Summary:  Written for the 2018 Missing Man Challenge.  I have always felt that the drama of “To Die in Darkness” would have been intensified if Ben had experienced its situation with a son, rather than with Candy, much as I like him.  This challenge seemed like the perfect opportunity to explore that idea.

Rated:  K+

Word Count:  14,833 words

Together in Darkness

Ben Cartwright and his oldest son Adam let their horses set the pace on the final stretch of road back to the Ponderosa.  After pushing cattle from dawn to dusk, neither had the energy to urge their mounts to a quicker one, much as they longed to see the familiar log ranch house.  A long, unintentional sigh escaped Adam’s lips as it came into sight at last.  “Long day,” he said in answer to his father’s inquiring glance.

With a twinkle in his eye, Ben responded, “Trust me, son: they get longer.”

“Not that I’m complaining or questioning the way you apportion duties for the day,” Adam said, although, of course, he was, “but it does seem to me that the younger half of the Cartwright family drew the easier assignment today.”

“You don’t think your brothers worked just as hard, running errands in town, as we did gathering those reluctant beeves?”

Adam arched a skeptical eyebrow.  “I do not, and, frankly, if either of them has commandeered the bathtub, I may be forced to lift him out bodily and toss him through a window.”

Ben chuckled at the image of his oldest doing that to his middle son.  “Hoss?  You sure you have the energy left for that challenge?”

Adam returned a weak smile.  “Probably not.”

“Nor have I,” said Ben, “but never you fear.  I have ways of evening things out.”

“Ah!  I shall leave it in your capable hands, then.”  He directed his gaze toward the front door.  “I suppose it’s too much to hope that the boys are back from town, eagerly anticipating the opportunity to stable our horses.”

Snickering beneath his breath, Ben shook his head.  “When they could be enjoying the attractions of the Bucket of Blood?  Or is the Silver Dollar these days?”

“Since Hoss is along,” Adam suggested with a wry twist of his mouth, “whichever is offering the largest free lunch.”

Ben’s grunt acknowledged the truth that formed the foundation for the time-honored, though not totally merited, joke about his middle son’s appetite.  “Still,” he said as he pulled his aching body out of the saddle and led his bay Buck toward the hitching rail, “on the off chance . . .”

Adam’s second eyebrow arch communicated his opinion that “off” perfectly described their chances of his brothers’ actually having resisted the temptations of a cold beer in Hoss’s case and a pretty face in Joe’s; nonetheless, he tied the reins of his chestnut beside his father’s horse and followed him toward the house.  One could always hope, after all.  Only it really had been nothing but hope, and a dim one at that, as demonstrated by the surprise his face registered when he saw both his brothers stand as soon as he and Pa walked in.  “What’s the matter, little brothers?” he quipped.  “Have the saloons of Virginia City suddenly run dry?”

“No,” Little Joe said, his serious attitude alien to his usual lighthearted demeanor.

“You finish early?” Ben asked.

“We didn’t quite finish up, Pa,” Hoss replied.  “We just felt a need to come home.”  He sent a pleading glance toward his younger brother.

Though Adam saw it and recognized it for what it was, the traditional passing of the buck of an unpleasant task, Ben’s back was to his younger sons.  He laid his curled gun belt on the credenza by the front door and turned to face them.  “Oh?  Something come up?”

“Yeah, Pa.” Little Joe moistened his lips as he moved toward his father and extended a small envelope.  “I thought you might want to see this.  It came in to Sheriff Coffee.”

Adam’s emotive eyebrows this time drew into a straight line.  Little Joe had never been able to hide whatever emotion was surging through him at the moment.  From the look on his face, something was, indeed, up, and it was clearly something far outside the ordinary.

Concerned by the troubled look on his youngest son’s face, Ben took the message and opened it; as he read, his face grew even more sober than those of Hoss and Little Joe.  “John Postley,” he said for the benefit of his eldest.  “He’s been released.”

“Released?” Adam asked, instantly as disturbed as the other men.  His father had been the chief witness against Postley in the trial that had sent the man to prison.  Early release from those dour walls, especially when the crime was bank robbery, just didn’t happen.  “You sure you don’t mean ‘escaped’?”

“Released,” Hoss verified.  “Verdict overturned.”

“Man in Placerville confessed to robbing the Virginia City bank.”  Ben looked stunned as he handed the telegram to Adam.

“Oh, no,” Adam murmured as he scanned the lines.  While an inmate’s escape from those walls was alarming, the realization that an innocent man had been imprisoned behind them was unbearable.  Especially for the man who had played a role in putting him there.  Adam automatically stepped to his father’s side and laid a consoling hand on the older man’s shoulder.  “You had no choice, Pa,” he said softly.  “You saw Postley come out of that alley; you had to testify.”

“It was the jury that found him guilty, not you, Pa,” Little Joe said.

“I know, but”—Ben shook his head, dismay painted across his ashen face—“a year and a half.  Can you imagine how he must have felt, sitting in prison all those months, knowing he was innocent?”

The hand gripping his shoulder tightened.  “Postley must be grateful to be vindicated after so short a stay in that place,” Adam said.

“Short!”  Little Joe looked flabbergasted.  “It was a year and a half, Adam.  I’ve never stayed in jail more than a few days, and it like to killed me.”

Adam chuffed out a gust of air.  “Thankfully we don’t all share your measure of impatience, kid.  After all, it could have been his whole life.  Compared to that, he ought to be feeling pretty lucky.”

“He was innocent, Adam,” Hoss argued.  “That’s gotta make a man a mite bitter, don’t you reckon?”

Adam gritted his teeth.  A year and a half was a long time to serve for a crime you hadn’t committed, and of course, it could lead to bitterness; he recognized that as readily as his brothers.  What they, however, apparently had lost sight of was the effect of their words on their father.  Devastation was too mild a word for the emotion pooling in Pa’s eyes.  He needed to believe that John Postley could come out of this still able to weigh the blessing of what had been restored against what had been temporarily taken, that he could emerge from the fire with an unbroken, unembittered spirit and pick up the pieces of his life once again.  Silence hung heavy for a moment; then Adam said, in a tone like that men use in prayer.  “That’s up to him, Hoss.”

**********

            Ben was waging warfare on the monthly accounts when a knock at the door granted him a reprieve.  When he saw who was waiting on the porch, however, he couldn’t help but feel a frisson of fear, and for a moment he couldn’t say anything.

“Howdy, Ben,” John Postley said, taking off his hat in the subservient way so typical of the humble, self-effacing man he’d always been.

“John.”  Ben still didn’t know what to say, how to say what so plainly needed to be said.

“It’s been a long time.”

A long time.  A year and a half and all for—Ben got hold of himself enough to say, “Come in” and step aside so Postley could.

Postley moved into the room ahead of Ben, and somehow the words were easier to say to his back than to his face.  “We—uh—got the news about a month ago.  Don’t know what to say.”

Postley turned to him with a small smile.  “Don’t say nothin’.  What’s done is done and ain’t nobody’s fault.”

Though still uneasy, Ben looked relieved.  “Thank you, John.”

“For what?”

“For making it easy for me.”  Much as he meant them, the words were still hard to get out.

“I told you wasn’t nobody’s fault.”

Ben’s laugh was nervous, but the muscles in his face began to relax.  “Well, come on, sit down, have a drink.”

Settling into the burgundy leather chair by the fire, Postley sounded as friendly as he had before the whole catastrophe had happened.  “No, no drink, thank you, Ben.  I’m sorry I didn’t get by earlier.  I meant to; I wanted to come by and tell you there was no hard feelings, but I got busy, up to the diggings this last month.”

“You doin’ some mining?” Ben asked as he took a seat on the settee, close to Postley.

“Little bit.”

“I thought farming was more in your line,” Ben said.

“Well, it was,” Postley admitted, “but I lost that little piece of land I had.”

Guilt pricked Ben’s heart.  He’d only done his civic duty, and he’d testified honestly; still, a man had lost his home because of it.  But for his testimony, Postley never would have been wrongfully convicted, never would have lost his land.  And Ben had so much, a thousand square miles; the least he could do was share a little of his bounty.  Eager to make amends, he hurriedly mentioned that there was plenty of good farming land on the Ponderosa, but Postley refused.  He said he was seeing a little color and wanted to keep at the mining for now.  He also refused Ben’s offer to stake the mining venture.  When his guest rose to leave after his brief visit, Ben said what he was certain were vain words: “Anything you need, you just have to holler.”  With every previous offer turned down, he had no reason to expect Postley to accept such a vague, general suggestion.  People almost never did.

Postley surprised him, though.  “Well, there is one thing.”

“Name it,” Ben said, excited to discover some way he could help the unfortunate man.

“Food at prison is nothing to shout at,” Postley said, adding with a wry grin, “but my own is worse.  I could sure use an invite to supper some night.”

Such a simple request, yet it carried within it more than a chance to assuage his guilt.  Sharing a meal felt more like an offer of renewed friendship, a return to happier times as if there’d been no interruption in their relationship.  “Well, how about tonight?” Ben asked eagerly.  “Now, the cook’s away, but they say I’m a pretty fair hand in the kitchen.”  Postley begged off, saying he had to get his supplies back to the mine, but he was quick to accept the same proposal for the following night.  Both men parted with smiles of satisfaction, but if Ben had seen Postley’s face after the door closed behind him, he might have noted that the would-be miner’s seemed a bit grim at the corners—grim and determined.

