Summary:  The Cartwrights are saddened to learn of the death of an elderly friend shortly before Christmas, but the bequest he has left one of them stirs warm memories, one very private and another soon to become very public.
Rating: G Words 5960
Written for the 2022 Bonanza Brand Advent calendar

Bonanza
~*~*~ Advent Calendar ~*~*~
* Day 8 *

Gideon’s Trumpet

As the wind howled outside, the huge stone fireplace cast a warm glow over the four men gathered in front of it (or three men and a boy, depending on which of them described the scene.)  Ben Cartwright, with his eldest son smiling in anticipated triumph, was intently studying the chessboard between them, while Hoss pondered in equal puzzlement a hotly contested game of checkers with his smirking younger brother.  A sudden banging on the front door broke all their concentration and sent puzzled looks flying around the circle, for two exceptionally good reasons.  First, it was past suppertime, an odd hour for anyone to be calling on any night and, second, because the weather outside was more than usually frightful for the week before Christmas.

Hoss, typically, put it best.  “What in tarnation makes a body come callin’ on a night like this?”

“One way to find out,” Adam observed dryly.

“Oh, meaning me, I suppose,” Little Joe put in.  It was a traditional complaint from the youngest to his elders, even though he didn’t really mind answering the door.  It was, however, a good way to distract his opponent from the strategic manipulation of the checkers he was in the midst of perpetrating.

Adam, who’d seen the checkers’ move—totally unnecessary, incidentally, since Joe was winning anyway—held up a restraining palm.  “I’ll get it,” he said, not to assist highway robbery, which is what cheating against Hoss generally was, but because the odd timing of the visitor raised caution, and he didn’t want the boy being the one to meet an actual highway (or house) robber at the door.  Little Joe just counted himself lucky until he saw Adam slip his revolver from the holster hanging from a peg by the door.  Then, brow wrinkling with concern, he stood to his feet, ready for . . . well, whatever.

Snow swirled through the door as soon as Adam opened it and so covered the man standing there that it took him a moment to recognized the frosted visitor.  Then his face broadened with a smile, he grasped the damp glove, still curled in position to knock again, and pulled the man inside.  “Sam Clemons!  Come in, you snow-drenched wretch.”

The other Cartwrights grinned in relief and outright pleasure, for each had come to appreciate the news reporter since their first meeting.  Ben felt grateful for Sam’s help in ousting the man the reporter had dubbed “Mr. Personal Pronoun,” while Hoss and Little Joe relished Sam’s sense of humor and enjoyment of a good fight.  Perhaps, though, it was Adam who had formed the closest attachment, after a somewhat rocky start.  They communicated on a literary level, and each seemed to understand the other’s thinking almost intuitively.

All of the Cartwrights wanted an answer to the question Hoss had posed when they first heard someone knocking at their door, but not even he thought to ask it until the reporter had a chance to thaw out.  Adam drew him close to the fire, Hoss pulled a blanket from the credenza by the door, Little Joe ran into the kitchen for a cup of steaming coffee, while Ben insisted that Sam take his own padded chair, the closest to the fire.  It was he who finally phrased the question they were all asking, “Well, Sam, what brings you to the Ponderosa on a night like this?”

“What else?” Adam said, one side of his mouth lifting in an amused and knowing smile.  “A story,” he amplified, for his less astute brothers.

While both of them hooted at the absurd notion, Ben saw the sudden flush on the reporter’s face and knew Adam was right, although he agreed with his younger sons at the absurdity of Adam’s analysis.  “I’m afraid the only headline you’ll find here, Sam, is ‘Snow, Snow and More Snow,’” he chuckled.

“I . . . don’t . . . think . . . so,” Sam stammered out through still shivering lips.  Another gulp of coffee seemed to thaw him enough to speak more clearly.  “I’m just following the editor’s orders.”

“Joe Goodman ordered you out here on a night like this?” Adam asked skeptically.

