A badly wounded Little Joe Cartwright is propelled into an adventure where he meets a beautiful Indian girl who seeks his love…and maybe his life!

Rated: PG

Word count: 34,669

The Maiden

 

ONE

“Come on, little brother.  Just a little higher!  Come on, Little Joe!  You can do it!”

“I…can’t.”

Hoss Cartwright swallowed over fear as he stretched his long body out to its full length.  He choked as his toe-hold on the rock behind him slipped and he slid forward. He didn’t stop sliding until the upper part of his chest dangled over the edge of the precipitous one hundred foot cliff.

By the time he found his voice again, it wasn’t as strong as he’d hoped.

“What do you mean ‘can’t’?” Hoss asked, adopting a cheerful tone.  “How many times have you told me that ‘can’t’ ain’t in your vocabulary?”

A short pause.  A sigh.

“Well, I guess it is…now….”

The big man closed his eyes, and then forced himself to look down – past his extended arm, past the skinny form of his eighteen-year-old brother clothed in his gray corduroy coat and black pants, beyond the spits and starts of cactus, juniper, and pine lining the perpendicular rock face Little Joe clung to, and on to the jagged rocks that lined the bottom of the chasm.  Joe’s feet were anchored on a rocky ledge not quite as wide as them itty-bitty black boots of his.  That last part didn’t bother Hoss too much.  The boy was agile as a cat.

Leastwise, he was when he had his wits about him.

Joseph Francis Cartwright’s angelic face – the one that could melt their Pa’s steely resolve faster than the sun melted snow – was turned up toward him and lit by the fading light.  The right side of it was covered in blood just like his side and shoulder – not Joe’s side and shoulder, his.  The warm liquid had soaked clean through the coarse fabric of his tan work shirt.  He’d just started to check on how bad it was when little brother started yellin’.  Then it didn’t matter no more.  His boots was firmly planted on the Earth.

Little Joe’s was just a hair away from Heaven.

Hoss shifted, repositioning his foot so it was securely wedged between the rocks that backed him.  Then, he puffed out a sigh.  He hated what he was about to do, but it had to be done.  Little Joe’s spirits was pert near as low as baby brother’s energy.

If he didn’t do somethin’ quick, the boy was gonna give up and die.

“Jo-seph!” he snapped.  “There ain’t no more than an inch between my fingers and yours.  Stretch out!”  Hoss winced.  Here it came.  “If you weren’t so dag-blamed short, you wouldn’t have no trouble reachin’ me!”

“If you weren’t so dag-blamed…fat…you wouldn’t…have ‘no’ trouble…reaching me!” Little Joe snarled a second later – with a bit of his usual fire.

Trouble was that fire went out right fast.

“Give it…up, Hoss,” the boy whimpered as he leaned his curly head against the mountain’s craggy side.  “I’m done.  You know it.  I…know it.  I’m not going to make it.”

Hoss chewed his lip.  He didn’t know it, but he feared it.

The big man lifted his head to scan the desolate landscape before him.  Somewhere out there in all of that mesquite, creosote, greasewood, and yucca was older brother Adam.  Or at least he hoped he was.  Adam had remained behind so’s he could lay down a coverin’ fire, lettin’ the two of them make good their escape.  Him and Adam, they’d been in this country before.   Durin’ a lull in the fightin’, older brother done told him to take Joe and head for the cave they’d stumbled on when they was kids.  Little brother didn’t know anythin’ about that cave and that was a good thing.

Hoss looked down again.  Joe’s knuckles shone white against the greasewood root they gripped; his narrow shoulders a-shakin’.

If baby brother had known just how high they had to climb…well…he’d of give up a long time before now.

Ever since Joe’d been a little tyke and got lost up there on Eagle’s Nest, the boy’d had trouble with anythin’ taller than a ladder.  Wasn’t  nothin’ to be ashamed of.  Any man in his right mind knew a fall of more than twenty feet was a bad thing.  But there was somethin’ else churned up his little brother’s insides when it come to climbin’ rocks and mountains.  None of them knew for sure what it was, but they’d sure enough heard him yellin’ about it in the middle of the night.  Little Joe bein’ Little Joe, of course, he didn’t tell them nothin’ – ‘cept to mind their own business – and kept right on pushin’; scramblin’ up steep slopes and walkin’ on barn roofs even though he went white as a windin’ sheet and sometimes lost his supper.  It puzzled them all until they’d realized just what was goin’ on.  It weren’t that Joe wasn’t afraid of heights anymore.

He’d just learned not to look down.

“Little Joe!” Hoss commanded, his throat tight with fear.  “You look at me!  You hear me, boy!  You look at me!”

Joe had shifted his position on the ledge and was peerin’ over his shoulder at the vast, desolate, desert landscape painted in tones of purple and red by the dyin’ sun.  At his call, the boy looked up.  The light was goin’ so Hoss had to squint, but he could read resignation written on his brother’s bruised and battered face.  The big man blew out a breath.  Seein’ that look was almost enough to make him lose his religion and cuss!  It took a whole lot of somethin’ to take the fight out of Little Joe Cartwright.  A bullet creasin’ the right side of the boy’s head hadn’t done it.  A second one took him in the shoulder and Joe just kept ridin’.  Grit and determination kept that boy on his feet when the outlaws shot his horse out from under him.  Hoss’ lips curled with affection.  Little brother’d even managed to keep it together when he first saw where the cave was.  It was when they was almost to the entrance and Joe’s boots slipped on loose rock, that the boy lost his nerve and fell.  Hoss sniffed the air and made a face.

He’d lost his nerve then too – along with a few other things.

“Hoss?”

“What is it, little brother?”

“Tell Pa….”  Joe choked.  “Tell Pa…I love him….”

“Now, Jo-seph, you know I ain’t gonna do any such thing.  You can tell him yourself.”

“I’m not gonna…make it, Hoss.  Just…leave me.“

“I ain’t gonna do that either.  I done promised both Pa and Mama that I’d never leave you, and you know me, I ain’t one to go back on a promise.  You wouldn’t want me to do that.  Now, would you?”  The big man blinked his eyes, freeing them of tears as he stretched his fingers out a little more.  “Besides, Adam’s gonna be mad as all git-out at me if the first thing he sees when he gets to this here mountain is your skinny little carcass gracin’ some big old rock below!”

Little Joe looked awful pitiful.  One arm was wrapped around his chest and his teeth were chatterin’.  Hoss squinted.  He wasn’t sure, but he thought he could just make out a dark pool formin’ beneath Joe’s black boots.  Little Joe was bleedin’ bad.  He needed tendin’.

First, he had to get him off of that dag-blamed ledge and up and into the cave!

“What’ll it take to get you to let go of that old greasewood and stretch out your hand proper so you can catch mine?” Hoss’ exasperation showed in his tone.  “I ain’t got no cherry pie up here.”

Joe’s voice was pitiful, but dang it, he was tryin’!

“Got any…pretty girls?”

“Now that, I got!” Hoss lied cheerfully.  “There’s a real pretty gal holdin’ onto my ankles right now, otherwise I’d of tumbled right off this ledge and over that curly head of yours.  Grab my hand and I’ll haul you up and introduce you.”

“Must be big…as the Washoe…if she’s holding onto you….”

“She ain’t big, just strong,” Hoss answered as he warmed to his tale.  “You know how it is with them…Indian gals.”

Joe’s answer was a cough, and then – in a still weaker voice – a question.  “Indian, huh?  What’s…she look like?”

God love him!

“She’s real pretty, Joe, just like I said.  She’s got long black hair that cascades down her back like a waterfall.  It sort of shines like that silk tie of Pa’s.  You know the one Mama got him that last Christmas?”  Hoss stretched out a bit farther, mindful of his toes’ precarious hold.  “She’s got eyes blacker than Pa’s, little brother, with long thick lashes, and a plump red lips just right for kissin’.”  Hoss wiggled his fingers.  “Come on, Joe!  Try!!  She’s waitin’ for you.  She wants to take care of you.”

Just like I want to take care of you.

“I bet her…pa’d take care of…me right quick!”  Little Joe snorted, but sobered quickly as his tone grew deathly serious.  “I’m so tired.  Honest, Hoss.  I don’t…know if I can.”

“What do you mean?  Sure you ‘can’, little brother!  Why, anyone will tell you, there ain’t nothin’ Little Joe Cartwright can’t do if he puts his mind to it!  All you gotta do is stand on your tippy-toes and reach up – reach up real far!”  Hoss’ six-foot-four frame was stretched out just about as far as it could go.  He teetered on the edge of a rocky ledge some six or seven feet above his brother.  Their fingertips were scant inches apart.  All Joe had to do was close the gap and he’d have him.  “I tell you what, Joe.  You just pretend you made it up here already.  That pretty Indian gal’s tall as Winnemucca.  You gotta go up on tiptoe to kiss her!”

“Winnemucca’s…not…that tall.”

“Well, gosh darn it, Little Joe, you just pretend he is!”  Hoss whispered a quick prayer and stretched…just…a…bit…more.  “Little Joe, you do it now!”

Night had fallen.  Nothing remained of the sun but its slender fingers; hellish red stripes on the brushed sand and scrub below.  The crimson light toyed with the tangles of his brother’s chestnut hair and brushed the tip of his up-turned nose.  A few seconds more and he wouldn’t be able to see the boy at all.  Little Joe would become only one more shadow among many.

Hoss didn’t know how he knew, but he did.  That was the moment he would lose him.

“DAMN IT, LITTLE JOE!  YOU DO IT NOW!!”

Ice-cold fingers brushed his.  Hoss caught hold of them, but just as quickly lost his grip as the blood-soaked digits slipped out of his hand.  The big man sucked in air – said a prayer – and then loosed his boot from the rocks and reached down – just in time to catch his little brother’s wrist and save him from certain death.

Seconds later they was both lyin’ on the ledge, huffin’ and puffin’.  Joe was cussin’ and complainin’.  Little brother even gave him a weak bop him on the nose.

Didn’t matter.

Little Joe was alive!

 

Hoss tossed a piece of kindling on the fire.  He eyed it for a moment after the wood caught, and then whispered a quick prayer.  He was glad the fire was burnin’ clean with no smoke, since a smoke signal wasn’t exactly what he wanted to send up right now.  The prayer was for both his younger and older brothers.  Little Joe’d made it, but the boy was all banged up and had a bullet lodged in his shoulder that needed to come out yesterday.  Adam, well….  The big man let out a sigh, part frustration and mostly of fear, as he turned to look at the gaping maw of darkness that was the cave mouth.  Big brother was out there somewhere.

Alive.

He hoped.

Hoss rose to his feet, shoved his hands in his pockets, and headed for the eight foot slab of stone that partially blocked the entry to the cave.  The first time he’d seen this place, it’d looked twice as big.  He’d been a young’un then, no older than Little Joe was now.  Maybe even a little younger.

Pa hadn’t kept quite as tight a leash on him as he did on Mama Marie’s baby boy.

Him and Adam had been sent on a buyin’ trip to Utah.  It was the first time Pa’d let him go alone with his older brother and, whoo-ee, had he been proud!  Hoss turned to look at Joe where he lay by the fire.  The memory made him grin.  Little Joe’d been mad as a wet hornet when he found out he had to stay home and do the chores for both of them!  Hoss’ smile widened.  They made it up to him though when Pa gave Joe his pick of the horses they brought back from Bader’s ranch that year for his birthday!

Hoss reached down and adjusted the Bowie knife he’d shoved into the top of his boot, before moving past the slab to the edge of the cliff.  Once there, he looked out onto the night.  The knife was all he’d had time to grab before he and Little Joe took off.  The memory made the big man shake his head.  The three of them had been havin’ such fun!  It was Joe’s turn to go to Utah and Pa sent them both along to keep an eye on him.  They’d had a grand time travelin’ together and hadn’t got into no arguments or nothin’.  Just enjoyed one another’s company.  They was talkin’ about stoppin’ early ‘cause the day was hot.  Adam offered to cook while he tended the horses.  Little Joe was bouncin’ up and down in the saddle, all excited for the chance to tell them about his new gal.

It was then the outlaws come out of nowhere.

Hoss pursed his lips and blew out a breath.  The three of them rode hard and, for a little whiles, thought they’d got away.  Joe was out front and then, all of a sudden, come flyin’ back toward them wavin’ his arm and shoutin’ somethin’ he d couldn’t quite make out.

A second later a bullet took Joe’s hat off from behind.

There was more of them layin’ in wait.

Adam reacted fast.  Older brother pulled his gun and started shootin’.  Their horses was close beside each other and the one he was sittin’ on wasn’t expectin’ that.  It shied and nearly threw him.  Hoss sighed.  He’d managed to get it under control right quick, but had to abandon the poor critter in the end when a bullet cut across its back leg.  Joe had almost reached them when another bullet took the boy in the side.  And then – dad-blame it! – if one of those mean hombres didn’t shoot little brother’s bay right out from under him.  Adam was the only one managed to stay mounted, which was why older brother chose to remain behind and run interference so’s he and Joe could get away.

“Hoss?  You…there?”

Little Joe’s voice was weak – so weak it worried him.  “Sure am,” he said as he returned to the boy’s side. “What is it, punkin’?”

Joe rolled his eyes at the affectionate term before asking his question.  “Were you…outside the cave just now?”

“Yeah.  I took a little walk.”

“Did you hear something that made you go look?”

“Nah.  I didn’t hear nothin’.  I was just restless and needed some….”  Hoss stopped abruptly.

Baby brother’s eyes were wide.  “Do you think…it could be Adam?”

‘I sure hope so’, the big man thought.

‘You stay put’, Hoss mouthed as he palmed the Bowie knife and rose.  “I’ll go see whose come callin’.”

He’d heard a sound, just like Joe.  So far it hadn’t been repeated, but the whisper of leather on rock had brought the hairs on the back of his neck to full attention.  The big man’s fingers gripped the hilt of the shining blade as he moved cautiously toward the cave mouth, anticipating trouble.

Then it came – a light whistle like a Cedar waxwing.  Once.  Twice.

Three times.

Hoss blew out a breath and sheathed the knife as relief flooded through his large frame.  “What took you so long, older brother?  You stop somewheres to romance some pretty Indian gal?”

Adam smiled as he holstered his pistol.  “Sure did, but she sent me on my way quick enough.  Said I was too old.”  Older brother’s eyes narrowed as he searched the darkness in the cave.  “You got someone younger in here she might be interested in?”

“She’s gonna be mighty disappointed,” Hoss replied with a sigh.  “Little brother won’t be takin’ a turn on the dance floor any time soon.”

The man in black was instantly alert.  “But he’s all right?”

“Depends on your definition.”

“Is it bad?”

Hoss shrugged.  “Bad enough.”

Adam’s keen gaze took in his own bloody sleeve.  “How about you?”

“Pshaw!  I’m okay.  Bullet went in and out clean.”

“It can’t be too clean.”  Adam held up his hand.  “I’ve got the only canteen.”

Hoss eyed the round metal object with desire.  “You got enough for me to take a drink?  Or do we need to keep what’s left for Little Joe?”

“I found a watering hole on the way here.  There’s enough to go around.  Just take it easy,” Adam cautioned as he handed it over.  Older brother shoved his hat back on his head and looked around.  “Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t there water in here somewhere?  Remember, we found it when we were boys?”

Hoss ran a hand over his lips to clear them as he returned the canteen to his older brother.  “Yeah, but that was later in the season and it was a wet year.”

It was hot as Hades this summer and seemed a century since it had rained.

Adam smiled as he capped the canteen.  “Ever the optimist, eh?”

Hoss shrugged again.

“So exactly where is little brother?”

“I’m…right here.”  There was a cough.  “Being talked about within earshot…like always.”

They both turned to find Little Joe standin’ – well, sort of standin’ – behind them.  The boy was leanin’ on a rock and breathin’ hard.

“Dagnabbit, little brother!” Hoss cursed.  “What are you doin’ on your feet?  Do you know how long it took me to get that side of yours to stop bleedin?!”  His gaze went to the boy’s ribcage, lookin’ for fresh signs, but it weren’t no use.  Not only was the cave full of shadows, but little brother had a dark blue shirt on.  “You lay back down, you hear me, and you do it now!  You’re gonna start bleedin’ again!”

Joe’s forehead wrinkled.  “Too…late,” he said as his knees began to buckle.

They were at his side in an instant.  “So where was he lying?” Adam asked as Joe’s head lolled against older brother’s shoulder.

“Back a ways.”  Hoss nodded into the cave.  “You remember?  Near that place that’s got walls and looks like a room.”

“The one that leads to the corridor with the drawings?”

Hoss chuckled.  Leave it to college-educated Adam to remember there’d been art!

The big man scowled as he shifted his grip on their injured brother.  “I got a small fire goin’.  Little brother here was supposed to be restin’ by it.”

“I was…worried about you, you…big galoot!”  Joe snarled, indicating he was awake.  “You’re hurt too.”

Hoss did a good job of pretendin’ the wound didn’t hurt.  “This little old scratch?  It ain’t nothin’.”  Fear gripped his innards as he noted the pale blue shade framing his baby brother’s lips.  “I didn’t take no bullet like you did.”

Adam was looking over Joe’s head and directly at him.  Hoss knew what older brother was asking.  He shook his head.  No.  The slug wasn’t out.  He hadn’t been brave enough to extract a bullet from his baby brother’s shoulder with an eight inch Bowie knife.

Adam closed his eyes for a second, plastered a smile on his face, and then caught Joe’s eye.  “Well, buddy, it looks like it’s your lucky day.  I managed to rescue my saddlebags from my mount before I had to abandon it.”

Joe’s mobile eyebrows skyrocketed toward the tangle of dirty curls dangling on his forehead.  “Since when is…getting a slug taken out of you…lucky?”

Hoss hadn’t noticed before.  Sure enough, slung underneath the canteen on older brother’s shoulder was a set of dusty saddlebags.  Since Little Joe was a mite…accident prone…older brother had started carryin’ a kit containin’ what was needed to take care of business.  Once Adam was sure he had hold of Joe, the man in black let go.  Adam removed the saddlebags from his shoulder, knelt, and rummaged through their contents.  Hoss was expecting the kit.  Instead, older brother pulled out a silver hip flask.

The man in black shrugged as he stood up.  “I was planning on doing a little celebrating after we closed the deal on the horses.”

Joe’s eyes went wide with relief.  “Is that…for me?”

Older brother’s eyes were wide too – and misty.

“Like the water, there’s enough for all of us.”

 

 

TWO

Digging a bullet out of someone you loved was never easy, even with the right tools.  Adam had done what he had to do and then excused himself, making his way farther back into the cave and away from the memory of all that blood.  He told Hoss that he was looking for the water they’d seen when they were younger, but – in reality – what he was looking for was a distraction.

He found it in the ancient drawings on the cave walls.

They were faint, but legible.  The images reminded him of hieroglyphics, which was the language of ancient Egypt and something he had studied in school.  A long stretch of them led him deeper into the cave.  The Stygian darkness, coupled with the light of his hastily rigged torch, brought the drawings to life and, soon, he was imagining who might have made them.  Someone like him, he guessed, since many of them were of men and cattle.  There were others farther along, brushed by the flickering torchlight, that appeared to represent women and children harvesting grain.  He thought the grain was corn, but wasn’t sure, since the stalks were outsized and loaded with what appeared to be foot long ears.  Adam halted and looked up – far up toward the natural vault above his head.  Hard as it was to believe, this cave – positioned a good one hundred feet above the desert floor – had once been someone’s home.  Maybe a lot of ‘someone’s’ homes.

He couldn’t imagine rearing children in such a perilous place, but apparently it had been done.

Since he’d first seen this cave as a young man, he’d been intrigued by the how and why of these ancient cliff-dwelling cultures.  A few years after that first trip to Utah, he’d attended a lecture in Carson City given by an English professor schooled in the new science known as an ‘archeology’.  Dr. Alfred Birnan’s specialty was prehistoric Indians.  After the lecture, he’d invited the man to supper.  As they dined, Alfred told him that the people who occupied the cliff dwellings were known as the Anasazi, and that they had lived and died some nine centuries before.  The professor said there was very little left of the culture – a few pots, some cave drawings, and a handful of bleached bones.  Alfred added as they parted that, sadly, very few people cared that the indigenous people had lived at all.

Disturbed by the thought, Adam turned to look at the light radiating from the small fire Hoss had kindled near the cave’s mouth.  Little Joe lay beside it, tossing and turning; burning with infectivity.  If Joe…died…they would mourn, but all too soon it would be as if his vibrant, irritating, bull-headed little brother had never been.  If he and Hoss didn’t make it out – if they died here as well – then they too would soon be forgotten.

