Summary: Two years after he was bushwhacked, Joe Cartwright returns to Lone Pines and the Griswolds’ spread. Though he intends to stay for one night, circumstances beyond his control compel him to change his plans. Something is terribly wrong, and he is bound and determined to set it right – even if it it costs him his life. Slightly AU in that the eps ‘Forever’ never happened.

Word count: 66, 499

Rated: PG-13

Author’s note: This story is a stand-alone not connected to any other tale or timeline I have created.

Blindsided

 

March 1873

 

Prologue

The tree looked as ancient and gnarled as the young man felt.

It had been a long hard ride and all he wanted to do was find some place to bed down and get some sleep, but something had drawn him into the desert to this place.

To this tree.

It was March and the tree was in bloom.  Its yellow blossoms and sweet fragrant scent were inviting, but the young man – seasoned in the realities of the West – knew, like the desert itself, that appearances could be deceiving.

Most often were deceiving.

Past the blossoms, beyond the scent, the tree’s branches were covered in thorns.

He had his gloves on – just like he’d had them on that other time – so he took hold of one of those branches and used it to steady himself as he knelt beside the tree.  It was a healthy tree.  It’s feathery top reached nearly twenty feet into the sky, far beyond its normal range.  That was because it had been watered.

With blood.

The young man let out a sigh.  He wasn’t quite sure what had drawn him here.  The path between where he was and where he intended to go was a straight one.  Point A to point B.  The Acacia tree was off the beaten path.  It was a detour.

He snorted.

Or was it a diversion?

The cowboy reached out to scatter the sandy  soil at the base of the tree’s bifurcated trunk.  After a moment, he removed his black gloves and dug into the dry dirt with his bare fingers, as if moving it with his flesh instead might – somehow – connect him to what had occurred here nearly two years before.   He didn’t remember much.  In fact, he remembered nothing at all of this place.  He only knew what he’d been told.

He’d almost died here.

Rising to his feet, the young man looked to the west.  He had a choice to make.  He could mount his horse and ride to the next town, and from there to Lone Pines, or he could take another detour.  Tears kissed his eyes as he considered his choice.  Life had taken a detour the year before.  No.  Not a detour.  It had been derailed.  Hop Sing often spoke of a balance.  When one thing rises, another has to fall.  Something is given, and something else is taken.

In other words, the ferryman had to be paid.

As he rose to his feet, he wavered.  Striking out, he caught hold of the tree’s trunk and balanced himself.  He was tired.  Dog tired.  He doubted he could make it to the next town even if he wanted to.  His choice was to sleep on the ground with scorpions as his companions, or to head for the ranch.   There were memories there he wasn’t sure he wanted to face.  Not of sickness or pain, though he’d know that as well, but of the gentle giant who, like Atlas, had sat by his side keeping watch; the giant who had balanced his world on broad shoulders.

That balance was gone now.  He was tilting, not at the wind, but toward the abyss.

The young man sniffed and struck tears away from his face with the back of his black glove.

He hated self-pity.

Joe Cartwright glared at the Acacia tree that had sheltered him all those months before when he lay dying of a bullet wound to the back and gave it a good swift kick.

Almost as much as he hated life.

 

 

ONE

It was another day.

The young woman who stood with her hand on the kitchen pump let out a sigh before brushing a long lock of straight brown hair out of her eyes.  She went to pick up the graniteware bowl that sat on the dry sink’s top, but instead leaned both hands on its edge and closed her eyes.  Her ma had made it clear to her when she was a little girl that life didn’t just hand you what you wanted.  That, in fact, it was downright unfair.

This last year had certainly proven that.

She was a willowy creature, tall for a woman, with a thin face, thinner waist, and long legs that put her waistline a good two inches above her ma’s.  Neither her ma or pa were tall, so she wasn’t sure where it came from.  Ma said it was great-grandma Ida on her mother’s side, but there was no ferrotype to prove it.  She’d always felt awkward and shy because of it.  Though she’d only attended school for a few years before they moved to the ranch, it had been long enough to be bullied and bossed and called things like ‘giraffe girl’.  She was shy by nature, but the treatment she’d received there had made her withdraw even further into herself.  It had come as a relief when Pa said they were going to move to the country to raise cattle.

The cattle wouldn’t care how tall or ungainly she was.

She was tired.  Not that that was anything different from the day before or the day before that.  She was always tired.  In the last year she’d had to do that thing Ma kept telling her she’d have to do one day – grow up.  She realized now what a vain and idle creature she’d been before.  Maybe it was because of what her pa always said.  He called her his ‘princess’ and, well, she just got it in her head that that’s what she was.  Where Ma was practical, Pa was a dreamer.  When she should have been helping with the chores, he’d swoop her up off the ground and they’d go riding over the vast track of land that was their home.  Pa talked about her future as they rode – how she’d grow up to be a beauty and have boys waiting in line to court her, and how he’d make enough money from the ranch that he could give her a sizeable dowry so she’d be able to land a handsome, well-heeled husband.

The young woman opened her eyes and looked at her reddened and chaffed hands.  Then she raised her head and stared at her reflection in the mirror that hung about the kitchen sink.  She was nineteen, going on twenty, but she looked much older.  The last year had aged her in more ways than she could name.  No, make that the last two.  She reached out to touch the mirror, laying a finger on the shadow of a smile that curled her lips.  Everything had changed the day he came – the stranger her Pa had found in the desert with a bullet hole in his back.  Up until that time she’d been an innocent.

She was an innocent no more.

The sound of the door opening caused Julia Griswold to turn toward it.

“I got the morning chores done,” an earnest young voice asserted.  “If you don’t need any help in the house, Miss Julia, I’m gonna head out and ride fence.”

The young woman smiled.  Ern was a sweet boy, but that’s all he was – a boy.

“No.  I’m fine,” she said.

Ern’s gaze went past her to the hall that led into the main bedroom.  “How’s your ma doin’?”

She let out a little sigh.  “About the same.  The Doc’s supposed to come by soon.”

“That’s good.”  The young man paused.  “You sure I can’t do anythin’ to help?”

“Thank you for offering.  I’m gonna take this bowl in to Ma so she can get cleaned up, and then I’m going to cook most of the day.  I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll check back come night fall then.”  He stared at her a moment.  “With all that’s been happenin’, well…you take care. ”

She nodded and then followed Ern to the door and watched him mount up and ride away.  After that her eyes went to the barn with its burnt-out end, and then to the pasture where they’d kept their extra horses until someone opened the gate and let them out.   Strange things had happened ever since…well, for a year or so…but they seemed to be happening with more frequency now.  Her eyes went to the rifle leaning against the wall by the door.  Her Pa’d shown her how to use it when she was little – at Ma’s insistence – but she didn’t like it.  She’d never really learned how to use it.  The idea of shooting a man – or anything for that fact – made her queasy at her stomach.

She knew how to use it now.

As she stood there looking out, a lone figure came into her line of vision.  Julia raised a hand and squinted against the dying sun.  The stranger was coming in from the opposite direction their hand had taken, riding at a slow pace as if to let whoever lived on the ranch see he was coming.  She reached for the gun and stepped out onto the porch and raised it.  He was almost in the yard now.  With a frown she noted the man was riding a black and white pinto and wearing an apple green jacket.

And that his hair was a wondrous tussle of silver and sable curls.

As he dismounted and turned toward her, Joe Cartwright raised his hands to a position of surrender. “So, you gonna shoot me or invite me in?” he grinned.

Julia melted.  She lowered the rifle and rested it beside the door.  “Hello, Mister Cartwright.  What brings you here?”

He moved a step closer, and as he did the dying light struck those curls. They sparked just like Christmas tinsel in candlelight.

“I was on my way to Lone Pines like before.  I thought I would stop by and say hello.”

Julia’s eyes narrowed.  There was something about the way he said that, that said that wasn’t quite true.   Or at least it wasn’t all of the truth.  She looked at him closer.

Joe Cartwright looked older too.

“Well, you’re welcome here,” she said.  “I’m afraid we haven’t got much, but what we’ve got, we’ll share.”

He shook his head.  “I don’t need much.  Just a place to lay my head for the night.”

She dared it.  “You look tired.”

Joe was studying her.  “You do too,” he said softly.

Julia reached up and pushed that stray lock of hair back again.  ”I’m all right.  There’s just a lot of work to do since….”   Her eyes grew moist.  She denied the tears.  “Well, since Ma took ill.”

He was immediately concerned.  “What happened to your mother?”  Turning he looked around, seeming only then to note the vacant pens, the haphazardly mended fences, and the lack of ranch hands.

“Is your father around?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “Pa’s…gone.  It’s just Ma and me.”

Joe nodded.  “Well, maybe before I pull out I can help Ern…he’s still with you, right?”  At her nod, he continued, “Maybe I can help Ern fix up a few things.  I’m in no hurry.  The horses I’m picking up are already paid for.”  Joe paused and then added, his tone hushed.  “Pa wouldn’t let me come carrying money.”

They’d thought that was why he’d been bushwhacked nearly two years back – his pa and big brother, Hoss, that was.  Joe was carrying a large sum of money.  In the end, it had been greed that had almost killed him, but that greed had nothing to do with the Ponderosa and everything to do with them.

“You don’t need to do that – ”

Joe’s look stopped her.  “I don’t need to.  I want to.  You and your parents….”  The handsome man drew in a breath.  “You saved my life.”

She hesitated and then nodded.  “Okay.  Thank you.”  In truth she would have done just about anything to get him to stay for a few days.  She’d been a child when Joe Cartwright rode away nearly two years before.  She was anything but a child now.  There’d been boys who had come out to the ranch to see her.  Even one who had asked for her hand before….  Julia looked out to the east where she could just see a rider heading that way.  Ern was in love with her.  She knew it and he knew she knew it, but there was nothing there.  There couldn’t be.  Her heart belonged to the man who had occupied her bed for nearly a month, the one she’d fear would die in it – the one who stood before her now and whom she had feared she would never see again.

“Miss Julia?”

She started and then laughed.  “Just Julia.”

“Then you have to call me Joe.”

“Oh, no!  I couldn’t do that.  You’re – ”

“Old?” he laughed.  “Well, I may be old, but ‘Mister Cartwright’ makes me feel even older.”

He climbed the steps to the porch and came to rest at her side.  There was about Joseph Cartwright an aura of strength and a fierce masculinity that was all but overwhelming.   It caused her to take a step back.  They were of a height, though with his high-heeled boots on he topped her by a couple of inches.  He’d aged in the years since she’d last seen him.  His hair was more silver than sable now.  There were added lines in his face and a tightness about his lips that spoke of something he would not name; something that ran deep, dark, and dangerous as a roaring river.  His eyes were the green of the desert in spring when water is plentiful, but his spirit – and oh, how she remembered that spirit – was dry as the bleached bones that littered the summer sand.

She wondered what he had lost.

“All right.  Joe, it is.”  She forced a smile.  “Ma will be right happy to see you.  She’s been laid up for a while.  I think company would be good for her.”

“What happened?”

“She was fixin’ a fence and cut herself,” Julia replied.  “The infectivity just won’t go away.”

“What was your mother doing fixing a fence?” he asked, his tone saying more than his words.

Julia dropped her head.  “Someone had to do it.”

The next thing she knew, his fingers were under her chin and Joe was lifting her head up.  The electric nature of that touch shot through her and made her shiver.

“Julia, what aren’t you telling me?”

“Answer plain, girl,” a weary voice said.  “The man’s asked you a question.”

The young woman started and turned in place.  “Ma!  What’re you doing up?  You know Doc Scully said you need to rest!”

“Pish-tosh!  I’m no city girl to be handled with white gloves.”  Pat Griswold pinned him with her keen stare.  “I see you managed to stay alive,” she said with just a hint of amusement in her voice.

“Yes, Ma’am.  I figured I used up so much of your time and food and bed linens that I’d better.  Letting myself get killed would have been a poor way to repay you for such fine nursing.”

Her mother nodded.  She eyed him a moment before speaking again.  “You look thinner, Joe.  You better come inside and get something to eat before the wind blows you away.”

With that, her mother turned her back on them and limped into the house.

Joe exchanged a glance with her.  “She’s supposed to be in bed?”

Julia nodded.

“Any luck keeping her there?”

She shook her head.

“Well?  Are you coming or not?” her ma’s voice called out.

As she made to follow her mother, Joe caught hold of her arm.  When she turned, it was to look directly into those eyes.  They were filled with concern and there was something in them that echoed her own pain.

“Your father?” he asked.

The tears she had denied fell.  Julia shook her head.

Then she hurried inside.

 

Joe Cartwright took off his black gloves and tossed them on the Griswold’s table before pulling out a chair and sitting down.  Pat Griswold had indicated he should with a nod of her head and then gone into the kitchen.  He’d been mostly out of his head when he’d stayed with them.  Not only had he had the bad luck to ask a cup of coffee off of two cattle rustlers, but they’d been neighbors of the Griswolds and knew where to find him.  When a shot in the back didn’t finish him off, one of them – Jim Fenton – tried to smother him.  He’d spent several weeks with the family, most of it out of his head.  The curly-haired man smiled.  Near the end Pa had allowed him out of bed and he’d sat at this table a few times before they loaded him into the wagon and took off for home.  As Julia moved past him to join her mother, Joe looked around.  The woodwork was off-white; the walls papered with a blue and white stripe that matched the tablecloth.  There were all the usual things you would expect to find in a kitchen – cupboards filled with dishes, a work table; pots and pans.  He raised his eyes as Julia came to the table to lay an extra place.

There had only been two.

A ‘huff’ and a slight moan made him look toward the stove.  Pat Griswold was leaning on it; both hands gripping the edge.  He started to rise, but Julia shook her head.  A moment later Pat was on her way to the table with two bowls of soup in her hand.

“I’ll get the other one, Ma,” Julia said and hustled that way.

Joe watched the older woman sit.  His eyes lingered on her face, noting the changes.  It was drawn and her coloring off.   Both sure signs of the sickness Julia had mentioned.  Pat had lost weight, which – again – was to be expected.  But there was something more.  Something he recognized.

This was a woman barely holding it together.

As Julia sat down, he said softly, “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

The redhead’s gaze shot to her daughter.  Julia gave a little shake of her head.

“Julia didn’t tell me, but it’s obvious.”  Joe indicated the table.  “Two places set.”  He turned and looked at the door beside which two cloaks and two hats hung.  “No man’s coat, hat ,or belt by the door.”

Pat drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.  “Eat your supper first.  Then we’ll talk.”

Joe exchanged a look with Julia and then did as he was told.  Not only was he hungry, but the older woman who had done so much for him deserved respect.  Not a word was spoken as they consumed the chicken soup and bread.  It was followed by a piece of apple pie and coffee.  He remained where he was as the two women returned the empty dishes to the kitchen.  He’d offered to help, but Pat had turned him down.  When they finished, the older woman came back to the table.

“I’ve a mind to sit out on the porch.  That suit you?”

He nodded as he rose.  “Yes, Ma’am.”

“Call me Pat,” she said as she wiped her hands clean on her apron, “somehow I think ‘ma’am’ is a little formal for a woman who’s seen you in your birthday suit.”

He must have looked horrified because Julia giggled.  He shot her a look and then stopped short.

Had she seen him too?

Pat seemed to read his mind.  “The girl didn’t get too good a look.  I shooed her out right fast enough.”

Pat Griswold had this way of looking at you.  Her face said one thing and her eyes another.

Right now they were laughing.

The older woman took him by the arm and began to draw him out of the house.  “C’mon, boy.  You look like you could use some fresh air.

The Griswold’s porch was broad and expansive.  It nearly ringed the house, lacking only one side.  The land the impressive ranch sat on was flat, so there was almost always a breeze.  Since it was spring, it was a bit chilly.  Julia came up behind her mother and dropped a warm merino wool shawl about the older woman’s shoulders before taking a seat beside her.  He did the same, occupying a chair while the ladies sat in rockers.   For some time, they were silent again.

“I lost my husband about a year back, just before winter,” Pat said at last.  Joe noted Julia reached over to take her mother’s hand as she continued.  “If you remember right, when you were shot, Tom was ready to take off on the drive.  This was the same.”  She paused.  “Only it wasn’t.”

“May I ask what happened?”

Pat shrugged.  “No one knows for sure.  Tom and the others rode off like they always did and took the same route.  Tom knew it well as the back of his hand.  When they came back, he wasn’t with them.”

“Sheriff Truslow said there was a storm.  The lightning scared the cattle and they stampeded.  Pa went out to try and stop them.”  The young woman paled.  “They looked, but they couldn’t find him.”

“That was the hardest of all,” Pat said as she rocked.  “Having nothing to bury.”

“Why was the sheriff on the drive?” Joe asked.  It seemed an odd thing.

“They were a few men down.  Bob went with them.  It was only supposed to be for a couple of weeks.”

“Sheriff Truslow actually deputized Ern to keep order while he was gone,” Julia said, laughing softly.  “You should have seen him sporting that tin badge.  He showed it off to everyone.”

Her description made him think of himself as a young man when he took over as sheriff in Rubicon.  He’d been so proud and so sure he was old enough to do what had to be done.  In the end, he’d discovered he was being used.

Joe frowned.

“Is something wrong, Joe?” Pat asked.

He shook his head, dismissing the thought.  “So, you two have been here alone since…since Tom’s accident?”

“Ern’s here,” Julia said.

“Just Ern?”

Pat nodded.  “We had to let the others go.  Since Tom’s death money’s been tight.  We have to pay men to move the cattle and care for them.  Our profit’s been just about cut in half.”

“Some of the neighbors have offered to help out,” Julia said.  “But Ma –”

“I won’t be taking charity, Julia, and you know it.  We’ll get by.”  Pat rose to her feet.  “We always have.”  She turned to look at him.  “I’m tired, Joe Cartwright, and I imagine you are too.  You can bed down in Julia’s room.  She can sleep with me.”  The older woman smiled.  “I think you know the way.”

“I’m gonna stay up a bit longer, Ma, unless you need me to help you get to bed.”

“I been putting myself to bed for nigh onto fifty years, girl.  I think I can manage it myself.”

Julia dropped her head.

“Goodnight, Mister Cartwright.   Don’t you young people stay up too long.  There’s work to do in the morning, bright and early.”

Joe smiled and then watched as Pat walked into the house.  Her steps were heavy as the grief she’d suffered weighed her down.

He knew all about that.

They sat for a few moments; Julia rocking and him staring out at the night sky.  After a bit she asked the question he had known was coming.

“How’s your family, Joe?  How’s your Pa and Hoss?”

Hearing the name was like an arrow thrust into his flesh.  He swallowed.  “Pa’s fine.”

She must have sensed it.  Women were that way.  You could no more hide something from them than a bloodhound.

“Is something…wrong with Hoss?”

He pursed his lips and closed his eyes.  It was there, whenever he did – the image of his brother’s last moments alive.  That picture – so much a part of him now – had the power to draw all strength away.  He couldn’t count the nights he’d lain curled up on his bed, racked with tears; unable to sleep.  Pa was worried about him, but then he was worried about Pa.  The last year had been hard.  After first drawing together, they’d drifted apart.  Pa…well…Pa was worried the same thing would happen to him.  His pa had always been a mother hen, but the wing that sheltered him had become a prison, and the tighter Pa held on, the more desperate it made him to break free.  Their grief had grown to the point where the sight of one another was painful.  It was part of why he had taken off for Lone Pines.

They needed some time apart to come to terms with their mutual loss.

Fingers touched his arm.  “Joe?”

He opened his eyes and leaned back in the chair.  “Hoss is dead,” he said.

Julia actually gasped.  “No!”

Joe nodded.  “It happened not too long after we left here.  A few months.  There was a flood and a wall of mud….”   He sucked in air.  “I almost died.  Hoss did.”

She was blinking back tears.  “I’m so sorry, Joe.  Hoss was….”  She paused.  “He was one of the kindest, gentlest men I ever met.  I’ve never seen a man so tender.  The way he took care of you –”

The arrow twisted and he sucked in air.

Julia’s grip tightened on his arm.  “Oh, Joe!  I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to….”

“I know.”  It took a few seconds, but he looked at her.  “Seems we’ve both lost something that can’t be replaced.”

Julia held his gaze for a moment and then rose and walked to the edge of the porch.  Once there, she took hold of the railing and gazed out toward the horizon.  There was something in her look – in the way she held her long, slender body – that told him there was more to learn and he wasn’t going to learn it now.

He went to join her.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She turned to look at him.  “Are you?”

He could have lied.  She could have lied.  But it would have done neither of them any good.

“No,” he replied.

Twilight had fallen and the moon risen in the sky.  Its pale beams struck the porch rails turning them silver-blue.  As she raised her head, the light reflected in Julia’s blue eyes, revealing unshed tears.  Her lower lip trembled as one escaped.  He reached up to brush it away.

And then, she was in his arms.

He held her for some time, until her grief and fear ran out along with her tears and she suddenly realized where she was and what she had done.

“I’m sorry, Mister Cart – Joe.  I didn’t mean to….”  She reached out to place a hand on his chest.  “I’ve ruined your shirt!”

He caught her fingers in his.  “Nah.  It needed a good washing,” he said with a smile.

She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could a stern voice called out, “Julia!  Unless you want to sleep on the porch, you better get in here.  I’m gonna lock the door.”

“She probably needs help getting ready for bed,” the young woman said.  “You know Ma.  She’s not good at admitting she’s less than perfect.”

“Are you?” he asked, taking her off-guard.

“Julia!”

She didn’t answer him.  He didn’t really expect her too.

Silence was part and parcel of the lie.

 

 

TWO

He’d known it would be haunted, but he hadn’t realized quite how powerful the ghosts would be.

Joe Cartwright ran a hand along the back of his neck as he turned from the window and the dawning day to face the specters of the past.  During the night it had been just about all he could do not to gather up his blankets and head out to the porch to sleep in the open air.  Darkness had fallen by the time he entered Julia’s room.  The moment he lit the lamp images of what had been, like a herd of wayward cattle, ran riot through his tired mind.

His father, without a face, asking if he knew who shot him.

Pa sitting at the end of the bed chiding him; demanding he ‘figure it out’.

Someone causing him pain.  Intense pain.   And then a sweet smell.  A sickening sweet smell and…

Flowers.  Everywhere.  On the dresser.  The quilted spread.  Dancing on the walls, pressing in on him; smothering him.

A pillow over his face.  His fingers clawing the air.  No air.  No breath.

Going…to…die….

Hoss.  Saving him.

Joe sucked in a breath and held it.  His gaze traveled around the room noting the coverlet and wallpaper, as well as a framed print of two puppies at play.  A left-over from Julia’s childhood, no doubt.  He’d lain in this room for several weeks, recovering from the gunshot wound to his back.  He’d grown so bored he’d asked for something to do and braided everything he could think of other than Julia’s long brown hair.

She had beautiful hair.

Joe snorted.  He’d felt kind of silly giving her that gewgaw, but she kept remarking on how beautiful the braided reins he was fashioning were.  He had to admit he had skill at it – honed over twenty years and more.  He’d asked her Ma if she had any ribbons and added some color to it.  The curly-haired man released the breath he held as he walked over to the knick-knack shelf that hung on the bedroom wall.  The gewgaw lay on the top shelf.  He’d discovered it in the middle of the night while he was pacing.  It kind of surprised him that she’d kept it – and kept it in such a prominent spot.

But then women were a whole different country.

A knock on the door made him jump.

“Joe, if you’re decent, I’ve got some linens for you.”

He snorted, remembering Pat’s remark of the day before about seeing him in his ‘birthday suit’.  “Come on it.  I’ve got more clothes on than the last time you saw me,” he replied with a laugh.   He’d removed his outer shirt and was clothed only in his undershirt and tan pants.

The older woman tutted as she entered the room.  “Pshaw, boy!  All I had eyes for was that hole in your back.”  Pat halted midway in placing the linens in the dresser drawer to look at him.  “Tom and I thought you were a goner for sure.  I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a wound so bad.  Other than….”  She paled a bit.

“Other than?”

Pat shoved the drawer closed and turned toward him.  “Other than Ed Flanders’ son, James.”

He’d heard the tale.  “Pa said he was bushwhacked in a way too – killed by a man who thought he’d gunned down his brother.”

The older woman shook her head.  “That’s the story.”

“You don’t believe it?” he asked, surprised.

“I knew Jimmy.  He was a good boy.  It just doesn’t sound like him.”

“Was he shot in the back as well?”

She shook her head.  “He was gut shot.  Jimmy bled out right quick.”

So, unlike him, James was facing his killer.

Joe reached for his shirt.  “Did the sheriff…what’s his name?”

“Truslow.”  Pat scowled.  “Robert Truslow.”

“I take it you don’t like him much.”

“Have to,” Pat said as she went to the window and threw the curtains open.  “He’s all we got.”

He finished buttoning his shirt and then sat on the edge of the bed.  “My pa thought he was….”

“Arrogant?”

“Well, that too,” he laughed.  “I was going to say inefficient.”

“Bob came here from Carson City a few years back.  He was set to retire, but Thom Fenton and Amos Pettis talked him into taking the position.  Orv and Jim’s pas”

Joe’s jaw tightened.  Orv Pettis, along with Jim Fenton, had meant to kill him.  Hoss had thrown Fenton through the window in this very room when he found the rustler trying to finish him off.  Pa clipped Orv with a bullet and lamed him.  After they got home, his father made an inquiry about the outcome of their arrest, but they’d never heard what happened.

“Whatever happened to those two?  The ones who shot me?”

The older woman raised a brow.  “You didn’t hear?  They’re dead.”

Joe forgot to breathe.  While he’d envisioned the pair hanging from a noose, the reality of it struck him hard.  Orv, especially, had been young.

“Were they hung?”

She shook her head.  “Bob was taking them into Lone Pines to await trial.  They tried to make a break for it.  One of his deputies shot them.”  Pat cocked her head.  “You look kind of peeked.  You need some water?”

“No.  I’m just…surprised is all.  You mentioned Pettis’ father.”

“Amos?”

“Was he okay with….  I mean, was there any kind of investigation?”

“There was an inquiry in Lone Pines.  The sheriff and deputy were cleared of any wrong doing.  What is it you’re thinking, Joe?”

He frowned.  James Flanders murdered, his killer unknown.  Him, bushwhacked and left for dead.  His would-be killers killed in turn on Sheriff Truslow’s watch.

Tom Griswold, missing and presumed dead on a cattle drive that included Robert Truslow.

“Was Sheriff Truslow involved in the investigation into James Flanders’ death?”

Pat nodded as she headed for the door.  “Bob found him.”

Joe listened to the door shut behind her.  Then he rose and went to the window.

He’d have to wire Pa.

It seemed he was going to be spending a few days with the Griswolds after all.

 

Joe was leaning over the water trough.  After working steadily for several hours helping out around the yard, he’d removed his shirt and was washing the sweat out of it using a bar of soap he’d found on the dresser in Julia’s room.   A flash of Hoss laughing his head off caught him unawares.

His big brother would never have let him down for smelling like vanilla.

“Hey there!  What do you think you’re doin’?” an anxious young voice called out.

Joe straightened up as he rung the shirt out.  He hid the smile that threatened to curl the corners of his lips at the sight of the intense young man approaching him.

If anyone had the right name it was Ernest Goode.

“Hello, Ern,” he said.

The Griswolds’ hand stared straight at him and made no attempt to mind his manners.  Ern’s deep brown eyes were narrowed and fixed on him with suspicion.  The young man started to say something – probably intending to order him off the property – and then, suddenly, he grinned.

“Mister Cartwright?”

“That’s my pa, but yes, it’s me.”  He held out his hand.  “Please, call me Joe.”

Ern moved right on up and took his outstretched hand and pumped it for all he was worth.  “I didn’t figure we’d ever see you again, Joe.  You’re lookin’ good.”

Somehow he doubted that.

Maybe Ern did know something about manners.

“Julia said you were still here.  I’m glad she and her ma have someone trustworthy to look out for them.”

“I do my best.”  The young man sighed.  “What happened to Mister Griswold, well, it just wasn’t right.”

“I understand you weren’t on the drive?”

“No, sir.”  His chest puffed out just a bit.  “Sheriff Truslow made me temporary sheriff while he was gone.”

Joe was curious.  “Why didn’t he let you go and stay behind?”

Ern scratched his head.  “You know, I kind of wondered that myself at the time, but Mister Griswold told me to do it.  Said he’d feel safer with me watchin’ over the women.”

His words caught Joe’s attention.  “Safer than with the sheriff?”

The young man winced.  “Didn’t your Pa tell you about sheriff?  I don’t like to talk bad about anyone, but Sheriff Truslow’s not the sharpest tool in the shack.”

“Why’s he still sheriff then?”

Ern opened his arms and indicated the land around them.  “It’s a big territory with only a few spreads, plus a one-horse town.  Nobody else wants the job.”

“I see,” Joe said as he pulled his damp shirt on and began to button it.

The young man sniffed and then his eyes shot to the soap.  “That Miss Julia’s?”

Joe rolled his eyes.  “I couldn’t find any soap that didn’t smell like a woman.  This one was at least tolerable.”

“So you didn’t want to smell like roses or lavender, eh?” Ern laughed.   “Miss Julia likes to make soap.  It’s always interestin’ to see what she comes up with.  My favorite is her calendula, rose, and cornflower.  She’s got so many kinds of oil in it, you think you’re gonna slip and break your neck climbin’ out of the tub.”

Joe laughed.  “I see you’ve tried it.”

Ern actually blushed.  “I didn’t want Miss Julia to think I didn’t like it or that I thought it was too girly.”

He studied the young man a moment.  “You’re fond of her, aren’t you?”

“Miss Julia?  Sure.  I watched her grow up.”

“Oh?  So, you’re older than her?”

Ern looked at him like he was an idiot.  “Gosh!  Sure am. A whole four years!”

Joe sucked in a sigh of his own.  He was getting old enough, he was beginning to understand why his Pa looked at people over twenty and scoffed, ‘Children!’

He nodded toward the barn.  “Can I help you with some chores?”

“You stayin’ for a while?”

He hadn’t meant to, but something about this whole thing – Pat’s illness, the ‘accidents’ around the ranch, and Tom Griswold’s untimely death – disturbed him.  Pa knew he could be gone a week or more, traveling to Lone Pines and back, so the older man shouldn’t begin to worry – at least until after the telegram he sent reached him.

“I have a few days to spare.  This is a big place to keep up on your own.”

Ern nodded.  “I do my best, but truth to tell there’s things I just can’t get to.”

Joe slapped an arm around the young man’s shoulders.  “Point the way!”

 

They worked until noon repairing the portion of the barn that had been burnt, and then moved on to fix and secure the fence that had been torn down; the one that allowed the horses to escape.  As they worked side-by-side Ern told him all about the strange happenings over the last year, most of which had cost Pat Griswold money she didn’t have.  She was a stubborn woman and took each one in stride.  The young man explained Pat had been out trying to mend a portion of the fence herself when she cut her leg on barbed wire.  An infection followed that came near to taking her life.  Doctor Scully, the surgeon who had saved his life, saved hers as well.

Ern was hesitant, but in the end admitted that Pat was close to broke and might have to sell.

Their conversation ceased when Julia showed up with a basket of bread and cold cuts for lunch and  three of them retired to the shade of a nearby tree to eat.  The sun was bright and the day, beautiful.  Its rays warmed them enough that they remained there for some time laughing and talking.  The sound of an approaching horse caused both him and Ern to rise.

“Oh, dear,” Julia sighed as he helped her up.  “Ma’s gonna be fit to be tied tonight.”

“Why is that?” he asked as he draped her shawl around her shoulders.

“Ed Flanders,” Ern said.

Joe had a vague memory of the name.  Pa didn’t like the man from what he could recall.   “What’s so special about Ed Flanders?”

Julia rolled her eyes.  “He’s been sweet-talking Ma since about six months after Pa died.  He wants to marry her.”

“Ms. Griswold’s told him plain and simple what he can do with his proposal, but it ain’t stopped him from comin’ out once a week to try and talk her into it.”

“Ma doesn’t want to get married again.  She says one man’s enough for one lifetime.”

Joe was thinking.  “It would solve her problems, though, wouldn’t it?  She wouldn’t have to sell.”

Julia was glaring at Ern.

The young man dropped his head.  “Sorry, Miss Julia.”

“Don’t blame Ern, Julia,” Joe said with a grin.  “I’m used to getting my way.”

“Well, you’re right,” she admitted with a sigh.  “Ed started showing up right after the trouble began.  He told Ma he had enough money to keep her and work the land.  When she said she didn’t love him, do you know what he said?  He didn’t care!  He said they’d come to love one another in time.”

At that moment, the subject of their conversation drew abreast them.  Ed Flanders greeted Julia and Ern before dismounting.  He was an average man of average height, with the kind of face you could easily forget.  His hair was black going gray and he had pale, narrow eyes.  Joe remembered now that Pa had spoken of him.  He told him he found the man to be cold.  Apparently Flanders had refused to do anything to help in the search for the men who had bushwhacked him, and almost seemed to be interfering with it.

“Who’s this?” Ed asked with a nod in his direction.

Joe stepped forward.  “Joe Cartwright.”

Flanders stared at his hand a moment before taking hold and shaking it.  “Cartwright.  You related to that man who had the boy who was shot here around a year or so back?”

“I’m the ‘boy’ who was shot.”

“I guess you look different on your feet.”  Ed scowled.  “What’re you doin’ back here?”

He could see why this man had rubbed his father the wrong way.  “I was on my way to Lone Pines on business.  I thought I’d see how the Griswolds were doing.”

“Well, you seen it now, so you can be on your way.”

Julia stepped between them.  “Joe’s gonna stay a few days and help Ern out.”

“Yes,” he agreed.  “We fixed the barn this morning, and are working on the fence.  It’s curious how many ‘accidents’ there have been since Mrs. Griswold has been on her own.”

Ed was staring at him.

He stared back.

Then, like a pane of glass striking stone, Ed’s deadpan look shattered and genuine concern entered his eyes.  “Pat’s a stubborn woman,” he sighed.  “She needs a man to look out for her.”

“And you think you’re the one?”

“Seems to me it ain’t a stranger’s place to ask.”

“Joe’s not a stranger,” Julia insisted.  “He’s….”

“What exactly?” the older man asked.

Yes.

What exactly was he?

“Julia?  What are you doing lollygagging about?  You pack up that basket and….”  The older woman had been standing on the porch with her hand shielding her eyes from the sun.  She’d just taken a step forward.  “Ed.  I didn’t see you there.”

“It’s Thursday,” he said.

“So it is,” Pat acknowledged.  “I suppose you’ve come to ask your question.”

“And I suppose you’re gonna give me the same answer.”

She nodded.  “And a slice of pie if you want it.”

“Don’t mind if I do.”  Ed started forward, then he swung around.  “You listen to me, young fellow.  You do anything to bring harm to these two ladies and you’ll answer to me.”

Julia started to protest, but he stopped her.  Joe smiled.  “I was about to say the same thing to you.”

Ed held his gaze.  “Then we understand one another.”

Joe watched the sullen man walk away.

Yes, he supposed they did.

 

It took some doing to find out where Sheriff Truslow’s office was located.  It turned out it was in Lone Pines, but he used his home – which was about halfway to the city – as a base of operations when he was out this way.  Once he was done talking to the lawman, Joe intended to ride on to Lone Pines and wire both his Pa and Clem Foster – Pa, to let him know what had happened to Pettis and Fenton, and Clem, in order to see if he had any knowledge of Robert Truslow.  He’d have to stay overnight once he got there, so he’d let Pat and Julia know he wouldn’t be back until morning.

Julia’s goodbye kiss still lingered on his lips.

The curly-haired man grinned.  That awkward gawky girl he remembered – the one who’d been afraid he would die in her bed – was still there, but the not-so-ugly duckling was quickly turning into a swan.  Julia was nineteen now and, rather than cracking under the unexpected responsibility of taking care of her mother and running a spread the size of the Griswold’s, she’d embraced it.  In the time he’d been away Julia had matured and blossomed into a beautiful and attractive young woman.

Joe snorted.  He could just hear Hoss now.  ‘There you go, little brother.  You got yourself a mystery with dead bodies right and left and all you can think about is that pretty little filly and her long legs.’

He closed his eyes.  His stomach muscles tensed as if he’d been sucker-punched.

He’d never hear that voice again .

Joe lifted his gloved fist and brought it down on the sheriff’s door with more force than intended.   When there was no response, he cast a glance to the side.  Truslow’s horse was tethered to the rail, so he knew he was in.

So he tried again.

“Who is it?” a gruff voice called out.

‘The man you would have happily let die,’ he thought, but said, “Joe Cartwright.  I’d like to talk to you if you have a minute.”

The door opened to reveal a man he only vaguely remembered.  The sheriff had come out to the Griswolds to talk to his Pa before they left for home.  He’d seen him through the open bedroom door.

Robert Truslow made Roy Coffee look like a lean mean Texas Ranger.

The lawman, if that was what he could be called, was in his mid-fifties at a guess, with a pork-jowl face and piggish eyes, the color of which were indeterminate.  They might have been blue, or they might have been an ugly gray.  If someone had shoved him hard, he would have rolled all the way down to Mexico with his short legs and arms akimbo.  Truslow’s belly protruded past his nose, while his nose dived south toward a chin that was thrust out in defiance.

“Cartwright, eh?” the sorry excuse for a lawman asked as his beady eyes searched every inch of him.  “What’re you doin’ back here?”

“Hello to you too,” Joe said, drawing back the hand he held out.  “I didn’t know I needed permission to be in the area.”

His eyes narrowed even further – if that was possible.  “We don’t want no trouble ‘round these parts.”

It seemed an odd thing to say, but then Joe’s suspicions were already aroused where this man was concerned.  He knew that could and did color his perceptions.

“Look, Sheriff Truslow, I don’t mean to cause any trouble.  I came looking for you because I wanted to ask about Jim Fenton and Orv Pettis.  Seems to me, since I am the man they meant to kill, that I have a right to know what happened.”

“They tried to escape, plain and simple,” Truslow said.

“And you shot them down in cold blood?”

The sheriff jammed one piggy finger in his direction.  “Now, look here Mister Cartwright, you ain’t got any more right to grill me than that pa of yours had!“

“So you did shoot them down in cold blood?”

The officious lawman drew a breath and let it out…real…slow.  “Them two boys jumped one of my deputies.  Got his gun.  What do you think we should have done, asked them to dance?”

Joe noted movement in the house behind the other man.  “Sorry.  I didn’t realize you weren’t alone.”

Truslow  glanced behind.  “Just a couple of boys come over for a friendly hand of poker.”

He glanced at the sky.  It was getting late and he had no desire to sleep in the open.  It was too cold.  “Is it all right if I ask you one more question before I go?”

“What’s that?” he groused.

“What happened to Tom Griswold?”

“You ask an awful lot of questions for a stranger,” the sheriff replied.

‘And you evade an awful lot of them for someone in the know,’ he thought.

“I didn’t want to ask Pat…Mrs. Griswold or her daughter,” he ad-libbed.  “I didn’t want to stir up unpleasant memories.”

A man appeared behind the sheriff.  “He bothering you, Bob?  You want me to get rid of him?”

“He’s botherin’ me all right,” the lawman replied, “but I don’t need no help.”

The other man was a little taller than Truslow and a whole lot thinner.  Joe couldn’t see his face, but the way he moved – slightly hunched over and quick – set his hackles on edge.

“I understand you were on the drive,” he continued.  “I thought maybe….”

“Now, look here.  Tom took a risk he shouldn’t ought to have taken.  I told him he was too old to try to head off a stampede.  He should have let one of the younger men do it.”

“I understand you never found a body?”

“Them cattle went straight into the river, boy,” Truslow said, emphasizing the ‘boy’.  “I doubt there was anythin’ left to find.”

And with that, the sheriff slammed the door in his face.

So much for the people’s servant.