**********

            The four Cartwrights were gathered before the fireplace for their after-dinner coffee, and Ben had just finished describing the afternoon’s visit.  “And that was the conversation,” he concluded, “and I’ve got to admit to something: it took a load off my mind to see how well he’d come out of it.”  His tone conveyed the amazement he still felt, even after hours of mulling it over.

“Mine, too,” Adam quickly agreed.  The relief he felt, which he was sure his brothers shared, was more for his father than for Postley.  Over the past month he’d seen his father’s countenance take on a grayish cast as meaningless guilt ate away at his soul.  Already he was looking brighter than he had since they’d first received the news of Postley’s false imprisonment, and Adam had every hope that Pa would soon be his vibrant self again, vigorous enough to work them all into the ground, though in Joe’s case that wasn’t saying much, he thought, grinning into his coffee.

“You know, that man’s got so much pride, he just won’t take any help,” Ben was saying as Adam came out of his reverie.

“You have to give him credit,” Adam said.

“Yeah, and I’ll tell you another thing we’ve gotta give him is a supper he’ll never forget . . . chicken and dumplings, the works.”

Hoss’s face puckered into a pout worthy of a disappointed three-year-old.  “Chicken ‘n’ dumplin’s,” he murmured.  “Dadbern it, Pa, can’t you do it another day?  I have to leave first thing in the morning, and it’ll take me two, three days to make all those line camps.”

Though it scarcely seemed possible, Ben’s smile broadened.  “Well, now, Hoss, that’s exactly why I sent you on that little mission, to make sure that John gets a chance at the dumplings.”

Little Joe let loose his famous cackle, rivaling any jaybird in volume and exuberance, but he was quickly silenced when his father added, with a broad sweep of his hand, “And having Joe along will just make the time fly by!”  As Little Joe slumped in disappointment, Hoss started to laugh.  Ben turned toward Adam and gave him a sly wink, and suddenly Adam knew exactly what his father had meant a month earlier when he’d said he had ways of evening things out.  At this moment things felt much more than even; he definitely felt he was one up on his brothers.

**********

            That John Postley had relished his supper was evident from the way he mopped up every drop of creamy broth from the chicken and dumplings.  It did Ben good to see the man eat heartily, but also pinched his heart at the thought of the year and a half of meager food that had produced the appetite.  Still, it had been a good evening, one he hated to see come to an end.  “Have you seen any encouraging ore sample?” he asked, as much to keep the conversation going as to explore the new miner’s prospects.

“Oh, I don’t know, Ben,” Postley replied.  “It looks good to me, but I’m not sure I know good ore when I see it.  All I know is what I read in some books another prisoner left behind.”

Ben flinched slightly at the mention of Postley’s time behind bars.  “You could get an outside expert to take a look,” he suggested.

Postley shook his head.  “Naw, experts cost money, which I ain’t got much of.”  His eyes lit up, as if sparked by a sudden idea.  “Hey, you used to do a little mining, didn’t you, Ben?”

Ben exhaled in soft disdain.  “Oh, a little when we first settled here.  I’m no expert, John.”

“But you could give me a fair idea, couldn’t you?” Postley pressed.  “It’d sure be a help to know whether I’m onto something or just diggin’ an empty hole.”

Ben shook his head.  “Adam here knows far more about mining than I do; he’s your man.”

“That’s right,” Postley said, though his excitement seemed to wane a bit.  “Probably studied it in college back East, right, Adam?”

Adam shrugged.  “I studied a little engineering, which can be applied to mining, but most of what I know I learned from the early miners on the Comstock.”

“I remember you pestering the Grosch brothers to loan you their mining books,” Ben chuckled.

Adam smiled as he nodded.  “They were good enough to do it, too, so, yeah, with one thing and another, I have picked up a fair understanding of mines.”

“Good thing they had the patience of Job, to put up with all your questions.”  Ben was still smiling at the memory of those early days on the Comstock.

“Well, it’s sure a blessing to me they did,” Postley put in enthusiastically.  “You’ll help me, then, Adam?  Just a look, that’s all my asking.”

“Oh, of course, he will,” Ben answered for his son.

Adam arched his eyebrow at his father, but he was smiling as he did, so while Ben felt chagrined by having volunteered his adult son, instead of letting him speak for himself, he knew Adam was willing to accept the assignment.

“Well, I’ll really appreciate it,” Postley said, “and—and you’ll come, too, won’t you, Ben?  Two opinions is better than one, I reckon.”

Ben laughed.  “Mine won’t matter much, next to Adam’s, but I’ll come, too, anytime you like.”

Postley beamed with eagerness.  “There’s a couple hours of daylight.  How ‘bout right now?

Both Cartwrights laughed, but neither had the heart to refuse, and soon the trio was saddled up and on their way to Postley’s diggings.  “This could be my lucky day!” Postley said with an enigmatic smile.

**********

            Peering into the deep shaft Postley had dug in his mine, Adam resisted the temptation to whistle in admiration.  If there were one word the man knew the meaning of, it was obviously work, for the shaft was not only deep, but wide, its walls straight and smooth, carved with almost geometric precision.  Postley pointed out a rope ladder, hanging over the edge, and said that he’d fetch a lantern while they descended.  Adam automatically started down ahead of his father.  If the ladder didn’t hold his weight, there was no way it would hold his father’s.  He quickly lost that concern, however, for the ladder, obviously newly constructed, felt sturdy beneath his feet.

As Ben came down after him, Adam moved to one of the walls and ran his hands over the smooth surface.  The light was too dim in the depths of the shaft to see any sign of ore, but just touching the wall reawakened his boyhood scientific interest in mining and conjured dreams of making a big strike.  For John’s sake, he hoped it wasn’t a dream.

His father came to his side.  “Can you tell anything?”

Adam snorted.  “In this light?”

Ben snuffled in agreement and turned around to see if Postley was back.  He was, but oddly enough, the man, so eager before to have them examine his mine, was just standing there, holding the lantern and staring down at them.  That frisson of fear he’d felt a couple of days earlier shivered up Ben’s spine as he called, “John?  What’re you doing?”

The question made Adam turn and look up, also, and he saw something his father had missed, the rope ladder dangling from one of Postley’s hands.  Every suspicious cell in his body clenched with concern, but he prayed he was wrong.

“You looking for this?” Postley said, raising the ladder.

“What’re you doin’, John?  What is this, some kind of joke?”  Ben laughed nervously.

“No, ain’t no joke, Ben; mistake I pulled the ladder up,” Postley said, face flat and expressionless.  “I didn’t mean to; made a mistake, but we all make mistakes, don’t we, Ben?”

Something in the man’s level tone and the hint at hidden meaning in his words made the hairs on Adam’s neck stand to attention.  While he was afraid he knew what that meaning was, he decided to act as though everything were normal.  Perhaps, then, Postley would step out from whatever dark shadow had swept over him.  “Come on, John,” he urged.  “Bring the lantern down.  Let’s see what sort of color you’ve struck.”

“Yeah, John,” Ben called.  “Don’t you want to see what you’ve got?”

“Oh, I know what I’ve got, Ben,” Postley said with foreboding calm.  “I’ve got you.”  He turned and walked away.

“John!” Ben shouted, and Adam, though he feared the effort futile, joined in.  There was no response to their repeated cries until Ben called, “John, are you there?”

“I’m here, Ben,” came that calm voice from the dark.

“We came here as friends, tryin’ to help,” Ben said.

That brought Postley back to the edge of the shaft.  “You and Adam come to help me, did you?  I can’t let you do that, Ben.  You done enough for me already.”

This time Adam was certain he knew what lay hidden beneath the calm, almost neighborly sounding words.  The worm of bitterness they’d all hoped had not left its bite mark on their old friend had all too plainly eaten its way into his soul.  But, maybe, there was still a soft spot of humanity residing within.  “John,” he said, reaching out toward that spot, “we know how you feel.”

“No,” Postley grunted.  “You don’t know how I feel . . . but you will.”  Adam caught the added grimness as he repeated, “You will.”  Postley started to turn away, but Ben’s shout stopped him.

“Now, look, John,” Ben pleaded.  “Just drop that rope ladder and let us out of here, and we’ll forget this ever happened.  We won’t say a word to anyone.”

Postley’s eyes lit up as if a new idea had penetrated.  “Ben, will you promise me that if I let you out, you won’t say anything to anybody?   Now, you promise?”  He sounded almost eager to find a way out of this situation.

Ben hesitated only a moment.  “Yes, I promise.”

Postley looked at his other prisoner.  “How about you, Adam?  You promise, too?”

Adam’s eyes narrowed warily, but there was only one possible response.  “I promise, John.”

Postley laughed, and the ugliest sound the two men below had ever heard went on and on.  “Now, that’s funny, and who you gonna tell if I don’t let you out of there?”

“You can’t leave us here to die, John,” Adam said, hoping still to find that single spark of humanity, of sanity and reason, that must yet reside within.

