The Telling

* A sequel to “Dividing Line

It was all over, but the telling…

In the dream, he was running again. He was running as fast as he could, but he couldn’t remember why. He wasn’t supposed to be in the line of fire. It was his job to navigate the aftermath of battle, not be caught in its onslaught. However, the lines were coming at each other, and the enemy’s yell was all around him. The ground was slick with mud and blood running together, and his boot caught on a tree root. He fell.

“God help us,” a soldier screamed an inch away from his face, writhing in agony from an injury that seemed to have taken out a good part of his belly. Other bodies lay nearby, their eyes open and bewildered in death.

God help us all, Adam thought, but didn’t say it. He pushed up and kept running, his feet still sliding. Balls rained through the air and across the field like a late season shower. The line was holding. The Rebels were falling back. It was springtime. It was lovely after the rain. Away from the churned up mud of the march, the nearby meadows were already blooming. The trees held their new growth proudly against the bright and shining horizon. There were men dying all around him, moans and screams filled the air above the sound of the artillery, and there was sunshine glinting off the greening leaves.

The pain, when it came to him, was predictable and always the same. The battle and the exact injury were sometimes different. The ball might have come from the Federals or the Rebels. He had learned it didn’t matter. Either side’s artillery could kill just the same. It tore into him with a ferocity that made it seem personal. It wasn’t personal. It was just another bullet taking the life of another man. His was just another body falling to the ground, crushing the budding wildflowers before they had a chance to grow. It was, as the soldiers always lamented, far too beautiful a day for a decent life to end.

In the dream, he could smell the warm earth mingling with the smell of blood and gunpowder. A man moaned nearby. He opened his eyes to get a look at his companion in death.

The cool green of eyes of his youngest brother met his. The kid’s leg was blown away from his body, and he was propped up in a spreading pool of blood.

“Hey, brother,” Little Joe said. “Don’t worry. There are lots of ways a man can die – “
Adam sat up in bed, his breathing coming in shuddering heaves. It was the same dream, but it came to him differently every time. He struggled to breathe, willing his lungs to work the way they were supposed to. He’d woken in a cold, drenching sweat, but at least he’d succeeded in one thing. He’d been quiet in his waking. Adam Cartwright’s nightmare hadn’t disturbed a soul. He’d been dreaming his dreams, like he’d been living his life. 

Keeping it to himself.

Joe’s nightmares were a different matter. His little brother still woke up, hollering and cursing at dreams that woke up the whole house, even Hop Sing downstairs. Joe would fight them with a savagery Adam had never seen in his sensitive brother before. He thrashed and fought until he realized who they were, that they weren’t coming for his leg or his boots, or whatever terror lay behind those confused eyes. 

On this night, the house was quiet, absolutely still. Adam didn’t dare sleep again. The second round of nightmares was always worse than the first, and he didn’t want to risk it. He lit the candle stub he kept on the table next to his bed, slipped into his robe, and crept into the hall, avoiding the creaky plank outside Hoss’ door. He made it to the landing, when he saw the shaft of light slanting from his father’s study. Half expecting to find his father at work behind his piles of papers, he was surprised instead to see Joe, slouched and casual in his Ben’s chair, looking up at him.

Joe smiled a sad smile, bitter around the edges. He lifted his glass to him in a weary toast.

“Cheers, brother,” he said. “To long nights and Pa’s good brandy.”

Joe finished off his drink in one swallow and limped towards the hutch to get a glass for Adam. Wordlessly, Adam took the offered drink and waited until Joe poured himself another. Together, they lifted their glasses and drank, long and hard. They leaned back into silence. 

It wasn’t much, but it was good not to drink alone.

**********

Adam dismounted and strode across the clearing toward his family. They braced against the corral fence, Ben’s arm slung around Joe’s shoulders. Hoss had his hat off and was bunching it between his hands in his excitement.

It was a lovely day. Summer had finally wrested control from a damp and miserable spring, and the sun felt warm across his face. The seasons were finally playing by the rules.

Hoss was hollering, “That’s it Jack! You got him!” 

Adam’s head ached with exhaustion and the litany of work that was waiting for him. All those hours of missed sleep were certainly catching up with him. He wondered how long a man could go without a good night’s sleep and not lose his health or his sanity. Could one go without sleep for a lifetime? A vestige of nightmare flashed in front of him, a pool of blood glittering in the sun, but Adam pushed it aside. Some nightmares shouldn’t see the light of day.

He came alongside Hoss and gripped the splintering rail, just as the bronc twisted and tossed young Jack Woods from the saddle. Their newest hand rolled in the dirt, before getting up and sheepishly bowing to the other hands who were hooting and cheering from the side. 

“He’s got promise, that’s for sure,” Hoss said to Ben, grinning widely. “I’m telling you, we could make a bronc buster out of him, yet. It’s a dadburned shame you ain’t able to break them any more, Joe. He ain’t as good as you were, little brother, not by no long shot.”

Adam didn’t miss the look that passed over Joe’s face, nor did his father. Ben started to tighten his grip around Joe’s shoulders, but the young man shrugged him off and pulled his hat lower over his eyes, shielding himself from the sun and their concern. 

Adam knew full well that their worry was a burden to the youngest Cartwright. It didn’t rest easy on his shoulders. He’d shrugged off his war wounds as best as he could and helped with the running of the ranch in every way that was left to him. He never complained, even though they could all see the pain the leg caused him. He whistled and joked with the hands and made light of his situation in a playful way that Adam didn’t think he’d have managed in the same situation. Yet, there was only so much a man could cover up with a bawdy joke or a smile. Sooner or later, he’d give himself away, and they all would get a look at what the war had cost him. Joe’s bronc busting days were over. Nothing was the same for Joe. Nothing was the same for Adam either, it was just that fewer people seemed to remember it. Everywhere the two of them seemed to turn, they ran smack into their own limitations. All the glorious possibilities for their lives had seemed to narrow in ways that neither could fully understand.

Ben turned to his oldest, after watching Joe tighten the cinch of his saddle. There was no missing the sadness in their father’s eyes. 

“The branding finished?” he asked.

“All finished,” Adam said. “I had Charlie pay the men off early, so they could make it to town in time for the dance.”

Hoss plunked his hat back on his head and let loose with a cheerful whoop. “I plumb forgot about the barn dance at the Dawsons! I hear the best fiddler for miles around came all the way from Placerville to play tonight. You fellas just gotta come to this one. Little Joe, you don’t gotta dance if your leg ain’t up for it. I expect there’d be a whole passel of lil’ gals who’d be happy to keep you company, if you just want to sit and watch. How bout it? And Adam how bout you? You only been to one dance since you got back, and that one was just cause we didn’t tell you we were going!”

Adam shook his head. “I’ve got a night’s worth of numbers to put in order, before I can think about dancing. Sorry, Hoss. You’ll have to go without me.”

He watched the happiness on Hoss’ face struggle with his disappointment. “Come on, Adam. You can let go of all them numbers for just one night. Ain’t that right, Pa?”

Ben was watching his oldest son carefully. “I’d be happy to take care of the books, son. Why don’t you go?”

“I’ll pass,” Adam said mildly. 

They all knew that tone of voice. That was something that hadn’t changed with the war. When Adam made up his mind, he didn’t change it. With a sigh, Hoss turned to Joe.

“All right, little brother, Adam’s out. You and me could still have a fine time. What do you say?”

They all looked at Joe. Back in the days before the war, Joe would have pushed aside heaven and earth to make it to a lively dance. Adam could remember the hours and hours Little Joe would spend getting ready in front of a mirror for the smallest church social. They all ribbed him for his cheerful vanity, but he didn’t care. Friendly and good looking, his confidence sang out when he walked into a room, the lilt of the fiddle making his steps cheerful and light. Life was good, after all. It was very, very good, and Joseph Francis Cartwright had his whole life before him. The rest of the world could get out of the way. And he did love to dance.

Joe looked over his shoulder, and shook his head ever so slightly. “Can’t do it, Hoss. I’m plumb tuckered out today. Didn’t sleep much last night. I reckon I better make up for it and turn in early.”

“Aw, come on Joe,” Hoss complained. “You got the rest of your life for sleeping. You ain’t an old man yet! Ain’t you got something left in you for one dance? If you don’t want to dance, you don’t have to. I’ll stick by you the whole night.”

Smiling at Hoss affectionately, Joe replied, “Thanks big brother. You’re forgetting that I’ve been in the saddle all day. I don’t think my leg could abide with another couple hours of riding. You go on. Dance with Sally Anne for me, when her pa’s not looking.”

His forehead wrinkled in frustration, Hoss persisted, “I’ll hitch up the buckboard. I’ll drive you myself. I’ll put a pallet in back, and if you want to sleep on the way back, you can stretch out the whole way home.”

All stared at Hoss, wondering at his persistence. Adam leaned against the corral fence and took a good look at his brother. Suddenly, this seemed like a lot more than a simple barn dance. It came to him that he couldn’t remember the last time Joe and Hoss went off together on one of their misguided adventures. Adam remembered his brothers before the war, with their easy ways and shared confidences. They had been quite the pair, getting into trouble that only Joe’s wild schemes and Hoss’ gullible imagination could manage. Adam’s relationship with Hoss had been different, less manic, but marked by confidences that words had nothing to do with. They didn’t need to talk to know where the other one stood. All that had changed after Adam returned.

