Absently, Adam continued to thumb through the stack of mail. No news from the doctor back east. A bill of sale for a promising stallion from Sacramento. A requisition order from the mine. Adam was almost through, when he slipped on a patch of ice on the road, almost losing his footing. The last letter fell from his hand and fluttered to the ground. He was not a superstitious man, and yet, it looked like a miracle lying there on the dirty snow. He knew what it might be, before he reached for it. He lifted the envelope to his face, hoping that it might hold the memory of lilacs, but it smelled more like dust than flowers.

For the first time in a long time, Adam wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. The rest of the day could branch out in so many directions. Folks stopped and stared, as he ran down the main street of Virginia City toward the livery. He retrieved his horse in a hurry and lit out of town like the terrifying daredevil his kid brother had once been. He ignored the dark looks of those who thought he was riding too fast. The wind was cold and exhilarating against his face. He spurred his horse to go even faster. The stretch of miles ahead of him had never seemed longer.

Some said the waiting was the hardest part, but Adam knew better.

**********

Summer

Forgetting came easy for Adam Cartwright, while riding across the ranch at day’s end. Sunset on the Ponderosa was really something. Startling splashes of color were gilded across the clouds, towering cedars trellised the sky, and the stillness before dusk was enough to make a man forget he had any troubles at all. Holding his breath and just taking it in, Adam could afford to believe that everything was going to be fine. All was well on God’s good earth and on their own little piece of it. The Ponderosa seemed to be nagging him, “See, you should never have gone away in the first place.”

Like he needed to be told. 

He’d been home for over a year, and admittedly, some things had been getting better. Most of the time, he didn’t have time to think about the war. Just going about the business of the Ponderosa kept him occupied from sunup to sundown. There were days where he couldn’t see any end to it. He thought of ancient times when people believed the world was flat. Adam could understand why they felt that way and often felt the same. When he tried to look too far forward, his whole life stretched out in front of him like he could fall off the edge. Like those ancient sojourners, he wondered what would happen if he made it to the other side.

It wasn’t all bad. Some things were getting better. He and Joe had been having fewer midnight meetings over Pa’s good brandy. During those first months, they were sitting up almost every night. Neither made mention of the fact that the liquor bottles never ran dry, like the water turned to wine in the old story. Obviously, Pa understood more than he let on. Lately, their dreams were getting easier and the nights were taking better care of themselves. The worst nights only happened a couple times a week. 

Oddly enough, Adam found that he missed the quiet hours in the middle of the night, drinking and staring at shadows with his kid brother. Truth be told, without Joe’s company during those long nights, Adam wasn’t sure if he’d have been able to stay at the Ponderosa alone. It was hard to forget the atrocities he’d witnessed, but even harder to forgive himself for his share in them.

Other times, Adam felt like things were changing for the better. For one thing, he’d started reading again. For almost a year after he’d been back, Adam had been unable to read any of his favorite books. While he was able to read receipts and contracts just fine, when it came to reading for pleasure, his mind refused to cooperate. What a loss it had been for a man who would have spent his last nickel on books over sustenance! For the good part of a year, he’d spent his evenings staring at page after page of words that had no meaning for him. Perhaps, it shouldn’t have bothered him, but he felt it a great loss all the same.

And then one evening in late spring, he’d sat down by the fire and opened his gilt-edged edition of “Much Ado about Nothing.” The story of my life, he thought sardonically, but opened it anyway. To his surprise, he proceeded to read through the first page and then all the way through the first act. It was his own private miracle. The beauty of written language came back to him; he could actually hear the words in his mind, and he laughed out loud. 

Of course, his father and Hoss looked up from their game of checkers and frowned. When was the last time they had they heard Adam laugh like that? The look on their faces made him laugh even harder, until his eyes welled up with it. Both Ben and Hoss hurried over to him.

Only Joe had stayed away from Adam and his book, bemused by the way laughter used to be something they took for granted. Joe shook his head, looking a lot older than his twenty-three years, and pushed himself to his feet, making his way to the stairs. His limp was always worse at night. Maybe they didn’t notice it as much in the morning, but Adam suspected that Joe made things harder on himself than he needed to. He never slacked off until he was absolutely exhausted. It was nothing anyone encouraged, but Joe had expectations for himself that were entirely his own.

That night, Adam had closed his book and looked thoughtfully at the space his brother left behind. No question about where Joe was going. He was off to read his letters again, like he’d done hundreds of time over the past couple months. Each letter was already finger-worn, especially the first, even though it contained not more than ten lines. They had all read that first one, memorized it even, although Joe hadn’t been able to read it out loud. It had been the most painful ten lines that Adam had ever read, a stark message of loss and grief. Annalisa Monroe Cartwright. Joe’s Southern lady. Come back from hell, high waters, and other places too unspeakable to name. But she was coming back to him. Back to them all really, even though they had never met her. Trust Little Joe to lose the war and win the girl. But of course it wasn’t that simple. Nothing ever was.

Even as Adam reined his horse back to the ranch house, he allowed himself one last lingering look at the sunset and steeled himself for what awaited him at home. It had been two months since the letter had come on that cold spring day, and the details were still working themselves out. For such a short letter, that single piece of paper managed to change everything. 

The facts were simple enough. Ordinary enough to be a shame if only it had happened to another family. Like Joe said once, it was a sad, sad story, but one of thousands, each sadder than the one before it. Annalisa, once a belle from old Mississippi money, had survived the war. Her baby had not. Somehow, she had made it to St. Louis, hundreds of miles from her burnt-out family home with its abandoned orchards and the six graceful chimneys that reached to the sky. Annalisa wrote to the Cartwrights in hopes of finding out where Joe’s body had been buried. Apparently, not one of Joe’s many letters had reached her. She knew if he hadn’t found her, then he had to be dead.

It was the spaces between the words in the letter that proved the most devastating to Little Joe. After all, Annalisa had believed she was writing to strangers and wasn’t going to confide in them. She didn’t explain what happened after Joe had been captured by the Rebels and taken soon after by the Federals. She described nothing about her child’s fate, other than that the baby boy had died. In truth, Annalisa wrote the Cartwrights nothing about much that told them anything at all. But somehow Joe knew what she didn’t put on the paper. It broke him in a way the war hadn’t. Adam couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his brother fall apart like that, but on that day, Joe cried and cried.

Adam could remember the helplessness on Ben Cartwright’s face. There was nothing he could do to make it any better. That was the worst thing the war took from his father, his ability to comfort his boys, especially his youngest. Even while Ben stood back watching, it was even harder on Hoss. Their kind-hearted brother couldn’t take not being able to do anything, and he’d left, quietly shutting the door behind him. His own solace would have to come in his work, in riding fence and rounding up strays, finding a way to be needed somewhere else. For seventeen years, he and Little Joe had been inseparable. It had been hard to know where one left off and the other began. There was nothing Hoss wouldn’t have done for his little brother, and yet every day, they seemed to have less in common. 

That very day, Joe insisted on going back to Virginia City. It took both Adam and Ben to convince him to contact her by wire, instead of taking the next stage to St. Louis. They drove the buckboard to town; it was hard for Joe to sit a horse that late in the day. At the telegraph office, Adam watched as his brother was shaking so badly, he could hardly hold the pencil. Gently, Adam took it from his Joe’s hand. He was pretty damn sure what Joe would have him write, but he waited and listened anyway. 

The message was simple and painful. To Annalisa Monroe Cartwright. From Joseph Cartwright of the Ponderosa: I’m here. I’m alive. I’ve missed you. Will you come home to me? 

While in town that day, Ben went to the bank and made arrangements to send a significant amount of money to a young woman he’d never met. The problem, of course, was that they needed to contact her. Ultimately, it took a lot longer than any of them would have expected. St. Louis was a growing city, teeming with refugees from the South who were desperate to make a new life for themselves, or at least continue the hard work of staying alive. The Union’s strategy of depopulation and “requisition of property” in the occupied South had triggered a massive movement into cities along the Mississippi River corridor. Thousands of women and children had been banished from the South, separated from their homes and from the Confederate soldiers who had fought for them. Finding a single young lady with no address was no easy task.

It took a month before Ben’s money could buy them information and the young lady was found. Joe was inconsolable during that time and almost had to be physically restrained from booking passage to go look for her himself. Of course, that could have been the death of him, as Dr. Martin dryly pointed out. Joe had never recovered physically from the near-starvation he had suffered during the last years of the war. His body never seemed to find its way back to the healthy young man he had been when he left home at age seventeen. A simple cold that made the rest of them uncomfortable would settle in his lungs and threaten him with pneumonia. He was cold on a warm, summer day and yet prone to passing fevers. Even though he didn’t like to talk about it, they knew he suffered from headaches and would often have to sleep through them at odd times during the day.