Just like the Anasazi.

Thoroughly depressed, the man in black left the ancient drawings behind to return to the light and his brothers.  He nodded to Hoss, who was trying to ease Joe’s suffering with a cool cloth placed on his forehead.  Adam’s lips wrinkled with wry amusement.  Of course, there might be some advantage to being forgotten – at least by the band of desperados who had chased him from the border of Utah to within a few miles of this place.  He certainly hoped they’d followed the trail of the borrowed horse whose back-end he’d smacked and sent flying north, instead of his.

If not….

If not, Little Joe’s cries would certainly bring them here.

Adam sank down on a rocky seat and looked at his middle brother.  Hoss had closed his eyes and leaned back, though he kept a hand on Joe’s shoulder.  He was exhausted.  No.  They were all exhausted.  The man in black’s full lips quirked.  As usual, Little Joe had to do things the hard way.  The bullet had entered his brother’s shoulder high on the right side and fairly far away from his heart, which was about as good as it got when it came to surviving a gunshot wound.  Unfortunately, it had lodged underneath one of Joe’s upper ribs and he’d had to dig deep to find it.  Luckily, it had been his saddlebags that had made it to the cave with them.  He’d learned long ago to plan ahead for his baby brother’s…mishaps…and carried a kit that included a sharp scalpel Doc Martin had given him, healing herbs from Hop Sing, and a needle and catgut.  Adam glanced down at his hands.  They couldn’t really spare the water to wash them.  He’d done the best he could with sand, but his skin was stained with his kid brother’s blood.  The man in black swallowed over bile as he returned his attention to his ‘patient’.  They’d poured the remainder of the whiskey into the wound before closing it, hoping to prevent infection, and the kid couldn’t take it.

Little Joe was out cold.

Adam’s gaze shifted back to his middle brother.  Too bad there hadn’t been more.  Hoss sure looked like he could use a shot.

“You okay?” he inquired.

“Why Joe?” Hoss asked, opening his crystal clear blue eyes.  “Why is it always Little Joe who gets hurt?”

Adam nodded but said nothing, because he didn’t know what to say.  He’d seen it coming.  Hoss hadn’t.  When the first attack came Joe was in front, Hoss was second, and he was in the rear.  As soon as they realized what was happening – that they were being pursued – they all drew their guns.  Little Joe was the first to fire.  The kid was fast and accurate.  Joe took out two of the outlaws before they had time to draw.

Which made the remaining outlaws – who were in hiding a dozen yards in front of them – very angry.

A hail of bullets followed their appearance.  Joe could have easily gotten out of harm’s way, but it wasn’t in baby brother’s character to think of himself in such a situation.  Joe was on the move when Hoss’ horse spooked and began to spin.  He saw it, just like Joe did: one of the outlaws taking aim at Hoss’ back.  That was when Joe –

Adam closed his eyes against the image that flashed before them.  The first bullet took the kid’s hat off and left a bloody channel across his temple.  Seemingly unaware that he’d been wounded, little brother kept moving, riding straight for Hoss.  Adam sucked in air.  He had to remind himself that there was nothing he could have done.  One of the outlaws had trapped him and his horse, cutting him off from his brothers.  He shouted, but Joe couldn’t hear him or chose not to.  A moment later he watched in horror as one of their attackers calmly took aim and shot Little Joe in the back.

Joe had deliberately put himself in harm’s way to save Hoss’ life, not caring if it cost him his own.

He didn’t know how he was going to tell the big galoot.

“Adam?  Did you hear me?  I asked, ‘How come it’s always Joe gets hurt?’”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

Hoss stared at him.  “You know somethin’, older brother – somethin’ you ain’t sayin’.  You tell me what it is.”

“You know Joe.  He has to be in the middle of the action,” he replied with a twist of his lips.

Hoss moved his hand to Joe’s forehead and brushed back the sodden curls.  “Don’t it say somewhere in the Good Book that God looks out for foolish young’uns?”

“I believe its fools and young’uns, or babes.  Drunkards too.”  Adam took a good look at his baby brother.  Joe’s face was nearly as pale as the stone he lay upon.  A thin sheen of sweat covered his downy cheeks and the exposed skin of his chest.  “I have to admit, there are times when all three of those apply to Joseph Cartwright.”

“You don’t think….”

He glanced up at Hoss.  “What?”

“It weren’t ‘cause of me, was it?”  The big man looked suddenly ill.  “Joe gettin’ hurt, I mean.”

Adam reached across their baby brother’s prone form to place a hand on the big man’s shoulder.  “Everything happened so fast, Hoss.  There’s no way to tell.  Just be thankful Joe’s alive and…. He’ll be fine.”

Hoss frowned.  “Are you tellin’ me the truth, big brother?”

“Of course, I am,” he lied.  “Don’t I always?”

The big man’s gaze went to Joe’s supine form and lingered for several heartbeats before he rose to his feet.  “You keep watch.  I need some air.”

“And just where do you think you’re going to get it?”  Adam nodded toward the cave mouth.  “We’re twenty stories up.  There’s not much of anywhere to pace.”

When, as youths, they’d first discovered this cave, he’d been amazed.  He and Hoss had come to the Utah Territory to meet up with a rancher and buy horses from him.  Before they left, Pa told them to take a few extra days to enjoy themselves – much to their little brother’s chagrin.  Of course, Joe had no idea that one of the horses was for his upcoming birthday, and that Pa was laying it on thick so he’d be surprised.  An old Indian, who went by the name of Patchwork Pete and ran a trading post just north of the horse ranch, told them of some cliff dwellings nearby, which ancient Indians had occupied.  He was intrigued.  He talked Hoss into it and they spent their free time exploring in and around the caves.  Near the end of their short ‘vacation’, they stumbled on this one.  It was set a little higher in the cliff-face than the others, which had kept it pristine.  The state they found it in – complete with pots and other artifacts, as well as the paintings – suggested that no one had been in it since its original inhabitants departed.  The old Indian was gone now, most likely to his maker, but the rancher was still alive and Pa still bought horses from him.  He’d sent Joe this time to make the sale, with them along as chaperones.  They’d been on their way to the ranch with money in their saddlebags when they’d been assaulted.  Adam wondered if one of them had accidentally let something slip in the last hotel they’d occupied, or maybe in the saloon where they had a drink before heading out of town.  Either way, it didn’t matter.  They’d been bushwhacked, the money taken and their rented horses lost, and both Joe and Hoss injured.

Hoss hadn’t moved yet.  The big man nodded toward the deeper shadows lining the back of the cavernous room they occupied.  “I’m goin’ that way.  You remember, don’t you?  How the air blows through that hole in the ceilin’ back aways?”

He did indeed.  Even in the desert’s cool season, it had felt like a blast furnace.

“Not a particularly good air.”

“That’s all right.”  His younger brother cast a forlorn look at their younger brother.  “I don’t feel ‘particularly good’ myself right now.”

Adam’s legs were cramping, so he stood up and watched the big man depart.  Characteristically, Hoss had his head down and his hands in his pockets.  The big man felt things deeply, and nothing more deeply than the love he had for their little brother.

Obviously, Hoss hadn’t believed his ‘truth’.

“Adam….”

The man in black looked down to find Little Joe’s trembling hand outstretched toward him. Adam bent and took it, and then laid his other hand on Joe’s forehead.  He winced at the slight elevation in temperature since the last time he’d done so.

The infection, if left unchecked, would kill Joe.

“Hey, little buddy.  What can I do for you?”

The boy’s fevered eyes searched the darkness.  “Where’s Hoss…going?”

He smiled.  “He’s getting some air.”

Little Joe winced.  He drew a breath and held it, and then let it out slowly.  “Does he…know?”

“Does Hoss know what?”

“That I…”  Joe swallowed hard.  His tongue darted out in a feeble attempt to wet his dry lips.  “What I…did.”

Adam squeezed the fevered hand.  “No,” he replied, keeping his voice low.  “But he suspects.”

Joe’s look was panicked.  “You…  You can’t tell…him.  Promise?”

He lifted two fingers to his mouth and made a stitching motion.  “My lips are sealed.”

Joe coughed.  His usual smile was weak, but there.  “Just like…my side….”

It was Adam’s turn to wince.  “Sorry about that.  The bullet was in pretty deep.”  He patted his brother’s shoulder.  “You’re gonna be okay, Joe.”

“Sure…I am.”  The kid snorted and closed his eyes.  “Aren’t…I always?”

In reality, Adam wondered what they were going to do.  If the fever abated, it was still going to take a few days for Joe to recover enough that that they could make the attempt to get him down the side of the cliff.  After that, it was at least ten miles back to the last way-station – on foot and through the desert.  The only food they had was a handful of jerky and a bag of dried fruit he’d tossed into his saddle bags at the last moment – and they were lucky to have that.  The man in black eyed his injured brother.  So long as Joe’s fever didn’t climb to the same heights as the cliff-dwelling they now occupied they’d manage it, he guessed.

“Adam?”

He’d thought Joe had lost consciousness.  It probably wouldn’t be long before he did.  The kid’s words were slurring.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Hoss…lied to me.”

Adam blinked.  “About what?”

Joe’s pale lips curled with a smile.  “I was…afraid.  Couldn’t get…off the ledge.  Hoss said there was a…pretty Indian girl up here waiting…for me.”  Baby brother sighed.  “Only thing I saw…when I opened my eyes…was his ugly mug….”

Joe was out.

Adam snorted.  He touched Joe’s cheek and then rose to his feet.

Fools.  Drunkards.  Babes.

And little brothers.

 

Whispers.  All around him.

They brushed his cheek and tousled his curls on their way to his ear, but then – like a girl at a cotillion who knows you’re looking – moved just out of reach.

Little Joe Cartwright drew a breath and held it against his confusion.  Wherever he was, it was blacker than a raven in a coal mine.  He wasn’t sure if the place was cold or hot, because he was both things, which was kind of funny.  It was sort of like that time he went swimming with his classmates in a watering hole, and Mary Jane Anders came right up and pressed her slim form into his and gave him a kiss.  He’d shivered, but felt hot all over at the same time.

Yeah, it was like that.

Sort of.

Joe let the breath out and sat up.  Something in the back of his mind told him that he shouldn’t have, or, rather that he shouldn’t have been able to do that.  He snorted as he tossed aside the light covering that blanketed him.  He was eighteen-years-old, for gosh sakes!  He could sleep on a bed of rock, wake up and jump to his feet, and set to traveling with no trouble!  The teenager frowned as he looked down at his muddy boots.

It looked like that was what he’d been doing – traveling.

Only he didn’t remember doing it.

Hmm.

Joe scratched his head.  Then he ran a hand along the nape of his neck.  Where the heck was he anyway, and where were Adam and Hoss?  He remembered them being there before.  Maybe it was his brothers who’d been whispering.  Maybe they’d moved out of earshot so he wouldn’t hear what they had to say.  The teenager scowled.  That would be just like them!  He was of a mind to track them down and give them a piece of his mind – only he couldn’t.  It was so gosh-darn black wherever he was that he couldn’t see his finger in front of his face!

But he could hear.

He could hear the whispers.

No.

This time he could feel them.

A warm breath.

Breath with words.

“Who’s there?” Joe demanded as his hand moved to the gun belt on his hip, only to find it empty.  That’s right.  He’d lost his gun when he fell from his horse.

Why’d he fall from his horse?

Dang it!  It made him angry that he couldn’t remember!

Joe stiffened as he felt, not a breath this time, but a touch.  Unseen fingers brushed his wrist even as a glint of light appeared in the distance.

Was it a signal?

Should he check it out?

Joe hesitated as ice coursed along his spine.

He was afraid.

Why was he afraid?

Gol-darnit!  There was nothing to be afraid of!  Joe laughed at his fear and winced as the sound of his hollow laughter echoed off the cave walls.  It was just an old spot of light, for gosh sakes!  It put him in mind of the moon reflecting on the surface of a watering hole.

Whoo-boy!  Did he remember that watering hole!  Mary Jane Anders’ skin had been cool on his.  That was the first time a girl had ever, well, shed her skirts and pressed up against him.  MJ was a couple of levels ahead of him in school and had a ‘reputation’.  He’d pretended that he wasn’t, but he’d been afraid then.

Just like he was afraid now.

The fingers brushed his flesh again.  Then gripped his hand and began to tug.  Joe resisted at first – just like he’d resisted Mary Jane – but then, slowly, he gave in and allowed himself to be dragged deeper into the darkness.

Whoever it was, they stopped just this side of the light and released his hand.  The unseen fingers caught hold of his chin and lifted it up.  Joe snorted with relief when he saw what lay above him.  So, that was it!  There was a hole in the stone ceiling. A full moon shone through it, reflecting off….

The what?

The teenager brushed his unseen guide aside and moved forward until he bumped into a crude stone well.

Water!  That’s what!

Joe drew closer, so he could peer into the water that filled the well.  The image it reflected back took him by surprise.  Gone was his usually tanned skin and robust health.  His face was gaunt and ghostly pale.  Puzzled, he reached out to touch the dark surface.  The image splintered into a thousand fragments of quicksilver that ran around the darkened cave, illuminating its corners.

It was then he saw her.

The Indian girl appeared from out of nowhere, as unlike pale, blonde Mary Jane Anders as she could be.  Her hair was blue-black, like India ink, and was fashioned into hundreds of little braids.  The girl’s skin was the color of desert sand in shadow.  Dozens of strands of glass beads – red, white, and black – decorated the neck of her deerskin dress.  Cast over the dress was a cloak of rich scarlet wool.  At first he thought she had a bird perched absurdly on top of her head – a great big white bird with out-stretched wings – but then he realized it was a hat.

Joe’s lips move without sound.  He wet them and tried again.  “Who…who are you?” he asked, his voice strained by an unknown fear.  “What do you want?”

The Indian girl held her hand out and wiggled her fingers.

The teenager shook his head and took a step back.

That wasn’t the answer he’d been looking for!

Unexpected anger sparked in the girl’s black eyes.  She wiggled her fingers again.

It was just like Mary Jane Anders.  She’d been mad too – so mad she’d pushed him under the water and meant to keep him there.  If Hoss and Adam hadn’t come along, he could have drowned.

He would drown, now, in those black eyes.

“No,” Joe whispered.  “No.”  Then, he regained his voice and started shouting.  “No!  No!  No!  No….

“No!!”

 

“Hold him down, Hoss!  He’s going to hurt himself!”

Tears streamed down the big man’s face.  Little brother’s fever was up – way up.  He and older brother was tryin’ to hold him still, but Joe was kickin’ and buckin’ like a bronco!  He’d sat up with Little Joe most of the night so’s Adam could sleep.  To be honest, he’d dozed now and then, but every time he woke up, he made sure to check little brother’s forehead.  Each time the boy had some fever, but it weren’t high enough to worry about.

Until about an hour ago.

Hoss scowled at the memory.  He’d nodded off again, but somethin’ woke him up.  Soon enough he realized it was little brother mutterin’ to himself.  After watchin’ Joe toss and turn for a minute or two, he considered rousin’ Adam, but figured there weren’t nothing’ older brother could do that he couldn’t do himself.  The trouble was, there weren’t much anyone could do.  They’d used up near all the water they had, so he couldn’t put a compress on Joe’s head or give the boy a drink.  On his walk, he’d looked for the natural well he and Adam had seen when they was younger.  He’d found it too, but it was all dried up.  Hoss turned toward the cave mouth, where the light was rising.  Soon as the sun was up, Adam was gonna go for water.  The big man licked his cracked lips.  They needed it almost as bad as little brother did.  Hoss looked at his brother again.  Not knowin’ what else to do, he’d picked up the cover the boy had shed, replaced it, and pulled it up to Joe’s chin.

That was when he felt the heat radiating off of him.

With his hands trembling, he’d pulled the cover down and raised up little brother’s shirt so’s he could take a look at the wound and found it was angry.  The infection was getting’ worse.

The big man snorted.  He didn’t know why he’d been surprised.

This was Little Joe, after all.

It was just about then Little Joe started yellin’.  ‘No!’ the boy shouted, and kept shoutin’, ‘No!’ No! No!’  Joe’s shoutin’ woke up Adam, and ever since then the two of them had been hangin’ on for dear life, a’feared the boy would break free and run out of the cave and plunge over the cliff to his death.

Hoss looked at his older brother and saw the same thought flicker in the depths of his hazel eyes.

Adam shook his head.

Damn right!

Over their dead bodies.

 

 

THREE

Hania stirred.  He lifted his head and looked to the east where the sun was rising.  It was from there the call had come.  So far, he’d chosen to ignore it.  His bones were ancient as the rock that supported him, and his back crooked as the juniper trees his people had bent to their will to mark this sacred place.  Many moons had passed since he’d sat a horse or traveled any distance.  These things were for younger men such as he had been when he his name was Nubaba.  Now, he was ‘Hania’ and he was old.

Too old to begin such a journey.

The aged man closed his eyes as he whispered words of gratitude to Yeii for the new day.  Next, he lifted his sinewy arms and stretched them out, calling on the wind to walk along the dry desert of his skin, to cleanse him of his dreams. The Holy People had visited him in the night.  Their speech was a whisper.  Only one word was clear – Ha’a’aah.

East.

His father had been Dinétah and his mother, Ute, so he was not Dinétah.  Still, it was the Holy People of the Diné who spoke to him.  His mother had called him Nubaba, which meant ‘snow’ in her people’s tongue, for he was born in a wet season when the white stuff lay on the far distant mountains.  His father’s mother, his Dinétah shinálí, gave him a new name.  She told him that he was Diné, and that the Holy People had come to her in a dream and told her he would one day be called to serve them.

Long after her death he was called to serve but not among the Diné, for they would not have him.  Nor would the Ute.  He had seen less than thirty summers when the spirit winds compelled him to leave his home and travel north to the land of the white men called Mormons.  There he learned another name for Yeii – Yahweh.  Among these white men Yahweh called him to be a healer.  There he earned the name his father’s mother had given him when still a boy.

Hania – spirit warrior.

The old man opened his eyes and rose to his feet.  The wind did not cease to blow, but lifted the trailing ends of his long white hair and tossed them about his face.  In his father’s tribe elders bound their hair, but he did not bind his hair.

It let him know when the spirit of the wind was near, for it had to lift the white strands in order to whisper in his ear.

The Mormons who took him in were kind and welcoming.  The man, whose name was David, was a white healer and freely taught him his art.  He became one with David and his family and served all those in the settlement where they lived.  He stayed there until Yahweh caused a fever to come.  Many died.  David died.

His welcome died.

Soon, Yahweh’s red and white children began to prey upon one another like the jackal.  Food became scarce and his kind were driven out; back into the desert.

Back to Yeii and the Holy People.

For many years now, it had been only him and the Holy People.  He had been content for it to remain so until he died.

Then, the call had come.

The call to travel east.

Hania gazed upon the cluster of bowls that lay beside him.  Each small earthenware vessel was filled with colorful sand drawn from the natural world – from rocks, pollen, plants, and flowers.  They had been carefully prepared and laid them out the night before.  It was time.  He would request the Holy People’s presence once more and, in their presence, would seek help and healing.  His spirit was deeply troubled by his dreams.  They followed him into the waking world and remained before his eyes.

A dark cave.  A flash of light.

A deep well, dry, and then filled with water.

And strangest of all, a white man – a boy, really – with thick brown hair curly as the coat of the wild horses that even now ran just beyond his sight.

All of these visions troubled Hania, but none more so than the one that came after.

The one, he knew, who would bring about his end.

The maiden.

 

“Why Mistah Ben not eat?  Old man grow skinny, skinny!  Wind blow you away and then what your boys do?!”

Ben Cartwright started and looked up.  His cook and friend, Hop Sing, was standing in the opening between his office and the great room.  One hand was planted firmly on his hip, while the other one held a spoon, which the Asian man waved like a banner.

The rancher blinked.  “I beg your pardon?”

“You beg pardon?”  The other man’s tone rose with each word uttered.  “You beg Hop Sing’s pardon?!  Hop Sing have no pardon to give!!  He work hard.  Cook food and put on table.  No one come and eat!  Maybe he take food and feed it to pigs so they not grow skinny skinny and blow away!!!”

Ben glanced at the table.  It was indeed set and filled with food, the alluring scent of which only now managed to penetrate the fog he was in.

“Did you call me to breakfast?”

“Three times!”  Hop Sing held up three fingers.  “Three times call and three times you no answer!  Not know better, think Mistah Ben take boat and go to China!”

The rancher tapped the papers in front of him into a stack, laid them down, and rose to his feet. “I’m sorry, Hop Sing.  I was…preoccupied.”

