time. There was little time for play or leisure if they were to thrive and prosper. As for his son’s health, there was nothing that could be done about that for the moment. He was obviously weak from blood loss, shock, but he was improving. Wasn’t he?

 

“I’m sorry,” Ben whispered.

 

“For what? Making it snow in winter?” Joe snorted as he spoke, trying to understand not only what was bothering his father but what was bothering him.

 

Carefully, his hand now coming to rest on Joe’s thigh, Ben spoke his thoughts. “No. I’m sorry that time got away from us. I’m sorry that I found the time to take two other little boys fishing but not my own sons. I’m sorry that right now you and I can’t go down to the creek and catch more fish. But, ” he took a deep breath and went on, “You are still my son. The creek is still there and I promise you that it won’t be long before you and I spend some time down there together. Deal?”

 

“Deal.”

 

The mother hen reasserted herself in Ben Cartwright and he told his son he expected him to get a good nap before dinner but Joe just smiled and, fumbling with the book one-handedly, told his father he would rather read for a bit. He asked him to light the lamp against the growing shadows in the room.

 

With a half-grimace, for his son was not going to follow instructions, he lit the lamp and started to leave, picking up a bucket of cold bath-water as he did so. Then he stopped, a puzzled expression coming to his face.

 

“Joseph, do you remember a time when you couldn’t read?”

 

Taken aback by the strangeness of the question, Joe gave him the same expression before he answered that he did – sort of – even though it had not been all his idea at the time.

 

“What was it that finally convinced you to learn?”

 

“You really want an answer to that question?” The tone of his voice said he doubted it. He went on, sure his father was not going to like what he heard and he said so. “It all kind of revolves around something you never wanted from us boys.”

 

The black brows both rose and he set the water bucket down, his hands now running down the sides of his own trousers.

 

“Competition.” If anything, the brows arched higher. “No. Not really competition like you’re thinking. Competition like in jealousy.”

 

Ben leaned one arm against the back of the bedside chair and the tilt of his head told him to continue.

 

“It was before Adam went away to school.”

 

That said nothing and Ben’s continued silence said so.

 

“You and Adam were spending a lot of time talking about things that came out of books. Getting him prepared for college, I guess. Anyway, Adam had taught me a few words. I remember sitting in his lap and him showing me pictures and telling me what they were and then showing me the word. Suddenly though, he didn’t have time to spend teaching me and you were too busy working with him. I got…jealous. I wanted to be part of what was going on and I couldn’t because…because I couldn’t read.”

 

With a painful jolt, Ben recalled that time in his life. He’d fought the idea of Adam going away to school at first but had reluctantly agreed to it, only to have his world fall apart when his wife died suddenly. Adam, the good and patient and caring son, had put aside his own dreams and aspirations and taken care of things. But the day had come again when he’d asserted his right, his promised desire, of going to college. Ben’d lost Marie and now he was losing his oldest son? No, he’d finally relented and even helped his son prepare. Long conversations -sometimes even debates and arguments- had ensued. When it was over with, and Adam had boarded that stage bound for the rest of his life, Ben had felt hollow. . .until his other sons had taken his hands in theirs, there on the depot platform, and watched Adam leave.

 

“I conned Hoss into helping me and I distinctly recall getting a few lessons from you, usually at the dining room table. You with a scowl on your face when I couldn’t figure out a word. Or when I tried to write my name. I thought you were being hard on me. After all, you’d given Adam and Hoss short names to learn how to spell and I had far more letters to master in my name.”

 

Ben chuckled and smiled an indulgent parental smile. “Oh yes, I remember you arguing that you should be allowed to just use Joe, even when I told you that you had to learn your whole name.”

 

“It didn’t help being left-handed either. You were far more lenient than Miss Abigail was, though. Although Hop Sing, trying to wash the ink out of my shirt sleeves, ran her a close second. But I knew my letters and could read by the time I got to go to school, mostly because-” He sighed and tried unsuccessfully to shrug his shoulders. “- because I was jealous of my older brother stealing my father’s time and attention.”

He could see the sage brush. Its nearly bare branchlets reached out to claw at his clothes, his skin. He felt the coarse shale burst and grind into his palms and knees as he went down. The pain sheared into his mind as his blistered hand took the brunt of the fall. As though summoned from the depths of the earth, the gnarled old pine snagged him, stopping him from going further. He clung to the old bark, then summoned strength from it to push himself to his feet, only to go down once more, letting his cheek rest against the tree. If he had thought he was in pain before, he was wrong. Now, slashing and snarling the pain-beast rose, its hot breath making him reel, nauseous. He sought to lift his hands and push it away but they brought the beast only closer and he could hear it cry out…engulfing him in fetid heat and stinging cold. . . .

 

In a cold sweat Joe awoke, his heart hammering in his chest as the room – the bed – the walls even- spun madly about him. His stomach heaved and he fought the blankets for freedom. With his feet finally on the floor, he collapsed. His knees hit the carpeting and suddenly the tumbling world stopped . Slowly, cautiously, he drew a deep breath, afraid it would start the mayhem all over again. It didn’t. He stayed on his knees and kept his arms tight against his stomach.

 

He didn’t question the dream-falling. From the depths of his unconscious mind it had come. Telling him once again what had happened but not why…and not how. As he reclaimed the present, he sagged and came to rest sitting with his back against the bed. Now that he could hear something above his own frantic breathing, he waited for someone – his father most likely he feared – to come charging into the room. The house stayed quiet instead.

 

After a few minutes he struggled to his feet and managed to flop back onto the bed. He swallowed hard and wished he could get a shot of brandy to wash the taste of his imagined fear from his mouth. “Not in this life time,” he muttered. “Pa find me downstairs and he’d take the hide off me.” He snorted softly. “Ain’t got that much left so he’d make real quick work of it.” Still chastising himself, he crawled into the bed and pulled the blankets up. “Can’t figure out if I’m really tired or just tired of sleeping.”

 

Giving up on any deep conversation with himself, he pushed his face into the linen pillow-slip and prayed for sleep to take him quickly. He didn’t have the energy to go looking for it.


Chapter 7:

Building Hope

 

“Just hand it over. I got an idea what to do.”

 

Adam wondered at the veracity of that statement but Hoss sounded rather self-confident so he pushed the last of the planks out of the wagon and into his brother’s hands. He clambered down from the buckboard and followed him as he headed for the cabin. The last thing he wanted was an argument. Lord knew, they had enough of them in the past few weeks.

 

For those several weeks the two brothers had spent a fair amount of time there in the ravine, working on the cabin. At first glance and considering the charge given to them by the judge to make it habitable, Adam was tempted to shove it down and start all over again. Wouldn’t have taken a lot of muscle to shove it over either but Hoss had scowled at him. If he didn’t want to help, Hoss had fumed, then he could just leave. To be honest, he considered it- the leaving part. After all, he was being punished – a term he had difficulty equating with this task- for not keeping Hoss in line. Forget about the fact that he’d not had a snowball’s chance in hell of making the big man behave since Hoss had turned fourteen or so. Indeed, even then, his sole means of checking the strapping young man was to intimidate him with logic. Now he didn’t even have that weapon in his arsenal.