“Oh, no, no, no; you’re not gonna die, Adam.  I wouldn’t let that happen,” John said.  “There’s food and water down there, everything a man could want, everything your pa gave me.”

He turned and walked away, and this time no amount of shouting brought him back.

**********

            A coyote howl in the distance briefly broke Adam’s concentration with its plaintive reminder that night was falling, but his hands kept probing the wall above him, searching for any rough crag to grip.  There were none.  Now he knew why Postley had made such an effort to make the walls of his vertical prison straight and smooth and why he’d dug so deep a shaft.  Adam was a tall man, but even from his perch atop his father’s strong shoulders, he couldn’t reach the rim of the shaft, and in the dark he couldn’t even see how far above him it was.  A pity brother Hoss wasn’t here; his additional height might have been enough.  If they’d had Joe, too, he’d have been light enough and agile enough to scramble up a tower of both his older brothers and give them a sure exit.

Adam immediately repented of the thought.  He didn’t want Hoss here in this hopeless place, and he certainly didn’t want Joe with his endless stream of chatter, much as he suspected he’d come to miss it.  He was glad they were safely away at those line camps.  “It’s no use, Pa,” he said with a weary sigh.  “There’s nothing to hold onto.”  As he came down to ground, he heard his father’s exhausted exhale and realized how his boots much have dug into the older man’s shoulders.

There was little light left as he slumped against the side of the pit, but he could just make out the shape of the canteen his father handed him.  His mouth dry as sunbaked dirt, he drank deeply until his father reached for the canteen.  “Better go easy,” Ben cautioned.

“Postley said there’d be food and water,” Adam reminded him.

“Yes, but he didn’t say how often.”

Adam nodded.  Pa was right.  When a man had as tenuous a hold on reality as John Postley, you couldn’t trust him to act rationally.  He might simply forget to provide for his prisoners, or since this was supposed to be repayment for what he himself had suffered in prison, he might make them relive some time there when he’d been left to go hungry or thirsty.  Adam remembered his glee the night before, when Pa had fulfilled his promise of “evening things out” between them and his brothers, and he wondered, briefly, if their current predicament was a prime example of a haughty spirit going before a fall, as the Bible cautioned.  Hopefully, the territorial prison had provided regular meals, and there’d be no score to even.  With a man crazed by bitterness and thirst for revenge, though, you could never tell.

He handed the canteen back to his father and listened as Pa took a small mouthful and swished it around his mouth.  Wanting to give the older man some hope, he said, “Hoss and Joe will be home tomorrow or the next day; they’ll see us gone and come looking; they’ll find us.”

“Could you find this place, without Postley to guide you?” Ben asked pointedly.

Adam shook his head.  Then, realizing that in this darkness he needed to be more verbal with his communication, he said, “They won’t give up, Pa.”

“No, they won’t,” Ben said, but there was more sorrow in his voice than hope.

Of course, Adam realized, Pa would be thinking of them, instead of himself.  He wouldn’t want his younger sons to waste their lives in endless searching.  For that matter, neither would he, but he couldn’t help hoping they wouldn’t give up too quickly; Hoss and Joe were, after all, the only hope he and his father had.  “So we wait,” he said.

“Wait and pray,” Ben replied.

Adam nodded, and this time he didn’t bother to voice his thoughts.  He wasn’t a man as given to prayer as his father, but he just might become one by the time this was over.  For now, he aimed a single thought through the ceiling of the mine, far above them: show them the way.  Soon, please, for Pa’s sake.

**********

            The sun was as bright as the smile on Little Joe Cartwright’s face as he and his older brother Hoss rode up to the ranch house and dismounted next to the hitching rail.  “I hope they’re both here,” he said as he wrapped his horse’s reins around the rail.  “I can’t wait to see the look on their faces when they see how quick we got those line shacks checked.”

Hoss, never as exuberant as his younger brother—who was, after all?—sounded a touch grouchy.  “I don’t mind working quick,” he grumbled, “but I sure do hate to go without breakfast.”

“Maybe you’ll get lucky; there might be some of those chicken ‘n’ dumplings left,” Joe suggested cheerily.

“That sounds good.”  Whether it was the thought of a good meal or just the contagiousness of Joe’s good mood, Hoss’s outlook changed noticeably.

Having untied his own blanket roll, Little Joe reached for Hoss’s as he headed toward the house.  “Well, you put the horses away, and I’ll check on the chicken.”

“All right,” Hoss said, so contented by now that he didn’t even notice that Little Joe had, as usual, given himself the easier task, while leaving the harder one to him.

Hoss may have been tired from the long ride home, but Little Joe was practically bouncing with enthusiasm as he dropped the two bedrolls on the credenza and unbuckled his gun belt to lay alongside them.  “Hey, Pa!” he called.  “Hey, Pa, we’re home!”  There was no answer.  Glancing at the desk area and finding it vacant, he strode briskly toward the foot of the stairs and called again, “Pa?”  Again, only silence met him.  Scratching his head, Little Joe quickly moved toward the kitchen, the only other place he could think to look.  “Hey, we’re back early.”

Still silence.  As he passed the dinner table, Little Joe noted that it was set for three, and every plate was scattered with crumbs and splattered with thick brown sauce.  Chicken gravy?  Puzzled, he picked up his father’s dirty plate, just as Hoss came in.  “Any of that chicken left?” Hoss asked, moving toward the dining room.

“Hey, take a look at this,” Little Joe said.  “Everything’s still on the table from dinner last night.”

Hoss clucked his tongue in consternation.  “Ain’t like Pa to leave a mess like this.”

“It sure ain’t.  Nobody in the house, either.”  Joe nodded toward the stairs.

“Well, they couldn’t be too far off; both their horses are out there in the barn.”  Hoss jerked a thumb over his right shoulder.

“I think I’ll have a look around,” Little Joe said with a clap of his brother’s brawny arm.  “You check with the boys in the bunkhouse.”

Eight hours later they’d still seen no sign of either Pa or older brother Adam.  Little Joe turned away from staring at the clock.  “Just doesn’t make any sense.  None of the hands saw them this morning; their horses are still in the barn; none of the wagons are missing.”

Hoss, ever the optimist, suggested that maybe somebody had driven into Virginia City for some reason.  With all the horses and wagons accounted for on the ranch, that wasn’t likely, but neither boy pointed out the obvious discrepancy.  They’d reached a point where they needed an explanation badly enough that it didn’t even matter whether it made sense.

Nonetheless, Little Joe said, “Even if you’re right, they would have been back by now.”  He raised his palm as he restated what bothered him more than anything else, because it was so far outside Pa’s character.  “Besides, what about the dinner dishes?  How do you explain that?”  Perhaps it was his years at sea, but Ben Cartwright always wanted things shipshape in his home and had schooled his sons to clear up after themselves whenever they finished any task.

“I can’t,” Hoss admitted, as bothered as Joe by that irregularity.

The neighing of an animal startled them both.  Hoss was on his feet and headed for the door in an instant, but at the last minute Little Joe pushed through the opening ahead of his larger brother.  Hope had surged in both their hearts, and they fully expected to see either Pa or Adam waiting there in the yard.  Instead, they saw John Postley, leading his mule toward them.  “Howdy, Joe, Hoss,” Postley said.  “Sorry to come callin’ so late, but I’d like to see your pa for a minute.”

“He’s not here,” Little Joe said.

Hoss took over.  “He didn’t say anything to you about where he was gonna be today, did he, John?”

Postley looked stunned.  “That’s why I come by.  I come to apologize for not coming to dinner last night.  I worked so hard at the mine yesterday that I just plumb forgot and fell asleep.”  He looked from one young man to the other, as if perplexed.  “What is it?  Something wrong?”

“We don’t know,” Little Joe admitted.

“Anything I can do?” Postley asked.

Manners broke through Little Joe’s anxiety.  “No, no, thank you, John.”

Postley put his hat back on.  “Well, I’ll be on my way.”  Mounting his horse, he added, “Look, be sure you tell him that I’m sorry about last night, huh?”

“We’ll tell him, John,” Hoss said.

When John left, Joe said, “Look, I’m gonna ride into town and have a look around.  Maybe we’re making a big thing out of nothing.”  After a momentary pause, he added, voice shaking, “At least, I hope we are.”

**********

            Ben lay stretched full length on the floor of the mine shaft, listening to his son’s slow, regular breathing.  It had been Adam’s suggestion that they needed to take the opportunity to rest more fully than just sitting provided.  “It’s not likely Postley will come back until morning, at least, Pa,” the boy had said, and Ben had acquiesced.  He closed his eyes, though that was scarcely necessary in the pitch blackness that had descended with the setting sun, and he really had no expectation of sleeping now.  More because it was his habitual attitude of prayer, and he felt a strong need to pray.  The words, however, refused to come.  The words from Romans, “we know not what we should pray for as we ought,” came to mind and struck him as having never in his life been truer.  His mind was a whirlpool of emotions: concern for the predicament in which he and his oldest son found themselves; gratitude that his other two boys had been spared from falling into the same trap and from knowing, at least for one more day, the sorrow of coming home to that inexplicably empty house; fear for the precarious edge on which John Postley’s sanity seemed to rest, and finally, perhaps as a product of residual guilt, pity for the man who had placed them here.  How did a man pray when the needs branched so many different directions?