“What stack of papers all about?”

Ben blinked.  “The papers?  Oh, that’s just a contract I was sent to look over.”

“So paper not what ‘pre-occupy’ Mistah Ben?  What he think about then?”  The Asian man glared at him.  Suddenly, his demeanor changed and his tone softened.  “You worry about sons?”

He felt a bit embarrassed.  “Yes, Mistah Ben worry about sons.”

Joseph had been so excited.  He’d promised the boy that when he turned eighteen, he could make the trip to the Utah Territory to purchase horses from Norwood Bader.  Of course, eighteen had seemed an eternity away when he’d made that promise.  Joe hadn’t been too happy at first when he was told that his older brothers would be going along, but the boy had come to peace with it once he realized the three of them were not only making a buying trip, but setting out on an adventure.

Which confirmed just how young he was.

“Mistahs Hoss and Adam take good care of Little Joe.  He be fine.  All Mistah Ben’s boys be fine.”

He’d told himself that a dozen times at least over the last few hours.  The rancher had been hard at work on the contract when something – he would almost describe it as a cold hand – had clutched his heart.  He’d dropped his pen and sat back, only to realize that he was actually panting.   For a moment, he thought he was suffering a fit of apoplexy.

Then, the feeling passed.

Almost.

It was hard to be a father in the West – at least a loving one.  There were so many things that could go wrong.  He’d reminded himself a million times since Adam’s birth that the Almighty was in control and he must and would surrender to His will.  God loved his boys more than he did.  More than he had loved Elizabeth, Inger, and Marie.

So much so, that the Almighty had taken those three beautiful women to be with Him.

“You come eat.  You feel better after you eat.”  When the rancher failed to move toward the table, Hop Sing let out a sigh.  “Mistah Ben not live yet for a hundred years, but worry enough for a thousand!”

Ben snorted.  A hundred years of this kind of worry would certainly kill him!

He’d been accused of being a mother hen by those who knew him well enough to suggest such a thing.  It was true.  Like the Good Book said, he longed to gather his chicks under his wing and keep them safe.

Why the Almighty had given him boys instead of girls, he would never understand!

“You come.  You eat.  Worry less with full belly.”

Ben glanced at the table.  “Five minutes?”

Hop Sing was suspicious.  “What Mistah Ben need five minutes for?”

He squirmed a bit.  “I would like to step out – get a breath of air.”  Ben smiled.  “With your permission, of course.”

Hop Sing glanced out the window that backed his desk.  The rancher could feel the morning sun shining through it.  Their touch was welcome, but even their warmth couldn’t dispel the chill that lingered.

Only one thing could.

The spoon was now tapping out a steady rhythm on Hop Sing’s gray silk pants.  “Plenty air in ranch house.  Why you need go outside?”

“Let’s put it this way, I will have a better appetite after I breathe in the fresh morning air.”  Ben’s smile was feeble.  “I promise, when I return, I will dig into those flapjacks with relish.”

The Asian man frowned.  “Mistah Ben want chopped pickles on pancakes?”

Ben was still chuckling as he took a seat at the table on the porch.  He sat there a moment, staring in wonder at the sunrise, before quieting his heart and going before his God.  He’d thought to ask for his son’s health; for their continued welfare and safety.  Instead, he confessed his fear and asked forgiveness for doubting.

It was with a lighter heart that Ben prepared to go inside some minutes later.  Joseph would be fine.  So would Hoss and Adam.  Hop Sing was right.  He worried too much.

Or maybe, not enough.

The rancher’s heartbeat increased and the hand of fear returned to clutch his heart as he heard the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves fast approaching the ranch house.

 

Hania had seen her.  More than once.  She came to him in the night as he walked the land of dreams.  Yeii had not blessed him with wife or child, but he had watched the children of the Mormons play and tended many of them in their sickness.  This one stood upon the precipice of womanhood – a child and yet, not a child.  If asked, a white man would have said she was a ‘teener’.  He did not know for certain the age of the maiden’s body, but her soul was timeless.  It walked the desert still, seeking something.

Or someone.

Hania turned into the wind, toward the hard, high rocky wall behind him.  Within a hidden cleft lay the place he called home.  He had found it in his exile and remained there to give aid to any Yeii might choose to send his way.  Most of his patients wore feather or fur, but there were others who came clothed in the garments of the white man – some driven to the desert by need, and others by greed.  Hania did not understand this.  He wore on his back the sum total of his possessions and had no desire for more.  He did not want to leave this place.  He told the Holy People he would not go.  Then, as the sun capped the mountains three days before – from the east where lay their abode – a light came.  It was as if Ha’a’aah gripped a shaft of lightning and threw it to the ground.  Where it struck, the maiden appeared.  She did not speak.  It was not necessary.

The call had come and, try as he might; it was one he could not refuse.

Hania glanced at the completed sand painting.  Its colorful whirls, swirls, and sacred lines represented the ones who had created him and controlled his destiny.  Soon it, like he, would be gone.  All things passed, even as the maiden had passed.

Even as he too would pass in the end.

 

Ben’s heart leapt into his throat as horse and rider rounded the barn and made an appearance.  He drew a breath to steady himself before stepping down from the porch to greet Virginia City’s current sheriff, Roy Coffee.  Roy was not only the town’s lawman, but a friend.  They’d known each other for years.  He’d seen every expression possible cross that grizzled and sun-baked countenance, including the one Roy wore now.

His friend was worried.

As the lawman dismounted, Hop Sing stepped onto the porch.  The pair of them exchanged a glance before Ben went to greet his friend.

“Roy!  What brings you to the Ponderosa so early in morning?” the rancher asked with forced cheerfulness – as if that pretense could somehow dispel the sense of foreboding that had gripped him.

“Ben.”  The other man greeted him with a nod.  “Hop Sing.”  Roy glanced around.  “Just the two of you here right now?”

“Yes.  The boys are off on the annual trip to purchase horses from Norwood Bader.”

The lawman chewed on that for a moment.  “All three of ‘em?  Little Joe ain’t here?”

“No.  No, Joe went with his brothers this year.”  He chuckled.  “Actually, he thinks he’s in charge.”

“That’s in Utah, right?”

“Yes.  Just the other side of the border.  Why?”

Roy drew a deep breath before reaching into his pocket.  “This come into the telegraph office this morning.  Lem was there.  He thought I should see it before you did, what with you and me bein’ friends.”

His jaw tense, Ben asked, “The boys?  Are they….”  He swallowed.  “…alive?”  That last word came out with the power of star-nosed mole.

“Now, Ben, don’t you go makin’ more trouble for yourself than you may have,” Roy chided.

“Then you tell me!” he snapped.  “What trouble do I have?”

The lawman was used to his anger.  Just as he was used to the sheriff ignoring it.  Others cowered before his wrath.

Not Roy Coffee.

His friend held the telegram out.  “This is from Norwood’s foreman.  Seems your boys have gone missin’, Ben.  They never made it to Bader’s.”

The rancher stared at the piece of paper as if it was a rattler waiting to strike.  He snatched it and consumed its contents as a starving man would a meal.

‘Ben Cartwright.  Stop.  Sons not here.  Stop.  Did you send?  Stop.  Please reply.  Stop.’

The news was not good.  Bader’s foreman would have had to ride to the nearest town to send the telegram as Norm’s ranch was in the middle of nowhere.  That meant it had been at least a day – maybe two since it had been written.  Surely, the horse trader would have waited a day or two before sending it to see if the boys arrived late.  That made it four or five days since Adam, Hoss, and Joe had gone missing.  It took about two weeks to get to Norm’s spread from the Ponderosa, riding at a pace, and yesterday marked the beginning of the fourth week since their departure.  Had his beloved sons even made it to the border, he wondered?  Of course, Norm could have sent the telegram before they arrived.  But then, surely, he would have sent a follow-up.  The other man knew how much he loved his boys.

And feared for them.

“What Mistah Cartwright think happen?” a soft voice inquired from close behind him.  “Why boys not arrive?”

Ben turned to look at his cook and friend.  For all of his sons – but for Joseph most of all – Hop Sing had served as a surrogate parent, filling – as best he could – the hole left in their hearts and lives when Marie passed.  He knew Hop Sing loved them nearly as much as he did and deserved to be treated with respect.

The rancher handed the telegram to the Asian man.

Hop Sing read it once, and then read it again.  “What Mistah Ben do?”

What would he do?  What he always did – make the impossible happen.  He would ride to Utah, not in two weeks but one, and he would find his boys no matter where they were in that expansive territory.  He would take on and survive yet another test of his mettle – and of his faith.  He would beg and plead, pray and protest, and finally, surrender to the will of his God, no matter how unendurable that will might prove to be in the end.

And he would do one more thing.

Never ever give up.

 

 

FOUR

Adam ran a hand across his dusty lips and spit out dirt as he waited.  He’d traveled an hour or so from the cave before stumbling upon a pool of water that appeared to be clean and wholesome. The man in black smiled grimly.  That is, at least, there were no bones around it, human or otherwise.  Taking a chance, he’d filled his canteen and taken a swig.  This was the test.  Either the cramps would take him, indicating the water was poisoned or polluted, or not.  He counted off two long minutes and, when nothing happened, took a second swig before capping the leather-sheathed container and slinging it over his shoulder.  It was early morning.  He’d only been gone a few hours, but already regretted the time away.  Joe had been really sick the night before and, even though baby brother’s fever had abated somewhat toward dawn, it was obvious the kid was in a bad way.  They needed to move Joe from the cliff dwelling and to take him somewhere civilized where his wound could be looked after properly.

Otherwise, baby brother was going to die.

What he regretted, was that Joe might die without him being there.

The man in black had given himself a mission – find water – and a mission usually superseded everything else with him.  He’d push his emotions aside, focus on it, and damn to Hell anything that got in his way.  The problem was, this time the thing getting in his ‘way’ was his own emotions.  He hated emotion.  It was messy.  Be it anger or love, jealousy or hate, emotion made a man lose control.  It wore away at his logic like a corrosive acid, reducing him to a rash, intemperate creature.

He hated being out of control even more than he hated emotion.

And yet, he loved his brothers.  There was no way around it.  Hoss was easy to love.  Joe….  Well, Joe tried his patience at times – and most of the time he thought the kid needed a swift kick in the pants – but that did nothing to diminish the love between them.  Adam chuckled, sighed, and shook his head.  He’d never known his own mother, so the woman he loved was mostly a figment of his own longing and fertile imagination.  Inger…dear, sweet Inger, he had known, but oh, so briefly.  It was likely he had idealized her as well.  She seemed…well…an angel.

And then, there was Marie.

Marie came into his life when he was eleven going on twelve.  By that advanced age, he’d barred his heart against loving anyone new.  He went through the motions, but he rarely felt anything.  Feeling meant leaving yourself open.  It meant bearing unbearable pain, and he was not about to have anything to do with that again.  So when Pa showed up with his new ‘ma’, he was not about to have anything to do with her either.  Adam didn’t know if it was a real or an imagined memory, but he was pretty sure he didn’t say more than ‘hello’, ‘good morning’, ‘good night’ and ‘please, pass the salt’ for a month or more.  Marie would smile and return his greeting, pass the salt or hand him a plate, and then go about her business.  He should have been glad, but it made him mad.

So then, he started to be rude.

His father’s New Orleans’ bride took that in stride as well and, to his chagrin, continued to be kind.  It became his mission to make her miserable.  He tried every trick in the book to make Marie go away, but she stayed.

He thought, at the time, just to irk him.

It was around the time Little Joe was born, that things finally changed.  He was approaching thirteen and, of course, thought he knew everything.  Pa had left him in charge for the night since he was away.  Hoss was in bed, and he’d told Marie he was going to go to his room to read.  If someone had asked him for his opinion of his stepmother at that time, he would have told them she was a flibbertigibbet, a piece of fluff; a bauble on his pa’s arm.  Adam snorted.  He remembered how surprised he’d been to find he’d fallen asleep reading.  He glanced at the clock, saw it was near one in the morning, and decided it was worth chancing Hop Sing’s ire to raid the ice box.  Back then, his room had been closer to his father’s.  When he stepped into the hall, he noted the light was still on.  Being young, he wasn’t very good at honoring or understanding a need for privacy – other than his own – so he went to the door, pressed his ear against it, and listened.

That was when he heard Marie praying.

Marie was Catholic, which was a new thing to him.  Their pa was Protestant all the way.  Glancing through the crack in the door, he saw her kneeling on the floor by the bed.  She had a rosary wrapped around her slender fingers.  As he watched, her lips parted and she let out a sigh, so deep it seemed her heart must break.

‘Holy mother,’ Marie breathed as tears streamed down her cheeks, ‘show me what it is that I have done to hurt my beloved’s precious son.  Show me why Adam does not care for me.  My Benjamin has told me of the boy, of how compassionate he is, and how loving.  Please, Holy mother, reveal to me the error of my ways and teach me to be a better mother.’

Her ways.

Not his.

He had thought Marie fickle and flighty.  He had judged her vain not because she was, but because she was beautiful.  Adam felt heat rise in his cheeks.  The thought of the boy he had been shamed the adult he was.  His relationship with Marie taught him many things, chief of which was to look beneath the surface and to mine the darkness for unseen treasures – to believe in the face of unbelief.   Marie proved to be a wonderful mother.

Just as Joe was a wonderful brother.

Even if he wanted to ring the kid’s neck most of the time.

Adam sniffed, ran a finger under his nose, and straightened his back.  He had two jobs to do.  One was already done.  The first?  Find water.  The second?  Find a horse or better yet, several horses.  There were plenty of wild ponies in the area, although most of them would likely prove too feral to ride.  Still, there were others; horses that had been broken, trained, and then set free by the loss of their rider or the luck of escape.  It was one of the latter that he needed.  There was no chance in Hell that Little Joe could walk a mile, let alone twenty.  If he was going to save his little brother’s life, he had to find the kid a mount.  It would be tough on him and Hoss to walk, but they could endure the desert.  Determination would see them through.

The determination that their little brother was going to make it back to the Ponderosa and live many long years yet to plague them.

This time the man in black laughed out loud.

After all, there was a purpose to plagues.  They caused even the most hard-hearted to bend.

 

Little Joe Cartwright stirred and opened his eyes.  He wasn’t surprised to find her waiting for him.  He wished he knew her name, but she hadn’t told him what it was, so he’d taken to calling her ‘Cheayka’’.

He didn’t know why.

The thing that surprised him the most was that they were no longer in a cave, but in a field.  A hard rain fell, driven by a strong breeze that rifled through the tall, soldier-straight stalks of corn surrounding them and turned the land to mud.  Joe marveled at the corns’ height.  It was nearly three times that of a man.  Why, the ears alone were close to the length of one of Hoss’ arms!  Cheayka’s fingers brushed each plant as they passed with the reverence of a preacher turning a page in the Good Book.  So far as he knew they were alone, though the steady breeze carried more than rain with it.  Somewhere ahead a man and woman were arguing.  The woman was upset.  Frightened, even.  The man’s voice was cool, controlled.

Unyielding.

Cheayka stopped suddenly to look back.  Joe couldn’t find a word for the look on her face.  He needed Adam.  Adam would know the word he wanted!  People called older brother ‘stoic’.  There was something of that in the depths of the Indian girl’s black eyes, but there was so much more.  Sadness.  Desperation.

Resignation.

Her lips parted.  Cheayka said something he couldn’t catch and then disappeared into the corn.  In response, the wind howled and the rain increased its fury.  Together the elements drove the tall stalks of corn to the ground and blocked his way, as if forbidding Joe to follow.  It didn’t matter.  Nothing mattered but Cheayka.  She needed him.  Something awful was going to happen to her and he was the only one who could prevent it!

Damn it!  He was honor-bound as a Cartwright to prevent it!

“You can do nothing, Joseph Cartwright.  What you witness has already been.”

Joe stiffened.  Whoever had spoken stood behind him.  He turned to look, but found that he couldn’t move as his boots had become mired in the ankle-deep mud.

“But she needs me!” he protested.

“Yes,” the man replied.  “Not then.  Not now.  The time is yet to be.”

Joe struggled as hard as he could to free himself, but to no avail.  He was sinking fast.  It was as if the mud had grown fingers; tuberous knotty fingers that gripped his ankles and clawed at his thighs, seeking to pull him down, down….

Down.

Down until he drowned.

Abject fear lent the teenager the strength to twist and look behind.  There was a man there; a thin, insubstantial man reaching toward him.

Offering salvation.

Joe closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.  Much as he wanted to take the man’s hand – as much as he wanted to escape whatever fate awaited him on the other side of the corn field – he wouldn’t.  He didn’t know how he knew it, but Cheayka was in mortal danger.

Someone had to help her and, so far as he could tell, he was the only one around!

The teenager gasped as he opened his eyes.  The man now stood directly in front of him.  Joe was surprised to find that he was Indian; an old Indian with a gaunt, care-worn face surrounded by a halo of white hair, pale as the moon.

“You will do,” the stranger said.

Just before the mud topped Joe’s curly head.

 

Hoss had never been so scared in all his livelong days.  He’d been tendin’ Little Joe all on his lonesome when baby brother up and took a big, deep breath and then stopped – breathin’ that is.  It was like the boy was preparin’ to go under water and forgot to dive.  By the time he realized Joe wasn’t gonna take in no more air, little brother’s lips were turnin’ blue.  That was when he started shakin’ him hard enough to winnow seeds.  A few seconds later, them big green eyes of Joe’s popped open.  Little brother looked at him, said somethin’, and then sucked in air and started to cough.  By the time he was done coughin’, Joe was done in.  They both fell back exhausted and Joe went right to sleep.

Him?  An hour had passed and he was still pacin’.

Hoss reached up and gripped his arm where the bullet had passed through.  The wound was achin’ and felt like it was on fire.  He hadn’t told Joe or Adam it was worryin’ him, ‘cause they both had plenty of other things to worry about.  He was kind of concerned about it though, on account of he knew he’d need every bit of his strength and more if they was to get Little Joe out of this gol-darn cave!  It had seemed like a good idea at the time, climbin’ all the way up to get away from them bad men, but now he wasn’t so sure.  How they was gonna get little brother back down that hundred foot cliff he just didn’t know, and there wasn’t no way they could leave him behind and go for help.

It was all too clear that it would come too late.

“Hoss….”

The big man hustled back to his brother’s side.  “Yeah, Joe, I’m here,” he said as he knelt and touched his brother’s shoulder.

“You gotta….”  Joe coughed and then wet his lips.  “Water?” he asked in a pitiful voice.

“Sorry, Joe.  We ain’t got none left.  Adam went to get some, though.  He’ll be back right soon, I promise.”

Joe nodded weakly.  “O…kay.  I’m…okay.”

Tears entered his eyes as Hoss brushed a lock of stray curls off of his brother’s forehead.  “Sure you are.”

Joe’s eyes opened again.  “But Cheayka, she….  Hoss, you gotta…help her….”

“Chee-aay-kah?” he asked.  “Who’s that?”

“…girl…”  The teenager smiled.  “You got it…wrong….”

It was obvious little brother was delirious, so Hoss figured he’d play along.  “Got what wrong?”

“…that Indian girl….  She’s…shorter than…me.”

The big man chuckled.  Leave it to Little Joe!  “So Chee-aay-kah is an Indian gal?”

Joe’s nod was feeble.  “Gotta help…her.”

“I will, but you gotta tell me where she is afore I can.”

His brother frowned.  “In….  In the…corn field.”

The big man’s amusement turned to concern.  “There ain’t no cornfield nowheres near here, Joe.  We’re stuck in a cave, high up in a rock wall.  Remember?”

His brother gripped his hand.  “There’s a…cornfield.  She went…into it.  You…gotta find it!  You gotta help her, Hoss, ‘cause I…can’t.”   Joe’s frown deepened into a scowl.  “I’m…buried in mud, so you…you gotta go.”

“Is he worse?”

The unexpected voice startled Hoss so that he jumped.  “Dang it, Adam!  What do you think you’re doin’, sneakin’ up on a man like that?!”

“Sorry.  Your attention was on Joe.  I coughed and stamped a bit, but, apparently, you didn’t hear me.”  Big brother crossed to Joe’s other side and knelt.  “How is he?”

Hoss fought back tears.  “Not good.  I….”  He cleared his throat.  “Adam, I done thought I lost him a short while back.”

“What?!”

“Little Joe stopped breathin’.”

Adam placed a hand on their brother’s chest.  “He’s hot and his heart’s beating fast.  Breathing is a little uneven, but steady.”  The man in black looked right at him.  “Are you sure?”

He swallowed over a lump of dismay.  “Sure, I’m sure.”