“There’s a price to be paid,” the doctor had explained to them privately. “You don’t skirt that close to death for so long without tracking some of it with you.”

Maybe he wasn’t well, but Joe was just as determined to find her. Although he’d hardly ever said her name out loud, once he knew she was alive, it was clear that his own life meant nothing without her. At last, the news came. She had been found. Her letter to him came soon thereafter. This letter, Joe didn’t share with any of them. He slipped it in his pocket and walked upstairs to read it alone in his room. When he descended the stairs later that night, he was notably dry-eyed.

“It’s going to take money,” he told his father. “But she wants to be with me.”

“Whatever you need, boy,” Ben Cartwright said and wrapped his arm around his son’s shoulders. Within the week, they got word. Annalisa had booked passage on the Overland and would be soon making the difficult journey across the war-ravaged countryside.

What remained for them all was the waiting. Seeing how his brother suffered with it, Adam thought fit to reconsider. 

Perhaps, the waiting was the hardest part after all.

**********

He simply had to give it one more try. Although aching and bruised from his previous efforts, he just knew he had it in him. Joe tried to resurrect some of his old temper. He needed to get angry. If only he could get himself riled up enough, he’d just like to see his bad leg dare to give out on him. What he needed was a little Joseph Cartwright defiance to stir things up. 

It had taken some defiance to get the time to himself in the first place. Joe was supposed to be rounding up strays with Hoss but had lost his big brother earlier in the day. In all honesty, they hadn’t gotten separated accidentally. All week, he’d been trying to find time to practice getting into the saddle, and it was impossible to do it with his family watching. That morning, he’d been watching Hoss struggle to pull a young calf out of a bog. When his big brother’s back was turned, Joe saw his chance and took it. He felt a little ridiculous sneaking away like that and more than a little guilty leaving his mud-caked brother behind. As he spurred his horse ahead, Joe could hear Hoss hollering at him in the distance. In his own defense, Joe did call back to Hoss that he had something else to do. However, he said it quietly enough that only the pinto was likely to hear it.

But he did have something to do and not much time left. It took privacy because his family would never stand for it, if they knew what he was up to. Dr. Martin had told him time and time again that he was blessed to be able to walk, let alone sit in the saddle all day. Joe knew that to be true, and he really did wish that it was good enough, but he just couldn’t stop remembering the way he used to ride. As it was, he could barely get himself onto his horse using the stirrups, let alone vault into the saddle like he used to. It was a point of contention for him, a shard of his old pride. Annalisa had married a Confederate cowboy from Nevada, and he was determined to live up to his own beleaguered reputation. A cowboy who couldn’t get himself onto the saddle without landing on his backside half the time wasn’t worth a hill of beans as far as Joe was concerned. 

The afternoon was warm and sunny, not a cloud in the sky, but he’d worn his jacket anyway. He was glad he did, feeling the chill in the shade. Joe shook his head. Glaring at the wretched stirrups, he grimaced but set his jaw to the pain. 

“Nothing to it,” he said out loud. “The leg’s just gonna have to remember how it’s done.”

Mind over matter, he used the strength in his good leg to launch him up and almost over. He was closer that time, but couldn’t get his right leg high enough, and it caught on the saddle, sending him backwards to the ground and onto a bed of pine needles. Cochise reared up in protest and nearly came down on him, as he lay panting on the ground, the breath pretty much knocked out of him. 

What a ridiculous thing to survive countless battlefields and die getting stepped on by your own horse!

The thought struck him as funny and he’d have laughed if he wasn’t in so much pain. To his surprise, a familiar voice came out of nowhere and unexpectedly agreed.

“Well, if that’s not the most damn, fool thing I’ve ever – “

Slinging his head to the side, Joe saw Adam stride over to him and grab the pinto’s reins. Carefully, he took hold of the lead rope and tied it to a tree. 

Immediately, Adam was crouched over him, looking more angry than concerned.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded. “Are you trying to kill yourself or are you trying to get me to do it for you? Damn it, Joe, I could just shake you!”

Helping Joe sit up, Adam waited while his younger brother caught his breath. In truth, Joe did feel rather foolish sitting up with pine needles sticking out of his hair. It had seemed like a good idea at the time… 

Joe attempted to catch his breath so that he could try to explain. 

“Adam, I’ve got to do this. Can’t have one of my big brothers always having to help me into the saddle.”

“That’s fine,” Adam snapped. “So practice using the stirrups! You don’t need to go back to that blasted vaulting thing you used to do when you were a kid! Honestly, Joe! I have no idea how you ever made it back alive!”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Joe said honestly and started laughing a little. 

Adam stared at him incredulously for a minute before shaking his head.

“What are you doing here anyhow?” Joe asked, trying to get back on his feet. Adam offered him a hand which he gratefully accepted. “I thought you were supposed to be in town with Pa, negotiating the new timber contract.”

“Well, that was the plan for the afternoon until Hoss came riding home in a panic that you’d headed away from the bog like a crazy man,” Adam said, dryly. “He was covered with mud from head to toe, convinced that you’d finally gone and lost your mind. He hadn’t seen you ride reckless like that since you got back.”

“I’m sorry,” Joe said, somewhat sheepishly. “I reckon I was trying to make a getaway. I know I shouldn’t have left Hoss, and I should have told him where I was going. But I needed to practice.”

“Practice getting yourself killed or getting in the saddle? This is for her, I take it?” Adam asked.

Joe looked at him, only a little surprised. He didn’t need to answer.

“Don’t you ever get tired of everyone always wanting to know if you’re okay?” Joe asked instead. Anyone but Adam would have thought he was changing the subject. “Always wanting to know if you’re going to go crazy and strangle a bank robber or something?”

Adam smiled at the nonchalance of the reference. Like Joe, he often remembered the bank robbery that he and his little brother had interrupted so dramatically. It had shaken Pa and Hoss badly at the time. It wasn’t anything they ever talked about, and to hear Joe refer to it so casually was almost a relief. Adam himself had come so close to putting a bullet in the head one of the robbers, while Joe had only been moments away from squeezing the life out of the other. It had been a reminder that the savagery of war was always only a decision away. They’d won the war but the specter of violence would prove a more intractable enemy. 

“I don’t think they’re nearly as worried about me as they are about you, Little Brother,” he said.

“Don’t be so sure,” Joe retorted. “Every time you go all quiet, they worry. It’s not like you were all that lively before you decided to join the Yankees, but I reckon they don’t remember that.”

“I reckon,” Adam said and landed a mock punch on his brother’s chin. He almost wished it was a real one, but Joe was going to look enough of a mess when those bruises came in. “How long you been trying this, anyway?”

“Long enough,” Joe admitted ruefully. “I think I’ve just about got it.”

Giving him a dark look, Adam ambled over to his saddlebag, pulling out a couple apples. He offered one to Joe who gave him a funny smile for it, and they sank underneath the tree, eating quietly together.

Just when their apples were down to the core, Joe asked suddenly, “Do you still dream about it? The way you got shot?”

Adam felt surprising irritation at the question and glared before tamping it down. It wasn’t something they ever talked about, the bullet Adam took in the shoulder from a fellow officer, when he tried to prevent the destruction of a Southern town. Even to that day, the injustice of the devastation cut far more than the actual injury. After the night he had told his family about the incident, Adam had made it very clear that the whole thing was not something he wished to talk about again. After all, nothing would change what had happened. The town was now rubble and ash, a memory of what the South had once been. It was unlikely that its buildings would ever be rebuilt, just like the South would likely never return to its former glory. To Joe, it was a tragedy. For Adam and those who fought to abolish the peculiar institution of slavery, it was a necessary evil. 

Adam’s shoulder would always bother him in the rain, and his nightmares would always bear witness to what he had witnessed. It was the hard price of peace, a debt that they would continue to pay throughout their lifetimes. Sometimes, he believed that if he could only learn to forgive for the injustices he’d seen, he might finally be able to move on again. However, Adam’s anger faded as he looked down at his younger brother. Joe had been so quiet lately. It was almost worth seeing him fall from the saddle like that, just to see him smiling again. 