Joe considered hammering on the door again, but decided it was pointless.  While the sheriff had said nothing to confirm his suspicions, the obese little man’s pat answers had done nothing to allay them either.  Turning on his heel, Joe stepped down from the porch and headed for his horse.  Cochise snorted and nudged him with her nose when he arrived.  As he fished in his pocket for a treat, Joe considered everything he had learned so far.  Some time back, three years at most, maybe less, Ed Flanders son had been killed.  The circumstances were suspicious to say the least.  Sheriff Truslow had been the one to find him and, so far, no one had been held accountable for his murder.  A year ago he too had been bushwhacked and, from what his Pa told him, it seemed Lone Pine’s sheriff had done everything he could to impede the search for his would be killers – who were now dead themselves.  And shortly after that, the good sheriff had turned his badge over to Ern and gone on the drive and Tom Griswold had ended up dead.

All of it might be coincidence.

But then again, it might not.

 

 

THREE

“Julia Adeline Griswold!”

Julia’s head came up.  She pivoted in her chair to look at the entrance to her mother’s room.  She’d taken a break from cooking to fold some linens.

And apparently forgotten to turn down the fire.

The chair skidded back as she shot to her feet.  “Sorry, Ma! I’ll get it!”

“You’ll get your head out of the clouds or you’ll end up sitting on one strumming a harp!” her mother huffed as she limped over to the stove and pulled the burning pot off of it ,and then proceeded to limp to the door and toss the spoiled contents into the yard.  She didn’t say anything – just shook her head – before taking the charred vessel back to the sink.

A moment later she was at her side.

Ma reached out a hand to touch her head.  “Really, child, you have to learn to concentrate on what you’re doing.  You could have burned the house down, and,” she added with a wink, “that handsome Joe Cartwright along with it if he was here.”

Julia blushed.  “I wasn’t thinking about Joe,” she said as she busied herself with the linens.

“You let that go.  I need help airing this place out.  Or hadn’t you noticed the smoke?”

The young woman wrinkled her nose.  Now she did.

Her mother winced as she lowered herself into the chair.

“Does it hurt bad, Ma?” she asked.

“I’ve had worse pain.  Birthing you was one.  Who would’ve expected a girl to have such long legs!”  Her mother placed a hand over hers.   “You know?  I think maybe the Good Lord let that pot burn.  We don’t stop much to talk anymore.  Seems there’s always something to do since your pa….”  Ma let out a sigh.  “How are you, Julia?”

She shrugged.  “I’m fine, Ma.”

“Fine with cooking and cleaning and managing a ranch and doing men’s chores?  Fine with wearing pants and mucking out stables?”

“I haven’t had to do that for a while.  Ern….”

“That boy loves you.  Do you know that?”

Julia laughed.  “I love him too, like a brother.”

“Not like a brother.”

“Oh, Ma, really!  No…I….”  She was flustered.  “Ma, you don’t mean….?  Ma?  No!  I’ve known him since I was a little girl!”

She nodded.  “About ten years.  That’s a long time for a man to wait for a woman to take notice.”

Ern was in his early twenties.  He’d been a boy when Pa hired him.  They’d practically grown up together.

“You’re wrong, Ma.”

“I’m right.  Now, I know you never looked at him that way – ”

“And I never will!  He’s just not my type, Ma.  He’s….”

The older woman was eyeing her.  “What?”

She pursed her lips and wrinkled her nose.  “Ern’s a boy.”

“While Joe Cartwright is a man.”

Julia scowled.  “You keep harping on Joe Cartwright….”

“Because your mind hasn’t been on anything else since he came riding in the other night.”  Her mother smiled.  “He’s a handsome man, and a good one.  I don’t hold anything against him.”

“But?”

Her mother leaned back in her chair and thought a moment.  “Julia, there are different kinds of men.  There are the ones who are hard-working, whose thoughts are for their wives and children.  There are men who are dedicated to their work and it becomes their life.  There are others whose high sense of justice drives them to right wrongs.  Some are loving.  Others, well, they shut themselves down from hurt.  And then there are some who are just plain reckless, who don’t have a lick of sense.”

“And which is Joe?” the young woman asked.

Her mother snorted.  “All of the above.  Joe Cartwright is a complicated man, Julia.”

“So….” She drew a breath.  “You wouldn’t like it if I…liked him?”

“Did what I just said make sense?”

It took a second.  She nodded.

Her mother leaned over the table.  She touched her forehead and then her heart.  “Here, but not here, I’m guessing?”

She nodded again.

The older woman let out a little sigh as she rose and pushed her chair back.  “The heart just plain doesn’t have any sense,” she said.  With that, she headed into the hallway that led to her bedroom.

Julia called her back . “Ma?”

“Yes?”

“Which one of those men was Pa?”

Her mother laughed.

All of the above.

 

Joe Cartwright reached for the coffee pot nestled in the coals of his campfire.  He was beginning to regret his choice to come to Lone Pines.  The more he thought about it, the more uneasy he was leaving the Griswold women alone with no one but Ern to keep watch over them.  He’d finished up his business around noon.  After sending the telegram to Pa, telling him he would be about a week, and the one to Clem Foster requesting information about Robert Truslow, he’d taken a turn around the town.  Lone Pines contained the usual feed and seed stores, a mercantile, a bank, a small opera house, and several saloons.  He’d gone to the one that also served food.  While most everyone stared, no one approached him – except a pretty saloon girl named Charlie who tried to get him to go upstairs.  Joe snorted.  He must have looked like an easy mark.  He’d bought her a drink and tipped her five dollars and she’d gladly moved on to the next one.  Charlie was a pretty woman with spiraling blond curls and a short, compact, curvaceous body.  She had big blue eyes and clear, clean skin, both of which were buried under too much makeup.  He found himself comparing her to Julia, with her silky brown hair that fell in a wave to her waist, her long willowy form and down on the farm freshness.

Julia won the contest hands-down.

Earlier in his life, when he’d been that kid that Adam was always pulling out of a bar fight and tossing over his shoulder semi-conscious, he’d been attracted to women who were trouble.  At seventeen it had been anyone old enough to be his mother.  Joe shook his head and took a sip of coffee.  He did not want to go there.  After Julia Bullette’s death, he’d matured enough to realize that she – along with Lotta Crabtree and Adah Menken – weren’t the kind of women a man wanted for a wife.  There’d been several he’d come close to marrying.  Amy Bishop, for one.  Laura, for another.

Laura.  She’d been the one.  He’d been so sure she’d be his wife and the mother of his children.

When she died….

Joe rose.  He took hold of the coffee pot and poured the remainder of the dark liquid on the fire.  He’d never stopped looking for love, not really, but he’d looked in all the wrong places – on purpose.  He knew he would never – could never find Laura again.  Laura was sweet and gentle; shy with the kind of smile that made a man want to circle her with his arms and draw her in.  He’d wanted to take care of her.  To protect her.

Just like he did Julia Griswold.

The curly-haired man shook his head as he headed for his horse.  Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Julia had something to do with him being alive.  Pa would tell him to consider that carefully before making any ‘rash’ decisions.  Adam would have agreed with Pa.  And Hoss?  Hoss would have told him to go for it, that life was too short to over-think things.

It had been too short for Hoss.

Joe leaned a hand on his saddle, and then leaned his head on his hand.  God, he was weary!  All he wanted to do was to get back to the Griswolds and flop on Julia’s  feather-down tick.  Her mother had changed the linens, but it still smelled like her.  It smelled of rose and lavender and vanilla…

And possibilities.

The curly-haired man lifted his foot toward the stirrup, but halted when he heard a twig snap underfoot.  He was fast and he almost made it.  His fingers brushed the pearl handle of his pistol even as the cold, hard barrel of a revolver made contact with the skin at the base of his neck.

“Nice and easy,” a low muffled voice said.  “Take your gun out of the holster and toss it on the other side of your horse.”

Joe did as he was told.  “Look,” he said, “my wallet’s in my pocket.  I’m gonna reach in and – ”

“You just shut your mouth and get your hands up,” the voice ordered before calling out, “Anything?”

Another voice replied.  It was muffled as well, but he could tell it belonged to an older man.  “For a rich man, he ain’t got much in his saddlebags.  There ain’t nothin’ worth sneezin’ at.”

So, they knew who he was.

“I told you my money’s in my pocket.  Ouch!”  Joe winced.  The man had struck him in the back of the head.

“And I told you to shut up!” the outlaw ordered as he began to pat him down.

Joe fought his rising anger.  Going off half-cocked would only get him shot – or worse.  “I told you, I’ll get the wallet.”

“Got it!” the muffled man announced as his fingers closed around the leather pouch and roughly drew it out of his jacket.  He turned and tossed it to the other man.  “Check it out.”

There was a moment of silence while the other man searched its contents.  “He’s got about a hundred dollars.  There’s some papers in here too.”

“What are they?”

“Copies of a couple of telegrams.  One to Ben Cartwright and the other…. “  The man whistled.  “Sent to Clem Foster, Sheriff, Virginia City.  He’s asking about Robert Truslow.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”  The second man came closer.  “Seems Mr. Cartwright here has a crazy idea that old Bob might not be on the up and up.”

“That right?”

Joe was thinking.  It was obvious these men knew who he was.  They knew as well where to find him and were aware he might be carrying important papers.  It was just as clear that they were, at the least, acquaintances of Sheriff Truslow.

Things were not looking good.

“What have you got against the sheriff?” the first man asked.

“Nothing,” Joe replied.  “I just find it suspicious that everywhere he goes, someone dies.”

“That so,” the man holding the gun said even as he heard the rifle cock.  “Funny.  I don’t see him here.”

Seconds later the gun discharged.

 

It was past midnight and Julia couldn’t sleep.  She’d gone to her bedroom to get a book and ended up staying there.  She was sitting on the edge of her bed, thinking.  Joe Cartwright traveled light and he didn’t have many belongings, but his extra shirt had been hanging on the wall.  She’d hesitated, but in the end, had removed it from the peg and took it with her.  His scent was comforting.  It reminded her of her pa – sweat and hard work mixed with pine and bay rum.  Lifting her feet, she positioned herself on the bed before leaning back against the pillows and closing her eyes.  It shamed her now to think of how much of a child she’d been the first time Joe came to their house.   Her ma told her that Pa was bringing in a man who’d been shot and they were gonna put him in her room, and all she could think of was the fact that she’d never sleep in that bed again if he died in it!  Ma’d upbraided her right smart at that and made her help bring him in.  She’d never forget her first look at Joe Cartwright.  Pa was bending over, talking quietly, as they carried him through the door.  At first, all she could see was his silver hair.  She’d thought he was an old man until Pa moved out of the way when they got to the bedroom and she helped her ma lay him on the bed.

This bed.

Julia raised the shirt to her nose and breathed in Joe’s scent.  She remembered it well though, at the time, it had been mixed with blood and alcohol.   She’d spelled her ma keeping watch over him.  One night, when no one was awake, she’d sat on the bed and run her fingers through his curls and them along his sweat-soaked, well-muscled chest.

Even dying, he was beautiful.

A sound brought her eyes open and her head up.  Quickly, she rose and crossed over to the rack and replaced the shirt.  Then she turned toward the door.  When it failed to open, Julia frowned.  She’d heard something.  She was sure of it!

There.

There it was again.  Coming from behind her.

Julia gasped.

The window was opening.

 

Pat Griswold lay with her eyes open.  The empty side of the bed next to her, like the cut on her leg, was a wound that would not heal.  It had been over a year since Tom rode away on that cattle drive, never to return.  She’d faced it before, the idea that something might happen to him and she’d be left alone.  She knew plenty of other women who’d had to.  And yet, when it happened, it had come like a flash flood, driving everything before it and leaving her with nothing.

No, that wasn’t true.  She had Julia.

For now.

With a sigh, Pat levered herself up and sat against her pillows.  She supposed she should have seen that coming too.  Julia falling in love, that was.  Of course, the girl’d been in love with Joe Cartwright – or the idea of him – since she’d tended him that last month before his pa and brother took him home.  The man had the face of an angel, albeit a slightly battered one.  He was charming and gracious and funny and more than willing to give a compliment where it was deserved.  Gratitude was one thing, but the ability to express it was unusual in a man.  The older woman reached out to caress the space beside her.  Her Tom had been like that.  She loved him for a lot of reasons, but his humble spirit was chief among them.

Pat’s lips twitched.

She wasn’t sure ‘humble’ was a word she would apply to Ben Cartwright’s youngest son.

Though, if the truth were known, she hadn’t really gotten to know Joe all that well when he’s stayed with them before.  Tom had left on the drive and she and Julia had a house packed full of guests plus a sick man to look after.  Still, if his pa and older brother were anything to judge the man by, Joe Cartwright would make a fit husband.  She wouldn’t want too soft a man for her girl.  Julia needed a strong hand.

Just as, once upon a time, she’d needed a strong hand.

Pat swung her feet over the edge of the bed and put them on the floor.  She was giving up.  Sleep simply would not come and there was more than enough to do.  With a glance out the window, which told her the day was dawning, she rose to her feet and headed for the bench where she’d laid out her clothes.  That bread she’d left to rise last night would be ready.  She’d just start it baking.

The sound of her door opening caused the older woman to turn toward it.  Her daughter’s young face appeared in the crack.

Julia didn’t have to say anything  for her to know something was wrong.

“What is it?” Pat asked as she tied her robe around her waist.

“It’s Joe,” Julia replied.

“When did he get back?”

“Just now.  He came in the window.”

Pat was halfway to the door.  She stopped short.  “He came in the window?  Whatever for?”

The girl was pale.  She swallowed over a lump in her throat.

“You better come quick, Ma.  Joe’s been shot.”

 

“Whatever have you got yourself into now?” a stern voice asked.

Joe was sitting on Julia’s bed applying pressure to his upper arm.  He gave Pat a smile.  “It went through clean, if that’s any help.”

“Well, it might be and it might not be,” she replied.  “You just let me take a look.”

“I’ve been shot before – I mean, before I was shot here.”  Joe winced.  “I don’t think that came out right.  What I mean is, I don’t think it’s too bad.”

“So, you make a habit of it?” the older woman asked as she sat beside him and reached for the bloody rag he’d folded over and applied to the wound.  “Getting shot, that is?”

“Is he gonna be okay, Ma?” Julia asked.

Joe winced as her mother probed the wound.  “Seems to me Doctor Cartwright might be right. The wound looks clean.  Julia, go and get the alcohol out of the cupboard and some clean bandages.  I want to clean it just to be sure.  We don’t want infection setting in.”  When Julia failed to move, her mother said sharply, “What are you waiting for?  Get a move on it!”

“Yes, Ma.”

“That girl,” Pat sighed as her child disappeared.  “Always has her head in the clouds.”

“It’s a pretty head,” Joe said.

Julia’s mother eyed him – like most girls’ mothers eyed him.

“Sorry,” he apologized.  “I didn’t mean anything by that.”

“Maybe you didn’t and maybe you did,” the older woman replied as she reached for the basin and pitcher of water on the bedside table.  “It’s no business of mine.  Julia’s old enough to know what she wants.”

Joe met her gaze.  When she said nothing more he nodded.  Then he closed his eyes and leaned back against the pillows.

“You gonna tell me what happened and why you came in the window?”

It was still open.  The breeze ruffled the curtains and blew them, along with a chill.  “I was robbed,” he said, and then paused.  “Or at least, that’s what the men who attacked me wanted me to think.”

“You think otherwise?”

Julia had returned.  Even though his eyes were closed, he knew her scent.  “I don’t think, I know otherwise.  They knew who I was and that I would have papers on me.”

“Papers?” Julia asked.  “What papers?”

He looked at her.  “Copies of the telegrams I sent to Pa and to Clem Foster.  I –”

“This is gonna hurt,” Pat said.

Joe nodded and then held his breath until she was done cleaning out the wound.

“Go on,” she said.

“Pat, what do you know about Robert Truslow?”

“I’ve known him since he came here.”

“But what do you really know about him?  Where did he come from before Carson City?  Has he always been a sheriff?”

Pat was wrapping his arm.  “Why so many questions?”

Joe considered his answer.  Pat was a tough woman.  She was also shrewd.  If he didn’t tell her, sooner or later, she’d figure it out on her own.

“I think he’s dirty.”

The older woman’s brows lifted.  “Bob?  I’ll admit he’s not the best sheriff, but what makes you think that?”  She thought a moment.  “Truth to tell, Joe, I don’t think he’s smart enough to be trouble.”

“Or he wants you to think he’s not smart enough.”  Joe winced as he moved his arm and balanced it on a second pillow.  “Thanks,” he said.

“It weren’t nothing.”  Pat placed the bottle of alcohol on the table.  “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

Joe glanced at Julia and then back to her.  “Has Ed Flanders told you about his son’s death?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Just answer the question.  Please.”

“Ed’s close about it.  Still, after Tom died, we talked a bit.  Jimmy was coming back from delivering some cattle up north.  Robert rode out to meet him.”

“How come?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Don’t you remember, Ma?” Julia asked.  “James had a lot of money on him.  The sheriff was gonna escort him back to Lone Pines.”

“But Truslow found him dead instead?” he asked.

Pat nodded.  “That’s right.  I remember now.  Bob said he was too late.  That man had already shot Jimmy.”  She paused.  “What’s that got to do with you being shot, this time or the other?”

“There were no witnesses.  Truslow could have fabricated what happened.”

“Why would Bob want to do that?”

“I’m not sure.”  Joe shifted to find a more comfortable position.  “It just seems suspicious to me.  James was shot by a man who disappeared.  Truslow is alone when he finds him.  When I was bushwhacked, he  did everything he could do to keep anyone from looking for the men who bushwhacked me.”  Joe met Pat’s gaze and held it.  “Robert Truslow was with your husband when he died.  And now, just after I visited him and let him know I didn’t trust him, someone tries to kill me.”

“Joe!” Julia exclaimed.  “I thought you said you were robbed.”

He regretted he’d said that.  “It was a cover, Julia.  They were pretending to be highwaymen.  They meant to kill me.”

“How’d you get away?” Pat asked.

He could remember the feel of the gun on the back of his neck.  When he heard the trigger cock, he was sure he was dead.  Past desperation, he’d whirled and brought his arm up under the barrel and managed to direct the shot skyward.  Then he’d taken off running.  He’d been shot in the arm while making good his escape.

And he’d come in the window because the men were still out there.

For several heartbeats Pat said nothing.  Then, she asked, “So tell me.  What do you think it’s all about?”

“There was a man at the sheriff’s,” Joe replied.  “He didn’t like me much.  He was tall and thin and slightly hunched over.”

“Sounds like Amos Pettis, Ma,” Julia said.

The father of the man who had tried to kill him – and in turn been killed by Robert Truslow’s deputy, or so the lawman claimed.

“It seems to me that there’s something the good sheriff is hiding,” Joe said as he rolled over and rose to his feet.

“Where are you going?” Pat asked.

“I need to get my horse.  I left Cochise in a thicket not all that far from away.  I didn’t want the men who were following me to know I’d come here.”  His jaw tightened.  “I won’t put you in further danger.”

“Ern can get your horse.  I’ll have him stable her at Ed’s.”

“Can you trust him?” he asked.

“I know Ed.  He’s a good man,” she said.

Joe glanced at the door.  “I can’t stay here.  If the men who shot me follow, it will put you and Julia in danger.”

“Where are you going to go?” Julia asked.  She was obviously distressed.

Pat thought a moment and then came to a decision.  “Julia?”

“Yes, Ma?”

“You remember the old Russell place?”

“The cabin up by the stream?”

“That’s it.  You take Joe there.”  Pat was heading for the door.  “I’m gonna go with Ern to Ed’s.  He’s never liked Bob Truslow.  He’ll help us.”

“You’re sure you can trust him?” Joe asked.

“I’m sure.”  Pat halted.  “We got about an hour or two before the sun’s up.  That’s plenty of time for you to start for the Russell’s.  You take the alcohol and extra bandages with you.  That wound looks clean, but you never know.”  She turned to her daughter.  “Julia, I think you better stay with Joe.  If someone’s watching, they could see you come back.  Once I talk to Ed, we’ll come fetch you.”

Joe caught her arm.  “No.  I’ll go alone.  I don’t want to place either of you in danger.”

Pat held his gaze.  “Breathing is dangerous, Joe.  And if what you say is true – and Robert Truslow isn’t what he makes out to be – then that’s a thing I need to know.”

 

 

FOUR

It took them most of the day to reach the Russell’s cabin.

The older woman said it was a ‘far piece’ and she wasn’t kidding.  They rode two-thirds of the way seated together on Julia’s horse.  He and Pat agreed it was best to keep Cochise, with her distinct markings, at Ed Flander’s place.  Julia’s horse was a beautiful black with three white socks, so he was pretty distinctive as well, which was why they paid a farmer’s young son to take him back to the ranch and made the last third of the journey on foot.

The cabin was more of a log house, with dark hand-hewn beams that had white chinking between them.   By the time they reached it the light was fading, so it was hard to determine its size.  It wasn’t small.  From the look of the place, a lot of love had gone into building it.  It made him wonder why the Russells left.

“Is the door locked?” Julia asked.

She was standing behind him on the porch.  Joe glanced in her direction.  The failing light hid her face, but from the tone of her voice, he could tell she was exhausted.

“I haven’t tried it yet,” he admitted.

Wearily, Joe reached out with one black-gloved hand and tried the latch.

The door wouldn’t budge.

After examining the locking mechanism, he let out a sigh.  “There’s no keyhole.  My guess is it’s barred from within.  Some kid probably climbed inside and was horsing around.”

“Maybe they left a window open.”

“Maybe, but let’s hope not.  Who knows what critters may have taken up residence if they did.”  Joe tried the door again.  It shifted a bit this time.  “The timber looks dry.  Maybe it will give if I strike it hard enough.”

“What about your shoulder?”

He grinned.  “I’ll use the other one.”

Joe turned so he was facing the dying sun and placed his right shoulder against the wooden door.  Then he gave it a shove.  It moved a little more, but didn’t give way.  He glanced at Julia and then tried again, putting more force and more of his weight behind it.  This time it groaned.

He groaned too.

“I think I better go look for that window,” he admitted.

“Let me help,” Julia said as came up behind him.  “Maybe if both of us push it will give.”

“No, I can’t let you do that.”

“Why?” she snapped.  “Because I’m a woman?”

“Well….”

Julia glared at him.

“All right.  You can…help.  Just be careful.”

“Me be careful?  What about you?  You’re the one who was shot!”

“I’ve been shot before,” he growled as he repositioned himself.

“Well, I’ve opened doors before!”

Joe looked over his shoulder at her.  The light was on her face and Julia was indignant.

And beautiful.

“Okay, you win.  But if the door attacks, you’re on your own.”

One corner of her rose-petal pink lips quirked.  “If the door attacks, I promise I will save you.”

Joe laughed.  “It’s a deal.”

As he turned back, Julia reached around his waist and pressed her body into his.  Her close proximity caught him off-guard and aroused feelings in him that were both unexpected and intense.

She must have sensed something, because she asked, “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” he said softly.

At least, not physically.

“All right,” Joe said.  “On my count.  One.  Two.  Three!”

The momentum of both their bodies was enough to snap whatever had been used to bar the door.  Joe heard a crack, and then a groan – and then suddenly he was laying on the cabin’s floor with Julia on top of him.  The impact of being sandwiched between the floor and her long, lithe body drove the wind out of him which, in turn, prevented him from crying out as his injured shoulder slammed into the wooden planks.  Julia let out a little ‘whoop’ as they went down.  It took her a moment to realize her position – one long leg on either side of his hips – was, well, slightly less than respectable.

“Oh!” she exclaimed as she bolted to her feet.   “Sorry!”

Joe fought to keep a straight face.  He was pretty sure Julia was as virginal as a young woman could be and he didn’t want to do anything to embarrass her further.

“You’ve got…nothing to be…sorry for,” he puffed out.   “I’m fine –”

“Joe.”

“Yeah?”

She inclined her head toward his left shoulder.  “You’re bleeding.”

He looked.  Sure enough, the fabric of the shirt he’d donned the night before was stained red.

“Damn.”

 

Jamie Cartwright was bored.  He’d finished his chores, done his homework, and then finished more chores and there were still several hours to go until bed.  With Joe away and Hoss…gone…there just wasn’t much to do if his pa was busy.   There was no one to play checkers with.  No one to hang out in the barn and talk to.  No one to tell those great stories of when Joe and Hoss and the mysterious unseen Adam were young.

He loved those stories.

The day had been okay until everyone arrived.  Pa was in the house now with about a half-dozen men finishing up a meeting.  A lot of their steers had gone missing recently and it seemed other people’s had too.  The men were from as far away as Sweet Water and Lone Pines, so the rustling was pretty widespread.  He’d listened at the door a little bit before Hop Sing came out of the kitchen and shooed him away from the window outside Pa’s office.  The Chinese man had called him an ‘eaves popper’, which had made him laugh.  He’d heard some big words while he was listening including ‘confederation’ and ‘syndicate’.  It seemed one of the men who’d come to the meeting had the idea that the rustling wasn’t being done by individuals, but by outlaws and criminals who had joined together in some kind of an dishonest organization.  That way they could protect each other.

Jamie shook his head.  He’d never figure it out, he guessed.  It just seemed like some people wanted to do wrong even when it would have been easier to do right.  It took a lot of brains and muscle and special skills to outrun the law and outsmart a sheriff like Clem Foster.  Pa’d been smoking his pipe one day and reading the paper.  He’d told him all about this man that evaded the Pinkertons for years.  When they caught him, he told them it hadn’t been about what he stole but about the fact that he could steal it – and get away with it.  Pa said it was kind of like playing chess.

Adam liked chess.  At least that was what Pa had told him.

He wondered what Adam was like.

The red-headed boy lifted his head and closed his eyes and listened to the voice of the pines.  It was late and they were whispering their secrets to each other.  He loved to guess what they were saying.  He also loved their scent.  It was clean and sharp enough to split frogs’ hair.  Jamie grinned.  Hoss had taught him that one.

He sure missed Hoss.

Still, he knew Joe missed him more.

When he thought of Hoss, it made him happy.  The big man was always smilin’ and laughing.  Big brother sure loved to laugh.  Joe kind of had ‘moods’.  He loved him, but there were times when you just had to leave him alone.  He’d always come around, but sometimes it took some time.  Hoss only had one mood – happy.  When the Cartwrights took him in, he’d been kind of sad.  He’d had his ‘moods’ too.  Hoss had taught him you couldn’t just wait for happiness to find you, you had to create it, and so he’d tried.  He’d tried so hard since Hoss died.

Especially for Joe.

Big brother Joe felt responsible for Hoss’ death.  He didn’t say so, but they all knew it.  It wasn’t his fault. There’d been a flash flood and a mudslide and Hoss had gone in to save both Joe and a lady and hadn’t come out again.  Joe was awful sad, but Pa said Hoss would have been even sadder if he’d lived and Joe had died.

Pa said God had his reasons.

With a sigh, Jamie jumped down from his perch on the fence and headed toward the barn.  There was a new batch of kittens in one of the back stalls and he’d been watching them grow.  Pa didn’t know they were there and he wasn’t going to tell him.  Hop Sing knew.  It was kind of their secret.  The Chinese man had given him a bottle of cream for them.  Since he didn’t have anything else to do until Pa’s meeting was done, he decided he’d take it to them and play with them for a while until he could go into the house.

Nothing could have surprised him more than to find there was someone already in the barn.

The man had brought his horse in and was unsaddling it.  He was tall and had what people called ‘salt and pepper’ hair.  He also had a scruff of a beard that had some gray in it too.  The stranger was facing the back of the barn, so he couldn’t see his face, but he was pretty sure he didn’t know him.  The coat he wore was the color of mustard.  Jamie thought it was called a civilian great coat.  It looked like the one military men wore, with a short cape over the shoulders.  His hat was black like his pants.

He’d been standing there maybe thirty seconds when the man turned and looked at him.  “Hello,” he said.

Just ‘hello’, like he wasn’t trespassing or anything.

“H…hi,” Jamie stuttered.  “What are you doing here?”

The man placed his saddle on the stable wall before replying.  “I’m an old friend of the family.  I was in the area and thought I would pay them a visit.”

“It’s just Pa and Joe now…and me,” he said.

The man eyed him.  “You’re Jamie.”

He nodded.  “How’d you know?”

The stranger’s gaze went to his hair.   “Red hair.  Freckles.  Mid-teens.  I don’t think there’s anyone else here who fits the description.  Unless Joe’s curls have turned copper.”

“They’re more like silver.”

The man’s brows peaked.  “Really?  When did this happen?”

He shrugged.  “I don’t know.  Hoss told me….  He said turnabout was fair play since Joe turned Pa’s hair white.”

The man’s face went blank for a moment, as if his thoughts had flown a thousand miles away in just one second.  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here,” he said as he turned back to his horse and began to lead it into one of the stalls.  “For Hoss…but more for Joe.”

Jamie watched the stranger go about all the things you had to do to stable a horse for the night.  There was something about him that was kind of familiar, but he couldn’t place it.  He had a funny thought that it might be the long lost Adam Cartwright, but he let that go right away.  The man didn’t look like Hoss or Joe, or Pa even.  As he stood there, puzzling it out, the front door of the house opened and Pa and the men he was meeting with spilled out into the yard.  Most of them mounted up and rode away right quick.  Barney Fuller, who was the one who had talked about the syndicate stayed the longest, but even he was gone by the time the stranger had finished with his horse.  Pa watched Mr. Fuller go and then looked toward the barn and saw him.   A moment later he started his way.

“Don’t tell him I’m here,” the stranger said as he stepped into the shadows.

Jamie frowned.  He had half-a-mind too.  He wasn’t sure he trusted the tall dark man.

“Please.”

The red-head let out a sigh.  Then he took a couple of steps out of the stable and into the light.

“I thought you’d be in bed by now, son,” Pa said as he stopped beside him.

“I wasn’t sleepy.”

“I’m sorry the meeting took so long.”  Pa let out a sigh.  “There’s a lot going on and not much known about it.”

“Did you figure out who’s rustling the cattle?”

“No.  It’s very widespread.  It seems the worst loses are near Lone Pines, but cattle have gone missing from Hawthorne to Lovelock.”

“Isn’t Lone Pines where Joe went?”

The older man nodded.  “Yes.  I tried to talk him out of it, but you know your brother.  He wouldn’t listen.”

“So what else is new?” a voice asked out of the darkness.  “Since when has Joe ever listened?”

Now, he’d seen a lot of looks on his pa’s face.  The older man wasn’t real good at hiding his emotions.  He’d seen him happy and sad, mad – maybe even furious – concerned and worried and even scared.  But he’d never seen this look.  There was a word for it.  It was a funny one.

Flummoxed.

Jamie grinned from ear to ear as the stranger held out his hand.

No, not the ‘stranger’.

Adam.

 

“Do you ever listen?!”

“I always listen!” he snapped back.

“Oh?  Do you?  Then why are you standing when I told you to sit?”

“I don’t like to be told what to do.”

Julia let out a little exasperated sigh.  “I asked nicely first.”

He looked over his shoulder.  “Did you?”

She had her hands planted firmly on her hips – just like her mother.  “Yes, I did, and since you were listening, I guess you just didn’t hear.”

He let the curtain drop back into place.  “That must be it.”

The young woman shook her head.  “Has anyone ever told you that you try a person’s patience?”

He’d moved to the other window and was looking out.  So far, he’d seen no one and nothing had moved, but he wasn’t going to settle until he was certain they were safe.

“Not in so many words,” he replied as he turned back into the room.

“Oh, I bet,” Julia said as she approached him.  “I can imagine just what words they used.”  She cocked her head and looked at him.  “Please, Joe, come over here and sit down before you fall down.”

“I need to make sure you’re safe first.”

“You’ve put a new bar in place and shoved a chest of drawers up against it.  The windows are nailed shut.  What do you think someone is going to do, come down the chimney?”

His eyes went to the hearth.  “Better light a fire….”

“I can do that!  Joe….”

He looked at her.  He didn’t want to look at her.  He was trying his best to keep so busy he couldn’t even think about her.

“What?”

A tear escaped to trail down her cheek.  “Please.”

In war that was what was known as unfair tactics.

When he hesitated still, she added, “Have you looked at the floor?”

“The floor?”

“Look.  At the floor.”

He scowled as he did what she wanted.  The scowl deepened when he saw what she saw – he’d left a trail of blood from window to window.

“You have to let me dress that wound, Joe.  Otherwise you’re going to get sick and then you aren’t going to do me any good, are you?”

He pursed his lips.  And wrinkled his nose.

And gave in.

“Where do you want me?”

She took hold of his good arm and led him across the room like a little boy.  “Come over here to the table.  I lit a lamp so I can see what I’m doing.”

It was only after Joe sat down that he realized how tired he was, and how weak he felt.   He closed his eyes and began to sink.

“Take off your shirt.”

That woke him up.  “What?”

“I can’t bandage your shoulder with your shirt on.”

“But….” He drew a breath.  “It wouldn’t be right.”

She placed a hand on her hip.  “I don’t know what you’re worried about.  I’m certainly not going to swoon when I see your shoulder.  I’ve seen just about everything you’ve got anyway.”

His eyes went wide.

“I said, ‘just about everything’.”  Julia smiled.  “Ma kept one of the towels in the right place when I tended you.”

He was sure his cheeks were redder than the blood on the floor.  “Julia, I….”

“Look.  You can take your shirt off, or I’ll take it off for you.  One way or the other, I’m tending to that wound,” she warned.

“You sound like your mother,” he said as he complied.  “You know that?”

Julia took the shirt between two fingers and tossed it over the back of the next chair.  “I certainly do.  Ma said men aren’t smart enough to know when they need tending, so you have to be smart for them.  They’d rather pretend they don’t need doctoring and die.”

He laughed as he gave in.  “Your mother is a very shrewd woman.”

“She had to be,” she replied as she went to the sink and returned with a bowl of water and a clean cloth.  “Ma said Pa was one of the most stubborn men she ever knew.”

“Your father?” he asked as she wrung the cloth out.  “He seemed very easy-going.”

“Ma said that was because he was old.  She said he was just like you when he was young.”

“And how is that?”

“Mule-headed and cock-sure of himself.”

“I am not – ouch!”

Julia frowned at him.  “I think it needs a couple of stitches.  I can’t get it to stop bleeding.  I wonder if there’s any extra alcohol here.”

“There’s a bottle  of whiskey in the cabinet I pushed up against the door.”  At her look, he grinned.  “I couldn’t help but notice.”

She gave him that ‘Men!’ look women have and went to get it.  Once she’d returned, Julia popped the cork and put the whiskey on the table next to the half-full one they’d brought.  Then she went to fetch a needle and thread.  He heard a ‘tsk-ing’ noise as she returned to the table and found he’d upended the whiskey into his mouth.

“Doc Martin always prescribed a shot before surgery.”

“I bet.”  She sat beside him and frowned as she took another look.   “This is going to hurt.”

“Are you up to it?” he asked, suddenly concerned.  “We can let it go….”

“No, we can’t.  And I’m fine.  Pa and I went fishing once and he cut himself and I had to make a needle out of a hook to sew him up.”

He looked at her with new eyes.  “And this is the girl who was scared a man was going to die in her bed?”

“I loved Pa,” she said, her tone wistful.  “I would have done anything for him, just like I’d do anything for….”  Her voice caught as she realized what she’d almost said.  “Like I’d do anything for a friend.”

“Thank you,” he said, and meant it.

Julia held the cloth with the alcohol on it over the wound.  “Ready?” she asked.

He nodded.

Even though he wasn’t.

 

“Adam!  Son!  What…?  Son, what are you doing here?”

Adam was staring at him.  “Don’t I get a hug?” he asked.

Ben laughed.  “You mean you want one?”

His son gazed long and hard at him.  “Yes, sir.  I do.”

He’d always done his best to honor his son’s wishes and leave Adam’s emotional barriers intact.  Hoss had honored them as well, but had made every attempt to get his brother to lower them.

Joseph had tossed himself against them, determined to break them down.

Between his three sons there had been a great love, but for the most part it remained unspoken.  A cuff, a shot to the arm; such simple gestures had expressed it in full.  Joseph was the most tactile and Adam, the least.  Touch meant the world to him as well, but he’d refrained from touching his oldest, knowing it made the boy uncomfortable.

Perhaps not so the man.

Adam stepped out of the shadows to embrace him.  “It’s good to be home, Pa.”

“It’s good to have you home.  Are you –?”

“I’m here for a couple of weeks.  I had business in San Francisco that got delayed, so I decided to come pay you all a visit.”  Adam smiled at Jamie who stood nearby somewhat at a loss.  “I had to meet my new little brother, now, didn’t I?”

As the boy grinned, Ben asked, “Why didn’t you write ahead?  Joseph’s gone.  I’m sure he would have wanted to be here to greet you.”

His son winced.  “Are you sure of that, Pa?  I’m not.”

“Yes, I’m sure.  Whatever anger your brother had over you leaving is long since past.”

“What about my not being here when Hoss…passed?”

Ben sucked in air.  He let it out slowly.  “Joseph was…is lost in a way.”

“He still blames himself?”

The rancher nodded.  “To be honest, we both do.  I let him go along with his brother.  He went, and he came back when Hoss didn’t.  I think this trip to Lone Pines was as much to get away from me as to do business.”

“Surely not, Pa.”

“Joe’s been awful sad,” Jamie said.

Ben moved to circle the boy’s shoulders with an arm.  “Yes, he has.  We’ve all been sad.  I think….  Well, our grief had begun to weigh on one another.  I think your brother needed some time away.”

“When’s he due back?”

“In a day or two.”  He felt Jamie stiffen under his arm.  “What is it, son?”

“I’m sorry, Pa.  I forgot,” the boy replied.

“Forgot what?”

“While you were in that meeting, a man came by with a telegram.”  Jamie reached into his pocket and produced two envelopes.  “He said to give this to you.”

Ben looked at the envelope.  It was postmarked from Lone Pines.

“Is it from Joe?”

“I think so.”  He opened the envelope, drew the telegram out, and scanned the lines.  “Your brother is at the Griswolds.”

“Aren’t those the people who took care of Joe when he got bushwhacked and almost died?” Jamie asked.

Ben’s gaze flicked to Adam.  He hadn’t told his son about the incident.  “Yes.  He says some strange things have been happening there and he wants to make sure Pat and Julia are all right before he comes home.  There’s also something….”

“What is it, Pa?” Adam asked.

“Apparently Joe has asked Clem Foster to look into the local sheriff’s background.”  Ben frowned.  “Robert Truslow was the most incompetent lawman I’d ever met!  I thought Hoss was going to take his head off more than once for delaying the investigation into what happened to your brother.”

“And what did happen to Joe?”

Ben returned the telegram to its envelope and put it in his pocket.  “It’s a long story, son.”

Adam grinned.

“How about that?  I just happen to have a few weeks free.”

 

 

FIVE

Joe woke to the touch of a hand on his forehead.  For a moment he thought it was his mother, but then he woke enough to realize he had left his childhood and that beloved figure behind long ago.

“How are you feeling, Mister Cartwright?” a light voice asked.

He felt fine – until he moved his left shoulder in an attempt to sit up and pain exploded through it.

“What hit me?” he groaned.

“A bullet.  Don’t you remember me?”

Joe thought a moment.  That’s right.  He was outside of Lone Pines and someone had tried to kill him.

Again.

“I hope I did everything right,” Julia said.  “You’ve got a fever.”

Her frightened tone made him look at her.  She’d grown so competent since the last time they’d met that he forgot she wasn’t even twenty; that she was, in fact, a child.

“You look tired,” he said.

She rolled her eyes.  “Don’t you know you’re not supposed to tell a woman that?”

He thought a moment.  “No.  No, I don’t.”

“Oh, come on now,” she laughed.  “I’m sure you’ve known a lot of women.”

“More than a lot,” he chuckled, “but I’ve only lived with one, and she died when I was five.”

“Was that your ma?”

He nodded.

“What happened to her?  If you don’t mind my asking.”

