Bonanza
~*~*~ Advent Calendar ~*~*~
* Day 5*

Summary:  With Little Joe, following his heart often leads to trouble.
Rating:  G
Words:  2,050

Silent as the Snow

It was going to kill him.  There was no way around it.

One.

Two.

Three…

Seventeen-year-old Joe Cartwright counted to ten before shifting his half-frozen body.  He gritted his teeth as he forced one heavily-clad arm to move; to reach up.  Then, with infinite care – as if shifting a bottle of nitro from one shelf to the next – he brushed the accumulation of cold white flakes off his long black lashes and looked up.

Silent, and soft, and slow descends the snow.

Oh, yeah.  He forgot one.

Scary.

Adam was really fond of that poem.  It was written by a fellow with a funny name – Wadsworth.  The poem was about snowflakes and had been published in the Territorial Enterprise the year before.  Older brother had walked around the house for a whole month reciting it – softly, slowly, but mostly annoyingly – all the while adding even more verses, each and every dang one of them so full of words that started with the letter ‘S’ that he started to sound like a snake.

Joe chuckled.

There were three more.

‘S’ words, that is.

The weary teenager grunted as he turned the collar of his blue plaid coat up to stave off the bitter wind that blew through his less-than-ideal hidey hole; framed on both sides with withered buckbrush.  Joe glanced sideways and swallowed hard.  The last time he’d looked it had still been there – the corpse of the horse he’d been riding.  In less than five minutes it had vanished beneath the white stuff.  Thank God Cochise had thrown a shoe and he’d been forced to leave him behind!  It sure would have been a less than ideal Christmas present to lose his favorite horse on an errand that he’d been an idiot to undertake in the first place.

Of course, losing his life on that errand was even stupider.

Joe snorted.  Another one!

If ‘stupider’ was a word.

He was sure older brother would know.

He sure wished older brother was here.

Joe sniffed.  No.  No, he didn’t.  He didn’t want Adam to die.

He didn’t want to die.

But he was gonna.

Joe’s green eyes shifted back to the constant cascade of sparkling flakes that descended; falling from the sky and filling the world with white.

Silent.

Soft.

Slow.

Scary.

The teenager blew out a breath.

And sinister.

He needed to move.  If he didn’t, he was gonna be buried just like Soppy.  Joe’s nose wrinkled with amusement.  Yeah, he’d named his horse ‘Soppy’, because that was how he was feeling when he left Cochise behind at the livery.  The seventeen-year-old blew out a breath that the bitter wind carried away in a cloud.  Maybe he should have named him ‘Slippery’ since that was what the dang fool horse did – slip!  For gosh sakes! It was the night before Christmas and there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in Hell that he would make it home in time to celebrate the holiday with his family.  Joe shivered and pulled his lightweight coat closer about his trembling frame.

Then again Pa probably wouldn’t want him to come home if he found out what kind of an idiot he had been!

It was silly really.  Joe snorted.  Now there was an ‘S’ word that pretty well fit his current situation!  They’d been in the settlement the week before – all four of them.  For some reason Pa chose the mercantile as the place to rendezvous before heading back to the Ponderosa.  The  store’s windows were all done up for Christmas and right smack dab in the middle of the window was the most beautiful bouquet of gilt-edged dried red roses he had ever seen. Pa saw them too.  The older man stood staring at the bouquet for the longest time before remarking with a sigh, “How Marie would have loved those for Christmas.”

He’d tried to fight it.  Honestly, he had.  In fact, he’d fought the impulse all the way up to the dawn of Christmas Eve Day – which for him was pretty dang amazing! Then, he couldn’t fight it anymore.  Joe blinked to free his long dark lashes of ice crystals, which were all that was left of the tears he had shed. It had been a few years since he’d taken his mama a Christmas present and he’d determined right there and then that this was the year he was going to make it right! He’d lied to his pa and his brothers; told them he was taking presents to a couple of his friends.  He promised he would be back by supper so he could ride into the settlement with them for the church service.

That had been this morning, just as the sun was rising.  The sun was setting now; its rosy light shining bright on the cut-crystal edges of the snowflakes that drifted down.

Soon, it would be dark.

Soon, it would be night.

Silent night.

Joe shifted again and grunted, this time running his hand along his left leg and down to his frozen foot.  It was frozen on account of the fact that he’d had to remove his boot so it didn’t cut off the circulation.  He’d felt Soppy goin’ down on a patch of ice and sprung from the saddle – only his left foot chose not to come with him.  Lucky for him, the force of impact snapped the cinch and the whole dang thing came off, otherwise the ankle would have been broken instead of sprained.  As it was, he was pretty well hobbled.  He’d tried walking earlier, but it had proven to be what older brother liked to call a ‘lesson in futility’.  He’d made it maybe a hundred feet before he couldn’t take the pain and collapsed, which left him where he was now – sitting beside the road in the middle of a pair of scratchy buckbushes.  The teenager bit his lip as he moved his aching body again.  Of course, that wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been anywhere close to where he was supposed to be.  His Pa and his brothers would take the main road.  If he’d been on it, or even on the road he’d lied about taking, there might have been a chance of rescue.  But he didn’t and he wasn’t.