Not for the first time, Adam thought about the one thing they weren’t talking about: the sweet consolation of a baby boy, lost to the Cartwright family. It wasn’t the kind of sorrow that was easy to put into words. It was another of those blessings that had slipped away from them. 

Joe had always been an optimist, unrealistic perhaps when compared to Adam’s level-headed pragmatism. He was obviously grateful for what he had: his leg and life still intact, his family, and the Ponderosa. Nothing had seemed to shake him up more than the miraculous possibility that the Southern girl he’d fallen in love with was coming back to him. Yet, the death of his baby wasn’t something he would get over easily. Like any of this is easy, Adam thought to himself, shaking his head. But Joe was still waiting for an answer. Adam owed him that much. He thought of the scores of boys he’d watched die in the agony of blood-soaked fields. Joe had almost been one of those boys. In that respect, Adam owed him a lot more than an answer. 

“Sometimes, I dream about it,” he admitted. “A lot of times, actually. I don’t know. I suppose I wonder if there was anything else I could have done to have stopped it. Maybe, I could have found another officer, one that would have listened to me.”

Joe shook his head, not much of his old optimism in evidence. “Like you could have changed any of this? Adam, I haven’t told you what I saw. The towns all across the South. It was all the same everywhere. Your battery was one of thousands. They burned towns to the ground all the way through. My God, when I think about Vicksburg… That was the best fortified town, and I still can’t hardly think about it. I saw mothers looking for their children along the side of the road. I saw babies lying on the ground…”

Silence. Not much to say. Adam had seen the same things too. Who knew how Joe’s own baby had died? Adam wondered if Joe knew more from Annalisa’s subsequent letters than he was telling them. Adam prayed that it hadn’t been the worst kind of death: a baby lost to die all alone. How did ordinary people recover from such a thing? There was no answer for that. 

Thinking of Annalisa and the baby brought to mind the thing that had been worrying Pa and the talk that was waiting for Joe, even though he didn’t know it. Adam felt like he owed it to his little brother to give him fair warning. Ben Cartwright could be pretty formidable when he caught you off guard. Taking a deep breath, Adam decided to plow ahead with his question.

“Will you marry her, Joe, when she gets here? Pa’s worrying over it. He’s going to talk to you soon, maybe tonight.”

The sorrowful look on Joe’s face disappeared, replaced by a rush of anger that took him by surprise. Adam saw it as if for the first time. All the protective instincts were kicking in, the lethal potential in defending what was his. The kid brother in front of him was taken over by a hardened Reb who might have shot him in the gut had he been any other Yankee.

“I’d kill another man for saying it,” Joe said, each word like a well-placed bullet. “Annalisa is my wife. She has my name, and I won’t hear you or anyone else say any different!”

“Pa doesn’t see it that way,” Adam said gently. “I’m just letting you know.”

“We married each other in the middle of Hell. There was no preacher anywhere around, Adam! You were there, you know that! If you don’t think God understands, then you don’t understand much about God. Or about me.”

“All right then, tell me one thing. Did you marry her first?”

“Tell me what you mean.”

“Did you marry her before you found out she was having the baby?”

Adam stepped back from the look on his brother’s face. Even though Joe wasn’t reaching for his gun, he was certainly dangerous.

Very quietly, Joe asked, “Would it matter?”

Suddenly, Adam felt very, very sad. He hated the conversation and was sorry he had ever started it. “Joe, this isn’t about me. If you love her, that’s enough. But it is about Pa, and I don’t know that he’s going to be able to let it go.” 

“Then he can let me go.” Joe shrugged his brother’s hand off his shoulder. “There’s more to the world than the Ponderosa.”

“You don’t mean that, Joe,” Adam said quietly.

Joe looked very tired. “Big brother, I don’t have anything to prove to you or Pa or anyone else. I’m serious about this, Adam. I’m not standing on shifting sand. You can’t go and marry someone twice, and if Pa figures different, then I reckon I’m going to have to move on.”

Making his way back to his horse, Joe leveled a steady, hard look at his brother. Adam didn’t take it personally. He and Joe had nothing to work out with each other. Yankees and Rebels. North and South. They’d each witnessed the unspeakable. They would work through their uneasy peace as well.

Defiantly, Joe glared the saddle in front of him. Relying on nothing but his own obstinacy, he took hold of the reins and the saddle horn, and in a single motion, Joe swung into the saddle.

Adam let loose with a low whistle and leaned against his own saddle, shaking his head in admiration. Joe tipped his hat to the sun.

“Don’t underestimate me,” he warned and reined away.

Watching Joe take to the road at a hard gallop, Adam swung into his own saddle.

“I wouldn’t dare,” Adam promised in a voice that didn’t work quite right and spurred his horse to follow his brother home.

**********

Hoss loaded the last sack of grain onto the back of the wagon, the rough burlap scraping his knuckles as he heaved it over the side. It was a good thing he’d decided to come instead of Little Joe. The way Joe had been so tired lately, he wasn’t sure his little brother would have been up to it. 

Wiping sweat from his eyes, he looked over at the bank’s office. The windows were shuttered, so he couldn’t take an easy look in. Where was Adam anyhow? He should have been done with his business a good long time ago. The excuse for Adam’s coming to town was the timber contracts, but Hoss knew the real reason. Adam hadn’t even gone over to the mill. He’d heard the two of them, Adam and Pa, huddled over the details of how they were going to get Little Joe’s girl to Virginia City. Ben had an old business associate in St. Louis who had helped finance the search for Annalisa. The associate had booked passage for her journey and seen to it that she was safely on her way. Everyone from stage drivers to depot owners had been overly compensated to keep an eye on her comfort and wellbeing. Pa wanted to be sure that his associate received payment in full for the money that had been forwarded. Joe had been assured that she was well taken care of and perfectly safe. They didn’t tell him how they accomplished it. It was something they’d kept from Joe, all the strings they were pulling to get her back to him.

All day, Hoss had been upset with Adam for what happened the day before. He was being unreasonable and knew it. As he secured the rigging, Hoss tried to remind himself that Adam had done him a favor. There wasn’t any reason to feel put out. After all, his older brother had gone and found Little Joe after he rode off from the North Pasture. It wasn’t the fact that Joe left that bothered Hoss. It was that he’d been unable to find him. There was a time when Hoss would have known exactly where to go looking for his little brother. On the other hand, there was a time when Joe was willing to be found. Everything had changed when his brothers left, and even more had changed since they came back. It was something Hoss had to remind himself, each and every day. Nobody else seemed to keep forgetting, except for him. Hoss didn’t know what had happened between his brothers earlier that day, but Little Joe had come home and stormed up the stairs in a regular temper, before closing the door to his room hard enough that Pa would have called it a “slam.” 

“Don’t ask,” Adam had said, closing the front door more gently behind him. “But I don’t suggest you have your talk with him today, Pa.”

Hoss had looked from his pa to his brother and back again, having no idea what they were talking about. They seemed to be understanding each other. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he always on the outside of everyone else’s conversation. Hoss wasn’t being fair – he knew that full well – but none of it had anything to do with fair. The war, his brothers’ wounds, the ongoing pain that kept coming at them in different ways. If there was any fairness left in the world, then they were due some of it. 

For weeks, it was the thought of the lost baby that kept coming back to him. Hoss didn’t know how Joe could stand it. Without understanding why, Hoss had taken to grieving that baby in a way he really couldn’t mourn his brothers. After all, they were still right in front of him even if they’d changed so much, he sometimes didn’t know who they were. But the baby was gone forever, and that was a sorrow so bitter he could taste it. It was like a baby boy could have made a difference to all of them. Life would have gone on and on and had joy again. The scenes he painted for himself – teaching Joe’s boy to fish and ride – were not going to come to pass. 

Without realizing it, he’d shifted his hopes onto “Joe’s little Southern gal.” That’s how Hoss liked to think of her, and he tried to believe that when she finally came to the Ponderosa, then things really would be better. Joe was always at his happiest when he was in love, and when Joe was happy, everyone else was too. His pa would smoke his pipe in the evening, and Adam would read out loud from his books even if no one was paying attention, just the way he used to. 

“Hoss?” Horseshoe Sam’s voice broke into his thoughts, and Hoss looked down at the portly blacksmith who stood in front of him. Next to him was a wiry fellow who Hoss had never seen before. He was a hard sort to read. Instinctively, Hoss fingered the handle of his gun. 

“Ya need something, Sam?” he asked, warily.

“This fellow’s looking for Adam,” the blacksmith said, with a nod of his many chins. “I told him you was brothers and that you’d know where to find him.”