 

While the change to the exterior of the cabin had been remarkable, the interior was no less startling. Gone was the old stove. It had been so pockmarked with rusty holes that it smoked up the room, never giving the wood a chance to burn evenly. In its place stood a new one, properly leveled and set with a new pipe running through the back wall that would also help to warm the large single room come winter. The floor was no longer hard-packed dirt. While the two brothers had planed and sanded the broad planks and coated them with oil, it had never occurred to them to rub beeswax into the grain. After all, they were men. They’d eyed it speculatively then decided that they’d done enough work on their hands and knees. Besides, that would be a good winter-time task for the Clements family. Or so they thought.

 

Hoss let the three broad pine boards he was carrying clatter to the floor. For a moment he stood back and eyed both them and the room then he lifted them onto his sawhorses and lifted the cross-cut saw.

 

“Get on the other end of this,” he all but ordered Adam. Wisely, Adam did as he was asked, muttering to himself about grumpy bears in the woods.

 

With the saw rasping and sawdust making neat little piles on the floor, they worked without comment or direction. The three boards became six then two of those became four as Hoss, chewing on his lip, would eye them, lift some aside and study them a little more.

 

“Want to tell me what we’re building?” Adam asked as the four smaller pieces hit the floor.

 

“Look around you, brother, and tell me what this place is missing,” snorted Hoss, retrieving his hammer and some nails from the tool caddy by the door.

 

Adam looked around then shrugged his shoulders. As far as he could tell, everything that was necessary to support life was there: the stove, a table and three chairs, and the three bedsteads. All that he would have added was maybe a rocking chair close to the stove but he figured that was personal preference. Rather than voice his opinion he waited, watching his brother.

 

Quick as a wink, Hoss had the pieces assembled into a set of shelves and had two short pieces left over. “Did you pick up that hardware order when you got this lumber?” He waited long enough for Adam to nod then headed out to the wagon.

 

Taking advantage of his brother’s absence, Adam studied the shelf unit as it sat on the sawhorses. Not once had Hoss measured a length or breadth. The nails had sunk in with only a strike or two of the hammer, finding their centered homes as if drawn there by a strong magnet. He picked up one of the remaining boards and was not in the least surprised to find that it was the perfect size to be a door.

 

“Not a bad job, little brother,” he teased when Hoss returned. “Should have gone into cabinetry instead of ranching.” For all of his pleasant words and kind voice, all he got was a hard glare and a scowl. “Okay, then,” he tried again.”Let me say that this is a good idea. The boys will need someplace to store their books and such.” Another scowl as Hoss affixed hinges onto the doors and then the sides of the shelves.

 

“Only you would think of this as some place for books. Ain’t.” With that, he hefted the shelves and calling to Adam, took them and his hammer and nails over behind the stove. “Got to have a place to store foodstuffs. Right here against this north wall should do pretty well.”

 

Adam did as he was asked and held the contraption while Hoss mounted it to the wall. He even opened and closed the doors a time or two making sure they would stay in position. They would. Hoss had done a good job and he told him so. All the response he got was a grunt.

 

“What is eating on you, boy?” Adam finally spat. “This isn’t that hard a chore.”

 

Hoss didn’t answer. Instead he stomped out to the wagon and began unhitching the team, preparing them for the night. Adam stood in the doorway and watched, his hands linked behind his neck, supporting his weary head.

 

By the time Hoss had the team settled in the newly rebuilt shed, his brother had a dinner of eggs and bacon ready. Together they sat at the plank table and ate. Silently. Finally, Adam could stand it no longer and he broke the heavy silence.

 

“What’s the matter, Hoss? Ever since we started this little penance, you’ve been grumpy and mighty hard to get along with. So, I repeat, what’s the matter?”

 

Hoss toyed with the last bit of egg on his plate. “Maybe I just think there’s something wrong with this – what did you call it? A penance?”

 

“That’s the word but what’s wrong with it?”

 

“It ain’t right. That’s all.”

 

He pushed his plate away and settled his elbows on the table then Adam cleared his throat. “This is certainly better than sixty days in Roy’s jail cell.”

 

Hoss also shoved his plate aside and planted his massive elbows on the table. “We didn’t do anything wrong so why should we be punished, either with this or with time in jail?”

 

“How do you figure that? We did – or at least you did and I didn’t do anything to stop you.” Seeing the slightly befuddled look on his brother’s face, Adam continued quickly. “Without any more evidence than what we had, look at what you did to that kid! You grab him up by the scruff of the neck and shove him down that slope, slam him into a tree and throw him towards the road.”

 

“I just wanted him to know what Joe had gone through.” Hoss’ hands chopped at the air as he spoke. “And that was after he’d been shot and left to die.”

 

“Tell me something, Hoss. If that had been someone else doing that to one of us, what would you have done? No, don’t. I’ll tell you what you would have done. You would have grabbed them and whipped the living daylights out of them. Mrs. Clements couldn’t do that, Hoss. In fact, there aren’t too many folks who could do that to you. So that’s why the court is having us do this.”

 

“It just ain’t right, Adam. We know now that them boys did it.”

 

“That was then and this is now. It still doesn’t justify what you did, Hoss. You lost your temper. Hell! I was on the verge of losing mine! But to rough up a kid? Pa hasn’t let us get away with that ever.” A smile threatened Adam. “Except when it was him with the paddle and one of us. Parents have rights that strangers don’t, apparently.”

 

Hoss also fought a smile but did so by assuming a hurt air. “I wouldn’t know ’bout that. I was always a good child and he never had to take a paddle to me.”

 

In response, Adam snorted then laughed heartily. “You? A good child? If you’ll pardon the expression – my ass! You should be glad that Joe came along when he did and distracted Pa. Kept you from being permanently assigned to the house and barn chores. If you can’t remember one of those necessary little talks of Pa’s, it’s because you physically outgrew the rest of us too quick . Didn’t mean you didn’t deserve it but that it’s real hard to paddle someone who towers over you!”

 

Hoss dipped his head and looked away, not wanting his brother to see the smile threatening to break out. Yet, just as soon as it came, the mirth in him went away. “Wish we could get this here work done and be able to go home for a bit. Miss Hop Sing’s cookin’ seein’s how yours would stunt the growth of a vulture.”

 

“Any time you want to start doing all the cooking, I’ll be glad to relinquish my spatula. And we should be done here in another few days. Don’t think you’ll starve in that short of time. What else have we got to do?”