“What brought him back?”  Adam’s question was sharp.  He answered it himself.  “Never mind.  I know.”  Those hazel eyes pinned him.  “I think we both know.”

“Me?”  The big man shook his head.  “Pa would say rightly that it was God.”

“Maybe.”  Older brother smiled.  “With a little help.”

“A-dm?”

They both looked down.  Little Joe’s eyes were open again.

“Yes, Joe,” Adam replied.

“Save her.”

Big brother looked at him.  ‘Save who?’ he mouthed.

“Her name’s ‘Che-aay-ka’,” Hoss replied aloud, and then mouthed as well, “Whoever that is.”

“Cheayka?”  Adam scowled.  “That’s Dinétah.”

“Din-ah-what?”

“Navajo.  One of the Utah tribes.”  Older brother leaned in close.  “Joe, can you hear me?”

Little brother’s head bobbed…just a little.

“Who is Cheayka?”

“Indian…girl.  Needs help.”  Without warning, Joe levered an arm and tried to push himself up and off the cavern’s floor, startling them both.  “Gotta go.  Gotta find her….”

“Joe, you can’t –”

Hoss went silent as Adam held up a hand.

“Joe, you’re hurt,” he said as he placed a hand on their brother’s chest, “you can’t help her.”  When little brother moaned, older brother added, “But I can.  I’ve got water and a horse.  I can find Cheayka and rescue her, but you have to tell me where she is.”

“You really got a horse?” Hoss asked.

Adam looked up and grinned.  “I got two.  Two pretty ponies with coats brown and curly as little brother’s hair.  They’re tethered below.”

That meant they could ride – all of them.

Pa must be praying awful hard.

“…promise?” Joe breathed.

“I promise,” older brother replied, “and you know I always keep my promises.  Now, where is Cheayka?”

When Joe failed to reply, Hoss answered.  “Joe said she was in a cornfield, Adam. Only there ain’t no cornfield in this here place.”  He lowered his voice.  “The boy’s out of his head.”

The man in black had a funny look on his face.  Adam stood up and turned toward the back of the cave. “Maybe, and maybe not.  You wait here, Hoss,” he said as he lit a torch and moved into the darkness.  “Make sure Joe stays put, even if you have to sit on him!”

“Where are you goin’?”

Older brother grinned.  “To harvest some corn.”

 

Adam didn’t know what he expected to find – certainly not a damsel in distress – but Joe’s words had rekindled the memory of the paintings of the fantastic corn stalks he’d examined the first night they’d spent in the cave.  To begin with he’d put their size and nature down to a fanciful imagination.  Now he remembered reading that the corn, or maize, grown by ancient Indians was said to have been two to three times the size of current varieties.  The paintings left behind by some long-dead cliff-dweller might be fanciful, or they just might represent a real field of maize at harvest time.  While he knew there was little sense in paying attention to the ravings of a fevered mind, something niggled at him, gnawing away at his skepticism and insisting there might be something more to his brother’s vision.  Their father was known for his uncanny ‘knack’ of sensing things others could neither see nor feel.  It could be hubris, but he was pretty sure he had inherited that ‘knack’.

That, along with the deadpan look he had worked decades to perfect, were what made him an ace at poker.

There was something here – some mystery at work in this cave.  He’d sensed it the first time he and Hoss explored it.  It was part of the reason he’d told his brothers to make for this place – not that he would ever let them know that!  Whatever that mystery was, it called to him now in a voice that was almost audible.

A feminine voice.

Adam raised his torch to light the wall and ran his fingers over the first of the crude paintings before quickly moving on to the ones that showed women working the harvest. The first stalks of maize they tended were tall as a house; their branches laden with fat, chubby ears.  As he followed the cave art deeper into the earth, the stalks withered and fell away as if with a blight.  By the time he reached the end of the corridor and the pictographs – the last one showed a young woman with her arms outstretched – his torch sputtered and went out.  He should have been afraid, but he wasn’t.

Because it wasn’t dark.

Before Adam a single shaft of light cleaved the darkness like a sword.  The man in black sucked in a breath as he recognized it.  He’d been here before.  This was the grotto where the air rushed in.  When young, he and Hoss had stumbled upon it and been amazed to find a well at its center.   He didn’t know why he hadn’t seen the cave paintings leading to this place before.  Maybe because the darkness masked it.

Or, maybe, because it wasn’t time.

It was time now.

What Adam Cartwright found when he leaned over the edge and peered into the depths of the empty well was something he could never have expected – and would never forget.

Her name was Cheayka.

 

 

FIVE

Joe groaned as Adam applied a hand to his brother’s back and helped the sick man shift position.  “That’s it, buddy,” the man in black cooed.  “Come on.  You can do it.  Open your eyes and look at me.”

The kid blinked.  “Uh…  Is that…you, Hoss?”

“You get an ‘E’ for effort, Joe.  It’s Adam,” he replied with a chuckle as he tapped his little brothers’ fingers with the edge of the plate he held.  “Hoss is catching a few winks.”

“Adam?  What are you…?  Oh.”  Joe reluctantly accepted the plate.  It contained a meager ration of field greens and a portion of rabbit stew.  “Is it already time for supper?” he asked as he wrinkled his nose.

“Mm-hm.”

“You mean, I fell asleep again?”

“Yes.”

“That’s all I seem to do.”  Baby brother sighed as he leaned his head against the rock at his back.  “That and bounce around on a horse.”

Adam hid his smile. “Well, you have to admit, it’s hard to sit a horse correctly when you’re half-awake.”

Joe glanced at the plate again and shook his head.  “I’m not hungry.”

“I know you’re not hungry, but you need to eat.  You have to keep up your strength.”  Adam drew in a breath and let it out slowly as his keen gaze took in their surroundings – sand, dust, dirt, dry grass and gorse…and more sand.  “We have a long way to go.”

Joe looked too.  “Where are we?”

“Two hours farther into the desert than the last time you asked.”  Little Joe had been going in and out of consciousness all day.  Travel on horseback was an exercise in strength, stamina, and skill at the best of times.  Adam chuckled softly to himself.  It was a good thing he’d found only two horses.  Joe would have insisted on riding alone if there’d been three, and then half of their journey would have been spent picking him up and dusting the desert floor off of him.  As it was, the two of them shared the smaller of the curly ponies, while Hoss rode the bigger one.  The horses had proven to be surprisingly good mounts.

“You should have left me behind.”

Adam took a good look at his brother and didn’t much like what he saw.  It had been a risk, removing Joe from the shelter of the cliff dwelling and beginning the long road home, but it was one he’d felt they had to take.  After his…discovery…at the bottom of the well, the cave had become oppressive; its atmosphere even more ominous than before.  At first the open vista of the desert with its broad expanse of sky above had revived them all, but of late Joe had gone pale and grown quiet.

And a quiet Little Joe Cartwright was as sure a sign of trouble as a sailor’s red sky in the morning.

“Hoss and I considered it,” he replied.  “In the end, the pros outweighed the cons.”

Joe’s look was sharp. “What ‘cons’?”

He smiled. “Pa not skinning us alive.  Hop Sing not roasting us.”  The man in black paused and then did something he rarely did – laid a hand alongside his baby brother’s face.  “Joe, you know we’d never leave you behind.  We’d die first.”

His brother’s jaw grew tight beneath his fingers.  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

The kid was hot – not as hot as he’d been, but still too hot.  Hoss wasn’t saying much, but both of his brothers were carrying infectivity.  Adam glanced at the big man where he lay asleep in the shade of a boulder with his ten gallon hat pulled over his face to muffle the snoring.

He didn’t want to admit it, but they were in a bad way.

“We’ll make it.  All three of us,” Adam said as he rose to his feet.  “There’s no other option.”

“Just like that.”

He looked back at his brother.  “Yeah.  Just like that.”

The teenager closed his eyes and sighed.   “Saying it doesn’t make it so, big brother,”

Adam bit his lip – and his tongue.  The kid was sick, so he needed to go slow.  Saying it might not make it ‘so’, but long ago – on the long road out west, actually – six-year old Adam Cartwright had learned the power of words.  He’d watched as a few well-chosen words spoken with authority by the wagon master united a band of disparate people too weary to go on.  He’d seen their power when the preacher who traveled with them invoked God’s blessings and reminded them of His promises after yet another death.  And he’d observed his father – dead tired, sick himself, and too weary to stand – go on in spite of the fact that common sense should have dropped him in his tracks, and all because he told himself he could.

It all depended on whether or not you believed in those words.

Adam crouched in front of his brother.  Joe was a child.  He had to remind himself of that time and time again.  Not a child like he’d been – reared on reality and forged by fire – but a well-fed, slightly pampered, and much loved child of the well-earned ease of their father’s success.

“Look, Joe.  I know you’re hurting.  I know you want to give up, but I’m not going to let you.  I’m going to poke and prod and nag you until I get you back to the Ponderosa in one piece.”  He pointed at the plate Joe’d set on the ground.  “Now, pick that up and eat something.  If not for me, then for Pa.”

Joe eyed the food and went slightly green.  “I can’t, Adam.  I’ll just upchuck.”

“Then, I’ll bring you some more.”  Adam touched his brother again, this time on the arm.  “You have to keep up your strength, Joe.  It’s the only way to get home.”  He glanced in middle brother’s direction again before adding.  “I’m going to give Hoss a half-hour and then rouse him.  It’s getting dark and that means it will be cooler.  We need to get moving.”

“You seemed like you were in an awful big hurry to get out of that cave.”  Joe frowned.  “How’d you get me out of there anyway?”

“You don’t remember?”

Little brother shook his head.

Adam remembered how and he did so with a shudder.  He’d leaned over the edge of that natural well for the longest time, staring down.  The whole thing puzzled him.  He was certain he had seen water in it all those years ago.  Still, the slender desiccated corpse curled into itself and leaning against the wall at its bottom was evidently ancient and would never have survived if submerged.  It was then he realized that this must be a different well.  When he looked more closely, he became certain the one the girl was in was manmade.  That realization took his mind off the dead and put it squarely on the living.  If men had made that well, then they had to have entered the cave – and left it.  Maybe they did both through the cave mouth, but then again, maybe not.

Maybe, they left via some kind of a ladder.

It didn’t take long to find it – a series of footholds carved into the rock leading up ten feet or so and out.  He’d climbed to the top and slipped through a narrow opening and found himself on the side of a hill with a moderate grade – one they could carry Joe down safely, if not easily.  He’d returned to Hoss and they’d talked it out and decided to do just that the next morning.

That night he went back with a rope and descended into the well and covered the dead Indian girl with the only shroud he had – a horse blanket.  He left her as she was, huddled against the wall with her hands crossed on her lap and her head bent slightly forward.  The sight still chilled him.  Where he’d expected to find a desiccated corpse, created by the arid winds that blew through the cave, he found instead a young woman – a girl, really – who looked to have drawn her last breath only seconds before.  Her skin did not cling to her bones, but graced it.  Her elaborately braided hair glistened in the light of the torch he’d left suspended above.  Her lips were slightly parted, not in a smile, but with a sort of half-frown.  Adam remembered reaching out to tuck the blanket around her shoulders.

If she had moved, he would have screamed like a girl.

Since then – for three days now – he and his brothers had been on the move, riding their feral horses and traveling at a snail’s pace.  Hoss had a vague idea of where Norwood Bader’s spread was and so that was the direction in which they were headed in – northwest.

So far, he hadn’t told Hoss or Joe about his discovery.

It might be he never would.

“Er…Adam?”

The man in black blinked.  “Sorry, Joe.  I guess I got lost in my thoughts.  I went exploring and found a natural ladder that led up and out of the cave.  Hoss and I….”  Adam winced.  “Well, we sort of man-handled you out.”

“You don’t have to tell me!”

Joe was rubbing his side where it was pressed against the rock.  There were unspent tears in his eyes.  Adam almost softened, but then he reminded himself that this wasn’t the curly-haired four-year-old who had run screaming into his room at two in the morning for a ‘cuddle’.

This was a teenager on the brink of manhood.

“You need a real bed, kid, and real food.  I’ve managed to halt the infectivity in the wound, but I’m not one to rest on my laurels.”  Adam picked up the plate and held it out.  “Now, eat!  That’s an order!”

“Thanks,” Joe groused as he took it and pushed the field greens around with a finger.

“For what?”

The kid shoved a leaf into his mouth and began to chew.  “Thanks for taking care of me.”

Adam immediately reached out to check his brother’s forehead.

Nope.  No high fever.

“Sure.  Now, you finish that up and then try to get some sleep before –”

Joe stopped chewing.  “I don’t want to sleep,” he said, his tone odd.

“Don’t be silly.  You need sleep.”

“But, that’s when…she comes – ”  Joe had that look – the one he got as a child whenever Hop Sing caught him with his hand in the cookie jar.  His jaw went tight.  His nostrils flared.

And then, he looked down.

This was new.

“Who’s ‘she’, Joe?” he asked.  “Come on.  Tell….”  Then, he knew.  A chill ran along Adam’s spine.  “Cheayka?”

“She comes to me in my sleep.  She…wants something.”  Joe lifted his head.  His green eyes were haunted.  “What does she want, Adam?  Why can’t I figure it out?”  The teenager swallowed hard.  When he continued, Joe’s voice contained a rasp that had not been there before.  “Why….  Why won’t she leave me alone?”

Adam gripped his brother’s shoulder and lied.

“Joe, listen to me.  Cheayka is a figment of your imagination, brought on by your injuries and Hoss’ suggestion of a pretty Indian girl waiting for you at the top of the cliff.”

“She’s real!” Joe protested.  “Adam, I know she’s real.”

This was why he’d not told Joe or Hoss about his discovery.  They’d had this conversation before – several times, in fact, over the last three days.

The Indian girl had become an obsession.

“You’ve been sick before, Joe,” he went on.  “You know how real a fever-dream can seem.”

His brother’s jaw tightened as he shook his head.  “This is different.  Cheayka needs me to do something – to help her somehow.”  Joe’s voice became a whisper.  “She’s here, Adam.  Cheayka is here now!  She came with us.  She’s watching….”

Adam wanted to dismiss what his brother said, but he had sensed it as well.  All day he’d had a feeling something or…someone…was trailing them.

“Ok, Joe.  Let’s say Cheayka is real.”

“You don’t believe that!”

“Maybe not, but you do.  So…we need to look at this, er, rationally.  Right?  If Cheayka is ‘here’, we can’t see her.  So that means she’s in another world.  And that means there’s nothing you or I, or anyone alive can do to help her.”

Joe groaned.  He dropped the plate and turned his face into the rock.  “Go away, Adam.  I’m tired.”

Adam picked up the plate.  “Come on.  You said you’d try.”

Joe shook his curly head.  “Can’t.”

The man in black took hold of his brother’s wrist, and then released it out of shock.

One green eye cracked open.  “What is it?”

Little Joe’s fever was up – way up.  Adam put the plate down and used both hands to pull the fabric of his brother’s shirt aside.  In the time they had talked, the bullet wound had grown ugly.  Jagged streaks radiated out from its center, crimson as the dying sun’s rays.

Blood poisoning.

So much for halting the infectivity.

“Good Lord, Joe!  Why didn’t you….”  Adam stopped.  His brother’s lips were curled up.  “What have you got to smile about?”

“Cheayka’s here, Adam.  She’s right…behind you.”

Adam felt like a fool, but he turned to look.  “There’s no one here, Joe.”

His brother’s lips were moving without sound.

“Joe?”

“You’re…right.”

“I’m right?  Right about what?”

“Remember?”  Joe was drifting; his words becoming slurred.  “You said I…can’t help her if I’m…in this world.”

Adam went cold.

He had a bad feeling about this.

He clutched his brother’s shirt and hauled him up.  “Joe?!”

The kid looked right at him – and through him.

“I gotta…go to Cheayka.   So long, Ad’m…”

 

“His fever’s flyin’ high as a hawk, Adam.  We’re gonna lose him!”

Panic gripped Adam Cartwright’s guts and twisted them as surely as it did Hoss’, but he didn’t dare admit it.  He was his big little brother’s rock and he knew it.

“Joe will be fine,” the man in black growled through teeth gritted against alarm as he struggled to hold the teenager down.  They’d been fighting what he too feared might well prove to be a losing battle throughout the night.  The moment Cheayka’s name passed Joe’s lips, little brother’s eyes had rolled up in his head and he’d slipped into a deep sleep from which he could not be awakened.  At first it had been a relief as Joe was peaceful and serene.  Then, without warning, little brother shot to his feet and – faster than greased lightning – ran toward the desert with its sea of shadows black as the inside of a tomb.

If Hoss hadn’t reacted as quickly as he had….

Adam ran a hand over his eyes, clearing sodden hair and sweat from them.  “We need to get this fever down.”

“How?”

He bit back a curse.  He didn’t know ‘how’, but he knew they had to.  Sadly, what supplies he’d carried in his saddle bags were long gone.  They had water, but only enough to keep them alive.  He’d briefly entertained the idea of carrying Joe back to the watering hole and submerging him in it, but that entailed other risks – such as the very real one that something unclean would enter the wound.  Besides, the hole was a long way away and Joe was weak.

Really weak.

“What are we gonna do, Adam?” Hoss pleaded.

It about killed him to utter the words, but there was nothing else to say.  Adam bit each one off as if it had a bad taste.

“I…don’t…know.”

“I do.”

The man’s voice came from out of nowhere.  Adam dropped his grip on his brother and reached for his gun – only to remember that he’d take it off earlier and left it near his bedroll.

“There is nothing to fear.  The wind that drove me here seeks to help, not harm.”

Adam glanced at Hoss.  “Can you hold him by yourself?” he asked.  Joe had been thrashing violently, but was somewhat subdued at the moment.  With Hoss’ nod, the man in black released the sick man and rose to his feet and went to confront whoever it was.

The moon shone above them, but its face was bedded in clouds, making the light at best, intermittent.   “Who are you?” he called into the darkness.

“No one,” the darkness answered.

“Step into the open where I can see you.”

The night held its breath and waited, along with him.  A moment later, a man appeared.

Ben Cartwright’s eldest son didn’t know what he’d expected to see, but it most certainly was not what he saw.  The stranger was tall and willowy, with deeply-tanned skin.  His clothing revealed him to be an Indian, but one very different to the natives back home.  The man’s shirt was made of a brushed dark blue fabric and fell nearly to his knees.  He’d tied a red sash over it, and under it wore a pair of white trousers the sides of which were decorated with brass buttons in a military style.  High doeskin boots protected his feet from the desert sands.  The moon’s light cast the newcomer’s face into shadow as he approached, even as it beatified his shoulder-length white hair, turning the loose-flowing locks into sort of halo.  The Indian employed a tall white staff topped with eagle feathers to aid his progress as he moved across the sand.  Its decorations – myriad strands of beads, bells, and bone – jangled when he drew to a halt.

Adam met the stranger’s even gaze. “I want an answer,” he demanded.  “Who are you?”

“Who I am is not important,” the man replied.  “Better to ask, what I am.”

“And what are you?”

The Indian glanced at Hoss and Joe, whose dark figures were locked in a silent battle, and before turning back to lock eyes with him.

“A gateway.”

 

 

SIX

“You okay, Ben?  Ben?”

It took the rancher a moment to remember where he was – and even longer to identify the man leaning over him.  When he did, he blushed with chagrin.

“Roy?”

“That’s right.  The same feller you left the ranch with a few days back.”  Roy made a clicking noise with his tongue as he wagged his head.  “Now, I know I ain’t the prettiest thing you ever seen, but if you commence to shoutin’ like that again, I’m gonna look even worse with some Ute arrow stickin’ out of my rump!”

“Utes!” the rancher declared as he straightened up.  “Have you seen Indians?”

Roy eyed the ridge above them.  “No, but I can feel ‘em.”

He felt it too.  At least, he felt someone watching.  Perhaps that was what had brought on the nightmare the rancher had just awakened from.  It was fading now, but he knew the matter of it had to do with his missing sons.  They’d been present, all three of them – Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe.  He could hear them shouting and calling his name, but no matter how fast he rode or how hard he ran, he couldn’t draw any closer.  There was something keeping him from them; a black cloud of sorts that hung like a storm on the horizon – heavy, pendulous, potent, and threatening.

Or it had until it attacked.

Roy eyed him.  “You want to talk about it?”

“The Indians?”

The lawman rolled his eyes.  “Like I said, I ain’t seen no Indians.  Just got me an itch I can’t scratch.  What I’m askin’ is if you want to talk about that there nightmare of yours.  Though I figure I know what it was about.”