“I’ve always found the editor of the Territorial Enterprise more reasonable than that, although,” he added with a grin, “his putting up with you and your shenanigans does raise certain doubts in that evaluation.”

“It’s those shenanigans, as you call them, that landed me this cruel assignment,” Sam admitted wryly.  “No offense to the hospitality, gentlemen, which is helping mightily.”  He reached with eager anticipation for the plate of cookies Hop Sing had just that moment offered him.  Crumbs spilled from his mouth as he continued, “I suppose you could say I’m being disciplined by Mr. Goodman, who seems to feel that my . . . uh, inventiveness . . . has gotten a tad out of hand, despite its leading to increased sales and the uncovering of scandal, as you remember.”

The hoots turned to howls of laughter.  “Not to mention opening the newspaper to potential lawsuit,” Adam opined with a sage nod.

“The good Mr. Goodman evidently figured there wasn’t much chance of any of that when he ordered me to cover the reading of an old man’s will,” Sam said.

Ben Cartwright chuckled with amusement.  “Well, Sam, if you’re about to inquire into the disposition of the Ponderosa after my demise, I’m afraid you are being disciplined with a most boring story.  It all goes to my boys, equally divided.”

Sam laughed.  “You’re right, Ben.  That would be punishment, indeed!  Guaranteed to lull our readers to sleep!  This story just might have more potential than either Joe Goodman or I thought, though.”

With dry humor, Adam asked the obvious question.  “Who’s the deceased?  Not one of the silver barons, I presume.  That would hold too much interest to serve as effective discipline.”

“You’re right there,” Sam replied with a trace of remembered irritation with his editor.  “Goodman’s given me a story that could only be made interesting with some of my signature ‘inventiveness’ and then forbidden me to use any!”  He paused to bite into another cookie and take another swig of coffee.  “To answer your question, it’s just an old man, longtime resident of the area, and from all I’ve heard, about the furthest thing from a silver baron you could find.”

Ben sobered quickly.  If the deceased had lived in Washoe that long, it was undoubtedly someone he knew well.  “Who?” he asked pointedly.

“Gideon Walters,” Sam said, eyes scanning each face before him for newsworthy reaction.  He got more than he bargained for.  The Cartwrights all sobered at once, and three sets of eyes turned to the fourth with concern.  For if Ben, Adam and Hoss looked grieved by the loss of what had evidently been a family friend, Little Joe was absolutely stricken.  His lower lip began to tremble, and tears hovered just beneath his dark eyelashes.  Hoss, who was standing beside him, snaked an arm around the boy’s shoulders and gave them a supportive squeeze.

Watching them, Sam knew he had a story here, after all.  The old man had a strong connection with one of the most prominent families in the territory!  “So, you do know him,” he said, a leading inflection in his voice.

“Yes,” Ben said, his concerned gaze still fixed on his youngest son.  Sam had the feeling he’d like to be in Hoss’s place, his own arms wrapped around the boy, but guessed that he didn’t want to embarrass Joe in front of a guest.  “We hadn’t heard that he’d passed, though.  What with the sudden change in the weather and the extra work it’s occasioned, we’ve been a bit cut off this week.  I thank you for bringing us the news.  Gideon is very important to Joe.”

“Was,” Adam, ever the precise grammarian, corrected.

“Is,” Little Joe said with ferocious insistence.

“Of course, little buddy,” Adam said in a softly soothing voice.  “Forgive me; I misspoke.”

“As I was saying,” Ben said, “Gideon and Little Joe have had a special relationship since he was very young.”

Hope sparked in the reporter’s eyes, and he leaned forward.  “I figured as much when he was the only one mentioned in the old man’s will.”

They all gasped in surprise, but, typically, Hoss was the one to voice it.  “I’m surprised ole Gideon had enough to will away.  I mean, he’d already sold his farm to Pa, right?”

“Several years ago,” Ben acknowledged, “with the stipulation that he could live out his life there.  It butts up against the Ponderosa’s southwest boundary.”