 

“We’ve fixed the corral and the lean-to. Should be all right for a milk cow. Closed in that one end so we need to snag a few of Hop Sing’s layin’ hens. The roof is finished and the holes in the walls are plugged. Got to finish running the piping into the kitchen for the pump. Did you get the pipe I asked for when you got the rest of the lumber this afternoon?”

 

At each item, Adam looked in its direction and made a mental check mark next to it on the running list he’d carried in his mind for much too long. When Hoss paused, Adam picked up on the list. “The stove and chimney work better together now that we’ve cleaned them out. Beds made and the door is fixed.”

 

“Yep,” Hoss sighed after his agreement. “Just one more thing I got to build so get this stuff off the table so I can go to sawin’.”

 

Rather than see the new dishes destroyed, Adam gathered them quickly into his arms. “What else have you got to build?” he asked, puzzled.

 

“You said it yourself, Adam. The boys got to have a place to put their books.” Hoss wanted to chuckle at the expression on his older brother’s face when he’d said the word ‘books’. There was a certain amount of pure glee in Hoss’ heart to see his brother so taken aback. If he really would have told the truth, Hoss would have said that the boys needed someplace to store their treasures – all those things a young boy found of interest – a blue stone shaped like an egg, maybe. Or the skull of some long-dead critter. Or a bright bit of stone that he could pretend was gold. But it would have taken too long to explain that to his brother so Hoss just let him think that it was for books. That Adam wouldn’t argue about.

 

While Adam washed the dishes and did his best to ignore his brother’s odd behavior, Hoss alternately hummed and muttered while he made the simple box shelving. He didn’t stop with one but made another just like it and hung them side by side on the wall at the foot of the smaller beds. He tried the doors and made sure they were hung square. He was turning to sweep up his sawdust when it struck him that what he’d done smacked of kindness – kindess to the two boys who’d tried to kill his brother – who had left him for dead -who – who -who…who were only young boys. With the wind now whipped from his sails of anger, Hoss sat down in his dinner chair, his hands limp between his knees.

 

“Something wrong with you? And don’t tell me that its my cooking.”

 

In reply, Hoss only shook his head.

 

“Well something’s the matter.” Adam slung the dishtowel he’d been drying the paltes with over his shoulder and, propping one booted foot on the chair seat, leaned over the table and shook his brother’s arm.

 

“Tell me something, Adam. Tell me how it is that we grew up so much different than these two boys. Is it because we grew up with a pa and they only got a ma? Can it make that much difference?” His words were soft, almost to the point where Adam wasn’t really sure he’d heard him right.

 

“I don’t think that having a father over a mother is any better – just different. More than that, Hoss, I think it has to do with the quality of that single parent. What do they want out of the world and what are they willing to do to get it? And what do they expect of their children?”

 

“You lost me.”

 

Adam sat down and let his long fingers stroke the base of the kerosene lamp that sat on the table between them. “I believe that there is a fundamental difference between Pa and Missus Clements. It has to do with how they view themselves and their lives. Pa looks at the world and sees a challenge to be met. He decided a long time ago, long before either of us was born, just what he wanted out of life and what he would do to get it. He wanted land that was his and knew that he would work hard for it. Pa didn’t ask for what he’s got now – he worked for it. Missus Clements looked at world and saw – or thought she did – all the mean and ugly things.”

 

“But she wouldn’t have wanted them,” interjected Hoss, a blunt finger stabbing the table top.

 

“No one does but did she do anything to keep from it? No. She found herself saddled with a man who probably wasn’t worth the price of a bullet. She lied to us and the judge about him so I would bet that she never married him. Might have been a blessing in disguise but whatever, she finds herself with this man, he gets her with child and what does she do? Does she try to better herself and her child and leave him? No, she stays and gets another child by him. I wonder how long she clung to some false hope that he’d come back once he left.”

 

“She said that they’d left Kansas and was workin’ their way ‘cross country. Don’t that mean she was trying to stay on the upside of things?”

 

Adam smiled then quickly let it fall away. Trust Hoss to look on the bright side of any problem. “She didn’t say it. Chris did and for all we know, that may or may not be true. Either way, look at the out come. Our father left Ash Hollow with you as a baby and me just barely able to hold the reins of the team. Before that, we’d stopped places and Pa worked for food and shelter but no matter what, he had a dream and was going to pay the price – hard work- to get it. That’s what I’m saying, Hoss. That is the difference between Pa and Missus Clements. He had a solid dream, a future he wanted and was willing to work hard for it. She never had a dream like that.”

 

“Except maybe that it would all get better.”

 

“But did she do anything about it? No. Instead she squats out here in the middle of nowhere with her two boys and does nothing. She gives them no hope because she herself has none. She doesn’t even try to teach them the fundamentals of caring for themselves. The boys were left to their own devices, Hoss, until -”

 

“Until they came across Joe and shot him.”

 

Adam shook his head. “No, not even then. It was only when the judge made his ruling – that those boys needed to go with Pa. The judge offered them a chance to learn how to change things.”

 

“To have hope, real hope.” Hoss nodded, chewed on his lip a moment then went on. “And we got ourselves a lesson, too. A lesson ’bout bein’ grateful that our pa done such a good job a-raising us.”

 

“Agreed. Now, you done with your bookshelves? Good. I want some of Hop Sing’s cooking too. I figure another two days at the round-up and we can turn the cattle over to the trail boss to head to Ogden and we can go home.”

 

In the dark of the night, the straw mattress beneath him rustling with each movement, Hoss studied what Adam had said. Yes, their father has been a huge impact on their lives but so had others: Roy Coffee, Paul Martin and a host of others, some ranchers like themselves but others were town folks. Watching the orange of the fire leak out around the stove door, he added Hop Sing to the list, moving him closer to the top of it, just behind their father. What had the little Oriental done? Besides stand his ground when it came to his kitchen? Hoss smiled to himself. Hop Sing had made the Ponderosa a home – a place of welcoming warmth on a cold day. A place to rest at the end of a hard day. After Marie’s death, when their father seemed determined to work himself to death, when Adam had gone away to school and there was no one else to talk to about being lonely, Hop Sing had made space and time into a home again. Not just a house but a home.

 

A flitting memory settled on him and Hoss let himself go with it. He’d been a young man – about fourteen or so and had been helping bring in the cattle from winter pasture. An unplanned dunking in a swollen creek had left him with a cold. He’d done his best to hide the sniffle and the cough from his father because he knew his help was needed. He’d been successful, for the most part, but when the cold settled in his chest and a fever started, he found himself alone with Hop Sing at the house. Without the scowl his father would have given him, Hop Sing made Hoss some horrible tasting tea, wrapped him in a warm quilt and settled him close to the fire on the settee. All that afternoon, he’d been cajoled and badgered into drinking the tea. When his family had returned late that evening, his fever was broken – gone as if he’d never had it in the beginning. Hop Sing had said nothing but went about preparing roast pork – Hoss’ favorite meal.

