Summary:  Shirtless Cartwright ALERT!!! This episode is dedicated to all those who are fans of bare-chested cowboys.

Rating:  T  (1,730 words)

Author’s Note:  The REALLY Losts are satires of the series written with much affection, eye rolling,  and winks.  And can be somewhat risque’.

 

Buck and Matt
A REALLY Lost Episode

Note from Professor F. Sheets: 

Trivia fact – The same horse was used to play both Marshal Dillon’s horse on Gunsmoke as Ben Cartwright’s horse “Buck” on Bonanza. No Kidding!!!

 

“Doncha think Pa is gonna find out about this, Little Joe?” Hoss said cautiously watching Joe nail the last corner of the sign to the barn.

“Nope” Joe gave the nail one last bang for good luck and jumped down off the ladder. His shirt caught on a rough piece of barn siding and ripped the garment from his body.

“This is mighty risky, Joe…” Hoss warned.

“Being shirtless?” Joe stretched and yawned in the warm sun like a cat. He winked right at the camera.

Hoss tossed him one of his numerous tan yoked shirts. “No, little brother, not your shirtlessness or your latest secret foolish plot. Pa will tan your hide.”

Joe slid the fresh shirt over his perfectly perfect shoulders. “Pa won’t be back for at least two weeks. He went to St. Louis or Stockton or San Francisco…don’t quite remember.” Joe stood admiring his creativity. “That sign looks mighty fine, if I say so myself.”

” Maybe Pa went to visit that widow lady over in Stockton with the pretty blonde, but dumb daughter and that wise ass son who looks like that foreman at Laura Dayton’s,” Hoss suggested. He silently prayed that wolf puppy ate Laura Dayton and Adam could be freed from her continual whining. Maybe if they made some extra cash from Joe’s project, he would go to the Virginia City TarJay and buy Laura Dayton a nice blue dress and hope for the best.

“I thought Pa went back east to pay a return visit to the Longlosts.”  Adam walked out of the house with his morning saucer of coffee and a pumpernickel bagel. ”You know that friend of Pa’s who showed up on a Tuesday as he was just dropping in on his way to St. Louis or South Dakota or Walnut Grove by way of Virginia City.”

“The one with the daughter Joe fell for who died?” Hoss asked. Adam had given them a cradle as a wedding gift that Pa was now using as a magazine rack for his back issues of Cattle Baron Monthly and Single Parenting on the Prairie Gazette. Joe was sad for a whole week.

“After I …harumph… made her a woman!” Joe bragged puffing out his chest. The buttons popped off his shirt and his naked chest was exposed to the swooning fans.

“It took than funeral director three days to get the smile off’n that little gal’s dead rosebud lips,” Hoss shook his head.

“Blue rosebuds,” Adam said cynically.

“Is that who Pa is visiting? My almost father-in-law? Captain Lardass Longlost?”

“No, Shmeckey Longlost, Pa’s other never before seen pal… the one with the daughter who didn’t fall for Joe but wound up marrying that Geeky looking pal of Little Joe’s. The one who ran like he had tight underwear that was caught in his butt.”

“That’s why I never wear underwear.” Joe outmaneuvered that trouble.

“Semper Ubi, Sub Ubi!” Adam declared in Latin. “Always wear underwear.”

“Yep, Pa told us, always wear clean underwear, Little Joe. You never know when you might get bushwhacked or run over by a wagon train,” Hoss reminded his brothers.

“Pa don’t want to be embarrassed by your underwear-less-ness. Look what happened that time when Pa had to follow you clear across the desert and save you from Sam Wolf? Poor Pa was mortified. When you all found ME in the middle of the desert that time I was held captive by the insane miner, I was wearing underwear.”

“CLEAN underwear!” Hoss added.

“See how far that gets you, Adam.” Joe chortled. Then he ripped off his shirt again and grinned.

“So Pa is visiting Shmeckie Longlost?” Hoss asked. He handed Joe another shirt. Joe put it on his sweaty, steaming body and buttoned fourteen buttons but left the top five buttons unbuttoned.

“Yep. That dopey girl married that skinny cowboy after Joe ran 17 kazillion miles across the rocky desert being chased by angry Indians and a herd of gals with binoculars and then he ripped off his shirt baring his chest to the swooning fans.”

“See if Pa is visiting THEM, he won’t be back on the Ponderosa for a good long while,” Joe grinned ripping off his shirt. The buttons bounced off the horse trough making tiny waves. Plink plink plink.

Joe wiped his handsome sweaty face on the torn tan sleeve. “And I got to get some money to replace that money we each lost getting bushwhacked during the last few months… the bunny suits… the paternity suits…and the new furniture at IKEA … and those mud flaps Adam got for Sport and the cappuccino machine Chub got for Cochise.”

“It was Coochie’s birthday, Little Joe!” Hoss defended his horse’s generosity. Both Hoss and Chub were big gift givers. Some thought Hoss had a secret trunk of leprechaun’s gold hidden somewhere on the Ponderosa but he denied it.