“It was an accident.  Her horse fell on her.”  He paused as he fought the images that sprang to mind.  He doubted he really remembered anything, but he’d heard the story so many times it was as if he did.

“How come your Pa never remarried?”

He looked at her.  “Probably for the same reason your Ma keeps turning Ed Flanders away from the door.”

Julia dropped her head.  “I miss my pa.”

Joe hesitated, and then reached out to take her hand.  “He was a good man.  You were lucky to have him.”

A tear escaped her eye to land on the exposed flesh above her bodice.  “That’s what Ma says.  The Good Lord giveth and the Good Lord taketh away.”  She sucked in air.  “Ma’s so strong.  I’m…not.”

“Yes, you are,” he countered.  “You’re very strong.”  Joe paused.  “I mean, you survived seeing ‘almost’ everything I got.”

That made her laugh, which was his intention.

He leaned back to ease his shoulder and looked around.  “Who were the Russells?”

“A young couple Pa gave some land to so they could get a start,” Julia answered.  “She was really pretty.”

That would be a woman’s first thought.

“She?”

“Maggie Russell.  They came over for supper every month or so.  Her husband wanted to raise cattle and Pa was teaching him how.”  Julia laughed.  “Bill was from the city.  The first time a steer bellowed, he ran like a scared rabbit!”

Joe shifted and then had to ask.  “Help me sit up?”

“Are you sure you should?”  Her hand returned to his head.   “Like I said, you’ve got a fever coming on.”

“It’s a low one.  I’ll be fine,” he replied and then favored her with the smile Hoss called ‘angelic’.  The one brother Adam said belonged to the Devil.  “Please?”

“Okay.”

He was lying on a low bed in the corner of the room that he supposed had been the Russells.  It looked hand-hewed just like the house.  There were a few other pieces of furniture in the room, including a cradle.  Once Julia had him settled with his back against the headboard, he asked, “Did they have children?”

She rose and went over to the cradle.  Placing a hand on it, she rocked it gently.  “Maggie died before the baby was born.  That’s why Bill left.”

“Before the baby was born?   So it wasn’t in childbirth?”

“No.  Maggie was sick.  They didn’t know it when they married.  Bill just up and walked away.  He said he couldn’t stand to be in this place, not without her and without their baby.”   Julia returned to his side.  She looked down at him with concern.  “Joe?  Are you all right?”

He’d paled, he knew it.  A sweat had broken out on his skin.  He felt chilled to the bone and suddenly very, very old.

“I’m tired, that’s all.”  He gave her a weak smile.  “Maybe I should try to get some sleep.”

She was still studying him.  “Are you sure that’s all it is?”

“Sure, I’m sure,” he lied.

Julia bent down to tuck the covers up around his chin.  “Is it warm enough in here?” she asked.

He nodded.  She’d started a small fire in the hearth and it felt good.  “You wake me if you hear or see anything.”

“I will.  I’m going to make us something to eat.  Bill left the larder full.  There’s plenty of things canned.  Are you hungry?”

“As a grizzly bear,” he replied as he turned his face into the covers.

Julia hesitated.  Then she leaned over again and planted a kiss on his hair.  “Sleep well,” she whispered.

Joe listened to the swish of her skirts as she left the room.  That was one of the memories he had of his mama, but it wasn’t his mama he was thinking of.  It was of a beautiful and innocent young woman just like Julia, so full of life and love, whom he had brought to a cabin much like this.  A lovely young woman he’d planned to love and cherish forever.   The young woman his brothers had thought so much of that they had carved a cradle to hold her first child.

His child.

That never was.

Joe fell asleep and in that sleep he murmured a name.

Laura.

 

“Jamie wasn’t too happy to be left behind,” Adam remarked as his pa sat down beside him.  They’d decided to follow Joe and had made camp a while back.  Neither of them had been able to sleep, so the fire they’d kindled for warmth was now brewing coffee.

“He’s a good boy, but that’s just it – Jamie is a boy.  Besides, he has school.”

His father was preoccupied.  He’d been too polite to ask him what about so far.  He knew it had something to do with Joe and what had happened a couple of years back at a homestead outside of Lone Pines.  Pa said Joe had almost died.

Jamie told him Joe was shot in the back.

“Pa?”

His father started.  “Eh?  Oh….  I’m sorry, son.  Here, you’ve just returned and I’ve asked you nothing about yourself or your work.  How have you been?”

“I’m fine, Pa.  Busy and happy being busy.”  Adam shifted and reached for the pot.  “Look, we’ll have plenty of time to talk about me and what I am doing once we get back home.  If I need to, I can stretch my stay to three weeks or so.”

“That’s wonderful, son.  I apologize for the fact that I’ve got you on the road again so quickly.  Your brother – ”

“Is Joe in trouble?”

Pa accepted the cup of coffee he handed him.  He breathed in its scent and took a sip before speaking.  “I don’t know.  It may be nothing.  I wasn’t comfortable with Joe going to Lone Pines in the first place.  Not after….”

Adam wondered what the end of that sentence was – not after what happened the last time, or not after what happened to Hoss.

He took a sip of his own coffee and leaned back.  “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“Not quite two years ago, your brother went to Lone Pines to close a deal.  I had other work to do and Hoss….”  Pa drew in a breath.  “Hoss had a commitment in town that kept him from going with Joe.  I assumed everything was all right until one of the hands rode in with a message from a rancher named Griswold.  I’ll never forget it.  It said Joseph had been shot and suggested I ride fast and hard.”

“Jamie said he was shot in the back.”

“And the leg.  You’re brother was bushwhacked, Adam, and left to die.  Tom Griswold was preparing for a drive.  He, along with one of his hands, was out looking for strays where he rarely went when he discovered your brother.”  His father paused.  “Joseph had nearly bled out by the time they found him.”

“I assume Hoss went with you.”

Pa looked at him.  He smiled.  “Nothing could have kept him away.  In the end, Hoss saved your brother’s life.”

Adam placed his cup on the ground.  “What was it all about?”

“Joe caught two men switching brands on Tom and Pat Griswold’s cattle.   They thought they’d silenced him, but your baby brother is tough and he survived.  Once I got there and began to investigate what had happened, they tried it again.  Hoss was with Joe at the house when one of the men broke in and tried to smother him.”

He felt as sick as his father looked.  “Good Lord!”

“Yes, the Lord was good.  He saw your brother through a dangerous surgery and protected him from Jim Fenton and Orv Pettis’ evil.”  His father looked away toward the horizon.  “There was one point where I was sure I was going to lose him.  Joe’s fever was so high and it seemed he’d given up.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“Pa?”

His father looked at him.  “Yes?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought about it, but what could you have done?  By the time the letter reached you, Joseph would either have been recovered or…gone.  It would only have made you worry.  Your brother is fine now.”

“Is he?”  Adam hesitated.  “Are you?”

“I’ve…come to peace with what happened.  Hoss died as he lived, giving and seeking nothing in return.”

“I understand he saved Joe’s life?”

“Which has been hard for your brother.  Joseph feels it should have been him who died.”

The man in black smiled.  “We both know what Hoss would have had to say about that.”

“Hoss told me once that he’d seen Joseph into the world and he refused to see him out.”  His father puffed out a breath.  “Do you know what Hoss told me?”

He shook his head.

“He said he’d made a pact with God that he would be first.”

“First?”

“Of the three of you.  The first to die.”

Adam swallowed over the lump in his throat.  “It’s not fair, Pa.  Hoss was so young.  He had so many years ahead of him.”

“I had hoped your brother would marry and have children.  He would have made an excellent father.”

The man in black reached for the pot to refresh his cup.  “It’s funny how it was always Joe who was about to get married.  I never could figure it.  The first time he proposed he wasn’t even nineteen.”

“Yes.  Laura.  What a sweet girl, and what a sad ending.”

“Does Joe ever talk about her?”

“No, but he still goes up to the old cabin.  The men have seen him there.”

“Is it still standing?”

“He’s repaired it.  I’m not sure what he’s waiting on, but it’s in good shape.”

Adam’s smile was rueful.  “Maybe he’s waiting on another Laura.”

“Maybe.”  Pa rose and stretched.  “I think it’s time you and I try to get some sleep, young man.”

He laughed.  “Young?  Pa, I’m over forty.”

“That’s still young to me.  You know, Adam, there’s a pretty young woman at the Griswolds.  Maybe we’ll get there and find there’s nothing more to your brother’s extended visit than the fact that Julia has grown up and turned his head.”

“How young?” he asked as he too rose.

Pa lifted a brow.  “About the same age Laura was when your brother fell in love with her.”

“Pa, Joe’s not nineteen any more.  He’s over thirty.”

“I know,” his father replied as he clapped a hand on his shoulder.  “It’s old fools who fall the hardest.”

 

Julia was sitting at the Russell’s table.  She’d fixed some food and gotten Joe to eat a few bites, but all too quickly he’d pushed the plate away and gone back to sleep.  She really needed to check his wound again.  His fever was still relatively low, but it was higher than before.  She was afraid she’d missed something when she’d cleaned it out.  Her ma had taught her all about wounds.  Most often, the injury itself was of the least concern.  It was infectivity that killed and the last time she’d seen Joe’s wound, it had looked angry and red.  Ma should have let him stay put at the house.  They could have kept him safe there.  They had the time before.

Or no, they hadn’t.  Jim Fenton would have killed him if not for Hoss running into the house while they battled the shed fire.

She supposed it was different now too since they were just two women.  Men like Joe felt responsible for women.  Her pa had been the same way.  He’d treated her like she was made out of china and she’d grown up thinking she was – that she was fragile and would break.  What she went through with Joe Cartwright nearly two years before had taught her she was more like her ma than she thought.  Ma was strong.

She was…getting there.

A sound made her look up and toward the room where Joe lay.  She listened and realized he was talking.  Puzzled, the young woman got to her feet and headed for the bedroom.  Outside the new day was dawning.  The pale light that intruded through the worn muslin curtains lit the floor and her way.  Dust danced in it.  The Russells had been gone about two years now.  She supposed no one had been in the cabin since then, unless it had been her pa to check on it and make sure no one had broken in and destroyed anything.  As she entered the room, she passed the empty cradle and a sadness overwhelmed her.  Sometimes it seemed there was more loss than gain in the world.

Sometimes it seemed hearts were meant to be broken.

Joe was tossing in his sleep, muttering words she couldn’t understand.  Julia sat  down beside him.  She watched him a moment and then reached out to touch one of the ringlets that covered his head.  He was young to have gray hair, but is suited him somehow, though ‘gray’ was a poor word to describe it.  Joe’s hair was a chaos of curls that reminded her of a summer storm.  Their color ran the gamut from steel-gray to a lightning flash of silver.  As she sat there, staring at him, she remembered the day he’d arrived.  He’d felt…empty somehow.  She knew now that it had to do in part with the loss of his brother, but there was something more – something deeper.  She’d felt something like that herself.  Her pa had died and yet she found herself thinking, not about him but about an earlier loss.

About Joe Cartwright and what might have been.

“Hey,” a familiar voice said.

She smiled when she saw his eyes were open.  “Hey.”

Joe’s fevered gaze rolled over to the window.  “Is it morning?”

“Just about.  Are you hungry?  I found some eggs.  The Russells chickens are still running around.”

He looked at her and smiled.   It was a lazy kind of smile, like a little boy waking from a wonderful dream.  “You are taking mighty fine care of me, Miss Julia,” he said.  “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

His words took her off-guard.  Quickly, to conceal the tidal wave of emotion that welled up within her, Julia reached out and placed a hand on his forehead.  The fever was still there but it hadn’t risen during the night.

“How do you feel?” she asked as she leaned back.  “Do you want me to fix those eggs?”

He shook his head and then, without warning, tossed the coverlet back and started to stand up!

“What do you think you’re doing?!”

Joe looked at her like she’d sprung a second head.  “Getting out of bed.”

“But you’re sick!”

He glanced at his shoulder.  “No, I’m not.  I’m shot.  I’ve been shot before.”

“But you’ve got a fever.”

He shrugged.  “I’ve had those before too.”

Julia’s hands went to her hips.  “Well, if you’re not going to eat breakfast, what exactly is it you think you are going to do?”

Joe pursed his lips and thought a moment.  One eyebrow cocked.  “Take care of business.”

“You’re not going out there looking for those robbers in your condition!” she countered.  “Why, if that fever was to take hold, you’d be flat on your face in no –”

His hand was on her shoulder.  Joe waited to speak until she met his more than slightly amused stare.  “Julia, I have to use the privy.”

If she’d blushed before when he told her he couldn’t do without her, she turned red as a beet now.   “Oh gosh!  I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to….”

Joe lifted a hand and placed it alongside her face.  “Julia.  Listen to me.  It’s okay.  This is new for both of us.  Maybe your ma and Ed Flanders will show up today and then your life can get back to normal.  I really appreciate all you’ve done for me.”  He paused and then asked, “Hey, what’s wrong?”

She couldn’t help it. There were tears in her eyes.  She didn’t want life to get back to normal.  She didn’t want to leave this place.  She wanted to stay here with Joe – just the two of them – for the rest of her life.

Since she couldn’t tell him any of that, she shook her head and dropped her eyes.

Joe must have thought she was upset about her ma and Ed, or maybe about her pa dying, because he drew her into his arms and held her.  They were so close, she could feel the beat of his heart.  She could also feel the heat radiating off of him.  He wasn’t being honest with her.  He was sicker than he let on.  Her pa had always been like that.  He wouldn’t admit to any weakness.  He had to be strong for them.

She wanted Joe to be strong for her.

“You know, Julia,” Joe said softly, “moving on doesn’t mean we forget about people, it just means we have to decide not to stay where we are.  Life is like a raging, rolling river.  We don’t have any control over it.  It takes us where it wants.  My pa sees God’s hand in that, and most of the time I do too.”

“Most of the time?” she asked.

His muscles tensed, as if readying for battle.  “Yes.”

“Are you mad at God because your brother died?”

“Yes.”  There was a pause.  “And for Laura.”

She’d heard him mention that name in his sleep.  “Who was she?”

Joe shook his head.  “I hadn’t thought of her in years.  I guess it’s this place.  Laura was a woman I loved a long time ago.  We were to be married.  She…died.”

She moved back so she could see him.  “Oh, Joe!  I’m sorry.”

He released her and crossed over to the cradle.  “My brothers made one like this for us.  For our first child.”

“How did she…die?”

He looked at her.  “She was sick.  She’d been sick the whole time she and her father stayed with us.  He kept trying to keep us apart, but never said anything.”  Joe’s fingers fisted in anger.  “She died in my arms.”

Tears were streaming down her face.  She didn’t know what to say.  This man’s grief put her own to shame.  The loss of a parent was to be expected.  The loss of a love – so fresh, with so much promise – was just…unthinkable.

Joe smiled at her.  “It’s okay.  It was a long time ago.  I don’t know why I keep thinking about her.  Like I said, I think it’s this place.  It’s very much like the cabin my pa gave us.”

Julia approached him.  She’d taken her shoes off and Joe had his on, so she had to look up a little at him.  Since she’d ‘seen just about everything he had’ the barriers were down between them.  It felt natural to reach out and take his hand.

“I’m so sorry, Joe.  I don’t know what to say.”

His fingers closed over hers and his other hand went to her hair.  He stroked it a moment and then gave her that smile, the one that looked like a wink.

“Then don’t say anything,” he responded.

And kissed her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SIX

 

He wasn’t sure why he’d done that.

Kissed Julia, that was.  Ever since coming to the cabin Joe’s emotions had been in turmoil.  At first he hadn’t thought about it since he’d felt like grass after a stampede, but the more time he spent inside the homely structure, the more the desolation that had claimed his soul on the ride to the Griswolds took hold.  He wasn’t a man to run, but that’s what he’d been doing.  He’d hoped travel, and spending some time in a different place, would ease the pain.  It hadn’t.  Hoss was still dead.  And now, he was grieving for more than Hoss.  The name he put to that grief was ‘Laura’, but it was deeper than that.  It was for the loss of a woman in his life.  There’s been a few he had really and truly loved – Laura and Amy Bishop chief among them.  They’d died, just like his mother had died, and while he’d danced and dallied and delighted in the company of dozens of delectable damsels, he’d known at heart that he would never take that step again.  Fearless, devil-may-care, dauntless and sometimes reckless Joseph Cartwright was afraid.

He was afraid that, in the end, every person he loved would die and leave him.

Adam was gone and who knew? maybe dead.  Hoss died for him and instead of him.  Pa…Pa was getting older and one day he would be gone.  Every woman he’d loved, starting with his mother, had either died or deserted him.

Did he dare take a chance again?

Everyone that knew him would laugh if he told them he was beginning to have feelings for Julia Griswold that went beyond friendship.  ‘Joe Cartwright?  Why, if that boy ever marries, it will be to a spitfire!’  But he didn’t want a spitfire or a fiercely independent woman.   He’d dated wild and willful girls, actresses, and even taken a turn or two with saloon girls.  Pa always told him they weren’t the ‘marrying kind’ and he’d been right.  He wanted – what was it the Good Book called it? – a helpmeet.  Someone who would quietly stand by his side.  A woman who would give him children and delight in taking care of them; someone who would take care of him.

Joe smiled.  Then he laughed.  The look on Julia’s face when she thought he was going to march out and take on the outlaws had been priceless!

He rotated his injured shoulder as he finished the short walk to the privy.  He had to admit, maybe he needed a little looking after.  Pa told him once that a woman was there to slow a man down and make him think.  Men – all men, but him more than a lot of them – had a tendency to charge ahead and right into danger.  Pa said, once you had a wife and children, you had to think of someone else first.  A single man could go out and get himself killed and his family would mourn, but a married man left behind people depending on him – people who needed him.

He…needed to be needed.

Joe halted when he just about bumped  his nose into the rough wood of the outhouse.  He shook his head and snorted and then took hold of the unlatched door and gave it a good thump.  When he was a kid, he used to shout ‘incoming!’ and then wait for the critters to scramble out if they were in there.  Since the Russells had been gone for over a year, he figured there might be a few of them considered the rough structure home.  After a count of about twenty, he stepped inside.

Just in time to miss the movement in the trees to his right.

 

Pat Griswold let out a little sigh as she placed the coffee pot next to the dish of pancakes on the table.  It was something she’d done hundreds of times.  There was even a man sitting at the table – but it was the wrong man.

“You worried about Julia?” Ed Flanders asked.

Pat pushed a stray lock of red-blonde hair out of her eyes.  She nodded as she took a seat across the table from him.  “Julia’s grown a lot since…well…since what happened, but she’s still a giddy girl not yet turned twenty.”

“You’re worried about Cartwright.”

She blinked.  “What?  No.  Joe Cartwright’s a gentleman.”

“Joe Cartwright’s a man,” Ed said as he took a sip.  “Right fine coffee, Pat.”

Her lips twisted.  “Oh?  And are men only interested in one thing when it comes to women?”

Ed hesitated before putting the cup on the worn tabletop.   He looked right at her.  “No.  I’m not sayin’ that.  But he’s a young one.”

She allowed the smile to escape.  “You were a young man once, weren’t you, Ed?”

“Yes, I was.  Didn’t see no point to it.”  He reached with his fork for a pancake.  “Every pretty filly that walked by turned my head.  Couldn’t think straight most the time.”

“Well, Joe’s not so young.  I think his pa said he was around thirty,” she said as she did the same.

“Young enough.”

As they began to eat a silence fell.  She’d ridden to Ed’s first thing and asked him to come help her.  He’d been right happy to, if ‘happy’ was a word that ever described the homesteader.  Ever since his son had died three years back, Ed had carried with him a sadness that sucked dry just about  anyone and anything he came into contact with.  He was a good man, but he was wasting precious time.

You never knew what the next day would bring.

“These men after Cartwright,” Ed began, “this have something to do with what happened before?”

She hadn’t told Ed of Joe’s suspicions about Robert Truslow.  She wanted Joe to do that.  All she’d told him was that some men had waylaid Joe and seemed to be following him and that they – she and Julia – needed help to deal with it.  It was a mark of the kind of man he was that he hadn’t asked any questions.

Until now.

“Joe seems to think so,” she replied, “but it’s better I leave the telling to him.”

Ed nodded, took another bite, and then announced, “Best I go alone.”

Pat stared at him.  “I’m coming with you.”

“Best if you don’t.  Could be dangerous.”

“If there is danger, Julia is right in the middle of it!”

“And what danger would that be, Mrs. Griswold?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

Ed was on his feet with his hand on his gun before the stranger could step in the door.  The homesteader relaxed a bit – they both did – when he was followed by the familiar form of Ben Cartwright.

Pat’s hand was on her chest.  Her heart was thumping.  “Sorry, Mister Cartwright, you startled me.”

“I should be the one to apologize,” the handsome man in black said as he held out his hand.  “And it’s ‘misters’ Cartwright.”

She looked at Ben who smiled.  “This is my oldest son, Adam.  He came home to find his youngest brother missing and insisted we come find him.”

“You know how older brothers are,” Adam said with a smile.  “First we hug, and then we box their ears.”

“We took the liberty of stabling our horses,” Ben said.  “I didn’t see Cochise in the barn.”

“Joe’s not here, Ben.”

“Not here?  Then where is he?” the man in black asked.

Pat rose from her chair and headed for the stove.  “Why don’t you two men sit down and grab some grub while I tell you about it?  You look done in.”

“Thank you,” Ben replied.  “We rode through the night.”  He glanced at his son.  “Neither of us could sleep.”

“Joe’s in trouble, isn’t he?” Adam asked as both he and his father sat at the table.

She remembered the older man’s presentiments about his youngest the time before.  It seemed there was a deep tie between all the Cartwright men.

“Fool kid got himself bushwhacked a second time,” Ed said as he laid his napkin on the table and scooted his chair back.

“A second time?” Ben asked.

“Joe went to see Sheriff Truslow and then on to Lone Pines to send you a telegram,” the older woman said.  “Some men tried to rob him on the way back.  They took his money, but he got away.”

Adam let out a small sigh.  “Was he hurt?”

Pat nodded as she sat another plate of pancakes on the table.  “Shot him in the shoulder.  It was a clean wound.  He seemed to be doing all right.”

“Where is my brother now, if I might ask?”

“Pat sent him up to the old Russell place,” Ed replied.  “Thought he’d be safer there.”

“Alone?”

“My girl, Julia, is with him,” she replied.  “She knows how to take care of a man in trouble.  She did it plenty of times with her pa.”

“Where is Tom?” Ben asked, as she knew he would.

Pat sat down and looked at him.

And began to talk.

 

Joe lowered himself gingerly into the chair at the table and then plastered a smile on his face as Julia turned toward him with a plate of food in her hand.

“Mm-mm,” he said.  “That smells good!”

She smiled.  “You missed breakfast, so I thought I’d make us lunch.  I found some tinned meat to go with the eggs.  It’s kind of a hash.”

He really wasn’t hungry, but for her sake he intended to finish every last bite.  As he picked up his fork and looked at the mix-up on his plate, Joe silently prayed his stomach wouldn’t betray him.

“How’s your shoulder doing?” she asked.  Before he could stop her, she reached out to touch his forehead.  “You’re still hot,” she remarked with a frown.

“I’ll be okay.  It just takes me a while to shake off a fever.  I’ve always been that way.”  It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t really the truth either.  He should have been better by now.   The wound was as hot to the touch as his head, but he wasn’t going to tell her that.   “You’ll see.  Tomorrow I’ll be right as rain.”

The look Julia gave him reminded him way too much of Hop Sing.

Which made him laugh.

“What?” she asked.

He put his fork down and took the opportunity to delay shoveling food into his queasy stomach.  “When this is all over, you and your ma need to come visit us on the Ponderosa.  I’d like to show it to you.  That way you can meet Hop Sing.”

“Who’s Hop Sing?”

“If you ask anybody in Virginia City, they’d say he’s our cook and housekeeper, but he’s a lot more than that.  Pa hired him about the time he brought my mama to the Ponderosa.”  Joe paused.  “After she died he took care of Adam, Hoss, and me.  Hop Sing was the one who saw we were up and dressed and washed and fed in time to ride to school.  He was there when we got home, and made sure we did our homework.  He took care of all of us, but for me, well,” Joe paused, “I guess you could kind of say he became my second ‘ma’.”

Julia smiled, as if the picture he painted amused her.  “He sounds like a wonderful man.”

“He is.  That look you gave me a minute back.  It reminded me of him.  That’s why I laughed.”

She held his gaze.  “You mean the one when you told me that whopper about feeling better by tomorrow?”

“Whopper?”  Joe gave her his best innocent look.

Julia indicated his plate with a nod.  “Healthy men eat.  You can’t stop them.  Sick ones don’t.”

“You never took care of my brother when he was sick,” he replied.  “Hoss could eat a horse and a –”

Her hand covered his.  “Joe.  How bad is it?”

He slumped back in the chair and let out a sigh.  “I don’t know.  I think the wound might be infected.”

“You better let me take a look at it.”  Julia rose to her feet and held out her hand.  “Come on over to the bed and lay down.”

“You can look at it here,” he said, suddenly uncomfortable.

“I can, but I can’t do it properly.”  The young woman smiled.  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid little old me is going to take ‘advantage’ of you.”

“Julia….”  He cleared his throat.  “About before….”

“It’s okay.  I’m sure you didn’t mean it.”  She shrugged.  “I imagine it was just what Ma calls a ‘moment’.”

She tugged on his hand but he didn’t budge.

“Julia.  You need to understand something about me.  I’m not a man who does things unless he means to do them.”  Joe rose to his feet.  He placed a hand alongside her cheek.  “So you see, I’m not so sure it’s smart for me to go lay down on that bed and have you unbutton my shirt.”

It took her a second to recover.  “Well, I can’t rightly take care of that wound with you wearing it.”

He nodded.  “Okay…fair is fair.  How about I take it off and stay here?”

She rolled her eyes.  “What am I supposed to do if you pass out and fall off the chair?”

“I won’t,” he replied as he began to work the buttons.

Julia watched him – a little too closely for his comfort.  Her rose-petal lips quirked.  “You want me to turn around?”

He’d finished with the buttons and was struggling a bit to remove the shirt.  The right sleeve had gone fine, but the left one wasn’t cooperating.  Apparently it was stuck to his skin.  Joe wrinkled his nose and winced as he pulled at it.

“I think I need some…help…here….”

Julia stared at him a moment longer and then reached inside his shirt.  He thought she was going to pull the shirt free, but instead she slipped her other hand inside the fabric and ran both hands up his back.  She looked up and he saw the same deep hunger that he felt reflected in her eyes.  Joe cleared his throat.  He needed to put a stop to this.  He was the adult here.  Julia was little more than a child.

Just like he’d been a child when he’d proposed to Laura all those years ago.

 

The road to the cabin was a long one and fraught with delays.  The four of them – him, Pa, Pat Griswold and Ed Flanders – had started out just after breakfast to head to the Russells.  Pat’s hand, Ern, was to join them later after attending to the needs of her spread.  The day was half-gone and they weren’t quite halfway there.  On the road they’d run into Sheriff Truslow and a man named Amos Pettis.  The pair said they were out looking for rustlers, but something about their demeanor struck him wrong.  Of course, Pa had prejudiced him a bit against the sheriff and not without reason.  The man’s inept investigation into who bushwhacked Joe had allowed those same men the opportunity to attempt to kill his brother again.  If not for Hoss, Joe would have been dead.

Adam closed his eyes.

Hoss.

It was so hard to believe he was gone.

Even though he’d known – even though he’d read the letter a hundred and one times – he’d still half-expected to find the big galoot in the barn nursing some animal back to health, or maybe in the kitchen rustling chocolate cake for a midnight snack.  Hoss’ absence was a presence that could not be denied.  You couldn’t help but feel it every time you stepped into the house.

He had no idea how Joe was coping with it.

Of course, from what little Pa had said – in letters as well as since he’d been home – it seemed Joe wasn’t ‘coping’ with his emotions.  Little brother had taken them and stuffed them in a sack and sewn it shut.  Then he’d tossed the sack into a deep, dark well.  Pa said Joe’s bursts of anger – usually directed at himself – followed by deep bouts of depression were difficult to endure.  Adam snorted.  ‘Difficult.’  That was Pa.  Steady.  Solid.  Self-sacrificing.

Long-suffering.

He looked like he’d aged ten years.

They were on the move again.  Truslow and Pettis had held them up about an hour asking questions about where they were going and what they were about.  The pair had couched it as ‘friendly chatter’, but it was more than that.  Adam had a sense that it was a delaying tactic, and that made him even more anxious to ride on and reach the cabin just to make sure his baby brother was still breathing.  Joe was an enigma.  His youngest brother was one of the strongest, toughest men he knew.  Up until his mid-twenties, Joe had been slight of build and in the featherweight class.   He was possessed of a natural beauty that, as a kid, had passed the handsome mark and marched straight on to ‘pretty’.  One year they’d talked him into dressing as a girl for an All Hallows’ Eve party and he’d won the prize for best costume.  Everyone thought he was a girl.  All of this had led to a lot of fights where little brother felt the need to prove himself.  He and Hoss had taught him how to defend himself and taught him well.  Joe could take on a man twice his size and win.  It was ironic that the one enemy that tough kid could not beat couldn’t even be seen.

Infectivity.

It had nearly killed him a dozen times.  Joe had been sick a lot as a child and then been shot, stabbed, and beaten a dozen times or more as an adult.   Worrying about Joseph Francis Cartwright was a natural state for anyone who loved him.

He was worried about him now.

Adam’s reverie was interrupted when his father urged Buck on and came alongside him.  Pa remained silent for a moment and then said, “What did you make of Robert Truslow?”

He pursed his lips and thought a moment.  “He appeared to me like someone who has something to hide.”

Pa nodded.  “I agree.  I have never trusted the man.  When we were here the last time – when your brother was bushwhacked – I did some asking around.  Most of the Griswold’s neighbors told me he was a decent man and a competent sheriff.  And yet, in your brother’s case, I saw nothing but an inept, belligerent individual who all too obviously wanted me to go away.”

“So what are you thinking?”

His father sighed.  “I’m not sure.  I want to give him the benefit of the doubt.”  Pa looked behind in the way the two men had gone.  “I’m uneasy about the fact that he was with Amos Pettis today.”

“That’s the father of the man who shot Joe, right?”

“One of the men.  It was either Orv Pettis or Jim Fenton.  I don’t know if it was ever established which man shot your brother, but they were in on it together.”

“And now they’re both dead.”

“Yes…which also makes me uneasy.  Amos could blame your brother for his son’s death.”

“You’d think he’d blame Truslow.  He’s the one who was there.”

“Man is a curious creature, son, as I am sure you know.  In order to make his son into a hero, Amos would feel compelled to turn your brother into the villain.  Joe lied about what Orv was doing.  Or Joe tricked him into doing something he didn’t want to do.”  Pa sighed.  “Perhaps Amos would even go so far as to try to convince himself that Joe was the one who was stealing cattle and his son was blamed for it.”

“I wonder….”  Adam frowned.  “It could be all or any of that, or it could be that  Amos and Truslow are involved.”

“Involved?”

“With the cattle rustling.”

Pa was frowning too.  “What are you thinking?”

“Well, let’s suppose that this syndicate our neighbors told you about is real and is operating out of the area near Lone Pines.”  He glanced behind at Pat and Ed who were following in their wake.  “Three years ago Ed’s son was murdered on his way back from a cattle show where some of those men would have been.  Let’s say James found out something there and that someone knew he’d found it out.”

“And had him killed to keep him quiet?”

“I’m not one to accuse a man without proof, but you said Sheriff Truslow found his body when there was no one else around.”

Pa’s look was grave.  He nodded.

“So, fast-forward to Joe’s trip to Lone Pines where he stumbles on Orv Pettis and Jim Fenton changing the brands on the Griswold’s cattle to their own.  Joe is shot and nearly killed and, from what you have told me, Truslow did everything in his power to stop the investigation into his shooting, from ignoring your suggestions and stomping off in a huff, to refusing to use dogs to search for clues.”

“It was odd,” Pa said.  “There was a definite feel of…well…conspiracy in the air.  Even among Tom and Pat’s neighbors.  I would look out to find them clustered in groups, talking quietly as they watched the house.”  The older man paused.  “Ed Flanders among them.”

So they could have a viper in their nest.

“And now,” Adam went on, “here we are riding out to find Joe who was attacked again – after he visited the good sheriff.   Plus, we run into that same sheriff, who is traveling with one of the dead bushwhackers’ fathers, along the way.  You know what they say, Pa?  Coincidence, if traced far enough back, becomes inevitable.”

His father was silent for a moment.  Then he nodded.  “Which means we need to get to the Russells’ cabin now.”

 

He’d stepped outside.

Julia followed him.

“Joe, I know what I want.  I want you,” she said as she stepped off the porch.  “I’ve wanted you since I met you that first time, two years ago.”

“You were seventeen,” he said.

“You were seventeen once,” she countered.  “Were you in love then?”

Joe closed his eyes and drew a breath.  Julia.  Amy.  Emily.  Laura.  At that age, he’d been in love more times than he could count.

“You’re not old enough to know what you want.”

She came closer.  “Ma was only eighteen when Pa proposed, and less than twenty when they married.  She knew what she wanted.  So do I.”

“How old was your Pa?”

“Twenty-six.”

“Julia.  Maybe missing your pa….  Maybe the fact that I’m older like he was.   Maybe….”

“Maybe you’re scared,” she said softly.

“I’m not scared.”

“Yes, you are.  Don’t you see?”  She was standing close by him now.  So close he caught the scent of vanilla on her skin; of rose water in her hair.  “You’re scared I’m going to die like those other girls you loved.  Like everyone you love.”

He shook his head and started to turn away.  She caught his hand and pulled him back.

“Every day is a chance, Joe.  You take a chance just opening your eyes and breathing.  You open the door without knowing what’s outside, and walk into it not knowing what you leave behind.  The kettle could spark and catch the house on fire while you’re in the barn.  One of the animals could spook and strike out.  They might miss you, but you could catch your leg on a piece of rusty wire backing away and die two days later from infectivity.”  She squeezed his hand.  “The only thing certain is uncertainty, and the only certainty is in believing that God is watching out for you and He knows what’s best.”

God.

In his darkest moments, he’d decided he was done with God.

“Everything happens for a reason,” she concluded.

He held her gaze.  “You really believe that?”

Julia smiled.  “Well, if God’s not in control, then who is?  You ever think about that?”

He touched her face.  “How did you grow so wise in two years?”

She shrugged.  “I’m not that smart.  You’re just dumber than you were.”

Joe started and then laughed.  Then he bent his head to kiss her.  When he came up for air, he said, “I think I could eat something now.”

Her smile was as stunning as a May morning.   “Give me five minutes,” she said and then turned and practically skipped into the Russells’ house.

Joe moved to the fence that bordered the yard and leaned his hip on it.  He reached inside his shirt and felt his wound, which was hot to the touch and giving him pain.  Still, he was on his feet and that was something to be grateful for.

Grateful.

It had been a long time since he’d been grateful for anything.  He’d been so angry that life – that God – had taken his brother instead of him that he’d struck out at everything including Pa and Hop Sing.  Joe glanced at the house.  Julia was singing.  He closed his eyes and listened and, again, his mind flew back to his youth and to his first true love and their hope for a life together.

Maybe, just maybe it could work this time.

With a sigh, Joe kicked off the fence and headed for the house.

Just as Julia screamed.

 

 

SEVEN

Night had fallen by the time they arrived at the Russell cabin.

Almost immediately they knew something was wrong.

While Joseph might have chosen to keep the lights low in the cabin, it was a chilly night and there was no smoke rising from the chimney.  Those two things combined with the fact that the front door was standing open were enough to pull Ben from his saddle before his horse came to a full stop and send him running toward the cabin even as Adam shouted for him not to.  When he stepped inside it was almost completely dark.  The only light in the structure was cast by a dim moon shrouded with clouds.  He felt his way around, hand over hand; moving from chair to table to stove to wall.  There were two full dishes on the table, as if Joe and Julia had just been ready to sit down to eat.  The fire was out, but there was a lingering scent of smoke in the air.  A pan or a kettle had burned dry.

He’d reached the back door when a voice called out, “Find anything?”

It wasn’t Adam.  It was Ed Flanders.

“Nothing. “  Ben glanced in the back room and was both relieved and disappointed to find it empty.  He turned back.  “There’s no one in the house.”

“Maybe they had to run,” Ed suggested as he stepped inside.

It was at that moment that Adam cried out, his tone both desperate and urgent.  “Pa!  Pa, come quick!”

The rancher was through the door and out of the house in a heartbeat.  Ed Flanders followed in his wake.  Once in the yard he halted and called. “Adam?  Son, where are you?”

“Over here, Pa!”

Ben’s chocolate-brown eyes narrowed as he searched the expanse of forest surrounding the cabin.  Then he saw it – a flash of white and blue.  Pat Griswold had stepped out of the trees and was waving him over.

“Must have found somethin’,” Ed said unnecessarily.

His nod was curt.

Ben was afraid he knew all too well what they had found.

By the time he arrived Adam had him halfway down.  Joe had been stripped of most of his clothing and strung between two trees.  The left side of his son’s body was covered with blood.   The boy was deeply unconscious, so much so that he made no sound as Adam cut the strip of rawhide that bound his right hand and Joe fell into his brother’s arms.

“Bastards,” Adam cursed under his breath as he laid his baby brother on the ground.  A moment later he tenderly reached out to touch his face.  “God!  Joe….”

There was cause for alarm.  There were red streaks running like rivers out of and away from the site where the bullet had penetrated his son’s skin but, worse than that, someone had ground dirt and debris into the reopened wound, contaminating it further.

“I’ll go to the house and fetch some water,” Pat said.

Ben caught her arm as she moved past.  “I didn’t find Julia,” he said, his tone apologetic.

“God will look out for her,” she replied.  “Your boy may die.  We need to see to him first.”

What a remarkable woman!

“Pa?”

It was Adam.   He’d dribbled some water onto his brother’s lips and forced him to swallow.  “I got him to take a little.”

“Is there any sign of consciousness?” he asked as he knelt at his sons’ side.

“Nothing yet.”  Adam scowled.  “Pa, that wound is really angry.”

He was angry too.  Upon closer examination he could see that some of the matter pressed into the wound was diseased.  There appeared to be animal hair as well as bits and pieces of rotten vegetation.  It was almost as if someone had wanted Joe to be alive when they found him – but planned on him being dead soon after.

Ben shivered from the thought – and the cold night air.  “We need to get your brother inside.”

Adam nodded toward the house.  “Looks like Pat’s got the fire going.”

Smoke was rising from the chimney and there was a lantern lit and hanging just outside the door.  As Ben watched, the interior was illuminated.

A truly remarkable woman.

“You want to rig something to carry him in?” Ed Flanders asked.  He’d been standing to the side since Adam cut Joe down.

“No.  I can – ”

A hand on his shoulder stopped him.  “Let me get him, Pa,” Adam said.

Their eyes met and in that look was a world of unspoken regret.  His demands on his eldest.  The boy’s need to prove himself his own man.  Adam’s departure.  Hoss’ death during his absence.  Joseph – so lost, so angry – so alone.

Ben rose and stepped back.  He nodded.

And watched as his eldest bore his broken and battered baby brother toward the Russells’ home.

 

Joe opened his eyes.  He lay still for a moment before turning his head and looking around.  It took him a moment to realize where he was.  It wasn’t the Ponderosa.  This was a simple structure with a couple of rooms, made of hewn logs.  There was a room with a hearth and next to the hearth was a cradle.  A woman sat beside it.  She was rocking it with her foot while she read.  Her head was bent so he couldn’t see her face, but the firelight danced in her light brown hair turning it to gold.

She turned a page.

For a long time he lay there, wondering if it was a dream or a real woman he watched.  Now and then she would reach down to the cradle to check its occupant.  Every so often she would take hold of the coverlet and pull it up as if worried the child would catch a chill.  He wondered about that.  The room wasn’t cold.

It was…perfect.