 

The snap of wood in the stove brought him back to the night. If it was up to their father to show the boys and their mother about respect, what was his and Adam’s role? Just to fix up the house? To make it, and the rest of the little place, livable? They’d done that. A few more little tweeks and the place would be ready for the Clements’ return. The question of his responsibility sat heavy on him though. Again, he rolled over, ready to find the answer in the darkness.

 

When he tugged at his blanket, it came to him. Yes, what he and Adam had done was fix the house up but that wasn’t the end of their penance. Like Hop Sing had done, they had been charged with making it a home. A home – more than a new roof. More than a stove that didn’t belch smoke. More. If circumstances had stolen away the things that went into a home, they could get them back. Hoss began making a list in his head and fell asleep wondering if he could convince Mrs Perkins, the bank manager’s wife, to part with her prize-winning quilt.

 

Across from his brother, Adam tried to settle his long body on one of the boys’ beds. It worked – after a fashion. Giving his shoulders another twist into the feather mattress, he let his eyes linger on the orange glow around the stove door. Across the way, Hoss began to snore. Adam grimaced and added one more reason to be glad that they would soon be headed home. That brought back their conversation of the night and how they’s come to the decision about the Clements. And what lessons had been passed out by the judge. There had been one person not there and Adam wondered what it would be that Joe would take away from this unfortunate accident. As he drifted off to sleep one word kept echoing in Adam’s thoughts.

 

 

 

 


Chapter 8

Fear Rides a Dark Horse

 

It came again. A phantom-sense of weight pressing down on his back that ballooned into a rage of fire and fear that caught Joe and held him. He would have fought it but his arms were useless. In the dream- world it was as if he watched from a distance as his body caught fire. He rolled in the dirt to escape the licking tongues of flame but it chased him, wrapping around his legs now and pulling him backwards into a blackened maw. The flames reached for his arm, his shoulder, and became hands themselves with claw-like nails. Even as he writhed against their touch, he found himself fascinated by them and leaned into their offered embrace. Yet they pulled back, taking their support and he fell. . . .

 

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “I didn’t mean to wake you. Sorry.” With her eyes round in sudden fear, Karyn Clements moved away from the fireplace, her hands tucked behind her back.

 

Joe gave her a lopsided grin as he tried to still the wild beating of his heart. “Seems I woke myself up.” He lifted his left arm as high as the restricting bandage and sling would allow him. “Ain’t easy to get comfortable with you arm strapped down like this.” He told the truth. More and more he was having difficulty letting the arm and shoulder rest like Doc Martin had told him to. The irritating stitches had been removed weeks ago but the sling remained tied to his chest. Doc had repeatedly warned him about trying to do too much too soon and for once in his life, Joe was following the good doctor’s instructions. Maybe not to the exact letter but closer than he had before. What he couldn’t deal with were the muscles twinging at the oddest times. . . and the nightmares that chased sleep away.

 

“I just came up to put another log on your fire. Didn’t expect to find you a-sitting here next to the fire. Your father asked me to earlier and I forgot. Hope this here log can catch off of them coals.” Her glance at the suspect log showed her doubt.

 

“Doesn’t look good, does it? Maybe if you brought up some smaller pieces and we shoved them under that big fella. . ..” Joe had no more than gotten the suggestion out and the woman was out the door. He heard her clattering footsteps down the stairs and the front door being yanked open. She shouted something that he couldn’t make out then the whole noisome racket happened in reverse.

 

Try as she might, she couldn’t get the poker under the log enough to lift it with one hand and shove in the smaller pieces under it. Half of her felt like cursing her own stupidity for having put the big one on just the coals. If he hadn’t woke up, she would have slipped out of his room and back into the kitchen. That way, she could have told Mister Cartwright that she’d done as he’d asked but that the draft or something hadn’t worked. Anything but telling him the truth – that she’d forgotten. Now she was stuck. And, so it appeared, was the poker under the log.

 

“Here,” the man’s voice offered at her side and she all but jerked away from the sound of it. He took the iron poker and maneuvered it expertly, prying up and exposing the glowing coals. “Now. Put that small stuff in. Put some of it crosswise. That’s it. No. Put it all in.” She did as he directed.

 

She settled back on her knees as he lowered the log over the growing flames. Then came his grunt of pain and he dropped the poker onto the brick hearth, grabbing his left side and arm. Quickly she came to her senses. Together with his shaky help, she helped ease him into the chair.

 

“I’m okay,” he wheezed. She fetched the brown bottle of laudanum and the spoon from the bedside table. He waved it away. “Just every once in a while, I forget that I can’t use my good arm.” For good measure, he smiled up at her.

 

“Your bandage is loose. Let me fix it for you.” Her offer was not refused. If nothing else, Joe didn’t want his father seeing it and knowing that he’d been trying something forbidden. Her tiny hands were cool against his bare shoulder, touching him as lightly as a spring breeze. “This whole thing needs to come off and be redone, I think.”

 

He nodded his agreement, the memory of the nightmare’s fight flashing through his mind. “If you don’t mind, and you think we can do it, I’d appreciate it, Miz Clements.”

 

Swiftly, she stripped the sling and loose bandages from his shoulder and around his chest. Still her hands were timid and Joe could hear her ragged breathing. Suddenly she made a fearful sound in her throat and, letting the roll of bandages drop to the floor, stepped away. She crushed her fist to her lips.

 

“That bad, huh?” he whispered, his own words nearly catching in his throat. “Look, why don’t we just forget it? It’ll be okay until Pa comes home. I’ll tell him I took it off because it was itching or something. It’ll be okay.”

 

He’d misunderstood, she knew but how could she tell him? “No. That doctor fella did a real nice job. Barely see the scars. I just. . . I just. . . I just hadn’t seen it is all.” It was a lie yet not a lie. For the first time, she’d seen the results of what her sons had done. Across his shoulder blade stood a red welt of a scar. It was easily the length of her spread-fingered hand. Matching it on his chest was another pair of marks. The bruising was thankfully long gone, leaving the flesh there pale and cool to her touch. For that briefest of moments, Karyn Clements had thought of what it must have looked like before. Her mind’s eye put the bruising back and opened the two wounds, letting blood trickle then gush from them with every beat of his heart. She’d laid her hand atop his shoulder as she been removing the bandages. Now she imagined it giving beneath her touch, and could hear the grating as his bones gave way. She closed her eyes; shame washed over her. She’d complained to the judge about how her son had been hurt by Hoss Cartwright yet look what her son had done. Hoss’ words came back to her in a heated rush: her son’s bruises would heal but Joe’s. . . .

 

“Ma’am?” His grasp on her arm brought her back to her senses. “You okay? Look, I’m sorry I asked you to help me. Please tell me you’ll forgive me?”