“I got a plan, brothers. Just watch and the moolah will roll in,” Joe bragged.

Adam shook his dented lumpy head and sipped his black coffee. He would stand back and watch Joe screw up and then say “Told ya so!!!” just before Pa gets home. Then let’s just see who is Pa’s best son. Cutie Pie baby boy? Chubsy Wubsy White Hat? NO! El Primo first born!!!  The black knight! His stupid brothers didn’t even realize that Pa made him the executor of the will. Little Joe was too busy flirting with the lawyer’s daughter and Hoss was figuring out what he would order for lunch at the Virginia City Hooters. Poor naive Hoss still thought Pa took them there for the chicken wings.

“I still don’t know…” Hoss eyed Adam’s bagel and hoped their NYC pal Lillian had sent some bialys for him and some scallion cream cheese too. Maybe some lox and white fish salad too. Hop Sing never made grub like that. Roast pork on a bagel just isn’t quite right.

Joe put on another one of his tan yoked shirts and then ripped it off to reveal his virile hunka hunka burning love chest.

“Joe, quit flashin’ yer bare flesh and get to work!” Hoss said.

“Yeah Joe!” Adam said ripping off his own shirt and flashing his manly bare chest.

“Ok.” Joe dipped his shirt in the horse trough and put the soaking wet, drippy shirt back on. Water sluiced down his perfectness, wetting him and making his clothes change hue to his favorite color of clothing, clear.

Not to be outdone by his kid brother, Hoss ripped off his clothes and draped the red calico café curtains from the kitchen around himself causing Adam and most of the audience to gag. He even put one of the brass curtain rings through his nose and imitated the infamous bull owned by Jigger Thurmond. He pawed the ground and snorted. “Snort Snort SNOOOORT!”.

“Cover yourself up, Hoss. You might catch a chill,” Adam grimaced. He yanked the brass ring out of his husky brother’s nose and tossed it into towards the horse trough. The ring hit the side of the trough with a clunk, bounced off and splashed into the water kerplop.

“OK!” Hoss said agreeably. “Give me a hand.”

Little Joe applauded. “YAY!”

“Not that kind of a hand. A hand getting un-neked,” Hoss pleaded.

“Allow me!” Adam offered generously.

“Thanks!” Hoss grinned.

“So, Little Joe. Tell us about your plan,” Adam said as he redressed Hoss in a fuzzy bunny suit. He hated to make a fool of Hoss, but it was very amusing and it had been a long winter and the only shows he was able to get on the not-yet-invented television were reruns of “The Waltons”, “Gumby” clay-mation review, and “Gunsmoke”. Even ogling Miss Kitty was getting tedious. If they only had cable TV on the Ponderosa, things could a bit less boring around the ranch. When Adam asked Ben about springing for the upgrade, Ben ranted and raved about available cash, unappreciative sons, and windmills (Adam would NEVER live that one down!) and not having cable when he was a boy.

“We didn’t even have RADIO!!!”  Ben said if the boys wanted cable, they could pay for it themselves.

Adam decided that perhaps he would piggy back on Joe’s moneymaking scheme and propose the brothers kick in for cable together. Hoss would love the Food Network… Joe would enjoy those rodeo shows on ESPN and Adam could watch all those doomed show biz celebrities on “E Network Lurid Tales of The Rich and Screwed Up” And all of them would enjoy “The Playboy Channel” and Hallmark.

Pa would never be the wiser.

“So, Joe, what do you know?” Adam asked shirtlessly. He adjusted the ears on Hoss’s bunny hat and pinched his cheeks affectionately. “Love ya, Brother!”

“It is real simple; rent out Buck and a few of the other horses….” Joe grinned as he mentally calculated the cash wind fall and ripped drippy wet shirt off. “Cartwright horse rental and livery…let us put you in the saddle…hourly rates!”

Suddenly a tall, tall, tall man walked around the side of the barn followed by a limping lanky dumb ass looking fellow.

“Howdy, heard you rent horses here abouts…I just walked over from Dodge City, Kansas…”

“Sure!” Joe exclaimed pulling out his lead clip board from the front pocket of his mighty tight tan pants. When it was not in use for record keeping, it served as a protective shield from radioactive fallout from those atom bomb tests over near Reno. Joe didn’t want to father any mutant, breech birth babies who glowed in the dark….if he ever got a gal who lived long enough for him to marry. “Just give me your name and ID. and we’ll have you and your scrungy pal ride out in a minute.  Cash or credit card or debit card? Oops! Credit cards haven’t been invented yet! Neither have debit cards…. So I guess it has to be cash.”

“Dillon, Marshal Matt Dillon,” the tall man said. “Give me that big buckskin over there and a side car for my skinny dopey deputy.”

*****End*****

Revised June 2016

 

Tags: Adam Cartwright, Hoss Cartwright, Joe / Little Joe Cartwright, tongue-in-cheek