Needing guidance, he let his mind run through the many Scriptures he’d memorized over the years.  So many precious words of comfort, but which could touch him now?  The ones that finally came to mind seemed strangely ill-suited at first: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”  They hadn’t, after all, fallen into temptation, and what they were experiencing was anything but common to man, thankfully.  Perhaps it was the latter half of the verse that was meant to encourage him, to give him hope.  His eyes opened, as insight came.  Yes, that was it.  He knew now how to pray: Lord provide that way to escape, for both of us, if You will, but if not, then at least for my son, who had no part in what happened to John Postley.  If You just spare him, I know I’ll be able to bear whatever I must.  His thoughts began to drift aimlessly, and soon his breathing was as regular as that of the young man lying near him.

A satisfied smile curved Adam’s lips as he heard his father’s soft snore, and he stopped paying scrupulous attention to his own breathing.  Perhaps I should have tried for a career on stage, he thought, amused.  It wasn’t easy, after all, to fool as attentive a father as Ben Cartwright.  Little Joe had never been able to get away with feigning sleep for even a minute, but then, Joe was a terrible actor.  The kid wore every emotion he felt on his sleeve.  Kid, Adam rebuked himself.  I’ve really got to quit thinking of him that way; he really is a man now.  Hard, though, when you’ve changed a boy’s diapers, to think of him as all grown up.  Sometimes he even found it hard to remember that Hoss wasn’t still a kid, especially since the big man, who towered over him now, still retained his childlike heart.  He’d miss that big lunk of a kid, if he never saw him again, and that younger kid brother, too.  Those weren’t thoughts to soothe a man to slumber, though.  With as much discipline as he’d used to fool his father into thinking he was sleeping, he turned his thoughts to more pleasant boyhood memories of his brothers, in hopes of achieving the real thing.

**********

            Perched in his bedroom window, Little Joe stared at the sliver of moonlight peeking through the pines.  He’d turned down the covers of his bed and rumpled the sheets, just in case Hoss happened to look in the next morning, but he hadn’t even bothered to get into bed.  What was the point?  Even if he managed to fall asleep, he knew, sure as the world, he wouldn’t stay that way, and he didn’t want to wake up, screaming in the throes of the terrible sort of nightmares that had started shortly after his mother’s death.  For the longest time after that, he’d been terrified every time Pa went away on business, that he wouldn’t come home again or that, like Mama, he’d ride up to the house and be thrown to his death right in the yard.  Eventually, Pa’s faithfulness in returning safely, each and every time, had made the fears fade and the nightmares, at least the worst of them, disappear.  What he and Hoss had come home to tonight had dropped the fear right back into his soul, the fear that some nameless menace had taken his father from him.  This was worse than his old nightmares, though; in those, at least, older brother Adam had still been there, a bulwark against the encroaching horror.  The bulwark was gone now, too, and the flood had rushed in, setting Joe adrift on a turbulent sea, guaranteed to forestall sleep until utter exhaustion set in.

With a sigh he stood and walked softly into the hall.  He didn’t hear Hoss snoring, and that was a sound that normally rocked the rafters.  Its absence probably meant that his older brother wasn’t sleeping well, either.  As he padded down the stairs in his bare feet, however, he was surprised to see Hoss sitting on the low table before the fire, stirring its embers with a poker.  “What are you doin’ up?” he asked automatically, feeling foolish as soon as he asked.  He knew good and well what was keeping Hoss up that night.  He didn’t exactly have a monopoly on worry.

“Same as you, I reckon,” Hoss said.  “It just plumb don’t make sense, Joe, and my mind keeps wrestlin’ to make it make sense.”

“And it just won’t,” Little Joe finished for him as he came to stand by the fire.  It was only a part of what he was feeling, but he would never admit, even to Hoss, the deeper fear that was keeping him awake.  He wasn’t fully ready to admit it yet, even to himself.  “Roy said he’d get a search party out looking tomorrow,” he said, instead.

“Yeah.”  Hoss stood up.  “Reckon we oughta try to get some sleep, if’n we’re gonna head out at first light.”

“I reckon,” Little Joe said, but he made no move.

Hoss stood still, staring at his motionless brother and nodded grimly.  “I’ll put some coffee on,” he said.

“Better yours than mine,” Little Joe said with a wry half-grin.

“That’s for dad-blame sure, little brother!”  Hoss snorted as he headed for the kitchen.

**********

            “How long do you think it’s been?” Adam asked, head resting against one of the straight, cool walls of his prison as he stared upward in thought.

“Oh, I’m not sure,” Ben answered absently.  “Hard to tell night from day down here.  Day, day and a half.”

Adam nodded, more for his own benefit than his father’s in the dim light.  “That’s about what I’d calculated.  The boys should be getting back any time now.”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed, though his tone carried little more than a spark of hope.  Needles in haystacks had better odds of being found by chance.

“Water’s running low,” Adam said.  “If Postley keeps his word about providing food and water, we should be expecting a visit from our ‘warden’ soon.”

“I’m sure he’ll be here.”  He’d said it primarily for his son’s sake, but he was fairly certain that Postley would keep his word, if only to ensure that the retribution went on . . . and on . . . for how long only the madman knew for sure.  However, Ben wouldn’t have put it past the man to give them a sharp taste of hunger and thirst before he provided sustenance.  For Adam’s sake, he hoped that wouldn’t be true, though if he were honest, he might admit that the deprivation would tell sooner on a man of his years than a young fellow like his son.

A rough voice, high above, drawled down at them.  “Well, did my friends think I’d forgot about ‘em?”

“Postley, let us out of here,” Ben called.

“Can’t be done, Ben,” Postley said, shaking his head.  “Justice has gotta be served; you know that.”

“But this isn’t justice, John.”  Ben switched to the man’s first name to make it seem more like he was reasoning with a friend.  “At least, not for Adam.  Your grievance is with me, not him.  Let Adam go.”

Adam jumped to his feet, saying sharply, “No, Pa.”

Ben held a silencing palm toward his son, while keeping his eyes focused on the man towering above them.  “Adam’s done nothing,” he continued, “and it isn’t justice to condemn the innocent with the guilty.”

Grasping that his father’s intent was to sacrifice himself for his son, Adam seethed inside, but in the momentary silence imposed by his father’s gesture, he’d also realized that if he could get out, by whatever means, it would ultimately lead to release for both of them.  He was young and strong; he could overpower Postley, and even if the man only sent him away at gunpoint, he could get help and return to rescue his father.

“Well, now, Ben, that sounds good,” Postley said, giving both prisoners hope for a second, which was all that passed before he shook his head.  “Trouble is, sometimes innocent men do get sent to prison.  You remember that, don’t you, Ben?  They get sent to prison and jailed right alongside the guilty, same as here, so sorry as I am to say it, Adam’s just gonna have to suffer along with you.  Sorry, son, but that’s how it has to be.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Adam said, resting a hand on his father’s shoulder.

“Well, ain’t that staunch of you?” Postley said, with a hint of mockery.  “You’ll be a real comfort to your pa, boy.  And it ain’t so bad, is it?  You got food and water, and you got each other to talk to.  I never had nobody to talk to.”

Ben looked intently at their captor.  “John, just—just listen for a minute now.  It’s not gonna work.  They’re gonna look for us, when they get back, Hoss and Joe.  They know you were the last one to be with us, to see us and they’re gonna find you and it’ll be all over.”

Postley chuckled dryly.  “Well, they don’t have to find me, Ben; I found them.”

“What?”  Taken by surprise, Ben felt his last thin hope slipping away.

“Yeah,” Postley said amiably, “I went by the ranch last night, told ‘em I was sorry I missed dinner the other night.  They’re right worried about both of you.  I even offered to help ‘em.”

“They’ll find out,” Adam said.  He had no idea how, but Little Joe, at least, was as snoopy as they came, and Hoss was the best tracker he knew, outside a Paiute encampment.

‘No, I don’t think they will, Adam,” Postley said, “and I’ve had a long time to think about this, you know.”

Adam smiled as he pictured the scene they’d left behind.  “Look, John, they’ll see the dishes that were left on the table . . . three settings there.  They’ll see that; they’ll know you’re lying.”  He, too, had had a long time to think about their situation, and he’d realized that those dirty dishes were the best clue Hoss and Joe could find to point them in the right direction.  Once they knew to seek out John Postley, they’d be halfway to figuring out the rest.

“Oh, well, them dishes,” Postley said.  “Now, I took the liberty of going back in the house the other night and washing mine up and putting them away.  It’s a habit I got in prison.” He grinned in satisfaction at the sudden slump of Adam’s shoulders, the look of defeat as he slid to the dirt floor.  “Now, why don’t you both stop arguin’ and pleadin’ with me all the time.  I did the same thing when I first went to prison, but it don’t do no good.  All it does is get you all upset.”   He dropped a flour sack tied to the end of a rope.  “Here’s some more food and water for you; I’ll be back in a couple of days.  Take it, Ben.”  When Ben hesitated, he said more sharply, “Take it!  ‘Course, it don’t compare to that meal you prepared for me, but after a while it gets to taste pretty good.  Then, after a while”—he drew out the word to give them a feel for how long they’d be here—”nothing tastes like anything at all.  Good-bye, fellas.”  He turned and walked away, out of sight.