Hoss looked more carefully at the man, but the stranger seemed more weary than dangerous.

“Can I help you with something?” Hoss asked.

“Captain Cartwright,” the man said, sizing up Hoss. “I’m looking for Captain Cartwright.”

Hoss knew it then without being told any more. He could see it in the man’s eyes that he’d also been there. The war had tracked them down to Virginia City, and Hoss wanted to usher it out of town by the scruff of its neck. 

“What do you want him for?” Hoss growled.

“I have something to say,” the man replied uncomfortably. He was wearing western clothes, but they looked new and ill fitting. “Something I need to tell your brother before I move on.”

“Say it, and move on.”

Adam’s quiet voice was a surprise. He’d become even more quiet during his years traveling with the Federals. They turned around to find Adam staring hard at the man, his eyes as dark and dangerous as Hoss had ever seen them. His gun was already drawn. Horseshoe Sam, a prudent man if ever there was one, knew enough to head back to the forge – it was a lot cooler there. Hoss felt the back of his throat tighten, as if things were about to go changing again. 

“Good day, Captain.”

The man in front of Hoss immediately stood at attention and saluted his older brother. Miraculously, the edgy look dissipated and the appearance of power took its place. Adam did not salute in return.

“I asked you what you were doing here, Major.”

Hoss looked back and forth from his brother to the uneasy officer, not knowing which he needed to keep an eye on. He had the sudden suspicion that the major might have more to fear from Adam than the other way around. 

“Captain, isn’t there somewhere else we could go to talk?”

“You mean the street’s not good enough to talk about how you authorized the destruction of a town? How you threw children on the street and let your soldiers beat up old men? What about how you shot me to keep me from getting in your way? What could there honestly be to talk about that you would need privacy for?”

Hoss had heard enough. Like the rest of his family, he would never forget the terrible details of how Adam was shot by his own commanding officer while trying to stop the destruction of a Southern town by Union soldiers. The way Adam had told it, Hoss could almost hear the terrified screams of women and children as they watched their husbands and fathers die in the streets. He could hear the glass breaking and the sounds of drunken soldiers swearing as they destroyed everything they couldn’t loot. He could smell the burning of the wood-frame buildings as an entire way of life went up in flames. Adam’s telling had been that powerful. Hoss almost felt like he was there. It was no wonder Adam didn’t talk about wartime unless pushed into it.

Hoss pulled his own gun out of its holster and leveled it at the man who had been responsible for so much death and destruction, wildly hoping that Sheriff Coffee would come out and arrest all three of them. 

“Mister, I don’t care if you are no major.” Hoss heard his own voice sound a whole lot more confident than he felt. “You better turn around and get yourself out of town. Your kind ain’t wanted here.”

The man obviously wasn’t concerned about Hoss and his gun but kept his gaze fixed on Adam.

“Please, Captain,” he said, as if the entire chain of command had reversed itself in a day. Adam’s disposition had that effect on people. “A moment of your time, then I’ll be on my way.”

“A moment,” Adam allowed, “but right here, and my brother stays to hear you out.”

“Agreed,” the major said and looked down the street to the dust being stirred up by the incoming stage. “I’m here to apologize, Captain. To ask for your forgiveness for what I had to do.”

“What you had to do!” Adam spat. “Don’t tell me. You’re going to tell me that you were only following your orders.”

“I was,” the man said calmly. “Just as you were disobeying yours. But I’m the one apologizing, not you.”

“Save it,” Adam snapped and put his own gun back in its holster. “Your apologies are worthless to me.”

“We won the war,” the major said quietly. “We all did what we needed to. We kept the Government in place and the Union intact. Tell me this, Captain. How many more soldiers on both sides would have died if we hadn’t driven the Confederacy hard to surrender? The South would never have submitted. There was every indication of that from the beginning. How long would they have fought back if we hadn’t broke them when we did? Years, Captain, it could have been years longer. I heard your own brother was in a Union prison. Do you think he would have survived another winter like ’65?” 

“Why are you here?” Adam asked quietly.

Immediately, the major replied, “Because I am sorry. I had no choice, but I’m sorry for it.”

Still standing at attention, Adam said, “We won the war. We kept the Union together. But, it was at one hell of a cost, Major.”

The faced each other off in their silent showdown. Hoss quietly slipped his gun back into its holster, realizing this was a different kind of fight. After a while, the major straightened up, suddenly looking like a much larger man. 

He said, “I’m on my way to California. I did well for myself in my investments. I’m going to buy a ranch outside Stockton. My brother moved there last year. I’m going to see what I can do about starting over again.”

Adam looked at him sharply. “And you needed my blessing for this?”

“Not your blessing, Cartwright.” The man sighed. “I just wanted to tell you why I did it. There are some things that don’t set well. The night… that night was one of them.”

“There are things you’ll have to live with,” Adam said, coolly. “The people of that town will have to live without justice. You’ll have to live without forgiveness. Mine at least. I’m sure you’ll be able to forgive yourself. Men like you tend to forgive and forget easily.”

The major looked stricken and took a step back, as if the words hit him physically. “Don’t be so sure about that, Captain. Tell me you never held your bayonet over a rebel’s body and thought about the fact that the boy you were killing had a mama waiting for him back home.”

“If you’re so sure of all that,” Adam hissed between his teeth, “then, why come to me for absolution? What do I have that I could possibly give a man like you?”

The major said tiredly, “The war’s over, Captain. We made the best of a grim business and fought off the threat of disunion. Anything else would have been intolerable. All the same, I’m sorry I had to shoot you.”

“You had to shoot me?” Adam asked, still incredulous. He could almost feel the old wound on his shoulder begin aching in response. “You’re saying you had no choice.”

“That’s right.” The man removed his hat and squinted off into the distance. “I had to. I’d have done it again, if you gave me the same choice. But I’m sorry for it, all the same.”

“Do you have a conscience?” Adam couldn’t hold the question back.

“Let me remind you that you were a topographical engineer. Captain.” The man said Adam’s rank like it was a curse. “You made maps, Cartwright. You charted the landscape of the war; you didn’t chart the course of it.”

“Not true.” Adam’s anger was rising despite himself. “I saw the fields of blood. Major. And I stood in the middle of them, and plotted out the rivers that led to your God-forsaken towns so you could destroy them more efficiently. I led you there, and I’ll have to live with that every day of my life!”

“That was the duty of your service, Captain,” the officer clarified. “And you did it well.”

“Why are you still here? What is it you need from me?”

“I’ve got some thinking to do before I move on. Understanding.” The man shrugged. “Yours. Mine.”

“Then you’ll be waiting and thinking for a long time.” Adam lifted his hand to his forehead, and Hoss wondered how a salute could come off so sarcastically. “Good day, Major.”

Hoss could see townspeople going about their business a little more leisurely than usual, trying to get an earful of what Adam Cartwright had to say to the mysterious Northerner. Hoss scowled at them all, and reluctantly they moved on. Protectively, he stood in front his brother, blocking him from the major’s sight.

“Mister, I don’t think Virginia City’s the place for you to be doing your thinking,” Hoss said. “My brother doesn’t owe you one dang thing. If you need someone to forgive you, then you best talk to your Maker instead.”

The major rubbed his eyes, and Hoss got a better look at him. To his surprise, he realized the officer probably wasn’t much older than he was. The lines around his eyes had been hard won. He might have been important during the war, but standing there in front of them, he was just another man.

However, he talked like an old man. “Son, if I learned anything, it’s that there are two sides to anything. If your brother doesn’t forgive himself – let alone me – he’ll always be fighting. That’s what I wanted him to know.”

And then the Union officer was gone, heading toward the International House, where apparently he was staying. The two Cartwrights watched him go. Hoss’ heart began filling up with more questions than answers. He wanted to ask at least one of them, but Adam stayed him off by reaching for Hoss’ arm. 

“Don’t,” Adam said. “There are things that aren’t worth knowing. If I tell you more, then they’ll be your burdens as well as mine.”

Hoss watched as his brother finished tying down the load. He wanted to tell Adam that he would be willing to share those burdens but realized he didn’t know what he was saying. The officer was still watching them from the grand doors of the hotel, but Adam didn’t look back to see it. But Hoss saw the bitterness on his brother’s face, and prayed that it wouldn’t prove more noxious than any bullet. Even more than forgiving the Union officer, Adam needed to forgive himself.

With a sigh, Hoss turned and together, they finished loading the wagon for the long ride home.