Finally, with a little sigh, she rose, put the book down, and crossed over to him.  Still, the shadows hid her face.  It was a slender face, surrounded by a mound of curls barely contained.  She was wearing a calico dress edged with green piping.  She stopped by his bed and reached out to turn up the lamp before sitting on its edge.

“Hello, Joe,” she said.  “It’s been a long time.  Do you remember me?”

Of course he remembered her.

It was Laura.

He nodded, even as tears entered his eyes.  “How?” he asked.  “Am I dead?”

He remembered the men.  Brutal, evil men.  He’d burst into the Russells’ house after Julia screamed and found them there.  It was the same pair that had waylaid him on the road only their masks were down, which told him instantly that they meant to kill them.  He didn’t know them, but he knew their type.  Thugs who would do anything for money and who took pleasure in the chaos they created.  There were only two of them and he was sure – even injured as he was – that he could have taken them, but there was Julia to consider.  She’d already been struck.  A frying pan lay at her feet.  Apparently she had tried to take one of them out since the taller man was holding a wet kerchief to a wound on his head.  The other man was holding her.  His gun was leveled at her chest.

‘What do you want?” he’d asked.

The shorter man had laughed.   “We don’t want nothin’.  We’re here to send a message.”

He’d looked at Julia and waited until she looked back.  She was scared, but she wasn’t cowed.  Not in the slightest.

He’d smiled to encourage her.

“You think somethin’s funny, Cartwright?”  the taller, wounded man asked.

“Yeah, you two,” he goaded.   He had to do something to get them away from Julia.  Maybe if he made them mad.  “You make a pretty lousy pair of kidnappers.  I got away from you before.”

“Oh, we wasn’t trying to kidnap you.  Was we, Dan?  We was just trying to send a message,” the shorter one said.

“Like now?” Joe countered.

Dan smirked.   “Yeah, like now.  Only this message is for your Pa and this one’s ma.”  He jerked his head in Julia’s direction.

“What do you want with my ma?” Julia demanded.

“You shut up!” Dan shouted and then he turned and struck her again.

That was all it took.

“Little Joe?”

He blinked.  He was back in the room with the impossible Laura.  “They hit her,” he said.

Laura frowned.  “Yes, I know.”

“You know?”

She placed a hand alongside his face.  “Dear Joe, I know everything.  I know how hard you fought them.  I know you did everything your strength would allow.  I was there when you fell, when you were dragged out of the house and thrown to the ground.  I…watched as that evil man took his boot and ground dirt into your wound and then hung you nearly naked between two trees.”  Laura’s fingers moved to his hair.  She ran them through it.  “I was there when you died.”

He blinked.  “Huh?”

“Your pa and Adam discovered it when they got you into the house.  You’re there now.  They are working over you, desperately trying to call you back.”  Laura looked directly into his eyes.  “Will you go?”

Joe looked around the room.  He recognized it now.  It was the common room of the house he and his brothers had restored.  The cradle was the one that had been meant to hold his son – or daughter.

“Can I stay here with you?”

“You can.  The choice is yours.”

“Where is…here?”

“Let not your heart be troubled.  Ye believe in God, believe also in me,” she quoted.  “In my Father’s house are many mansions.  If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.”  Laura smiled.  The gesture was so brilliant it lit the entire room.  “This is my mansion.  The life I desired with you.”  She looked toward the hearth.  “And our child.”  Laura hesitated and then moved her hand to his heart.  “I want you here with me, Joe.  Then Paradise would be complete.”

“Then I’ll stay.”

A tear formed in the corner of her eye.  “I can’t let you.  It would be selfish of me.  You have things to do.”

Joe sat up.  He took her hand in his.  “I don’t want to do anything but stay here with you,” he said.

Laura touched his face.  “What about Julia?”

“I don’t…love her like I loved you.”

“Are you sure?  And what about your Pa?  Would you leave him a broken man?”

“Pa will….”

No, he wouldn’t.  Pa wouldn’t survive his loss, not so soon after Hoss.

“It will be painful to return,” she said.  “In more ways than one.”

He nodded.  After a moment he asked, “Why?”

“Why what?

“Why?  Why did my mother have to die?  Why did you?!”  Joe sucked in air.  “Why Hoss?”

Her hand stroked his cheek . “Dear Little Joe.  Everything – everyone – dies.  In death we are set free.  There is no pain here, no loss.  Grief is unknown.”

He reached out to touch the tear that was trailing down her cheek.  “Then why are you crying?”

Her smile returned.

“Love.”

 

“Anything, Adam?”

Pa’s question was desperate.  As desperate as his own attempt to pound life back into his lifeless brother.  He shook his head as he bent his mouth to Joe’s and breathed.  More and more the medical journals were suggesting such a thing could help revive a man and call him back from the brink.  He didn’t understand the science.

He was doing it on faith.

It had been no more than thirty seconds since they’d realized Joe’s heart wasn’t beating.  Thirty seconds of agony as he worked over him with Pa and Pat Griswold looking on.  Pat’s lips were moving in prayer.  She was a practical woman and he was sure her prayers were practical as well.  Wake Joe up, Lord.  Make him breathe!

Start that generous heart beating again.

They knew from the last time this had happened – when Joe had been taken by a group of miners and nearly beaten to death – that they had precious little time.  After a few minutes the brain began to die and even if his brother lived, there would be damage.

Adam had the fingers of one hand screwed tightly in his brother’s curls.  They were silver.  Dear Lord!  How had he stayed away long enough that his baby brother’s hair was silver?!  How could he have forgotten the love he had known on the Ponderosa?

How could he have forgotten…home?

“Adam.”

He looked up with hope.  Pa dashed it with a shake of his head.  Tears were streaming down his father’s face.

“Let him go.”

Adam sucked in air like a drowning man.  He raised a hand and brought it down on his brother’s bare chest with killing force a half-dozen times, punctuating his words and his grief.

“I…will…not…let…him…go!”

Two things happened.  Pa caught his hand.

And Joe coughed.

 

An hour later Adam sat at his brother’s bedside watching the bruises form.  He felt like a heel.  What he’d done might have had a hand in bringing Joe back, but it would certainly add to his brother’s pain.  Pat Griswold cleaned the wound out as best she could, removing all the foreign matter.  They’d found alcohol and bandages – plus a bucket of soiled linens – near the bed.  It was obvious that Pat’s daughter had been tending Joe.

They’d found something else once they had time to think of something other than Joe.  That was a note.  It had been left by Julia’s kidnappers.  They promised they wouldn’t harm her so long as he and Pa left the area and never returned – and kept their mouths shut about their suspicions.   It didn’t mention Joe, so obviously they thought they’d killed him.  Pat was instructed to return home and await word.  Pat was pretty sure whoever it was, was going to demand she get off her land in exchange for Julia’s return.  It was a prime piece and smack dab in the middle of all the rustling.  If Joe hadn’t stopped them two years before, the men who bushwhacked him would have succeeded in doing it by stealing cattle and slowly bleeding the Griswolds to death.

Adam placed a hand on his brother’s arm.  Joe had certainly paid a high price for his chivalry.

At his touch, his brother stirred.

The man in black shrank back into the shadows cast by the bedside lamp.  He wasn’t sure what effect his presence would have on Joe.  He was really sick and he didn’t want to agitate him.  The only trouble was, he was the only one in the house.  Pat was outside hanging laundry and Pa and Ed Flanders were gone.  He wasn’t quite sure what he thought about that.  He didn’t know the man well enough to trust or distrust him, but there was something about the rancher that just set wrong.

Joe’s lips were moving.  Adam expected the first word to come out of them would be ‘Pa’.  It wasn’t.

It was ‘Laura’.

That took him back to another time, in fact, to another world.  One where he’d been a part of his brothers’ daily lives.  It hadn’t taken him long, once he’d left, to realize that his quest for independence came at a high price.  So he’d kept himself busy, sailing from place to place, taking on new and more complex jobs.  In that way the years had flown by at a pace.  Joe had been barely twenty when he’d proposed to Laura.

Her death had broken his brother’s heart.

Joe said the name again as his feverish eyes searched the semi-darkness.  “Laura?”

Adam sighed and leaned forward.  “Laura’s not here, Joe.”

His brother blinked and turned his head toward him.  He studied him a moment and then asked, “I came…back…didn’t I?”

“Back from where, Joe?”

Joe looked puzzled.  “Are you dead too?”

Adam chuckled.  “No.  I am very much alive and so are you.”

His brother leaned his head back and closed his eyes.  For a moment, Adam thought he’d fallen asleep, but then he said, “She’s still here.”

“Who?”

“Laura.”

“Joe, Laura’s not here.  She’s…dead.  She died nearly ten years ago.”

A smile curled his brother’s lips.  “Shows what you know,” he said just before drifting off.

“He’s bound to be confused,” Pat Griswold remarked as she stopped at his side.  He looked up and saw the wash basket in her hands. “I’ve got fresh linens.  I’ll get that bandage changed.”

“Thank you.  Thank you for what you are doing for my brother, and for what you did before.”

She looked down at him.  Pat Griswold was a handsome woman, not tall but not short, with golden-blonde hair tending toward red that she wore pulled back in a bun as severe as she pretended to be.  She had a no-nonsense way and a competency about her that made him think of the stories his pa had told him about his own mother.  Pat had made it quite clear that she was not to be pitied or treated with kid gloves.  ‘The good Lord is about His business, so I need to be about mine,’ she’d said as she cared for Joe – for all of them, in fact.  It was the lot of a woman to be left behind, but he’d wondered more than once if Pa would have been better off taking Pat with him instead of the enigmatic Ed.

“Like I told your Pa back when your brother was bushwhacked, one hand washes the other.”

“We’ll find Julia,” he stated as he moved out of her way.  He intended to join his father and Ed on the hunt as soon as he knew Joe was out of danger.

Pat removed the soiled bandage from Joe’s shoulder  and dropped it in the bucket by the bed.  Quickly and efficiently, she replaced it with a clean one.  As she straightened up, the older woman paused.  She linked her hands in her lap and looked at him.

“Your Pa tells me you’ve been gone some time.”

“Nearly a decade.”

“Why’d you leave?”

He shrugged.  “A young man’s fancy that he had to find himself.”

“And did you?  Find yourself?”

Adam considered her question.  “I found I could function outside my father’s shadow.  Pa’s a strong man with a strong presence.  I’m sure you’ve noticed.”  As she nodded, he went on.  “I felt stifled on the Ponderosa.  I felt…no one took me seriously.  I would always be my father’s son.  I went where I could just be me.”

“And now you’re back.”

“For a visit.”

Pat nodded.  “Mister Cartwright – ”

“Adam.”

“Adam then.  Your pa tells me you never had a mother.”

“I had a step-mother.  Joe’s mother.”  His smile was wistful.  “Five years with Marie more than made up for twelve without my own.”

“She loved you.”

“Yes.”

“Did you love her?”

Did he?  “I believe I did.  Our relationship was…rocky.”

“Adam, there’s something God gives a mother to do.  It’s different from a father.  Only He knows why sometimes He takes it away.  Most like, it’s to give a man something to overcome.”  She shifted so she was facing him.  “A mother loves a child in the way no one else can.  There’s no need to measure up, no shoes to fill.  No…shadow to step out of.  A mother draws her child close and lets them know they are accepted as they are.  There’s no need to strive.”

“You’re saying I missed out on that?”

“I’m saying that what you’ve been looking for has been inside you all along.  You’ve no need to wander.”  Pat turned to Joe and placed her hand over his.  “You have a father and brother who love you and who need you.”

“Don’t let Joe hear you say that.”

She brushed a curl back from his brother’s sweaty forehead.  “He knows it.  But that’s how you men are, stubborn and thick as flour paste.  All I’m saying, Adam, is that once this is over you need to look to your heart and not your head . Maybe then you’ll know what’s important and it will bring that ship you’ve been sailing to its berth.”

With that, she rose and returned to the stove.

Adam sat for sometime at Joe’s side, recalling both their battles and victories, and then he rose and walked to the door.  Stepping out, the man in black drew in a deep breath of air, nosing the scent of pine.

And of home.

 

 

EIGHT

Ben Cartwright looked across the fire at Ed Flanders.  Night had fallen and they’d made camp.  They’d traveled, perhaps, five miles in search of Julia and the men who had taken her.  He’d been careful to mark their path as they traveled in such a way that Adam would recognize the signs.  His eldest intended to follow once he was certain his brother was out of danger.   Adam was worried about Joe.

He was worried about Ed.

The homesteader hadn’t said much as they traveled.  From what Pat told him, Flanders was a man of few words on his most loquacious days.

He held himself like someone who had been punched and never recovered from the blow.

“Cartwright.”

“Yes.”

“What are you doing here?”

It was an honest question, if an odd one given the circumstances.  “My son sent a telegram saying he would be delayed at the Griswolds.  I came to see if Joe was all right.”

“Seems to find trouble easy, that one.”

Ben agreed.  “Yes.  Yes, he does.  In some ways Joseph is an innocent and I suppose that’s my fault.  He’s too trusting of people.”

“While you’re not?”

There was something in the man’s tone that put him on edge.  “Are you saying I shouldn’t be?”

“All I’m saying is, here you are alone in the wilderness with a man you barely know.  You’re sharin’ a fire with him while your gun’s in its holster and hangin’ on the saddle horn twenty feet away.”  Ed patted his side.  “I got mine right here.”

Ben’s eyes narrowed.  “Do you intend to use it?”

“Maybe.  But not for what you think.”

“And what would that be?”

“Bushwhackin’ you, like Orv and Jim bushwhacked your boy.”

“Did someone bushwhack your boy, Ed?”

The homesteader’s jaw went tight.  “In a way.  Jimmy didn’t have a chance.”

“Was the killer caught?”

Ed shook his head.  “Sheriff Truslow said he didn’t find any evidence of who done it.”

Ben’s tone was dark.  “He didn’t find any evidence of who attacked Joe either.  His brother and I had to do that.”

Ed reached forward and picked up his coffee.  He took a sip before saying, “You don’t like old Bob much, do you?”

“I think he’s incompetent at best and corrupt at worst.”

“And you intend to find out which it is?”

Ben let out a sigh.  “My son has been hunted down like an animal and almost killed, twice.  If I find out Sheriff Truslow is somehow involved, it is my intention to take him down.  I’m surprised, considering what happened to your boy, that it’s not your intention as well.”

“Never said it wasn’t.”

It took a second.  “What?”

Ed leaned back.  “Tom Griswold was a good friend of mine.  I trusted him.  He told me, ‘fore he took off on that drive, that he suspected Robert was dirty.”

“What?  Tom knew?”

“He suspected.  Don’t know as he had any proof.  Tom wasn’t comfortable when Bob signed up at the last minute to go on the drive.  I guess we know why.”

“You suspect Truslow had him killed?  Have you told Pat this?”

“No, and I’m not likely to.  She’d march herself right over to his office and demand the truth.  Pat’s smart, but she’s also a woman.  She thinks with her heart and not her head.” Ed smiled.  A rare occasion.  “I been courtin’ her partly to keep an eye on her and Julia.  Figured if Truslow and his crew saw me over there all the time, they’d think twice about doin’ anythin’.”

“So the accidents…?”

“Someone’s been tryin’ to drive her out.  That’s prime land she’s got and there’s a lot of acres to hide rustled cattle on.”

Ben shifted his position and leaned toward the fire.  “Before I left the Ponderosa, there was a meeting at my house.  It seems there’s some sort of syndicate, rustling and moving thousands of head a week.  There wasn’t one rancher between here and Lone Pines that was unaffected.  Some had small losses, but others had a majority of their cattle taken.”

“Seems to me it’s been going on for a long time,” Ed agreed.  “It’s just got big enough that someone’s noticed.  I did some checking around before you showed up.  It seems Bob’s not the only one turning a blind eye.  I visited half-a-dozen sheriffs in the surrounding towns.  Half of them had nothing to say.”

“You think they’re on the take?”

“That, or they’re gettin’ kick-backs from the sales.   Maybe both.”

It made sense.  If Truslow was in the syndicate’s pocket, he would have done everything he could to keep them from finding out who bushwhacked Joe.  He would also have been forced to eliminate Pettis and Fenton before they went to trial.  And, if he knew Tom Griswold suspected his involvement, the dirty lawman would have been forced to eliminate him too.

“Do you think your son stumbled on their plan?”

Ed sighed.  “James was a lot like his mother.  He was headstrong boy.  If he caught wind of somethin’, he would have taken action on his own.  I asked around and it seems some of the ranchers were talkin’ about a group of men that were rustlin’ down this way and how the local lawmen were turnin’ a blind eye to what they was doin’.  Seems to me that there man who shot him could have been one of them, pretendin’ to be a grieving brother.”

“I’m sorry, Ed.  I’m sorry your son died – and I’m sorry I suspected you.”

“Nothin’ to be sorry about.  A sorry man doesn’t make it long in the West.”

“No, I suppose he doesn’t.”

“Well, I’m gonna turn in.  No knowing’ what we’ll face in the mornin’.   I just hope Julia minds her tongue until we find her.”

“Really?  She seemed like a quiet, respectful girl.”

Ed snorted.  “Much as Tom was a friend of mine, he was a dreamer.  He was always tellin’ that girl a prince would come by one day and sweep her up and take her somewheres she could live a life of ease.  When he died, she woke up from that dream.  Wasn’t too long after Tom passed that Pat took ill.  Julia’s been running the place for some time.”

“Pat’s not well?”

“Cut herself.  Ain’t mended.”

“She seems fine.”

Ed stared at him.  “You got a wife, Ben?”

“I did.  Three, in fact.  Joseph’s mother died when he was five.”

“She ever hurt herself?”

He’d nearly forgotten.  They’d been in the middle of haying.  It was their third cutting and they were still short of what they needed.  The weather had been as changeable as his wife’s disposition.  It rained before, during, and after they cut and formed the bales.  Every day when he came in exhausted and in a worse mood than the day before, Marie would be there, waiting.  She’d have his supper ready and his pipe and slippers by his chair.  He was so tired he failed to notice the tightness around her eyes and lips.  She was careful to keep out of the light so he couldn’t see how pale she’d become.  Finally, one night as she bent to pick up a paper he had dropped, she stumbled and almost fell.  Marie put it off to fatigue, but when he questioned Hop Sing the next day he found out she had fallen and twisted her ankle while chasing Joseph down for a nap.  She’d suffered silently for over a week and never said a word.

He nodded.

“I tried to stop Pat from comin’, but she wouldn’t have none of it,” Ed said as he arranged his bedding.  “She gave me a ‘pshaw!’ and called me an old worry-wort and started packing her bags.”

“I imagine her concern for her daughter was paramount in making her decision.”

“That girl’s flighty as a feather in an October wind.  She needs a man’s firm hand to tether her to the ground.”  Ed looked at him.  “Don’t suppose that’d be your boy?”

Ben shook his head.  While Joseph had been chief among his sons to think of marriage in his youth, as an older and more sober man he was not the marrying kind.  The rancher shifted and laid down.  As he lay on his back in his bedroll, visions of Julia Griswold from that last day flooded his mind’s eyes – her shy smile, her gentle and pure beauty; her tall, willowy figure wrapped in a red calico dress with a plunging neckline.

Or was he?

 

Joe Cartwright opened his eyes.  For a moment he had no idea where he was, but then he shifted and pain exploded in his left shoulder reminding him of the events of the last few days.

“Damn!” he cursed.

“I swear I didn’t do it,” a familiar voice laced with irony and concern said.  “At least not this time.”

Joe closed his eyes, drew a breath, and then turned his head in the direction of the voice.  Nearly ten years absence had brought almost as much gray into his brother’s hair as his own – and there was less of it.  Adam was still slender, but had bulked out as men in their forties were wont to do.  He was dressed in his customary black, though the suit had an Eastern instead of a Western flair to it.  Joe studied him a moment and then swallowed.

He didn’t know what to say.

Adam’s lips curled at one end.  “It’s good to see you too.”

“Sorry, Adam, I’m….  Well, it’s kind of a…shock.  We thought…Pa and me that…well…maybe you were –”

“Dead?”

He nodded – and then winced as his wound once again made itself known.

“You want help sitting up?”

“Yeah.  Thanks.”

There was something about the touch of his brother’s hands that nearly undid him.  He was tired – dog-tired – and no matter how much he wanted to deny it, sick.  So the fact that his emotions were on edge came as no surprise.  What surprised Joe was the flood of relief that coursed through him.  Adam would take care of everything.  Adam would make everything all right.

Adam was here.

Except he hadn’t been, and he wouldn’t be again.

“You want some water?”

Joe nodded.

Adam poured him a glass and then leaned back in his chair and watched him drink it.  He took a little longer than necessary, partly because of using his right hand, but also because he was hiding behind the glass.  He didn’t know what to say – wasn’t sure what he would say.  If there was one thing Joe Cartwright was famous for, it was blurting out his feelings in a rush of anger.

And he was angry.

“So,” older brother said, folding his arms over his chest, “let’s have it.”

Joe eyed him over the rim of the glass.  “Have what?”

“Both barrels.”

“Huh?”

Adam sighed.  “Joe, the last time I saw you, you were mad enough to spit nails.  I’ve always…regretted how we parted.  How I…wounded you.”

Joe shrugged.  “I was a kid.”

“And now you are a wise old sage?”

“Look, Adam,” he began as he straightened up.  “You haven’t been home for nearly a decade.  You have no idea who I am anymore, so don’t….”  Joe drew a breath as pain stabbed him.  “Don’t even try to pretend that you do!”

His brother pursed his lips.  He’d finally figured out why he did that.  It kept Adam from blurting out his feelings.

“Joe, you need to calm down – ”

“And don’t start telling me what to do!” he snapped.  “You gave up the right to do that when you walked out the door and broke Pa’s heart!”

A silence fell between them broken only by his own ragged breathing.  Joe sucked in air through his nostrils and blew it out slowly, seeking to regain control of his temper.

Adam was the first to speak.  “Joe, when you were twenty and you wanted to get married – why was that?”

“What do you mean ‘why was that’?”

“Why did you want to get married?”

“Because I loved Laura.”

“And?”

He scowled.  “And…I don’t know.  I wanted to be with her, just the two of us.  I guess I wanted a place of my own.”

“To be your own man.”

Joe winced again as he shifted his shoulder.  If the truth was known, he was getting awfully tired, but he’d never admit that to his brother.  Whatever poultice Pat had put on his shoulder had taken some of the fire out of it, but it was still hot to the touch and he was still feverish.  If he was going to do what he had to do, he couldn’t let anyone know how weak he was.

“Yeah, I guess,” he replied.

“As you know, Joe, I was…burned on my way to the altar.  I decided then that marriage wasn’t for me.  Still, like you, I needed a ‘place of my own’ and to be my own man.  I had to go away to find both.” Adam smiled.  “Much as I love our father….”

He’d thought about it after Adam left.  He’d always envied his brother being the oldest . Now, since he’d been thrust into that position by Pa adopting Jamie and Hoss’ death, he understood better what it meant.  Constant responsibility.  Unending worry.

Living up to Pa’s expectations.

“He casts a big shadow,” he said quietly.

“Yes, he does.”  Adam rose to his feet.  “And now, little brother, I think you’d better get some sleep.  You look tired as Old Nick.”

Joe scowled.  “You gonna tuck me in?”

“Well, if I thought it would make you stay put, I would.”

He’d slipped down a bit so his head was resting on the pillow.  “Huh?”

“Just when were you thinking of sneaking out to go after Julia?”

Joe put on his best innocent look.  “Who me?”

“Yes, you.  I was going to go join Pa and Ed, but then I got to thinking.  It’s what I do best, you know?”

He rolled his eyes.

“I leave, which leaves Pat Griswold here to keep you in bed.  From what I understand, the last time you were under her care you were…compliant.”  Adam sighed.  “I may not know you now, Joe, but I knew you then.  You’ll pull that face you just gave me, take your medicine and pretend to go to sleep – and then sneak out before the sun is up.”

“And what are you going to do about it if I do?”

“Why, go with you, of course.  Get some sleep and we’ll see how you are in a few hours.  Then – if you’re strong enough – we’ll take a wagon and follow Pa.”

It took him a moment to swallow his pride.  “Thanks, Adam.”

The man in black reached out to tussle his curls.  “That’s what older brothers are for, little buddy.”

He had a snappy comeback.  He just didn’t have the energy to deliver it.

A few seconds later, Joe Cartwright was asleep.

 

“Now what?” Ben asked.

Ed Flanders shook his head.  “Beats me.  A man’s got to have a trail to follow for him to go anywhere.”

Julia’s kidnappers were sharp.  They’d left few signs of their passage before, and now that they had come into the high country, there were none.  In the last half hour grass and meadowland had given way to scrub and rock.  In the beginning there were three horses, but they’d been joined by three others for a total of six.  Five men and Julia, he supposed.  The girl must have been riding since no single horse’s tracks were driven into the earth any deeper than the others.

The rancher stepped back and looked up the steep grade they faced.  “Do you have any idea where they would be going?  What would be out here?”

“There’s a box canyon not too far from here.  It’d be a pretty good place to hide a thousand head of cattle.”

“The rustlers.”

“That’d be my guess.”

If Ed was right, it changed things.  A couple of kidnappers they could take on alone.  Dozens of men, dedicated to crime and bent on secrecy, would be another matter entirely.

“Can we go to the law?  Is there anyone other than Truslow we can trust?”

The homesteader thought a moment before inclining his head toward the south.  “Bridgeport’s over that way.  That’s Damien Strait.”  Ed’s lips curled at one end.  “Folks around here call him ‘damn strait’.   Trouble is, we’re out of his jurisdiction.”

“I imagine some of the stolen cattle would be ‘in’ his jurisdiction, don’t you think?”

Ed snorted.  “Hard to tell till we check each and every one of them thousand of quarters for a brand.”

“Exactly.  How long it is to Bridgeport?”

“I’m thinkin’ a couple of hours.”

Ben glanced at the sky.  The day was advancing.  He hated to leave Julia in the rustlers’ hands overnight, but it seemed they had little choice.  She was a beautiful girl.

“You thinkin’ about Julia?”

“Yes.”

Ed’s hand descended to his gun.  “Me too.  Those men touch her, well….”

Ben nodded.

They would make them pay.

 

Joe woke again, only this time it was to find Pat Griswold sitting by his side.  She had her hands folded in her lap and was staring out the window.  The late afternoon light was slanting through it, casting golden-red ribbons on the floor.  He noted her straight spine and closed eyes and decided she was praying, so he simply watched her.  He bet, in her youth, that she’d turned a lot of heads with her small chiseled features, shapely form, and reddish golden-blonde hair.   That beauty had matured now, ripened by wisdom and honed by sorrow.

She was one of the strongest women he had ever known.

As he lay there, drifting in and out of sleep, Joe wondered what his own mother would have been like at that age.  He had few real memories of her.  Her face was the face in the portrait on his father’s desk – a mask of perfection with a shy smile and eyes that did nothing to hide the pain she had known.  What he knew of her came from stories.  He’d never tell Pa, but he liked Adam’s stories best.  Pa….  Well, Pa had loved her and lost her and lifted Marie De Marigny to sainthood.  Hoss thought that she was the best ma that ever walked the Earth.   Hop Sing’s stories were the most fun.  He’d never tire of hearing of their bouts to rule the kitchen and the part he had played in them.  His favorite was the day he and his mama and Hop Sing got into a flour fight.  By the time Pa got home, it looked like it had snowed in the kitchen!  While Adam….  Adam and his ma hadn’t gotten along well to start with.  They’d fought too, but with words.   Older brother had grown to respect her and love her, and when he spoke about her he told the truth.  The plain honest truth.

His mother was a woman.  She had her flaws like any woman.

He’d been looking at that portrait one day when Adam had come alongside him to get something out of Pa’s desk.  Older brother was there when the image was taken, so he’d asked him what she was smiling about.

‘How happy she was,’ Adam replied.

He’d looked at the portrait again.  “Her eyes look sad.”

Adam had done something then that was out of character.  He’d draped an arm around his shoulder.  “Joe, your mother had a hard path.  She was young and beautiful and full of life, and just about every other woman in the territory was jealous of her.  Marie left behind everything she knew to come out West.  She had few friends.”

‘So what did she have to smile about?”

His brother had given his shoulders a little squeeze.

‘You.’

“You enjoying the view?” a wry voice asked.

Joe turned to look.  Now, Pat was watching him.

“How are you feeling?” she asked as she reached out and placed a hand on his forehead.  “Fever’s down.”

“Better.”  He thought a second.  “Hungry.”

Pat laughed.  “Now isn’t that just like a man.  First consideration back from the brink of death is food.”  She started to rise.  “I’ll get you some coffee and then we’ll see how something light sits.”

He caught her arm.  “Pat.”

She drew in a breath and held it a moment before letting it out in words.  “I know what you’re going to say and I won’t hear it.  It’s no one’s fault Julia’s gone missing other than the men’s who took her.”

“I was careless.  I wasn’t paying attention.  I….”  He stopped, ashamed to admit what he’d been doing.

The older woman chuckled.  “That girl.  It didn’t take her long.”

He frowned.  “What?”

“Joe, that child’s been in love with you since the moment she saw you.  It was all, ‘Oh, Ma!  What if he dies in my bed?’, ‘til she caught a look.”  Pat paused.  “You’re a right handsome man, Joe Cartwright, and a gentleman to boot.  What woman wouldn’t fall in love with you?”

He hoped he could pretend his blushes were because of the fever.

“That’s why I sent Julia with you.  Not because she’s got it bad, but because I knew I could trust you.”  The older woman looked him straight in the eye.  “I was right to trust you, wasn’t I?”

He could feel Julia’s hands on his skin; her lips touching his.  He carried in his memory her scent and the softness of her hair.

“Yes, Ma’am,” he said at last.

One golden-blonde eyebrow was arched.  “I see,” she said, and he was sure she did.

“How’s he doing?” his brother asked as he reappeared.  Apparently Adam had been outside.  “Have you had to tie him down yet?”

Joe made a face.

“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with him a good two or three days in bed won’t cure.”

“How about you?”

“Pish-tosh!” Pat exclaimed as she rose.   “I’m right as a fiddle.  And they saw women-folk are the worriers.  You take over here while I go get your brother some grub.”

Joe watched her go, noting her slight limp, before turning back to his brother.  “I forgot Pat was injured,” he said softly.  “How is she?”

“You heard her,” Adam said with a grin, “right as a fiddle.”  He shook his head.  “She’s a damned stubborn woman.”

“They don’t come any better.”

His brother was silent a moment, then he said, “So how many days do you think it will be before you can travel?”

“I can travel now.”

“How did I know you were going to say that?  I think ‘now’ is pushing it a bit.”

“But Julia…!”

“I’m as worried about her as you are, but you passing out and falling off the wagon seat is not going to help her in any way.”  Adam glanced out the window.  “Look, Joe, it’s almost night.  How about we see how you’re feeling in the morning?”

“I’ll feel fine.”

His brother turned back to him.  “I’ll wake you just after dawn and we’ll see, shall we?”

“I said, I’ll feel fine,” he insisted between gritted teeth.

“Mm-hm.  Oh, and Joe?”

“What?”

“Just in case you need to use the privy in the middle of the night, I’ll be sleeping in front of the door.”

 

 

NINE

She’d never been so miserable in all her life.

Julia Griswold huddled in the corner of the line shack Dan Lobaugh had placed her in an hour or so before.  Even though the milled planks that composed it were laid tight enough to keep out the chill, she shook from head to foot.  She’d seen evil before – when Joe Cartwright had been bushwhacked and the men who wanted him dead had been willing to burn them out to get to him; when Jim Fenton had tried to smother him.

But this…..

Joe had made the outlaws mad.  He wouldn’t go quietly.  So they’d struck him over the head and dragged him out into the cold night where they stripped him of his clothes before flinging him to the ground.  While he was lying there, semi-conscious, Dan had driven whatever foreign matter he could find into Joe’s wound, contaminating it.  After that the men tied Joe’s wrists with rawhide bands and strung him between two trees, and then forced her to mount up and ride away, leaving him behind to die.

She was sure he was dead.

Julia’s tears flowed as she thought of Joe expending his last ounce of strength to protect her.  He knew, as she did, that she would be at the mercy of the unscrupulous and unsavory men who took her.  A few hours before they arrived at wherever they were, their party of four had met up with three other men. Each wore a mask and tried to disguise their voice, but she was pretty sure one of them was Amos Pettis.  Amos and her Pa had disagreed about just about everything, including the time Orv had asked to court her.  She wanted nothing to do with him.   Amos told her pa that his son said she was ‘uppity’ and needed to be taught her place.  Pa taught Orv Pettis his place by lifting his belt and escorting him off the property the next time he came to call!

She missed her pa.

She wanted her ma.

But she wanted Joe Cartwright most of all.

Julia had just lowered her head into her hands and begun to weep when she heard a key ‘click’ in the lock of her cage.  She rose and retreated to the mean cot that occupied one corner of the wood structure and took a seat on it just as the door opened and a man stepped in.  It was Dan Lobaugh.  This was the first time she had seen him unmasked.

It wasn’t a pretty sight.

“I’m just checkin’ to make sure your accommodations are acceptable,” he said.

She didn’t reply.

“Is milady distressed?” he sneered.

Julia’s jaw tightened.  She’d ‘milady’ him if she had half a chance – just for Joe!

“I was,” she shot back.  “At least the shack was clear of vermin until now.”

The man’s dirty brown eyes narrowed.  “Now is that any way to talk to the man who’s runnin’ shot gun for you?”  He took a step and closed the door behind him.  “Seems to me you owe me somethin’, princess.”

There was nowhere to go.  Her back was literally against the wall.

“Don’t you come any closer.”

“What’re you gonna do, call on that white knight Cartwright to save you?”  Dan scoffed.  “He’s white all right; white as a winding sheet.”

“You stay away from me!” she exclaimed as he came to the bedside and loomed over her.  “I’ll scream!”

“And who do you think’s gonna hear you, princess?   There’s a thousand head of beef bawlin’ just outside this shack.”

A thousand head?

“You’re one of the rustlers!”  Julia’s mind was racing.  ‘’So you took me to…what?  Force my ma’s hand?  Make her sell her land?”  Then she remembered something Joe had told her, about how he’d visited Sheriff Truslow and how Amos Pettis had been there and she fell silent.

Dan’s thin lip curled up toward his sketchy mustache.  “You’re a smart girl.  I see you’re workin’ it out.”

“What are you going to do with me?” she demanded.

“Ain’t my decision to make.  I’m just here to make sure the cattle get where they’re going and you stay put.  Although….”  He took hold of her arm and forced her to her feet.  “If you’re nice to me, I just might look the other way and let you escape.”

Escape so she could be killed.  So neither Robert Truslow or Amos Pettis had any hand in her death.

She might be young, but she wasn’t stupid.

Dan’s fingers dug into her skin.  His face came close to hers.  So close, she could smell whiskey on his breath.

“How about it, milady?”

She’d pay for it.  She knew it.  But she did it for her Pa – and for Joe.

Dan Lobaugh would be singing soprano for the foreseeable future.

 

The long drink of water that was Sheriff Damien Strait unfolded from the weather-beaten chair on his front porch and rose to his feet to face the failing light.  He’d deliberately built his mud and adobe house directly across from the mud and adobe structure that served as post office, court of law, and jail, so he could see the people who arrived before they saw him.  Bridgeport wasn’t a big town, but the territory under his badge was, so he never knew who or what was gonna come to call.  The pair looking in his windows and trying his door looked harmless enough.  Both of them appeared to be mature men, probably in their fifties, and fairly well-heeled, which ruled out most rustlers, horse thieves, and general ne’er-do-wells.

Neither one looked like a gambler.

The older of the two – least he guessed he was older due to his hair being the color of snow – was a man on a mission.  He moved from window to window and back to the door with the grace and persistence of a mountain cat on the hunt.  Damien watched as the two men exchanged words and then the white-haired fellow moved around the back of the structure.

It didn’t have a back door.  He’d done that on purpose too.

Twenty heartbeats later the white-haired man reappeared.  He wasn’t happy things hadn’t gone his way.  So, he was used to command and immediate obedience.  The man’s bearing spoke of time spent in the military or maybe at sea.  He slapped his hat on his head, placed his fists on his hips, and began to assess the loose collections of adobe houses that they loosely called a ‘town’.

Then, he saw him.

And made a beeline over.

Damien ducked as he stepped off the porch, careful not to strike his head on the low beams.  The Doc had measured him at six-foot-five, but his five-foot-five wife said that was wrong.  She said he was mountain-size, which was funny considering he’d been skinny as a bed slat since he’d been a kid.  His height was intimidating.  His skeleton frame, unsettling.

Both of which suited him just fine.

The man with the white hair had made it across the dirt path that served as a street.

Damien tipped his hat.  “Howdy, stranger.”

“Hello.  I’m looking for the sheriff.  Can you direct me to him?”

Educated too, and rich by the look of his clothes.  With what it cost to buy that tooled leather belt and boots, he could have bought the town.

“Mind telling me what you want him for?”

Another man had come up behind him.  A familiar man.  Damien silenced him with his eyes.

They were blue, by the way.  Gun-metal blue.

He glanced at the other man.  “We believe there’s a nest of cattle rustlers operating out of the box canyon north-west of here.”

“That so.”

The white-haired man was assessing him now.  He could see the wheels turning in those chocolate-brown eyes.

“Yes, that’s so.”

“What business is it of yours?”

“Other than the fact that the entire operation is illegal?” the man demanded.

The stranger’s temper was flaring, which was exactly what he wanted.  Angry men forgot what they were saying.   “Could be you’re one of them.  Maybe you just want to lead Sheriff Strait into trouble.”

“Do I look like a cattle rustler?!”

“No.  But you don’t exactly look like a rancher either.”  He indicated the man’s fine linen shirt, buckskin vest with leather pockets and silver conchos, and his worsted trousers.  “Those are some mighty fine duds.”

The white-haired man sighed.  “My name is Ben Cartwright.  I own one of the largest spreads in the Nevada territory.  Some would call me a rich man.”

Damien smiled.  “Well, it stands to say you got good taste in clothes.”

Ben Cartwright closed his eyes, fighting to master his temper.  When he opened them, he looked directly at him.  “Sheriff Strait, I presume?”

He smiled.  “Damn straight.”

“Have I passed muster?”

“I can vouch for him, Damien,” Ed Flanders said.

Cartwright pivoted.  “You knew?”

“I told him not to say anything.”

The rancher turned back and their eyes met.  Like bucks battling over a doe, they locked gazes and held on for several seconds.  Neither one of them gave in.

They just came to an understanding.

“So, what’s this all about?” Damien asked.  “I don’t see a man like you coming all the way to Bridgeport just to report a group of rustlers.  And you, Ed, you got your own law in Lone Pines.”

When Ed said nothing, Ben Cartwright spoke up.  “We have reason to believe that the law in Lone Pines is corrupt.”

He thought a moment.  “Truslow, isn’t it?  Bert?”

“Bob,” Ed said.

Robert Truslow.  Now there was a man he wished he could forget.

“You think he’s dirty?”

Ben Cartwright hesitated.  “It’s not my place to accuse any man without clear and concrete evidence.  What I have is circumstantial.  I’d like to lay it out before you and see if you come to the same conclusion I – we – have come to.”

If he’d been cleaning his gun, Cartwright would have just moved up one chamber in his estimation.

“All right.”  Damien tossed his head at the simple structure behind him.  “Come on in.  My wife’s got supper on the table.  You can join us.”

“We don’t want to be any trouble,” Ben insisted.

“Mister Cartwright, we got us some eighty buildings in this town, all of which are mud and adobe, and most of which aren’t tall enough for a grasshopper to jump in.  Mine’s got a foot or two on the others because I’ve got a foot or two on the others.”

“Still, we’d be perfectly content in a hotel.”

Damien chewed on that a minute.  “First of all, my wife would have my head if I sent you off to Old Piss-pots.  Secondly,” he nodded to the structure two down from the jail, “that’s it.”