“But you didn’t really need it,” Sam guessed.  “You bought it to help ease his obviously lean later years, didn’t you, Ben?”

“I’m not giving you a quote on that, young man!  And I trust I’ll see nothing to that effect in the Territorial Enterprise.”

“I understand,” Sam said, although Adam noticed that he hadn’t promised anything.  “Well, I must admit I was being a bit inventive in calling it a will,” the reporter continued with a wink at the oldest Cartwright son.  “It wasn’t a legal document, just a letter describing what he wanted done with that box.”  He gestured toward the package he had set on the fireside table when he blew in from the cold.  “The letter said it was to go to Joseph Cartwright of the Ponderosa, so I offered to bring it.”

“Out of the only slightly adulterated goodness of your heart,” Adam opined.

“In the probably vain hope that I can make a story out of an old codger leavin’ all his worldly goods, such as they are, to a young whippersnapper like Joe here,” Sam admitted.

“Without being inventive,” Adam reminded him with a wry lift of one corner of his mouth.

“Yeah,” Sam sighed.  “So, how ‘bout it, Joe?  You willing to open this box and let the world know what riches the old man left you?  No chance he once robbed a bank and left the loot to you, I suppose?”

Clearly, he was trying to evoke a spark of humor, but the usually effervescent Little Joe was silent as he shook his head and reached for the box Sam was extending to him.  For a moment he held it until, misreading the hesitance, Adam asked, “Would you prefer to open it in private, Joe?”

The look Sam sent him could have felled an elephant, but Adam returned it with a steady gaze that would have decimated an entire herd.  Sam, wisely, kept his mouth shut.

Equally silent, Little Joe again shook his head and, to Sam’s relief and, indeed, the hushing of the whole room, began to open the box.  With near-reverent care, he opened layer after layer of sheltering paper, and he began to smile as he lifted the object from the box.

The rest of the room did not share his awe.  “He gave you that?” Hoss finally said, voicing the mystification the other faces around the fire plainly revealed.

“A cow horn?” Sam asked, of all the faces his being the most devastated, since not even he felt inventive enough to make a story out of this.

His hopes rose again for a moment when Adam scoffed, “Not just a cow horn,” and plummeted with even greater alacrity when he continued, “It’s an ear trumpet.  Gideon was hard of hearing.”

“Yeah, but Joe ain’t,” Hoss protested.

“Anything but,” Adam chuckled, for he’d had to deal more than once with the consequences of little brother’s big ears stretched where they ought not to have been.

“I believe Gideon meant it as a keepsake,” Ben said generously.  “Probably all he had to give, and he wanted his friend to have something to remember him by.  Simple as that.”

“Yeah,” Sam muttered.  Simple as that and equally boring.  He was ready to resign and give up a career in journalism as readily as he’d laid aside his miner’s pick and ax to take up the pen.

“Yeah, but he had a better one than that, Pa,” Hoss insisted.  “Joe gave him that silver trumpet a couple of years back, remember?  That’d be worth something, leastwise.”

“This one’s worth plenty,” Little Joe said, lovingly stroking the slight crack in the trumpet, the reason he’d given Gideon the silver replacement.

Sam was reduced to begging at this point.  “Please tell me there’s a story somewhere in this?”

Adam grinned.  “Not a chance.”

“Aw, sure there is,” the ever-optimistic Hoss said and then turned to his younger brother with a questioning face.  “Ain’t there?”

“Maybe,” Little Joe said.  “The trumpet’s how we met.”  And it was more, but he wasn’t about to share that with the entire population of Virginia City!

“Oh . . . yeah.”  Hoss got misty-eyed, Ben’s gaze softened, and Adam nodded in slow understanding.

Sensing the more sober atmosphere, Sam nonetheless didn’t hesitate.  After all, his career was at stake!  “I do sense a story here, after all.”

“You always do sniff out a story, Sam,” Hoss said, “and it’s a good ‘un.  You wanna tell it, little brother?”

“Let Pa,” Little Joe, still clearly overcome, said.