**********

Ben stared long and hard into the fire. Despite its warmth, the evening felt brittle and cool. He wasn’t sure why. It was the kind of day you could build a life on, and yet everything felt wrong. Reflecting on his family made it seem distorted like he was looking at it through a mirror. Adam and Hoss had been distant with each other since they’d come back from town. Something had happened in Virginia City, but neither were doing any talking about it. 

It was all very civil, but had little to do with what the Cartwright family was all about. The most warmth Ben had felt all day came from the embers crackling in front of him. Ben stared upstairs where shadows were already gathering on the landing. Joe had gone to his room immediately after supper. For Ben’s long lost “Little Joe,” this would have been unheard of, but for the polite stranger returned to them from the war, it was fairly common. Most of the time when Joe disappeared in the evening, Ben would find him later stretched out on his bed, asleep to all of them. He was always tired, although he tried to hide it. Knowing his father worried, Adam reminded him that Joe worked hard all day and earned the right to be tired. With Adam, you had to listen to the space between the words.

“This is no way to live,” Ben muttered to himself and frowned when he realized he’d said it out loud. Startled, Adam looked up from his figures and Hoss came over from the settee’. 

“Y’all right, Pa?” he asked.

“Fine, son,” Ben said, warmly. “Just fine.”

Smiling wistfully at Hoss, Ben remembered how they’d been partners while the other two were gone. He’d come to depend on his middle son’s stability and sanity during those long, hard years of waiting and wondering what hell the other two were living through. He’d never make it up to Hoss, and yet he knew that his son wasn’t waiting for any reward. Recompense for Hoss was a good meal and having his family safe and somewhat sound. As it turned out, Hoss should have been satisfied. And yet as Ben watched his middle son, he knew it. Things were far from settled. Any peace they shared was a troubled one, although they were all alive together. How many divided families in their country could say the same? It could have been so very much worse.

“Are you going to talk to him?”

Ben looked sharply at Adam. His oldest had put away his ledgers and was regarding him in that sidelong way of his. Ben hadn’t even noticed. It must have served him well, Adam’s quiet approach, when he’d been a cartographer for the Union Corp of Engineers. Ben had always wondered how his son was able to march across bleeding battlefields with his maps in hand. How he was able to focus on landmarks, when all around him was more violence and agony than Ben would know in a lifetime. 

Even photographs from the War still haunted his dreams. The images had come to them from the monthly periodicals. The photographs were gruesome and shocking, almost too much to bear. After a while, Hoss had been unable to look at the ghostly images of young soldiers still caught up in the last throes of death, their still, open eyes seeming to ask, “Is this all there is?” Sometime around the halfway mark of the war, Hoss had come upon his father staring at such dreadful pictures and had leaned over and gently closed the page.

“Pa,” he said, “those ain’t my brothers.”

It had been a weak moment. Ben had protested in a husky voice, “Hoss, we don’t know if anything’s happened to them. These soldiers – these boys – could well be your brothers.”

“Nope.” Hoss said it like he meant it. “Even if Adam and Little Joe don’t come back to us, they ain’t never gonna be just a dead body in a picture. We love them, and that’ll keep them alive, one way or ‘nother.”

Ben shook his head just thinking of it. Hoss and his wisdom. How lost Ben would have been during the long years of the war without it! And yet, he hadn’t even told Hoss what he’d been worrying over, ever since they’d received the first letter from Annalisa. When Joe told them about the girl and about the time they’d spent together in Mississippi, Ben had grimly assumed with the rest of them that it was unlikely she had survived. After all, Joe had come back to them half-dead. He’d done everything possible to find her. Everyone knew how stubborn his youngest son could be and how intractable. Ben figured, along with Adam, that Annalisa Monroe was either dead or else entirely unwilling to be found. Ben mourned his lost grandchild much like he mourned the lost years with his sons. It would be a sorrow he would carry with him for the rest of his days.

And yet, Joe’s words kept coming back to him again and again, troubling in their moral ambiguity: “There was no preacher for a hundred miles, so we married each other.”

Like banging chips of flint, Joe’s words had immediately sparked a reaction in his father, one that he’d had a hard time suppressing. Ben fought off the urge to ask questions. The girl was gone. His son was a grown man, a good soldier, who had suffered enough for several lifetimes. There was no point in backtracking over decisions made in wartime. What was done was done. Ben believed he was letting the dead have their rest by not questioning his boy any further. 

However, when Adam brought Miss Monroe’s letter back from town a couple months earlier, all those questions were right there in front of them. Suddenly, Ben’s moral quandary was unavoidable. Should he demand that his son marry this girl or could he simply let it go?

Ben didn’t want to lose his son. He’d already come too close losing both his sons. Ben trusted his son’s discernment, even if he hadn’t made all the right choices. Ben knew what needed to be done. He would welcome the girl, and then, he would escort the two of them to the nearest tight-lipped preacher in the territory. 

Ben settled heavily in his chair and sifted through the talk he’d prepared for the evening. Adam had already warned him that his proposal might not go well. And he knew his son’s temper. Closing his eyes, Ben thought of the place he’d decided would be perfect for them to settle. It was a jewel of a spot, just the right place for a young couple to start over, to raise a family. He’d often pictured the scene in his mind. 

In the imaginings of a father, Joe was whole and healthy again, no longer limping. He had a beautiful wife at his side, children all around. Adam was restored to them as well. His oldest son’s eyes were no longer shadowed and troubled. He would be able to set the war firmly behind him. And Hoss… his loyal son would finally be rewarded for his steadfastness. The Cartwright family would be intact and healed. Restored and ready to move on. 

“Are you planning to talk to him tonight?” Adam asked again.

Ben sat back in his chair. He could feel the beginnings of a headache coming on and pressed his fingers to his temple. 

“Yes, God help me, I’m going to talk to him.”

“Good luck with that,” Adam replied, a little too mildly, but when Ben looked up to glare at him, his oldest son’s countenance was already hidden, dark and defended by the shadows.

**********

He was always hungry.

The prison itself was a cinder-block tomb full of cold, emaciated men. They were all so hungry they’d have fought over a rat if there were any still living. Dinner was notable for such battles. A bit of beef boiled on a tin pan was a feast and too wonderful to starving men to imagine. Joe could hardly remember that abundance existed in the world, let alone that he had ever been part of it. Now all he knew was deprivation, and in truth, there was no end in sight. Abundance was another life away.

He’d lived comfortably on the Ponderosa with his father and brothers and never gone without. He’d known the privilege of turning down what was placed in front of him. Now Joe knew the truth that hunger was never satisfied. Once in prison, he’d taken to dreaming of the bounty in his knapsack when he was with his division. Although it made for poor sustenance, a soldier’s portion of hardtack would have been a king’s feast in the last days of the war.

The earth was frozen outside. Joe didn’t even know where the prison was but only that it took a long time to get there. The cold winter was very hard on boys born and bred in the South, but Joe was used to it. Sadly, it reminded him of home, but the snow outside was dirty and spoiled. It wouldn’t pillow when you fell into it, like the snow in the mountains. It was another Christmas away in a strange land. Joe missed his family so much it became a different kind of hunger. There were things he’d meant to say to them, apologies and amends to be made. His clothes were rags, filthy and torn. He was wasting away from his life, freezing and feverish in short order.

The firing and pounding of artillery was a constant commotion in the distance. It broke up some of the monotony of the day. Joe had stopped caring about which side was winning or losing. They were all lost, as far as he was concerned. His drive to stay alive had narrowed to a single purpose, a solitary desperation. He was going to love Annalisa and see her again, in this world or the next. If he was going to die, it would be with her name on his lips. It killed him to be without her, but ironically, she kept him alive. Annalisa had given him a reason to keep fighting.

Time dragged its heels so dutifully, it was almost unbearable. The pain of hunger competed with the agony of boredom. Men sang about Dixie, played games with sticks and pebbles, wrote letters in the dirty snow, and died. Joe was too sick and weak to find work in the prison, so he spent much of his time curled up on the dirt floor of the barracks and reliving his minutes of being with her. He was dying. It was a plodding march to a painful death, but it was only a matter of time before he got there. The fight was going out of him, every day that the conflict wore on.

The Federals started telling them that the war was almost over. Their captors were just as sick of the whole thing as they were. They were also men separated from their families. Few of them could remember why it had ever seemed so important. The days turned into months. It was almost over. The starving Rebel prisoners repeated the old adage to each other, “The longest way round is the nearest way home.” But Joe didn’t think he would live long enough to see his home again. So he tried to think of ways into tricking his body into staying alive. He drank water drawn from the rank cistern and pretended it was fresh milk and fine wine. Every crust of bread became a remembered feast, courtesy of Hop Sing. Constantly, Joe dreamed of the Ponderosa, of his father and brothers. Taking Annalisa and his child home to meet them.