Joe seemed to know all this. He walked over and slung his arm around Hoss’ shoulder. 

“Hey Hoss,” he said. “I’ll tell you what. How bout you and me get up real early next chance we get and go fishing? I’d imagine the trout are thick as molasses out by the cove.”

Hoss stared right back at him and wasn’t mollified. He stood his ground. “All I’m asking is that you two come to that dance with me. Ain’t much to ask, all things considered.”

It certainly wasn’t much to ask, given what Hoss had shouldered during the years they were gone to the War. It wasn’t just the work that he’d taken on. Adam knew all too well the burden and privilege of being his father’s right hand man. His younger brother had taken on responsibilities that the two of them had tossed aside, when they left the Ponderosa. Hoss had taken on his father’s grief and worry, along with his own. He had carried the full weight of Ben Cartwright’s ruined legacy. It was enough to make a man bitter. And yet, all Hoss was asking for was that his brothers accompany him to a dance. 

Adam could just picture the sweaty warmth of the barn, the hay dashed across the floor, and the whine of the fiddle. He could hear the roar of laughter and of pretty girls shrieking as they were whirled in the arms of their partners. There’d been a time when he would have looked forward to such a dance, but that time was over. He simply didn’t have it in him, and he couldn’t bring himself to pretend for a full night with such a curious audience.

“Sorry, Hoss,” Adam said, and he meant it. He rested his hand on Hoss’s broad shoulder, but his brother just shrugged it off and went over to help Joe. 

Joe was struggling with the stirrups. His young days of vaulting into the saddle were also over, and it was a bittersweet thing to watch him on a horse. It was a miracle he could ride, to be sure, but it was impossible not to mourn what had been lost to him. Hoss held the reins, while Joe got his leg into the correct position, anchoring it against the pinto’s flanks, like it was a saddlebag. He smiled, sincerely grateful, when Hoss handed him the reins. Once, Joe would have spurned such help. Then again, there’d been a time when Hoss would have accepted the apology of a brother’s hand on his shoulder. Lots of things had changed.

Ben had watched the whole exchange, and finally he stepped forward. The War had etched worry lines across his face, and the past year had done little to ease them. Peace had come uneasily to the Ponderosa.

“Son,” he said, walking up to Joe. “It would mean a lot to your brother to have your company tonight. He did without it for a long while, and he’s not asking for much. Surely Virginia City must have one or two lovely ladies to tempt you from a quiet night at home. You’re a young man, Joseph. You still have your life ahead of you.”

Joe met his father’s gaze with a look of steady weariness. He pulled off his hat and raked his fingers through his hair. It was still long and kind of wild, but he wasn’t a boy to be ordered into town for a haircut. Ben couldn’t even order him into town for a dance.

Joe seemed to be gathering up his words, before he came to a decision. When he spoke, his voice was stubborn and sad.

“I’m already spoken for, Pa.” Ignoring his father’s startled expression, Joe reined toward Hoss and added, “I’m sorry, big brother. You go on, and have a good time. Dance with one of those pretty gals for me.”

He tipped his hat to Adam, in mutual acknowledgement of all the secrets that lay between them, flicked the reins lightly, and rode away. Adam watched his brother ride and wondered if there was a Southern lady out there somewhere saving all her dances for him. Somehow, he doubted it. It would make for the kind of happy ending that only came around in stories, and he didn’t believe in stories any more. He swung into his own saddle and left his father and brother to discuss what it all might mean.

He had work to do.

**********

In all probability, Joe couldn’t have made it to that dance, even if he’d wanted to. He was bone-tired, in ways he could hardly explain. In many ways, he had wanted to go with Hoss to the dance. He could remember the feeling of knowing that life was just waiting for him to show up on time. Maybe, he would dance again some day. He wasn’t ready to give up all hope.

Joe sat on a rock and gazed across the lake. This ridge had always been Adam’s favorite place to get away and think, and lately he’d taken to hiding out there as well. Sometimes, he’d join his brother after a day’s work and watch the sun until it vanished behind the western ridge. Sometimes they’d talk about things; other times they would just sit there. It was a fine thing to be in the company of someone who understood that silence was a blessing when there wasn’t anything much to say.

It was a strange thing. As time passed, the War seemed to be slipping away for folks who weren’t there. Bystanders asked for fewer and fewer war stories and quietly began to refer to him as the “that poor Cartwright boy” rather than the heroic veteran come back from the War Between the States. Even the Southern sympathizers in town lost interest after some time. The War of Northern Aggression still got their blood to boiling, but their side lost, and there wasn’t much point rehashing old victories that didn’t lead to anything. Folks still bought him a beer, when he found his way into in town, but Joe found his way there less and less often. 

It wasn’t a bad life he’d come back to. He woke up each morning to a hot breakfast, worked hard alongside his father and his brothers, and he did what he needed to when it was needed. In his younger days, he might have rebelled against such a routine. After what he’d been through, he knew well enough to count his blessings. He’d already had enough adventure in his life. Sometimes, he forgot he was only twenty-two years old. Sometimes, he felt as old as his father. 

Adam had also adapted admirably to his life back on the ranch. Joe knew his oldest brother sometimes drove his father to distraction, with all his cool politeness. Yet, Joe admired Adam the emotional control that he’d never managed. He’d have given anything, during the years of the War, to have saved himself from his own reaction to the horrors around him. Living sometimes took more out of a man than dying. He was pretty sure that Adam felt the same way.

Whatever works brother, whatever works, he thought and willed himself to find his way home. With any luck, Hoss would be getting ready for the dance and Pa would feel obligated to keep him company. Joe couldn’t answer any questions about his last statement and wondered if he’d be able to keep warm enough to stay away until they’d left. He could certainly remember a time when they’d have been waiting on him to fix his tie or to pilfer a splash from Adam’s bottle of Bay Rum. He’d been a vain boy, no doubt about it, perfectly satisfied with the gifts that the good Lord had given him. That boy seemed to belong to another lifetime.

During those earliest weeks of summer, there was an edge to the air, and he hadn’t brought his jacket. Sometimes, Joe felt like the War had sent him home with the body of an old man. He had complaints and pains in places he’d never thought about before. His leg throbbed relentlessly, every morning and night, and he was often tempted to take a swig of whiskey just to make it through those hours. He wore layers of clothing, even on warmer days, and it still wasn’t enough. His stomach had never recovered from the dysentery he’d suffered in prison. Many times, it would rebel after he attempted to eat too much of Hop Sing’s good cooking. Joe figured it was nature’s way of mocking him for all the hours he had passed dreaming of such meals. Now that he had abundant food in front of him, he could hardly keep it down.

He was careful and never complained. His family had already worried enough. More than that kept him quiet. It was almost as if telling anyone about his maladies would only make them real. He tended to think of them as part of some strange, shifting dream he might wake out of someday. Summer meant the days were getting longer and the nights were getting shorter, which should have been just fine. His dreams, when they came, were laced with the blood soaked fields of the South. But Joe didn’t resent his dreams; he welcomed them. Every now and then, a spare dream about her slipped into the grim procession of nightmares.

During the past night, he’d had his favorite dream, the one that reached into the heart of Mississippi, making its way through the tangled orchards that the Federals plundered and left behind. He could see the abandoned plantations he’d traveled past, the shutters banging in the wind and the paint peeling from wanton neglect. How many lifetimes had passed him by, since he reached for that poor excuse for an apple and heard her voice for the first time….

The bullet sang past his ear, as he reached for the apple. His hand had been shaking anyways, from fever and pain, and the shriveled fruit slipped from his fingers. He could feel the heat across his cheek from the bullet’s trajectory. If he’d been a little closer, he’d have a bullet through his brain, and it wouldn’t matter much if he was starving to death in the heart of the Mississippi countryside.

Good Lord, he thought, ducking behind the tree, what fiasco have I stumbled into now?

He closed his eyes for just a moment, tempted to just give in and surrender to whoever was after him this time. There was really no point to any of it, anyway. He was sick and tired and didn’t have a musket, no way of defending himself. The wound from his leg was festering, and he’d been unable to clean it thoroughly for days. If the wound didn’t finish him off soon, starvation probably would do the trick. He was dying, and if some damn Yankee thought it best to help him on his way, then Joe didn’t really have the heart to stop him.

The voice that accompanied the bullet served to rouse him out of feeling sorry for himself.

“You there! Come out where I can see you!” The voice belonged to a girl, and it was well bred and lovely. It spoke of moonlit nights underneath the magnolias outside fine plantation homes. It stirred up a feeling he hadn’t felt in a long, long time – curiosity. He thought he’d seen just about everything that life was going to offer him. This particular girl could very well kill him, but at least it would be a kind of death that hadn’t occurred to him before.

He limped out from behind the tree and held his hands out, palms up. He stared across the grove but didn’t see where she was standing, although he could smell the gunpowder from her musket.

“I’m not armed,” he called out but didn’t expect it mattered. A girl holding a musket was just as dangerous as an armed soldier. One of his buddies had been killed by a seven-year-old boy defending his mother’s chicken coop. A bullet was a bullet. Didn’t matter much who was pulling the trigger. There were lots of ways a man could die…

“Don’t move,” she called out. “A thief is a thief, whether he’s armed or not. I’m a good shot, and I don’t think highly of thieves or deserters!”