All eyes, especially Sam’s, turned toward Ben, who nodded, cleared his throat and began.  “Well, they first met when Little Joe had just turned five.  We were hosting a harvest hayride for the community, the first of many, so it would have been early to mid-November.”

“A week before Thanksgiving, to be precise,” Adam put in.  Being precise was something, like grammar, he always seemed to think was important, to the everlasting befuddlement of his brothers.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Hoss agreed, “and it was cold!”

“Which does matter in this story,” Ben said soberly, but then he smiled.  “In those days, I’m afraid, my little boy had a propensity for wandering off.”

Also sensing the need to lighten the mood, Adam arched a playful eyebrow and said, “In those days?”

Little Joe produced the groan expected of him when twitted by his elder brother, and Ben chuckled.  “Well, I admit that hasn’t changed as much as I might hope, but the important point in this story is that he did that night.”

With obvious latent regret, Hoss said, “I was supposed to be watchin’ him.”

Adam smirked.  “And, instead, you were watching the food being laid out.”

Hoss admitted it with a sheepish shrug.  “It was a mighty fine spread, and like Pa says, we hadn’t done nothin’ like that before, but little brother was right beside me . . . until he wasn’t.”

“The beginning of more stories than we can count,” Adam said with a wicked waggling of both eyebrows.

As Ben continued the story, Little Joe settled down on the hearth and drifted into his own memory of that day . . .

He knew he shouldn’t have gone off alone into the woods, but he needed a pee, and he was a big boy now—five years old!  Big boys didn’t need someone watching them do that!  Hoss was busy staring at the food, anyway, so he wouldn’t notice, and Little Joe figured he’d just trot into the woods a ways, do his business and be back before anyone knew he was gone.  It should have worked, would have worked . . . if he just hadn’t chased after that squirrel with the fluffy tail.  He really shouldn’t have done that, but it didn’t seem wrong at the time.  Hoss could hold a squirrel in his lap, and it would let him pet it, and now that he was a big boy, he should be able to do that, too.  Hoss, who knew everything, said winter was coming when lots of woodland critters went into hiding.  Little Joe wasn’t sure if squirrels were one of the critters that did that, but if they were, he might not have another chance to pet one for months and months.  That was reason enough to forget everything he knew he shouldn’t do and just trot after the squirrel, who didn’t seem one bit eager to be petted and ran away.  Frustrated, Little Joe ran after him, deeper and deeper into the pines.  By the time he realized that was the wrong thing to do, it was too late.  He was lost.

He tried turning around and going back the way he’d come, but he didn’t realize he’d already done so much twisting and turning that doing that wouldn’t take him back to the clearing where the food and fire was.  Instead, it was taking him in almost the exact opposite direction.  When he finally did come out of the tall trees, there was no one in sight, and nothing looked the same.  Not wanting to go back into the dark forest, he walked into the open and just kept going, because he didn’t know what else to do, except sit down and cry, and big boys didn’t do that.

Feeling smaller and more ready to cry by the minute, he kept putting one foot after another.  Finally, far in the distance, he saw a light and started to run toward it.  Maybe it was the big bonfire, after all, and that silly squirrel had just led him so far from it that it looked tiny from here . . . except it didn’t get bonfire-big, however fast he ran.  His short legs quickly tired out, and he slowed down, but kept moving toward that light.  It started to rain, chilly, soaking drops that pattered his face and soaked his hair and clothes, and then there was a crash of thunder and jagged jolts of lightning stabbed the earth.  Scared, he started to run again, for the flashes of bright light had shown him that the little light he saw ahead of him was coming from a house, and he wanted inside!

With a thrill of joy and expectation, the exhausted boy ran onto the porch of the house and began to pound on the door, but no one came.  He pounded again.  Still no one came, so he started yelling.  “Let me in!  Please!”  He knew someone was in there, because of the light shining through the window.  Finally, he moved out from under the porch roof into the rain, so he could peek through that window, and sure enough, there was a man inside.  He looked kind of funny, holding a cow horn up to his ear, but Little Joe was a child who never met a stranger, and he couldn’t imagine a house in the territory where he wouldn’t be welcome.  He splatted the window pane with his hand and began yelling, all the louder.