As he was untying the sack of provisions, Ben glanced to his left and saw the rope, still hanging there.  “Adam,” he whispered.  “Adam, the rope!”

Adam looked up and sprang to his feet.

“Wait; make sure he’s gone,” Ben said.  The silence was deafening . . . and inspiring.  Finally, Ben called out, “John,” although the man would have had to be close at hand to hear his soft voice, Ben realized later.  He gave the rope a sturdy tug to test it and then said, “You first; you’re lighter.”  As Adam began to make his way up, his father cautioned, “Easy.  As quietly as you can.”

Good advice, Adam thought, slowing his pace slightly, to keep from scraping his boots against the rock-hard walls.  He had almost reached the top when the rope went slack and its cut end fell down over his hands as he plunged to the floor of shaft.

Ben rushed to his side, cradling his son’s head in his hands, searching for response.  It was slow to come, but Adam’s eyes fluttered open.  Only then did the older man look upward.  What he saw horrified and infuriated him.

Postley again towered over them, a lantern in one hand and, ominously, an axe in the other.  “You shouldn’t oughta try to escape,” he said, playing the warden role to the hilt.  “I’m gonna have to put that on your record.”  He turned to leave, and this time, damage done, he really did.

**********

            Hoss sat on the settee, deftly plaiting a rope.  He found the simple task relaxing, and goodness knew but he’d needed something to relax him ever since—he looked up as the front door opened and his little brother came dragging in.  As Little Joe laid his hat on the credenza to the left of the door, Hoss glanced over, not surprised to see the discouraged look that had become habitual on what had before been a vibrant, almost always laughing face.  “Nothin’, huh?”

“Nothin’,” Little Joe said with a sigh.  “Nobody’s seen ‘em or heard of ‘em.  Two weeks and nothin’.”

“What about the reward posters?” Hoss asked.

“Roy sent ‘em out to every town within 200 miles.”  Joe shrugged.  “I don’t know what good they’re gonna do.  The news has been in every newspaper from Carson City to Placerville.  If anybody had any information, we’d’ve heard by now.  All we can do is wait.”

“Yeah.”  Hoss felt like they’d had this conversation or one like it a hundred times in the last two weeks, and it didn’t get any easier to hear.  He stood up.  “My turn to cook, I guess.  You want a big feed or . . .”

“I don’t want anything,” Little Joe said.

“Now, listen here, Joseph,” Hoss began, but his younger brother quickly cut him off.

“I said I don’t want anything,” Little Joe snapped.  “You sound like Hop Sing, thinkin’ a good meal solves everything.  It don’t solve nothin’.”

Hoss got hold of himself in time to avoid biting his brother’s head off.  Paying Joe back, angry word for angry word, never worked.  Maybe reason would.  “Look here, little brother,” he said.  “If you don’t start eatin’ more’n you have been, you’re gonna plumb pine away.  Already lookin’ downright skinny, like when you was a snot-nosed kid.”

Little Joe snorted.  “Yeah?  Well, I haven’t exactly seen you chowin’ down here of late.  Kind of off your feed, too, ain’t you?”

Hoss’s nose scrunched up, a sure sign that Joe’s words had hit home.  “Reckon I am, but there’s a difference, little brother.  Doc’s been tellin’ me I’d do better to shed a few pounds; you ain’t got none to shed.”

Little Joe whooshed out an exasperated gust of air.  “All right, all right.  I will if you will.”

“Reckon it’s a bargain,” Hoss said as he moved toward the kitchen to prepare a meal neither of them truly wanted, but each was willing to consume if it would encourage the other to keep up his strength.

**********

            Propped against a wall of the shaft, Ben was snoring softly.  Adam chuckled under his breath at the sound.  It was easy to get their days and nights mixed up down here, but so far, he hadn’t succumbed to that himself.  At least, he didn’t think he had.  The difference between day and night was a slim one.  Even in the so-called day, the light that slanted in through the mouth of the mine was barely enough to see one another’s faces, much less do the work he had assigned himself, but he had to do something.  He couldn’t sleep the day away.  It simply wasn’t in his nature, but then, it wasn’t in Pa’s hard-working nature, either.  There just wasn’t any of Pa’s sort of work available here.  Adam, who had always preferred work with his brain over labor with his brawn, could still put his mind to work, even in this dark pit.  Sometimes he thought it was all that was keeping him sane.

He rubbed at his scruffy beard.  It itched.  For that matter, he itched all over, but he supposed that was a natural consequence of being unable to bathe for—how long now?  Sadly, he’d lost track of the days, and that failure, with its hint that his mind was failing, was more troubling to him than the physical discomfort and the appalling stench of the pit, despite their designating the furthest corner for body waste.  He wasn’t sure how long he and Pa had spent in this hole.  He shook his head, willing his mind to work.  If he lost that, he’d have nothing left to live for, nothing, that is, except the duty of standing by his father in this crucible.  To assure himself that his wits were still in working order, he again picked up the piece of rock that had fallen into the shaft and began to sketch in the dirt.

Ben woke slowly, and as always, his eyes first sought his son.  He needed that reassurance that his boy was still alive and—well, just alive would have to be enough for now.  This boy of his was all he had to live for now, him and his two brothers, but Ben was losing hope that he’d ever see Hoss or Joe again.  He wasn’t sure how long he and Adam had been down here.  Long enough to grow an inch or so of scraggly beard, but surely past the point when reasonable men would have given up looking.  He shared a secret smile with himself.  Not that any of his boys had ever been reasonable.  Hard-headed stubborn, the lot of them.  The smile disappeared as he realized his younger sons were probably still searching for him and Adam and might be for the rest of their lives.  He hoped not.  He wanted something better or, at least, something less futile, for them.

He squinted, the better to see his companion in misery.  “What are you doing there, boy?” he asked.

Adam sat back, working the ache from his shoulder muscles that came from hunching over the drawing.  “Trying to engineer a plan to improve the water flow to Fincher’s Plateau.  If we could just get enough water there, we could irrigate, maybe plant a field of alfalfa for extra grazing.”  He sensed, more than saw, his father’s dumbfounded look.  “It keeps me from going stir-crazy, Pa, thinking about how long a man can live in these—these conditions.”

Ben sighed.  “With food and water . . . a long time.”  He crab-crawled over to Adam’s side and peered at the sketch.  He couldn’t tell a thing about it.  Too dark to see anything as meticulous as his son’s usual sort of work, and he wondered how Adam could possibly see well enough to do it.  “Don’t strain your eyes, boy,” he said.  “Not enough light here for your technical drawing.”

Adam laughed roughly.  “With nothing but rock and dirt to use, it’s not that technical, Pa.  Closer to stick figures, if I’m honest, but you’re right.  If there’s anything I don’t want it’s to go blind in the darkness, little as there is to see here and short as the time is each day that we can see anything at all.”

“Yeah, I think the light’s starting to fade,” Ben said.  “I should have saved sleeping for later, but I just drifted off.  Couldn’t help myself.  Too bored to do anything else.”  Suddenly, Adam’s sketching, which had seemed so pointless when they’d likely never live to implement it, made sense, and he wished he had something like it to absorb his own mind.  But he didn’t, he realized with a sigh.  “Now, I’ll find it hard to sleep when I should.”

Adam set aside his rock and yawned.  “Think I just about could now, and since you’re feeling wakeful, maybe I could persuade you to tell me one of those seafaring yarns you used to regale me with at bedtime when I was a boy.”

Ben chuckled.  “Been a long time since you asked for one of those.  I thought you were tired of them.”

“Not anymore.”  Resting his head on his father’s thigh, as he had when he about five, he made a little boy’s plea, “Tell me a story, Pa.”

Ben felt his heart surge with affection for his son, and he tenderly stroked the dirt-gritted hair as he spun the most adventurous yarn he could recall.  Maybe he couldn’t work out detailed engineering schemes to occupy his mind, but he’d always been able to tell a good tale, and if it helped Adam, he’d tell them ‘til his throat went dry.  Postley had been right about one thing: being together did make the confinement easier to bear.  He was almost certain that, had he been left alone in this hopeless place, he would have lost his mind by now, as miserably as had Postley himself.

**********

            Little Joe sat at his father’s desk, holding his aching head and poring over a column of figures that just wouldn’t add up right, no matter how many times he ran the sum.

Hoss set a cup of coffee down near his brother’s left hand.  “Still stumped?” he asked.

Little Joe reached for the coffee, his main source of sustenance over the past month.  “Just can’t get it to balance.”

“Want me to try?” Hoss asked, sounding anything but eager to take on the challenge.

Little Joe snorted.  “Your arithmetic’s worse than mine.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hoss said.  “Me and numbers just never could make friends.  Why don’t you give it a rest, tackle it again in the morning?”

“I need to get this done,” Little Joe muttered, clenching the pencil tighter.  “Adam would have a fit if he saw how I’d slacked off with the bookwork.”

Hoss snuffled.  “I wish you would slack off, little brother.  Plumb wears me out to watch you workin’ yourself into the ground, night and day.”