Ben accepted a canteen from his friend and took a deep drink before answering.  “It was about the boys, I admit, but there was something else.  There was a dark force keeping me from them.  Something…malevolent.”  The rancher wiped the lip of the canteen off and handed it back.  “You could even say ‘evil’.”

Roy capped the canteen and hung it by the strap over his shoulder.  He glanced at the captive moon in its cloudy cell and then at the sea of shadows surrounding them.  “It’s mighty easy to get spooked in the desert, ‘specially at night, Ben.  The desert don’t care none who or what you are.  It’ll kill you faster than a dog can trot if you let your guard down.”

“I know, but, it wasn’t that kind of evil.”  Ben rose and stretched in an attempt to toss off the remnants of the dream.  “It was more like a…malignancy.  Mindless and deadly.”

“Sounds like a pretty good description of a thousand miles of hot sun and dry sand to me,” the lawman groused.  “It ain’t gonna be mornin’ for a couple of hours.  You gonna go back to sleep?”

Ben shrugged.  “Perhaps, but not right away.  I’m…restless.  I think I will wander for a bit.”

“You want me to keep you company in your wanderin’?”

“No.  No.  You go back to sleep.”

Roy looked dubious.  “And here I thought you was a smart man, Ben.  It ain’t wise to go wanderin’ alone in these here parts.”  The rancher jumped as the lawman punched the shoulder of his leather vest with two fingers.  “You keep one eyeball on this here camp, you hear?  There’s already more than enough bleached bones in these here parts.”

“I promise I won’t go far.  I just need to…move…if you understand?”

“Don’t matter if I do or I don’t,” his friend replied as he returned to his bedding.  “Just see to it you don’t wear no ruts in the sand.  We ain’t got no horses to spare.”

Roy was snoring by the time Ben cleared their makeshift camp.  His friend’s allusion to wearing a ‘rut’ in the sand took him straight back to the Ponderosa and other nights when one or more of his boys were overdue.  It wasn’t until he caught Hop Sing on his hands and knees with a horsehair brush and a tin of stain in front of the fireplace one day that he realized just how much he paced!  The rancher knew both the lawman and his Asian housekeeper thought he was an old mother-hen, unable – and perhaps unwilling – to let his boys become men.

Ben shook his head.  His boys.

Joseph was well on his way to twenty.  Hoss would turn twenty-four in December and Adam, thirty the next May!  His ‘boys’ were men now.  Honest, loyal, moral, and dependable men.  He had done his job well.  He should trust them.  By God, he did trust them!

He just didn’t trust the world.

The rancher reached a tumble of large rocks situated less than one hundred yards from where they’d made camp.  Undaunted by its size, he clambered up the side of a giant boulder and sat on a flat part that jutted out over the sand.  The desert was a wonder; dead and yet alive, with temperatures so extreme they would bake a man in the morning and rattle his teeth with cold at night.  It was awful and awesome.  Silent and so very vast.  He remembered how, the first time he’d seen it; the undulating waves of sand had put him in mind of the seas he’d sailed in his youth.  The desert sky at night was the very same – eternal and never-ending.  Black as a paper soaked in ink punctured with light.  He’d been a young man then; young as his sons were now.  He’d known no fear as he set out to sea, only longed for adventure.  In his mind’s eye, the weary rancher saw his boys riding away from the Ponderosa the week before laughing – ready and raring for any challenge.

As he would have been, had he not been a father.

Ben crossed his legs Indian-style and laid one hand on each knee.  Then he closed his eyes and breathed.  With each expelled breath, he let something go – fear, unease, anxiety, lack of trust…lack of faith – and breathed in peace.

It had been a dream.  A night terror.

Nothing more.

Before he stood, the rancher whispered a quick prayer.  In it he asked the Almighty to forgive his doubt and renew his faith.  He asked for his sons well-being; that they be taken care of and that he would find them soon – both hale and hearty.   He asked as well for guidance and for a straight path to that goal before he whispered the final ‘amen’.  Then he rose and slipped off of the side of the boulder and began the walk to their camp.  It was his intention to return to his bed.

He never made it.

 

Roy Coffee started from sleep, only to find himself facing the nose of a Colt revolver that was pointed between his eyes.  His gaze flicked from the man holding the gun to the pair of mean lookin’ masked hombres backin’ him up.

Roy sighed.

“Funny, you fellers don’t look like Indians.”

The man holding the pistol glanced at his companion.  “I thought you said this was the sheriff.  Seems mighty dumb – ”

Five seconds later Roy was standin’ over the gunman, pointin’ the pistol between his eyes.  He turned to the other stunned outlaws.  “Now, if you fellers don’t want to find out what’s between this yahoo’s ears, I’d put down your weapons, and –”

“If you don’t want to see what makes Mr. Cartwright ‘tick’, I’d do the same.”

Roy turned so he could look the other direction.  Dang it!  There was a fourth masked man and he had Ben!  The outlaw shoved the rancher forward even as he leveled his rifle at the back of his friend’s head.

“And I’d do it now.”

With a sigh, Roy did as he was told.  “I told you wanderin’ around in the desert alone weren’t good for your health,” he chided Ben as the rancher stumbled to a halt at his side.

“Shut up, lawman!”

Roy shrugged.  “Just passin’ the time of day.”

“You better do what my brother says, or you ain’t gonna have too many days left!” a youngish voice threatened. “Ain’t no one gonna think anythin’of it if they find one more set of dry bones layin’ on the sand.”

The lawman gave his friend an ‘I told you so’ look.  It was only then that Roy realized the other man had been mishandled.

‘You okay, Ben?’ he mouthed.

The ranched sighed.  He replied with one word.

“Stupid.”

“That’s right, Cartwright, for a man who managed to make himself richer than Midas before forty, you are pretty stupid.”  The gray-haired man that held the rifle on Ben sidled over, full of himself as a fox in a house full of fat hens.

Ben stiffened, not from fear but with fire.  “Do I know you?” he demanded.

“You should, but it’s a fair bet, you don’t.  I’ve watched you and your boys ride in for years, flashin’ them Cartwright smiles and wavin’ wads of cash.”  The man came right up to Ben and loomed over him – which weren’t an easy thing to do!  I figured it was time I took some of that cash for my own.”

“You’re one of Norwood Bader’s men.”

“Well, what’a you know?  Mister Cartwright here wins the cigar.”

The outlaw said this while looking over his shoulder at the younger man.  Roy observed the pair of them closely.  If looks counted for anythin’, by the look of them, they probably was brothers.

At least, what showed of their faces proved they was both ugly as the hind end of a mule.

The gray-haired man shot him a glance, as if he sensed he might try to make a move.  “I already showed Cartwright here that takin’ me on ain’t a smart thing to do.  The same goes for you, lawman.  I won’t think twice about puttin’ a bullet through either one of you.”  The outlaw met Ben’s belligerent stare and added, “Just like I did that youngest one of yours, Cartwright.”  The man touched his head and then his side.  “No, wait, make that two bullets.  Here, and here.”

“If you’ve harmed my son, I’ll – ”

“Ben,” Roy cautioned, his voice low.  “You mind that temper of yours.  You gettin’ shot ain’t gonna help Little Joe or his brothers none.”

“Ain’t nothin’ gonna help Little Joe none,” the younger outlaw snorted.  “Less’n it’s a rattler takin’ him out of his misery!”

These two were meaner than them desert snakes.  The same probably went for the rest of the men gathered round.  Roy knew the type.  Wasn’t nothin’ sacred to them but money and, after that, their own hides.

Sometimes that last one proved to be a weakness.

“Ben, you listen to me.”

“Yeah, listen to him, Ben,” the gray-haired man mocked, ‘or you’ll be dead as that precocious brat of yours.”

‘Precocious?’

The light was dim.  The moon had bedded down behind the hills and the sun was a slacker.  Still, Roy could just about make out the face of the oldest of the outlaws.  Men like that – hard-living, harder-drinking, sons of snakes – didn’t use a word like ‘precocious’.  ‘Cheeky’, maybe, or maybe ‘pushy’ or ‘nervy’.  Come to think of it, there was something wrong with the way the man what had brought Ben in looked.  Like maybe he was wearin’ a disguise or somethin’.  Now, why would he be doin’ that, unless he thought they could identify him?  Roy cocked an eyebrow.  No one knew he’d be along for the ride, so it had to be Ben or one the boys they was worried about.

Or maybe all of them.

“How’d you know Ben’s boys were comin’ this way early enough to way-lay them?” Roy asked out of the blue.  “There ain’t no telegraph in the Utah territory, so someone had to tell you.  Or maybe, you got a letter.  Maybe a letter from old Ben here?”

He saw Ben stiffen beside him.  ‘No,’ the rancher mouthed.

Roy got his answer, quicker than he expected, and he supposed he could consider the method of delivery a definite ‘yes’.

Norwood Bader’s rifle butt made contact with his head.

“Damn you!” the horse-dealer cursed.

 

“You know, my eldest son has a favorite saying, ‘The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.”

Ben watched Roy Coffee pry open one blackened eye.  “You tryin’ to tell me somethin’?” the lawman asked.

In spite of everything – his boys’ plight, as well as the dire situation they found themselves in – the rancher chuckled.  “Nothin’ you don’t already know.”

Roy attempted to sit up which, with his hands tied behind his back, was no easy feat.  Ben steadied him with a shoulder to his back and waited until he succeeded.  The lawman was a little green around the gills – his skin white and waxen as uncooked pastry – but otherwise seemed unharmed.

“Are you all right?” Ben asked.

“Who, me?  I’m fit as a farthin’ fiddle and ready to go….”  Roy tugged at his bonds.  “…just about nowheres it seems.”

“When did you realize the older man was Norwood Bader?” the rancher asked, his tone utterly weary.

Roy snorted.  “When he called that youngest one of yours ‘precocious’.  What kind of an outlaw uses a word like ‘precocious’?”

A wily one, Ben thought.  An educated man who was once a friend but who now, it seemed, had abandoned his former self in favor of becoming a jackal who preyed on innocent men – and all for the love of money.  He should have recognized him, but time – and it seemed, wrong choices – had altered the man beyond knowing.

“Joseph…” he breathed.

“They’re all lyin’ skunks, Ben.  It don’t mean Joe was shot.”

Perhaps not, but there was something in the way Norwood Bader had…gloated…that made him think it was true.  The rancher cast his mind back, trying to remember the last conversations he’d had with the horse-dealer.  He hadn’t made the long and dusty trip to Utah to collect the horses since Adam was old enough to go on his own.  That was some ten or more years ago.  In fact, it had been him and Adam that time.  He remembered it because Norwood had seemed uncomfortable around the boy.  The horse-dealer had lost a child – a son – along with his wife in an accident the year before.  He remembered now how Norwood had remarked as they departed, that it was unfair that he still had three sons.

Could that anger have been nurtured over the years until it grew into a kind of hatred of both him and his boys?

“Ben?”

“Sorry.  I was thinking about Norwood and trying to understand what might drive a man to put everything he spent a lifetime building in jeopardy.”

“Same as any other man.  Money.”

Ben glanced at Roy.  The lawman had a bit of his color back and his voice had gained in strength.   “Norwood has money.  Or at least he did.  Power as well.”

The lawman thought a moment.  “Jealousy, then.  You got somethin’ he’d be jealous of?”

The rancher closed his eyes.  Behind the lids, a terrible scene unfolded – Joseph, shot off of his horse, struck by bullets in the side and head; his lifeless form being dragged across the sandy ground by a runaway horse.  Then he saw his older sons – at first horrified, and then furious and on fire, recklessly charging the men who had struck their brother down.  He saw them – Adam and Hoss – struck down as well, their blood mingling with their baby brother’s as it ran from their fallen forms to water a dry and arid land.

“No,” he said.

“Beg pardon, Ben?”

“I have to get away.”

Roy blinked.  “Even if you could, Ben, you cain’t take off into the desert on foot!  You won’t make it a day.”

“I can if I manage to pinch one of the outlaws’ horses, or catch a wild one.  There are plenty of feral ones in this area.  I’ve seen them.”

“The point bein’ they’re ‘feral’!”

Ben’s grin was taut.  “Not so feral.  We’ve lost our fair share on the way back to Nevada.  Others have done the same.  While they’re not tamed, they are rideable.”

“By some goldarn idiot in his twenties!”

“Shh!”  The rancher checked to see if anyone was listening.  Norwood had left the camp and set a guard to keep watch over them.  The youngest of the outlaws was leaning up against a tree nearby, snoring.  Other than that there was only one other man in camp and he appeared to be a cook.  Bader and the others had left at dawn, headed in the direction his sons would have taken.

He meant to follow them.

Roy drew in a breath and let it out slowly.  “So, tell me, Ben, what can I do to help this here hare-brained scheme of yours?  Mind you, when your obituary hits the front page of the Enterprise, I don’t want no mention in it. ”

The rancher looked his friend up and down.  Roy was looking better, which was too bad.

“How good are you at moaning?” he asked with a grin.

 

A half an hour later Ben Cartwright was in the saddle, riding hard.  The guard had been brighter than he expected and proven suspicious.  He called the outlaw who was cooking over to keep watch while he checked what appeared to be a very sick Roy.  In the end, that worked to their advantage.  He’d managed to work his hands free and to free Roy, and – between them – they overpowered both men at once.  He left Roy the gun and told him to keep watch until he returned.

With his sons.

 

 

SEVEN

“I ask you again, who are you?”

The Indian – Adam was sure he was some sort of medicine man or shaman – had moved to Little Joe’s side and begun to examine him.  Hoss was there too, keeping watch.  The look on the big man’s face as he stared at his ailing brother was that of one who had lost his best friend.

Or was about to.

Joe was in a bad way.  The fever had reached such a height that he’d stopped sweating.  Little brother’s skin was hot, dry, and red as the rising sun that hung bloated above their heads.  The old Indian had just opened Joe’s dark blue shirt, which left the wound exposed.  Blood red lines ran from it in every direction. Little Joe’s chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow breaths.  Next would come the seizures and then….

“Did you hear me?” Adam demanded.  “I asked you who you are.”

The stranger did not look at him, but continued to tend to Little Joe.  “I am listening, bilaganna, but not to you.”

“To who then?  Is Little Joe talkin’ to you?” Hoss asked eagerly.

Hoss was more accepting of the supernatural than he was, and far less distrustful.  This man – this shaman – appearing out of nowhere at precisely the critical moment in Joe’s illness had left Adam unnerved.  Could they believe anything he said?

Why had he let him near his little brother?

The shaman rose at last.  He placed a hand on Hoss’ broad shoulder and said, “Stay with him.”

“Where are you goin’?  You ain’t gonna leave him, are you?”  The big man was distressed.  “Dang it!  My brother needs you.”

The Indian left Hoss and came to stand before him.  The shaman’s eyes were as black as their father’s, but deeper somehow, as if they looked into all of time and space.  The man’s upper lip twitched with something approaching a smile.

“Yes,” he said.

“Yes?  What ‘yes’?”  Then he got it.  “Are you intimating that I am the brother in need?”

“I intimate nothing, Adam Cartwright.  I say.”

“My brother is the one who is dying!” he countered sharply.

The older man studied him a moment before speaking. “What do you know of the ways of my father’s people?”

The shaman had said very little, though they had managed to wrangle a bit of information out of him.  He was half-Ute and half-Diné or Navajo, with the Navajo being on his father’s side.  That meant he had been accepted by neither tribe.  Life had taken him many places, including a good amount of time spent among the Mormons where he had served as an assistant to a white doctor.

That was what had convinced him to permit the man to take a look at Joe.

“The Dinétah?” Adam replied.  “Very little.  There are no Navajo, as we call them, in Nevada.  I know of their Holy People, and of the tales of Changing Woman and First Man and First Woman among others.”  The educated man prided himself in learning what he could of all native people’s beliefs.  He respected them, though their rituals and practices often put him in mind him of the pagan religions of Rome or Greece with their seemingly never-ending pantheon of beneficent and trickster gods.

“And what do you know of hózhó?” the shaman asked.

He had heard of it as well.  The term roughly translated to the Asian belief in Tao.  For the white man, the closest thing was the Spirit of God as mentioned in the Gospels.  In the Gospel of John it said,‘The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.’

“You speak of the wind of the spirit.”

“I speak of walking in beauty.”

“I get it,” Adam said impatiently.  “When a man or woman falls out of ‘beauty’, they get sick.  You medicine men restore the balance.  So,” he pointed toward his baby brother, “restore it!”

“Joseph is not the one who is out of balance, Adam Cartwright.”

“Then who is?”

The aged Indian shook his head.  “I do not know.  The Holy People have not told me.  All I know is that a dark wind blows and brings with it both peril and death.”

“A dark wind?  Hóchxó?”

“Yes.  What do you know of the dark wind?”

A little less than he knew about the way of beauty.  ‘Hóchxó’ was the polar opposite of ‘hózhó’.  While shamans and healers drew upon the first, Navajo witches sought to control the other.

“You think someone has…bewitched…my brother?”  Adam swallowed over the image of the silent form at the bottom of the well.  “This girl, Cheayka, he speaks of perhaps?”

For the first time, the old man was startled.  “Chʼikę́ę́h?  The one who sleeps has spoken of her?”

“That’s what Joe calls the Indian girl he sees in his dreams,” Adam replied.

The shaman nodded.  After a pause, he said quietly, “Among my father’s people the word is known.”

“Word?  Then it’s not a name?”

The old man’s eyes – those dark black pools – they lit with a curious light.  Almost as if he understood something for the first time.  “I have seen her.  Chʼikę́ę́h has called to me as well.  The maiden is why I am here.”

Adam’s suspicions deepened.  Not for the first time, he wondered if the medicine man had a hidden agenda of his own.

“Can you help my brother?” he asked point-blank.

“Hania,” the older man said.  “That is what I am called.”

Adam nodded.  “Hania, then. Will you help him?”

Hania glanced at Joe and then turned back to him.

“I will try.”

 

Hoss Cartwright chewed his lower lip and shoved his hands in his pockets before striding over to where his brother Adam stood.  Adam’s folded arms rested on the top of a boulder and his face was turned toward the dying sun.

“Adam….”

“I know.”

Hoss frowned.  “What do you know?”

Older brother looked over his shoulder; his gaze traveling to the place where Joe lay and Hania crouched.  “He’s just sitting there.”

“I’m here to tell you, Adam, that Hania feller ain’t done nothin’ in hours!  A whiles back, he lit some bark and waved it over Joe.  Breathin’ in the smoke seemed to calm the boy down.  Then he put some kind of poultice on the wound what took some of the fire out of them awful red lines.  Ever since then all he’s done is draw in the sand and talk to himself!”

“It’s called the Healing Way.  The first thing the shaman has to do is make a sand painting.  Both the ritual and painting are meant to invoke the power of the Holy People and to call the Holy Wind to heal the patient.”

Hoss scratched his head.  “Seems kind of like what them magicians at the circus do.”

Adam smiled.  “How can I explain it?  Ah, I know.  You remember Marie and how funny some of her religious practices seemed to us?”

“You mean thing like fingerin’ them itty-bitty beads and prayin’ to someone other than to God straight on?”

His brother nodded.  “Offering prayers to the saints.  Yes.  Try thinking of the Navajo’s Holy People as saints, Hoss.  That might help.”

He chuckled.  “I remember there was a different one for just about everything – findin’ lost things, crossin’ water, travelin’, and such.”

Their pa, of course, didn’t truck with none of those ideas, though he never said anythin’ around Mama.

“Each saint has a special job to perform.  The Holy People are something like that.”  His brother glanced at the medicine man where he crouched, chanting.  “Though, they are not always so beneficent.”

“Bene…what?”

Adam glanced at him.  “Good.”

Hoss frowned as his gaze followed Adam’s.  “You ain’t sure of him, are you?”

“No.”

“Then how come you let him tend to Little Joe?”

The man in black said nothing.  He turned back to look at the sky.

“Right,” Hoss said aloud.  Out of habit, the big man’s fingers dug deeper ditches in his pants’ pockets – on account of there was nothin’ else he could do.

He’d sat by the boy for a long time, his attention split between Joe and the medicine man and what he was doin’.  The sand painting sure was beautiful.  Hania made a big thick circle first and the added lots of lines, and then he started drawin’ stick people, kind of like the ones he’d drawn when he was a tyke.  At the center of the circle was a cross with equal sides that cut the painting into four quarters.  Each quarter had its own figure – one of them Holy People, he figured.  The painting was mostly black, white, and blue, with some splashes of other bright colors dropped here and there.

He sure had a hard time believin’ it was gonna help little brother get well.

“I’m going to take a walk,” Adam said suddenly as he pushed off the rock and headed into the desert.  “Call me if anything changes.”