Joe looked at the shriveled apple lying on the ground. It was true that he’d foraged in the orchards of mostly abandoned plantations, but he’d had little choice left to him. He’d been a skinny kid when he left the Ponderosa, but now he wondered that his bones didn’t poke right through his skin. Wasting away to nothing. He’d always wondered where that phrase had come from. There was so little left of him. The Union army had stripped the area of just about every food source. There was so little left of everything.

It had been days since he’d eaten much of anything. The Confederate doctor who’d saved his leg had ushered him out the back door of the hospital, advising him to stay in hiding, until he either died or managed to recover. He couldn’t stay in the hospital, because any doctor who treated him would have insisted that he part with his leg. Rather than defend himself against the doctors who were trying to save his life, Joe decided he’d take his chance hiding from both the Federals and the Rebels. So he found himself wandering in the countryside that had been largely abandoned after the Union army marched through.

He had walked aimlessly for days, slipping in and out of a rising fever, taking shelter underneath the willow oaks and magnolias that seemed to grace the grounds of every grand manor. He found himself wishing Adam were with him to admire the architecture. Hoss would have been able to identify every bird on every branch and would admire the gentle slopes of jonquils and wild azaleas. If his father was there, he’d have placed his arm around his shoulders. How he had missed his family.

Several times, he spent the night in abandoned slave quarters. Yet, his dreams were unbearable on those nights, haunted with the pain and suffering of the people who had lived and suffered within those walls. Surrounded by the vestiges of slavery, Joe finally understood why his father and brother had hated it so much. Joe had never been in favor of slavery, but so far removed from it out west, he simply hadn’t thought about it. After the past years of witnessing it firsthand, Joe had come to hate slavery with an intensity that floored him. He firmly believed that the South had the right to secede from the Union, but slavery was evil, simple as that. Ben Cartwright’s code of right and wrong ran through his veins, and he’d have given anything for the chance to tell Adam that he’d been wrong on this issue.

However, Joe had made his own decision to leave home and join the Rebels. An honorable man didn’t go back on his commitments. He lived with them, the best he knew how. If necessary, he laid down his life for them. And that was what Joe intended to do, if it proved necessary

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he wondered what was wrong with him. Not much other than blood poisoning, starvation, and a Southern girl about to shoot him. What did he have to lose? He started to toward her.

“Stop right there!” the girl ordered, stepping out in the clearing. For the first time, Joe got a good look at his captor.

She was lovely, in a way that was particular to Southern girls; her beauty hung over her gracefully, like the wisteria twined around many a majestic column. She couldn’t have been much older than eighteen, but her eyes looked older than that. Joe could only imagine the things that she’d seen, living through the occupation. That same look had lingered in the eyes of just about every survivor that he’d encountered. The Federals had marched through the countryside, leaving a swath of devastation in their wake. Little had been spared. Most of the women and children had left and had yet to return, leaving their homes to be plundered and often burned to the ground. Obviously, this girl had made a dangerous decision to remain, and Joe didn’t blame her for wanting to be armed.

“Miss,” he called out. “I don’t mean you any harm. I’ll move on. You can keep that gun on me, until I’m gone.”

She didn’t reply, but lifted the musket, keeping him well within her sight. Hands still raised, Joe started to back up, but his leg buckled underneath him, and he collapsed to the ground, his makeshift cane falling to the side.

The girl immediately lowered her weapon.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“Not too bad, Ma’am,” Joe replied. The world was swimming in competing waves of dizziness and pain. Had he imagined how difficult his recovery would have been, he might have offered up his leg to the first Confederate doctor who wanted to amputate it for him. The doctor who had saved it hadn’t done him as big a favor as he’d first thought.

“Don’t move,” she ordered, and Joe grinned at being given an order that was easy to obey for once.

Aiming her musket at him, she edged a bit closer. He wasn’t sure if he cared if she pulled the trigger or not. After all, he couldn’t ask for a more appropriate way to go. Adam and Hoss always said a pretty girl and a shotgun would be the death of him. They probably hadn’t reckoned the pretty girl would be holding the shotgun, but there was a certain dark appeal in the situation…

“Southern Lady,” he murmured. “I ain’t going nowhere.”

“Why aren’t you in a hospital?” she demanded. To his surprise, the girl had come alongside him. She was close enough for Joe to touch, and for a moment he was tempted to do just that. It had been so long since he had been so close to anyone so beautiful. He reached for her hand, and she didn’t shy away or shoot him. But she didn’t let him touch her hand either. . The hem of her dress was muddy and torn, and Joe expected that it had known better days. After the embargo, it became almost impossible to buy cloth, and every piece of clothing had to be mended dozens and dozens of times. He sighed.

“If I go back to the hospital, they’ll take my leg,” he told her. “I’m fixing to stay hidden long enough to let my leg heal. Then I’ll find my regiment and join up again.”

“So you can go back to fighting?” she asked softly. “So you can get your other leg blown off as well?”

“Yes, ma’am, I guess you’re right,” he answered truthfully. “It’s what I signed for, and a man doesn’t go back on something like that.”

“A man,” she harrumphed, lowering the musket and smiling. She really was something to look at. “Why, you don’t look old enough to enlist!”

“Appearances can fool you, ma’am. I’m a whole lot older than I look.”

“Aren’t we all?” she asked, and to his surprise, she sat down on the grass beside him, her full skirt flouncing around her.

She didn’t seem to want to talk any more, and she didn’t seem to want to shoot him. They sat like that for a while, watching the sunlight lacing through the canopy of trees. The wind rustled the branches and felt warm against his face. He could hear the frogs and crickets by the river, and the breeze carried the fragrance of wildflowers. He eyed the apple lying next to him, but oddly enough, he didn’t feel that hungry any more. He’d decided for sure; there could be far worse ways for a man to die.

After some time had passed, the girl seemed to arrive at a decision. She sighed and reached out her hand.

“Come on soldier,” she said. “Let’s see what we can do for that leg. You don’t look like you’re long for this world.”

He smiled at her bluntness, but asked, “Why are you doing this? You’re taking a chance.”

“I suppose I’m a fool when it comes to lost causes,” she said. “That’s why I’m still here. Besides, you wouldn’t stand a chance if the Yankees got hold of you.”

“I’m just as worried about the Rebels,” he said. “Until I get back to my regiment, I’m considered a deserter, no matter how good my reasons.”

“Well, we better not let them find you then,” she replied, with a smile that he wasn’t sure he was reading right.

“I don’t know your name,” he said softly.

“Southern Lady suits me fine. I always wanted to be a lady,” she replied, bearing his weight on her shoulders as they made their way toward the manor at the top of the hill, its six towering chimneys standing as a testament to grander days…
Joe shivered. Evening had settled around him, while he’d been lost in that dream. It was a dream that was dear to him in every way that mattered, and he never tried to hurry it along. It had kept him alive through troubles that might have killed him otherwise. 

He’d been a good soldier, a hero, some said. And yet the bravest thing he had ever done was to keep on living, day after day, after he knew she was gone.

**********

Adam felt for the money, tucked carefully in his pocket. It had been a profitable business deal. Even in peacetime, the government was still willing to pay top dollar for Ponderosa timber. The war had increased the Cartwright fortune immensely. Lincoln had pushed to build the Transcontinental Railroad, and the Ponderosa had supplied vast quantities of lumber for this endeavor. Adam shook his head and smiled to himself. His father had vastly increased his holdings during the five years of war, as had the mine owners who had helped finance the Union victory. The War had left so much of the South in ruins, yet had proved a windfall for many others. Adam knew that his father would have given back every cent to be able to take back the devastation. That was all Ben Cartwright wanted. His sons returned to him, his family and his country restored to what they had once been.

Rocking back on his heels impatiently, Adam waited for the teller to finish with the customer ahead of him. It had been an unusually long wait. His father and brothers would likely be finished at the mercantile, before he’d be able to make his deposit.

Sure enough, the door swung open, and they entered the bank. Pa and Hoss were laughing, and Joe trailed behind them. His little brother’s limp was more pronounced on some days than others. Lately, it seemed to bother him more than usual. All of them had seen him trying to work it, when he didn’t think anyone was watching. He didn’t eat much, said he was fine when he looked like he could sleep in the saddle, and wore his jacket on the warmest days. Plenty of time for recovery had passed by already. Just the previous week, Adam had gone to Doctor Martin asking when his brother might physically recover. The doctor’s response had been less than encouraging. 

“Your guess is as good as mine, Adam,” Doc Martin had sighed, rubbing a hand across his creased brow. “To come so close to starvation for so long, along with the damage to that leg…” 

Pa had urged him to stay home, but Joe had insisted on coming along. Said he was bored and needed a change in scenery, but Adam knew full well that he was fixing to mail off another batch of letters. Adam had helped him with the letters before, plotting out possible towns on one of the maps he’d brought home from the War, and he knew that every envelope would have a different address. His little brother was nothing, if not persistent. He had blanketed the South with his letters to a woman who was likely either indifferent or dead. One way or another, it was probably a lost cause, but the Cartwrights were famous for such efforts.

Whatever gets you through, he thought, and smiled sadly at his little brother. Joe caught the smile and held it, looking at him curiously. Adam shrugged in response. They were both making it through, the best that they could.