“Someone has to,” Little Joe grunted.

“I do my share,” Hoss said.

Little Joe looked up quickly and saw the hurt on his big brother’s face.  “I didn’t mean you didn’t.  We’re both puttin’ in long hours, what with tryin’ to keep up the search and the ranch work, too.  Just hard for two men to do the work of four.”

“Dadgum impossible,” Hoss said.  “Maybe we oughta quit tryin’, huh?”

“This ranch meant everything to Pa!”  Little Joe exploded out of his chair.  “If you think I’m gonna let it run down on him, you got another think comin’, brother!  I may not be as good at this as Adam was, but I don’t want either of ‘em comin’ back to find it in worse shape than they left it.”

“What they’re gonna come back to is you layin’ flat o’ your back if’n you don’t ease up some, boy,” Hoss scolded.  “You don’t eat; you don’t sleep.”

“You don’t, either,” Little Joe scoffed, dropping back into the chair and bending again over the ledger.

“More’n you,” Hoss insisted.  He exhaled wearily.  “Not much more, I admit, but I don’t sit up half the night ‘cause I’m afraid to let my head hit the pillow . . . or did you think I was too dumb to figure that one out?”

Little Joe tossed the pencil aside and came around the desk to stand next to his brother.  “You’re the smartest man I know,” he said, laying a hand on Hoss’s muscular arm, “and the best.  I’m just sorry I can’t be the brother you deserve, the one you really need, but he’s gone, Hoss, and I can’t take his place.”

“That what you’re tryin’ to do . . . be Adam?”

Little Joe shrugged.  “Maybe.  Same way you’re tryin’ to be Pa?”

“I reckon,” Hoss admitted.  “It ain’t workin’ too good, is it?”

“No.”  As Little Joe looked into his brother’s face, his chin began to quiver.  “Hoss, we’re kidding ourselves.  The only chance we had was that kidnappers were holding them for ransom, and even that’s no good now.”

“Yeah.  Reckon that’s what’s been stickin’ in my craw, too.  Just hate to give up, though.”

“I can’t give up, either,” Little Joe said, “but you’re right: we can’t keep on goin’ like we have been.”

Hoss nodded with determination.  “You got to quit tryin’ to be Adam for me, and I got to quit tryin’ to be Pa for you, but you got to let me be your big brother, you hear?”  He pulled Little Joe into his strong arms and just held him, the way he’d done so easily before his little brother got to be a man, the way he’d wanted to ever since this whole miserable business began.  He felt the younger man trembling in his grasp and was afraid for a moment that Joe might collapse.  Then his brother leaned into his shoulder, and Hoss felt his shirt start to dampen.  Joe’s tears released the floodgate of his own, and they both wept openly.  When they pulled apart, they looked at each other, unashamed of the exposed emotions, willing for the first time to let the other see the hopelessness brimming inside.  And while they looked weaker, in that moment of honesty they felt stronger, more able to carry on, even though their hearts were still weighted with lead.

**********

            Postley strolled into the mine, attitude light as air, countenance sunny as a cloudless day.  “Morning, boys,” he called affably.  “Beautiful morning!”

The two men sitting, side by side, in the dark hole below him made no response.

“You’re awful quiet this morning,” Postley remarked, all the more cheerful at seeing their solemn demeanors.  “I figured you’d be happy to see me.” Knowing the rope stunt wouldn’t work a second time, he just dropped the sack of provisions and wasn’t surprised when it brought no reaction at all.  Like he’d prophesied, his pets had got to the place where the food didn’t taste like anything at all, and his smile broadened as he sat down at the edge of the shaft.  “Hey, I brought a newspaper,” he said amiably, “thought I’d read to you a little bit while you’re having your breakfast.”  He laughed in malicious glee at the headline.  “Yes, sir, you’re both famous now.”  He looked down at them as if he were conveying some special honor.  “Yeah, you’re right on the front page.  Yes, sir, it says ‘Reward offered’ for anybody knowing anything about you.”  He let loose a throaty cackle.  “Heh, heh, heh . . . you sure you don’t want me to read it to you?  Well, I’ll read it to you, anyway,” he said, pouring out sociability like it was water.  “Yeah, it says, ‘Cartwrights missing one”—he paused long enough to give them a taunting grin.  “Guess what it says.  Is it a week, a month, a year?  Come on, guess, Ben.”

Ben ignored him, except for a slight, disgusted shake of his head, but Adam, looking up, said with calm reason, “You’re insane, Postley.  You know that, don’t you?  You’re insane, and you’re trying to drive us insane, but it won’t work.”

Ben caught his son’s spirit and spoke with the same calm logic.  “You know, I feel sorry for you, John.”

Pleased that his father had understood what he was doing, Adam affirmed what he’d said.  “Yeah, I do, too.”

Postley snickered.  “You’re down there, and I’m up here, and you feel sorry for me.  I’m free to go anyplace I want to.”  Apparently, his prisoners needed a little reminder of just how much difference there was between them and a free man.

Ben chuckled as he shook his head.  “No, you’re not.  You can’t get away from here.”  He let his voice drawl out.  “You gotta keep coming back day after day, week after week.  You’re just as much a prisoner as we are.”

“You’ll never be free,” Adam added to emphasize his father’s point.

Unperturbed, Postley grinned.  “Well, now, what if I just go away and let you die?”

Ben was past being taunted by his captor.  The shoe suddenly felt as if it were on the other foot, and he was quite willing to grind it into Postley’s face.  He sounded almost as gleeful as his captor as he said, “Oh, you won’t; you can’t.”

Relishing the role reversal as much as his father, Adam reiterated the point.  “You wouldn’t have anything to live for.”

Postley refused to take the bait.  “You’re sure of that, aren’t you?  You’re real sure?”

Ben nodded with certainty.  “Yes, I’m sure.”

“You’re trapped, John,” Adam chimed in, “and you’ll never be free.  Never.”

Postley folded the paper.  “Well, we’ll see about that.”  He stood and walked away, mumbling to himself, “We’ll see about that.”

Father and son exchanged a look of satisfaction.  Then, since they were hungry, Ben began to untie the knot at the top of the flour sack with little expectation that it would reveal anything other than the same steady diet of monotony they’d endured for one . . . day?  Obviously, longer than that.  More than a week, too, so it was probably a month.  A month of misery for him and Adam and equally so for his younger sons, with a large dose of the unexplainable thrown in for them.

The monotony ended abruptly when a lighted stick of dynamite fell between him and Adam.  Stunned, Ben simply stared at it, as high above, Postley leaned forward to watch the drama below, tongue held to the top of his mouth in animated suspense.

Adam instinctively flinched when the hissing missile hit the floor of their prison.  A brief glance revealed what a short fuse Postley had lit.  Only one thing to be done, and being younger and quicker to react, without a second thought, without even a moment to commit his soul to his maker, Adam threw his own body atop the burning stick.  He winced as it singed through his shirt and seared the flesh beneath, but he bore it in silence, determined, at whatever cost, to shield his father from the impending blast.

“Adam, no!” Ben cried, scrambling toward his son to stop the sacrifice that would destroy all he had to live for.  Adam fought him, wanting to absorb the shock of the blast himself, but the desperate father finally succeeded in pulling his son away, just as the fuse fizzled out, and the pit was again silent, but for their heavy breathing.

Adam snatched up the inert stick and broke it open.  “It’s dirt; it’s only dirt,” he said as the contents spilled out.  He tossed it away in disgust.

Ben wrapped his arms around his son and held him close.  “Oh, Adam, how could you?” he chided.

“How could I not, Pa?” Adam murmured, breathless in his father’s embrace.  “How could I not?”

“How could I go on without you?” Ben whispered in the boy’s ear, for fear that Postley would hear and devise some new way to make that happen, just to torture him all the more.

Bracing his arms on his bent knees, Postley leaned out over edge.  “Who’s insane now, Cartwright?” he taunted.  “Who’s insane now?”  He left them, satisfied with his morning’s work, but having totally misunderstood both Adam’s motive in throwing himself on the sizzling fuse and the reason behind Ben’s tears.  Whatever else happened, Ben felt his life had been well spent, if it had produced even one such boy.

**********

            Postley was whistling cheerily as he hauled bucket after bucket of water from the creek to the barrel standing next to his cart.  It took a lot of effort to get water up to the mine, so he generally filled several barrels each trip.  Sure, it lost its coolness fast, but that didn’t matter to his prisoners.  It was wet, and it kept ‘em alive.  It was all they needed, all they deserved.  He grinned as he remembered how entertaining that stunt with the dynamite stick had been; he’d have to go some to better it, but he’d come up with something.  Gave him something to think about in the lonely nights.  He had to keep apart; he couldn’t afford to get friendly with anyone.  Might raise their curiosity, make ‘em wonder what he did with his time and come snoopin’ around and find his mine . . . and what was in it.  Couldn’t have that.  So, he’d had to give up sociability, but then, he’d pretty much lost that while he was in prison, anyway, and this time it was by choice and it was worth it.