“Where are you goin’?”

“I don’t know.”  Older brother’s lean body grew tense as an arrow ready to fly.  “Somewhere.  Somewhere that isn’t…here.”

Hoss didn’t know what he thought about being left alone, what with their little brother so sick.

“How come?”

It was two simple words, but they might as well have been a match set to TNT.  “How come?  How come?” Adam snapped.  “Because I…can’t abide my own company!  Because…”  Older brother breathed a sigh and his body sagged.  “Because I’ve failed.  There, I said it.  Are you happy now?!”

“What are you talkin’ about?  How have you failed?”

“I didn’t keep Joe safe!”  Adam’s fingers caught his bloody sleeve.  “I didn’t keep you safe either.  I know you’ve been hiding how badly hurt you are.”  He drew a deep breath.  “We’re all going to die out here and it’s my fault!”

Hoss stared at his brother.  He knew Adam thought a lot of that new science called ‘psychology’.  Seems some man in Germany figured out that what happened in a man’s past had a lot to do with his present.  One time when they was talkin’, older brother called Little Joe ‘damaged goods’.  Before he could pop him on the nose, Adam explained it was on account of his mama dyin’ when he was so young.  It left Joe ‘vulnerable’.  Truth was, older brother was just as ‘vulnerable’, maybe even more so, because of what he’d experienced before he and Pa settled on the Ponderosa.

With a smile, the big man said, “Shucks, I ain’t so bad off.  Leastwise, I don’t intend to up and die.”  Hoss quickly sobered.  “I ain’t gonna let Little Joe die either, so you can stop blamin’ yourself for somethin’ that ain’t gonna happen!”

“Oh?  Because you know that for certain?” Adam snarled.

“Sure I do.”  Hoss drew his hand out of his pocket.  He’d dug so deep in his misery that he’d found somethin’ there he’d forgot all about.  It was somethin’ he sometimes carried with him when he traveled, as a kind of lucky charm.  His brothers didn’t know nothin’ about it.  Fact was, the only one that did, wasn’t gonna tell no one on account of she was in Heaven.  He eyed the small silver medallion, no bigger than a nickel.  Its surface was well-worn; so well-worn in fact that it was hard to make out the image stamped upon it.

“What is that?” Adam asked.

Hoss gave the surface a polish with his thumb and held it out.  “Somethin’ Mama gave me.  I’m thinkin’, older brother, that maybe you need it more than me.”

Adam eyed the medallion like it was a snake about to spring.  “I repeat, ‘What is that?’”

Hoss couldn’t help it.  In spite of the grave situation they were in, in spite of his baby brother layin’ there, maybe dyin’, and in spite of the fact that he knew that TNT was gonna blow, he tossed the coin in the air and chuckled as Adam caught it.  “You got the college education.  You tell me.”

The big man watched the wheels turn in his brother’s head until they stopped on Marie’s saints.  Adam ran a finger over the figure of a man who wore an image of Jesus tied around his neck and carried a staff.  “St. Jude,” he said, his tone wry.

“That’s right.”

Adam licked his lips as one ink-slash eyebrow reached for his black hair.  “The patron saint of lost causes?”

“Yep.”

Adam didn’t get mad.  In fact, older brother started to laugh and it took him a long time to stop.  By the time he did, they was both weak in the knees.

“This is good,” Hania said, startling them.  His approach had been so quiet, they’d missed it.  “Joy and laughter, these are the ways of beauty.  You must walk in them, putting aside all dark thoughts, if you are to bring your brother back.”

“Back from where?” Hoss asked, puzzled.  After all, Joe’d been lyin’ in the same spot for nigh on a day.

“The land of shadows.”

“The land of shadows?” Adam queried.  “Where is that?”

“Where it is, is here,” Hania replied, enigmatic as ever.  “What it is, is the place between here and there.  The land the spirit walks between life and death.”

“You mean, Little Joe can hear us?”  Hoss grinned.  “He knows what we’re sayin’?”

“Hoss….” Adam cautioned.

Hania looked at him.  “Your brother does not believe,” he said.

The man in black pursed his lips before replying.  “I do believe an unconscious man can hear what is said.  What I don’t believe is that words spoken over a drawing in sand can work miracles.”

The shaman came close and did something few dared – he touched Adam, laying his hand just above older brother’s heart.  “You have known it,” Hania said softly.

Adam frowned but then, a moment later, his eyes lit with something – well, dang unnatural.

“Yes…” he breathed.

Hania’s smiles were rare.  He favored them with one now.  “Come, both of you. I will show you how to walk where your brother walks, so that you may bring him back.”  The smile disappeared abruptly.  “But take warning, the way is perilous.  He is not alone.”

Hoss exchanged a glance with his brother.  “Cheayka?” he asked, breathless.

“Yes,” the shaman agreed, “but there is another.”

 

A shiver ran through Adam’s lean frame as Hania took hold of his ailing brother’s legs and straightened them.  He watched as the shaman moved to the teenager’s arms, which he crossed over his chest before rising.  Throughout the process Joe remained silent and still.

If he hadn’t known better, he would thought Little Joe had already passed to a place where they could not follow.

“It’s gonna be okay, Adam,” Hoss whispered near his ear.  “You gotta believe.”

Adam fingered the medallion of St. Jude that was now in his pocket.  The saint had another title.  He was also known as the patron saint of miracles.

They sure needed one now.

“You must drink this,” Hania said as he offered a wooden bowl to each of them.  Adam lifted it to his nose.  The concoction had a pungent odor; one he was vaguely familiar with.  It took a second.

“Mescaline?” he asked, surprised.

“That is the name the white man gives to Nahuatl peyōtl.  It is known among the people as ‘Caterpillar Cocoon’.”

“I didn’t think the Navajo believed in its use.”

Hania nodded.  “It is not the way of my father’s people, or my mother’s.  This answer came from the Holy People.”

That didn’t give him a lot of confidence!

Adam pushed the bowl back toward the shaman.  “No.  I won’t drink that.  Nor will my brother.  It’s not safe.”

“What is it?” Hoss asked.

“An opiate, and a particularly dangerous one.”

Hania proffered the bowl again.  “Without it, you cannot follow your young brother.  You cannot walk where he walks.  You will not be able to save him from the place between life and death.”

A harsh voice startled them.  “I don’t know about you, old man, but it looks to me like this one done passed over already.”

Adam reached for his pistol just as he heard a hammer cock.

The masked outlaw nudged Joe’s supine form with a toe and rolled him onto his side.  Then he crouched and anchored the nose of his revolver in the teenager’s curly hair.  “Or, if he ain’t, I’ll be happy to hasten him along.”

 

He and Hoss sat tied back to back, not ten feet away from their ailing brother.  Hania had been taken as well, but they hadn’t seen him for some time.  Adam feared for the old man.  This bunch – part of the same group of outlaws who had waylaid them earlier – were rough characters.  They were something else as well.

Like the drug Hania had offered him, they were familiar.

Since they’d been taken and trussed up, he’d had little to do but think.  He’d run their original confrontation with these men over and over in his mind and each and every time he came to the same conclusion.

They’d been betrayed.

The robbers had known they were coming, that much was clear.  The attack was too well-planned.  That meant someone from Norwood Bader’s ranch had to be in on it.  He’d wracked his brain, trying to bring to mind the face of the ranch’s foreman or one of Bader’s other hands, but in the end had given up, dismissing the exercise as a waste of time and energy.  That kind of man flowed in and out of a spread like water.

Still, a betrayal was the only thing that made sense.  Someone on Bader’s ranch heard they were coming, and coming with a lot of cash.  Caught in the desert unawares, they would make an easy target.  But why did it seem Joe was singled out?  Or was that just a misconception?  After all, Hoss had been shot as well.  The man in black blew out a sigh.  Not that it made any difference.  No matter what, it seemed someone bore a grudge against them.  Those shots had been meant to kill.

Against them.

Or maybe, against their father.

Ah….

Nah.

Adam frowned.  He’d noted the last few times he’d made the run to Utah, that Norwood Bader had been very cool to him.  The sale had been conducted by, and the horses handed over to him by Bader’s men instead of the rancher himself.  But could the horse breeder really be behind this?  Could he – would he sanction stone cold murder?  It was hard to believe.  Norwood Bader and his father went way back – all the way to the wagon train, in fact.  The then farrier and his family hadn’t traveled the entire way with them from the East, but joined the long line of prairie schooners as they entered Wyoming.  Bader had a wife then and one…no…two sons.  Jimmy and Thad.  Yes, he recalled them now.

They died on the trail.

The man in black chewed his lip.  It was a long time ago and he’d been a little boy, so his memories were vague at best.  Mostly he remembered playing with the pair and being scolded when he left Hoss alone in the wagon one time to do so.  There had been an accident.  Yes.  Now he remembered.  That was the night when Pa had spoken those words – the ones that had convinced the older man that he could go on.  One of the mules had spooked just as they crossed the border into Idaho.  There was a chain reaction and soon all the animals were braying and chomping at the bit to escape.  Several wagons near the middle of the train turned over, tossing both people and goods off of the road and into the abyss.

Norman Bader’s young sons were among them.

“You’re awful quiet,” Hoss whispered.

Adam glanced at the guard who kept watch over them.  The outlaw was looking the other way.  “I’ve been thinking,” he replied, careful to keep his voice low.

“Me too.”  Hoss nodded in their ailing brother’s direction.  “Little Joe ain’t moved a pinch since they tied us up.”

He’d noticed.  “It’s probably for the best.  Maybe they’ll forget he’s there.”

Hoss sighed deeply.  “If Joe is still there….”

It was his fear as well.  Joe had been in a bad way the last time they checked on him.  On top of that, night was upon them.  He and Hoss were without coats and he could feel the big man shivering.

“I bet they ain’t covered him up or nothin’.”

His jaw was tight.  “Probably not.”

Hoss inclined his head in the other direction, toward the tree line.  “What you think happened to that there medicine man?”

Adam shook his head.  He hesitated to guess.  It was obvious from the jeers and calls that greeted the shaman that these outlaws were no friends of the Indians.  The last time they’d seen Hania, he’d been bound and blindfolded and was being led into the trees.

“You think he’s dead?”

Adam blew out a breath.  “Probably.”

Hoss shifted as if uncomfortable and straightened his back, forcing the ropes that bound them together to cut into his wrists, but Adam said nothing.  The movement caused the guard to glance their way.  Seeing nothing amiss, his glance didn’t linger.  He had little cause for concern.  Not only were they tied to one another, but ropes circled their ankles, so they weren’t going anywhere.  At least they hadn’t been gagged.  Then again, since they were in the middle of nowhere, their captors knew it wouldn’t do any good to call out.

“You think Pa’s on his way?”

Adam smiled.  “We’re a long way from home, Hoss.”

“Not so long,” his brother countered.  “I mean, we barely made it into Utah before them outlaws jumped us.  If Pa started out east when we started back west, we might just meet up about now.”

“Maybe.”

“I sure hope for Little Joe’s sake that Pa’s on his way.  Joe’d want to….”  Hoss swallowed over a lump of deep feeling.  “He’d want to say goodbye.”

Adam was about to remind the big galoot that he’d assured him not two minute before that Joe wasn’t going to die, when a cry went up from one of their captors.

“What’s goin’ on?” Hoss asked, his tone anxious.

“Shh!  I’m trying to figure it out.”

Adam listened.  He caught a few words, but they made no sense.  ‘Gone,’ was the first.  The next was ‘devilry’.

The last one was ‘witch’.

Within seconds, the guard was at their side.  Adam choked as the outlaw gripped his collar and pulled him off the ground, half-dragging Hoss behind.

“What did you do?” the irate man shouted.  “Where is he?”

“Where is…?”

The question died on Adam’s lips as the guard back-handed him, cutting his lip in the process and drawing blood.  A second later the man pulled his pistol and lodged its nose in Hoss’ thinning hair.

“You’re gonna tell me or he’s gonna die!”

“Tell you what?” Adam asked, truly confused.

“Tell me what you did with the carcass of that little brother of yours!  Where’d you put him?”

“Joe?”  Adam looked past the man to the place where his little brother lay.

Had lain.

Joe was gone.

 

 

EIGHT – Several hours before.

 Ben Cartwright was more than thankful.

God had blessed him every step of the way.  He’d managed to capture one of the outlaw’s horses and flown like the wind through the gathering darkness, following the trail of Norwood Bader and men.  The moon was high and the horse was used to desert travel, so they made good time, covering fifteen miles an hour to the ten he could have hoped for.  He’d slowed after noting a rock carving left by some thirsty traveler that indicated there was a watering hole nearby.  The sun would soon rise and they were both hot and tired, plus his canteen was nearly empty.  As he approached the small oasis, Ben heard voices, so he dismounted and led the horse into a chasm between boulders.  Less than a minute later five men appeared.  Three were mounted and the other two on foot.  They spoke for a few minutes.  He couldn’t make out all that they said, but he recognized their voices.  One of the riders was Norwood Bader himself.  Another, Bader’s longtime foreman, Jake Burns.  The men spoke in low whispers for five minutes or so before Bader and the two who had arrived with him on horseback took off.  After that, the ones on foot returned to the watering hole.

Ben swallowed hard.  ‘Captives’ was among the words Bader had spoken.

As was ‘kill’.

It took everything that was in him to let Norwood Bader ride away, but he knew where his path must lead.  He would follow the outlaw pair, who were even now doffing their clothes and stepping into the water to wash themselves, to his sons.  The rancher considered, for a moment, taking them unawares and forcing the information from them.  A still small voice in his head told him to bide his time and follow instead.  He had learned long ago to listen to it.

Some called it natural intuition.

He knew it as his God.

The sun had risen and lay low on the horizon by the time the men mounted and took off.  Ben waited a full five minutes before following.  The outlaw’s sign would be easy to follow at this point though he knew – in time – the shifting sands would quickly erase any sign of its existence.

The men were in no hurry, which chafed at the anxious father’s nerves.  Each minute Ben knew his sons were in danger multiplied into an hour of worry.  ‘Captive’ must mean the boys were corralled somehow – most likely tied up.  He would have to locate the outlaws’ camp and conduct surveillance before he could make his next step.

Or so he thought.

God was with him again in that, as he neared the outlaws’ camp, dark clouds began to roll in – the kind that indicated an approaching storm.  The clouds acted as a screen, obscuring the sun and casting the desert into shadow so he could move at ease.  The rancher had tethered his mount the moment he realized he was drawing near the camp and was on foot.  Nearly a lifetime lived in the West had taught the worried father that going slow – no matter how grating on his nerves – was for the best.  Ben waited until the men had greeted their friends and settled in before making his approach.  The fire was smoldering and nearly out.  One man leant over it, reaching for a coffee pot.  Another of the outlaws leaned against a tree, chewing on a piece of grass.  There was a rifle in his hand and he was guarding –

Ben’s heart leapt into his throat.

Adam!

Hoss!

The hand of fear that had gripped the rancher’s heart when sitting at his desk so long ago, closed around it once more.

Where was Joseph?

 

Joseph Francis Cartwright was fine.  He was walking hand in hand through a field of tall corn with a pretty Indian girl.  The teenager glanced at her and smiled.  Cheayka was so pretty it made his heart leap, and so serious it made him wonder what was going on in her head.  Kind of like he did with most women.  He’d tried talking to her, but she wouldn’t say much and, when she did answer, he had no idea of what she was saying.  Every once in a while there was a word that sounded something like Spanish.  One he thought meant ‘home’, and another might have been ‘father’, but he wasn’t sure.  So, in the end, he’d settled for holding her hand and letting her take him where she would.

After all, they’d have to be going somewhere.

Didn’t they?

The corn was real different from the kind he was used to.  He had a vague memory of seeing something like it before, but not up so close or in such detail.  Maybe it had been dark the last time or, maybe he’d been sick.  He had a vague memory of that too – of a deep unending, unbearable pain, and of his brothers calling to him, urging him to hang on and to stay with them.

“Bił hinishnáanii?”

Joe winced.  Whenever she spoke, Cheayka kind of sounded like she was sneezing.  He caught her eye and nodded, hoping that whatever she had said was something nice.

Her smile was all the reassurance he needed.

Cheayka clasped his hand more tightly and tugged, drawing him through the corn at a quick pace.  The ears were so large and the corn silk on their heads so thick, both struck him as they walked.  The soft silk tickled his nose and made him laugh.  He imagined Cheayka’s hair was like that – soft and silken.  He hadn’t dared to touch it yet.  There was something about her at once so profound and…almost sacred…that he didn’t dare.  She was kind of like the statue of Mary, Jesus’ mother, he remembered on his mama’s bureau.  Beautiful.   Serene.

Sad.

“Wóshdę́ę́,” she said.

They’d reached the end of the cornfield.  Through a canopy of fat ears and giant leaves he spied a simple village, different from, but not unlike the ones the Indians near the Ponderosa lived in.  Only here, the huts were made of mud instead of leather, bark, and hides.  In the yard before the simple dwellings a half-dozen children played under the watchful eyes of their working mothers.  The few men who lazed against the mud walls were white-haired and old.

Cheayka halted.  She turned toward him, placed her free hand on his cheek, and said, ‘Bighangi.”

Joe recognized the look on her face.  It was the same look he had every time he crested the hill and saw the large timber house his Pa had built.

“Home?” he asked.

Cheayka nodded even as a tear trailed down her cheek.  The teenager reached up to chase it away, but hesitated.  She caught his hand, kissed it, and drew it to her face.  Hesitantly, he passed his fingers over her cheek, displacing the tear, and then, let them slip into her hair. The tiny black braids were soft as corn silk.  Their lips almost touched, but at the last second Cheayka bent her head, so the kiss landed on her forehead instead.  She gave him a shy smile, giggled, and then took his hand and drew him in the opposite direction, back the way they had come.

By the time they cleared the opposite end of the cornfield, it was night.  They emerged, not as Joe had expected, on the edge of another village but, rather, at the foot of a high peak.  It looked strangely familiar.  Still, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t place when he’d seen it before.  Cheayka caught his attention and pointed up.  High in the side of the cliff face a ledge jutted out forming a rough stone platform.  There was a man on it, looking down even as they looked up.

“Do you know him?” Joe asked.

Cheayka’s dark head nodded.  “Shizhé’é,” she whispered near his ear.

Joe didn’t know how he knew that one, but he did.

It meant ‘Father’.

 

It took every ounce of strength Ben had not to charge into the outlaws’ camp.  He ached to put a gun to the head of the first man he came across and demand to know what they had done with his youngest son, but he knew he couldn’t.

He had his other sons to think of.

There were only two outlaws in view now.  The pair he followed had eaten and rested, exchanged their weary mounts for fresh horses, and moved on.  The rancher drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.  Closing his eyes wasn’t prudent at this time, so he prayed with them wide open; his dry lips forming words without sound.

‘Father, I know you are watching.  You have made a way so far.  Please, show me what to do now.’

Ben watched as the man who was standing guard over Adam and Hoss pressed off the tree at his back and ambled over toward the fire.

“You got any hot coffee left, Mike?” he asked.

The other man laughed.  “Sure do, Pete, if you like it thick and dark.  It’s last night’s.”

“I’ll take it any old way.”  Mike jerked a thumb over his shoulder.  “I gotta keep awake.  Gotta keep an eye on those two ‘til the boss gets back.”

“How long you been doin’ that?” the cook asked as he handed Pete a tin cup.

“Since Noah stepped out of the ark, or so it seems.”  The outlaw took a sip to check the temperature, and then gulped down half the cup.  With a jerk of his head toward the bound men, he asked, “Can you keep an eye on those two for a minute?”

“I was just packin’ up since Frank said we’d be breakin’ camp soon.  But I suppose I can give it a rest for a time.  Why?”

“I need to check the other one.  See if he’s still breathin’.”

Ben’s heart raced.  ‘The other one’?  Could that be Little Joe?  At first the man’s words filled him with joy.  Joseph was alive!  Then, he recalled the Pete’s words.  ‘…if he’s still breathing.’

Pete was on the move, heading for a rocky outcropping some ten or twelve feet away.  In the dawning light it was hard to see, but Ben thought he could just make out a figure lying on the ground.  The outlaw stood for a moment looking down, and then used the toe of his boot to shove whatever it was – hard.

Mike had followed and stood a short distance away.  “Well?” he asked.

Pete shrugged.  “Can’t tell.  Bring me one of those shiny pans of yours.”

“You think I got any shiny pans left after the road we’ve traveled?” Mike groused and held his ground.