 

“No. No. Nothin’ to forgive. I should be askin’ you. . . Let’s get this back like it was.” Her words came fast, stumbling over themselves. She closed her mind off to what her eyes saw and got the bandages and sling replaced. When she was finished, she backed away, ready to turn and flee the shadowy room. The fire had caught well and the dancing flames lit his face, his eyes suddenly glowing bright, making the bandages whiter and the room beyond him darker. It was as if he had stepped from those shadows and was about to curse her, she thought.

 

Yet he did not curse her. Instead he thanked her once more and smiled, forcing it onto his face as another spasm of pain raked across his shoulder. From a far distance, he heard shouting – or did he just imagine the sound of a young boys’ shout of glee? No, he recalled his father saying something about the lady bringing her sons to the ranch and how she’d spoken once about them..

 

The boy’s shout also grabbed the mother’s attention. It was Peter, downstairs shouting for her – something he’d been strictly told not to do. She started to turn away, to hurry and silence his noisy calls.

 

“Guess that’s one of your boys, right?” asked Joe, striving to take his mind off his aching body. “Sorry I haven’t gotten down to meet them yet.”

 

The tidal wave of panic that swept across her left her knees shaking. With just the thought of Peter, or God forbid, Chris, coming into this room and this man recognizing them as the ones who’d shot him, left him to die –

 

She quickly excused herself and raced down the hallway and then the stairs, praying she could intercept Peter before he blundered into Joe’s presence. That would be all she’d need, the woman feared. There would have to be explanations that she was not willing to give or receive. Not only that but how would the young man take it all? Would he feel abused by the law and his family? Or would he decide to execute his own justice? Either way, with the sentence bestowed upon them nearly over and their time here almost done, she knew she must keep her sons away from the man in the bedroom at the head of the stairs.

 

Joe tried to settle himself once more in the chair by the fireplace. Now that the logs had caught the warmth spread across his legs. One-handed he managed to light the lamp. It helped to settle his thoughts to not sit in the darkness. For a half of a heartbeat, he imagined again that something had slammed into his back and that he had fallen into the flames of the fire. He shoved it aside but it lingered there, close to him. A victim of many nightmares as a young child growing up, Joe had found a variety of ways to overcome the terrors they brought upon him. One of the most effective was not available to him that evening for it was just to spend quiet time with his brother Hoss. Years before he’d told himself that Hoss was big enough to scare away the most horrible of demons.

 

“What about now, big brother?” he spoke softly into the lamp’s golden flame. “Can you chase away these nightmares for me?” Or are you one of them? No, you could never hurt me like these dreams are – if that is what they are –dreams. Had to have been an accident if it was you. But I’ve never known you to hide from me and that’s what you’re doing now, isn’t it? Hiding from me. And I’m hiding from myself. If only I could remember what happened then neither one of us would have to hide, would we?

 

Or is it better this way?

 

That night, deep in the darkness that comes after midnight and silences all but the bravest souls, it came again for Joe. In the dream he knelt before the warmth of a fire, his spirit easy yet strangely wary. He’d just said or heard something that made him smile – maybe even laugh a little. Then came a tug at his side, followed by a hollow click. The fire reached for him, as though to push him from the path of whatever demon it was making those ominous sounds. He went to it and let the flames cover him, hide him. All of his senses came alive. He could smell a curious mixture of burnt flesh, coffee and spent gunpowder. He tasted blood but didn’t know where it came from. Along one side, from within his body not from outside it, he felt searing heat and heard his own disembodied shout of surprise, of fear. It was only when he saw the bare feet twisting in the mud before his eyes that he knew he was on the ground.

 

And then, rising above it all, a shrill scream from an unseen demon.

 

He bolted upright in bed, his heart hammering at his chest, his mouth open and dry. Hunched over and tangled in the blankets, he battled his own body to remain still for the overwhelming urge was to run away from the shadows. Joe pulled at the bandages that bound his strong left arm, wanting to use it to battle the demons.

 

“Easy now, son,” came his father’s deep voice there beside him in the dark. It touched his mind the same way his hands touched his flesh – holding, gentling, protecting. Joe pushed away from that proffered security only to find his strength gone, his body shaking with relief. He fell back onto the pillows and threw his unfettered arm over his eyes. To find the pillowslip damp was bad enough but he would not let his father find tears on his face. The fear shaking him was enough.

 

“Joseph?” There was that softly pleading tone in his father’s use of his name that spoke of his own fear. Joe shook his head, ignoring the plea. Again, that tone when he asked if Joe wanted to tell him what was wrong. This Joe would respond to.

 

“What happened, Pa?”

 

A scratching sound bloomed into a tiny flame that lit the bedside lamp. The demons in the shadows fled, escaping on Ben’s sigh as he settled himself on the side of the bed. “You were shouting out something, son.”

 

Joe smacked the coverlet. “No. I mean when I was shot. What happened? Who shot me? Was it…?” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence, to ask if it had truly been Hoss.

 

Ben heard more than the questions. He heard the trembling fear, felt the flush of anger on his son’s flesh beneath his hand, saw the green eyes flinch from some unacknowledged pain. “It was an accident, Joseph. Just an accident. The gun went off close to your shoulder. It broke your shoulder blade. You lost a lot of blood.”

 

“You’ve told me all that but that isn’t all of it.”

 

“It’s late, son, and while you may protest and say that you’re rested, I’m not and I have a lot on my plate tomorrow. Can we talk about it then?” Although Ben had phrased it as a question, Joe knew from his father’s inflection that it was not. He’d meant it to put him off again and Joe had no choice to concede.

 

“Besides, your brothers and Hop Sing should be home tomorrow.”

 

Only that kept Joe from rebelling and demanding his answers. He knew that once he faced Hoss, the truth would come out. The whole story could be told and he could tell his brother that he held no blame against him.

 

Then maybe the demons would leave him in peace at night.


Chapter 9:

As Silence Stalks the Memory

 

“I am sure,” Joe repeated emphatically only to catch the doubt in his father’s eyes once more. “Doc said to start walkin’ on this leg more. I should be able to get down the stairs just fine, Pa.” He didn’t want to admit that he’d done it several times already while his father was out doing ranch chores.

 

“I just don’t want Miz Clements to have to help you up off the floor!” Ben teased but in his heart, he wasn’t sure that there was any teasing about it. More and more, Joe had been pestering him to get out and about. This morning he was tempted to give in since the major fear he had – Joe discovering the Clements boys and remembering that they had . . . . No, he’d told himself, eventually Joe had to know the whole truth but I need to be there when he finds out. I know him. He’ll want to lash out. He’ll be so angry; he won’t understand why we took in the very ones responsible. But Ben had plans to take the boys into town and buy them winter things for the chill in the air no longer hinted at winter; it screamed of it with ice rimmed on the watering trough in the mornings and the cold stillness to be heard in the night. He would have them well away from the house most of the day so there would be little chance of an impromptu meeting.