He persuaded himself that by the time the snow melted, the war would be over. He would be alive, the flowers would be in bloom, and he would find her again…

Joe lifted his head guiltily from the bed. He’d told himself he was only taking a minute to rest. But there he was, the light was failing, and his pa was calling from downstairs. It must be time for supper. He was confused and didn’t understand why it was so dark already.

Paradoxically, he hadn’t gotten used to eating regular meals since he’d returned home. In fact, he had to remind himself when he was expected to be hungry. Part of him suspected he could starve to death without such reminders. Living took more effort than he would have thought. 

Joe staggered to the basin by the bureau and splashed water over his face. He dared to look at his reflection. And he smiled just a little. Still on the thin side, he didn’t look as bad as he used to. He’d shaken off the hollow look that had settled around his eyes and looked a little like he used to, but not nearly so self-assured. The girls still flirted with him in town. Vanity restored, Joe wondered if Annalisa would smile at him like she used to. There were only days left until she was coming home.

Stiffly, Joe hobbled down the stairs and realized they were all waiting for him. Adam too, which was unusual. He’d expected them to be sitting around the table, but to his surprise, he realized it was already too late for dinner. Once again, he had slept when he wasn’t supposed to. It was hard to keep track of things: when to sleep, eat, or drink. When to laugh, look worried or when he should simply pretend and play along. It was almost like he was learning to be a human being again.

Adam and Hoss were sitting across the room, not looking at each other. Something had happened the other day in town, although neither were talking about it. That was perfectly fine with Joe. He’d learned enough about life to know that some secrets weren’t worth knowing. How far he had come from the curious young man who always had to have his nose in everything. 

Joe apologized, “I’m sorry I missed supper. Must have fallen asleep again.”

Even he couldn’t have missed the confused looks that his pa traded with his brothers.

Gently, Ben said, “Joseph, we ate dinner well over an hour ago. Did you forget, son?”

Somehow, Joe did remember it: pot roast and potatoes, warm rolls and green beans. Abundance. He tried to convince himself he wasn’t hungry any more.

“I guess so,” he admitted and sat on the settee’ next to Adam. “Fell asleep upstairs. I don’t know why I’m so tired.”

His pa cleared his throat and came over to stand in front of him. Joe glanced at Adam, but his brother was markedly looking the other way. Ben cleared his throat, a clear sign of an impending speech. At that moment, Joe was pretty sure that he didn’t really want to hear it. He’d be headed for the door if he didn’t already owe his pa for a lifetime’s debt of running. 

“Son, we need to talk,” Ben began. “Miss Monroe is going to be here in just over a week – “

“Mrs. Cartwright.” Joe knew he was interrupting but wouldn’t stop himself. “Her name is Annalisa Cartwright, Pa. Has been for almost a year.”

“Joseph, you know that’s not the truth.” Ben’s voice was so sad and gentle that Joe almost lost his nerve. “You told us yourself that you and the young lady were not married in the church. Joseph, I’m not going to pass judgment, nor am I suggesting that anyone else know about it. This concerns our family, and we can take care of it properly and privately.”

“She is my wife.” Joe said every word so distinctly that there was no mistaking his meaning. “We were married in the sight of God and each other.”

Purposefully, Joe rose and faced off his father. The room was dead quiet. As much as possible, Joe had tried to submit to his father’s authority since he’d returned. He owed his pa that much and a lot more for all he’d put them through. Yet, on this point, he was not willing to submit or surrender. There was no way this situation could be negotiated. When Joe had his back up, he could be every bit as stubborn as Ben Cartwright.

“Joseph,” Ben sighed. He was losing much of his considerable patience. He could see the defiance rising in his son, the southern rebel getting his back up. “This will make no difference for your future together. We can take care of it right away, the day after she arrives, if need be. You have your whole lives ahead of you. The terrible things you’ve both lived through… don’t you see, son? This is nothing compared to that. Nothing at all!”

Joe turned away, willing his unreliable leg to hold him. Sometimes, it got numb at the end of the day. He had pushed himself hard all week and was about to push his father even harder.

“No, sir, I don’t see,” he said. “I don’t see how this is a trivial thing that doesn’t really matter. I’m telling you this, and I mean it, Pa. Annalisa is my wife, just as sure as if we were married by a preacher. Don’t you understand that we were surrounded by troops from both sides for miles around? There were no preachers. Every one of them had been killed or enlisted. Every church that wasn’t deserted was filled with dying soldiers. It was just us. We made the best of it, and nobody’s going to take that away from us.”

“Aw, Little Joe.” Hoss was clearly troubled and hated to see his little brother so upset. “Ain’t nobody gonna take your little gal away from you. Pa wired the Overland office yesterday, and she’s where she’s supposed to be, right on time. Can’t you see Pa just wants you two to get off to a good start?”

“No,” Joe said, besieged by both of them. “There’s no new start to this. We don’t get to live it over again. We’re stuck with what we’ve been through. There’s no going back on it.”

Ben reached out and tried to draw him in, but Joe ducked out from under his father’s arm. Hurt, Ben retreated and crossed his arms across his chest.

“Joseph,” he said, opting for a sterner tone. “This isn’t about your feelings. Marriage is a sacred institute, put into place by God and -“

“What about the baby?” Adam asked, suddenly, interrupting his father.

They all froze, suspended in the question that Adam had dared to ask. 

Adam continued, as if thinking out loud. “It’s the baby you’re thinking about, isn’t it? You don’t want him to be illegitimate.”

Joe turned and met his brother’s eyes, relief and despair twinned in his own. “He was real, Adam. I felt him. He was ours.”

“I know,” Adam said, and somehow he did know.

“If Annalisa and I weren’t married, then where does that leave him? She gave birth to him all alone. And he died. But I loved her, and I married her. Don’t you see, Pa? I gave them my name – I didn’t have anything else to give them.”

Dry-eyed and oddly empty inside, Joe took to the stairs not wanting to see the hungry look on their faces. They were all famished for what he couldn’t give them. The good-natured boy he’d once been was gone for good. In his place was a damaged man with a heart full of painful memories. He didn’t have any easy answers or any untroubled peace to offer.

**********

Adam lowered himself wearily onto the chair next to his bed. It had been a long week and an awkward one. His father had been troubled all week, the agony of his predicament apparent to all of them. His mind already made up, Joe had taken to avoiding everyone lest any of them say something that he didn’t want to hear. Avoidance was certainly a battle strategy that had its merits. Sometimes, the best defense was not getting into it in the first place. 

They were to meet Annalisa on the next morning’s stage. Pa had confirmed the arrangements, careful not to bring up the subject of Joe’s marriage again, although his own mind was unchanged. Adam smiled ruefully and shook his head. His father and youngest brother were alike in more ways than they were different. Both had the ability to take a situation and see it the way they wanted to out of sheer force of will. “Ornery” was a word he’d often attached to his brother, but he’d never say it about his father out loud. They were so far apart on this issue. Adam wondered if they’d ever be able to see it from the same side.

Their father had always followed a clear moral code. Whether or not Joe and Annalisa were legally married was more than a trivial detail as far as Ben Cartwright was concerned. Adam, on the other hand, found it admirable that his little brother had managed to wrest love out of devastation. Joe had left the Ponderosa as his kid brother and had returned a fellow veteran, no matter which side he had fought for. By any reckoning, he’d earned the right to make his own decisions. If he wanted to give his dead baby boy the Cartwright name, Adam would sooner take a bullet than deny him.

Life was more complicated than he’d once believed. The Federals won the war, the Union was preserved at the cost of countless compromises and atrocities. Adam would never believe that all the tactics employed by the Union forces were just, but he’d be the first to admit that he didn’t have all the answers. Quite a change from the wise young man he’d once thought himself. Even though he hated to admit it, the major’s words had gotten to him. In some respects, the officer was right. If the will of the Confederacy hadn’t been broken, they might still be fighting.

It was time to call it a day. Easing his boot off, Adam had to grimace. He’d had problems with his feet since returning, one of the less glamorous aspects of his military service. He could still see the scars where his heels had become abraded during an especially grueling campaign through knee-deep mud. Blistering badly, the skin had come right off where the dried blood stuck to his sock and boot. He could point similar reminders of the war all over his body, from the diamond shaped scar on his shoulder to the tip of his index finger that had gone frostbite-gray during the winter of ‘64. All across the country were men who could point out similar landmarks on their own bodies. Heroes and cowards alike, they were all branded with the scars of their experience. 