The outlaw shoved the object with his boot once more.  “Don’t matter.  Now, or when the boss comes back, anyway you look at it, this one will be dead before the sun goes down.”  Pete returned to Mike’s side and clapped a hand on the cook’s shoulder.  “Thanks for the coffee.  Kind of tasted like dynamite goin’ down.  Ought to be just right to wake me up!”

Both men laughed heartily before parting.  Mike went back to packing as Pete checked Adam and Hoss’ bonds.  After that, he returned to his post by the tree.  Once there the outlaw glanced at the rising sun, and then lowered his hat to cover his eyes.

Ben blew out a breath and returned his gaze to the area near the outcropping.  He was on the opposite side of the camp, so he couldn’t make out much.  From the outlaw’s words, he assumed whatever was lying there was a man, but it seemed too small somehow – too insignificant.  More like a bundle of rags or a discarded blanket.  The anxious father glanced at Pete and Mike again to reassure himself that neither had changed position and then began to move – silently and with the utmost caution.  The desert was still except for the call of a lone coyote and the chitter of the pair of cactus wrens it had surprised.  One wrong move, one twig snapped underfoot and it would be over.

Bound as they were Adam and Hoss would be easy targets.

It took ten long, agonizing minutes to cross the camp.  The rancher felt like a single raw nerve by the time he arrived.  The shape beneath the rocks was closer to him now, but he still…couldn’t…quite…make it out….

Ben choked.

The insignificant bundle of rags was his son.

It took a moment to gather himself.  What Ben saw, from his concealed position behind a clump of bushes, was disheartening.  Joseph had been laid out as if he was already in his coffin.  He held his breath as he watched the boy for a moment, waiting for the smallest sign – a twitch of Joe’s arm, his chest rising and falling.  Anything.

Nothing.

Still, the anguished father would not believe that his loving Father in Heaven had permitted his beautiful, bright, and brash son’s life to end at the hands of such despicable men.  He simply would not!  Ben steeled himself, glanced at the pair of outlaws again to make sure they were not looking his way, and then reached through the brush and caught hold of the crowns of his son’s black boots and pulled.

Ben’s heart pounded hard in his chest as the boy emerged from the leaves.  It took every ounce of willpower not to stop right there and then to ascertain that his son was alive.  He knew he didn’t dare.  The moment the outlaws realized Joseph was missing, the search would begin.  He stood and gathered the boy in his arms with the intent of fleeing as fast as a horse can trot – only to hesitate.  Joseph prided himself on his ablutions.  The boy’s scent was always one of soap, pomade and bay rum comingled.  Instead, his handsome son smelled of sickness and dried blood – and he was hot.

Very hot.

“Dear Lord, boy,” he whispered.  “What have they done to you?”

A righteous ire rose within him, like that of God when Aaron turned away from the truth and created the golden calf for the Israelites to worship.  A man he trusted had done this.  A man he had known more than half his life.

A day of recompense would come for Norwood Bader.

Noise in the outlaws’ camp roused him and set his feet to moving.  With a backwards glance, the enraged father noted that Pete was on the move again.  He would have to travel fast and find a place of safety.  While it terrified Ben to know that his boy was fighting a fierce infectivity, it also brought him joy.

It meant Joseph was alive!

 

Joe felt so alive.  The air had a crisp, fresh primal scent and the desert was awash with green foliage.  It wasn’t the wasteland he remembered at all.  As they walked, he noted a myriad of tiny multicolored blossoms peeping through the scrub brush.  It must be spring, he thought, and yet, somehow, that seemed wrong too.  Cheayka noticed his discomfit.  She squeezed his hand and gave him a smile.

“Wóshdę́ę́,” she said again.

He’d figured out that one meant ‘come’.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked, even though it was silly.  He knew he wouldn’t understand the answer.

The Indian girl halted and pointed up.  ‘Shizhé’é.’ she repeated.

Joe stubbornly refused to move.  He wasn’t sure he wanted to meet her father.  He didn’t know why, but there was something sinister about that lone figure standing sentinel-straight on the natural platform above them.

He shook his head.

Emotion surged in Cheayka’s black eyes.  She looked confused, then hurt, and then….

Angry.

“Sorry,” he admitted.  “I’ve got a problem with heights.”

She regarded him a moment and then moved to embrace him, wrapping her brown arms around his waist and pulling him close.  Cheayka had this scent – like all of the spices in Hop Sing’s kitchen mixed together.  It was warm and, well, downright intoxicating.  She kissed his cheek and brushed his lips were hers before pulling back.  Reaching into a pouch at her waist, she drew out a handful of dried leaves and offered them to him.  When he stared at her, uncomprehending, she took a leaf and placed it in her mouth, and then indicated he should do the same.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Naabaahii,” she replied as she placed her hand on his chest, just above his heart.

The teenager sighed.  He didn’t know why he kept trying.

“Mama taught me not to put anything in my mouth if I didn’t know what it was,” he said with a crooked smile.

Cheayka pointed to her own cheek, which was bulging with the leaf, and then to the leaf in his hand.

He guessed she was trying to tell him that if she hadn’t dropped dead, he probably wouldn’t either.

Joe took the leaf in two fingers and smelled it, and then nibbled just the edge. The flavor was dark, like molasses or maybe prunes…with a touch of dirt.

“Yuck,” he said aloud.

Cheayka laughed as she pushed the leaf the rest of the way into his mouth.  Then she took his hand and began to climb.

He didn’t fight her.  For some reason, the mountain didn’t seem as imposing – in fact, he felt up to the challenge and within minutes was leading the way.  As Joe worked his way up the cliff, sight and sound became more acute.  Suddenly – unexpectedly – he became aware that they were not alone.  A great crowd of people had gathered below to cheer them on.  They wore clothing similar to the natives he’d seen in Cheayka’s village.  For all he knew, they were the people of her village, just gussied up.  Joy and expectation radiated from them.

From all but one of them.

The woman who’d been arguing with the man earlier stood near the front of the crowd.  Her face was terrible in its sorrow.  Joe sucked in air as his gaze locked on hers and the native’s emotions became his own.  When he halted, breathing hard, Cheyaka turned to look at him.  What he saw stunned him.   A deep, dark tide of anger rose within the dark pools of her wide and once innocent eyes.

Then, it was gone.

“Why do you hesitate, beloved?” the Indian girl asked.  “Have you not promised you would come with me?”

“I….”  Joe blinked.  “I can understand you!  How?”

Cheayka grinned.  “It is the power of the Ayahuasca leaf.  With it we become one.”

“Is that what we’re doing?”  Joe took a step back.  “You need my help, right?  It’s not like we’re getting…married or anything.”

“You do not love me?” she asked with a pout.

“Pa says I’m too young to know what love is yet.  Besides,” he looked her up and down, noting again her slender form and babyish face, “you’re just a kid.”

“She who gave life to me was younger than I when she did so,” the Indian girl replied as she drew closer.  “Do you not feel the bond between us?  Is it not your wish to be with me forever?”

The mingled scent of Cheayka’s skin, along with the power of the leaf made it nearly impossible to resist her.   “I…I…,” Joe stammered just before her lips found his and a darkness veiled his eyes.  “I….  Yes.”

“Come then,” a man’s voice said, “it is time.”

 

“Joseph.  Son, can you hear me?  Joseph, open your eyes and look at me.  It’s your pa.”

If he hadn’t used the buckle from his pants to check, and seen the boy’s breath coalesce on the polished silver surface, he would have thought he’d already gone to join his mother.  The rancher reached out to brush a clump of soiled curls from his son’s forehead.  There was a nasty gash on one side, half-healed.  He recognized it as the trail of a bullet that had barely missed its target.  Sadly, the second bullet had struck home.  Little Joe’s shirt was open and his chest was bound with ragged bandages.  Under them was some sort of poultice.  Under the poultice was an angry wound showing clear signs of infectivity.

It was a wonder the boy was alive.

Bending in close, he tried again.  “Joseph, its Pa.”

“He…cannot hear you.  Joseph is…beyond your reach.”

Ben stiffened.  His hand was on his gun and it was out of its holster and pointed at the darkness before he had time to draw a breath.

“Who are you?” he demanded.  “What do you want?  You will not take my son!”

For a moment there was no reply.  Then, the tall grasses masking the refuge he had chosen in a cleft in the rock parted and an old man stumbled through.

“Stay where you are!” Ben ordered.

The man ignored him.  “I mean you no harm, Benjamin Cartwright,” he said as he approached.  “Nor will I do harm to your son.  I am here to help him – and you.”

The rancher was on his feet now.  “How do you know who I am?”

“I know you, even as I know Hoss and Adam.”  The man inclined his head.  “This one is Joseph.  A dark wind has blown into your life, Benjamin Cartwright.  It means to claim one, if not all of your sons.”

Ben could see now that the old man was native, though he did not recognize his mode of dress.  “I said, stay where you are!” he barked.  “I need you to tell me who you are.”

The Indian halted a few feet away.  “It will mean nothing to you if I do.”

“Do it anyway.”

“I am Hania,” the stranger answered.  “I am what the white man calls a medicine man.  I was called by the Holy People to help your son.  The Healing Way was interrupted.  I must finish the ritual or your child will die.”

Ben could see that the old man had been soundly beaten.  Blood had crusted above both eyes and on his lips.  Still, his back was unbowed and his black eyes bright as obsidian rock struck by the sun.

“What is this ‘Healing Way’?  Does it have to do with the poultice on Joseph’s wound?”  Ben’s tone softened as he remembered himself.  “I thank you for that.  Joseph doesn’t appear to be in any pain.”

“Joseph is beyond pain,” the medicine man replied.  “In his dreams, he walks the land between the living and the dead.  The one who called upon the Dark Wind – one the white man would call a ‘witch’ – desires him.  If we do not intercede, he will be lost.  The dark wind will claim him and Joseph will not return.”

All of this was hocus-pocus.  Still….  Ben glanced at his son, who lay still as death.  It did seem as if Little Joe was…somewhere else.

“You said ‘we’,” the rancher countered.

“Yes.”

“What is it you want me to do?”

“First, look into my eyes.”

It was an odd request, but Ben did as the old man asked.  He met the medicine man’s gaze and saw no deception there, only a deep concern coupled with a breadth of knowledge of which he, a white man, could have no experience.

“Do you trust me, Benjamin Cartwright?”

Ben nodded.  Hesitantly.

The native reached into his pocket and produced a handful of dried leaves.

“Joseph cannot come to us.  We must journey together to him.”

 

 

NINE

“I’m tellin’ you, Pete.  It had to be that old injun!  He’s some kind of ghost or something.  He spirited the kid away!”

“Shut up, you idiot!  There ain’t no such thing.  It was a man what did it and this one here…” Adam felt his teeth rattle as the angered outlaw shook him, “…is gonna tell me who it was!”

The man in black looked from the miscreant grasping his shirt collar to the one hovering near the fire.  Pete was angry.  He was also afraid.  Not like the cook who was afraid of spells and charms cast in the dark.  Pete didn’t believe anything supernatural had happened.  No, the man who guarded them was afraid because he knew when the ‘boss’ returned the blame for ‘losing’ Little Joe would land squarely on his shoulders.

“Don’t tell him nothin’, Adam,” Hoss said between gritted teeth.  Pete’s gun was still anchored firmly against his brother’s head.  “He ain’t gonna shoot me.”

“Oh, yeah?!” the outlaw shouted.  “You just try me!”

“Pete,” he began.

The man with the gun glared at him.

“Sorry.  I hope it’s all right to call you ‘Pete’.”  ‘Stupid ugly brute’ was the appellation he would have preferred, but Adam thought that unwise considering the circumstances.  “You don’t want to shoot my brother.”

“Why not?  I shot the other one!”

‘Yes, you did, you bastard, and you will pay for that,’ he thought, but again held his tongue.  “You don’t want to shoot Hoss because we are too valuable to you alive.”

Pete’s expression changed.  “How’s that?”

“Our father is rather fond of us,” the man in black replied.  “In fact, he’d pay a king’s ransom to get us back.”

“Two king’s ransoms,” Hoss added quietly, catching on.

“Don’t listen to him, Pete,” the quavering cook warned.  “He’s just trying to –”

“Shut up, Mike!  I want to hear what this one has to say.”  The gun shifted from Hoss to him, and then back.  “So, you’re tellin’ me that your Pa’s gonna pay even more to get you back than that ten thousand we lifted from your saddlebags?”

“Pocket change,” Adam said.  “You’ve heard of the Ponderosa, surely?”

“Yeah, I know all about your fancy spread.”

“Did you know it covers one thousand square miles?”  Adam wondered if the outlaw could count that high.

Mike had drifted over.  “Damn!  That’s a lot of land.”

It was indeed.

“Pa spent twenty thousand alone this year just buying cattle.”  That was a bit of an exaggeration but Adam was sure God would forgive him for the lie…considering.

“And another ten thousand on them horses, don’t forget,” Hoss added.

“I’m sure, should you decide to…ransom us…that you could come out of it with….”  He looked from Pete to Mike.  “Ten thousand or more…each.”

Pete was falling for it.  Then, to Adam’s chagrin, the outlaw recalled the subject that had started this little parley.

“None of that explains what happened to the kid’s corpse,” the outlaw growled.

Adam sucked in air. It was his sincere prayer that Little Joe’s ‘demise’ was a guess and not a known fact.

The man in black shrugged.  “It just means our father is here.  Unless you’d rather choose to agree Mike over there that the old medicine man somehow magicked Joe’s body away.”

Hoss gave a little moan beside him.

‘Sorry, big guy,’ he thought, then said aloud, “Pa’s going to be pretty upset that you let Joe…pass.  I believe – at least this would be my choice if I knew there was an irate and vengeful father plus, maybe, a dozen or so lawman about to storm my camp – that the wisest course would be to open up negotiations.”

“The boss ain’t gonna like it,” Pete groused.  “He said we was to kill all of you.”

Adam pursed his lips.  “Ah, well, ‘all’ of us…dead…might make the boss happy, but what’s in it for you?”

“One thousand,” Mike replied, his tone dolorous.  “A measly one thousand split two ways.”

Adam cleared his throat.  “Well, now, I think a school boy of five could do the math.  If I was you, I’d keep us safe.  After all, Pa can’t come in with guns blazing so long as you have us in your custody.  Isn’t that right, Hoss?”

“It sure enough is, Adam.”

“One of you would be enough,” Pete snarled.

“True, but two live Cartwrights are worth twice as much as one.”  Adam paused to let that sink in.  “It’s a matter of perspective.”

The outlaw was scowling – which, he supposed, meant he was thinking.  “I gotta talk this over with Mike,” Pete said at last and, gesturing to the other man, moved to the other side of the camp.

“Whew!” Hoss said after a minute.  “That was some fast thinkin’, brother.”

“It’s not too hard when one is dealing with flunkies.  Neither Pete nor Mike have any stake in this other than money.  I offered them more than Bader.  That should tip the scales in our favor.”

“So, maybe you and I come out of this alive, but what about Little Joe?  I mean, what do you think really happened?”  Hoss’ bright blue eyes were wide with hope.  “You really think Pa is here?”

No, he didn’t.  The odds were against it.  The way from the Ponderosa to the border of the Utah Territory was long and fraught with unseen danger.

But if anyone could do it, it would be Ben Cartwright.

“Honestly, Hoss, I don’t know.  It may have been Hania who moved Joe.”

“So you think that there medicine man’s alive too?”

“I hope he is.  Perhaps the outlaws beat him and left him for dead – but maybe he wasn’t.  I believe, even though Hania’s appearance is frail, that he as tough as the bones of these mountains.”

“I think so too.”  Hoss sighed.  “I sure hope he has Little Joe, or Pa does, and not anybody else.  Seems to me that, maybe, it was Joe these fellers was after all along.  I mean, they took him out first.”

“And yet, Pete said they’d been paid to kill all three of us.”  He shook his head. “I don’t think we’ll know the truth until we come face to face with Norwood Bader.”

“Pa’s gonna be awful upset that his old friend turned out to be a villain.”

“Yes, I….”  Adam stopped in mid-sentence.  Pete had returned.  Mike trailed after him.

“All right, Cartwright,” the outlaw said.  “Where do we begin?”

 

Ben glanced at the empty bowl beside him and, not for the first time, entertained the thought that he might be mad.  What was he doing sitting cross-legged on the desert sands beside an Indian medicine man, waiting to enter another world?  He needed to be in this world!

He had to help his sons!

“This is how you help them,” Hania said, as if reading his mind.  “We defeat the witch.”

“What ‘witch’ are you…?”

The rancher sucked in a startled breathe.  He was no longer seated on the desert floor, but was on his feet walking through a field of maize.  Ben halted in midstride and gaped at the giant stalks.

“Good Lord!”

“Yes,” a strong voice agreed.  “Yeii is good, as is Yahweh.  He is here.”

Ben turned to see who had spoken and was surprised to find that it was indeed Hania, but not the Hania he knew.  The healer was no longer old or bent with care, but young.  He stood tall, his dark eyes keen and clear; his hair black as the coat of a bear.

Power exuded from his every pore.

The medicine man smiled.  “Are they not the words of your God, Benjamin Cartwright?  ‘The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak’.”

“Is it…really you?”

Hania inclined his head.  “Yes.  Here, in the place between life and death, you see me as I really am.  Even as I see who you truly are – a man, tall as a mountain, whose faith is rooted just as deeply.”

Ben indicated the field of waving grain around them.  “Where are we?”

“This is the land your young son walks.”  The healer turned.  “Come, we must hurry,” he added as he moved.  “Like you, Joseph is a good man, but he has been deceived by the one who calls upon the Dark Wind.”

The rancher touched one of the tall stalks of maize.  It was there.  He could feel its leathery hide beneath his fingers.  Still, he had a hard time accepting that what he experienced was ‘real’.  It had to be a dream.  That thought brought a chuckle.  Hadn’t he reared his boys on the Good Book, and in it, weren’t there men of vision – Elijah and the other prophets, and his son’s namesake, Joseph – who dreamed?  Their visions…their dreams were true.  He had to admit that there were times when God – Hania’s Yeii – chose to break into human reality to work His will.

Perhaps, this was one of them.

“Where is he?  Where is my son?  How has Joseph been deceived and by whom?”

Hania halted and turned back.  “Your thoughts are of the words that guide your life.  Of Jehovah and the men who followed him.  Tell me, Benjamin Cartwright, how was First Man deceived?”

“First man?”  Ben asked.  “You mean Adam?”

The medicine man nodded.

“Well, by Eve.  By a woman….”  His heart sank.  “Oh, Joseph….”

Hania touched his shoulder.  “There is more here than you can see.  More, even, than I know.   I was called from my solitude by one seeking help and yet, now, it seems I too was deceived.  Before the end, we will know.”

“What end?” he demanded.

The shaman left the path, passing into the tall field of maize.

“That I do not know.”

Hania indicated their destination lay miles ahead, and yet they walked it in minutes.  It was as if time had no meaning in this place.  The maize field soon gave way to a desert kissed by an impossible spring, and then the desert to a tall crag cleft in twain by a rocky shelf.  The shaman halted at its base and looked up.  Ben did the same.  A native man occupied the ledge.  He was even taller than the shaman and was powerfully built.  His oiled skin blazed in the rising light, but nowhere near as bright as the dark eyes that fixed them with loathing.

A second later, he was gone.

“Is Joseph up there?” Ben asked his companion.

Hania nodded.

Without another word – or a thought for his own safety – the determined father began to climb.

 

“You know, Adam, I’m getting’ awful tired of sittin’ here on my be-hind while there’s so much goin’ on.”

“I know, but I’m afraid I couldn’t convince Pete to free both of us.”  The man in black glanced over his shoulder.  “From what I have seen,” Adam continued, his voice pitched low, “once we’re gone, you shouldn’t have any trouble getting Mike to free you.  He’s really spooked.”

“So am I, Adam.  You really think that there medicine man ‘magicked’ Little Joe out of here?”

Did he really think it?  No.

Was it a possibility…?

“Someone made off with Joe.  It could have been Hania – but only if he pulled little brother out by his heels.”

Hoss swallowed over his fear.  “You think Little Joe’s still alive?”

“I have to believe he is.  Maybe I can –“

“Stop your yappin’, Cartwright, and get over here, or I’m gonna tie you up again and go without you.”

Ah, the ever-agreeable Pete.

“Certainly,” he replied.  “I’ll see you later, Hoss.”

“You and Pa – and Little Joe, you mean.”

Adam sighed.  “If it’s within my power.  Yes.”

Before Hoss could say anything else, the man in black turned and walked to the other side of the outlaws’ camp.  He glanced at the spot where his baby brother had been before turning to Pete.

“Give me your hands!” the outlaw growled.

“I can travel better unimpeded.”