 

Settling himself on the wagon seat, Ben took a long look at the front door. He hoped that he had made the right decision. Why the judge had thought he was a good role model was beyond him at that moment. Joe had won, like Ben’s sons always seemed to on things such as this. There had been some give and take and the ultimate concessions by each: Ben would allow him to stay at ease on settee until his brothers arrived home – hopefully by mid-day- and Joe would wait until Mrs Clements came up to help him make the trip down the stairs. Ben shook his head and scowled to himself as he slapped the reins over the broad backs of the team.

 

“Is there something wrong, Mister Ben?” Peter asked, seeing the expression on the big rancher’s face. Beside him, Chris squirmed, elbowing his brother. A glimpse showed Peter his own dismay. Chris had wanted to ride into town, taking full advantage of his newly honed skill o horseback riding. In the past week, the boys had been allowed to ride horseback with Ben around the ranch. Sure, there were chores that they did. They had learned to herd cows into a new pasture. They had mended a fence and cleaned out a watering hole. To do these things, they’d had to ride. For the very first time, there had been no sulking or argument from Chris for he was doing what he wanted – riding a horse. As he looked down from his saddle, he considered himself a man, doing a man’s work. No one would look down on him now.

 

Yet, they rode the wagon into town because their keeper, as Chris silently thought of Ben Cartwright, had said that there were too many things that they needed. If he had learned nothing else, Chris had learned that there was no arguing with logic. He did try, though, when he suggested that he and Peter could ride alongside. That had drawn Ben’s brows together and he’d repeated that they would take the wagon. So, with a little of Ben’s help, they had hitched the team to the buckboard. It hadn’t stopped Chris from one last ditch effort. He’d given Ben a mournful look as he’d climbed to the wagon seat.

 

“Don’t look so out of sorts, Chris. We should be back in plenty of time for you and Peter to go check on that cut-up cow we saw the other day. A good rancher looks after all the chores on his spread. Not just the ones he can do from the back of a horse. And, no, Peter, there’s nothing wrong. Just getting colder.”

 

By the time they were headed back to the Ponderosa, even Chris had to admit grudgingly to himself that they couldn’t have ridden all that way without revealing some soreness. Besides, the wagon was full. They took turns driving the team and Chris even smiled when Mister Cartwright praised his ability. Peter, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to hold the reins laced through his fingers, preferring instead to wad them into his fist.

 

“Think I could get a job driving a stagecoach?” Chris asked, a eye cocked to gauge the rancher’s reaction.

 

“Perhaps,” admitted Ben but then pressed on with his ever-present speech about the need for real education. “Being a stagecoach driver means more than just handling the teams. He has to know when he needs to be in a certain town so he has to be able to understand a schedule.”

 

“So he needs to be able to read?” Peter piped up, handling the reins back to Chris.

 

Ben nodded then crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back on the seat. “That’s right. And he needs to be pleasant to his passengers so that they’ll take his stage again sometime.”

 

“Can’t be scowlin’ and howlin’ at em.” The youngest Clements had a knack for stating the obvious at times and this referral was clearly aimed at his brother’s attitude.

 

“At the same time, he can’t be takin’ no guff of ’em neither ’cause he’s got a stage to get on the road.” Chris shot a clean glare at both his passengers of that day, letting them know that while he held the reins, he controlled things. This was certainly to his liking. Almost as much as riding horseback.

 

It surprised both boys that the man laughed.

 

The wagon had no more than rumbled out of the yard than Joe was on the move. With plenty of wincing, he’d managed to get both arms into his shirt sleeves but buttoning the front took a while. He’d gotten a little dizzy and off-balance when he’d leaned over to pull on his trousers but several deep breaths cleared his head. He shoved his feet into his slippers, cursing the fact that he couldn’t pull his own boots on as his left arm just wasn’t up to it. A glimpse in his shaving mirror showed his face to be only passingly pale but he straightened his shoulders and told himself that he could do it alone. After all, it was just a short walk downstairs.

 

His right leg seemed to lag behind and he half-stumbled when his foot encountered the edge of the hall carpet. Hissing softly, he clung to storage chest there. Then again he began with fingertips balancing himself against the wall. Doc Martin had warned him about this unsteady weakness and equilibrium. It had come not only from the loss of blood but also the time he had spent sedentary. Having one side, his left and therefore dominate side, nearly immobile didn’t help either. There was only one cure for, Joe thought, and that was to get up and move. On his own. Without his father or -God forbid, the woman!- hovering close by.

 

By the time he had reached the head of the stairs, he was panting. It didn’t seem to be caused by the exertion but by some strange heaviness he felt. It was as if he was dragging a ball and chain around, making him lopsided. He pushed the thought from his mind, laughing at his own imagination. Yet the stairs with their downward angle taunted him, daring him to try them on his own. Simple, hands on the railings, one step at a time.

 

The first set of steps went well but the carpeting at the landing was just a little loose. Here, without the death grip on the railing on his left, he stumbled once more. . . .

 

He could see the sagebrush rushing up at him yet he couldn’t find his arms to stop his falling. Down he went and because of the slant of the earth and the pull of gravity, he continued to fall. The pungent sage tore at him. Once, twice, three times he rolled completely over then the gnarled oak rose up before him. That roll slammed him into the tree, making it shake with the impact. His breath was forced from his lungs; his vision swam from it; still he welcomed it. The rough bark scrapped his cheek as he pushed up the trunk, trying to stand. His knee screamed at him, the pain dragging darkness over him once more. This time when he fell, he couldn’t begin to slow his descent into the unknown. Over and over, he felt the unrelenting shale cut and the sage slash. Then suddenly, he stopped falling. Cool grass and a trickle of water was beneath his. Human nature forced him to open his eyes and assess his surroundings. On one side, only an expanse of green rose toward the sky. On the other, the slope he had fallen down, and through the fogginess of growing shock, he saw two small human shapes mounting his horse. He tried to call out but his jaws locked tight on anger as they rode away. . . .

 

“Mister Cartwright said that you would wait until I got-. Oh, never mind. Can I help you?” Mrs Clements begged to help. She’d been finishing the breakfast dishes when she’d heard a faint noise from the living room and had gone to investigate. Joe had been on the landing, both hands gripping the railing, one leg buckled beneath him. She had flown up those few steps and seen the paleness and the beads of sweat on his face. Frantically she had looked around but found nothing but herself to help him. Again, now, she asked to help him, unsure of what she honestly could do.

 

Joe raised his eyes to meet hers. He shook his head, the vision of falling down the slope dissolving as quickly as it had come. His ragged breath allowed him only to nod. She took his right arm over her shoulder and carefully they maneuvered down the last of the stairs and to the settee. She said something that didn’t make it passed the buzzing in his ears. He shook his head once, trying to clear it away. A glass of water was pressed into his hand, lifting it to help him sip. One sip, two and he was able to take it away from her completely.