It only took a moment for all his carefully laid plans to fall apart.  He never saw or heard the rattler that spooked his mule, so he had no warning when the animal suddenly reared up, thrashing in its harness and toppling the cart just enough to make a water barrel roll down the ramp he’d set up to make loading by himself easier.  Heavy with water, it rushed down fast, and he cried out in sudden, sharp pain as it landed on his legs and pinned him to the ground.  For a brief second he lay, staring up into the blazing sun, and then he knew no more.

**********

            Hoss reined Chubby to a halt and pulled out his canteen for a swig of water.  Hot day.  He was almost tempted to envy Little Joe his indoor chore with the books.  Almost, but he hadn’t plumb lost his senses yet.  They’d talked it out, him and Joe, and decided to take turns.  One day he’d ride out, scourin’ the countryside for Pa and Adam, while Joe stayed home and tended to ranch business, and the next he’d stay home and Joe’d go lookin’.  He drew the line at doin’ the books, though.  Joe was as much better at that than him as Adam had been than all of ‘em, Pa included.

Hoss winced when he realized he’d put his older brother in the past tense, like he was dead and gone, but it was probably true, much as he hated to admit it.  He couldn’t give up yet, though, even if his pa and brother had been missing a little over a month now.  Adam had come back to ‘em after bein’ missin’ almost as long that time in the desert with that Caine feller, hadn’t he?  No, it wasn’t time to give up yet.  He capped the canteen, wrapped its strap around his saddle horn and rode on, ranging out further and further from the Ponderosa, since they’d already searched every square inch of that.

Later that afternoon he reached for the canteen again and noticed how low it was getting.  Looking around, he remembered there was a creek nearby and figured he’d better refill it while he was close.  The last thing he expected was to find another man lying there in a puddle of water, unconscious, trapped beneath a smashed water barrel.  As he bent over the crumpled figure, he recognized John Postley.  Now, what was the little man doin’ out this way?  Hoss shrugged.  It didn’t matter.  He needed help, and Hoss thanked God, as he had many times in his life, that he had the brute strength needed for the job.  Little Joe and Adam might have it over him when it came to bookwork, but he had his talents, too, and they were the ones Postley needed right now.

**********

            Adam lifted the canteen and shook it.  Frowning at the small slosh he heard, he held it out to his father.

Ben shook his head.  “I’m not thirsty.”

“Liar,” Adam said, but he took a small sip before handing the canteen over to his father.

With a smile Ben took it this time and swallowed shallowly and then sighed as he shook the canteen.  “All gone.”

“Yeah.”  The look Adam exchanged with his father told him they were both thinking the same thing.  This was the first time that Postley had let their supply of water run completely dry.  They still had food, only a little, but that wasn’t nearly as critical as water, especially in the heat of summer.  Was this some new torment dreamed up by the madman or had their taunts about his lack of freedom hit home in a way they’d never intended?  Had he finally decided to just leave them here to rot and die?  Die and rot, Adam corrected himself.  Mustn’t get the cart before the horse.  He would have laid odds that he’d been right when he said that Postley would have nothing to live for if he let them die, and he still believed it.  That didn’t mean the man wouldn’t let them come close, just to punish them for their insubordination and disrespect.  Maybe he’d need to factor that in the next time he decided to let his smart mouth run.

Needing a change of subject, both for his own mind and to distract his father from their dire situation, Adam observed, “I wonder how the boys are coping with the responsibilities of the ranch these days?”

“Hmm,” Ben mused.  “Well enough, I imagine.  We trained them well, you and I together.”

“Well, we tried,” Adam said.  Then to inject a little levity into a situation that had none, he added, “I just hope Little Joe doesn’t decide to wager half the ranch in a poker game and come home with a Chinese slave girl.”

Ben chuckled at the memory.  “I think he has finally learned the difference between a girl and a horse.”

Adam laughed.  “I certainly hope so.”  The laughter was healing, for both of them, and adding to the warmth of their feeling was the knowledge that, had Little Joe been there, he’d have been laughing right along with them.  Warm sentiment turning him suddenly pensive, Adam said, “I keep telling myself that I should quit referring to them as ‘the boys.’  They’re men now, even Joe.”

With a smile Ben nodded.  “Even Joe,” he said, and returning to the original question, he added, “He’ll do all right, but it is a heavy load for those young shoulders.”

“Hoss will help,” Adam assured him.

“All he can,” Ben agreed.  “He’ll run the ranch work as well as we could—maybe, better—but the business side?  That’s going to fall on Joe, and he’ll hate it.”

Adam nodded.  “Hope he doesn’t forget to have some fun along the way.”

“I hope so, too,” Ben said.  Fun was an alien concept down here, but in that great world out there beyond the mouth of the mine, it must still exist, and he wanted it for the boys—the men—he’d left behind.  He no longer prayed for deliverance from this bottomless pit, as deep a hell as the one described in Holy Scripture, but he did pray for those outside it, for Hoss and for Joe.  Let them live, he implored his maker now, and let them find joy—and, yes, just plain fun along their way.  If he could know that prayer would be answered, he’d willingly relinquish anything for himself.

As for Adam, he was younger, stronger; he might last a little longer, even if water never came, but not much longer.  In desperation, but little hope, he added a codicil to his prayer.  Dear God, let them come in time for Adam; do that, and I’ll gladly give my life for him, as surely as he offered his for mine when that fool stick of dirt came hurtling down.  Doesn’t he deserve mercy for that one act of outrageous love?  Then, exhausted, he lay down and closed his eyes.

**********

            Hoss sat patiently by the bedside with the same concern he would have felt for any hurt critter.  And goodness knew, this little critter, this little mite of a man, was hurtin’ bad.  You could tell that by the way he moaned off and on.  He’d been unconscious ever since Hoss first found him, a mercy, given all he’d been put through since.  Postley started to moan louder as he stirred on the bed and his eyes finally cracked open.  Hoss quickly reached for the sedative Dr. Martin had left and that he’d kept at the ready for this very moment.  Postley didn’t seem to know what he was doin’—maybe he was just thirsty—but he drank the potion down like it was water.   “John, you had yourself a real bad accident,” Hoss explained.  “Busted your legs up real good.  If they’d’ve been hurt any worse, the doc said you’d’ve lost ‘em both.”

Postley still looked bleary-eyed, confused.  “Doc?  What doc?” he babbled.

Hoss kept his voice calm and patient.  “Doc’s already been here and gone.  Little Joe’s takin’ him back to town.”  Hopefully, his little brother was givin’ the doc a whole heap less frantic a ride back than he’d given him comin’ here after Hoss brought Postley in.

Postley still couldn’t seem to follow what was said to him.  “Where am I?” he asked, staring at the unfamiliar room.

Hoss pulled the covers back over the injured man.  “You’re at the Ponderosa, John.”

“Ponderosa?”  A look of horror came over Postley’s face.  “No, I can’t be!”  He tried to rise up from the bed, but his broken body wouldn’t obey his command.

Hoss pressed him firmly to the bed.  “John, now you gotta lay still.  You got two busted legs, and if you keep movin’ around, they ain’t gonna set proper.”  He hated getting rough with a man hurt this bad, but he’d had plenty of experience with his ornery little brother, and he wasn’t about to brook any nonsense.

Postley wasn’t past dishing some out, though.  “I gotta get outta here,” he insisted, fighting his body once again and losing the battle, same as before.

Hoss made himself stay patient.  “John, you ain’t gotta go nowhere, not for another six weeks anyhow.”

The horror with which Postley had heard where he was magnified itself a hundred times over.  “Six weeks?” he croaked.

Hoss nodded.  “That’s doctor’s orders.  You lay still and let me go get you something to eat.”

As Hoss left, Postley again tried to rise up in bed, but he couldn’t get past the pain.  He lay there helpless, staring at the ceiling, torn between two unspeakable alternatives.  If he didn’t say anything, Ben Cartwright and his son Adam would soon die; if he did speak up in time to rescue them, what he’d done would become known, and he’d probably end up back to prison.  Both were unthinkable; yet all he could do was think.  Soon, however, the medicine Hoss had given him began to take effect, and by the time Hoss returned with a plate of food, Postley was fast asleep.  It would be more than twenty-four hours before he woke again.  For the men in the mine, twenty-four hours of draining thirst.

**********

            On the second morning after he’d found Postley, Hoss was carrying a tray of food to their guest’s room.  He was bound and determined to see that the man ate this time.  John had drifted off to sleep before he could take a bite that first night, and then he’d slept all day yesterday.  He understood that, of course; a body just naturally craved extra rest when he was hurt as bad as Postley was, but he needed food, too, and Hoss had had plenty of experience in spooning soup down a reluctant throat.  He eased into the bedroom and stood there, staring in shock at the empty bed.  How on earth?

Setting the tray on the bedside table, he hurried downstairs, calling, “Joe . . . Joe!  Postley’s gone.”  He spotted his brother, sitting in Adam’s blue chair this morning, as he often had since the disappearance.  Still trying to take Adam’s place the best he could, Hoss figured, or maybe he took comfort from it, the way Hoss himself did from Pa’s big chair.

Hoss’s near-frantic call brought Joe to his feet, though.  “What do you mean, Postley’s gone?” he demanded.  “How could he get out of bed with two broken legs?”  He was tempted to lay a hand across his brother’s forehead to check for fever.