Looking puzzled, the man inside stood up and turned that cow horn toward the window.  Then he turned himself toward it, and his jaw dropped, practically to his stomach, and he began moving toward the door, so fast he even beat Little Joe to it.  Although maybe that made sense, since his legs were a whole lot longer than the boy’s.

The door flew open.  “Good lands, child!” the old man said.  “What’s a little mite like you doin’ out in this storm?”

“Gettin’ wet!” Little Joe cried.

“Well, get in out of the wet,” the old man declared, holding the door wide.  “Get over there by the fire, sonny.”

Little Joe was only too happy to do that!  He was still shivering, but the warmth from the fire felt good.

“Skin out of them wet clothes,” his host ordered as he closed out the storm.

That sounded like a good idea, so the boy quickly shucked his shirt and pants and was about to strip down to the altogether when the old man wrapped him up in a blanket.  “There now, that’s better, ain’t it?”

“Yes, sir.  Thank you, sir.”

“Well, you’re a polite one, at least,” chuckled the old man.

Little Joe smiled and nodded his head.  “Yes, sir, I am.”

At that, the man laughed outright.  “And modest, too, huh?”

Little Joe frowned slightly at the unfamiliar word.  “I guess so,” he ventured.  A grownup had said it, and grownups didn’t lie, did they?  “And hungry,” he added, figuring that was more important than whatever the old man had called him.  Pa always offered food to anyone who came calling at the Ponderosa, so he assumed he’d be equally welcome to it here.

“I’ll see what I can rustle up,” said the man.  “Sit down on the hearth, boy; it’s warmer there.”

That sounded right, so Little Joe did as he was told.  The old man soon returned with a sandwich and a glass of milk, which the boy hungrily gobbled and slurped down.

“You wanna tell me your story now, boy?”

“I don’t tell stories,” Little Joe said.  “Pa says to always tell the truth.”  It wasn’t quite the truth that he never told stories, but he never did unless there was some mess he needed to wiggle out of, and he didn’t think he was in one here.

The old man grinned.  “I didn’t mean a fib, boy.  Still wonderin’ how you came to be here, that’s all.”

“Oh!” Little Joe said.  “I walked . . . and ran part way.”  Clutching the blanket around him, he waddled over to the old man’s chair and propped his elbows on the bony knees.  “How come you stuck that old cow’s horn in your ear, Mister?”

“Gideon, name’s Gideon,” the old man said.  “What’s yours?”

“Joe,” the child answered.

Gideon pulled the boy into his lap.  “Well, we got something in common, then.”

Little Joe cocked his head and gazed into his new friend’s face with a questioning expression.

“We both got Bible names,” Gideon explained.

Little Joe frowned.  “I know Joseph is,” he said.  “He was Jesus’s pa.”  With Christmas coming up, he’d had lots of reminders about that story.

“That’s right, and there was another one before him, too.  The one with a set of onery brothers.  You know him?”

Little Joe grinned.  “The one with the coat with lots of colors.”

“That’s the one,” Gideon said, “but do you know about my namesake?”

The child’s frown returned.  “Is there really a Gideon in the Bible, mister, or are you fibbin’?”

“I don’t fib, either,” Gideon said.  “I had a good pa, same as yours, who taught me right from wrong.  By the way, who’d you say your pa was?”

“I didn’t say.”  Little Joe yawned and snuggled into the old man’s breast.  “Tell me ‘bout the other one, that Bible Gideon.  Did he have a cow’s horn, too?”

Gideon cackled.  “He did have a horn.  Probably, his was a ram’s horn, though, and he used it for blowin’, not hearin’, like I do.  I’m just a smidge deaf, boy.”

“Oh!  Tell about the blowin’ one, then.  I hear just fine.”