Both men turned to look.  Lutie, who ran the place for Piss-pot, was standing outside.  She was a forty-year-old prostitute with one leg who looked right eager to bed a rich cattle baron.

Ben Cartwright cleared his throat.  “Thank you.  We accept your invitation.”

Damien raised a hand to his throat and made a cutting gesture.  Lutie snorted and went inside.

“Thought you would.”

 

Supper turned out to be a simple repast of tortillas with a variety of delicious fillings and fruit.  Mrs. Strait, Ben came to find out, was the daughter of a Spaniard who had lost his land in the war and removed to Mexico.  Isla, which was of both Spanish and Scottish origin, meant ‘island’.  She was as beautiful as a breeze blowing off of one and reminded him of some of the beauties he’d known during his wild and misspent youth.  He’d never confess it to Joseph, but a weakness for women was one thing he shared with his youngest son.  He’d known his fair share – with propriety and without – before he’d settled down and married.

Joseph.

He wondered for the thousandth time how the boy was doing.

They’d finished the meal and he’d laid out his suspicions.  Damien Strait was digesting them along with his food.  The sheriff of Bridgeport was an interesting man to put it mildly.  Taller than Hoss, he might have weighed what Joseph did.  He was lean and, he suspected, mean when he wanted to be.  His tanned skin was stretched taut over a bony structure like hide wetted and dried and then pulled over poles to make a wigwam.   Strait’s eyes were uncanny.  They were the blue of gun-metal and were set off by his jet-black hair, which was a touch shaggy and fell around his ears.  He put his age at thirty-eight or so, but he might have been older.

Ben shifted in his chair.  His eyes went to the tabletop, which Isla had cleared.  He’d written down the progression of his thoughts before they got here.  It was that the sheriff was looking at now.

“I got a few questions, if you don’t mind,” Strait said as he pushed it away.

“Anything.”

“That first time, two years or so back, do you think Robert Truslow deliberately attempted to stop the investigation into who shot your son?”

He wanted to be completely honest.  “At the time I just thought he was inept.  We’d been there for half a day and he’d done nothing.  When I questioned him, Truslow became belligerent and stomped off.  Every time I asked him to do something there was an excuse as to why he couldn’t.  I think I became suspicious when he refused to use dogs to track down the men and did everything in his power that he could to stop me from doing it.”

“Bob’s a wily old fox,” Damien said.  “There’s more to him than meets the eye.”

Ben thought of Roy Coffee, who pretended to bumble and fumble to put criminals off.

“So how did your son run into him the second time?”

He let out a sigh.  “Joseph is…impulsive.  He suspected Truslow had something to do with Tom Griswold’s death and went to confront him.”

A smile curled the sheriff’s lips.  “So you got all the brains in the family?”

“My youngest is smart, but he wears his heart on his sleeve.  He can’t abide injustice, and the combination of those two things gets him into trouble.” Ben let out a sigh.  “Frequently.”

“So, after Joe talked to Truslow, he was attacked on the way back to the Griswold homestead.”

“Yes.”

Damien looked from him to Ed Flanders and back.  “I’m taking a risk here, but I’m going to trust you two.  You seem like honest men.”

He was being honest, though he hadn’t mentioned Julia’s kidnapping yet.  The opportunity had not come up.

“A pair of federal marshals came to me not long ago, out of Stockton.  Seems they caught wind of some type of syndicate in this area rustling thousands of head of cattle.  They pick them up north of here and then sell them south where no one will think to look.  The marshals think they’ve got a hidey-hole somewhere close to here where they change the brands before moving them out.”

“The box canyon,” Ed said.

Strait nodded.  “Seems you found by accident what I’ve been looking for on purpose.”  He paused.  “There’s another thing.”

“What is that?” Ben asked.

“These men have got a lot of money.  They aren’t spare with it.  Just about every law officer on this side of the California border has been bought.”

“Except you.”

“They tried,” he said and then grinned.  “I pretended I was dumb and didn’t get it.”  Damien looked at his wife and she came over and took his hand.  “Then they threatened my family.”

“Our little ones, they are not here,” Isla said.  “We sent them to live with their abuelo in Mexico.”

Ben was aghast.  “Then we’ve put you in further danger by coming here!”

“Ben, I think you and I understand one another,” the lawman said.  “These men have to be stopped and it won’t be done without sacrifice.  I mean to take them down, and I’d like your help.”

Ed nudged him.  “Ben….”

The sheriff didn’t miss it.  “What?  Is there something you haven’t told me?”

“Not because I was hiding it.  I agree.  This syndicate has to be taken down.  There’s just one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“The life of a young woman is on the line.”

 

Julia remained huddled in the shack, unmolested for the time being.  Dan had grabbed her and forced his lips against hers.  Just as that happened, someone called him.  He growled and she fell back to the low bed as he suddenly released her.  With barely contained rage the outlaw strode to the door and threw it open and then slammed it shut behind him.  A second later she heard the lock ‘click’ into place.

Thank God!

It was foolish, but she couldn’t help but compare the rustler’s rough handling to the way Joe had touched her.  Joe’s hands were calloused, but gentle.  His touch, respectful and loving.  He’d brushed her lips with his own and let her lean into the kiss, as if waiting for permission.  She loved Joe Cartwright as if he was bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh.

And he was dead.

A sob burst from her as her eyes flooded with tears.  She’d never forget the last image she had of Joe, hanging between those trees; his head dangling on his chest and his tanned skin gray as the evening mist.

All because there were men who thought power and money were everything.

After Dan left, she’d counted to twenty and then risen and gone to the door.  Looking out, she couldn’t see much, but there had been men moving around, some of whom seemed familiar.  Julia remembered how hard it had been to accept the fact that some of her neighbors had been involved in changing the brands on her parents’ cattle.  She’d always wondered how they got by with it since everyone knew everyone.  Now, it seemed, since she’d recognized Amos Pettis – and Sheriff Truslow was involved – that maybe, just maybe even more of the men her father had called friends had been in on the rustling.

Maybe…just maybe, that was why he’d died.

From her position, she’d watched a hundred head or more of cattle moving through.  She couldn’t read their brands, but from the shape of the marks she could tell there were at least a dozen different ones.  After Orv and Jim were caught and killed, the rustling had stopped.  Then, slowly, over the last year or so it had started up again.  A couple of the smaller ranches had been bled dry and their owners packed up and left.  Before he passed, Pa had mentioned someone was buying up the land.  She wondered now if they were the owners of the syndicate and were trying to build some kind of an empire.

She rose and went to the door again and looked through the crack between it and the wall.  The light was fading.  Without warning, two men appeared outside the shack – so close that instinct told her to take a step back.  She held her ground.   It was two of the men she’d ridden with earlier.  The pair had abandoned their masks and the light of their unshuttered lamps struck their faces.  One was Amos Pettis and, as Joe had suspected, the other was Robert Truslow.

Driven by fear and grief, Julia returned to the bed and took up a position in the corner against the wall where she felt she had command of the room.  From what Amos and Sheriff Truslow had said, it seemed some of the men would soon be moving out.  She prayed Dan Lobaugh would not be among them.  As the day turned to night, a resolve had begun to build in her.

The men who hurt Joe needed to pay.  They had to pay for what they had done.

She would make them pay.

Come Hell or high water.

 

 

TEN

“You okay?”

Joe grunted.  “I told you I’m fine.”

“Right.”  Adam reached out and pulled the blanket up around his brother’s shoulders.  The weather had taken a turn for the worse overnight and Joe was shivering.

“Cut that out!  I’m not four anymore.”

“Then I would advise you to stop acting like you are!”

Joe glared at him and then, like sunshine breaking through the clouds on a stormy day, he laughed.  “Listen to us.  We sound like a couple of kids.”

“I was just gonna say that, but I decided discretion was the better part of valor,” Pat Griswold said as she settled on the wagon seat beside him.

“I can drive,” Joe said.

No.

He pouted.

“Not with that shoulder,” the older woman replied as she sat beside him in the wagon and took up the reins.  “It’s aggravated enough.”

“What about your wound?” Adam asked quietly.  “And don’t tell me ‘pish-tosh’.”

“I’ve been minding it.”  She lifted her skirt to show him.  On the lower portion of Pat’s leg there was a long red gash that was a deeper purple toward the middle.  “The fire’s gone out of it just like it has out of your brother.”

Joe’s fever had broken the night before.  So far it had not come back.  Of course, Joe should be lying in a bed sleeping it off, but that was out of the question.  If he could stand on his feet, little brother was going to go after Julia Griswold.  Joe said it was because he felt responsible for her.

He sensed there was more.

And so here they were getting ready to set out for God alone knew where, with Joe wrapped in a winter coat they’d found in the Russell’s cedar chest, topped by two light woolen blankets – also from the cedar chest.  The strong scent had made Joe sneeze.  At least, that’s what he said.

With little brother, you never knew.

“Let’s get going, Adam.  We need to find Julia.”

He nodded.  “Yes, but first we have to find whatever signs Pa left for us pointing the way they went.”

They had several different signs they’d used over the years.  One was an arrow of white rocks.  That one worked when you were following the bad guys, but not when they were following you.  If Pa had a hatchet, he would cut a rudimentary version of their brand into trees along the way.  He’d taught them to look for that one when they were boys.  There was one other and it was the hardest to find.  Pa wore a lot of green kerchiefs.  He would tear pieces from them and hang them off of a branch.  You really had to look for that one, but then again, so did whoever you were trying to elude.

“I’m thinking it’s the silk leaves,” Joe said as if reading his mind.

“I agree.”  He’d been standing next to the big brown thoroughbred he’d chosen from the stable.  Sport had been there, but they needed time to reacquaint themselves.  Adam placed his foot in the stirrup and mounted.  It had been years since he’d spent so much time in the saddle and he was feeling it.

His brother snorted.  “I bet your rump feels like my shoulder.”

“I’ll admit, it’s a tiny bit tender.”

“Maybe you should transfer some of that cotton wadding that’s between your ears to your saddle.”

Pat looked at Joe and then at him.  “Why do I find myself sitting here thanking the good Lord that I had a girl?”

Mention of Julia sobered them both.

“We’ll find her, Pat.  I promise,” Joe said.

She touched his leg briefly.  “I know we will.  She’ll keep herself safe for you, Joe.”

It was Adam’s turn to look from the older woman to his brother.  “Is there something I should know?”

“You should know enough to turn that animal around and get moving,” his brother growled.

“Okay, little buddy,” he said with a grin.  “You just work on keeping your seat.”

It was a good thing there was nothing loose within reach.

 

Ben narrowed his eyes against the rising sun and looked to the north.  He was waiting outside Bridgeport’s jail and post office for Sheriff Strait to emerge.  The telegraph had been down in the small town, so Ed Flanders had offered to ride to the next one over to send out messages.  Since then it had been fixed, and Damien was hoping a few of the answers they sought had already arrived.  The first thing he’d asked Ed to do was wire the US marshals.  They needed to be informed of what they’d found out and brought in before any plan of attack could be formulated.  The sheriff had also alerted several trustworthy lawmen he knew of in the vicinity so they could join them.  The rancher blinked and turned away from the sun.  He’d sent a message to Clem Foster explaining why he was away and asking him to go to the ranch and check in with Hop Sing.  Another went to the Griswolds’ place.   Ern was probably still there holding down the fort.  He’d asked him to ride up to the Russell cabin and find out how Joseph was before joining them.  Joe had been a very sick boy when he rode away.  It had been hard to leave, but he’d taken comfort in the fact that he’d left his youngest in his capable older brother’s hands.

Ben snorted.  Hopefully they hadn’t killed each other.

The rancher walked over to the chair that was propped under the post office window and sat down to wait.  He’d sent one last wire for Ern to take with him.  He felt Pat needed to know what they were thinking of doing.  Their plan was to rescue Julia before all Hell broke loose, but plans often went awry.  A rescue attempt could well prove fatal.

God willing it didn’t come to that.

“We got a couple of answers,” Damien said as he stepped out of the office.

“Oh?”

“This one’s from the marshals.”

“That was fast.”

“Seems Ed ran into them in town.   They were already headed this way.  They should be arriving soon.”

“Anything from Ern?”

The tall lanky man held out an envelope.  “Yep.”

Ben stared at it for a moment before working open the flap.  It was like an receiving an unexpected surprise.  The telegram could contain anything.  Joseph could have taken a turn for the worse.  The men who left him for dead could have returned.  The rancher drew a breath as he drew the message out and read its contents.

His face must have given him away.

“What is it?”

“Ern went to the Russells.  There was no one there.”

Damien took a moment to think that through.  “You think your boys are on your trail?”

He nodded.  “If Joseph was well enough to climb to his feet, nothing would have stopped him from going after Julia.  It’s why Adam stayed behind.”

The sheriff whistled.  “I gotta meet this boy of yours.”

“Which one?”

“Both.”

Both.  Two.  He had two sons.

“Something wrong?”

Ben shook the nostalgia off and rose to his feet.  “I should probably tell you that Ern is on his way here.”

“That the hired hand at the Griswolds?”

“Yes, though he’s more like a son.  He and Tom were close.  The boy’s fiercely loyal to Pat and Julia.”

“He in love with the young one?”

The rancher smiled.  “Probably.  She’s a beautiful girl.”

Damien tipped his hat back on his head and rolled his eyes.

“Ain’t they all?”

 

“How do you think he’s doing?”

Pat shook her head.  “He should be in bed, not tramping around the woods.”

Joe was standing under the trees looking up, seeking the elusive silk ‘leaf’ they knew had to be somewhere in the vicinity.

“Well, we could try telling him that he needs to keep going, maybe then he’d insist on stopping.”  At her look, Adam chuckled.  “No?”

She was staring at him.  “You two are so different, although I’m not sure who would win at being the most stubborn.”

“Oh, that would be me.  Joe’s nickname for me when he was a kid was ‘Yankee granite head’.”

Pat laughed out loud.  “And what did you call him?”

“A lot of things I don’t care to admit,” he said with a sigh.

“How much older are you?”

“Twelve years.  Sometimes thirteen.”

“Not quite old enough to be his pa, but close.”

“Good Lord!  There’s a nightmare thought for you!”

“Some folks say if there’s seven years between you, it’s like being firstborn.”

His eyes were on Joe.  He wanted to make sure he didn’t wander off and out of sight.  “Well then, Pa had three firstborns, or almost.  There was six years between Hoss and me, and six between him and Joe.”

Pat nodded.  “Hoss was a good man.  I haven’t ever seen one so gentle.  Sometimes I’d come in when he was sitting with Joe and find him patting his hand and talking to him like he could hear.”

“One of Hoss’ gifts was with wounded creatures,” he replied.   “I can’t tell you how many he nursed back to health.”

“How’d you hear he’d passed?”

“A colleague in Hong Kong.  He just casually mentioned it one day.  I suppose he thought I knew.”

“Must have been a shock.”

That was an understatement.  He’d been on the mainland, and while he’d been away his mail had piled up.  When he went to the post office to get it, there were a half-dozen letters from his father.  All watered with tears.  The first explained how Hoss had died and informed him that they weren’t sure Joe would live.  The second, which he opened so fast he tore the paper in two, told him Joe was better physically, but slipping daily into a deep depression.  The third and fourth gave a report on Joe’s progress.  They told him how Jamie had helped to pull him out of the darkness he found himself in and how Joe was assuming the role of older brother.  The last one pleaded with him to come home.

It had taken him nearly a year to arrange his affairs and do so.

“Yes.  Hoss was the…glue that held us together.  To tell the truth, I had no idea what reception I would get.”

“From Joe?”

He nodded.

“He’s still grieving,” she said.  “Your Pa says he blames himself for surviving.”

Adam let out a sigh.  “And the irony is, if Joe had died instead, I don’t think Hoss would have survived.”

“Hey, Adam!  Come over here?”

“Brotherly duty calls,” he said as he left the woman and went to his brother’s side.  “You find Pa’s ‘leaf’?”

Joe shook his head.  He held out a scrap of calico fabric.   “It’s Julia’s.”

“Do you think she dropped it on purpose?” he asked as he took it and turned it over in his fingers.

“It’s ripped.”  Joe swallowed hard.  His fingers formed into fists.  “If they’ve hurt her….”

“Think a minute.  She could have ripped it herself and dropped it.  Maybe she left it for you, so you could find her.”

His brother took the scrap back.  He stared at it a minute before saying, “Adam, I think I’m in love with Julia.”

He’d heard that line so many times, his first impulse was to dismiss it.  But this was a new, wiser and more mature Joe.  Maybe he finally knew what he wanted.

“Pa said she’s pretty.”

“It’s more than that.  She’s…a breath of fresh air.  And she needs me.”  He looked up.  “Adam, I need to be needed.”

“It’s a good starting point, Joe, but there’s more to a relationship than that.  You know that.”

“My ma…needed Pa.”

Marie did indeed, and that need had sustained them through the time they’d been together.  But then, they’d only been married for six years.

He reached out and placed his hand on his brother’s shoulder.  “Does this have to do with Hoss?”

Joe glared at him.  Then his look softened.  “I don’t know what it has to do with.  I want to take care of her.  Is that so wrong?”

“No.  There’s nothing wrong with that, so long as you love her for who she is and not who you want her to be.”

“I think this is…real.  I haven’t felt his way since Laura.” His brother frowned, and then he turned those green eyes up. They were brilliant with unshed tears.  “I…saw her, Adam.”

“Saw who?”

“When I was so…sick.  I saw Laura.”  His brother drew in a breath and shuddered with it.  “She said I had a choice.  I could stay with her or come back to you and Pa.  It was a…hard choice.  It was so peaceful there.”

There’d been a moment, when he was pounding on his brother’s chest, that he thought they’d lost him.

Apparently they had.

“If you two are done jawing, I got some grub ready,” Pat called out.  Adam drew in a whiff.  There was sausage and something else savory, and fresh coffee.

“Come on,” he said.

“I’m not hungry.”

“If you truly love Julia, you’ll eat.  Otherwise you won’t have the strength to save her.”

Joe stared at him for several heartbeats before he spoke.  “I’m glad you’re back, Adam.  Thanks for being my brother.”

Men didn’t hug.  They stood at a rail side by side and stared at anything but each other.  They punched shoulders.  They wrestled, because – in that place – touch was safe.  It could be interpreted any way you wanted.  Adam hesitated and then reached out and drew his little brother into an embrace.

Joe shattered as he feared he would.

He held him tightly so none of the pieces fell away.

 

“I got another telegram,” Damien Strait said as he came to rest beside the table where Ben was eating lunch.

Ben dropped his napkin to the table.  The sheriff’s jaw was tight.  “It doesn’t look like it’s good news.”

“It depends on your point of view,” the lawman said as he sat down.  One of the serving girls headed for them.  The lawman smiled at her.  “Same as always, Lucy.”

She nodded and turned on her heel.

“They know you well here.”

Damien laughed.  “I’ve found if a man keeps things simple, it frees his mind up for more important matters.  About the only thing that varies is whether the steak comes with one potato or two.”

Ben chuckled.  “So what’s your news?”

The lawman reached into his pocket and dropped two telegrams on the table.  “Seems we ain’t the only ones trackin’ down this gang of rustlers.  There’s a group of cattlemen out of Carson City headed this way.”

He picked up the telegrams and perused them.  “These are some of the men I met with at my home.”  Ben sighed.  “I was afraid of something like this.”

“I thought they might be.  Seems that Sheriff you had Ed Flanders wire is with them.”

“Clem?  Thank God.  He’ll do all he can to keep the ranchers from going off half-cocked.”

Damien nodded as the girl returned and sat his plate before him.  He stared at it a moment and then pushed it aside.  Drawing a pencil out of his pocket, the long lean man turned one of the telegrams over so the back was face-up and started to draw.

“So, here’s how I see it.  You and me are here,” he made an X and wrote ‘Bridgeport’.  Flanders is on his way back, so that makes three of us.  I can rustle up a half-dozen men or so in the town I trust, so that makes us – at most – a dozen strong.  With luck, the sheriffs I wired will be coming this way with men of their own.  Might make us fifty strong.”

Ben reached over and pointed to the south.  “Ern is coming from near Lone Pines.  He’s young.  He’ll probably ride straight through and get here late tonight or early tomorrow morning, unless he runs into Adam and Joe and comes in with them.”

“Where do you think your sons are?”

He thought a moment.  “Joe and Adam left the Russells’ place before Ern.  I don’t know when.  My guess would be this morning.  Joe’s injured, so they’re probably traveling by wagon, which will slow them down.”  Ben paused.  “Pat Griswold may be with them too.  It’s her daughter who is missing.”

Damien’s face twitched.  “No disrespect meant, but can she hold her own?”

Ben laughed. “Oh, yes.  You have no need to worry about Pat.”

“All right.  So, let’s put your boys here.”  The lawman made a second mark, about halfway between Lone Pines and where they were.  Then he frowned.

“What?”

Sheriff Strait pursed his lips.  “I haven’t been completely up-front with you, Ben.  I needed to know I could trust you.”

“What do you mean?”

“In spite of what you said, you could have been in with the rustlers.  Trying to find out what I know and such.”

Ben nodded impatiently.  “What haven’t you told me?”

Damien’s gaze returned to the paper.  He made another ‘X’.  This one he wrote the number 50 beside.  It was placed just to the north of where he’d made the mark for Adam and Joe.  “This here’s your cattlemen.  I’m guessing they’ve made it about that far.”  He hesitated.  “They’re not comin’ to Bridgeport.  They know about the canyon.  They’re heading straight there.”  The lawman shifted back in his seat.  “I’m supposed to meet them about a mile out, come nightfall.”

“And just when did you intend to tell me this?”

“I wasn’t sure I was going to.  My only consideration wasn’t that you were an honest man.  It’s that you’re a father whose boys are in danger.  A man like that can go off half-cocked.”

Ben let out a slow sigh.  “In my younger days,” he admitted with a wry grin.  ”But I am older and wiser now – as are my ‘boys’.”

The lawman held his gaze for a moment and then dropped his eyes to the paper.  He made one final mark as he drew a box around the area representing the canyon and then wrote the number ‘100’.

“The rustlers?” Ben asked.

“Near as we can tell.  Not that they’ll all be there.  It’s a big operation with cattle moving all the time.”  Damien traced a line from where they were to the canyon, and then did the same with the cattlemen.  Then he pointed to the ‘X’ that marked his son’s location.

Joe and Adam were squarely in the middle.

“I’m afraid, Ben, those boys of yours are gonna find themselves in the middle of one hell of a war.”

 

Joe heard footsteps.  He thought it was Adam.  It was too late to pretend to be asleep, so he braced himself for another round of thoughtful older brother brotherly advice.  He really was grateful Adam was back, but he was tired.  He just didn’t have it in him to deal with the emotions such a talk would stir up.  Drawing a breath, Joe looked up and was surprised to find it wasn’t Adam.

It was Pat.

She had a plate in one hand and a cup in the other.  “You didn’t eat much for supper,” she said.  “I thought you might be hungry.”

Joe smiled at her.  It was an effort, but she deserved it.  “I don’t have much of an appetite.”

Pat cocked her head and looked at him.  “You better let me take a look at that wound.”

“It’s fine,” he replied, a little too quickly.

She shook her head.  “Men.  Not one of you knows what’s good for you.  Now there’s two reasons a man don’t eat.  One’s that he’s ailing.  The other is that he’s in love.”

Joe held her gaze for a moment and then dropped his head.

Right on both counts.

“Here, you eat this while I check your shoulder,” she said, holding the plate out.  “I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, so you can save your strength for another battle.”

He looked at it.  It held a couple of biscuits laden with butter and honey.  As Pat sat beside him on the ground, she nodded toward the cup he now held in his hand.  “There’s butter in that too.”

Joe’s brows went up.  He held the cup under his nose and sniffed.  The scent was familiar.  He laughed.  “Does Adam know you’re packing rum?”

Pat smiled.  “Who do you think told me to bring you the toddy?”  As she peeled his shirt back, she sucked in air.  “Joe, didn’t your mama tell you that lying was a sin?”

It was bad, he knew it.  But what were they going to do about it on the road and in the middle of nowhere?

“I’ve had worse,” he growled.  Then, he felt foolish.  “Of course, you know that.”

“We need to get a poultice on that and get some of the fire out of it.”  Pat rose.  “You finish your supper.  I’ll be back in a minute.”

Joe slowly sipped the rum toddy and nibbled at the biscuits.  Watching Pat made him wonder about his own ma and what it would have been like to grow up knowing her.  From what Adam and Hoss had told him, Marie de Marigny Cartwright was more like Julia than her mother.  A woman at church had been talking about his ma one Sunday and she’d used the word ‘coquette’ to describe her.  He’d had to look that one up since Adam wouldn’t tell him what it meant.

It was a good thing his pa had raised him to be a gentlemen otherwise he would have challenged that woman to a duel.

Of course, he’d been a kid then.  He hadn’t understood how the world worked.  He had a wonderful pa and ma, and two amazing brothers.  They loved each other, looked out for each other – truly cared for one another.  Most weren’t so lucky.  Most people lived, like Adam used to say, in ‘quiet desperation’.  They’d been hurt and wounded and all they wanted to do was hurt and wound back.  Pa said it took faith for a man not to be like that.  Joe took a sip of the toddy and relished the warmth as it coursed through his tired and aching body.  He’d paid some attention to what Pa said when he was young, but not too much.  There just didn’t seem to be time for things like reading the Bible and thinking about God’s word, though Pa had written it so deeply on each of their hearts he knew its truths and lived by them.  Now, as an older man, it seemed he needed God more.  Life was a long hard coach ride with a few bright and beautiful inns and cities along the way.  He’d been growing closer to God.  He even had a Bible in his room.  And then….

Hoss…died.

Joe sucked in air.  It was still like a blow, that word.  He felt like he did when he he’d been punched in the stomach, only, it was like he’d never drawn the next breath – like he’d never recovered.

“You’re thinking about your brother,” a soft voice said.

Joe wiped away a tear as Pat knelt by his side.  He nodded.

With a glance that asked permission, Pat pulled his shirt aside and went to work.  After a moment, she said, “You need to let him go about his business.”

He looked at her even as he sucked in air as she applied the poultice to his wound.  “Who?”

“Hoss.”

He blinked.  “Let him…go…what?”

“He’s got business to attend to and you’re keeping him here.”  Pat looked up and around.  “I imagine he’s here now.”

“What are you talking about?”

The older woman finished what she was doing and pulled his shirt back into place.  She sat on the ground beside him, linked her hands around her knees, and let out a little sigh.  “When Tom died I grieved something awful.  There’s not many a woman has a man like Tom.  Oh, he was a man and always wanted to roll his own hoop, but he was loving and gentle and he listened to me.  The last choice was his as the Good Book says, but he always heard what I had to say and took it into account.”

“He was a  good man,” Joe agreed.  “Pa told me all he did to help him and Hoss, and…Julia has told me a little more.”

“He was a good man, like your brother was a good man.  Like I said, I was grieving something fierce.” Pat looked straight at him.  “It was hard on Julia, just like it’s hard on your Pa.”

He dropped his head.

“Anyhow, the preacher came all the way out from town one day to talk to me.  He told me my grief was holding Tom close to the earth; that he couldn’t get about his business until I let him go.”

“What business was that?” Joe asked.

She laughed. “Whatever the business of Heaven is.  The preacher said he had a job to do and Tom couldn’t get to it until he knew I was all right.  He asked me if I could let him go and I told him I could.”  She turned to look at him.  “If you love your brother, you’ll let him go, Joe.  He needs to know you’re all right.”  The older woman reached out to touch his arm.  “Do you think you can do that?”

Images flashed in his mind – Hoss throwing back his head and laughing until you thought he would bust, his brother picking him up and carrying him as if he was a sack of grain – the two of them in trouble after one of his own harebrained schemes had failed….his brother stuffing him into a rabbit cage.

Joe laughed even as a tear trailed down his check.

“Well?” she asked.

“I…don’t know,” he replied honestly.  “I can try.”

Pat touched his cheek and then rose to her feet.  Then she did something unexpected.  She bent down and kissed the top of his head.

“That’s the best any of us can do.”

 

 

ELEVEN

Julia shook her head as she looked at her reflection.  She’d found an old tin pot in the corner and polished it as best she could so she could get a look at herself and then cringed at what she found.  She’d cried herself to sleep grieving for Joe and risen feeling exhausted, but even more determined.  During the night – maybe while she was sleeping – an idea had begun to form.  There was no way she could take on the rustlers by herself.  There had to be at least fifty of them coming and going.  She’d considered starting a stampede, but that could have gotten her – and anyone else in the camp who was innocent – killed.  Plus, it would have done nothing to return the stolen property to its rightful owners.  So, in the end, she decided she had to get away and go for help, and there was only one way she could think of to do that.

She had to convince Dan Lobaugh that she wanted him.

The young woman shuddered.  The touch of his rough hands was still very real on her arms.  The bruises were just beginning to show.  She’d have to be very careful.  He would think nothing of using her and throwing her away.  She could wind up dead.

Still, she had to do something.

Julia’s gaze returned to the polished metal.  She’d been provided with a bucket of water and a cloth, so she’d washed her face and used the fork she’d found inside the kettle to comb through her hair so it wasn’t a tangled mess.  A shred of cloth from the bed linens served as a tie to hold a portion of it back.  Her ma had taught her how to pinch her cheeks to bring color into them. There was little she could do about her eyes.  They were haunted and ringed with shadows.  Still, she knew that Dan – though he was attracted to her – really cared little what she looked like.  All that mattered was what he could get from her.

The trick was to get him to release her from the shack and take her somewhere more…comfortable.

She let out a sigh as she placed the kettle on the rough table by the low bed.  Then she straightened her skirt and, with a glance toward the door, lifted it to do the same to her stockings.  The light streaming in the crack between the door struck the small bit of metal showing at the top of the right one and so she shoved it down until it was covered.  Along with the fork, she’d found a knife in the kettle.  It was in her stocking now.  If she had to, she’d use it.

Her ma had taught her how to do that as well.

Outside the door men were shouting.  The rustlers were moving out with another herd of cattle.  It amazed her.  As soon as one herd left, another arrived.  The stench of burned animal flesh was a constant.  Julia wondered if any of her neighbors were outside the shack.  She’d heard Robert Truslow speaking.   If she blamed anyone, she guessed, she blamed him the most for what had happened to her pa and to Joe.  A sheriff was supposed to uphold the law, not break it.  The other men were desperados, villains – criminals.

Robert Truslow was a devil.

A sound at the door made Julia drop her skirts back into place.  She sat on the edge of the bed and effected what she hoped was a provocative pose.

She didn’t have much experience.

Dan Lobaugh stepped in and halted in his tracks.  He looked her up and down before speaking.  “Did milady get a good night’s sleep?”

She nodded and then dropped her head.

Dan took the bait and walked over to the bed.  He placed two fingers under her chin and forced her head up – none too gently.

“You been cryin’ over that boy, I suppose.”

Here it goes….

“No,” she replied.

“Oh?”

“I felt bad for how I treated you.  I realized you were trying to help me.”  Julia looked up and poured every ounce of feminine wiles she had into the look she gave him.  “You said you’d let me escape if I was…nice to you.”

He was staring at her, his beady eyes narrowed and a sneer on his lips.  “Might have.”

Julia sucked in her disgust and rose to her feet.  “I want out of here,” she said.

They were close; so close it was nothing for Dan to reach out and cup one of her breasts in his hand.

She managed not to flinch.

“You got the lock.  I got the key.  You willin’ to put them together?” he asked, his tone lascivious.

Julia’s jaw clenched.  “I told you, I want out of here.  I’ll do whatever it takes.”

He was walking around her now, assessing her like a horse he might buy.  “You’re a mite on the skinny side,” he said.  She felt his fingers in her hair.  “I like this.  Soft as silk.”  Dan rounded her.  He looked her up and down again and then, to her disgust, lifted her skirt and placed his hand on her thigh.

A moment later she was pinned against the wall and he was kissing her.

She was saved by a second set of footsteps.

“For God’s sake, Dan, get your gun back in the holster!” the man said as he entered.  “We got us work to do!”

Her tormentor twisted to look at the other man.  One hand was on her throat.  The other dangled dangerously close to his revolver.

“Get out of here!” he ordered.

“Dan,” she managed to squeak out.  When he turned and looked at her, Julia didn’t look away, even though she could see the invitation to death in his eyes.  “Not…here.  Somewhere.   We need to go somewhere…where we can….”  Her gaze went to the other man.  “Where we can be alone.”

The villain stared at her for a moment and then, slowly, nodded.   “Yeah,” he said.  “Right.”

After that he released her.

“Next check is suppertime, milady,” Dan said as he took a step back.  “I’ll bring your grub and we can…talk more.”

Julia nodded and then collapsed onto the bed as the two men left and the door was closed and locked.   Involuntarily her hand went to the knife in her stocking, checking to make sure it was there.  She’d never killed a man before.

But there was always a first time.

 

Adam had gone to the stream to wash up.  His concern for his younger brother had rendered his night a rocky one.

He looked and felt like hell.

It was funny being home.  In some ways, it felt like it had been days – maybe weeks – since he’d left instead of years.  The dynamics were all in place, protective slightly dominating father, reckless and needy little brother; stepping back into the older brother’s shoes.  It felt…comfortable in a way, and yet in other ways, it reinforced why he had run.  He’d come to realize over the years that there was nothing wrong with his family.  They were, in fact, amazing and remarkable men.  The fault lay in him.  He was wounded and he knew it.  Just as Joe was wounded.  Adam grinned.  The two of them were more alike than either of them would ever admit.  Joe’s anger stemmed from the loss of his mother.  His wanderlust had the same root.  Something deep within drew him to the life Elizabeth Stoddard had known and been a part of; to a world of streets and shops, museums and books – to civilization, if that was a word you could apply to anything man had conceived.  He’d gone to New England first, to reacquaint himself with those he had known at school, and then on to seek out what was left of his mother’s family.  They had welcomed him with open arms and he’d thought he’d found what he was looking for.  He hadn’t.  He would never find it.

The woman who had given him life was dead.

And so he’d set off again seeking, searching – hoping to find whatever elusive thing it was that would fill the void Elizabeth’s absence left in his soul.  It was useless.  No contract or job, no elegant home or exciting sea voyage was enough.  He’d almost married – more than once – but something had stopped him.  To give it a name, he would have called it ‘fear’.  In the night, in the dark, he admitted to it himself.  He feared loving and losing a woman, but, even more, he feared that the woman he loved would grow great with child and his love would…kill her.

As his father’s love had killed his mother.

Adam shook his head.  He ran a hand over his face and then splashed water onto it to clear away such morbid thoughts.  He was going to kill that little brother of his for keeping him up all night worrying.

A twig snapped, causing him to freeze in place.  His hand moved to his hip.

Damn!  He’d forgotten his gun.

“You get up nice and slow, mister,” a man’s voice said.

Adam raised his hands as he rose to his feet and turned around.  He almost laughed.  What confronted him was a young man who would have had to stand twice in the same place to cast a shadow.

He indicated the gun in his hand with a nod.  “That’s not the most amicable of ways to say good morning.”

The young man frowned mightily.

Perhaps ‘amicable’ had been a poor choice.

“What are you doing out here?” the stranger asked.

“I might ask the same of you,” Adam said.  “I would think this bright and beautiful morning would occasion camaraderie and not mistrust.”

“Gosh, darn it!  You sure talk right funny.”

He might have said the same thing.

Adam’s shrug was not quite an apology.  “I was educated in the East.  I am a man of words but, also, I am a man of my word.  Would it be all right if I lowered my arms, so long as I promise not to attack?”  When the stranger nodded, he lowered them.  While rolling one shoulder to return the circulation to it, he added, “I was unaware that a man’s speech was enough to make him suspect.”

“I don’t know you, mister, so I don’t trust you.”

Ah, the way of the West.

“Well, then, allow me to introduce myself.  My name is Adam Cartwright and I – ”

The young man’s eyes lit up.  “Cartwright?  Like, Ben Cartwright?”

He nodded.  “Yes.  He’s my father.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?”   The stranger shook his head as he returned his gun to the holster.  “I could’ve shot you, you know?”

Adam curbed his smile.  “You didn’t give me much of a chance.”

“Guess I didn’t.”  The stranger thrust out a gloved hand.  “My name’s Ern.  I work for Miz Griswold.  I’ve been trailin’ her and your brother, Joe.  Fact is, I been trailin’ them since midday yesterday.”  Ern looked around.  “Are they here?”

He remembered both his pa and Joe speaking of the Griswolds’ earnest young ranch hand so appropriately name ‘Ernest Goode.’

“Yes.”

“They okay?” he asked.

“Joe’s hurt.  Pat is fine.”

“I thought so,” the young man said.  “I saw the bloody rags in the bucket at the Russells’ and found some evidence outside that someone’d been tied to a tree.”  He paused.  “You find Julia yet?”

The way Ern said it, he could tell the young lady had charmed more than his brother.  “No.  We’re following her trail.  She was taken by the men who hurt Joe.”

“Well, I’m here to help.”  The Griswold’s hand looked slightly ill-at-ease.  “If you want me, that is.”

Adam took a step toward the him and clapped a hand on his shoulder.  “We can use all the help we can get,” he said.  “Come on, I’ll take you to Pat.”

 

Joe Cartwright was pacing.  Usually, when he did, he moved like a cat on the prowl.  Now, it was more like a snail on the crawl.  His wound was weakening him.  He knew it.  But damn it, he didn’t care!  Big brother Adam had been the first one who’d taught him about mind over matter.  Adam told him stories of men who’d been wounded in battle, who had nearly bled out, but who’d gotten up from their sick beds and gone out to save their brothers-in-arms.  ‘Never give up’ were the words Pa used.  Hoss had been the only one to add a word of caution.  ‘You gotta see to your own wounds first, little brother, before you can help someone else.  A man whose leg is broke has gotta put a splint on it before he can stand.’

Well, he had a splint on it.  Pat’s poultice had taken the fire out of his wound.

He was going after Julia.

He just had to figure out how.

Much as he loved his brother and knew Adam cared about Julia – even though he hadn’t met her – Adam was worried about him first and even more rightly so, about Pat.  Older brother wasn’t about to take any chances – or allow him to.  At the pace they were going, by the time they got to wherever Julia was being held, it would all be over.  He didn’t know exactly what that meant, but the prospects weren’t good.  The men who had her were vicious brutes.  That had been evidenced in their treatment of him.  They were probably holding her as a hostage against her mother, but if they got tired of her, or ran out of patience, or decided to…abuse her, he doubted that would keep her safe.  Someone had to find her and get her out of the rustlers’ hands before whatever was going to go down went down.

And that someone was him.

Halting in place, Joe closed his eyes and assessed his condition.  His fever was down.  Thanks to Pat’s expert ministrations, his wound was aching but no longer throbbing.  The various cuts and bruises he’d received when he was strung up were healing.  His head was clear.  The only thing he lacked was strength.  In the end he’d eaten every bit of the food the older woman had brought him.  She was right.  If he meant to help Julia, he needed to be strong both mentally and physically.  Joe hated to admit it, but the only thing he wished he had was an ally; someone who would go along with him without arguing or laying down conditions – or trying to protect him.

Someone like….

“Joe, look who’s here.”

He turned to find a young man, lean as a grasshopper, with locks of stringy light brown hair dangling down to his shoulders, standing beside his brother.

A smile broke over his face as he recognized Ern.

There was a God.

 

Bill Collins.  Luther Kent.  John Lane. Tom Slayden.  Barney Fuller.  Bill Steen.

Ben knew them all as well as he knew the differences they had; differences that had been set aside in a common cause.   These ranchers, whether they be sheep or cattle men, meant to take down the organization that had been rustling their herds for the last five years.   They’d known loss and hardship because of it.  For men like Bill Collins, it meant their families had gone hungry.  For Tom, who’d managed to rebuild nearly all his greed had cost him ten years before, and Barney Fuller whose business holdings were vast, they were little more than a sting in the side – and in their pride.  Still, while the loss of a few hundred head of cattle might have meant little to their bank account, the fact that they had been stolen out from under their noses meant a lot.  They intended to take these men down.  He wanted to take them down too.  There was only one thing stopping him.