“I don’t know,” Hoss said grimly, “but he did.”  With long strides he crossed the room and flung open the front door.  Little Joe was right behind him.

They both rushed into the yard, but Hoss was the first to spot Postley, trying to pull himself up at water pump.  “John!” he cried, running to him.  “What in tarnation got into you, anyways?”

“Water, gotta get ‘em water,” Postley babbled, clinging to the pump.  Sometime in the night he’d decided that he couldn’t let his prisoners die, but he didn’t want to go back to prison, so he’d tried to fetch them water himself, so no one else would know.  This was as far as he’d gotten before his broken body betrayed him.  The threat of prison no longer seemed important now, though, not with life or death on the line.  “You gotta help ‘em; you gotta help ‘em.  God help me, I don’t know why I did it.”

Fever-touched, Hoss thought, still trying to pry the man’s fingers from the pump.  Looking at his brother, who had knelt down behind Postley, he said, “Let’s get him in the house.”

Joe started to help him, but Postley protested so sharply they both stopped.  “No!  They’ll die!” Postley raved.  “I never meant ‘em to die.”

“John, what are you talking about?” Little Joe asked in bewilderment.  “Who’ll die?”

The pain was so severe by this time that Postley had trouble getting anything out.  “Your pa . . . brother,” he panted.  “In the mine.”

Little Joe looked at his brother, dazed by disbelief, but unable to resist the pull of the single, impossible thread of hope just handed him.  “Pa?  Adam?” he asked, eyes fixed on Hoss, lower lip trembling.

Hoss, always quicker to believe the impossible than any other Cartwright, demanded, “What mine?  Where?”

“I’ll show you,” Postley said.  “I’ll show you.”

Little Joe jumped to his feet.  “I’ll hitch up the team,” he said and sprinted toward the barn.

“Hurry!  Hurry!” Postley cried.

Hoss raced the wagon, abandoning his own steady pace of managing a team for something more resembling Little Joe’s reckless way of careening down a road, while Little Joe rode in the back to steady Postley on the wild ride.  It had to be giving the man pain, but neither he nor Hoss could think past what might be waiting in that mine.  Pa . . . Adam!  Alive or dead?  All they—or Postley, for that matter—could think about was getting there, in time to prevent tragedy striking all over again.

Hoss had barely reined the team before the mine entrance when Little Joe vaulted over the edge of the wagon, canteen in hand, and charged toward the mine.  Taking time only to grab a second canteen, Hoss ran after him.  Little Joe raced to the edge of the deep shaft, and his heart plummeted at the sight of the two men, sprawled on the floor.  They weren’t moving.  Had they come too late?  Tossing the rope ladder into the pit, he scrambled down.  As if drawn by a magnet, he moved first to Pa, and his hand trembled as he turned over the unresponsive body of the man who was his rock, his world.  Hoss, too, was drawn first to his father’s side, where he bent over the other two: watching . . . waiting . . . praying.

“Thank God he’s alive!” Little Joe said.

With that assurance Hoss went immediately to Adam, who roused more quickly and grabbed hold of the life-giving canteen with both hands.

Little Joe held his canteen to his father’s mouth.

Ben swallowed a gulp and then voiced his greatest concern.  “How’s Adam?”

“He’s all right,” Hoss called.  “He’s gonna make it.”

“Come on,” Little Joe said tenderly to his father.  “Let’s get you out of here.”

Out of here.  They were the sweetest words Ben could ever recall hearing.  God in His mercy had answered his prayers and rescued, not only Adam, for whom he’d pleaded, but himself, as well.  He couldn’t comprehend how Hoss and Joe had found them, but for now all that mattered was getting out of here, getting home, rising from this graveyard of dead hope to the promise of new life.

Weakened by their ordeal, both Ben and Adam needed help in climbing the rope ladder, and they continued to lean on the strong arms of the younger Cartwrights as they were led out of the mine into light so bright that their long-deprived eyes could not bear its intensity.

With his eyelids narrowed to mere slits, Ben raised his face to let the warmth wash over him.  “Ah, the sun feels good,” he said as he collapsed on a slag heap outside the mine.  “How did you find us?”

“Postley,” Little Joe said, his heart too full to say anything more.

Despite the glaring light, Ben opened his eyes in bewilderment.  “Huh?”

“Postley,” Little Joe repeated as he nodded toward the wagon.  “He told us.”

Weak as he was, half-blind as he was, Ben hauled himself upright. More blinded by hate than by the blistering sun, he staggered toward the man lying in the back of the wagon.  He wanted nothing more than to close his hands around that scrawny, taunting throat and squeeze the life out of the man who had brought such agony of body, mind and soul upon him and, what was worse, upon his oldest son.  When he reached the wagon, however, some unseen hand seemed to restrain him.  Something made him take a close look at Postley.  The man he saw didn’t even resemble the man who had tormented them, and all Ben could do was stare at him.

Postley hung his head in shame.  “I wanted you to feel what I felt,” he said, “to know the darkness and the loneliness.  Heaven help me; I don’t know why.”

In that moment compassion overcame the anger surging in Ben’s heart, and his hate-blinded eyes were able to see clearly again.  He reached out to squeeze the broken man’s shoulder in a grip that conveyed both understanding and forgiveness.  All thoughts of vengeance vanished, lost in the gratitude of a hard battle won, a battle for control over his own heart.  Ben knew now that he would never suffer from the bitterness that had possessed John Postley and driven him to the brink of insanity.  He’d come close to it, but he’d emerged from that dark cave unvanquished, not only a survivor, but a conqueror.

Looking back at Adam, he prayed that his son, too, had survived without the canker of bitterness taking root.  If the boy wasn’t there yet, somehow Ben would help him, as well, to find the peace that came not only from forgiveness of a man’s own sins, but from its extension to one who didn’t deserve it, no more than any man deserved forgiveness for his wrongs.  With the help of his youngest son, he climbed into the wagon alongside Postley, and it was he who steadied his former tormentor on the ride home.

**********

            The hour was late, and the house dark, its inhabitants all asleep, save one.  His days and nights still muddled, all the more so due to the rapid debilitation of the last couple of days, Ben had fallen asleep as soon as they reached home and Hoss and Joe had seen to baths for everyone and settled them all in bed.  Now he was awake in the middle of the night, ready to indulge in a ritual long denied him.  He stopped first in Adam’s room, and his heart welled up at sight of the young man sleeping so soundly after the hellish ordeal.  He’d loved that boy from the moment he first drew breath, but never had he been so cherished and never had Ben felt more proud.  They had, indeed, been through hell together, but the journey had only brought them closer.  Adam had always shied away from being touched, but in that dark pit, when their other senses had often been curtailed, he’d come to welcome it, and Ben had accepted it as a gift, one he hoped and believed would endure.  He brushed his hand lightly across the boy’s curls and left, closing the door soundlessly behind him.

He moved into Hoss’s room, shaking his head at the sonorous snores that greeted him.  Yet they were music to his ears, music long denied him.  He had yet to learn what this big-hearted man and his younger brother had suffered during the long weeks apart, but Hoss, the most open of all his sons, would tell him.  In him was no dissemblance of the sort Little Joe so often sought refuge in and Adam had perfected to an absolute art.  Thanks be to God, they had days and days ahead for frank conversations about what each had endured in the nightmare they’d all been put through.  He turned his middle son onto his side, to quiet the snores, at least for a little while, and moved to the room next door.

Ben almost laughed aloud when he saw Little Joe spread-eagled on the bed, every limb sprawled a different direction, the covers turned all but inside-out.  His youngest had always been a restless sleeper, as if even in sleep he couldn’t stop the boundless energy that characterized every waking moment.  As soon as he’d leaned on Joe, coming out of that mine, Ben had felt the ravages emotional suffering had made on this most sensitive son.  He was thinner, clear evidence of a loss of appetite, and once Ben could open his eyes he’d seen the dark circles under Joe’s that spoke of a loss of sleep.  Well, they were all pretty much in the same fix, all in need of decent rest and good, solid nourishment.  Thank goodness Hop Sing was due back from his annual visit to his family in China within the week, according to the date the younger Cartwrights had cited to him, when asked.  Their faithful cook would rant as he banged pots in the kitchen, but he’d soon feed them all up again.

Untwisting the sheets, Ben tucked his youngest boy in and, knowing nothing less than an earthquake would wake this son, he risked dropping a kiss onto his forehead.  The smallest of gestures, but to Ben, it represented life as it should be, as he’d feared it would never be again.  They’d all been through darkness together, he and Adam literally, the other members of the family in spirit with them, and they would come through whatever lay ahead the way the Cartwrights always did—together.

The End

© June, 2018

Notes:

Based on To Die in Darkness, written by Michael Landon, in answer to the Missing Man Challenge to incorporate Adam into a late-season episode, as if he’d never left the Ponderosa.

The following Scriptures are referenced in this story: Proverbs 16:18; Romans 8:26; I Corinthians 13:13.

Passing references are also made to the Bonanza episodes, Day of the Dragon and The Crucible.

Tags:  Adam Cartwright, Angst, Ben Cartwright, Hoss Cartwright, Joe / Little Joe Cartwright,