No one knew where he was.

No one was gonna find him, at least not until he was just one more icicle.

Joe looked up again and blinked as another round of snowflakes settled on his lashes.  The storm had come out of nowhere as it often did in the Sierras.  It had been clear when he left for the settlement and clear when he bought the roses, but by the time he headed out he knew he was in trouble.  He should have stayed put, but no, gilded red roses in hand he’d taken off like some little kid too dumb to know his back from his front and headed straight for his mama’s grave.

Stupid.

The teenager winced.

That was an ‘S’ word he seemed to hear a lot.

He supposed he really should try to get up and move around; do something to keep the blood from freezing in his veins.  By now his foot would be numb, so he probably wouldn’t feel the pain if he tried to walk.  Trouble was, he didn’t want to.  What he wanted to do was go to sleep.  It was funny how a man who was freezing to death felt all warm and toasty, like he was leaning over a crackling fire reaching for a graniteware pot brim full of steaming hot coffee.  Maybe if he tried to reach for something…something like the pile of bruised and broken red roses that lay just beyond his reach, their gilt edges glinting in the dying rays of the sun.

Was he dying?

No.  Not dying.  Not yet.  But he was weary to the bone.

Maybe if he could just….

Silent.

Soft.

Slow.

Scary.

Sinister.

Sleep.

Joe jerked awake and tossed his head, dislodging handfuls of snow that fell from his chestnut curls and slid silently to the dusky purple-blue ground.

Can’t…sleep.  Have to….

The teenager’s numb brain reached for the word, just like he wanted to reach for those roses.

Have to….

Struggle.

I have to survive!

Joe focused on the roses.  They’d been buried by that snowfall – all but one.  Its shining head poked out of the dark stuff, gleaming; pointing like a beacon to the west, toward the special place he shared with his dead mother.  He blinked and sniffed and then, the weary young man smiled.

“One way or the other, mama.  I’ll be seein’ you soon.”

It took everything that was in him – probably more than was in him – for Joe to climb to his feet.  He swayed from side to side as he looked around for some kind of prop, at last finding a broken branch substantial enough to bear his weight.  Then, strong-willed, stiff-necked, stubborn and still alive, Little Joe Cartwright headed for the lake and his mother’s grave, rose in hand.

All the while silent, and soft, and slow descended the snow.

Ben Cartwright held his breath as he reached out to touch his youngest child’s frozen face.  He had known where he would find him.  Hop Sing was searching the ranch.  Adam insisted on riding into the settlement.  No doubt Hoss was on his way back from Seth’s by now.  Him?  Without a thought, he had ridden hard and fast for the lake.  The heart-broken father glanced at the single rose clasped in his boy’s frost-nipped fingers – a painful reminder of his own foolish sentimentality; a foolishness that sent his son on an errand that led to his death.

Then, a miracle!  The supple skin beneath his gloved hand shifted.  Joe’s eyes opened and his pallid lips parted.  The boy’s voice was dry as the soft, silent snow it broke upon.

“P…pa?”

Already he was wrapping his child in a warm woolen blanket, pulling it around Joe’s quivering shoulders while reaching for the flask he had brought with him; a flask filled with a rich warm liquid that could bring life.

“Yes, son?”

“…mama’s rose….”

“It’s here.”  Ben picked up the gilded rose and held it close to his son’s face.   “Your mother knows that it – and you – are here.”

“Is it…Christmas yet?”

Ben nodded as he took the flask and pressed it against the boy’s lips.  “Yes, it’s Christmas.  Your brothers are home by now.  They’re waiting for you.  So is Hop Sing.”

Joe swallowed some of the warm liquid.  He seemed to savor its effect before speaking.  “I’m…sorry, Pa.  Are you…mad?”

Mad?

How could he be?

“No, Joe, I’m not mad.  I’m grateful.  Your love brought you here, and your mother’s love protected you until I could come.  Now, let’s get you home where you’ll be safe.”

Safe.

Shielded.

Sheltered.

Secure.

Saved.

It took him a few minutes to get Joe up and on Buck’s back.  As he settled into the saddle behind his son, Ben turned for one last look at the grave of his beloved wife.  The single red rose that remained unbroken rested on a field of white before the marble stone, gleaming bright as the tears of gratitude in his eyes.

Softly they fell – his tears – like the white flakes whirling in a slow, silent dance around them.

Silent as the snow.

———————————————-

Prompt: “Silent, and soft, and slow descends the snow” Snow-flakes by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

*Author’s note:  Longfellow’s poem, from which my prompt was taken, was not published until 1863.  I moved its publication back a bit in time to be able to use a younger, more impulsive Little Joe.

Link to 2023 Bonanza Brand Advent Calendar – Day 6 – Jingle Bull by ElayneA