 

“Guess I should have waited,” he teased lightly, trying to alleviate the panic he saw in her eyes. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just stay here for a bit.” He gave her a half-hearted smile that she took for the real thing. A pat on his hand and she was gone.

 

The other wouldn’t leave him as easily. This he knew was not a dream but a memory. He took stock of his body and matched it all to what the dream-like memory had told him. All of the pieces fit but for two things. It made him at first doubt the whole but little by little, he found acceptance. The first thing that hadn’t fit had been the wound to his shoulder. He knew it was a bullet wound. The second was the vision of two small human beings riding away on his horse.

 

It wasn’t Hoss that shot me. Had to be those. . . those boys? But where did they come from? And how did they shoot me? Why did they shoot me?

 

His father’s explanation floated back to him. It was an accident and his brother had nothing to do with it. But why hasn’t Hoss been here? Can’t blame it all on the round-up. No, I know what I saw on his face that morning. He was ashamed of something, something he’d done. Did he–? No, Hoss wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less a kid. Or would he?

 

“Hey! Look ‘ee here who’s got himself propped up on the sofa! Think we oughta wake him up?” Hoss Cartwright was thoroughly delighted by the sight of his sleeping brother. He thought about poking him but decided against it. There was always a chance that he would hit someplace that hadn’t healed yet.

 

“I don’t think we need to. I saw an eye move.” Adam leaned over the back of the settee, his brows arching just like their father’s would. “But then of course we could always take him out and toss him in the water trough. That’s what we usually do with slackers around here.”

 

Without cracking open an eyelid, Joe responded. “Ain’t any slackers around here unless it’s you two. I’ve been busy, I’ll have you know.”

 

Hoss dropped his ample body onto the square table with a resounding thud. “Busy? Doin’ what?”

 

“Keepin’ Pa out of your way.”

 

All three laughed. It was true that if he hadn’t been concerned about his youngest son and bound by the judge’s ruling, Ben Cartwright would have been out on the range daily. While the three younger Cartwrights knew the cattle business as well if not better than their father, it would be Ben giving the directions. How often the directions were followed to the letter after he left was always a subject of muttered discourse, mutual decision and agreed upon silence.

With careful back slaps and hearty voices, the two older brothers were welcomed home. They accepted the coffee Mrs Clements brought to them and settled before the fireplace. Talk centered on the round up and Adam and Hoss were both keen on filling their brother in on everything that had happened. They did their best to ignore the rattling pans in the kitchen. Hop Sing was apparently reasserting his dominance to the lady’s dismay.

 

“Say, where is Pa?” Adam finally asked.

 

“Took the Clements boys into town. Said he’d be back by lunch time.” Joe sipped his coffee, never seeing the flash of eye-contact between his brothers. “Passed lunch time, though. Would have thought that you’d have seen them on the road?”

 

“We came in a different way.” Hoss brushed the comment away quickly, launching into a tale from the round-up that was bound to become legend despite the fact it was one their writer friend Mark Twain could have written in one of his books.

 

Even as they talked and laughed, Joe sensed a growing uneasiness between his brothers. It was as though they were waiting for the other proverbial shoe to drop. Finally they quit trying, disappearing to clean up and leaving Joe alone once more.

 

It was only for a short while. The buck board rumbled into the yard and halted at the porch. Above the hub-bub of unloading was Hop Sing’s strident singsong, directing where things should be put in the kitchen and the larder. Then there was silence. Still on the settee, Joe strained to hear a sound but nothing came to him. He rolled his feet to floor and started to stand up but a wave of vertigo hit him and he dropped back down. He let his head fall into his hands, the memories of falling rushing again at him but this time he didn’t let them control him. Instead, he forced them forward and found they were easier to handle. When he parted his hands, he found himself looking at the floor and a pair of small boot toes.

 

“You okay, Mister?” the young boy standing before him asked. When he hadn’t answered, the boy went on, displaying his new boots and telling Joe about Virginia City.

 

Just like the memory of falling down the slope had returned to Joe, so did the sound and timbre of this boy’s voice. It washed out then joined with a second young male voice, rising into a reverberating shout of warning. They, he and the boy, were back on that ledge above Silver Canyon on a windy, rainy day with a fire growing between them. A tug at his side and he turned his head to see the second boy, one older than the one before him. Joe saw a pistol barrel raising until he was looking down the barrel of it. A voice shouted another warning and he felt the bullet slam into his back. For a moment, all went dark.

 

Joe blinked his eyes. He was back on the settee. Beneath his feet, he could feel the solid wood floor and over the boy’s shoulder -not between them- he could see the dance of flames. He swallowed hard.

 

The others were all in the room now. They had all seen that Peter was talking to Joe but he prayed that they hadn’t seen his reaction. How could they? They hadn’t been on that ledge that day. They hadn’t seen Death glaring at him down the barrel of his own revolver.

 

The woman was calling to her son Peter, telling him that he had chores to do. His father was doing his best to seem nonchalant but Joe had seen the flash of panic in his father’s eyes. Of his brothers, only Adam appeared normal yet he was good at hiding his emotions. Hoss, on the other hand, had a visible tightness to his body.

 

The memories fell into place for Joe. Through the wispy haze of time, he had learned what his family would not tell him. All except one over-riding question had been answered.

 

Why?

 

He watched his brother that evening, seeing in his face a growing and painful understanding of what was happening around him. Adam had settled in his favorite blue chair and watched as Hoss and Joe had taught the two Clements boys the fine art of playing checkers. Their father and Mrs Clements had spent a fair amount of time talking quietly over in the study but had eventually been lured over. Both watched their off-spring indulgently and Adam decided that all parents must do that. He’d even put aside his reading to watch and wondered what tale his face would tell. The final match, touted as the championship match, went to Hoss with Chris as the runner-up. Then, with the youngsters shuffled off to their beds, silence settled in.

 

“I think I’ll head to bed, too. Been a while since I slept on a real bed. How about you, Adam?” Hoss stretched his arms wide as he stood up.

 

Adam nodded then offered to help Joe. For a moment, he thought he saw reluctance as Joe glanced briefly towards their father. It disappeared when he stood up then reappeared as he said goodnight.

 

As much as he was able, Joe took no help from his older brothers. They let him lead, setting the pace to slowly mount the stairs. Adam expected Joe to look back at Ben and Mrs Clements when they reached the top of the stairs but he didn’t. If nothing else, Joe seemed to gain strength and he’d straightened his back.

 

“You want to talk about it?” asked Adam softly when Joe paused at his doorway. Joe didn’t answer him. Wordlessly, the two followed him in. There was a minimum of fussing as Hoss stirred the almost-dead fire back to life and Joe took the chair there beside it. Adam slung the desk chair around and sat down, his arms across the scrolled back.