He was making his way toward the teller’s window, when it happened. The two men looked ordinary enough. He’d noticed them outside before he came in and had tipped his hat to them. But they didn’t waste any time hiding their intentions. Guns drawn, they burst into the bank and began shooting. A woman standing near the door screamed, and Hoss grabbed onto her and flung her to the ground. The teller ducked to the ground, out of sight.

“Nobody move!” the youngest one screamed. His arms shook, holding the revolver. Anyone else might have thought that the kid was scared. Adam wasn’t fooled. He’d seen it before, plenty of times before on the battlefield. The kid wasn’t the least bit scared. He was quivering with the joy of it, the possibility of killing someone on a lovely summer afternoon.

Ben stepped forward. “There’s no need for shooting. You’ll get what you want. As long as no one gets hurt, you’ll be able to ride on out of here.”

The boy swiveled, aiming his gun at Ben Cartwright. The gun trembled in his hand.

“You stay right where you are, old man. I wouldn’t think twice about shooting you right where you stand. Ain’t that right, Graham?”

The other man next to Adam laughed. He regarded them all with vague scorn.

“Yeah, that’s right,” he said. The sour drift of liquor and tobacco reached Adam where he stood. “My brother’s a mean one, that’s for sure, and one less witness would be all right by both of us. Now, it’s just about time for you to throw down your weapons.”

Reluctantly, Ben, Joe, and Hoss pulled their guns from their holsters and threw them into the center of the room. Adam fingered his, but hesitated, trying to think of anything that would buy him a little more time. Joe stood off to the side. He was the one closest to Pa and stood the best chance of overpowering the younger robber. He leaned against the wall with an expression approaching boredom. It was impossible to read his expression. The Little Joe Cartwright who had left home at age seventeen would have been flashing with anger. He’d have been chomping to save the day. Probably would have thrown himself in front of his father to distract the robber. 

That Little Joe Cartwright probably would have gotten himself killed. 

His brother may have appeared nonchalant, but Adam knew better. He’d seen the exact same expression on hundreds of soldiers during the worst horrors of battle. Any man who survived those years had to build up similar instincts. In all probability, he wore the same look on his own face, as he watched the young man aiming his barrel straight at his father’s heart.

Adam felt his breathing quicken and felt a rush of heat that reached from his chest down to his toes. He’d believed that he’d left the war behind him. However, these men were speaking the language of violence, and his body was answering back before his mind had a chance to come up with a more civilized solution. It was something he’d forgotten about – the shameful thrill of impending battle, before all hell broke loose. Adam remembered the words that soldiers liked to quote, from General Lee. The Confederate leader had once said that it was well that war was so terrible – lest we should grow too fond of it. Only a man who’d lived through such things could appreciate the wry truth behind those words.

He hazarded a glance at Joe and knew he could feel it too. His brother’s lips were quirked upward in the faintest hint of a smile. Joe met Adam’s steady gaze and held it. His nod might have been mistaken for a shudder, but the two brothers understood each other perfectly.

They were speaking the same language.

The younger bank robber was still raging and moving closer and closer to Ben and Joe. Adam didn’t underestimate him. Like a baby rattler, the bite of the young could prove to be the most lethal. Young rattlers didn’t know how to hold back their venom. They poured out all their poison at once, and their bite could easily kill a grown man. The older ones understood how to save their venom for when they really needed it. 

Almost instinctively, Joe deferred to the chain of command and looked to Adam, who shook his head. Not yet. The military had taught Joe patience that he had never learned at home, and he stayed where he was, keeping his eye on his older brother. The younger robber laughed nervously and turned around to follow Joe’s stare. 

Glowering at Adam, he snarled, “What are you two planning?” but his moment of power was already over.

Adam nodded, and Joe moved so quickly that the young fool never saw him coming.

He thought to himself, good job soldier, but his body was already moving. As Joe flung himself against the young robber, Adam swiveled and knocked into the older one. The man swore that he’d kill them all, and a small, unspeakable part of him wished for a bayonet. He grimly flashed back to the few horrific times he’d had the opportunity to use one. 

Enough, he commanded himself and tried to ignore the pounding of his heart. He knocked the gun out of the man’s hand, by bringing his own revolver down hard over the man’s wrist. He heard the bone break with a crunch. The man’s resulting howl was lost in the roaring in his ears. Everything was drowned out, except for the one litany that didn’t leave him. The only word he could hear was the one that told him what he needed to do – save those that belonged to him and live! 

He raised his pistol to the man’s head and cocked the hammer. The man turned to him, spitting mad, and Adam could have pulled the trigger right there and then. 

Suddenly, he felt a strong hand gripping his other shoulder.

“Easy, Adam. You got him!” 

Hoss stood next to him, his hand steady on Adam’s shoulder. It was his bad shoulder, and he felt the pain of the old wound. The pain shocked him back into the present. He could no longer smell the gunpowder, or the coppery tang of blood mixing with mud in his mouth. He was standing in a bank in Virginia City. He was with his family. He had apprehended a bank robber. Hoss was standing next to him. And he could hear his father yelling. 

“Stop it, Joseph! Stop it! You’ve got him! Somebody help me!” Ben Cartwright’s desperate voice had been lost in the roar, but they both heard him that time.

Convinced that Adam wasn’t going to shoot the robber, Hoss hurled himself across the room, chorusing with his father, “Get off him, Joe!”

Adam looked towards the door and saw the reason for their panic. Joseph Cartwright, bum leg notwithstanding, straddled the younger robber and was casually strangling the life right out of him. He hadn’t even broken a sweat, and from where Adam was standing, he could see that Joe’s face had the focus that his had had before. Ben had his gun back and was trying to keep it aimed at the robber while simultaneously pulling his youngest son off the man.

“You’re killing him, Joe!” he hissed. “Stop it, now!”

Just as Hoss reached to pull Joe off the man’s limp body, their younger brother seemed to come back to himself. Adam watched as he stiffened suddenly and looked down at the slack features of the man underneath him. With terrible dignity, he released his fingers from the spot near the Adam’s apple that every good soldier knew about and pushed away. Awareness flooded in. He tried to stand, but his bad leg buckled underneath him. Hoss and his father caught him by either arm, and he sagged between them.

“You’re crazy,” the older robber was hollering. “That young one’s crazy! Look what he did to my brother! He might near have killed him! Neddy wasn’t gonna kill no one! We ain’t never killed no one!”

Ben started to say something, but at that moment, the doors burst open and the room resounded with the sound of shouting and men rushing in. Roy Coffee and his men had been alerted that a robbery was in progress. By the time the lawman’s guns were aimed in the right direction, Joe was standing, held upright between his father and his brother. He looked absolutely exhausted. Adam stepped aside, so the sheriff could take the older robber into his custody. 

“You wanted to kill me,” the man hissed at him, as he walked away. “I could see it in your eyes. Same as your brother.”

Adam didn’t respond. To be honest, he was having a difficult time catching his breath, and he almost retched at the man’s words. He prayed they weren’t true, but his gut told him otherwise. He’d once held fast to his father’s ideals of justice. Even the guiltiest man deserved the fairest trial. But that just didn’t carry much weight on a battlefield. Waiting to determine right and wrong could get you killed in a hurry. What had happened to him over the past five years? What had happened to Joe? The room was buzzing with talk and motion. Roy was taking statements from the woman and the teller. Already the word “heroes” was being bandied about the room. 

Adam stumbled out of the bank and found his way to the alley. Again and again, he retched, until he was absolutely and utterly empty. It was one thing to survive. It was another thing to be able to live with yourself in the morning.

**********

Hoss knew what he had seen. 

The newspaper labeled his veteran brothers as heroes, and neither he nor his pa had cared offer up a differing opinion. Adam and Joe didn’t say much of anything and kept to themselves more than ever. They seemed bone-tired most of the time, but they’d just about given up the pretence that everything was going fine. It was clear that something had happened in that bank that they preferred to have hidden away. Something had changed, but Hoss wasn’t sure what it was. He felt uneasy about it. The way things were, it wouldn’t take much to scare them away from the Ponderosa for good, and Hoss knew it. Accordingly, he minded his words and his brothers.

And the two of them minded each other. It was a strange thing. Before the War, Adam and Joe could have spent hours arguing about the best way to stoke a fire. Now, after fighting on opposite sides, they were at peace in each other’s company. They spent almost all their free time together; he’d seen them go off together. It wasn’t like they talked all that much, not that Hoss could tell at least. Most often they just sat around, staring off, with that distant look on their faces. He had no idea what they were thinking about when they got all quiet like that, but he knew it didn’t have much to do with the Ponderosa. Hoss was almost embarrassed to admit it, but he’d been hurt when his brothers turned to each other and away from him. It was like they had nothing left to share with him or Pa or anyone else for that matter. The brothers he had grown up with, worked with, and fought with all his life had turned into polite strangers, who were suddenly capable of things that Hoss didn’t even understand. The violence at the bank was almost a relief. It meant that they couldn’t pretend they were “fine”. There wasn’t anything fine about any of it.

He was awfully tired of secrets. 