His sons were on the front line.

At least, he thought they were.  It was hard to know for certain, but so far Joe and Adam had failed to show.  He could only imagine they had found and followed the trail of Julia’s kidnappers and were already at the box canyon.  If that was the case, his prayer was that Adam’s good sense would win out over his brother’s impulsiveness, and they would stay put and wait.  The boys had to know help was on the way.

Of course, that had never stopped Joseph before.

He loved his youngest son.  Since Hoss’ death he and Joe had grown even closer, if that was possible.  He’d learned long ago that it raised Marie’s boy’s hackles a bit to say he was like her, but he was.  Even as an older and wiser man, Joseph still had the temperament of a dead broke horse.  He was quick to anger and quicker to act, and both of those traits had led him into trouble more times than he could count.  If Joseph could, he would head out after Julia alone.  Ben ran a hand over his face.  He hated to admit it, but he hoped his youngest was at less than his best.

At least that way he knew he was safe.

“Ben, get your head out of the clouds.  We need an answer!” a gruff voice declared, followed by a puff of smoke.  “Are you with us or against us?”

The rancher started and then looked at the sea of faces surrounding him, which included not only the men he had named but several dozen more who had accompanied them.

“You know I am, Barney.  This can’t continue.   The Ponderosa has lost cattle as well.”

“How’d you know, Ben?  You notice an empty acre out of the thousand or so you own?” Luther Kent huffed.  He and Luther had never come to terms  since he’d offered Bill Collins and the other sheepherders a chance to homestead on his land.

Ben ignored him.  “I just want us to proceed with caution.  There are lives at stake, not only my sons but those of Julia and Pat Griswold as well.”

Clem Foster was standing to his right.  Damien and two other sheriffs were on his left, along with one of the federal marshals.

“We agree to a plan, or none of us go,” the marshal said.  His name was Saul Parker, and like his Biblical namesake, he was not a man to cross.

Barney tried to anyway.

“What’re you gonna do, marshal?  Shoot us if we take off without you?”

The marshal was tall like Damien, but where Bridgeport’s sheriff was willowy as a tree, Saul Parker was solid as the Sierra Mountains.  The marshal thought a moment before taking a step toward Barney.  He unfastened the clasp on his holster as he did.

Looking the businessman in the eye, he said, “Yep.”

Just…yep.

Barney took a step back.

“Look, marshal, we don’t want Ben’s boys hurt, or the women, but we have to do something!”  This time it was Tom Slayden.  Ben hoped he would be the voice of reason.  Tom was a changed man.  The time he’d spent in prison had made him a better one.  “We’re losing precious time.  With everything that’s happened, the rustlers could already know we’re coming.”

“Those rustlers aren’t going anywhere,” Clem remarked.  “They’ve got themselves a million dollar operation and they aren’t going to be able to dismantle it overnight.”

“My concern,” Bill Steen interjected, “is that they know we’re coming and they’re going to use Julia and maybe your boys and her ma against us.  What do we do if that happens?”

“That’s why we have to get them out first,” Damien said, “and why Ben and I are askin’ you to stand down for one day.”  Sheriff Strait looked at Clem, who nodded.  “Clem here’s goin’ with Ben and myself and the marshal.”  He was leaving the other sheriffs behind, of course, to make certain the others did what they agreed to.  “Hopefully we can get what hostages they’ve got out of there and then – mindin’ the law, you understand – you men can do what you please.”

“I’m going with you,” Barney stated.  “Someone needs to represent our interests.”  His former competitor looked him in the eye.  “You’re soft, Ben, and you know it.  It takes a tough man to make tough choices.”

Ben looked to Damien, who nodded, and then stepped up to Barney.  “I’ll admit I’m ‘soft’ when it comes to my sons.  I will do anything to preserve their lives, as well as those of the Griswold women.”  He punched the other man’s hundred dollar suit with two fingers.  “If you push me, Barney….  If you do anything that will put their lives in jeopardy, I promise you, you will find out just how ‘hard’ soft can be.”

Barney was chewing his cigar.  He didn’t say anything.

He just grinned.

“I’m coming too,” Bill Collins said as he stood forward.  “Someone needs to represent our interests.”

“These rustlers aren’t stealing sheep!” Barney growled.

“Who’s to say?” Bill remarked.  “Our sheep have gone missing.”

“They’re probably making mutton stew out of them to keep their ornery hides alive.”

Ben held up his hands.  “You’ll have to talk to the marshal.  The last word will be his.”

“That’s not quite right,” Sheriff Strait said.  “You take it to Saul.  He’s king of the hill here.”

As the group of men moved away, grumbling and grousing, Ben turned to the lawman.  “They’re powerful men, Damien.  They’re not used to taking orders, they’re used to giving them!”

The sheriff puffed out a sigh.  “I know, and I’d like ‘em by my side, but they’re angry, Ben, and angry men make mistakes.”

He’d been an angry man once upon a time.  It was true.

“They may follow us.”

Damien nodded.  “I know, Ben, but they’ll have to fight their way past my boys and that will slow them down.   I’m hoping we have the girl in hand and know where your sons are before they find us.”

“And if we haven’t?” he asked.  “What then?”

The long lean lawman met his concerned stare.  Strait held it for a minute, and then he walked away.

Ben had his answer.

 

 

TWELVE

They were seated around the fire.  The plan was to eat an early lunch and then take off.  They’d failed to find their father’s ‘leaf’, but had stumbled on the rustlers’ trail, which was headed toward a box canyon nearby.  As Adam sipped his coffee, he considered his unpredictable younger brother.  Joe was quiet – too quiet.  He’d had enough experience with the kid to know that meant he was planning something.  Adam chuckled as he lowered the cup.

Probably an escape.

Joe felt they were moving too slowly.  Even though Pat agreed with him that caution was the best option, little brother would have none of it.  Thankfully – thank God, really! – Joe was less than able at the moment.  Adam pretended to lower his gaze as he took another sip, as if he had suddenly found something exceedingly interesting about the dark brown liquid filling his cup, but actually pinned his gaze on his brother.  At first glance, Joe appeared ready and raring to go.  Of course, years of his brother’s prevarications where his health was concerned had taught the man in black that there were other signs to look for.  First of all, Joe was irritable as hell.  Secondly, there was a pinched look to his normally wide eyes, his full lips were pulled into a thin line, and he was shaking – not with fever, though that was there too – but with a restive sort of energy; the kind that made a boiler blow.  When he asked Pat about the state of Joe’s wound, the levelheaded, no-nonsense woman shook her head.

He sympathized.  He did a lot of that too.

Adam’s gaze shifted to the loquacious young man who had joined them.  Pa told him about Ern, the Griswolds’ young hand.  He was a few years older than when he and their father first met, but to an old man like him – Adam snorted – Ern seemed incredibly young.  Pat said he was twenty-four but he didn’t believe it.

He looked fourteen.

Ern was greatly enjoying himself at the moment, regaling them with his adventures.  He was quite a talker and expressive with his hands.  And while it was obvious he had not been educated past, perhaps, the tenth grade, he was savvy as all young men living in the West had to be.  Adam put his cup down and leaned back.

He’d thought about hiring him to keep track of Joe.

“Wait a minute,” he heard his brother say.  “Are you talking about Ed Flanders’ son, James?  The one that was killed?”

Ern nodded his head.  “Sure am, Joe!  Only he weren’t killed.  Come to find out, he was murdered!”

Joe looked puzzled.  “Pa told me James was killed by a man who thought he’d gunned down his brother.”

“That’s what we thought too, but we don’t anymore.  Weren’t too long ago Ed got a telegram from Sheriff Strait out of Bridgeport.”

“What did it say?” Pat asked as she lifted the coffee pot from the fire and headed his way.

“Sheriff Strait was lookin’ into some old cases.  He thought there was something funny about what happened.  Come to find out the man that killed Jimmy – that’s what I called him, he was a friend of mine – didn’t have no brother to be gunned down!”

“You mean the whole thing was fabricated?” Adam asked as he waved away another cup of coffee.

“Sure was.  Sheriff Strait went out asking questions nobody wanted to answer.  Finally, there was a man in the jail who said he knew somethin’ and he’d give it up if the sheriff let him out in the middle of the night so’s he could leave town without bein’ seen.”

“What did the man say?” Joe asked.

“That Jimmy was murdered on account of he’d found somethin’ out about the rustlers and was comin’ back to tell his pa.”

“And what was it he’d found out?” Pat asked as she retook her seat.

“The telegram didn’t say.  Ed was right upset about it.  He took off in the middle of the night and I didn’t see hide nor hair of him for a week.”

‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ as Alice would say, Adam thought.  Ed Flanders was a tight-lipped man, but it seemed odd that he hadn’t informed anyone of this development.  It was clear this new information was as much of a surprise to Pat as it was to them.  Perhaps it was due to the fact that he intended to take matters into his own hands.

“Where is Ed?” he asked.

“Ed’s with your father,” the older woman replied.  She was silent a moment.  “Jimmy was his youngest.  Ed was awful close to him.  He’s not been the same since.”

Adam’s gaze returned to his brother.  Hoss had known, just as he did, that if anything happened to their little brother, it would be their father who would pay – perhaps with his life.

He would have done the same thing as Hoss that day at the mud slide.

“So, Joe,” he said, turning to his brother, “tell me again about your suspicions concerning Sheriff Truslow.”

“I told you everything already,” his brother snarled.  Joe tossed his cup down, spilling its contents and setting the fire sizzling.  “We’re wasting our time!  Julia is in danger and we’re sitting here chattering like a bunch of silly women at a social.”  Joe’s gaze flicked to Pat.  He looked appropriately abashed.  “I’m sorry, Pat.  I…”

The older woman favored Joe with a motherly smile.  “That’s one thing I haven’t ever been accused of.  Just the opposite.”  She paused and then added with a wink.  “Now, that daughter of mine, she’s another thing entirely.”

Adam stifled a laugh at Joe’s startled look.  “Humor me, Joe.  I would like to hear your thoughts again in light of what Ern just said.”

His brother sucked in air and let it out slowly – something Hoss had taught Joe to do many years ago to calm that demon that lived inside him.

“I don’t know much about the first time I was shot.  Only what Pa told me.  He said Sheriff Truslow didn’t have any interest in finding out who shot me and actually seemed to be trying to prevent anyone from finding out.”

“It’s true,” Pat agreed.  “I hate to speak ill of Bob, but I was there when he talked to your Pa and your brother.  When they questioned the sheriff about what he’d done – and pushed him when he admitted he hadn’t done anything – Bob got mad and left the house.”

Adam nodded.  “I understand when it was suggested hounds be used to hunt the bushwhackers down, the sheriff refused at first and then took his own sweet time about fetching them.”

“Yes.”  Pat paused.  “The odd thing is, Bob’s been a good sheriff and I always thought, a decent man.  He never gave us any cause for worry.”  Her gaze went to Joe.  “Another thing seems odd to me is that, when Jim Fenton and Orv Pettis tried to set our place on fire so they could get to you, Joe, Bob was nowhere to be found.  The men took them and turned those outlaws over to him and they….”

“They ended up dead,” Joe finished for her.

Adam pursed his lips.  “Seems a bit of a coincidence.”

“I thought so too.  That’s why I went to talk to Truslow,” Joe said.

He held his brother’s gaze.  “And almost ended up dead as well.”

Pat made a noise.  “That reminds me.  I should check that shoulder again.”

Joe visibly flinched.  “I’m fine.”

The older woman cocked her head and placed one hand on her hip.  “You may be fine, but I’m right.  You work at those buttons while I get my kit.”

As Pat rose and moved away, Adam began to speak, partly to hold Joe’s attention and keep him from bolting.  “So, two years ago Fenton and Pettis were rusting cattle by changing their brands.  We know now there was more of it going on in the area that no one was aware of.  Joe caught them at it and they tried to kill him.”

“Came darn near tootin’ to doin’ it too!” Ern exclaimed.

“Yes.”  He cleared his throat.  “Sheriff Truslow did everything in his power to impede the investigation.  It seems Truslow was always around – until Pettis and Fenton were caught – and then, he was nowhere to be found.  Those two later died in his custody – just as James or Jimmy Flanders was found dead in his presence; Jimmy, whom we now know knew something about the rustlers.  If the three of them were witnesses to Sheriff Truslow’s involvement, they were conveniently – and quietly – eliminated.”

Pat was fussing over Joe’s wound.  His brother was bearing up admirably.

“And after Joe confronted Bob, someone tried to kill him too,” Ern added.

“I’m thinking someone had to be watching our place,” Pat said as she began to button Joe’s shirt.  “How else would they have known that Joe and Julia were up at the Russell’s cabin?”

“What about this Ed Flanders?” Adam asked.  “Do you know he’s trustworthy?”

“I’ve known Ed half my life.  I’d swear he’s a good man,” Pat said as she rose to her feet and returned to where she’d been sitting.  “But then, I would have said that about Bob Truslow too.”

“How’s he doing?” Adam asked, even as Joe rolled his eyes.

Pat looked right at his brother.  “Joe should be in bed, not traipsing around God’s country.”

Adam knew a chill of fear.  “What’s wrong?”

Joe was glaring at her, willing her to keep quiet.

“Fever.  He’s got a good one going.”

“Is the wound infected?”

Pat hesitated.  “It’s hot, but there’s no other sign.”

“See, I’m fine!” Joe declared like any five-year-old would.

“Can he go on?”

“Stop talking about me like I’m not here!”

Adam gave him a ‘Pa’ look.  “Can he?”

Pat’s smile was affectionate – and unsure.  “I don’t see how we’re gonna stop him,” she replied softly.

The man in black sat where he was for a moment and then rose to his feet and went to his brother’s side.  Once there, he swung toward Pat.  “I’d like to speak to Joe alone for a moment if that’s all right.”

Pat nodded and then reached out to touch Ern’s arm.  “You come with me, boy.  You look like you’ve been weaned on a pickle.  Let’s get some grub into you.”

After the pair disappeared around the wagon, Adam dropped to his haunches beside his brother.

Joe arms were folded across his chest and his chin was thrust out.

Not a good sign.

“Well?” his brother demanded.  “What do you want?”

“So, what scheme do you have cooked up?”

There it was – that ‘innocent as an angel look’ he knew only too well.

“Scheme?” Joe squeaked.  “Me?  I’m not planning anything.”

“R…ight.  And the moon’s made of swiss cheese.”

Little brother shrugged.  “You heard Pat.  I’m sick.  I don’t have the strength to try anything.”

“Joe, look at me.”  He waited until his brother did as he asked.  The signs were there.  Joe’s eyes were glassy, his color high.  A thin sheen of sweat covered his skin.  “I want the truth.  Your life – mine and Pat’s – and Julia’s count on it.”

Joe glared at him.  “I can’t…I won’t sit here while you go on without me.  You leave me behind, Adam, and I swear I will follow you on foot!”

At least, maybe that way, the action would be over before he arrived.

Adam ran a hand over his face.  “Look, Joe.  I don’t intend to leave you behind unless you force me to by being dishonest with me.  Tell me, what are you planning?”

His brother’s gaze flicked to the wagon behind which Pat and Ern sat.

“So you enlisted an innocent in your multifarious scheme?” the man in black chided gently.

Joe’s jaw tightened as his temper flared.  “I knew you would do this.  I knew you would try to protect me and stop me!”

“And what does Ern have to do with that?”

His brother snorted.  “He has three older brothers!”

This was a hard one.  Still, it had to be said.

“On top of the fact that Ern’s in love with Julia and would do anything to see her safely home.”

Joe started to protest, but then nodded.  “He’s been in love with her since he came to work for the Griswolds.”

“But she never returned it?”

He shook his head.  Then Joe cleared his throat.  “She was….”  He murmured something.

“What?”

“She was waiting for me.”  Joe breathed out a sigh.  “She took care of me when I was shot.  I was out of my head.  I hardly remember.”

“But she does.”

Joe nodded.

“So, tell me, did she give you a sponge bath?”

The question took Joe so off-guard he was speechless for a moment.  Then that left hook shot out.  If it hadn’t been for the fact that his brother was weak, he would have ended up on his arse.

Adam laughed as he rose to his feet, but sobered quickly.  He held a hand out and waited until Joe took it.  He did not miss the fact that his ornery, pig-headed and obstinate brother who insisted he was ‘fine’, let him help him to his feet.  When Joe made to pull away, he gripped his arm more tightly.

“You and Hoss had a secret pact when we were kids.  An oath you made that could not and would not be broken.  I need that oath from you.”

Joe frowned.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Obviously you didn’t know I was listening outside the door either,” he said with a wry smile.  Adam held out his hand in a particular way.

“What do you want me to do, pinky swear?” Joe snorted.

He turned his hand and placed it at a right angle to his brother’s.  Then he gripped his wrist.  “Swear, Joe.   Swear to me you won’t go off on your own, and that if you get to feeling that you can’t go on, you won’t.  Admitting you ‘can’t’ doesn’t make you less of a man.  I know – Pat knows – that you would give your life for Julia.  I’m sure Julia knows that too, but I’m just as sure she would want you to choose to live.”  He paused, unsure of whether he should go on.  “I could add that Pa would be devastated if anything happened to you, but you already know that.”  His brother was eyeing him oddly.  “This is for me, Joe.  I need you to live.  I…already lost Hoss.  I don’t think I could make it if I lost you too.”

He expected his brother to snap out something smart about him not caring, about his going away and deserting them, but he didn’t.  Joe continued to stare for a moment before he shifted his fingers and gripped his wrist in that certain way.

Then, he walked into the trees.

He wanted to follow him.  For all he knew this could be the moment where little brother and Ern put their supposedly non-existent scheme into motion.  But he didn’t.  He gave Joe his trust.

Just like he was asking Joe to trust him.

 

Even as he acknowledged that it wasn’t the brightest thing to do, Joe pushed on into the woods.  He was in turmoil.  Everything that was in him demanded action.  He knew Julia was in imminent peril, but he had no way to back up just why he felt that way to his imminently practical older brother.  Pa would have understood.  It was something he and Pa shared; an innate ability to sense when someone they loved was in danger.  Hoss had it too, though not as strongly.  Joe turned and looked back toward the camp.  It wasn’t that Adam didn’t care or wasn’t intuitive.  It was more like he suppressed it.  Pa told him one evening, when they sat before the fire, that he regretted allowing older brother to go to college.  It wasn’t that Pa regarded Adam’s education as a mistake, but he said he should have seen the warning signs.  Adam lost something when he went East.  In order to survive, older brother wrapped himself up in knowledge and made it his god, because he thought that god was safer than the mercurial one that had let his mother and two step-mothers die.  Facts and figures, marks on a ledger, science and scientific facts were sure and certain things upon which he could rely.  The trouble was, those things might keep a man afloat in Boston, but not so much in the West where he had no more control than a twig being driven down a swollen river.

Joe’s smile was wry.  ‘God’s country’ they called it.

They got that one right.

He’d been to cities.  As a young man he’d found them exciting and enticing – especially the women.  While brother Adam had pulled in, he’d always lived life full-out.  It had gotten him into a lot of scrapes.  There were a couple he still marveled he’d come out of alive.  It seemed to him that he was hunting something.  As a boy he thought it was excitement.  Now he recognized it as a desire for danger – as if he dared the world to put an end to the constant pain that gnawed at his soul.  He regretted now the grief his actions had caused his family.  Since Jamie had come into their lives, he’d begun to understand what it was to be and to feel like a father.  Joe snorted and ran a hand through his curly hair to brush it back from his forehead.  He’d have to remember to tell Adam that one!  He was responsible for Jamie, and he was bound and determined that nothing would happen to the kid, for Jamie, but more for himself.  Thank God Jamie was nothing like him!  The kid got into trouble, but he did it by accident or because, like Hoss, he was trying to help someone else.  His own troubles – being cold-cocked more times than he could count, beat up, kidnapped – all lay squarely at his own feet.  Pa said his Ma had been the type to ‘rush in where angels fear to tread’.   Pa didn’t think she was a fool – the older man didn’t think that of him either – but he knew they both leapt before looking and didn’t check to make sure there was a safe place to land before they did.

Joe raised a hand and pushed a branch aside and made his way into a small glade.  He paused at its heart, in the shadow of a Weeping Willow, to listen to the whisper of its leaves and the quiet song of the birds they sheltered.  Evening was approaching.  They’d wasted nearly a whole day.  He knew what Adam was doing – giving him time to build strength – but the waiting was just as bad.

It just might kill him.

As Joe stood there, in the quiet and the encroaching dark, he heard a sound.  Someone was on the other side of the trees.  He hunkered down behind the willow’s trunk and remained still for a minute or so, and then slowly made his way to the other side of the tree’s dangling branches.  Through their living canopy he saw a man.  He appeared to be breaking camp.  Smoke from a recently damped fire rose into the air.   As Joe watched the man rose and walked to his horse.  There was something familiar about him.   He was older, maybe a little younger than Pa.  His form was lean and sinewy and he walked like a man who was well-acquainted with the saddle.  His hat was pulled down over his eyes so Joe couldn’t see his face, but there was something familiar about that too.  It was gray, with a plain braided leather band.  The man was wearing a gray and blue plaid shirt with a gray vest.  The checked pattern was small….

Ed Flanders.

Joe grinned and started to part the branches, but then stopped.

What was Ed doing here – alone?

Where was Pa?

Joe withdrew into the shadows as he continued to ponder the evidence of what he’d found.  Pa’d told him, two years before when he was shot, that Ed – like Sheriff Truslow – had been less than helpful in the search for his attackers.  They came to find out that his son had been killed not too long before, but he’d always wondered why that mattered?  Not the boy’s death, but how it mattered in the light of looking for the men who wanted him dead.  He moved forward to look at Ed again.  The older man was standing by his horse, gazing toward the northwest – almost as if he was waiting for someone.   Maybe that someone was Pa.  Joe strongly suspected that Ed’s boy had been killed, not by a brother seeking justice, but by rustlers in an attempt to keep their schemes quiet.  It could even have been Fenton and Pettis that did the deed.  They’d proven themselves to be cold-blooded killers.

So, if Ed was seeking justice, perhaps he was alone.  Maybe he’d ditched Pa somewhere along the way.  A new sound caught his attention and Joe looked.  Two other horses had pulled up alongside Ed’s.  Neither was his father.  One man he didn’t recognize, but the other one he knew all too well.

It was Amos Pettis, the father of the man who had tried to kill him and a cohort of the dirty sheriff, Robert Truslow.

Noting his vulnerable position, Joe slipped even further back into the shadows to listen.  From where he was he couldn’t make out many of their words, but what he did hear set his hackles on edge.  Joe ran his hand through his hair again, thinking.  What if Ed was dirty like Truslow and he’d done something to Pa?  If he didn’t move closer, he wouldn’t know if the men mentioned him.

But did he dare?

 

“You’re worried about Joe.”

Adam jumped.  He turned toward Pat Griswold and smiled.  “Always.”

“He’s a keeper, that one.”

“You’d approve if Joe asked and Julia accepted his proposal?”

She nodded.  “From what I’ve seen of that boy, he’s honest as the day is long.  I know he’s a hard worker and, better than that, I met his Pa.”  Pat smiled.  “And his brothers.  You Cartwrights are something.”

“We’re also pig-headed, opinionated, obstinate and….” Adam laughed.  “Accident prone.”

The older woman sighed.  “I thought we were gonna lose your brother that first time we met him.  When Ern and the boys brought Joe in, I saw the wound in his leg and didn’t think it was too bad.  Then I pulled open his shirt….”  She fell silent for a moment.  “I sent for the doctor, but I thought Joe was a goner.  After that his fever went so high that Doc Scully thought, if he did live, he might be an idiot.”  Pat looked straight at him.  “But that boy fought.  Joe fought in a way I haven’t ever seen before – to live for his Pa, for his brothers.  I know if I place Julia in his hands, that he will keep her safe.”

“Joe would give his life without thought to save anyone he loves,” he agreed.

Pat chuckled.  “It’s that ‘without thought’ part that’s the only thing gives me pause.”

Adam laughed too.  “I will admit, I often despaired that Joe would ever see the high side of eighteen.  I didn’t leave home until I saw a change in him.  Somewhere around twenty-three, he turned from a boy to a man.”

“Your pa’s right proud of him.  Of all of you.”

Adam was silent a moment.  “Pa is a remarkable man.  I don’t know that I could have survived everything he’s survived.  Losing three wives…a son….”  He stopped abruptly and looked around.  It was only then he realized Joe had not returned.  “Have you seen him?  Joe, I mean?”

Pat shook her head.  “Not since he walked off into the woods.”

Adam pulled his pocket watch out and checked it.  Joe had been gone over a half an hour.

“Good Lord,” he breathed.

“What?”

“He promised me,” he growled between gritted teeth.  “I am going to mop up the forest floor with that curly head of his!”  Turning, Adam shouted, “Ern!”

The boy came running.  “Yes, sir, Mister Cartwright?”

He’d have to correct that later.

“Come with me.  We need to find my brother.”

Pat placed a hand on his arm.  “If Joe made you a promise, he won’t break it.”

Adam nodded even as he started to move.

Unless his pig-headed, opinionated, and obstinate little brother had found a loophole.

 

It took them about fifteen minutes.  Joe had wandered pretty far afield.  Adam cursed himself every step of the way for being foolish enough to let the kid out of his sight.  He’d spent the time it had taken them to arrive thinking about his brothers – about Joe and Hoss.  One incident in particular had come to mind.  One he hadn’t thought of for years.  He and Pa had been riding the range.  Hoss was busy shoeing horses and Joe – Little Joe – was supposed to move a thousand head of cattle from one pasture to another.  He got home and found the kid playing at being D’artagnan and – after a long and frustrating day in the saddle – lost his temper.  Really lost his temper.  He’d insulted Joe’s mother, Joe had insulted his back, and then they’d gone for each other’s throats.

It seemed so long ago now and so impossible to think that he’d ever treated his baby brother that way.

Now, as an even older and wiser man, he understood what the problem had been.  The ‘baby’ in the family was growing up, fulfilling his duties and becoming a man and he, well, he couldn’t handle it.  Yes, Joe at seventeen was devil-may-care and at times he’d considered him irresponsible, but little brother was no more irresponsible than any boy his age who had been born into the comfort of a secure home and a family filled with love.   Joe’s very recklessness spoke of the fact that he knew there was someone to watch his back – someone there who would always take care of him.

And now, he’d failed him.

Pat was standing with one hand on her hip, looking into the distance.  She was talking to Ern, who was looking at her.

He was looking at the ground; at the confusion of prints that told a story he did not want to read.  As a matter of course Adam had noted the make and mark of his brother’s boots.  Old dogs seldom learned – or forgot – old tricks.  Joe had been walking, taking his time, and no doubt thinking.  He stopped and dug in his heels and then back-tracked.  Then – the Devil take him! – he advanced again.  Where Joe stopped there were three sets of prints, all trampling on the other as if a struggle had taken place, and then two emerged, dragging the third.

Joe had been taken.

He had no idea by who, or why.

“So what are we gonna do?” Pat asked as she came to his side.

“Follow them,” he replied as he got to his feet.  “Hope they lead us to Julia.”

“You think the same men took Joe what took Miss Julia?” Ern asked.

He didn’t know who else would be out here, gunning for his brother.  In his father’s world, this would be seen as God’s hand – a providential stroke that would bring an end to evil.  He wasn’t so sure.  In his life – all forty-plus years of it – he had learned that evil often won unless good was very, very careful.

“I think so,” he answered at last.  “Who else would be out here and interested in taking Joe?”

“To keep him quiet?” Pat asked.

He nodded.

Quiet, yes.

He only prayed it wasn’t quiet as the grave.

 

 

THIRTEEN

Julia Griswold was trembling.  She did her best to hide it and, fortunately, the heavy cloak Dan Lobaugh had cast over her shoulders before they left the camp helped some with the cold.

But not with the fear.

Dan had returned as promised to bring her supper and stayed behind after barking at the other man who’d accompanied him and ordering him to leave.  With the door open, she’d noted a lot of activity in the rustlers’ camp.  Men were coming and going constantly, almost as if they knew something was up.   Several she recognized as neighbors.  Sheriff Robert Truslow was among them.  He was seated on his horse and paused just outside her prison door to look in like a fat cat satisfied with his kill.  It took everything that was in her not to rush past Dan and fling herself at his horse.  She had the knife.  She could take him down.  It was the least she could do for her pa whom he’d murdered.

Then, she thought of Joe.

She might take Truslow down, but these men would kill her and that would be the end of any justice for the man she loved.  So she sucked it in and smiled as Dan took her by the elbow and moved her out of the line of sight.  He told her to wait where she was; that he’d be back within the hour.  When she questioned him as to how he was going to get her out of the camp unseen, he’d struck her and told her that was his business.  Her cheek stung still, but her rage was held in check by the fact that she had every intention of killing him the first chance she got.  She’d never killed a man, but she could do it.  Besides, Dan wasn’t a man.

He was a savage animal.

It wasn’t quite a half hour later when Dan reappeared, cloak in hand.  She watched his approach through the crack in the door, wondering what he intended to do.  A moment later she knew.  Someone else was in on the plan.  When he opened the door a cry of ‘fire’ went up and the men outside the shack started running.  Dan tossed the cloak over her shoulders, pulled the hood up to hide her face, and then flung her over his shoulder like a feed sack before stepping out of the shack.  He had a horse waiting behind it.  They were on the animal and away before anyone noticed.  Dan held her in front of him and rode for a good half-an-hour before he drew the horse to a halt and dismounted.  A second later he stepped into the trees.  It surprised her that there wasn’t any structure where they stopped, but then again, the villain didn’t need one for what he intended.  While she waited by the animals’ side, Julia fought the urge to reach down and check that the knife had not jarred loose from her stocking during their hasty departure.  It didn’t really matter anyway.

If it was gone, she was dead.

When Dan reappeared, he took hold of the horses reins and led it over to a tree, where he tethered it to one of the lower branches.  A moment later he returned to her side.

“I figured you’d run.”

“Why would I do that?” she replied.  “I asked you to bring me out here.”

“Figured that was so you could run.”

Julia moved closer to him.  “I guess you just don’t understand the effect you have on women,” she said.  God forgive her for the lie!  “You’re a man and – ”

“You bet I am,” he said as he caught her arm and drew her to him.  “And that’s what you need, a man between those skinny legs of yours, not some pampered and privileged boy like that Cartwright kid!”

Julia stifled a sigh.  Dan disgusted her but, in order for her plan to work, she had to lead him on.   She had to engage him to the point where he dropped his defenses, which – unfortunately – wasn’t going to happen until after he’d dropped his drawers.

Steeling herself, she ran a finger along his jaw and then placed her hand on his chest.  Like all cowboys he smelled of sweat, horse-flesh, and smoke.   She was used to that, but Dan reeked of something else.

Evil.

The outlaw stared at her a moment before taking a step back.

“Get out of that blouse,” he ordered.

She tried her best to hide the fact that her fingers were trembling as she worked the buttons free.  Thank God, the blouse was old and the button-holes worn or she would never have managed it!

“Take it off.”

His eyes watched her every movement.  She had a corset underneath, of course, and started to work on it, but his hand caught hers and held it.

“Leave that for me.”

Julia swallowed over her fear.

Dan eyed her up and down and then nodded toward a nearby tree.  Underneath it lay a pool of shadows.  She nodded and then screwed up the courage to take his hand and pull him after her, as though she was eager.  Like most little girls, she’d dressed-up and pretended to be a dozen things.  She’d ask her parents to sit in the parlor and watch while she pretended to be a princess, a waitress; even a warrior.

She had no experience at being a whore.

Dan had no such problem.  He caught her arms and drove her back against the tree so hard her teeth rattled, and then he forced her down into the grass and pressed his lips against hers.  She fought him a bit because she thought he expected it, but for the most part she complied.  Nothing mattered.  Nothing mattered but keeping her right hand free so she could reach down and pull the knife out of her stocking and –

“Well, well, what have we got here?  Ain’t you supposed to be in camp?”

Dan’s fingers were on his belt.  It was half-undone.  He cursed and then turned to look over his shoulder.  “What business is it of yours?” he snarled.

The man who had spoken stepped into the light.  Julia stifled a gasp when she saw him.  It was Amos Pettis.  There were three men behind him.  Two of them were holding another man.

“No business of mine unless it interferes with tonight’s plans.  Who you got there?”

Dan rose to his feet.  He moved so his shadow masked her.  “One of the women who does the cookin’ and washin’ in the camp.”

“I see.”

Dan was looking past Amos to the other men.  “Who you got there?”

“While you’ve been holsterin’ your pistol, I’ve been workin’.  Truslow put us on patrol and a good thing too.  We caught us a spy.”

The outlaw stooped and tossed the cloak over her, partially obscuring her face.  Then he crossed to the other man.

“What spy?” he asked.

Amos sneered before glancing at the other men who remained in darkness.  “Show him.”

It was dark.  She couldn’t see well, but the man who hit the dirt was dressed as a cowboy.   The remnants of a coat clung to his slender frame.  He had silver in his hair because the rising moonlight caught it and made it glint.  The poor soul remained where he had landed and then began, slowly, to climb to his feet.

“Don’t you ever learn?” Amos growled just before the toe of his boot contacted the fallen man’s ribs.  “You’re askin’ for it, you know, Cartwright.”

Cartwright?

A small sound escaped her, which caused Dan to pivot and warn her to keep quiet with his eyes.

Hope rose in Julia as a thing with wings, but she beat it down.  It could be Joe’s father, or someone else with that name.  She was desperate to shove the cloak aside and to look.  If she could see his face, or even that familiar mass of curls, she would know it was him.

She would know Joe was alive!

“Cartwright?” Dan asked.  “One of the Cartwrights?”

“Yeah, and where’s there’s one, the others won’t be far behind,” a new voice remarked.  “That old man, he won’t give up.  We need to get to the camp and raise the alarm.”

Julia was scowling.  She was sure she knew the voice.  Carefully – quietly – she shifted so the cloak fell away from one side of her face and she could see.  The man on the ground was still in shadow, but the one who stood above him was clearly illuminated by the moonlight.

It was Ed Flanders.

 

They’d halted about a quarter mile outside the canyon and were discussing the best way to reconnoiter it.  Ben glanced at the men around him.  They were all good men with decent heads on their shoulders, though Bill Collins had a tendency to act before he had thought things half-way through.  Barney would hang back, happy to watch and wait and report what he had seen.  The others with him – Sheriffs Clem Foster and Damien Strait, and the Federal Marshal, Saul Parker – were three of the most fearless men he had ever known.

They needed to be for what they faced.

From their vantage point on the top of a rise, and behind a thick line of gorse and trees, they had watched dozens of rustlers enter and leave the canyon, some alone and others driving hundreds of cattle before them.  Barney had a pair of binoculars and he’d reported seeing a good half-dozen brands on the cattle’s back quarters, all of which appeared to be fresh.  Of course, by the time the steers made it to Mexico, they would heal and no one would be the wiser.  So far there had been no sign of Julia Griswold.  Not that they’d expected to find one.  If the girl was being held by the rustlers, it would be somewhere secure and most likely at the heart of the camp.  One of them was going to have to go in.

The marshal and the two sheriffs were arguing about which one of them it was going to be.

Ben thought it should be him.  Not only did he have more at stake – after all, his son was in love with the girl – but he was less likely to arouse suspicion and more likely to inspire Julia’s trust.  On top of that all one had to do was take a look at the three men and they would know immediately that they were lawman.  It was almost as if they had a tin star emblazoned on their brow.

“So when are you leaving, Ben?”

The smoke that accompanied the voice told him it was Barney Fuller.

Ben scowled.  “You heard Damien.  I’m not going anywhere.”

“Now, come on.  That’s not the Ben Cartwright I know.”  Barney’s eyes narrowed above his cheroot.  “Or are you going soft on me again?”

“What is it you want, Barney?” he asked with a sigh.

The other man’s lips curled.  “Some fire to light my cigar?”

Ben ran a hand through his hair and then along the back of his neck.  “If…if it was my child, there would be no stopping me.  But Julia is not my child.  I don’t have the authority to place her life in jeopardy.”

“What do you think her mother would want?”

“I know what Pat would want.  She would want her child returned – alive.”

“That boy of yours will be coming.  What about his life?”

He feared it more than anything else.  Joseph, injured and weak, bound and determined to enter the rustlers’ camp and rescue the woman he loved.  They hadn’t seen his boys yet, but he sensed they were close – and in danger.

“As that Chinese cook of yours is so fond of saying, ‘tiger father begets tiger son’,” Barney went on.  “You won’t stop him, Ben.  The only thing you can do is get in there and get that girl out first.”

“I agree.”  They both pivoted to find Damien Strait standing behind them.   He tipped his hat.  “Ben.  Barney.”

“What is this?  I thought the three of you….”

Damien’s smile could be disarming.  It was one of the weapons he employed.  “We drew straws.”  He held up a thin stick about three inches long.  “I won.  I’m goin’ in and I want you with me.”

“Of course,” Ben replied.  “But, may I ask why?”

“You know the girl.  She’ll trust you.”  The lawman looked down and tapped the badge on his chest.  “I can’t exactly be wearin’ this.  There’s no reason she’d believe I was anythin’ other than another low-down good-for-nothin’ lyin’ rustler.”

Ben looked behind him.  “What about Clem and Damien?”

“They’re going back to meet with the ranchers and whatever lawmen have gathered. “  Damien frowned. “They’re gonna give us until morning, Ben, and then they’re gonna move in.  Word has it the whole bunch will be pullin’ out tomorrow.”

“Word?” Ben asked.  “Who does this ‘word’ come from?”

Damien let out a sigh.  “Can’t tell you that.  At least not yet, Ben.”

So there was a ‘plant’ or spy amidst the rustlers; someone who was working with the law.  The man’s life wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel if he was found out.

“I understand.”

“So, Sheriff, what’s your plan?” Barney inquired.

“Ben here, and me will take off shortly.  We’ll ride into camp like we belong.  With nearly a hundred men, not everyone can be known.”

He’d thought of that.  Still, Ben had a fear that someone might recognize him.  “Some of the men could know me.  They could have seen me two years ago when I was at the Griswolds.”

Damien’s smile returned.  “Same here.  Still, I figure a little boot black and some cowhand’s duds will take care of that for both of us.  There’s nothing says we can’t wear kerchiefs over our faces.  I’ve seen plenty of men going into the camp who did.”

Ben reached out and took the sheriff’s hand.  “Thank you, Damien.  I appreciate it.”

The long, lean lawman had an odd look on his face.  He glanced at Barney Fuller and back.

“I heard tell you Cartwrights were crazy.”

 

Dan stood between her and the trio of men.  “Which Cartwright you got there?” he asked.

Ed Flanders was the closest.  When he answered, her heart leapt.

“The youngest one.”

“He still breathin’?” the outlaw asked, surprised.

Amos Pettis was rolling the man in the grass over.  As he did the light struck a head of spiraling curls.

It was Joe!

Julia drew a breath and held it until Amos answered.

“Not for long,” he said.  “Looks like you did a real good job tainting his wound.”

“Not good enough.”  Dan tossed her a look as if daring her to speak.  “Should have been dead long before now.”

“We caught him listening,” Ed said.  “Figured he’d run and tell his pappy if we didn’t take him.”

“Did you see Ben Cartwright?”

“No, but I know he’s here.”  Her mother’s suitor came a step closer.  “I was travelin’ with him up until the time I went to the telegraph office.”

“The camp’s breakin’ up,” Dan answered.  “Orders are we make it a ghost town by sundown tomorrow.”  He paused.  “Bob told us to put any ‘evidence’ in one of the sheds and torch it before we leave.”

“I can’t get him to respond,” Amos said as he rose from Joe’s side.  “I say we bury him here.”

Julia’s heart was thudding in her chest.  Joe, alive, but so sick.  And these men, these brutal men, intended to kill him – maybe sooner than later.

She had to do something!