Old memories had been coming back lately, usually at night. For a long time, he’d kept them away, but after talking to the major in town, he’d been a lot more susceptible to remembering. It was like an illness he couldn’t beat, the way the old memories seemed to infect him.

With his boots still in hand, Adam suddenly thought back to the death of his favorite commanding officer, a well respected man, adored by all his troops. Adam had been traveling with the battery through rebel territory, and sharpshooters had killed most of the unit’s gunners. 

Trying to instill courage in his men, the officer stood in front of them and declared, “The danger’s over, boys. I believe we’re safe here.”

At that very moment, a bullet struck him through the side of his neck, and he fell backward into Adam’s arms. He was dead before Adam could ease him to the ground. It was brutal, random, and final – the almost casual way that any man’s life could come to an end. It was something he’d gotten used to during the long years of the war, but the shock of life ending in his arms had power over him still.

Adam went to the window and tried to look out at the stars. Even with the poor light, it was difficult to see out in the darkness past his own reflection. Adam closed his eyes. The war would always be with him, but it was time to let some of it go. He had to put it past him. The answer came to him suddenly. It was almost easier to forgive the despicable officer in that Virginia City hotel than to forgive himself. He’d always been harder on himself than anyone else. First things first, he thought to himself.

During the years of war, Adam had seen more senseless death than he’d ever imagined possible. He’d been able to stop very little of it. At least, that one day, he’d tried. It was time to forgive himself for not succeeding. He could never forget what happened, but he could let go of it. At least it was a start.

After slipping his nightshirt over his shoulders, Adam reached to snuff out the light. A slant of moonlight cut through the sudden darkness. Through the wall next to his bed, he could hear his father pacing the width of his bedroom. This would not be a night for untroubled sleeping. 

Closing his eyes, he tried not to worry or remember. Tomorrow would be the end of Joe’s waiting and the beginning of God knows what. Adam wasn’t going to make any predictions. He’d long since given up predicting how any given day would end.

**********

The road to Virginia City ran along a meandering stream that flowed down from the foothills. Seated next to Joe on the buckboard’s stiff, jouncing seat, Ben cringed at the debris and waste that had ruined the water in recent years. Avarice was always ugly, and this was no exception. The mines had profited greatly from the War Between the States. Their gain had been the landscape’s great loss, with the refuse from the hydraulic mines washing down from the foothills. Ben didn’t know if the delicate balance of nature would be restored in the years to come. It made him shake his head at the shame of it. However, even as he was thinking about it, Joe suddenly grinned and pointed at the water.

“Take a look at that, Pa,” he said.

Pleased that his son was actually talking to him again, Ben almost missed it. But then he saw it too. A mother duck was swimming among the whirls and eddies, navigating the muck with her babies. On the shore, a male duck trailed them dutifully. Despite himself, Ben chose to take it as a hopeful sign, the little family making the best of the circumstances. 

“Nature finds a way,” Ben said wistfully over the rattle of the wagon wheels, but Joe didn’t ask what he meant.

They were riding alone, oddly enough one of the few times they’d been alone together since Joe had returned. His son was a different person than the impressionable young man who’d gone off to fight for the Confederacy. Ben couldn’t really imagine how that sensitive seventeen year old had managed to survive. Patting his son’s leg, he could feel the taut muscles under his hand. While little emotion showed on Joe’s face, he was keeping his fists clenched tight enough to bruise the skin of his palms. Joe had been dressed and ready to meet the stage before dawn, despite the fact it wasn’t due until late afternoon.

“Small detail,” Adam had quipped, coming down the stairs bleary-eyed to listen to the “crack of dawn” argument between his father and brother.

Joe finally agreed to wait until mid-day, and more importantly, to ride in the buckboard rather than saddle up with his brothers. It took some doing, but Ben finally got through to him that he would want to ride home with Annalisa in the wagon. In truth, Ben was afraid that his boy’s leg wouldn’t be strong enough for the long ride home but wisely kept that fear to himself. However, there was something else that made Ben want to keep his son by his side. Joe hadn’t talked much since Ben had talked to him about his “marriage”. He had been polite ever since, more like a visiting guest than a son. Joe’s disconcerting manners warned Ben of the possibility that his son could gather up his lost love, board the stage, and leave the Ponderosa behind, this time for good. 

His other sons had allied themselves with their brother. They didn’t press their point and didn’t ask him to reconsider his position on the sanctity of a legal marriage, but Ben knew where they stood. He’d come out to the barn the next morning and found them all together. Silently, Adam and Hoss were in the far stall helping Joe curry the lovely saddle pony they’d chosen for his lady. Feeling curious and ridiculous at the same time, Ben had ducked into the next stall, peering around to watch when he didn’t think they were looking. With a father’s pride, he swallowed hard when Hoss reached over and swung a saddle onto the mare’s back. It was a ladies’ saddle, obviously new, but it had been painstakingly broken in. The leather was soft and supple. Cared for. 

Gruffly, Hoss explained, “Adam ordered it from San Francisco when we got her first letter, and I’ve been workin’ the leather. Ain’t finished yet, but by the time your little gal’s ready to go for a ride, it should be ready for her.”

Adam cleared his throat. “We’ve been clearing timber from the pretty little bend in Shelden’s Valley. We’re figuring you two may not want to hole up forever with the lot of us for company, and the valley might not be a bad place to build on. Lots of good water, grazing, not too far from the ranch.”

“You can still get your chores done that way, Little Brother,” Hoss interjected with a big smile. “Don’t think we’re letting you get away that easy.”

Joe grinned at his big brothers. He shoved Hoss, not moving him a bit. “Thanks. The saddle’s perfect, just perfect.”

Ben turned himself out into the night air and thought long and hard about the scene he’d witnessed. His boys were making provisions for their future, with or without him. Ben wished he could simply join in. However, marriage was a sacred institution, not to be propped up like a makeshift shanty. Ben only wanted the very, very best for his youngest son who’d suffered so much, and a feigned marriage was not the best. Not by a long shot.

Sitting on the wagon seat, Ben looked down at his son. Despite the fact he no longer matched his old nickname, Joe was still so much smaller than the rest of them. Ben almost wondered if he’d have grown bigger, gained more height and mass, had he stayed on the Ponderosa. Old fool, Ben chided himself. There was no point in mourning what couldn’t be changed. Joe sat quietly, looking as far down the road as he could.

He’s already made up his own mind, Ben thought. He’s only waiting to see what I’m going to do. I could lose him all over again. 

He could lose both of them. If Joe left, it might not be long before Adam left as well. That’s what Ben was thinking, even though he wasn’t sure why. They’d helped each other stick things out since returning. His oldest and youngest sons were bound together in a way they hadn’t been before the war. 

It was an odd thing, really. The fight over North and South had driven Adam and Joe into enlisting. Now he felt like the two of them were on one side of a dividing line, and he was on the other. Ben had given up asking himself if anything could have made a difference. What if Fredrick Kyle, the southern sympathizer, had never come to Virginia City? What if Ben had never allowed Little Joe to introduce him around town? What if Ben had openly chosen sides- would it have diffused Adam’s anger? Kept Little Joe from riding out after him? Protected either of his boys from the worst that life had to offer?

He didn’t know the answers to any of those questions and knew there wasn’t much point in asking. If his boys were determined to choose sides, Heaven and Earth couldn’t have stood in their way, let alone Ben Cartwright. The Lord had given, and the war had taken away. Gone was the headstrong, laughing son who could mount a horse without his boots touching the stirrups. His oldest son, once articulate with strongly held opinions and passions, had been replaced with a distant and troubled young man who sometimes had a cynicism about him that was disturbing.

Even Hoss had changed from the war. Before the war, Hoss had believed that family and faith trumped all. That hard work and love could overcome all obstacles. That he and his brothers would always stand together, come hell or high water. Yes, Hoss had changed just as much as his brothers – he no longer believed that everything might well turn out all right.

“Virginia City, Pa.” Joe’s voice was quiet enough but thick with emotion. It broke through Ben’s thoughts like an awl tapping glass.

“Guess we’re here then,” Ben said, forcing cheer into his voice. Come what may, he didn’t bother to add.

Hoss met them at the livery, smiling reassuringly at Joe.