Hoss Cartwright wasn’t a fool. The secrets were costing all of them, probably most of all, their father. He knew his pa had aged decades after his brothers left home. Hoss had seen how he suffered while they were gone and was suffering still. Pa wasn’t the only one who was paying a price. Adam’s reserve hid all kinds of pain and that he hadn’t come close to telling them anything that really mattered. Something had shaken Adam to the core, and Hoss wanted to know what it was. 

Joe seemed better, but in reality he was faring no better than Adam. He’d watched Joe like a hawk, after he’d returned. Hoss still hadn’t gotten over the physical condition Joe was in, when he returned. For the rest of his life, he was sure that he’d remember the day the boy collapsed in front of the house, more dead than alive. It had shaken Hoss deeply to see Joe skeletal and riddled with ailments that Doc Martin didn’t know how to treat. He’d known his little brother, inside and out, before he’d left, and Hoss still felt sure that he knew him now. He knew that his brother’s body might never be the same and was sure that they could all live with that. Little Joe Cartwright’s spirit was another matter.

The kid brother he knew had been easy with his emotions and prone to losing his temper. He had a knack for stirring up trouble and an even bigger knack for having a good time. Hoss had few illusions about Little Joe; he knew that he wasn’t perfect, but more importantly, his brother knew it too. He’d returned to them, but Hoss wasn’t sure he knew this steady young man who didn’t go to dances anymore and could kill a man without breaking into a sweat.

“Thinking son?”

Hoss hadn’t heard Pa coming and almost jumped out of his skin. It wasn’t like him to be taken by surprise like that. He managed a sheepish smile at his father.

“I reckon I was,” he said. “Didn’t even hear you come in. Adam and Joe finishing up with the branding?”

“They’re getting cleaned up,” Ben answered. 

He leaned against the other side of the hearth and looked at the fire, just like Hoss had been doing when he’d come in. 

Prodding the embers, he finally asked, “Something troubling you, Hoss?”

Hoss steeled himself. He hadn’t intended to burden Pa with his worries about his brothers, but he just didn’t feel like he could keep them to himself. He’d been raised to believe that part of being a family meant sharing each other’s burdens. Keeping things deep inside was killing all of them.

He stirred up his resolve and said, “Yes sir, something’s bothering me.”

“Go on, son,” Ben prodded gently.

“Pa, I know what I saw there at the bank. We ain’t been talking bout it, and I reckon that’s just as well. Those two fellows are gonna be hung most likely. Roy says they’ve left a string of bodies all over the territory, and I reckon it’s a right good thing they didn’t leave any here. But Pa, Adam and Joe were going to kill those men. I saw it, and I know it’s true.”

“Hoss, those men were threatening my life. Your brothers had no choice but to step in,” Ben replied. His voice sounded testy, but Hoss knew that his father was not arguing with him. He was arguing with himself.

“They had a choice,” Hoss said, more sure of himself as he continued. “They took back control of the situation right away, but they took it a lot further than it needed to go. They’ve been different since they got back. Have you thought about how far away they’ve stayed from any sort of fighting? Little Joe ain’t even been in a bar fight, since he got back.”

“His leg -” Ben started, but Hoss shook his head.

“No sir, it ain’t just his leg. None of this is about his leg or Adam’s shoulder. I just know it. Both of them – Adam too – liked a good fight just about as much as any man, and I ain’t seen neither edgin’ that way since they got home. I just reckoned they’d had enough fighting and were plumb tired of it. I could understand that. But that ain’t all of it. But something changed there in the bank. When they went after those two men… Pa, they’ve been through things we don’t understand. It was like they weren’t there with us no more.”

“Where were we then?” Adam walked in from the kitchen. Neither Ben nor Hoss had heard him coming, and both startled, sharing a guilty look. How much had Adam heard of their conversation?

Adam repeated himself patiently, as if to a recalcitrant child. “If we weren’t with you, then where do you think we were?”

Hoss swallowed before replying. “That’s just it, Adam. I don’t know where you were, because I don’t know where you’ve been. Dadburnit! If you’d only tell us, maybe we could help!”

Adam’s voice was so quiet, they had to strain to hear it. “You don’t want to know where I’ve been. I don’t figure there’s a man across the territory who’d have much interest in where I’ve been or any story I had to tell.”

“I’m interested.” 

They heard Joe’s voice before they saw him. He came into the room, still wiping off his face with a rag. His hair was wet and wild from cleaning up; fresh scrubbed liked that, he looked a lot more like a boy than a man. Ben fought the urge to go to him and hug him. However, his youngest had shown little inclination for physical displays of affection since he’d returned. Both of his sons had changed in more ways than he could even begin to imagine.

Adam turned to regard his younger brother. “I’d expect you’re interested. I’d also expect you’ve already seen just about anything I could talk about.”

Ben and Hoss each held their breath. In an instant, the mood in the room had changed, and they didn’t know what it meant.

“But, it happened to you,” Joe said quietly. There was a earnestness in his voice that Hoss and Ben hadn’t heard in a long, long time. Both held their breath, while he continued. “That makes it different. I’d hear it, if you’d tell it.” 

The two regarded each other, as if they were the only two in the room. North and South, brother against brother. None of that seemed all that important. Hoss sat himself at the edge of the hearth, as did Ben. Neither said a word. Instinctively, they each seemed to know. This was not about them.

“You’ve got some telling to do of your own,” Adam said quietly. 

He pulled up a chair at the table and sat down, gesturing pointedly at the chair across from him. All of them knew that Joe’s leg gave out easily, especially at the end of the day, and they took pains to get him to rest it. Joe shrugged and took him up on it. He sat, facing Adam. 

“Your secrets for mine?” Joe asked, the shadow of a smile playing on his face. “I’ll tell if you tell? Is that how this is going to play out?”

“We left for the war together,” Adam said. “Maybe it’s time to talk. I don’t know. Maybe, there’s never really a time. It’s not like talking will change anything”

Hoss didn’t understand exactly what was going on, but he knew it was important. Why the two of them were considering talking about what happened to them was a mystery, but it really didn’t matter. Maybe they were so tired of keeping it in, they just couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Your shoulder,” Joe said, reaching down to prop his leg onto a chair. “Let’s talk about what happened to your shoulder.”

Adam returned, “All right, let’s make a deal. I’ll tell you my story in exchange for the truth about the letters. Your southern lady. I’ve kept your secret all this time and I’ve helped you with it, but I want to know what happened.”

Joe was quiet for a while. Hoss couldn’t make out the look on his little brother’s face. They all knew about the letters. Joe wrote them every night after dinner and took pains to mail them whenever he found an excuse to go into town. They all knew he checked the mail religiously, but none talked about it, not ever. They had never been a family that kept secrets from each other, yet he almost felt as distant from his brothers as when they’d been off at war. They had always been a family who believed in keeping things out in the open, even if it meant an honest fight. Hoss wondered why they had settled for such an uneasy peace.

Finally Joe said softly, “All right, brother. You’ve got a deal. My secret for yours. But yours comes first.”

Adam almost looked disappointed that Joe had agreed to his terms. But a deal was a deal, and this was no exception. His brothers would never let him hear the end of it, if he backed out. It was a story he’d told to himself so many times, he figured he’d be reciting it on his deathbed. The army hadn’t been interested in what he had to say, but he knew it was true. His memory was his own, and he could tell the story to his father and brothers. It wouldn’t hold fast in a court of law, but it was his testimony. 

That had to be worth something.

**********

It was the summer of 1864. The humidity hung in the air like a shroud. Even at night, there was little relief from the heat and the mosquitoes that feasted on the scores of filthy, exhausted men. Such was the South in the summer, and Adam found himself aching for the cool, crisp evenings of home…

In the army, Adam worked for the Corps of Engineers and quickly reached the rank of Captain. Even with his non-combatant assignment, he traveled with the regiment, drawing maps of the southern countryside. During those expeditions, he saw horrors he’d never imagined, and yet Adam still felt that the war was justified. The more he saw of slavery as he traveled into the slave-holding states, the more the loathing of it settled inside until it felt like a living presence. Visceral. Although he grieved the constant bloodshed, he was sure that it would be worth it in the end. The Union had to hold together, and slavery had to be abolished.

It was as simple as that.

Then came the terrible afternoon that his regiment descended on a picturesque town by a pretty little river. When a stash of Confederate supplies was found hidden in the basement of the rectory, it was the beginning of the end for the town and for Adam’s world of simple justice. Maybe it was the miserable heat of that summer. Maybe it was the contagion of violence that had spread like a disease among otherwise decent men. The war had continued on and on, seemingly without end. Maybe it was just sin, plain and simple. Who could say? At any event, a day’s patrol quickly turned into something else altogether.

The officers ordered that all the town’s valuables be loaded off into Army wagons and taken into Union custody. A mockery of a trial was held, and several townspeople were found guilty and hanged in the span of a single afternoon. And from there, everything fell apart quickly.

Adam rode into the town, after it had already started. On that day, he saw things that he wouldn’t forget for the rest of his life. He saw women running down the street, holding crying babies in their arms. He saw elderly men, pulled from their sickbeds, and thrown out onto the street. The lifelong possessions of generations were tossed out of windows and smashed underfoot. Overwhelmed by it all, Adam tried to help a family of three children find their mother in the ransacked town.

“Where did you last see her?” he asked with urgency.

“In our house,” replied the oldest. “She’s not there any more. She was screaming, when we ran out.”