“Oh, oh, oh, I bet you do!  Probably all sorts of things you shouldn’t.”

Little Joe giggled.  “That’s what Pa says . . . and Adam.”

“And what about Hoss?” Gideon asked, for he now knew what family this little mite came from.

Little Joe’s eyes grew wide with wonder.  “Hoss . . . Hoss thinks I’m perfect, and he knows everything . . . like you.”  He swallowed hard and asked in awe, “Are you God?”

Gideon rubbed the boy’s curly head.  “Naw, I’m just a man, son, but a man who knows his neighbors, at least by name.  A pa with a son named Adam hereabouts—got to be the Cartwrights, don’t it?”

“Yeah.”  Little Joe cuddled up close again, now that Gideon was just a smart man and not the Almighty, who would’ve scared him just a tad.  “So, tell the story,” he ordered.  Then he tapped the cow horn on the side table.  “How’s that help you hear?”

“Now, which story you want?” a clearly amused Gideon asked.

“Both,” his imperious dictator declared.

“Well, the cow horn—which is really called an ear trumpet—takes less time, so I’ll start there.  The shape just kind of concentrates the sound, makin’ it easier for me to hear. In fact, if’n you want, you can try it out while I tell the Bible story.  I ain’t so deaf yet that I can’t hear a little mite on my own lap.”

Little Joe grinned and reached for the horn—no, he corrected himself, the trumpet—and held it to his own perfectly sound ear.  As Gideon began to speak, the little boy’s mouth gaped at the way it made the story seem louder and, somehow, more magical . . .

“Because of the heavy rain, Gideon couldn’t get him back to us until the next morning,” Ben said, finishing up his version of the story of their fruitless search and its blessed ending.  “We met him out on the range, where we were still looking.  I’d known of him before, but wasn’t well acquainted until that day.  I invited him back to the Ponderosa, but since we were closer to his place, he invited us there, instead, and I couldn’t say no to the man who’d, quite possibly, saved my boy’s life.  That’s where, between him and Little Joe, we learned all about their encounter.”

Hoss slapped his knee.  “And all about the trumpet of the Lord and of Gideon!”

Sam gave him a quizzical look.  “I didn’t pay the best attention in church as a little lad myself, but isn’t it ‘the sword of the Lord and of Gideon’ in the Good Book?”

Adam laid a hand on the reporter’s shoulder.  “Yes, but you see, like you, Little Joe has always felt free to tell a story as inventively he pleases, even when the original writer is God Himself.”

Little Joe scowled.  “I ain’t that bad, but it’s the trumpet that’s important,” he insisted as he had all those years before.

“In your story, I’d agree it is,” Sam said as the rest of the family hooted at the argument they’d had . . . and lost . . . so many times before.  To Little Joe, it would always be the trumpet and not the sword.

“At any rate,” Ben said, wiping from his eyes the tears of laughter, “that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship between Gideon and my little boy, which lasted . . . well, I don’t suppose it ever ended, did it, Joe?”

“Never,” Little Joe said, “and never will.  He was the closest thing to a Grandpa I ever had, and I think he felt the same.”

“Sure did,” Hoss confirmed.

“Joe used to spend the night with old Gideon about once a month,” Adam amplified for Sam.

“Not as much lately,” Little Joe said with regret.

“No,” Ben said, “but you still visited from time to time, son, and I know Gideon cherished each visit, although”—after a pregnant pause, he continued with a twinkle in his eye—“I was never quite sure what sort of mischief those two were cooking up, since it was obvious the old man and the little boy were kindred spirits.”

“I’ll never tell,” Little Joe said, his eyes misty with nostalgia once again . . .

One of his fondest memories of old Gideon (and one he would never share with his father or brothers) happened about ten years after their first meeting.  It was a warm summer evening when he knocked on the familiar door.