It was then she saw Joe move.  It wasn’t much, but he lifted his head an inch off the ground and looked at  Amos.  It was obvious he wasn’t well, but she recognized the determined look in his eyes and knew he was going to take action.  Soon.  She swallowed hard over her fear.  She was terrified, not for herself, but for him.  There was no way Joe could overcome five healthy men in his current state.

Maybe she could reduce the odds.

Julia threw off the cloak and stood up.  “Ed Flanders!” she declared.  “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

Ed’s eyes went wide.  “J…Julia?” he stuttered.

Joe’s eyes went wide too, first with joy and then with fear.  He shook his head.

She could see it cost him.

“Yes, it’s me.  What are you doing with these horrid men?”  As she spoke, she moved closer to her target.  It would be awkward.  The knife was in her stocking.  She would have to raise her skirts to get to it and that would take a couple of seconds.

She needed a distraction.

Unexpectedly, Ed turned on Dan and backhanded him.  “I should kill you,” he growled as he reached for his gun.

Dan raised his hands and backed up toward her.  “She…she wanted it.  She asked me to come out here.”

“She’s a child!” Ed snapped.  “How dare you take ad–?”

At that moment three things happened.  Joe rose up and threw his full weight against Amos Pettis, driving the crooked rancher into the other two men.   Ed turned in surprise when he heard Amos cry out, and Dan lunged, making an attempt for Ed’s gun.

The fourth thing, she would take to her grave.

She took the knife and drove it into Dan’s back, between the ribs.  The force of the outlaw’s fall tore the blade from her bloody hands.   She looked at the dead man and then at Ed, and then burst into tears.

“All…right,” a panting voice said.  “Hands…up and…back away from…her.  Slowly.  Drop your weapons to the ground”

Julia blinked and looked as the men complied.  It was Joe!  She could hardly believe it, but there he was standing over Amos Pettis.  He had the older man’s gun in his hand.

It was smoking.

“J…Joe?”

He gave her a weak smile as he opened one arm and invited her into it.  She didn’t hesitate a second but ran to him and threw her arms around his quaking frame.  Joe kissed the top of her head.

“Julia, you have to let me go.  I have to take care of Ed.”

“No, you don’t, boy,” the older man replied, his tone as calm as if he had stopped by to shoot the breeze.  “It’s me who needs to tie up these yahoos and then take care of you – and Julia.”

“You betrayed me!” she shouted.  “And Ma!”

“Quiet, girl.  You’ll bring them all down on us.”  Ed met Joe’s unsteady gaze.  “Son, if you’ll just let me reach into my vest pocket, I can clear this all up.”

“Do I look…like a fool?” Joe replied.

Ed grinned.  “You look about done in, boy.  I could take you with one arm tied behind my back.  Now, don’t the fact that I ain’t tryin’ to say somethin’?”

Joe thought a moment.  Then he looked at her.  “Julia, I need you to go and get whatever is in his pocket.”

She nodded.

“Be careful.”

It was hard for her to believe.  She’d known Ed Flanders since she’d been a girl.  But then she’d known the Pettis’ family too and look what Orv had done to Joe.

“It’s a piece of paper,” she called over her shoulder as she pulled it free.

“You take that to Joe Cartwright, Julia.  You tell him to read it,” Ed said.

She did as he asked, crossing back to Joe and handing him the sheet of paper.  Joe hesitated and then handed her the gun.

“Keep it on him,” he said as he unfolded what appeared to be a telegraph message.  Joe read it quickly, and then read it again more slowly.  “Who’s Damien Strait?” he asked.

“Sheriff in Bridgeport.  I’ve been workin’ with him about a year now, tryin’ to find out who killed my boy.”

“Rustlers,” Joe said.

“Seems like.”  Ed paused.  “Can I put my hands down now?”

He nodded.  Joe folded the paper and held it out to the older man.  “Seems kind of…dangerous, carrying such a thing in your pocket.”

“I was gonna show it to your pa, but we split up afore I could.”

“Pa….”  Joe swallowed.  “Is he okay?”

“Okay as you can be when you’re starin’ down a bunch of desperados,” Ed replied.  “I meant to be with them, but I ran into Amos at the telegraph office and decided I’d better stick with him instead.”  The homesteader snorted.  “Seems like it’s a good thing I did.  He was hellbent on killin’ you, son, ‘cause of his boy.”

Joe looked down at the dead man.  “Did he put Dan up to torturing me?”

“Yep.  Told him to make sure it was slow.”  At her gasp, Ed frowned.  “Sorry, Julia.  It ain’t right a filly like you has to hear such things.”

‘Or do them’, she thought.

Unexpectedly, someone spoke.  “Well, well, what do we have here?”

She didn’t know the voice, so fear shot through her – until Joe turned and let out a sigh.  “I didn’t break my promise,” he said, his voice utterly weary.

A man emerged from the trees.  He was tall and broadly built, with receding hair that had once been black, but was salt and pepper now.  He was dressed all in black, in a suit with an Eastern cut, and the expression he wore on his face was the same tolerant but exasperated one her ma used when she’d done something stupid.

“Semantics, Joe, since the first thing you agreed to was not to wander off alone.”

Joe shrugged.  “I’m not alone.”

The man rolled his eyes.  Then he turned to her.  “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, miss.  I take it you are Julia Griswold?”

She nodded.

He smiled.  “Then I think there is someone who is very much looking forward to seeing you.”

Julia followed his gaze.

A woman had just stepped out of the trees.  There was a long skinny man grinning like an idiot beside her.

It was Ern – and her ma.

She felt Joe’s hand on her arm.  “Go to her,” he said.

All of her life she’d wanted to be grown up – to be a woman and to have a family and life of her own – but at that moment she wanted nothing more than to be a little girl.  With a yelp of delight, Julia ran the last few feet and fell into her mother’s embrace – and began to sob.

“There, there, child,” her mother cooed.  “It’s all gonna be all right now.”

She wanted to believe it.  She really did.  But there were still the rustlers  and the danger they posed, to her, to her mother, to their ranch and home, and to the others who stood in their way.  Julia pivoted in her mother’s arms and found Joe and the stranger talking to Ed.  One of them turned and pointed northwest toward the box canyon.

And to the good men who would insist on taking them down.

 

 

FOURTEEN

“Just act like you belong.”

Ben Cartwright nodded at his companion and then slouched in the saddle, effecting a weary and nonchalant air.  It didn’t take much to produce the ‘weary’ part.  He was exhausted both from lack of sleep and rest, and worry for his sons.

Sons.

The familiar word seemed unfamiliar now – a part of another life and time.  Hoss had been gone nearly two years and, while God in his grace had given him Jamie to rear, the boy was his son in name only.

Hoss, Adam, and Little Joe were his blood.

“You see anyone you know?” Damien Strait asked, his voice pitched low.

So far he had not, but it was only a matter of time.  The cattle drive Tom Griswold organized was preparing to set out the day after Joseph was shot in the back.  Nearly all the men in the area were there.  He spoke to each and every one of them in an a attempt to figure out who had bushwhacked his boy.  Ben chuckled as he nodded his head to a passing cowpoke.  He had to admit he looked nothing like himself.  When he asked Damien why he carried bootblack in his saddlebags, the sheriff had rolled his eyes and asked, ‘Why do you think?’, and then set about turning his hair from a snowy field to a coal yard.  After it was blackened, Damien took a comb and parted it in the middle and slicked it back.  Like an artist he’d retreated a few steps away to survey his work, and then moved forward again and proceeded to blacken his cheeks as well.  The clothing he was wearing belonged to one of Damien’s deputies.  The feel of the homespun on his skin reminded him of his first years in the West.  He seldom wore brown, but now he was attired in it from head to toe in a linen shirt and tow vest, a pair of loosely woven pants, and a large slouch hat.  When he was done, Damien remarked that his own mother wouldn’t have known him.

He was probably right!

The sheriff was masked as well.  He looked like one of the men on the wanted posters in his Bridgeport office.

“Anyone I know?  No,” he replied.  “Not yet.”

“Just keep your head down and keep ridin’.  I’ve got a couple of men in place and I mean to find them.”

“Men?  You mean other…?”

The sheriff shot him a look that said ‘shut up.’  “Yep.  Men.  We need to reconnoiter.”

They passed dozens of rustlers.  Some were moving cattle out, but even more were breaking camp.  From the speed with which they moved, he doubted much of anything would be left by morning.  There was a sense of anticipation, even of danger in the air.  Men jumped as they rode past and reached for the weapons slung low on their hips.  If wasn’t hard to imagine why.  An organization this large would have spies everywhere.  No doubt someone had seen the sheriffs, or maybe even the marshal ride in.  They could have caught wind of the movement of the ranchers.  Ben drew a deep breath and let it out slowly as they continued to make their way through the scene of ordered chaos.  When the law moved in, it wasn’t going to be a raid.  As Damien said, it was going to be war.

And somewhere, in the middle of it all, was one terrified young woman his son had come to love.

As if reading his mind, Damien said, “We’ll find her.  My men will know where to look.”

It comforted him to know that Strait had lawmen planted among the rustlers.  It only made sense and he should have thought of it before.  It was their hope to find Julia tonight and get her out before – literally – all Hell broke loose.  The fact that there were men that knew her location was a godsend.

“There’s Luke Benton,” Damien said as they drew near a group of five cowboys.  “He’s the one looks like a bull with blond hair.”

He did indeed.  Luke was short and broad, with a beefy face and a mass of corn-silk hair that pitched forward over his brow, nearly eclipsing his eyes.  When he saw them, he bid goodbye to his companions and walked to their side.

“Hey there, Sinbad,” Luke said with a nod.  “Who’s your friend?”

The sheriff snorted at his look.  “Middle name.  My mother read too much.  This here is Mel.  He’s a stray I picked up on the way into the canyon.”

Luke was assessing him.  “Big strong fellow from the look of him.”  He held out a hand.  “Howdy, Mel.”

Damien nodded and they both dismounted.  As the sheriff tethered their mounts, Ben stepped forward to take that hand.  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Luke.”

An elbow in his rib made him turn toward the sheriff.  “You ain’t a gentlemen rancher anymore, Mel.  You want to try that again?”

Ben looked at the man blankly for a moment and then laughed.  Shaking Luke’s hand again, he said, “Howdy.”

“Now that’s a sight more friendly,” the stout man replied with a grin.

Damien looked around before asking, “Where’s Matt?”

“In the thick of it, where else?” the other man replied.  “He’s keepin’ watch on the big man.”

It was one of the things Ben wondered about – just who was behind all of this?  Most likely there was a ‘boss’ of some nature.  Even if the rustlers were led by committee, someone had to have the tie-breaking vote.  Whoever it was had to have a strong personality.

And be ruthless.

“Who is the ‘big man’?” he asked.

Damien stared at him a moment, as if thinking through his need to know.  Then, instead of telling him, the lawman asked, “Who do you think it is?”

Ben considered what he knew.  It seemed inconceivable to him since the man appeared to be a buffoon, but it was the only thing that made sense.

“Robert Truslow.”

Luke let out a low whistle.

The rancher was still thinking.  “What I don’t get is why Amos Pettis would be working with or for him.  From what I understand, his son died on Truslow’s watch.”

The sheriff looked around and then drew the two of them over to an abandoned campfire.  He tested the coffee pot sitting on the coals and, finding it hot and nearly full, used it to pour three cups.  With them in hand, they sat down and effected a casual air.

“It’s my belief that, in the beginning, Truslow was a sheriff on the take,” Damien began.  “At that time the rustlin’ was bein’ done on a smaller scale.  That’s what your son ran across that almost got him killed.”  He took a sip.  “Bob was in charge of Orv and Jim when they rode away from the Griswolds’ ranch, but he didn’t kill those boys.”

Ben was surprised.  “No?”

“No.  They were killed by their own for bein’ incompetent and nearly exposin’ the organization.  Bob was there.  I don’t imagine he put up any fuss, but he didn’t pull the trigger.”

“I still don’t understand why the Pettis’ boy’s father would be involved.”

Damien let out a sigh.  “Ben, you’ve got a good relationship with your boys.  You love them, more than your own life – more than anything money can buy.  Sorry to say, that’s rare.  Orv and Amos knocked heads from the time that boy could lift his.  He was a hellion.  Amos loved him, but he didn’t like him.  It was the same with Jim Fenton and his pa.”

“You mean, the money was more important than their boys’ lives?” he asked incredulously.

The sheriff nodded.  “And there’s one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

Luke answered.  “Every man here has taken a pledge of loyalty to the organization.  If they break it, they’re dead.”

“Then why go after Joe?” he asked.  “Why risk exposure?  Amos Pettis and his men nearly killed him.”

“Weak men act to satisfy their needs, Ben, you know that,” Damien said as he tossed the remainder of his coffee on the fire and rose to his feet.

Seneca had said it best.  ‘All cruelty springs from weakness.’

The rancher closed his eyes for a moment, taking it all in, and then turned to the sheriff.  “We need to know about Julia.”

“The girl?” Luke asked.  At his nod, he continued, “She’s gone.”

“Gone?!”

The stout man nodded.  “Truslow was mad as a skinned rattler on a spit when he found out.”

Ben looked at the dozens of men coming and going.  “Did she escape on her own?  It seems impossible.”

Luke shrugged.  “Ain’t sure.  One of the men was sent to fetch her and the shack was empty.  Bob was gonna use her as a shield.”

Of course.  Robert Truslow was not just a rustler – he was a coward.

“Are there any other prisoners?” Damien asked.

“Not as I know of, though I can’t make any promises.”

The sheriff fell silent.  Ben could see the wheels turning in his head.   A moment later he took hold of his arm and said, “We need to get you out of here….”

“Ben,” a voice finished for him.  “Why don’t you just say it?”

The rancher knew that voice – arrogant, snide, and embittered.  He turned on his heel to face the stuff of his son’s nightmares.

“Ben Cartwright,” Robert Truslow said.  “Imagine meeting you here.”

 

Adam knew it was useless, so he hadn’t even tried to talk his brother out of coming with them.

Joe was on his feet and, again, insisted he was ‘fine’, though he knew better.  He and Ed – along with Joe – had left Pat and her daughter behind with Ern to watch over them and ridden north-east, hoping to reach their destination before dawn.  The dry and wasted countryside, with its hard-packed earth, made a good road, and the moon was high.  It provided the light they needed to make certain they avoided chuck-holes and other hidden obstacles.  Every so often he would glance at his brother just to make certain Joe wasn’t going to pitch over, out the saddle, and end up under the hooves of Ed’s horse.

No surprise, the Cartwright grit kept him glued there.

He’d seen Joe angry before, plenty of times.  His brother was beyond angry now.  It wasn’t for himself.  It was for Julia and her mother, and for the other ranchers these men were bleeding dry – and that made his rage even more dangerous.  Pa had written to him a couple of years back about an incident that had happened.  A skittish horse had thrown the older man over the edge of a cliff and Joe had to go for help.  The men he found were worthless.  They demanded money  and then, when it came to it, refused to help.  His brother had been so angry that he had charged three heavily armed men – unarmed – and had nearly been killed himself.  If Marie had deeded one thing to her son, it was her fearlessness.

The fearlessness that put her on the back of a horse as reckless as she was the day she died.

“You can stop worrying.  I’m not going to do anything stupid,” a voice remarked.

He’d been so caught up in his thoughts that he’d failed to notice Joe had pulled up alongside him.  “Oh?  Is that a promise?”

The broken one hung between them still.

“Look, Adam.  I’m sorry I went off on my own.  I didn’t mean to.  I saw those men and, once I knew what they were up to, I felt I had to – ”

“Handle it alone?  Be the white knight?”

Joe drew his horse abruptly to a halt.  Ed was watching, or he would have run into him.

“You need to stop this,” his little brother said.

“Stop what?”

“Being the ‘big brother.’  I’m not a snot-nosed kid anymore who needs his backside wiped.” Joe sat tall in the saddle.  “I’ll admit, when you left, I didn’t know what to do.  You were a…constant…in my life.  Like breathing.  But you were the one who chose to cut that lifeline off.   And you know what?  I’m glad you did, because I had to grow up.”  Joe thrust his arms wide.  “Look!  I’m here!  It’s been over ten years and I haven’t killed myself yet!”

“Joe,” he began.  “I don’t mean to imply – ”

“Yes, you do!  In your eyes I’m still that seventeen-year-old boy playing with an épée instead of doing his work.  I worked hard then and I work even harder now.  There’s no Hoss.  There’s no you.  There’s just me!”  Joe paused.  “Don’t get me wrong.  I love what I do.  I don’t want to do anything else.  What I’m saying is….”  He sucked in air and let it out slowly, to calm his anger.  “What I’m saying is that I’d like a little respect.”

Curious, that he would mention that particular incident.

“I was just thinking about that time with the épeé,” Adam said with a wry smile.  “I was wrong then and I’m wrong now. “

“You’re…what?”

“Wrong.”

That single word had the impact of a stampeding herd of cattle.  Joe blanched and nearly fell from his horse.

“Are you okay?”

“Sorry.”  Joe’s eyes lit with mischief.  “I think I just felt the Earth move.”

Adam glanced at Ed. The older man’s lips were curled with amusement.

He could try to explain it to Joe and might later, if they came out of this alive.  He’d been wrong to act as a second father and not a brother.  His serious and sober nature had cost him dearly.  His brother loved him, respected him – honored and obeyed him – but they had never been friends.

God grant him time to remedy that grave omission.

Adam held out his hand.

“What’s this?” Joe asked, wary.

“A handshake between two men – two equal men.”

His brother took his hand and shook it.  “Thanks, Adam.”

He nodded.

Without warning, a devilish light entered Joe’s eyes.  “Last one to the rustlers’ camp is a rotten egg!” he declared.   And then, with a whoop and a holler, his brother pressed his knees into his horse’s side and sent it flying.

For a moment Adam didn’t know what to do.

Then he did.

He sighed.

 

Even as the words left Robert Truslow’s mouth, Damien Strait shouted, “Now!”  It was an odd thing to say and, for a moment it took Ben off-guard.  Then he understood.  Damien thrust sideways, knocking one of the rustlers to the ground, and then bolted into the camp where he quickly became lost in the milling, moving crowd – while Luke, overlooked for the moment, disappeared into the trees behind them.  Ben thought about following one or the other, but the gun Truslow pointed at his belly caused him to raise his hands instead.

“They won’t get far,” the dirty sheriff said with a snort and a spit.  “We got us fifty men to each one of you.”

“Maybe there are more of us,” Ben replied.

“Maybe.  They’ll be just as dead as you’re gonna be if they try to move in.  We got men in the hills, watchin’.  No one’s gonna get in here without us knowin’ it.”

“We did.”

Robert Truslow was a surly, unattractive man; overweight and overbearing, with the cocky sort of arrogance that belonged to a younger man.  Even his words had a swagger to them.  His pale blue eyes were jammed into a porcine face.  They narrowed as he replied.

“You didn’t fool anybody, Cartwright.  We let you in to see what you were up to.”

That could be the case, he thought.  But then Truslow, if anything, was a liar.

“We?”

Another man appeared behind the sheriff.  He seemed vaguely familiar.  He had a full head of thick, sandy hair and light blue eyes that were parted by a straight nose and underlined by a pair of thin cruel lips.  He wasn’t fifty but he was well past forty and might have been called ‘handsome’ –  if not for that mouth and the look out of his eyes, which was as inflexible as any blacksmith’s iron.  Ben frowned as he stared at him.  The sense of knowing him was strong, but the man’s age seemed wrong somehow.  He should be younger.

The newcomer stepped up to him and struck him hard across the face.  “You owe me, Cartwright,” he snarled.  “You and that brat of yours.”

Robert Truslow was laughing.

The other man, whom he now recognized as the father of Jim Fenton, pivoted sharply on his heel.  “You find something funny, Bob?  Why don’t you share it?”

So Damien had been wrong.  It wasn’t Truslow who was the ‘big’ man.  It was Fenton.

The sheriff sobered instantly.  “Sorry, Thom.  I thought –”

“Don’t.  Don’t think.  You ain’t up to the challenge.”  Thomas Fenton turned back to him.  “Now, Cartwright, you and I are gonna have us a talk.”

“What makes you think I would tell you anything?” Ben replied.  “I know Julia got away.  You don’t have my son, the sheriff here said as much.   You have no leverage.”

“Oh?” Fenton asked.  “Steve!  John!”

Two men appeared out of the darkness surrounding them.  They dragged a third between them.  Ben watched as they tossed an unconscious Damien Strait to the ground and took up positions on either side to guard him.

He could only pray that Luke had escaped.

 

Joe Cartwright wasn’t a fool, though he liked to play at being one with his older brothers.  He was making a good pretense at another thing – feeling ‘fine’.  In truth his shoulder wound was throbbing and he felt sick.  The curly-haired man reined his horse in a half-mile out from the canyon and dismounted, ground-tethering it before he headed for a nearby stump.  He sat down to wait for Adam and Ed and nearly fell off as a wave of dizziness took him.  Uneasy, he unbuttoned his shirt and reached inside.  The heat radiating from the wound was hot as any desert rock.

Joe closed his eyes and drew a breath as he thought back.  He could feel the touch of Julia’s hands as she wound the linen strips around him.  She and her mother had talked for some time, and then she’d come to his side, bandages in hand.  He’d looked up at her and she’d looked down, but neither of them had said a thing.  She knelt then at his side and worked quickly, removing his shirt and cleaning the wound, and then applying salve to it.  Last of all, she reached around his back to tie the ends off.

It didn’t happen.  Instead, she started sobbing.

And told him how she thought he was dead.

He understood that. The last time they’d seen each other he’d been stripped down and tied like a dressed deer between two trees.  Amos Pettis’ man had taken great pleasure in contaminating his wound and it had grown as angry as him.   By the time he was cut down, he’d been as close to death as he cared to be.  That was when he’d seen Laura.

That was when she’d sent him back.

He’d held onto her; one hand on her shining hair and the other around her shoulder.  As her slender body spasmed, wracked with sobs, he too began to cry.  The tempest passed in a few minutes, leaving them both exhausted and bound together in a way that was hard to explain.  He loved her, plain and simple.  He wanted to ask her to marry him – almost did, in fact – but something stopped him.  It wasn’t the fact that he might shortly ride off to his death, though that gave him pause.

It was brother Adam’s words.

‘Does this have to do with Hoss?’ older brother had asked him.

‘I don’t know what it has to do with.  I want to take care of her.  Is that so wrong?’ he’d replied.

‘No.  There’s nothing wrong with that, so long as you love her for who she is and not who you want her to be.’

Did he?

How could he be certain?

Joe flexed his shoulder and rose to his feet.  The others should arrive shortly.  He caught the first sound of their horses as he pulled his shirt to and began to button it.  Then he froze.

The sound was coming from the wrong direction.

Joe rose and turned so quickly it left him woozy.  He stumbled forward a step as he fumbled for his gun.  Just as it came loose from the holster, a man tumbled out of the trees and fell to the ground.

He kept his weapon trained on him and called out, “You!  There!  Get up!”

The man lifted his head.  He gave him a plaintive look before collapsing.

Joe approached him with caution, wary that it could be a trick.  Upon his arrival, he toed the man’s shoulder and waited.  The action brought no response.  At last, doing what he did best and throwing caution to the wind, the curly-haired man knelt at the stranger’s side and slapped his cheek.  It was only then he saw it, sticking out of the inner pocket of the man’s vest.

A deputy’s star.

“Strait,” the man said as he stirred.  “…got Strait.”

Joe frowned.  Was that a name?

“That your sheriff?” he asked.

The man nodded weakly.  “Rustlers got…him.  …right too.”

The frown deepened.  “Right too?”

Even as he heard the sound of his brother’s approaching horse, the man’s eyes went wide and then closed in pain.  Joe hesitated and then gently flipped him over and discovered the red stain spreading across his side.

“Who is it, Joe?” Adam asked as he dropped to the ground beside him.

Joe shook his head.   He shook the man again.  “Can you tell us who you are?”

The stranger’s eyes opened.  They were glazed, but he was lucid.  “I need…you to find…Cartwrights.   Ben…Cartwright.  Tell them….”

They looked at each other.  “I’m Adam Cartwright,” his brother said.  “This is my brother, Joe.  Ben Cartwright is our father.”

“Cartwright?”

They nodded.

Just before his eyes closed for the last time, Luke Benton spoke once more.

“The rustlers…they got your pa.”

 

 

FIFTEEN

“Is it always this hard, Ma?” Julia Griswold asked.

Her mother, who as usual was busy with practical things, turned and looked at her.  “Is what always this hard?”

Julia sighed.  “Loving someone.”

The older woman stared at her a moment before coming to her side.  They had established a camp after Joe and his brother took off in order to wait for them.  Ern had remained behind and was out hunting for something to cook for supper.

Her ma ringed her shoulders with an arm.  “Not always.  There’s good times.  Happy times.  But there are hard times too – sickness and sorrow, times you disagree.”  She laughed.  “Times you find a man so pig-headed and obstinate and just dead wrong that you want to box his ears and send him to bed without any supper like the little boy he is.”

Julia looked at her mother.  “Pa made you that mad?”

She nodded.  “It’s the way with men and women.  We make them mad enough to spit nails too.”

“How do you ever…well…stay together then?”

Her mother squeezed her shoulder and released her.  “Love, child.  It’s love that binds a man and woman and holds them fast against what comes, good or bad.”

“I love Joe, Ma.  I really do.”

“I know you do.  I can see it in your eyes when you look at him.  Besides,” Ma said as she returned to her work, “you haven’t talked about anything but Joe Cartwright since you first saw him.”

“Do you…?”  She was almost afraid to ask.  “Do you see the same thing in his eyes when he looks at me?”

Her mother stopped what she was doing.  “Julia, come here and sit down.”

“What is it, Ma?”

“Just do as I say.”

She felt a little queasy as she did, like she didn’t want to hear what her mother had to say.  What if Joe didn’t love her?  What would she do then?

Her mother reached out and placed a hand over her own.  “First of all, Julia, that young man loves you.”  When a smile broke over her face, the older woman went on.  “Secondly, there are many kinds of love.  Sometimes love just happens.  It’s when a man sees a woman across a park and knows he’s going to marry her.  They know nothing of each other, and they join together so they can learn.  Then, there’s a kind of love that’s hungry.  One that needs more than it gives.”

“Joe’s very giving, Ma.  He really is.”

“I know.  That’s the third kind of love.  A love that grows out of a need to protect someone.”  She paused.  “Out of a need to be needed.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Not necessarily.  It’s what God created men for, to take care of the women they love.”  She hesitated.  “I’ve only one caution, child.”

“What’s that?”

“That kind of love can be stifling to a strong-headed woman.  These last two years, since your Pa died, you’ve had to grow up and take on more than your share.”

“It’s okay, Ma.  You’ve been sick.”

“No, it’s not.  You should have been going into town to socials and meeting boys who’d tell you how pretty you are and who’d turn your head with their nonsense.”

“I don’t want a boy, Ma,” she said quietly.  “I want Joe.”

“He’s a good man.  I won’t say otherwise,” Ma said as she stood.  “I’m just saying, well, take it slow until you know one another better.”

“I know him.  I do.”

Her mother placed one hand on her hip and cocked her head to look at her.  “That may as well be, but you listen and do as your mother says.  And right now, she’s telling you to get over here and help with this washing.”

“Ah, Ma….”

“Idle hands, child, are the Devil’s tool.  Besides, the time will go a lot faster if you keep busy.”

Julia turned to look to the north, in the direction Joe and his brother Adam had gone.  “Do you think he’s okay, Ma?”

“That’s in the Lord’s hands.  Now, come on over here and we’ll pray while you’re scrubbing pans.”

 

Ben Cartwright’s head snapped backward from another blow.

“You’ll tell us what we want to know, Cartwright, or your friend will die!” Thomas Fenton snarled.

As he licked blood from his lip, the rancher considered the threat that had been leveled at him ever since he’d been dragged into a line shack and his interrogation had begun.  Fenton and Truslow wanted to know what he knew – how many men were marshaling against them and when they were coming.  Beyond the walls of the tiny building chaos reigned.  It was hard to dismantle so large an operation in one night, but the outlaws were trying.  Herd after herd of cattle were being moved out.  Men were busy taking apart  fences and other standing structures.  Within the box canyon the sounds of hammering, shouting, and bellowing were nearly enough to drive a man mad.  He’d been bound to a chair hand and foot.  Questions came rapid-fire as bullets.  At first that was all it was, but after he failed to give them what they wanted, the beatings had begun.  And all the while they threatened Damien’s life.  He hadn’t seen the lawman since he’d been dragged in here.  For all he knew, he was already dead.  He had to ask himself, did he dare betray nearly a hundred men – some of them his neighbors and co-workers – for the sake of one man who might no longer be among the living?

He knew what Damien would say.

“I say we kill him and be done with it,” the dirty sheriff growled.  “He ain’t gonna tell us nothing.  We already know there’s law on the way.  I say we cut our losses and run.”

“You would say that.  This has always been about the money for you.  A sheriff on the take and taking more than his share.”  Fenton moved closer to the other man.  “I have my doubts about you, Truslow.  I always have.  Ever since my boy was killed.”

“It’s Joe Cartwright’s fault your boy is dead.  He’s the one got him arrested!”

There was something in the man’s tone that smelled of fear.

“Oh, I blame Joe Cartwright too.”  The rustler turned to look at him.  “That’s why we aren’t gonna kill his pa.  We’re gonna put him on display and wait for that boy of his to show.”

Ben began to struggle against his bonds in earnest.  “No!  You leave my son out of this!”

Fenton moved across the room quick as a lightning strike and took him by the collar.  As he slammed his head back against the wall, he shouted, “Your boy didn’t leave mine out of it!”

“Your son was a thief and a killer!”

Thom Fenton came in even closer.  “Yeah, Cartwright.  Jim was.  And so am I.”

 

Adam looked at his brother even as he and Ed Flanders talked to the United States marshal, Saul Parker.   They’d run across the men who had been traveling with their father a short time before and found out that Pa had ridden into the rustlers’ camp in disguise along with a Sheriff named Damien Strait.  Strait had been going in to make contact with his men, Luke Benton among them.

Benton was the man who had lost his life bringing them word that their pa had been taken.

Somehow the rustlers had discovered who the two men were.  That meant the outlaws were on to them.  Obviously, as criminals, they weren’t about to hang around now that their operation had been compromised.  The remaining lawmen and the marshal had discussed it and decided that Parker – along with several other sheriffs – would divide the men they had with them into three parties and spread out, forming a noose that would tighten around the rustlers as they fled.  He and Ed – and Joe – would come in from the remaining side.  Their mission was to rescue their pa.  One of Parker’s men reported that he had seen their father being taken into a shack.  He hadn’t waited around long enough to see what was happening.

He didn’t need to.  Adam was pretty sure he knew.

The trouble was, so did Joe.

Adam let out a sigh.  He’d considered roping his brother and tying him down to make him stay put, but Ed had spoken against it.  When he’d argued that Joe was too sick to undertake such a mission, Ed had disarmed him by agreeing.   ‘Makes no nevermind,’ the older man said.  ‘The boy will never forgive himself if somethin’ happens to family and he don’t at least try’.

Ed was, of course, speaking from experience.

“I haven’t had a chance to tell you how sorry I am about your son and what happened,” Adam remarked quietly.

Ed nodded.  “These men have been gettin’ by with evil for far too long.  They need to be stopped.  Jimmy was a good boy.  That little brother of yours kind of reminds me of him.  All piss and vinegar.”  The older man pursed his lips and shook his head.  “That boy could build up a head of steam that would blow him into the next county ‘fore you knew he’d opened the door.”

“That’s definitely Joe.”

“Your Pa sure loves him,” he said, his tone wistful.

Yes, Pa did.  He loved them all, but there had always been a special place in the older man’s heart for Joe and an unparalleled closeness between them – mostly because Joe needed it.  His kid brother was a man now – a brash, confident, so cocksure of himself you wanted to hit him upside the head man – but, inside, in the depths of his wounded soul, there lurked a child who had realized at far too tender an age that loss was real and unbearable grief, but one girlish giggle away.

“Adam.  What are we waiting for?!” that brash young man demanded.  “We need to find Pa!”

He turned to find Joe behind him.  His brother’s color was up and his skin, flushed with fever.

Pa was going to kill him for letting him come along.

Adam drew in a breath and let it out…very…slowly.  “You know what we’re waiting on, Joe.  We’re waiting on the others to move out.  We’ll ride along for a while and then slip away.  That way the rustlers will be none the wiser.”

“Then what are they waiting on?” Joe snapped.

“Son, you need to lasso in that temper of yours,” a solid, steady voice remarked.  “An angry man is a danger not only to himself but to others, and I won’t be letting you put my men in danger.  Before I do that, I’ll lasso you myself and hog-tie you down.”  Saul Parker’s grin was a thing to reckon with.  “One of my men will be by later to fetch you.”

Adam bit his lip to contain his own smile.  The marshal cut quite a commanding figure; his height and rock-solid stocky build making him an intimidating figure to most men.

Not to Joe.

His slight, five-foot-nine brother went toe to toe with the six-foot-three marshal.  Joe didn’t poke Parker in the chest – physically, that was – but he might as well have.

“I understand that, but you need to understand this!  That’s my father who’s in the rustlers’ hands, marshal, and I intend to save him.  I know these men.  They nearly killed me twice!  They aren’t going to be sitting around like we are, content as a ladies’ aide society to debate whether to bake pies or cakes for the social!  Do you understand?!!”

Saul turned and gave him a sympathetic look.  “He always been like this?”

“Since birth.”

Joe glared at him.

That elicited a shrug.

“I heard you son.  Now, you listen to me.  I know these men better than you do.  I’ve been tracking them for years and, while I will do everything in my power to make sure your pa comes out of this alive, I will not – and I repeat – not have you jeopardize the entire operation and put dozens of lives in peril for one man.”  He did jab Joe.  “Do I make myself clear?”

Adam held his breath.  He was afraid Joe was going to punch the marshal.

Instead, his brother suddenly deflated.  He hung his head for a moment and then looked up.  “I’m…sorry.  I don’t want to put anyone else in danger.  But,” he winced, “could you please make them move a little faster?”

Saul stared at him and then smacked Joe on the back.  “You’re all right, kid.  Matter of fact, we’re ready to move out now.  The sun’s gonna be up soon and we want to be on our way before it rises.”

“Come on, Joe,” Ed Flanders said as he moved to his brother’s side.  “Let’s go check the horses.  Looks like we’ll be ridin’ soon.”

As Ed and his brother moved off, the marshal turned to him.  “The kid’s pretty sick, isn’t he?”

Adam nodded.  “It won’t stop him.”

Saul stared after Joe and then looked at him.  “Let’s just hope a bullet doesn’t do that for him.”

With that, he walked away.

 

It was the darkest part of the night, just before morning.  Her mother and Ern were asleep.  Julia had been asleep as well, but had woken up in a panic after a particularly vivid dream.  She couldn’t remember much about it.  Only one image remained – that of a pretty young woman with light brown hair wearing a calico dress, warning her that Joe was in danger.  She’d tried to put it off and go back to sleep, but been unsuccessful.  Her mother would tell her it was just a dream, brought on by the fact that she was worried about Joe.

She knew it was something more.

Julia stroked the nose of the horse she had just saddled, hushing it.  The animal looked at her expectantly with its soulful eyes.  She had no answer for it.  She knew what Joe would say if he could see what she was doing.  He’d tell her to stay put, that he wanted her safe – that her being in the midst of things would only divide his attention and make room for mistakes.

But Laura’s plea had been so plaintive – so compelling.  From what Joe said, they had loved one another deeply.  She knew, in some ways, he loved Laura still.  Just as she knew, if he died, she would love him until she drew her final breath.  Laura was giving her warning and she couldn’t ignore it.

Moving with stealth, Julia drew the bay roan out of their camp.  Once she was free of it, she mounted up and turned the horse’s nose in the direction Joe and his brother had gone.

“I’m coming, Joe,” she whispered as she checked yet again to make certain Ern’s revolver was anchored firmly behind her skirt’s waistband.  “Wait for me.”

And was gone.

 

The marshal and the other men were on their way, heading out in all directions with the intent of surrounding and taking the rustlers and bringing an end to their organization.  They’d watched as a thousand head of cattle had been moved during the night, each herd taking a dozen or so of the outlaws in the box canyon along.  There were guards in the hills.  The lawmen who’d remained with them – deputies from several nearby towns – were moving throughout them, seeking the criminals and neutralizing them.  He and Joe, along with Ed Flanders, Clem Foster, and – of all things – Tom Sladen were biding their time until the camp had emptied out enough that they had a chance to move in.  They’d talked about storming it, but fear for their father’s safety had ruled that action out.

They hadn’t seen Pa yet.

One of the deputies who remained had worked with Sheriff Damien Strait.  He was just as concerned about his friend as they were about their father.  He was a young hot-head, just like Joe, and it had been all they could do to restrain him from taking things into his own hands.  Thank God, in the end, older and wiser heads had prevailed.  Ed was an asset since he’d been in the camp before and knew the lay-out.  Tom Sladen was too, because he had headed up and run a rather shady organization of his own.   He and Joe had been chosen to keep watch at the top of the rise while the others went about their business.  The sun was up. A new day had dawned and it was going to be a cold one.

Adam let out a sigh.

Joe was sick – too sick to be doing anything other than lying in a bed with some beauty sitting beside it nursing him back to health.  That meant nothing to his brother.   If there was a chance he could save their father’s life, Joe would do it at the cost of his own.  Their father was held captive, ill-treated at the best and dead at the worst.  The man in black ran a hand along the back of his neck.  He’d come home to spend time with his family.

He wondered now if he would leave it alone.

“Adam!  You need to come!”

The words were terse and barely audible.  He responded immediately.

By the time he arrived, Tom was physically restraining Joe and keeping him from going over the edge of the rise.  He moved in beside his brother and followed Joe’s glare to the empty camp.  Three men stood dead center of an abandoned corral.  One was the dirty sheriff, Robert Truslow.  The other, a stranger.  Last of all – battered and bruised, but still unbroken – was their pa.

Truslow held a gun against his head.

Adam caught hold of his brother’s arm.  “Joe!  Think!  They can’t know we’re here.”

“Then why bring Pa out?” Joe demanded.

He glanced again at their father.  Pa’s face was spattered with blood, as was his shirt.  When he moved, it was obvious that it was with pain.  It was even more obvious that he older man had been beaten.

“They’re baiting us.  Trying to get us to make a move before we’re ready.”

“I am ready!”

“Joe.  Listen to me!  You can’t just run down there and – ”

“Cartwright!” a gruff voice called out.  “We know you’re there.  Show yourself now or I’ll put a bullet through your old man’s head.”

Cartwright.  Only one.

But which one?

“It has to be me,” Joe said.  “Truslow knows I know about him.  It’s why he had me beaten.”

Adam frowned.  He looked at his baby brother – so eager to die – and nodded.  “Don’t show yourself.  Just call back.”

“Yeah, I’m here,” he called, “but I’m not alone.  You’re surrounded by lawmen, Truslow!  Let Pa go and they’ll let you live!”

Joe glanced at him.  Adam nodded.  It was all they had to bargain with and he hoped it was true.  The lawman who’d stayed behind with them should be in place by now.

Truslow shouted back.  “Now, what kinda fool do you think I am, boy?  I ain’t about to do that.  The only way we’re gettin’ out of here is with a hostage.  Your old man ain’t lookin’ so good.”  The sheriff paused.  “I’m thinkin’ maybe we could make an exchange.”

Adam shook his head.  “Joe, no.  Pa wouldn’t want you to – ”

“I’m going down, Adam.  I don’t care what you say.  This is between me and Truslow.”  Joe’s jaw was tight; his nostrils flaring with fire.  “He almost killed me.  He did kill Julia’s father, and now he’s threatening mine.  I owe him.”  Joe turned to look at the scene below.  “I own him.”

As his baby brother began to scramble over the top of the rise, Adam did the only thing he could.