They didn’t find her, and eventually he watched the children wander down the street, until he couldn’t track them any more. His father’s question came back to him, as he watched the destruction. Could right possibly come from this kind of wrong?

The thousands of soldiers descending upon the town didn’t take long to find the liquor closets in town. The smell of intoxication soon filled the air; the stench was almost enough to drown a man. Adam wandered, as if lost, searching through the frenzied mobs, for someone – anyone – to stop the madness. There was blood running in the street, and it was civilian blood. Not what Adam had signed up for. Not what any of them had signed up for, and yet there they were, wading through it.

At last, he found a commanding officer. The man obviously had imbibed his share of plundered spirits, but his eyes were focused and calm.

“Captain,” he said. “What is it?”

“This has to stop,” Adam sputtered, amazed that the man had to ask. “Sir, there are terrible things being done to this town. Its sources of food and water are being destroyed. These people are not the enemy. These are women… children – “

“These people have no inherent right to food or water, Captain.”

“Sir?” Adam gasped, unable to believe what he had heard.

“These people,” the officer spat, “are sympathizers to the Southern cause. We’re not going to win the War, Captain, until we destroy the underpinnings of the Confederacy. Those so-called ‘innocent’ people you see around you. They are just as much ‘The Cause’ as the soldiers trying to kill us on the field.”

Adam stared at the devastation around him and managed to choke out the words. “I disagree. Sir.”

“That,” the officer said wearily, “is of absolutely no interest to me.”

The man dismissed him with a wave of his hand and returned to his drinking.

Slowly Adam returned to the chaos, stepping around the broken glass and smashed furniture that lay discarded in the street. He was overwhelmed by what he saw.. Through the course of the war, the Federals and the Rebels both had committed their share of atrocities. He’d heard plenty of tales about the Rebels’ acts of vengeance. And of course, he’d seen brutality on both sides of the battlefield. But this was the first time he had seen widespread systemic violence. He was watching the death of a town.

The sound of breaking windows and harsh laughing startled Adam into turning around. Across the rubbish-strewn street, he saw them. A group of uniformed men pouring jugs of cheap alcohol onto the dry tinderbox of the county store. Two soldiers stood nearby, singing a ribald song and holding lit torches. Immediately, Adam recognized the act for what it was. Not only would a fire destroy much of the town’s remaining food supply, it would most likely spread to the other buildings. The soldiers were tiring of their fun. They were ready to move on, and they didn’t want to leave anything behind. And they could do what they wanted.

They were winning the War, after all.

At what price victory, Adam asked himself, bitterly. He stood in the street for only a moment, considering what he would do. Of course, he was outnumbered. Not every soldier was participating in the mayhem. Some were just standing by, drinking and watching the show. He had seen one man rescue a child that was standing in the middle of the street, but it was too much. Anyone trying to do the right thing wouldn’t know where to begin. He closed his eyes, ignoring the rabble-rousers bumping into him as they staggered along. He could smell the liquor on their breath.

As he stood there thinking, Little Joe’s face drifted into his mind, as it often did at such moments. Adam tried to remember Joe’s easy smile and his predilection for a bad joke. He thought of the fields of bodies they crossed that had paid the price for the conquering of this town. Any one of those boys, dead in the field, could have been his own brother. He heard more screaming. The memory of Joe’s face faded away and was replaced by that of his father’s. Ben Cartwright’s righteous anger could fill the town, let alone Adam’s conscience. He opened his eyes quickly. There was no doubt at all in his mind what his father would do, in his place. These men were his fellow soldiers; he’d pledged to serve at their side. But what they were doing was wrong.

Simple as that.

Adam moved quickly. He was no longer afraid of death. He had seen it far too many times for it to have a grip on him. Everyone had to die sometime. He fingered his colt pistol. Already, he’d killed his share of men, but it had never occurred to him that he might need to draw on his own side. From an upstairs window, he heard a woman screaming in obvious terror, and bile rose in his throat. He would do what he needed to. He was a Cartwright, before he was a soldier. While he couldn’t stop all of it, he could stop this. Somehow. It wasn’t much, but he’d always been taught that a little was a whole lot better than nothing.

He drew his pistol and forced more authority in his voice than he felt. “Put the torches down! No one is setting this store on fire!”

The men turned and appraised him with obvious amusement. He was an officer and of higher rank than any of them, but apparently the chain of command had fallen apart for the day, and no one had bothered to tell him.

Only one of them bothered to respond. He was a squat man with piggish eyes. In peace-times, he might have worked in a stable shoveling manure. In wartime, he was an important man. “Who do you think you are? We’ll do as we please.”

“I am an officer,” Adam replied coldly, cocking the hammer of his pistol. “And you will stop immediately.”

Another man broke in, “Well, we’ve got orders that go a hell of a lot higher up than you! Sir!”

Feeling he had no choice, Adam lifted his pistol to fire a warning shot. He would only warn them once. The rest of his ammunition had to be saved for actual targets.

As he raised his gun, a single shot resounded through the air. Adam actually felt it before he heard it. Pain, white-searing and bitter, exploded through his shoulder. The bullet carved through bone and cartilage and all his good intentions, before it exited the front of his shoulder. He collapsed to the ground. The group of men laughed, dismissing him and setting their torches to the wood frame building. Sparks flew and within moments, the fire raged as high as the roofline. Hellishly, it stood over them all. The men laughed again and moved on, leaving Adam bleeding in the street. The heat from the fire blazed against his face, even hotter than the pain in his shoulder. And yet, he was cold, so terribly cold. His entire body was shaking.

What a stupid way to die, Adam thought, but something made him look behind him, before he closed his eyes. He looked into the face of the senior officer who he had asked to stop the pillaging. The officer was not laughing. Indeed, he looked exhausted, but he held a smoking revolver in his hand. He ordered three soldiers to go to Adam, and they did, carefully lifting him up. Not seeming to catch the irony, the officer called out to them to watch his shoulder. He shouted for someone to alert the ambulance corps. Adam didn’t know where they were taking him. It didn’t really matter.

Darkness, when it came, was the greatest relief that he had ever known.

 

**********

 

He awoke in an infirmary. He could smell lye soap and antiseptic in the air. Girls, in crisp white uniforms, attended the desperately wounded. Less critical patients lay on their backs, staring into empty space. A few men played cards. No one seemed to care that he had awakened. All and all, well over a hundred men lay in the room. It was the least crowded hospital Adam had ever seen. Clearly, he had been sent to a well staffed hospital for wounded officers. Most infirmaries were hundreds of acres of tents staked in the mud, holding places for death and the dying.

Searching for his voice, he found it, a mere scratch in the back of his throat. He needed to tell someone – anyone – about what he had seen and what had happened. A fresh-faced nurse hurried to his side. She had freckles on her nose. She looked all of sixteen.

“War crimes,” he murmured faintly. “I need to report – “

The child nurse looked frightened, nodded, and hurried away. After what seemed like hours, she returned with a uniformed officer, higher in rank than Adam.

He looked faintly impatient and asked, “What’s this about, Captain? Isn’t this little girl treating you right?”

Adam frowned. He didn’t have the strength for good manners. In a barely audible voice, he started to tell his story. Always meticulous with details, he struggled to not leave anything out or to exaggerate anything he had seen. When it was finished, he collapsed against the coarse ticking. He had nothing left to tell. It was up to the Army to decide what measures had to be taken.

The Colonel stood for a time, staring out the window. Adam followed his gaze and noticed it had started to rain outside. The dampness crept into the air. It already smelled of mildew growing.

Finally the man looked back, not without compassion.

He said, “Captain, I suggest you forget what you saw and what happened to you. Nothing’s going to come of it. You can trust me on that. Best thing you can do is take the story to your grave and concentrate on healing. Make it home to your family in one piece.”

Adam didn’t even bother protesting the gunshot to his shoulder. “But the women.. the children… That entire town-“

“Everyone in that town were Southern sympathizers, Captain.” The Colonel lowered his voice. “I don’t like this, any more than you do, but it goes higher than me. We’re not going to have a country if this doesn’t end soon. If that means breaking the will of the South, then so be it. Those are our orders. I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of it.”

As he walked away, Adam could feel his convictions slipping away. The emptiness they left behind hurt worse than the pain in his shoulder, and that was saying a lot. The wound hurt like sheer and utter hell. He thought back to the fine day he left the Ponderosa, full of righteous purpose and tightly held convictions. He still held those convictions, but they had cost them all so dearly. Slavery was a terrible evil that had to be ended. Secession had to be stopped. He still felt that he had made the right decision to fight for the Union. But right and wrong wasn’t as simple as he had once believed.

Before closing his eyes, Adam Cartwright managed three more words. No one was around to hear him, but that didn’t matter any more. What mattered was the telling.

“I’m sorry, Pa,” he said.

 

**********

The evening had slipped into darkness. While listening to Adam’s story, they had missed dinner, although Hoss could smell it drifting in from the kitchen. Hop Sing was sitting by the door, listening to Adam telling his story. Even he was willing to admit that there was something more important than his dinner served hot and on time. They were all quiet for a while, considering the terrible things he had described. Ben and Hoss had read of such atrocities. Sherman’s march to the sea had been widely reported in the periodicals. It was one thing to read about it and quite another thing to hear it firsthand. To know that a beloved son and brother had lived through it. Finally, Adam broke the silence. He repeated the words he had spoken in that hospital.