Gideon smiled broadly when he saw his visitor.  “Well, come on in, little mite.”  The old description had become sort of his nickname for the boy, and Joe didn’t mind, as long as it was kept private between them.  It was no different in his mind from his friends and family calling him Little Joe.  Like that, it just felt warm and affectionate and not belittling.  “You stayin’ the night?” Gideon asked as the boy entered.

“I told Pa I was,” Little Joe replied, “but of course, if it’s inconvenient, I can tell him I mistook the date.”

“You know you’re always welcome,” Gideon scolded, “so I guess you didn’t tell your pa too much of a fib.”

Little Joe grinned, ‘cause they’d had this conversation many times before.  “I never tell stories.”

Gideon gave his usual response.  “Least not very sizable ones.  So, what’s the big attraction this particular night?”

“Big attraction?” Little Joe squeaked.  “Why, Gideon, seein’ you is always a big attraction.”

Gideon shook his head in mock disapproval.  “Now, that was a bigger fib, the kind I might have to share with your pa.”

“I do always like seein’ you,” Little Joe protested, but under the old man’s steady gaze, the façade crumbled.  “Well, yeah, I did sort of have another reason tonight.”

When Gideon saw the flush creep over the boy’s face, he sat in his chair by the fire and motioned Little Joe into the one facing it.  “Let’s hear it,” he said, lips twitching.  One of the things he liked best about his visits with the young’un was that he could never tell what would come spewin’ out of that mouth, and it could be downright entertainin’.  He had a feeling the story tonight just might be a humdinger.

Little Joe sat in his chair, but he nibbled his lower lip nervously.  “I—uh—sort of had a favor to ask.”

“Then, ask it,” Gideon said.  “I’m disposed to grant it . . . if’n it ain’t too outlandish.”

The flush of the boy’s face deepened.  “Well, it is . . . sort of.  I—uh—was kind of hopin’ to borrow . . .”

Gideon rolled his eyes.  He loved this boy to pieces, but he could sure try a man’s patience.  “Spit it out, boy.”

“Well, could I . . . could I borrow”—Little Joe gulped—“the trumpet of the Lord?”  It finally came out in a burst, and then he held his breath.

“And of Gideon?”  The old man’s mouth dropped.  “What you need that for?  I know for a fact, your hearin’s sound as a silver dollar.”

“Uh, well, it’s sort of a scientific experiment,” Little Joe said, head bobbing earnestly, “and I wouldn’t need it until you went to bed, and I’d have it back by morning, before you needed it again.”  As was typical of the boy, when it came out, it came in a rapid gush of words.

Gideon settled back in his chair.  Oh, this was going to be a humdinger!  “Didn’t know you was particularly interested in science.  Sounds more like Adam to me.”

Little Joe grimaced.  He wouldn’t have minded being compared to Hoss, and being like Pa was the highest goal of his life, but there couldn’t be two more different people than him and Adam.  “Adam’d be the last one to . . .”

“Figured as much,” Gideon cackled.  “Now, why don’t you quit pussyfootin’ all around the north pasture just to get a yard or two.  What kind of scientific experiment you got in mind?”

Little Joe took a deep breath and plunged in.  “Well, I was wonderin’ if a fellow could hold the trumpet up to a windowpane and, maybe, hear what was bein’ said inside a house.  Wouldn’t that make a good experiment, just to see how the sound carries?”  His head bobbed again, slowly and hopefully.

Gideon’s lips worked as he digested that.  Then he asked bluntly, “Who you wantin’ to eavesdrop on, boy?  Not Adam?”

“No,” Little Joe said with a shudder.  He couldn’t imagine anyone less interesting to spy on.  Adam probably spouted Shakespeare, even in his sleep.

“Your pa?” Gideon asked.  “I know it ain’t Hoss, ‘cause that boy’s so honest he couldn’t keep a secret to save his life.”

“Not them, either.”  Little Joe took a deep breath, knowing the time had come to just spill it.  “Well, the truth is . . .”

“‘Bout time we got to the truth,” Gideon snickered.