 

“I know some of what happened,” Joe began but found himself afraid to go on.

 

“So do we.” Adam’s voice deepened as he softened it, telling his brother what they knew had happened. He held nothing back. Nothing. Hoss, seated on the side of the bed in the darkness, hung his head and contributed nothing.

 

“That’s what Hoss and I have been up to. Fixing the cabin up like the judge wanted. From the sounds of things, Pa’s had his hands full with Peter and Chris but they seemed to be more likable this evening. Saw their mother even smile.”

 

“Why couldn’t Pa tell me any of this before?” Joe’s whisper asked and neither had an answer. “I almost thought it was Hoss that had done it.” He tried to lighten the words and make them humourous but he’d failed. Hoss still wouldn’t look up.

 

“It was an accident, Joe, and sometimes it takes a while for a body to understand that and come to grips with it. To understand that there is no one to blame for what happened. To maybe understand that what happened was for the good of all concerned. And to understand that forgiveness is important to heal everyone.” Adam stretched forward, stopping just shy of touching Joe’s leg.

 

“You really think those boys got something good out of this?” queried Hoss from the shadows. “You think they’ll do different now?” Doubt underscored his words.

 

“We can only hope so. We’re different now, you and I, Hoss. We’ve looked at what made us what we are and understood that not everyone can say the same, can be the same, and maybe that’s what separates us from them. We know right from wrong only because we’ve been taught the difference.”

 

“So what now? The Clements go back to that cabin for the winter and we’re gonna just forgive and forget?” Hoss pressed, finally coming into the fire’s light and leaning across the back of Joe’s chair.

 

“All that we can hope for is that they’ll take the gift of the place and make something of their lives. Us? Forgiving them is paramount because it was an accident.” When his voice fell silent, Adam found himself staring at Joe’s hands. Before, they were settled gently on the arms of the chair, relaxed. Now they fiercely gripped the chair, the cords on the back of them standing out and the knuckles white. He called his brother’s name once then asked him what he thought of all of it.

 

Joe looked up sharply and drew a ragged breath. He forced his body to relax as he replied that he didn’t know just exactly what to think. “Thanks for telling me though, Adam. Filled in some holes. Like you said, just have to take a while to come to terms with it being an accident and all. Makes me a little shaky to think of it all.”

 

“Maybe that’s why Pa wanted to wait until you were better to tell you. To see what you remembered on your own,” Hoss said, thumping the back of the chair with a balled fist. “And you should know that I’d never accidentally shoot you. Now if you got between me and some fried chicken, you might have a whuppin’ comin’ your direction!”

 

The brothers chuckled momentarily.

 

“Like I asked before, Joe, what’re your thoughts on this?” again Adam pressed and for a moment, saw anger and fear cross his brother’s face. Then there was nothing.

 

“Dunno, Adam. I’ll think on it a while then corner Pa. See what he thinks.”

 

From the doorway came “I think the three of you need –”

 

Adam rose quickly and with his brothers answered, “We’re going, Pa.”

 

Ben waited at the door until his older sons were gone from the room. “Need some help?”

 

“No,” answered Joe, his tone flat and monotone. Stiffly he stood, favoring his injured shoulder. He wasn’t surprised when his father came forward to help despite his protests.

 

Ben slowly slipped his son’s shirt off and dropped it to the floor. He let his hand gently rest on the healing shoulder and it did exactly what he meant it to do – it drew Joe’s attention. “So now you know. I was waiting until you were all healed up, like Adam said, but now you know.”

 

Joe nodded, holding his father’s eye. He repeated his words. “Now I know. Doesn’t change much and I wish you’d said something to me earlier.”

 

“I did,” asserted Ben. “I told you it was an accident.”

 

“Yeah. An accident.” He swiftly changed the subject. Or so Ben thought. “And tomorrow the Clements family goes back to their fixed up cabin.”

 

“Yes, they do, and those boys will be able to help their mother make a go of it there. I’m sure of it. They’ll grow into fine young men, just like my own sons did.” He didn’t have to force pride into his words for Ben truly believed every word he spoke. “Now that you know, I am certain that you can forgive not only the boys but your old man as well?”

 

He was glad of the darkness for he knew how much his father could discern from his eyes. “Sure,” he said.

 

“Well, you look done in, young man. Get some sleep.”

 

The misty moonlight filtered through the falling snow. Joe watched from his window as it gradually covered the trees, the buildings, the earth. He shrugged a little deeper into the quilt he’d pulled from his bed, willing it to warm him through. It wouldn’t and he knew it. In one corner of his soul lived a cold ember that he recognized as something abhorrent – a lie. His brother’s words about knowing right from wrong echoed off each falling snowflake, screaming that Joe had lied to his father.

 

No, he countered his own thoughts. I didn’t lie to Pa. I forgive him for not telling me right off. For doing what he did. He didn’t have any choice but to do as the judge ordered. He had to take those two into his house; had to teach them. He had no idea, only what he’d been told himself.

 

“An accident,” he muttered lowly. He let his head fall forward and his eyes closed. One last time he would relive the memory before he would tuck it away forever. It was what his family wanted, an end with everyone satisfied that the greater good had been done. Only he and the two Clements boys would know different. He wondered if they would ever tell. He knew he wouldn’t. But one last time, as he imagined the click of hammer drawing back on his own revolver, Joe would hear the shout from Peter, “Kill him!”

 

the end

 

Tags: Family, SJS

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Author: Tahoe Ladies

Many of you may remember a group of writers called the Tahoe Ladies who wrote some of the most emotive Cartwright related fan-fiction to date. Unfortunately for a number of reasons, their site containing all their work was lost a couple of years ago, leaving the bulk of their stories, as far as we know, only on one other Bonanza site. Sadly two of these ladies are also no longer with us, but one of the remaining Tahoe Ladies has kindly granted us permission and given us her blessing to add over 60 of their stories to our Fan Fiction Library. For those of you not familiar with the stories by the Tahoe Ladies…their fan fiction was sometimes heart-breaking, sometimes heart-warming. In other words you won’t be disappointed. The Brandsters are honoured and proud to be able to share the work of these extraordinary women with you in the Bonanza Brand Fan Fiction Library.

6 thoughts on “Mercy (by the Tahoe Ladies)

  1. Oh wow! What a gripping and powerful story! The last line, though, turned everything upside-down, opening up a whole new world of ethical questions, and left me breathless. Could Joe forget, though, and could both of the kids? I just have a feeling that there’s another story here.

  2. Poor Joe having to live with that knowledge & not tell Pa! An excellent story, I had to read it in one sitting. ❤

  3. I remember reading this story before and I remember the ending; however, I didn’t remember what Joe knew.

    When did Little Joe grow up? Only a grown up Little Joe could have faced his family and accepted their explanations, knowing how far it really was from the truth.

    Well told!!!

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