“I’m sorry, Pa,” he said.

He wasn’t sure what he was sorry for, but it seemed right to say it. He was sorry for leaving the way he did, and he was sorry for bringing the war home with him. He was not the only one who had paid a price. If he hadn’t left, Joe wouldn’t have followed. His father wouldn’t have aged years before his time, and Hoss wouldn’t be shouldering the responsibility that his brothers had cast on him. 

“You did the right thing, son,” Ben said gently. “I’m proud of you. You did what you needed to, and you paid a price for it.”

“I don’t understand why you left,” Hoss said, after a spell. “Maybe I’ll never understand why the two of you went off to that war. But you’re my brother, Adam, and I reckon you were needed there. Maybe you stopped some bad things from happening that you’ll never even know about.”

Adam wished he shared his brother’s faith, but he said, “Thank you,” all the same.

Joe hadn’t spoken yet and looked sharply at Adam.

“The town burned, didn’t it?” he asked.

Adam nodded. “To the ground.”

“Were you there, Joe?” Hoss asked.

“I didn’t need to be,” he answered. “It wasn’t the only town.”

He looked away with evident bitterness. It was late. They all had an early morning waiting, but none had forgotten Joe’s promise. Ben turned to him.

“Son,” he said gently. “The letters…”

“Talking about it won’t change anything, Pa,” Joe said. “I’ll still wake up with it in the morning. It’s not something to get over. You have to understand that.”

“It might stay in front of you little brother,” Hoss said. “But at least it won’t be between us. That’s gotta be some kind of help.”

Joe shrugged and looked over at Adam. Having his family know the story wouldn’t bring her back to him. However, Adam had parted with one of many secrets, and to tell the truth, his brother did look a little more at ease than Joe had seen him. It was too early to tell if it was real, but he looked a little less alone in the world. 

“Why don’t you tell us, Joe?” Adam asked, with an unexpected smile. “Not to pressure you, but a promise is a promise…”

Joe smiled back but rolled his eyes. “Not to pressure me or anything. I’d have thought you’d all forget about me, by the time big brother here was done talking. There’s not much to tell. Just another sad story. That’s what’s left of the South. Miles after miles of stories, each one sadder than the one before it.”

“It’s your story, Joseph. That makes it ours as well,” his father said, placing a hand on his youngest son’s shoulder. For once, Joe didn’t ease out from under it.

Instead he leaned into the strength of that hand. He couldn’t decide if he felt like a little kid or an old man. Either way didn’t matter. The weight of his memories was a burden that he didn’t think he could keep carrying alone. He would start telling them, only because he was too tired to keep them to himself.

**********

… it was fall, and it was beautiful that afternoon. The air smelled like dry leaves and the changing seasons. She was lovely, and she was his. His leg was healing. Any day, he would have to leave her and return to his regiment. He was not the same man he had once been. He would never be the same, and his leg would probably slow him down so much that he wouldn’t live through a few days of battle. They didn’t talk about that. Their time together had been five months of healing and friendship and trying to find enough food to stay alive. They lived together in the grand house, surrounded by the dark woods.

It hadn’t taken them long to fall in love. She joked later that he was in love with her before they made it back to the house on the day she found him. It was only a little true, but he’d laughed anyways. His father and brothers were always kidding him that on a good day, he could fall in love a couple of times before breakfast.

This was different than all those other times.

They knew they didn’t have much time for love. He would need to return to his regiment as soon as he could walk an honest mile. Penalties were harsh for deserters, and Joe hadn’t been raised to back out on a promise made. She was a daughter of the moral code of the South. She also understood about honor but didn’t have to like it. Perfectly aware that they didn’t have much time, she fell in love with him before any of the normal courtship rituals had even started. There simply wasn’t time to pretend they felt any differently. Rebel and Union troops still patrolled the area, engaging in occasional skirmishes and stealing what little food was left. Supplies in rural Mississippi had dwindled to almost nothing. They didn’t take a single day for granted.

They were very young. Each considered the other the bravest person they had ever known. They were wounded, inside and out, but they loved each other, and that was enough to make a lot of it better.

Joe braced his musket against the door and looked to her. She was stoking the fire but turned as though she could feel him watching her. Grinning, he crooked a finger, and she rolled her eyes at him. She was one you had to take seriously. A slip of a girl, and yet she had held a pack of Union soldiers off from her home with a riding crop. She had grit that even a Yankee could respect. The keys to the cellars and the smokehouses dangled from her pocket. She had work to do. There was always something that kept her busy.

He loved to watch her. Joe had been in love before. He didn’t kid himself that she was the first. Yet, the way he felt for her changed everything. Their time together wasn’t just an idyll. It was real, and the war that raged around them was the dream. A half-remembered dream of unrelenting harshness.

Shaking her head at him, she walked over anyways. He held her in the soft afternoon light, stroking his hand over the faintest curve of her belly. She was his wife, and she was carrying his child. No law in the land would recognize them as legally married, but there were no preachers left in the territory. All the nearby towns were already plundered and abandoned. There was nobody to marry them for miles in any direction, so they married themselves. They would take care of the rest when the War was over. Joe hoped that God and Ben Cartwright would understand.

“Do you have to go?” she asked. “I’ve had the oddest feeling all day. Something’s not right, and I don’t want to be alone.”

“Something’s not right, but we need to eat,” he said, kissing the crown of her head, inhaling the clean scent of lilacs. “That means I need to find us some food. Don’t worry. With a little luck, I won’t be gone for long. You do know that I love you.”

“We don’t have much time,” she said softly. “You’re leaving soon.”

Although he’d had his doubts about the Southern Cause for a long time, he had few doubts about the way the war was turning. He’d grown to love the people he fought with. He still had great sympathy for their right to self-govern. If nothing else, the woman in his arms would always tie him to the fate of the South.

He answered with true regret. “It’s almost over, Annalisa. Seasons change, wars have to end sometime. All I need to do is stay alive a little longer, and then I’ll be coming back to you.”

“Dead men aren’t much good at keeping their promises,” she retorted. “This baby needs a father alive and well. Joe, that leg won’t keep you alive, and you know it. The Yankees will have you in your grave before the sun sets on your first day back.”

“I’ve made it this far,” he interjected. “Have a little faith. Let’s not turn this into a tragedy before we get to see how the story ends.”

“I’ve read enough of the story to have my doubts,” she said wryly.

“Then believe in me,” he said. “You’ve never read a story like this one.”

She allowed herself a smile. He always made her smile. “Tell me about the Ponderosa, then. Please. One more time before you go.”

So he told her. There in the musty room, he let his words take her back to the Nevada ranch house set back from the main road. Back to the miles and miles of mountain ridges blanketed with endless forests of pine and cedar. Back to the lake that glistened so impossibly blue that a man’s eyes ached to take it in. She’d heard it before, but she wanted to hear it one more time. He told her about his childhood as though it were something perfect, even though they both knew that couldn’t be true. About what it felt like to grow up wild and loved and as fast as a good horse could take you. He told her about the Ponderosa.

“And you left it for the South,” she whispered. “You left for a war that wasn’t your own.”

He repeated the words he said every night. “Maybe I left it for you. To bring me to you.”

It was their litany, their sacred text. The words were always the same. It was almost as if speaking them differently would make them less true. It wasn’t much of a story, but it was all in the telling.

He held her and kissed her and then slipped out the door. Later he blamed himself, a thousand times over, for never saying goodbye.

Joe propped the musket over his shoulder and whistled a bit, as he slipped down the mossy hill that led to the woods by the river. It was a bright, edgy day, not as humid as the past couple weeks, and the future stretched out in front of him with all its uncertainties. There was no fruit left in the orchards and very little game. Hunting here took patience, persistence, and a great deal of waiting. So much about war had been the waiting. Actual combat was a nightmarish break in the interminable boredom of waiting. Joe had often felt he could lose his mind in it, that fighting a battle would be preferable, but he didn’t really mean it. The War had taught him patience in many things. His time with Annalisa had also been about waiting. Waiting to heal, waiting for love to grow stronger, waiting for the War to end. Many soldiers said that the wait was the hardest part, but Joe knew better.

He had never imagined that his life might have headed in this direction. He could hear Adam’s voice mocking him gently: Trust my little brother to go to war and meet a pretty girl. He almost believed everything would be all right.

The light was lacing through the leaves, shadowing diamonds on the ground. It smelled like rain, and he scanned the woods, eager for some movement, somewhere. He had to find something to bring home for dinner, but the pickings were scant. He refused to think about how she would make it through the winter without him. She was strong, but it wouldn’t be easy. For a moment, he entertained the idea of running away with her. Of leaving the South and the War and finding his way home. There were too many risks, of course. She was with child. Likely they’d be caught by either side, a few miles out, and he’d be shot in front of her. He didn’t even want to think what would happen to Annalisa, as a spoil of war. Of course, he already knew, as did she.

He heard the crack of branches. From a childhood spent outdoors, he knew he was hearing men and not a wayward deer. They were at least a half mile away, when he began to run. Before, he would have gotten away. He’d always been fast, everyone said so. Yet his leg seized in pain and caught in the undergrowth. Falling uselessly onto the ground, he heard them gaining ground, the hounds yelping. By the time he got to his feet and started moving again, they were on him. It was over very quickly.