He turned his pistol so the handle was uppermost in his hand and cold-cocked his brother.

 

Sheriff Robert Truslow watched the lone figure make its way down the hill and into the camp.  It was early morning and hard to see, so he waited in expectation for the face of the man who had become his personal demon to come into view.  He’d passed his gun over to Jim’s father and told him to keep it pinned to Ben Cartwright’s head.  His men had done a good job on the old man.  He was barely on his feet and offered no threat, just as that damn lawman Strait offered no threat.  They’d worked him over even better than Cartwright and left him lyin’ in his own blood on the floor of the line shack.

Insurance, that’s what he called it.

Just in case something went wrong.

Once upon a time he’d been a good man.  He’d come out West with his wife and kids and settled just outside of Bridgeport.  First of all, he ran a store.  After a few years the local sheriff had asked him to become a deputy and he accepted.  Molly had been so proud of him.  She’d polish his tin star ‘til it glittered like silver.  Everything had been all right until that night five years back.  He’d been sheriff for about six months when he put an end to a band of desperados who’d been terrorizing the citizens of Lone Pines.  Or so he thought.  Turned out the outlaws had brothers.  While he was gone to Carson City, speakin’ his piece and puttin’ them in prison, their brothers burned down his house with Molly and his young’uns in it.  He hunted them down.  Found them too, but when it came to them payin’ for their crimes – hangin’ wouldn’t have been good enough – some high-powered lawyer from San Francisco showed up and got them off scot-free.

They paid anyhow, when he gunned them down.

No one knew about it, of course.  He was careful to cover his tracks.

After that he went back to sheriffin’, even though his heart wasn’t in it.  Years passed and then, one day,  there was a knock on the door.  He opened it to find out that he hadn’t been as careful as he thought.  He’d been seen.  The men said they didn’t want to tell on him.  All they wanted was for him to look the other way while they rustled a few head of cattle.  They even paid him for bein’ blind and mute.  They paid him that time and the next time and the time after that.

He found he liked the money.  It didn’t take away the pain, but the things it bought did a good bit to numb it.

Everything had been fine until the Cartwright kid showed up.  Amos and Thom had sent their boys out to switch brands when the kid stumbled on them.   As a cattleman, he knew what they were doin’.  When Joe Cartwright took off runnin’, there weren’t nothin’ they could do but hunt him down and kill him.

Only they didn’t.

Robert Truslow spit in the dust.  Ben Cartwright and his son Hoss were ‘good’ men, like he’d been once upon a time.  He didn’t want to hurt them.  He’d done his best to put them off the scent, but like bloodhounds they just wouldn’t give up.  He and Amos and Thom considered killin’ all three of them, but decided that was too risky.  Thom said if they silenced the young one, that would be enough.  The stupid thing was Thom sent boys to do a man’s job.  Orv and Jim bungled it just like they had the first time and that was the last straw.   The only way to keep an organization like theirs in business was to give no quarter.  Thom and Amos took it like good soldiers.

It was all over now, of course.  He and the other men would scatter to the wind, never to be seen again in this territory.  There was just one loose end to tie up.  Joseph Cartwright.

That boy owed him.

The dirty sheriff came back to himself as the man beside him – Joe Cartwright’s father – let out an exclamation.  He glanced at him and then turned back to face the boy who had cost him everything.  Only it wasn’t him.  It was a man dressed in black.

“And just who are you?” Truslow demanded.

The newcomer exchanged a glance with their prisoner before squaring his feet and looking him in the eye.  “My name is Adam Cartwright.”

God, not another one!

Truslow spat again.  “You ain’t the Cartwright I want.”

“Well, I’m the only one you’re going to get.  My brother is dead.”  The muscles in his jaw shifted dangerously.  “You killed him.  You and your thugs.”

Ben Cartwright stiffened.  He said nothing, but tears began to trail down his cheeks.

“Well, now, ain’t that a shame?”  Truslow sneered.  “I wanted that pleasure myself.”

“Let my father go.  I’ll go with you peaceably.”

“Adam, no!” Ben Cartwright breathed just before a blow silenced him.

Hatred crackled in the newcomer’s eyes.  “That was uncalled for.”

“Maybe,” the man replied.  “But it felt good.”

“My father is an old man,” Adam said.  “You’ve killed his son and most likely you will kill me too.  What threat will he be?  You can tell by looking at him that he’s a broken man.”

Robert Truslow’s gaze went to the elder Cartwright.  It was true.  His head was hanging down and he appeared unsteady on his feet.

“Take him back to the shack, Thom,” he ordered.

“Since when are you giving orders?”

“Since now,” the sheriff replied as his gun shifted to the other man.  “I got nothin’ to lose.  You got a wife and sons still livin’.  I’d say you do what I tell you.”

Thom glared at him before catching Ben Cartwright by the elbow and propelling him toward the shack.

Adam Cartwright had watched the whole thing.  He held his arms out.  “I suppose you’ll want to tie me up.”

He’d just reached for the rope when a shout went up.  Truslow thought it was Fenton, and that Ben Cartwright had made a break for it.  Then he realized his mistake.  A second cry caused him to turn back toward the rise.  An older man’s head was showing above it.  There was another man, he was halfway down the hill.  As his feet hit the ground, he began to run.

Bob Truslow cursed.

Adam Cartwright wasn’t as good a man as he’d thought.  He’d told a bald-face lie.

It was Joe Cartwright.

 

 

SIXTEEN

Joe was dead.

God.  No.

Not…Joe.

Ben sucked in air like a drowning man.  He still had one son left.  One…alive who needed him.  He had to remember that.  The last glimpse he’d had of Adam, his son had been standing erect, calmly facing down death as he’d seen him do so many times before.

Ben choked.  A sob escaped him.

Joe.

“I’ve failed you, my love,” he managed to rasp out.  “I’ve failed you and our boy.”

He wasn’t as weak as he’d pretended.  He’d hoped to put the men in charge of him off-guard.  Once he was confined to the shack he’d hammered against the door until his knuckles were raw, shouting – insisting – that the men who trapped him take him hostage instead of his oldest boy.  The life of a hostage wasn’t worth a plugged nickel.  He knew it.  Adam knew it.  Offering to go with Truslow and the other rustlers was tantamount to suicide.  They’d kill him the moment they were free.  Ben straightened his tall frame, forcing himself upright and into action.  Adam was out there.  Adam needed him.

Just as he needed Adam, now more than ever.

“…Ben….”

The older man pivoted to look at his friend.  He’d checked on Damien Strait the moment the door had shut behind him.  The sheriff had been beaten savagely, but he was tough and was clinging to life.  The only beating he’d seen that had been worse was when the self-proclaimed Champion of the World, John C. Regan, nearly killed his seventeen-year-old son.

Strait, it seemed, had the grit of a Cartwright.

Ben went to the bed and knelt beside the wounded man.  “What is it, Damien?”

The sheriff gripped his wrist.  “Men.  My…men.  Told them….”  Damien drew a sharp breath and moaned.  His ribs were broken among a multitude of other injuries.  “I told them if too…many hours went by…to surround the place.”  He let out a small cry and frowned as if disappointed in himself.  “They’re out there…waiting.”

That gave him some comfort, but the news frightened him as well.

“The rustlers have my son, Adam.  They intend to take him with them.”

Strait did his best to nod.  “He’s a…Cartwright.  He’ll make it.”  It seemed then that the sheriff noticed something in his eyes, or perhaps in the way he held himself.  “Joe?” he asked.

He couldn’t find the words.  He shook his head.

Damien stared at him a moment before lowering his head back to the pillow.  “Damn.”

Ben rose and returned to the door.  He could hear someone shouting.  It sounded like Adam.  Nearby a  horse whinnied.  Someone cursed.

And then, there was a shot.

 

The bullet flew past his ear to strike the ground at his brother’s feet.  Adam held his breath as Joe halted.  He was pale as paste and breathing hard.

Truslow waddled forward to meet him.

“I see the rumors of your death are greatly exaggerated, boy,” the dirty sheriff growled.  “I’m much obliged to you for showin’ up.  Now I can remedy that.”

Joe’s gaze shot to him, acknowledging the lie and the reason for it.  Those green eyes reflected gratitude for a moment, and then sparked with indignation.

“You wanted…a hostage, you got one,” Joe panted.  “Let my Pa and brother go.”

“So they can follow?”

“Adam will promise for both of them that they won’t follow,” Joe said.  “And – unlike certain other people – a Cartwright never breaks a promise.”

Truslow snorted.  “You don’t like me much, boy.  Do you?”

Joe said nothing for several heartbeat.  “You think I hate you,” he answered at last.  “I don’t.  I hate the things you’ve done, what you did to me; to Tom Griswold.  How you hurt Julia and her ma.  But you?”  Joe scoffed.  “I pity you.  You are a miserable, worthless mass of flesh without a conscience that isn’t fit to walk the earth.”

Adam passed a hand over his eyes.  Joe was going to get himself killed, here and now, if he wasn’t careful.

The sheriff moved closer.  It was a slow and steady progression, like a wolf going in for the kill.  Once he was about six feet away from Joe he stopped.  His lips curled in a sneer.

“Looks to me like I don’t need to go anything, boy.  You’re about dead on your feet.”

It was true.  Joe was still standing and he had his gun in his hand, but he swayed and his hand shook.  Sweat poured down his neck, soaking his tan shirt and the collar of his ruined green jacket.  His cheeks were flushed with fever, but his face was pale as the underbelly of a rattler.

“Why don’t you just shut up and take me with you,” Joe snapped as he turned the gun and offered it grip first to Truslow.  “If you’re going to keep talking, I’d prefer you kill me now so I don’t have to listen.”

Robert Truslow took the gun and immediately pointed it at his brother.  For a moment, it looked like he was going to pull the trigger.  Then, instead – with an unexpected swiftness – he moved forward and struck Joe in the temple and drove him to his knees.

“Take him!” Truslow ordered.  “Tie him face down over the saddle of one of the horses – and make it hurt!”

Joe offered no resistance as Thom and the other man pulled him to his feet.  It was the second time in less than an hour that his brother had been struck in the head and it was showing.  He couldn’t put one foot in front of the other and did nothing to break free as the rustlers dragged him over to a nearby horse and threw him across the saddle.

“Okay, Adam Cartwright.  I want your word – for you and your pa – that you won’t follow.  Seems it’s good as gold.”  Truslow had a way of smiling that made you want to punch him.  “Maybe better.”

Adam’s mind was racing.  It was true.  Honor was their lifeblood.  Still, there had to be a way to leave a loophole through which he could fire a fatal shot.

“I need your word first that you’ll let Joe go and not kill him.”

The dirty sheriff glanced at the horse to which Joe was now bound.  “That’s an easy one.  Odds are he’s gonna die on his own,” he said as he turned back.  “You got my word.”

“And you have my word that neither my father or I will follow – for four hours.  That will give you time to get away and leave Joe somewhere along the trail.”

“So, you makin’ the rules now?” Truslow growled.

“My brother will be dead if we wait any longer,” he stated flatly.

The sheriff thought about it.  “Okay.  But you gotta promise as well not to go to the law.  You pack up your things and go home.  If I hear – or Thom does – that you told the law, I know where to find you.”  He snorted.  “You and your kid brother.”

Adam nodded.  Of course, he didn’t need to tell the law.  They were all around them.

It could still come to a bloodbath.

“I promise.”

“Now ain’t we just fine, comin’ to a gentleman’s agreement,” the odious man scoffed.  Truslow turned then and nodded to one of his men.  “Go to the shack and bring out Ben Cartwright and the sheriff.  We’ll tie old Ben to his son here and take Strait with us.”

“Why not leave the sheriff?” Adam asked.

One of Truslow’s beady eyes shut.  “You think I’m stupid.  You think I don’t know these hills are littered with lawmen.  I was one of them once, boy.  I know how they think.”

Two hostages to fate.  One his beloved brother, and the other a good man whose only sin was to try to take these bad men down.

God did indeed move in mysterious ways.

 

Ben Cartwright let out a sigh.  He’d intended to rush whoever was opening the door, but when he found himself face-to-face with half-a-dozen weapons, realized it was useless.  Almost faster than the eye could follow, he assumed a disconsolate air, drooping his shoulders and stumbling back.  It didn’t take much to do it.  He was clinging tightly to his faith, but was close to despair.  His wives were dead.  Hoss was dead.  Joseph….  It seemed, like Job, God had taken nearly everything from him except his life.

And his last remaining son.

“Come on, Cartwright,” one of the rustler’s said as he took him roughly by the arm and began to haul him outside.  Turning to a second man, he ordered, “You get Strait.”

“You can’t move Damien!” Ben protested.  “You’ll kill him!”

“Damned if I care,” the first man said.  “He put my brother in prison.  For all I care Damien Strait can rot in Hell.”

Ben’s arms were drawn behind his back, bound, and he was shoved outside.  He nearly stumbled and would have if the man who had tied him up hadn’t caught him.  The outlaw led him toward Adam, who was seated on the ground with a rifle pressed against his head.  His son raised his eyes and met his gaze.  A torrent of emotion ran through those whiskey-brown eyes – anger, regret, a touch of fear – and something else.

Shame?

“I’m sorry, Pa,” Adam managed to say before the man holding the rifle struck him in the side of the head, silencing him.

Sorry?  What did the boy have to be sorry for?

The man who gripped his arm shoved him to the ground and ordered him to sit back to back with Adam. He quickly bound his feet and then looped the rest of the rope around both their chests, securing them to one another.  It appeared they were going to leave them alive, which came as a surprise to him.  Perhaps that was what his son was ‘sorry’ about.  Adam had made a deal with the outlaws to keep him alive.

Ben wondered what it was.

Robert Truslow’s shadow covered them as the loathsome man leaned over to check the ropes.   “Good and tight, just like I like ‘em,” he said.  As he straightened up, the corpulent man added, “What about the other one?”

“He’s set, Bob,” the man who had bound him replied.  “So’s the sheriff.  We’re ready to move out.”

It took a second.  Adam who was groaning and listing to one side.  He’d been so worried about him he almost missed it.

The ‘other’ one?

At that moment a horse drew into sight.  There was a man tied across it’s back; a young man, slight of build, with dusty, debris-strewn silver and sable curls.

Ben’s heart skipped a beat.

Joe.

 

Joe Cartwright came abruptly back to consciousness to the steady jog of a horse’s hooves and a lot of pain.  Not only was his shoulder aching, but his ribs were killing him.  Every step brought them down with a jolt on the unforgiving leather saddle.  He was finding it hard to breathe and his heart was hammering in his chest.  Weakened as he was, he wasn’t sure how long he could take it.

Still, he had to hang on, if only for his pa.

He’d caught a glance of the older man as he was led past the place where Pa and Adam were seated on the ground.  Pa looked like Hell.  He’d been beaten badly.  Blood covered his face and shirt.  And his eyes….  He’d seen that look only one time before.  It was at the moment he awoke and Pa had to tell him that Hoss had died saving his life.

Joe sucked in tears and coughed, causing a snide voice to remark.  “You was wrong.  He ain’t dead yet, Bob.”

The horse jolted to a halt and a hand took hold of his hair and roughly hauled his head up.  “Won’t be long by the look of it,” Robert Truslow crowed.

He didn’t know how he did it, but he managed to spit in his face.

And paid for it.  Truslow cursed and slammed his head into the saddle, leaving it and the world spinning.

“Where we gonna leave him, Bob?” the first man asked as they began to move again.

There was a low chuckle, the kind Satan made the day he thought he’d killed God’s son.

“Somewhere deep and dark.”

 

Truslow had left them in the sun and without water.  Ben swallowed over grit and coughed.  He was sure it was the crooked lawman’s hope that they would dry up and die before anyone found them.  The short time it took for Clem and the others to come pouring over the rise seemed like hours.  Clem brought a canteen with him.  The sheriff handed it to Adam once he was free and then began to undo his bonds.

“Sorry about the delay, Ben.  We had to make sure the rustlers were clear before we made a move.  Truslow left a couple of gunners in the hills.”  Clem’s mouth was a straight line of justice.  “We took them out.”

Ben nodded as his hands came free and accepted the canteen from hs son.  After a sip of water, he asked, “Joe?”

The former deputy sighed.  “I put a couple of men on the outlaws’ trail.  Told them to hold back until they had word from me.”  Clem’s gaze went to Damien’s men, who were fanning out across the empty camp.  “I don’t know how long they’ll listen.  They’re awful worried about their sheriff.”

“Could you tell if Joe was…alive?” he asked.

He shook his head.  “Sorry, Ben.  They got him tied across the saddle.  Couldn’t see his face and Joe was moving ‘cause the horse was moving”

“Pa?”

Clem looked from one of them to the other.  “I’ll leave you two alone for a minute.”

Ben spoke before his son could.  “You have nothing to apologize for, Adam.”

“I told you Joe was dead.”

“Yes, and I understand why you did.  You wanted Truslow to believe it, so I had to believe it too.”  Ben thanked God again under his breath that it had been a ruse.  “What happened?”

“You’d no more than disappeared into the line shack when Joe came charging down the hill like the cavalry.”  Adam paused.  “The little idiot.”

“I take it you tried to stop him?”

Adam winced.  “I wasn’t too nice about it.”

Ben clapped a hand on his son’s shoulder before rising shakily to his feet.  “We both know your brother.  I doubt you could have stopped him, short of hog-tying him.”  Ben drew in a breath of the crisp cold air.  “All that matters is that Joe is alive and we can go after him.”

“Er, Pa…”

“Yes?”

“I gave my word we wouldn’t, go after Joe that is, not for four hours.”  Adam glanced at the lawmen mopping up the rustlers’ camp.  “And that we wouldn’t go to the law.”

“Well, we didn’t.  The law came to us,” he replied.  “And as to not going after your brother, when I get to Heaven, I’ll ask the Lord for His pardon for breaking a promise.”

Adam grinned.  “I’ll be right there with you.”

Clem walked back over to them.  “We found a few men hiding.  They don’t seem to have any fight left in them.  One of them told my deputy that the party that took Joe has about a dozen men in it.  A few of those are scouting ahead, and more are bringing up the rear.  Robert Truslow seems to be in charge.  Thom Fenton’s with him.”

Ben noticed his son looked puzzled.  “What is it, Adam?”

“I just realized….”  Adam turned in a circle.  “Where’s Ed Flanders?”

Clem shrugged.  “That’s a good question.  When Joe rushed down the hill, we were all looking at him.  By the time we regrouped, Ed was gone.”

To do what, Ben wondered – join with the rustlers, or seek revenge for his son?

 

Julia dismounted and pulled her horse into the trees.  She’d heard a sound and knew it was someone coming toward her.  She’d ridden hard and fast through the night and into the early hours of the day, and figured she was a few miles outside of the box canyon.  Her father had taken her there as a child, to show her its beauty.  Taking the horse deeper into the trees, she tethered the roan and then returned to a place of safety from which she could watch the road.  Whoever it was wasn’t moving with any speed.  When the first of the horses rounded the bend, she understood why.  The poor thing was panting and its sleek black coat shone with sweat.  Its rider had obviously pushed the animal almost beyond its limit.

She wondered why.

Her hand went to the gun she’d taken from Ern.  It was still lodged firmly behind the waistline of her skirt.  He and her ma were probably awake and on their way by now.  She’d said prayers that one of their horses would throw a shoe, or that the wagon wheel would break – anything to slow them down and keep them safe.  As the rest of the unknown party came into view, she removed the weapon and loaded it.  Then she settled back, sure she was ready for whatever came her way.

Except she wasn’t.

Julia’s free hand flew to her lips when she saw a man slung like a sack of potatoes over the back of a horse and realized it was Joe.  He hung limply, evidencing no sign of life.  In front of the horse was a man with a rifle.  Behind it was the man Long Pines trusted to keep the law, Sheriff Robert Truslow.  Robert Truslow, who had tried to kill Joe twice and most likely killed her pa.  Julia drew a breath as she raised her hand and took aim.

The bullet never left the chamber.

Because another hand had clamped over her mouth.

 

By the time he was cut loose, Joe decided he’d rather be dead.  The pain was more than he could bear.  He felt the ground as he struck it, but then floated up until he was looking down at his body.  He didn’t know if it was a fever dream or if he’d been granted his wish and was on his way to Heaven until he saw her.

Then he was sure it was the latter.

Laura knelt beside him and gently cupped his cheek in her hand.  “Hold on, Joe,” she whispered in his ear.  “Help is coming.”

“Am I…dead?” he asked, not really caring what the answer was.

“No.  But death is knocking.  Don’t open the door, Joe.  You have so much to live for.”

As he lay there, considering her words, Laura’s slight form was eclipsed by a giant shadow.  It was as if the sun had passed behind the mountains.

“It ain’t your time, little brother.  You gotta go back.”

Tears filled his eyes at the sound of his brother’s beloved voice.  “Hoss?”

“Yeah, it’s me.  Now don’t you be stubborn, Little Joe.  You listen to old Hoss.  He knows best.”

‘Little’ Joe.

“But I want….”  Joe gasped as pain stabbed him, proving he was still alive.  “I want to be with you…with Laura.”  He breathed a sigh.  “…with mama….”

“You will be, boy, but not now.  We’ll be waitin’ for you on the other side of the veil and when you come, we’ll have us one rip-roarin’ party!”

Joe felt something touch his shoulder.  He thought it was Laura’s hand.  “I…love you,” he said as he met her soulful stare.  “I always have.”

“I know.  But you love Julia too and you must return to her.”  Laura rose and stepped back, out of his field of vision.  “Marry her, Joe.  Have children.  Be happy.”

He felt it again, a touch on his shoulder.

A second later it was a stab of pain.

“He ain’t dead,” a voice proclaimed.

Joe’s eyes shot open.  The man who had tied him to the saddle was leaning over him and poking at his wound.

“Get him on his feet and bring him over here.”

It took all that was in him, but Joe turned his head to find out where ‘here’ was.  He recognized the edge of the cliff – and knew of the hundred foot drop beyond it.

Truslow snorted.  “I promised that brother of his we’d leave him somewhere on the trail.  I never said whether it would be at the top or the bottom.”

Thom Fenton appeared above him.  Jim’s father leaned down and slapped him hard.  “This is what you get, Cartwright, for killin’ my boy.”

Joe wanted to protest that he had nothing to do with Jim Fenton’s death, but he knew it would do no good.  He didn’t kill Orv or Jim.  They tried to kill him.  But none of that mattered now.

He eyed the cliff again.  Hoss and Laura might be angry with him, but he afraid he was gonna see them real soon.

Thom Fenton caught him by the collar and hauled him over to the edge.  Joe could see the chasm beyond it looming, but he wasn’t afraid.  He knew there was a life after this one and, while he wasn’t ready to die, not really, he was prepared.

“Stop right where you are!” a woman’s voice cried out.

Joe turned his head and moaned, “Julia, no….”

“You are going to let Joe go!” she ordered as she stepped out of the trees, gun in hand.  “Do it!”

Robert Truslow took a step toward her.  “Now, now, little lady, you listen here – ”

A bullet struck the ground at his feet.  “You listen!  I mean it, Bob.  Let Joe go!  My Pa taught me how to shoot and your fat belly is next.”

“What we got here is a ‘stand-off’.  One little push and Joe Cartwright is a dead man.  Thom will throw him over.” Truslow sneered.  “You can’t shoot both of us.”

Joe rolled his head over and looked at the remaining rustlers.  The four men were shifting from foot to foot, ill at ease.  Probably trying to decide whether to fight or fly.  Julia was bravely facing them all down, but she had no hope of winning.  His chest was tight; his head spinning.  He wanted nothing more than to roll over the edge and enter oblivion – but he had to do something to help her.  Without moving, he looked up at Thomas Fenton.  The older man’s attention was divided.  He was holding onto him but his eyes were riveted on Julia and the gun she held.

It was now or never.

He pretended to lose consciousness and sagged in the outlaw’s arms.  The motion threw Fenton off-balance and he stumbled.  Joe drove the heel of his boot into the other man’s foot, and then reared up and took him under the chin with his head.  As he did two shots rang out:  Julia’s, which took Sheriff Truslow in the belly before he could draw his weapon, and another one that came from behind her.  That one dropped Thomas Fenton where he stood.

Joe smiled as he saw Ed Flanders step out of the trees.

Just before he tumbled over the edge.

 

Ben Cartwright looked at his eldest son as several shots sounded.  Then he took off running for all he was worth.  They’d been traveling on horseback and been forced to stop when Adam’s horse came up lame.   Adam dropped the animal’s leg and followed, quickly outpacing him.   Behind them, Clem’s men struggled to keep up.

The trees the rancher passed through were thick and cloying.  Their branches tore at his shirt and snagged in his blackened hair, seeking to slow him down.   As he pressed forward, desperate to get to his son, several men emerged from the trees to run past him, flying as if the Devil himself were on their tails.  He let them go.  They didn’t matter.  Nothing mattered but reaching his boy.   There had been no more shots, but a woman was screaming.  One word.  Only one, and she cried it over and over again.

Joe

Joe!

JOE!! 

Ben emerged from the trees and halted, breathless, before a strange tableau.  Julia Griswold knelt perilously close to the edge of a cliff.  Ed Flanders stood behind her, his hand on her shoulder; anchoring her as she reached down.  Beside the distraught woman lay his oldest son, stretched to his full length and, on Adam’s other side, propped against a rock, was Damien Strait.  The sheriff was unconscious, but alive.  Terrified that Adam would slip over, Ben ran straight for his son and gripped his ankles.  The rancher glanced at Julia, whose tear-streaked face told the tale and then, steeling himself, peered over the edge of the cliff.

Joe was there.  He had hold of his brother’s hand.

He looked like he was ready to let go.

“Son,” the older man shouted in that ‘Pa’ voice that none of his boys could resist.  “Joe!  Look at me!”

It took several seconds, but his reckless and rebellious boy obeyed.  The pain that filled his son’s eyes took him aback.

“Joe.  Your brother has you.  Hold on, son.  I have to get a rope.”

“Sorry, Pa,” Joe breathed.  “I don’t…know…if I…can….”

“Yes, you can!  Joseph!  You will!”

“So…tired.  I’m…so tired….”

Those were the same words Joe had spoken two years before that had terrified him.  He thought he had lost him then, especially when the boy asked if he would miss him.

“I know you’re tired, son.  You were tired before but you didn’t give up.  Remember?”  He choked.  “Joe…just hold on a few minutes longer.”

Ben had to kick Robert Truslow’s body out of the way to get to the horse that held the rope.  He winced at the pleasure he took in the action.

“Hurry, Pa,” Adam shouted.  “He’s slipping away.”

Ben turned to grab the rope and halted.  It was no longer on the horse but in Clem Foster’s hand.  The sheriff gave him a tight smile as he said, “I’m goin’ down.”

“No, Clem.  It should be me.”

Clem shook his head.  “You’re exhausted, Ben.  Exhausted men make mistakes.”

“Joe’s lost consciousness, Pa!  Hurry!  I don’t know how much longer I can hold on!”

Clem nodded and then, in less time than it took to say ‘Jack Robinson’, was gone.  A minute later Virginia City’s sheriff swung out and over the edge of the cliff.

Ed Flanders drew a protesting Julia back from the edge just as a pair of horses bearing the girl’s mother and the trustworthy Ern arrived.  Pat dismounted quickly and ran to her daughter.  She held the young woman tightly as she burst into tears.  Adam was up and on his feet.  He had the loose end of the rope wrapped around his frame and was pulling for all he was worth.  Ern ran over and lent what strength he had.  Ben did the same.

In less than a minute, Joe was hauled up and over the cliff’s edge.

And the battle began.

 

 

EPILOGUE

“A penny for your thoughts.”

Joe Cartwright blinked.  For a moment, he didn’t know where he was.  Then the familiar room, with its floral wallpaper and picture of a pair of puppies at play, came into focus.  It took most of the energy he had, but he managed to muster a smile.

“We have to…stop meeting like this.”

Julia smiled back and then sniffed before reaching out to touch his face.  The touch hurt, but he didn’t say anything.

“Welcome back.”

He knew he’d been gone a long time, and maybe pretty far away.  He’d seen Laura again.  She’d scolded him and told him to remember from now on that he was left-handed, not that he had two left feet.

Joe chuckled, and then coughed.  His chest felt tight.  “Pneumonia?” he asked.

She nodded.  “Doc Scully said it came from already being sick and hanging upside-down so long.  He didn’t know if you had the strength to fight it.”

“Did I hear my name?”

Joe looked up to find the larger-than-life physician he remembered from his last bout with mortality.  “Hi, Doc,” he managed.

“How do you feel?” Scully asked even as the familiar stethoscope came out and landed on his bare chest.  It was as cold as he remembered.

“Fine,” he replied.

One of the doctor’s eyebrows reached toward his thinning hair.  “Well, then, there must be a new definition for the word.”

“Is he going to be okay?” Julia asked.

The doctor frowned.  “We might have to come up for a new definition for that word as well before I can employ it.  Let’s just say that Mister Cartwright is mending.”

“What else?” Joe asked.

“Excuse me?” Scully asked as the stethoscope retreated back into his black bag.

“What…else is wrong with me?”

The doctor was wiping his glasses on the tail of his coat.  “Let’s see, a bullet wound, which from what I understand was deliberately contaminated, resulting in a high fever that lasted nearly a week.  Severe exhaustion complicated by a beating and,” he scowled, “a certain someone driving himself too hard instead of resting.”  The heavy-set man smiled.  “Shall I go on?”

“You sound…just like Doc Martin,” Joe groused.

“Would that be the man who had the dubious pleasure of being your family physician?”

“It would!” a strong baritone voice rumbled.

Joe swallowed over a lump as his father, battered and showing bruises, but whole and alive entered the room.

“Next he’d…tell Pa I was young and strong…and it was up to me whether or not I…got better.”

“A wise man,” the physician said.  “You could start by keeping quiet and resting.  Your lungs are not healed.”

Joe shrugged.

Julia had shifted aside to let his pa move in. The older man sat on the side of the bed.  Pa hesitated a moment and then reached out to brush his curls aside with his fingers, and then placed a hand alongside his face.

“How are you, son?”

“Alive, I guess,” he replied.

His father must have noted something in his tone.  “Is everything all right?”

How could he answer that?  He wasn’t completely sure that everything he’d seen was real, but what he’d experienced had left him with a kind of sadness.  He wanted to be here with his pa – with Julia – but he longed for Laura’s touch and his brother’s voice.

For his mama.

“I’m okay, Pa.  Just tired.”

The older man stared at him a moment longer and then nodded.  “Well, then, we’d best let you rest.”

“How come this always happens at haying season?” a strong voice asked.

Joe smiled.  It was an old joke with them, one that had begun with that fall from Cochise when he was around twenty.

“Just lucky, I guess,” he answered, giving the expected reply.

Pa rose and made way for Adam.  He paused at the door and said, “I’ll be in the kitchen, son.”

Adam nodded.  It seemed from their faces that this was the end of a conversation and not the beginning.  Joe stared at his brother for a moment and then turned to the doctor and Julia.

“Could I talk to Adam?  Alone?”

Disappointment shone out of Julia’s eyes, but she nodded.  “Come on, Doctor Scully.  I’ll get you some coffee before you head back to town.”

“Julia?” Joe called.

She turned at the door.  “Yes?”

“Come back.”

A smile lit her face and she nodded.  “Someone has to make sure you don’t fall out of bed after all.”

He watched her go and then looked at his brother.  “You’re leaving.”

“Not yet, and not now.  But soon.”

“Why?  Why can’t you stay?”

Adam pursed his lips.  “There are a couple of reasons, Joe.  One is I have contracts to fulfill.  The other is, you don’t need me.”

Joe scoffed and then held his side.  His ribs were broken, he could tell.  “Like…Hell I don’t,” he managed.

His brother paused, obviously moved by his honesty.   “I made you a promise, that I wouldn’t treat you as a kid.  Joe, it’s a promise I can’t keep.”  Adam closed his eyes and sighed.  “When I saw you go over the edge of that cliff….”

“You ‘saw’?”

He looked right at him.  “I outpaced Pa.  I got there just as you went over.  Joe, I’ll never stop wanting to protect you.  I don’t care if your hair is white and you’re gumming your food.”  Adam laughed.  “Come to think of it, that’s when it started.”

He’d been a towhead, after all, and without teeth for a while.

“It’s okay.  I understand.”  Joe hesitated. “You want to take…care of me like I want to take care of Julia.”  He was growing weary.  It hurt to breathe.

“You still feel the same way?”

He nodded.  Gingerly.  “I’m going to…ask her to marry me once I…well…once I know I’ll live until the wedding.”

His brother looked toward the window.  “Well, then, I suppose I’ll have to stick around for that.”

Joe caught his brother’s wrist in his fingers.  “Stay, Adam.  Pa needs you.  I need you.  We need our…family.”

It had remained unspoken between them except for brief moments where they had shared a common pain.

“The big galoot would have wanted to be there,” Adam said with a sigh.

Joe smiled.  It was the first time he’d done it when thinking about Hoss since….well, since his brother had died for him.

“He will be, Adam.  He will be.”

 

It took nearly a month for Joe to regain his strength.  He’d had pneumonia before and it clung to him like a long, lost friend.  He’d get up and out of bed, and then end up back in it in less than two shakes of a steer’s head.  The fever was persistent and it drained him.  Doc Scully said he would recover fully, but he wanted to be certain and so he had said nothing to Julia about his plans.  She continued to care for him and they talked about everything and anything other than their feelings and what they were going to do about them.  After accompanying a recovered Sheriff Strait to Lone Pines and testifying to what had happened, Adam and Pa returned to the Ponderosa.  It was hard for a spread as big as theirs to run itself.  His brother told him he’d written to his clients explaining everything and they’d delayed the project in San Francisco by two months.

If he was going to ask Julia to marry him – and wanted his brother there – it had to be soon.

Joe was sitting outside on the Griswolds’ porch, rocking and soaking in the sun.  Julia had chided him and dropped a shawl around his shoulders before going inside to help her ma prepare supper.  The coarsely woven garment smelled of her – of lavender and vanilla.  It was funny.  Since he’d been ill, they hadn’t kissed or touched each other in a special way.  He wondered if she was frightened.  She wouldn’t be the first woman to realize what it would be like to be married to a Cartwright, who had bolted at the first chance.  For him, he thought it might be the lingering memory of Laura.  She’d been his first love and a part of him longed for her still.  Seeing her – if he did see her – had only made that longing stronger.

He’d come to peace with his brother’s death.  Mostly, at least.  When he’d arrived at the Griswolds’ he’d been an angry man – angry at himself and at God.  Adam’s return had helped with the deep agonizing sense of emptiness Hoss’ passing had left.  Older brother had made it clear that he had to stop blaming himself for middle brother’s death.  Adam told him in plain terms that he would have sacrificed himself too, and that he knew he would have done the same.  It was God who chose to take Hoss out of this life when He did and Hoss seemed fine with it.  Happy as a pup eatin’ burrs, the big man would have said.

Joe wiped away a tear.

“Do you want to come inside to eat, or should I bring your food out here?” Julia asked tentatively.

He looked over his shoulder at her and smiled.  “How about out here, and how about you join me?”

She brightened.  “Sure.  I’ll tell Ma.”  The beautiful young woman paused.  “Besides, Ed Flanders is coming over and I think they want to be alone.”

Joe nodded.  Ed had proposed again to Pat.  She hadn’t given him an answer…yet.  He was a good man.  Better than he’d thought.  Ed saved his life and, in a way, Julia’s, and for that he would be eternally grateful.

It was about ten minutes later that she appeared with a tray.  On it were two plates of steaming hot food.  Julia was a good cook.  When it came to cooking steak, she wasn’t Hop Sing, but then, no one was.  She’d made apple dumplings for desert tonight.

On that one, she had the Asian man beat.

They’d finished and Julia had gone inside for a minute to wash up.  As he sat there, watching the sun sink below the horizon, Ed Flanders rode in through the gate.  The older man tethered his horse to the rail and then tipped his hat.

“Joe.  Glad to see you up.”

“I had to fight to be here, I can tell you that,” he replied.

“Women.  Needful as water and twice as dangerous.”

That made him laugh.  “So how come you’re trying to saddle yourself with another one?”

Ed was his usual droll self.  “Can’t live without water.”

Julia returned after the older man had gone inside.  She sat on the step at his feet and looked out.  The land beyond their place, barren and nearly lifeless, took on a special beauty when the dying rays of the sun struck it.  She was dressed again today in the crimson gown she’d worn when they’d bid goodbye that first time.  It was cut low and showed the tops of her breasts.

Joe laughed when he saw what she had in her hands.  They’d grown close enough, she knew what he was thinking.

“When you rode away that day,” Julia began, looking at the leather gewgaw he’d braided, “I had this in my hand.  I told myself it was a kind of charm.”  She glanced at him before continuing.  “I told myself if I kept it under my pillow, I’d dream about you.  I told myself…if I wished hard enough…it would bring you back.”  She placed the item on the porch board.  “Silly, I know, but I was young then.”

His hand fell on her head.  “Not so silly.  Here I am.”

She sniffed.  Fighting tears, he supposed.  “Are you?”

Joe’s fingers trailed the length of her hair.  “What do you mean?”

“Well, since we brought you here this time, half-alive….”  She drew a breath against the memory.  “…you seem different.”

“Different how?” he asked.

Julia shrugged.  He noted how it made those white breasts rise and fall within their crimson sheath.  “Quieter.  Older, maybe.  Maybe too old for me.”

He knew he’d hurt her by keeping silent, but he had to be sure he had something to give her before he offered it.  He was about to turn thirty-two and he’d been close to death more times than any man he knew.  This time, like the last time in the Griswolds’ house, had been close.

“Oh,” he said, “so you think I’m an old man?”

She turned to look at him again.  “Well, you do have gray hair.”

He laughed.  “I had gray hair when I was  your age.  Why do you think I always wore my hat?”

Julia laughed as well, but sobered quickly.  “Joe, I have to know.  Do you love – ”

It hurt, but he slipped from the chair to sit beside her.  The shawl fell across them both, warming her with its presence even as its absence chilled his shoulders.  He pressed a finger to her lips, and then followed it with his own.  Julia’s lips were firm; her breath, fresh.  The scent of her skin delightful.  His hand went to her breast, lifting it within its tightly corseted prison until the top resembled one of her apple dumplings where it spilled out of her dress.  He kissed that too.

Julia gasped.

Joe kissed her skin again, teasingly, and then looked into her eyes.  “Julia Griswold, will you marry me?”

It stunned her for a second, coming so suddenly.  Julia lowered her eyes and said, “Well…I don’t know….”

“You don’t know?” he asked in surprise.

She glanced at him.  “How soon were you thinking, Mister Cartwright?”

He shrugged.  “Well, I know you women have things you have to do.  A dress and such.  Flowers, and all those invitations.”

She frowned.  “How long will it take your Pa and Adam to get here?”

He’d thought of that.  “If I send a telegram, two days at most.”

It was Wednesday.

Julia kissed him back.  “How about Saturday?”

 

It actually ended up being Sunday.  Julia wasn’t worried about any of the finery, but her mother insisted, saying a girl only got married once.  The day dawned beautiful and blessed.  In the end, it turned out to be a double-ceremony.  Pat had accepted Ed Flanders proposal at last.  His pa was there, and Adam.  So were Damien Strait and his wife – and children.  Clem Foster showed up along with Barney Fuller, who even agreed to leave his signature cigar behind.  And when he’d kissed the bride and turned to walk out of the church, Joe saw the others he loved.  They were there, just as they’d promised.  His mama was standing arm in arm with Laura.  Hoss hooted and tossed his hat in the air.

God was there too.  The Man upstairs had been patient with him.  Pa said everything had a reason and a purpose.  The Almighty had let him wallow in self-pity, had stayed silent as he wrestled with guilt and grief – been patient all the while he’d been blind-sided by what life had handed him.

And was smiling now that he’d finally come home.

Tags: Joe, Ben, Adam, Hurt comfort, SJS, ESJ