Summary:  A mysterious discovery puzzles Hoss. Will he be able to put the pieces together and solve the riddle on his own?
Rated:  K
Word Count: 1236

 

He ran his palm over the cover of the book. Dark green velvet decorated with a fine embroidery made of golden yellow threads made the book appear magical. He carefully opened it. The pages had become wavy from the moisture but had since dried again. The paper was yellowed towards the edge. The book seemed old.

Turning the pages, he saw that they were handwritten. The uppercase letters in a strangely curved script, the lowercase letters in thin lines close together and connected with a sweeping pen stroke. Although he could guess the individual characters, he still didn’t understand the words. The book must have been written in a foreign language. He kept turning the pages. Enumerations with figures seemed to occur again and again. In the middle of the book there were empty pages before a new section or chapter was announced in big letters over an entire page.

He now generously wiped through the pages, which were similar in writing and presentation throughout the book. It was most probably always the same person who wrote the entries. Suddenly something crumbled to the ground. Carefully he put the book aside and bent down to pick up the straw that had fallen down. It was a pressed flower. Someone had used the book as a flower press. Well, it was thick enough anyway. Hoss tried to lift the plant from the ground, but the flower was so dry it fell apart in his fingers. Disappointed and a little sad, he looked at the heap of dust at his feet. Hoping to find more flowers and treat them more sensitively, he turned back to the book. In fact, he found three more flowers on the following pages. He had never seen such plants although he was often out in nature and had an eye for flowers and grass. Of course, dried flowers could also be old and transported far. So they didn’t necessarily have to be from around here.

His gaze swept over the wrecked horse-drawn carriage in front of him. Then he looked up the slope, the foot of which he was standing at now. It might have been a runaway wagon where the horses had shied. The animals probably ran away and then fell down here with the wagon. The splintered wooden planks were rotten and partly overgrown with moss and fungi. The accident must have happened a long time ago. Who was in the car? How many people were affected by the accident? No tracks of a human body were visible in the rubble.

Hoss thumbed through the book. The writing, although always the same, changed over the course of the entries. It became a scratchier writing. The entries were probably written over a longer period of time. He switched to the first few pages. Was there something like a date written somewhere? Was he perhaps holding a handwritten diary in his hands? He didn’t find anything in the front of the book and the back pages were blank. What did the last entry look like? Was there a date or at least a word that he could decipher and understand?

He looked for the last written page. The paper curled slightly in this area of ​​the book. Something thick had to be between the pages here again. Another flower? No! It was a lock of hair neatly tucked between the pages. At the end near the head, the hair was glued together with some wax so that the curl held its shape. The hair was golden yellow, almost like the threads of the embroidery on the cover of the book but of course much finer. If he straightened the hair, it would probably be the length of his forearm. Thoughtfully, his gaze rested on the unexpected content of the book. No woman would just cut off such a long lock. Hoss studied the scribbled writing on the page with great effort. But he didn’t see any sense in the sequence of letters.

Suddenly Hoss realized that he must have been standing here for a while. He should go back and help his brother build the fence. He tucked the book under his shirt and hurriedly climbed the slope. When he got to the top, he pulled the bushes together behind him and covered his tracks so that no one would think to look over the edge or climb down right there. For himself he made an inconspicuously visible mark on the stalk of a bush to ticket the access to reach the location. Then he mounted his horse and rode to the west pasture.

That evening in his room, Hoss took out the book again. It gave him no ease. What was that book, so beautifully bound and handwritten? Who did it belong to? Who did the lock of hair belong to? Why was the book the only item left in the crashed carriage?

He slowly thumbed through the pages. Some sections seemed to be marked. He began to compare the curved letters with one another. On two consecutive pages he could decipher the sequence of letters “Suppe”, which seemed to repeat itself. And then, further back in the book, he came across a headline that he took to mean “Butterdessert”. Hoss slowly got an idea of ​​what kind of book it could be. When he came across the words “Pudding” and “Orange” shortly afterwards, his suspicion seemed to be confirmed. Hoss closed the book, stroked the cover once more, and placed it on the shelf. It had to be a cookbook.

That night an unexpected storm swept across the terrain. It spooked cattle, damaged fences and buildings, and when it subsided left much work for the Cartwrights and their cowboys. In the following days there was a lot of activity on the ranch and the land that belonged to it. In addition to the general repair work, a flash flood had caused the Truckee River to burst its banks. As a result, 600 cattle had to be led out of the morass to another pasture.

The men left the house before sunrise and came back dead tired in the evening. Every minute of inactivity was spent sleeping and resting. The cookbook in Hoss’s room fell into oblivion.

**********

It had been eight months since tragedy struck and changed life on the Ponderosa forever. The snow cover began to melt and the first flower buds announced the approach of spring. Ben stood in the doorway to his son’s room. The room was now empty except for the bed, the small desk and the closet. Ben had dreaded the day and he was glad Joe, Jamie and Candy had worked so quickly and without discussion. The cleared inventory lay carefully stacked in the bottom of the wagon. In between was a book covered with dark green velvet.

“Pa? Are you sure you don’t want to keep any of these things?”

Ben shook his head weakly. The next thing he heard was Joe urging the horse and the wagon pulling away. Sadly, he closed the room door.

The End

Author’s Note: Written for the 2022 Ponderosa Paddlewheel Poker Tournament.   The game was Five Card Draw and the words and/or phrases I was dealt were:

runaway
ticket
pressed flowers
lock of hair
cookbook