At first, he didn’t know who had captured him, the Rebels or the Federals. They were out of uniform, sour and unwashed. They were laughing and swearing, kicking at him lazily. In a daze, he figured they were Rebels by their tattered clothing. They reeked of liquor and desperation. His own weapon lay discarded at the side. One of the men picked it up, inspected it, and handed it to his companion with a shrug.

The largest one tightened his grip around Joe’s throat and cocked the hammer of his pistol, pushing it against his forehead.

“Worthless deserter,” he hissed. “I should kill you right now. I’d do it if the Rebs didn’t pay good money for the privilege of doing it themselves.”

Joe realized immediately that he’d been caught by one of the vicious groups of bounty hunters that roamed the countryside, searching for deserters. They were associated with the Guard, but only loosely so.

“You look better fed than you ought to,” one spat in his face. “Who’s been hiding you?”

Joe didn’t answer, so they beat him some more. It didn’t matter. He’d gladly die, over and over again, rather than lead them back to her. She would be watching out the window, worry creasing her forehead. She would load her father’s old musket and take the lantern, using their scarce fuel to light it. She would come looking for him again and again, just as he would always come looking for her. It would take more than a miracle to make this all turn out right.

Joe cast out one last desperate prayer, before he closed his eyes.

Annalisa. Don’t look for me. I’ll come back for you…

 

**********

The room had grown dark,. Hop Sing had stoked the fire, while Joe was talking, and no one had noticed. They all were shivering anyways. It wasn’t even cold, but the chill had settled for the night. Joe felt it reaching into the very marrow of his bones. The cold ran through his veins. How did a man survive such things and keep living to tell about them? 

He was all out of stories.

But there was more, and so he told it. Told about how the band of bounty hunters and their captives were captured a day later by a Federal regiment. Two men were pistol whipped, one shot in the head, and Joe and three others were taken into custody. A Yankee prison was just another form of hell, and he’d survived only by keeping her face always in his mind. He stayed in prison, until the war ended. More dead than alive, he fought his way across miles and miles of devastated countryside, back to Mississippi, until he reached the dark woods at the bottom of the hill.

She was gone.

The house was gone as well. In its place remained a burned out shell, with six, graceful, brick chimneys jutting out from the ground. Dropping to his knees, he cried and cried. It would be the last time he cried for a long time. He looked for her, month after month, until his flesh hung over his bones like rags. Until he had no choice but to return home or die. He hadn’t stopped looking. He would never stop looking. He’d give up the remaining years of his life just to see her one more time.

Joe looked up. The clock’s ticking echoed across the great room. It sounded impossibly lonely. His father and brothers were staring, all lost in their own thoughts. Hoss looked particularly troubled, scuffing at the floorboards with the heel of his boot. I’d rather have spared you, big brother, Joe thought to himself.

“Not the kind of story to tell at a dance,” Joe said softly. 

Nobody laughed or even smiled, but Ben reached across the table for his son’s hand. 

“I’m sorry, son,” he said. “There’s nothing I can say other than tell you how sorry I am.”

“Maybe, she’s somewhere you haven’t looked,” Hoss suggested. “You couldn’t have sent letters everywhere.”

“She knew where to send for me, Hoss,” Joe said softly. “I’d have heard by now. It would take a miracle.”

“Miracles happen,” Hoss retorted. The gruff stubbornness in his voice might have made Joe grin, on a different kind of day. 

“Sure they do,” Joe said kindly, not missing Adam’s skeptical shake of the head. “You’re right about that, big brother.”

Joe stood, stretched, and tried not to lean too heavily on his strong leg. Work on your weaknesses, that’s what the doc said. It was all too easy to let the injured muscles wither from disuse. He’d been living off balance; he could see that now. It had left him numb and opened him up to the kind of violence that had flooded back into him the other day at the bank. That was part of him now, and he’d just have to face that. He’d have to deal with so many things. It had been the right thing to tell his family about his wife and child. 

“Good night,” he said, squeezing his father’s hand, before heading up the stairs.

Hoss lowered his head to his hands, looking as sad as Adam had ever seen him. It had been too much, the incident at the bank topped with the night’s telling of stories. There had to be some way to take some of it back. Desperately, Adam wondered how he and Joe could make it up to him, even in the smallest way. Joe couldn’t be asleep yet. He’d slip into his room so they could talk it over. Surely, together they could come up with something. Joe had always known how to make Hoss happy. This time, Adam would be willing to follow along with whatever his little brother planned.

“Night,” Adam told them both and started for the stairs.

“Adam.” Ben’s voice still held all sorts of authority and Adam froze, one foot poised on the first step. “Thank you, son.”

Adam managed a wry smile tinged with apologies he couldn’t say out loud. He took the stairs, two at a time, and disappeared down the hall that led to Joe’s room.

**********

It was still dark, when Ben woke up. He hadn’t planned to sleep, realizing that his sons’ terrible stories would give him nightmares that rivaled theirs. Finally he dozed off, and sure enough, he dreamed of smoldering Southern towns and a Southern beauty holding a grandchild that he might never know. 

Then he realized why he had woken. There was a ruckus outside his door, but it was a good sort of ruckus that the house hadn’t known in some time. He cast the dreams aside and slipped into his robe. He pressed his ear against the door and listened to what was happening in the hall.

“Dadburnit, Little Joe,” Hoss was muttering. “Stop pulling on me. I ain’t even had time to get my boots on.”

Joe shot back, “Big brother, at the rate you’re going, the fish are gonna die of old age before we get there!”

“Would you two keep it down?” Adam complained. “You’re going to wake up Pa. Joe, did you saddle the horses already?”

“Saddled, while you two old men were still in bed,” Joe said, and Ben could hear the cheerful edge to his youngest son’s voice.

“What about the saddlebags?” Adam asked. “The fishing poles?”

“Packed and ready,” Joe replied. “Glory hallelujah brother, have some faith in me!”

“Will the faith of a mustard seed suffice?”

“They say it’d move mountains, so I expect it’ll have to,” Joe replied. 

Ben bit back a laugh. It seemed that two of his sons had been paying attention during all those Sundays at church after all.

Hoss grumbled, “All I can say is you two picked some time to want to go fishing with me. I don’t think I slept an hour last night.”

“Complain, complain,” Joe said. Ben could picture him winking at Adam. “Older brother, what happened to you, while we were gone? A man could grow roots just listening to you.”

“And you’re both going to wake up, Pa,” Adam said. “Quiet now. I mean it.”

“Should we tell him where we’re going?” Joe asked. “I hate to wake him up after last night.”

“He’ll know,” Adam replied. “This time, I’m pretty sure he’ll know.”

Their voices faded, as their none too quiet footsteps sounded on the stairs. The front door opened and slammed shut. His youngest boy might be a war hero, but he’d never learned to close a door gently. Ben hurried to the window, wanting to catch a glimpse of his three sons before they went on their way. The dawning light was gray, but he could see them as they mounted. Hoss leaned over and pretended to pull Joe from the saddle, while his little brother took a swing at his hat. Adam shook his head at them, but laughed out loud, when Joe succeeded in knocking the hat to the ground. Joe laughed as well, and Ben could still hear them laughing, as they rode away, fishing poles jauntily bumping against their saddlebags.

Ben stole a glance at the brightening horizon. The overcast had lightened, unusual for the season. He allowed himself to hope for a decent day. Perhaps the boys would get to the lake before it got too late in the morning. Maybe, the weather would hold. Maybe the fish would bite. It had been a long night, and there was a road ahead of them. Yet, Ben figured they were due for a miracle. 

Or two.

**********

Epilogue

Adam absently thanked John at the desk and took the packet of mail. He hummed a little under his breath, as he strolled outside, gathering his coat against the cold. It hadn’t been a bad day. In fact, it had gone better than most, although his body ached from hours in the saddle. Some days, the day’s work hummed along. He almost felt like he could fit into his life again.

The memories didn’t wear at him the same way that they used to. He hadn’t told his family many more stories, but somehow he didn’t need to. His shoulder seemed to be improving. Sometimes, he was able to pass a day and forget he’d been wounded. He even managed to smile at Joe’s tall tales, which only got worse by the day.

Joe’s leg still gave him a lot of trouble, and Doc Martin wired a specialist he heard about back east. They still hadn’t heard anything, but Joe told them not to worry. He could live with the leg the way it was. That’s what he said, and they chose to believe him. He’d lived with worse things.

Mrs. Fisher and her girls smiled at Adam, as he passed by. Rumor had it, among the female population of Virginia City, that the oldest Cartwright boy might prove a catch yet. They said that he was coming out of the dark funk he’d been in, since returning from the War. Adam hadn’t done anything to encourage any of them, but a mother with pretty daughters could hope. He tipped his hat to them, as he began sorting through the mail.

He smiled a bit to himself. Little Joe Cartwright had remained a disappointment to the lovely young ladies in town. It was a shameful waste of a God-given face, for such a young man to keep it to himself. That’s what the gossips said at church. Even Hoss had heard them. None of the Cartwrights talked about any of it. The truth about Joe. About him. They could live with a chorus of whispers, because they were a family and knew how to keep each other’s secrets. 

Every one of them.

Absently, he 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.

The End

Next story in the Dividing Line Series:

 Peace Offering
 The Quickening