“Stage is on its way, Shortshanks,” he said, patting him across the back. “Right on time. We checked in the office first thing. Won’t be long now.”

Joe didn’t answer, but Ben asked, “Where’s Adam?”

Ben thought about his oldest son that morning. He’d been even quieter than usual and explained that he needed to get into town earlier than the rest of them. When Ben asked why, Adam had shrugged and said that he needed to get some things out of the way before the stage came in.

Hoss scratched his head and took a while to answer. “He says he’s got some business he’s tending to, Pa.”

Inexplicably, Hoss pointed to the International House, and sure enough, Adam’s horse was tied outside.

“What’s he doing in there?” Joe asked, curious despite himself.

Hoss looked kind of funny and said, “Adam didn’t exactly say, but I ‘spect it had something to do with a peace offering. He said it was time to move on.”

They both looked at him strangely at that, but Hoss merely shrugged. They made their way to the stage office and sat on the rough splintered benches outside. When the Overland Company had built its depot some years back, the benches outside been polished and well tooled. Exposed to the elements, they’d since seen better days. After only several minutes of waiting, Ben found himself picking at splinters, slicing open his finger with one, despite his determination not to succumb to nervous habits. 

Virginia City was unusually quiet for a late afternoon in the bustling mining town. Hoss paced for a while, and finally asked if maybe he should ride out and try to meet the stage.

“They’d shoot you for a bandit,” Joe said, raising his eyebrow at his brother. “And if they didn’t, Annalisa might. She’s not real big, but don’t underestimate her with a shotgun. Trust me, I know.”

Bemused, Ben and Hoss turned to him, but Joe was smiling to himself as if sharing a private joke. It was so unusual to see him sharing a joke with anyone, that the mood over all of them felt lighter. Hoss sat down and rested his elbow on Joe’s shoulder, leaning heavily on him.

“Little Brother,” he said, “If that little gal’s anything like you, I reckon we all better learn to duck.”

“Don’t worry, Hoss, she’s nothing like me.” Joe waited a moment before adding, “Thank God!”

Ben couldn’t help but chuckle. “That’s fortunate, Joseph, because I don’t think this old heart could take it. I’ve always said that you were God’s way of turning me into a wise grandfather some day. I don’t expect there are many problems left that I haven’t had to face.”

Immediately, Ben regretted his words, thinking of the lost baby, but Joe didn’t seem to hold it against him. He smiled. 

“Sorry, Pa,” he said, sheepishly, shifting under the weight of Hoss’ elbow. “I know it hasn’t been easy.”

“What hasn’t been easy?” Adam was standing in front of them, appearing somewhat suddenly on the dusty street. Ben looked around to see if anyone was with him, but Adam was alone.

“Me,” Joe replied. “I haven’t been easy. But you haven’t exactly been a cakewalk either, Brother. Where ya been, anyways?”

“Offering up some peace,” Adam said simply enough. He looked at Hoss meaningfully. “Sometimes, forgiving is the easy way out. It’s one of those things I find very depressing, but unfortunately, it seems to be true.”

Whatever he’d been doing, it hadn’t been easy. He looked absolutely exhausted. Even so, Adam seemed more peaceful than he’d looked in months. Shrugging at their questioning looks, he squeezed onto the wide bench between Joe and his pa and balanced his elbow on Joe’s right shoulder. With Hoss still leaning on his other side, the weight was too much for Joe, and he tipped backwards, sending the others toppling onto him. Adam overcompensated and practically knocked Ben off before grabbing onto Hoss’ leg, while Joe tried to wriggle out from underneath his massive brother. 

Even as he was laughing about it, Joe complained, “Would you two get off of me? Glory hallelujah, since when am I some sort of armrest? You all right, Pa?”

“I’m fine, son,” Ben replied, accepting a hand up from Adam, and remarkably enough, he felt more than fine. It was something to hang his hopes on, the picture of his three sons laughing and practically wrestling with each other on the bench outside the stage depot.

They were all still smiling, when they heard it. They could recognize the rumbling of the approaching stage-coach from a long distance away, as the massive wooden wheels stirred up clouds of dust. All lightness slipped away, and Joe stood quietly and stepped away from his family. They all stood but stayed back, watching. The moment had an air of unreality. In the distance, they could hear music coming from a nearby saloon. In ironic dissonance, the chords spoke of high spirits and good times. Ben felt Adam and Hoss come along either side of him, providing support for whatever would come next. This is only a girl, Ben told himself, but the waiting had built the moment into much more.

The stage rumbled to a stop, and the driver hopped to the ground, shaking Joe’s hand.

“I hear I’ve got a delivery for you, Little Joe,” he said.

Joe didn’t bother answering but practically ran towards the door. It opened before he could reach for it, and she was out of the stage and in his arms in a single movement; they didn’t even see when it happened. A slightly older woman stepped down from the stage pulling along a child with an obviously croupy cough. Another war widow. They’d been coming west by the wagonload. The woman patted Annalisa sympathetically on the small of her back, as she passed them. The younger woman didn’t seem to notice. She was secluded with Joe in the middle of the street, and the rest of the world had ceased to exist. 

They were woven together, as if they were entirely alone. Her hands played upon Joe’s face, his neck, his shoulders. Reaching down, she felt for his ruined leg as if its very presence was nothing short of a miracle, which of course it was.

Annalisa was beautiful. Ben would have expected nothing less from the beloved of his handsome son. But there was a flaw in her loveliness, and he saw it at the same time as Joe. A scar, angry and proud, ran from beneath her chin, down her neck, past the bodice of her gown. Joe’s finger found it first, and he caught his breath. Tracing it downward, following the scar wherever it might take him. She caught his hand and held it.

“Not yet,” she said. 

He kissed her hand, and they leaned into each other, touching foreheads, laughing and sobbing at the same time. She pressed her hand against the back of his neck and pulled him even closer. 

“Oh Lord, how I missed you,” was all he said.

They seemed to come back to the world then and remembered the others. Annalisa straightened her skirts and pulled up her bodice. Her hair was wild from the journey, and even her lacings had come undone. Joe wiped away tears even though more welled up to take their place. When they turned, their faces were alight and joyous. Ben got his first good look at her – the young lady who might well have saved his son’s life – and that’s when he saw it. And he knew it for a certainty that he had seen that type of love before. 

Elizabeth, with her dark and sharp loveliness. The smell of the sea in her hair. Inger, open, generous, and kind to a grieving widower with a young, serious son. Marie, his young, beauty of a wife, doomed from the beginning, but too in love with life to notice. They were all three there, his own lost loves, in the way that Joe looked at this young woman.

Joe managed a few steps toward his family, before he stopped and took hold of her again. He touched the inside of her arms, the palm of her hand, and used his own to rest on the empty place where she’d once carried their son, but only for a moment. It was too intimate and sad, and Adam and Hoss had to look away. Yet, Ben couldn’t take his eyes off them. From where he was standing, he could see the terrible scar on her neck fade against his son’s own broken body. They’d been devastated, body and soul, but they had survived it to be together.

Although he had long been regarded as one of the wisest men of the territory, it took that long for Ben Cartwright to remember that a man shall leave his father and cleave unto his wife. Like so much that had taken place during the years of the war, it had happened without his knowing. They were married already, in the sight of God and man, in every way that mattered.

Ben stepped forward and took her hands in his own.

With great feeling, he said, “My dear, I’m Ben Cartwright. I’m pleased to meet you, Daughter. We’ve been waiting a long time for you.”

Annalisa held onto his hands with surprising strength. “Thank you, sir. It means everything to meet you, here at this place.”

Her accent was distinct and impressively brave. The reckless courage of the unbroken South. And yet, she had come to be with his son. The sun was setting to the west of them, casting a purple glow over the mountains in the east. The day was almost over and yet seemed a more fitting beginning than an end.

Ben took one more look at her lovely face and then turned to his son. Joe was appraising him with curious wonder, and for the first time, Ben realized how close he’d come to losing his boy again. He looked over his shoulder, saw his other two sons behind him, waiting. With an ear to ear grin, Hoss’ eyes were shining, and he had his arm anchored around Adam’s shoulders. If his oldest son had been a different kind of man, Ben might have thought he was blinking back tears rather than looking too long into the sun.

“Mind your manners, Joseph,” Ben said with gruff tenderness, as he cupped his hand against the back of his son’s neck. “Come and introduce your lovely wife to your brothers.”

The End

Next story in the Dividing Line Series:

The Quickening