The teasing helped Little Joe relax.  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees.  “Yeah.  Well, several of the girls are havin’ a party at Mary Elizabeth Raymond’s place tonight, and some of my friends have been speculatin’ on which of them which girl likes, and I thought, maybe, I could use the trumpet of the Lord . . . and Gideon . . . and sort of find out for them.”  He finished with a weak, but hopeful smile.

“For them?” Gideon said, settling back comfortably in his chair.  “Ain’t you the least bit curious about which gal likes you, little mite?”

“Oh, they all like me,” Little Joe said with open-faced confidence.

Gideon couldn’t hold himself in a moment longer.  “I reckon that’s right, boy!” he cackled.  “Couldn’t nobody not like you, right?”

Little Joe gave him a wink.  “Not girls, at least.”

“Well, if we’re gonna do this thing, we’ll want to wait ‘til it’s good and dark,” Gideon proposed.

Little Joe grinned, sure now that his outlandish request had been accepted.  Then, something hit him.  “Wait.  You said ‘we,’ as in you and me?”

“Of course, you and me,” Gideon said.  “A real scientific experiment needs a witness, don’t it?”

“Uh, I guess so.”  In fact, Little Joe calculated, he might well need a witness to his innocent intentions, if this whole ‘experiment’ blew up in his face.  “Yeah, sure,” he said, “if you’re sure it ain’t too much for you.”

“I ain’t that old yet, little mite,” Gideon said, “and I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

It was months afterward before Little Joe realized that Gideon’s real reason for going along was to keep him from taking the experiment further than he ought, which tended to happen when he was left to his own devices.  That night, though, nothing untoward happened.  The experiment worked, and he gathered all the information he needed for his friends, as well as learning which girl liked him best, Mary Elizabeth herself.  The memory of that night, far too personal to ever share, was one he’d hold to his heart and cherish forever . . .

“Aw, come on, Joe,” Sam was wheedling as Little Joe came out of his brief reverie.  “My nose twitches in the presence of a good story, and it’s twitching now.”

“Nope, some things is private.” Little Joe said with a determined shake of his head.

“Are private,” Adam put in, seeing no reason not to correct his baby brother’s grammar this time.  He smiled at the expected roll of said baby brother’s eyes.  Then, standing, he slapped Sam Clemons on the back.  “You’ve got your story, Sam, a warm and inspiring one for Christmastide.”

“Complete with headline,” Sam said, stretching his hand across the room as if already seeing it spread across the front page.  “‘Penniless Codger Saves Life of Child from Prominent Family.’”  He stood, then.  “Well, I thank you, friends, and now I guess I’d best brave the wind and the snow and make my way back to town.”

A chorus of protests met that suggestion, Ben’s voice being the loudest and most forceful in the choir.  “Of course, you’ll stay the night, Sam.  The weather should clear by then, and that headline isn’t so pressing it can’t wait a day or so.”  And hopefully, he thought, I can persuade you to drop ‘penniless’ from it!  Gideon deserves better.

Sam had expected no less from the hospitable head of the Cartwright clan, and he quickly accepted.  The weather did, indeed, clear the next morning, and his story, without inventiveness of any kind, made it into the Territorial Enterprise on the following one.  By the night of the Cartwrights’ annual Christmas Eve party, everyone had read it and understood why an old, cracked ear trumpet rested in the branches of the tree filled with bags of candy and small toys for local tots.  Little Joe had insisted, and no one could deny him the right to honor his friend, however ridiculous it looked as a Christmas ornament.  The next year Adam presented him with a tiny silver ear trumpet, designed by a craftsman in San Francisco, and it hung on the Cartwrights’ Christmas tree ever after.

The End

© December, 2022

My chosen character: Joe

My optional secondary character: Samuel Clemons

My designated word: trumpet

If you’re unfamiliar with the story of old Gideon’s Bible namesake, you may read it in Judges 6:11-7:22.

Link to the 2022 Bonanza Brand Advent Calendar – Day 9 – In Absentia #6 – Heart’s Desire (by Belle)