“I don’t care how fast you pedal anythin’!  I ain’t takin’ a chance on you pullin’ a gun or somethin’.  Now, turn round while I tie your hands!”

Peasant!

Adam grunted as the outlaw bound his wrists with a thick cord, making certain the rope was tight enough to cut off his circulation.  Hobbled, so to speak, he walked in front of Pete ever aware of the barrel of his guard’s rifle pressed between his shoulder-blades.  When they had gone a quarter mile or so, the outlaw ordered him to halt.

“Call your old man,” he ordered. “See if he answers.”

Damn! There was the rub.  Was his father really here, or would his call simply alert some other – perhaps – less friendly stranger to their presence?

Adam cleared his throat.  “Pa!  Pa, are you out there?  It’s Adam.”

There was no reply.

Pete nudged him with the rifle.  “Try again!”

“Pa, if you’re out there, I’d appreciate you making an appearance.”  To give him a little more incentive, the outlaw dug the nose of the barrel in-between two vertebrae and pulled back the rifle’s hammer.  “Er, Pa….”

They both leaned forward, listening.  There’d been a sound, but it didn’t appear to be a reply.  It was more like someone close by was caught deep in the throes of a night terror and was sleep-screaming – a peculiar sound his little brother’s bad dreams had made them all very well acquainted with.

“What do you think that is?” Pete asked, his voice shaking a bit.

Adam hesitated, but he couldn’t help himself.  “I’d say it sounds a lot like my little brother.  Maybe he’s passed over and is looking for you.”

The nose of the gun wavered a bit where it pressed into his flesh. “You ain’t gonna scare me with none of that mumbo-jumbo, Cartwright.  I know you don’t believe it.  I heard you was an ed-ji-cated man.”

A passage Adam had read somewhere came to mind.  ‘Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.’

He certainly hoped so.

“The West is young, Pete,” he said with a sigh.  “Back East, where I got my ed-ji-ca-tion, they’ve forgotten things you and I have yet to learn.  When I was in Massachusetts, I saw a tombstone proclaiming that the man buried in the grave was one of the vampiri.”

‘The what?”

“A vampire.”

“Pshaw!  There ain’t no such thing.”

“Can we be certain?  The parson had the corpse dug up and they found a stake driven through its heart.  The poor man’s head had been cut off and placed between his legs.”  He glanced at Pete and noted he had paled a bit.  “I’m sure you have heard of whole families taken ill after one member has died – coughing up blood, growing pale…dying.”

The outlaw rolled his squinty eyes.  “That’s consumption, you idiot.”

“Is it?  How do you know?  Don’t tell me you trust the learned?”  Adam leaned in.  “Have you ever considered that they’re lying to us all?  Perhaps they are in…cahoots…with the dead.”  He paused to whisper a quick prayer that his words were untrue.  “It might be that – even now – my little brother’s spirit lurks in the shadows ahead.  Wait.  What was that?”  He raised both hands to his ear.  “Do you hear him?”

God bless whoever it was out there.  They moaned at precisely the right instant.

It wasn’t easy taking a man out with your hands tied.  In fact, it took all of the ‘ed-ji-cation’ he had, but Adam did it.  Less than a minute later Pete was lying flat on his face in the scrub.

Now, to get his hands free!

 

Once on the ledge Ben halted, hands on knees to catch his breath.  Then, with deliberate strides, he headed for the cave that gaped before him.  An unexpected sound stopped him and turned him on his heel.  Had someone called?  He waited for the call to be repeated.  It was not.  He snorted.  Of course, it was not!  It had sounded like his eldest calling out his name, but that was absurd.  Adam was far away, held captive in the outlaws’ camp.  Ben closed his eyes and shook off his unease.  He needed to keep his mind on what he was doing if he was to save Joseph.

Strange as what he was doing was!

Ben shifted to the side as his companion approached, Hania having completed his climb as well.  The medicine man placed a finger to his lips, calling for silence and stealth, before stepping into the cave and disappearing into the darkness.  The anxious father followed – slowly.

He was out of his depth here.

Ben’s bewilderment grew as the two of them made their way along a dark passageway lined with chalk drawings.  Where were they going?  And why?  His answer came when the passage opened out into a rocky grotto, illuminated by a single shaft of light that pierced the ceiling above.  Joseph!  Little Joe was there!  His son stood at the center of the cavern, in front of a well; his hands linked with that of an Indian girl.  His youngest was dressed in his traveling clothes – in his favorite dark blue shirt and black pants – and looked hale and hearty.  The girl looked directly at them.  In her black eyes Ben read both longing and loathing.

Longing for Joseph.

Loathing for him.

“Is she the witch?” he asked Hania.

The medicine man nodded.  A second later, he shook his head.  “Call your son, Ben Cartwright.  Let Joseph know you are here.”

Ben needed no urging to do so.  “Little Joe,” he said as he took a step forward into the light.  “Son, it’s your pa.  I’m here.  Look at me.”

A shudder ran the length of the boy’s lean frame, but he gave no response.

“Joseph!” the rancher called again, more sharply this time.  “That’s an order!  Look at me!”

It was part and parcel, marrow and bone of his boys, to respond to that tone.  Joseph started and looked at him.  At first, the boy’s green eyes showed no sign of recognition.  Then his mouth opened and his full lips formed a single word.

‘Pa?’

The Indian girl gripped Joseph’s hand.  “You will not have him,” she proclaimed, her tone guttural and harsh.  “You shall not have him.  He is mine!”

“No!” Ben countered.  “Joseph is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.  He belongs to me!”

“Pa?”

This time, his son spoke aloud.  Little Joe reached out and took a stumbling step toward him.  Instantly, the Indian girl moved to block his way.  She closed her eyes and lifted her hands and began to chant in a language he did not know.  In response, a black cloud rose from the well like a sudden storm to envelop her lithe form, blotting out any sign of his son.

It was then Ben understood.  This was his nightmare become reality.  This girl – or whatever she was – was the one who sought to keep him from his sons.

The urge to turn and run was all but overwhelming.

He felt Hania’s touch on his arm.

“Goodness is stronger than evil.  Love is stronger than hate.  Light is stronger than darkness.  Life is stronger than death.  Victory is ours,” the medicine man intoned.  “Repeat these words with me, Benjamin Cartwright.  Repeat and believe!”  Hania’s fingers gripped his flesh.  “Goodness is stronger than evil.  Love is stronger than hate….”

‘…light is stronger than darkness,” the rancher mouthed.  ‘Life is stronger than death.’

“Out loud!”

His voice was weak, not his voice at all at first, but it grew in power and potency with every word that fell from his dry, cracked lips.

“Love is stronger than hate,” Ben proclaimed and meant it.  “Light is stronger than darkness.  Life is stronger than death.  Victory is ours!”

Hania took hold of his hand.  “Join us, Joseph!  Join with your father and me!” the shaman shouted as he stretched the other hand out toward his bewitched son.  “Joseph, you must believe!  Life is stronger than death!  Victory can be yours!”

It was all Ben could do to keep his feet in the midst of the roiling, churning blackness that swirled and whirled around them, seeking to take his breath and life away.

But he did keep his feet.

And his sanity.

“Joseph, its Pa!  Choose life, boy!” he shouted.  “Take Hania’s hand!”

And then?

A miracle!

Joseph’s slender form appeared from out of the storm-cloud of acrimony and hate.  Their eyes met – Ben’s and his son’s.  Little Joe smiled.  He took the medicine man’s hand.

After that, Ben knew nothing.

 

 

TEN

Adam tented his fingers and leaned forward, gazing more deeply into the fire he had kindled on the immense hearth that dominated the great room of the Ponderosa ranch house.  All was quiet at the moment.

The night before had been very different.

It had been a long and slow road home.  The journey that took his father a week took three weeks for four very weary travelers.  Nearly a month was gone from their lives.

Thank God none of them lost their lives.

Adam roused himself.  He walked to the front door, opened it, and stepped outside.  Taking a seat on the table banked up against the rough-hewn log wall of the house, he considered the sunrise and how blessed they were to see it as a family.  He didn’t understand what had happened.  In fact, what had happened went against every understanding of the world he had been taught.  Still, he couldn’t deny what his eyes had seen.

Or his soul experienced.

After subduing Pete, he’d turned back to the camp to free Hoss.  While he wouldn’t exactly have called the journey a waste of time, it was unnecessary.  By the time he entered the outlaws’ camp, his brother was free.  It turned out Mike wasn’t really an ‘outlaw’.  He’d just been hired to cook.  When he realized that cooperating with the Cartwrights might keep his neck from being stretched, he’d removed the ropes from Hoss’ hands and feet and offered to go find a sheriff.

It seemed middle brother had quite a gift with words as well!

On his honor – with God, his mother, and everything else as witness – Mike had sworn that he would ride to the nearest town and return with the law.  When questioned, the reformed outlaw told Hoss that he knew little of the machinations of those above him.  Pete kept him mostly in the dark.  He had no idea why Norwood Bader wanted the three of them dead.  What the mortified cook did know was that Bader’s business had failed the year before and the older man was teetering on the brink of losing everything.  Some said it had driven him over the edge.  Still, it seemed a long leap from standing on the cliff’s edge of jealousy to plunging over it into murder.

There had to be something else – something more – that had riven his father’s old friend to betray him.

He and Hoss saw Mike on his way before turning back to search for Little Joe.  On the way they passed Pete where he lay in the desert sand.  The outlaw hadn’t moved an inch.  Hoss bound the scoundrel hand and foot, picked him up, and unceremoniously pressed the insensible man into a dark chink in a rocky outcropping.  Middle brother left him there with a slap of his hands and the words ‘good riddance to bad rubbish!’

At first the desert was silent.  Then, as they traveled deeper into it, the moaning he’d heard before returned.  There were words in the sound of it, but it was difficult, if not impossible, to make them out.  They both knew from experience that when a man talked or screamed in the throes of a nightmare, it was as if the speaker was under water or had a mouth full of molasses.  They decided to head straight for whoever it was, hoping against hope that the one making all that noise would prove to be Little Joe.  In all reality, Adam expected to find some stranger, caught in the grip of a waking terror.

Instead, it was they who were plunged into one.

The scene they came upon, bathed in the light of a dying fire, was as eerie as a lone coyote’s howl.  Little Joe lay on the ground, his legs straight; his arms crossed over his chest like a corpse.  A large circle of colored sand had been drawn around him, the edge of which was decorated with images and runes.  To one side – on the west of Joe – sat Hania.

On the east was their pa.

Both men appeared to be in a state of semi-consciousness, like a man in a coma who can see and hear but not speak.  They addressed each in turn, but neither responded – at least not to them.  Pa and the old Indian seemed to be talking to someone else.  At times their words were nothing but whispers.  At others, they became weird wailing shouts.  Throughout it all Joe lay as one dead.  Not a twitch, and nary a sound did little brother make.  Hoss wanted to shake the two to try to wake them, but something deep within him told Adam that course would not be wise.

He didn’t understand what was going on, but he knew what was going on.

It was a battle for their baby brother’s soul.

_____

Adam took Hoss by the arm and led him away from the pair and seated him some twenty feet away.  There were times he thought he might have to tie the big man down, but was thankful that Hoss listened when he told him to wait.  The contest between the combined will of Hania and his father and some unknown malignancy continued as the day turned to night and the moon rose to light a starless sky.  Then, as the blessed sun kissed the horizon and the first fingers of its golden light walked the desolate sands, their father stirred.  Pa’s near-black eyes opened and closed and he drew a deep breath, like a man emerging from the sea.

That was all Hoss needed.  Middle brother was on his feet and running.

Adam followed more slowly and arrived just as the big man placed a hand on their father’s shoulder.

“Pa?” Hoss pleaded.  “Pa?  Can you hear me?”

“Pa,” Adam repeated.  “It’s us.  Adam and Hoss.”

Their father’s gaze was clouded with weariness.  It took a few seconds for him to stir.  His lips opened to form a word, but no sound issued forth.

Water!  He wanted water!

“Pa’s thirsty, Hoss,” he told his brother.  “Get the canteen.”

The cool, clear liquid revived the older man some, but he was still weak and unable to rise.  Pa capped the canteen and then looked at them in turn.  This time the light of recognition was in his eyes.

“Hoss,” he croaked.  “Adam.”

“Yeah, Pa.  We’re both here,” Hoss replied, his tone gentle.

Their father’s eyes widened.  He turned, seeking the quiet figure that lay on the ground nearby.  “Joseph,” he croaked.  “Did your brother come with me?”

‘What do you think he means?’ middle brother mouthed over the pa’s head.

“I don’t know,” he said as he rose.  “But I’m going to find out.”

As he knelt at his baby brother’s side, Adam cast a glance at the shaman.  Hania hadn’t stirred  It appeared that he was still deep within the trance from which their father had awakened.  Curious, the man in black rose, intent on checking on him.

A feeble touch on his leg drove all other thoughts out of his head.

All other thoughts but joy.

Little Joe’s eyes were open.  “A…dam?” he asked.

Adam caught the hand his brother had lifted toward him and squeezed it between his own.  “Yeah, buddy.  It’s me.  Hoss is here too.”

Joe frowned.  “Pa?”

“Pa’s here.  He’s okay.”  He touched his brother’s sweat and dirt clumped curls.  “I have to admit, he looks better than you.”

Little brother snorted, sort of smiled, and fell silent again.  Adam waited a moment before pressing his ear to his brother’s chest.  Relief flooded through him when he found a steady heartbeat.  It changed to amazement as he noted his brother’s condition.  The poultice was gone.  Where Joe’s skin was exposed, there were no crimson streaks.  The infectivity was gone and the wound nearly healed.

_____

Adam had returned to the fire.  He shook his head and he reached for the poker.

He had yet to figure that one out.

“Hey there, Adam,” Hoss said as he entered the house and began to remove his coat.  He’d been out tending to the animals.  “You been up to visit Pa or Little Joe yet?”

He shook his head.  “The doc said to let them sleep.”

“That’s okay, only….”

Adam turned to look.  Hoss was…discomforted, to say the least.  He noticed that his brother had left the door open behind him.  Unexpectedly, Roy Coffee stepped through.

“Howdy, Adam,” the lawman said.

“Hey, Roy,” he replied.  “What brings you out so late?”

“Your pa well enough to talk to me yet?”

Adam snorted. “Not according to Doc Marin.”

“Not Little Joe neither?”  The lawman shook his head before he replied.  “No, I s’pose not.”

“What do you need to ask them, Roy?  Maybe Hoss or I can help.”

The sheriff blew out a sigh.  “Okay if I sit down afore answerin’?” he asked.  “I came straight from Virginia City.  I been on the road four hours and I am plumb tuckered out.”

“Sure.  You want some coffee?”

Roy beamed.  “If it’s Hop Sing’s.”

At that moment their cook appeared tray in hand.  “Sheriff’s horse velly velly noisy.  Know it Mister Roy and know he want hot coffee now.”

“Hop Sing you’re an angel!”

The Asian man looked as if he wasn’t sure whether that was a compliment or an insult. “You drink coffee,” he said as he placed the tray on the table.  “More in kitchen if you want not to sleep tonight.”

With that, he was gone.

Adam gave the sheriff a few minutes to warm up before he cleared his throat and asked, “Ahem.  Roy, you were going to tell me what you’re here for.”

The lawman put the cup down and reached into a pocket, from which he produced several envelopes.  He held them out and waited.

Adam frowned as he sat down and scanned the telegrams’ exteriors.  All were addressed to his father. Several were marked ‘Utah Territory’.

“Give ‘em a read while I finish my coffee, son,” Roy prompted.

It took several minutes to do that – and a few more to digest what he’d read.  When he’d finished, Adam leaned back in his chair.

“Norman Bates is dead,” he announced, his voice void of emotion.

“Dead?”  Hoss repeated.  “How?”

Adam turned to Roy.  “Would you care to answer that?  I know you read the telegrams.”

“Well, a sheriff’s got a right to know when they come from another sheriff!” the lawman groused.  “Seems most say a witch got him, Hoss.  Them what believe in that kind of thing, anyhow.”

Middle brother gaped.  “A witch?!”

Adam pressed entwined fingers to his chin.  He’d heard of it before.  The telegrams said the authorities found ‘corpse powder’ on the dead man’s clothes and in his drink; a means used by Navajo witches to destroy their enemies.  The Diné believed that contact with a dead body could bring about another’s death.  Witches ground up bones and put the powder in their enemy’s food or blew it in their faces.

Ugh.

The man in black turned to address his brother.  “It says in one of these telegrams, Hoss, that Peter Messing – our ‘host’ in the outlaw camp – confessed to all of this on provision that he would go to prison and not hang.  He told the Utah sheriff that Norwood Bader was insane and had been going insane for some time.  It began when Pa stayed home and sent his sons to fetch the horses alone.  Bader began to hate, and that hate grew into a dangerous jealousy.  Apparently, a year ago – when he lost his wife and youngest son – that jealousy grew into a desire to make Ben Cartwright suffer like he’d suffered.”

“Is that why he wanted Little Joe dead most of all?” Hoss asked.  ‘Cause of the young one dyin’ last?”

“Who knows?” Roy asked with a shrug.  “It’s as good an explanation as any we’re likely to get with Bader dead.”

“Hoss, it’s clear Bader wanted all of us dead, but it’s common knowledge how Pa dotes on Joe,” Adam said.  “Maybe he thought Joe’s death would hurt Pa in a way no one but another father who has lost his youngest son could understand.”

Hoss thought a moment.  “So where’s this witch come in?”

“Apparently Bader started seein’ one; kind of a dark shaman, if you like,” Adam replied.  “His men knew all about it and thought Bader was crazy.”

“Then why’d they do what they did?” the big man asked.

Adam sighed.  “Money.  What else?”

Hoss leaned forward in his chair.  “So let me get this straight.  Bader got his dander up ‘cause his sons was dead and Pa’s was livin’…right?”

“Right.  And, I imagine, because Pa has been successful.  Don’t forget Bader’s ranch had failed.”

“Okay….  So he goes to this here Indian…witch…and gets them to put a spell on Pa?  Is that it?”

“Or maybe on Joe.  Or on all of us.”  Adam shrugged.  “Who knows?”

Hoss swallowed hard.  “And it worked?  Is that possible?”

The man in black rose to his feet and returned to the fire.  Horatio’s speech from the last act of Hamlet came to mind.  ‘There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’

Such ‘things’ were certainly not in his philosophy.

“It don’t matter none from the law’s point of view,” Roy said as he rose to his feet.  “Can’t prove any of it.  But we do have kidnappin’ and attempted murder.  Them’s charges the law understands.”  The sheriff paused on his way to the door and turned back.  “Your Pa and Little Joe?  They’re gonna be all right?  The charge is gonna be ‘attempted’ murder, right”

“So Doc Martin says,” Adam replied.  “Pa’s exhausted.  A few days in bed should see him right as rain.  Joe….”  How to put it?  “Joe’s doing well physically, but he’s still…confused about what happened.”

That is, either Little Joe was or they were.

“Well, then, that’s all right.”  Roy put his hand on the door latch.  “You send me word when either one of them can talk.”

“We will,” he replied.

After Roy had left, Hoss turned to him.  “You want to go check on Pa and Joe, or do you want me to?”

“You take Pa.  I’ll take Joe.”  He smiled.  “At least, this time.”

Hoss was having a hard time with Joe not being…Joe.

The big man nodded, even as tears entered his eyes.  “You tell punkin I love him – if he’s awake, that is.”

He would.

He was worried about his little buddy too.

 

Adam stood at the bottom of the steps until his brother disappeared, and then slowly followed Hoss to the second floor.  The big man would sit with Pa, maybe talk for a while, and get him what he needed.  He didn’t know what he was going to do if Joe was awake.  The few times little brother had managed to swim to the surface of consciousness, none of what he said made sense.  Joe’s speech was garbled, almost as if he were caught in an endless night terror.  Still, there was one word that was crystal clear.

Cheayka.

Adam shuddered at the image that name conjured.

By the time he arrived at the door to Joe’s room, Hoss had entered their father’s.  He peeked in and saw that the big man had pulled a chair up beside the bed and was leaning back, book in hand.  Adam smiled.  It wouldn’t be long before he heard his brother snoring.  It was late.  Near midnight.  Adam wrinkled his nose.

The witching hour.

Taking hold of the latch on his little brother’s door, the man in black lifted it and pushed it in inch so he could see if Joe was sleeping.  Nothing could have startled him more than to be issued an invitation.

“Come on in.  I’m awake.”

Adam opened the door and stepped inside.  “Is that you, Joe?”

His brother’s voice was weak, but after six days, it was his own.  “Well, it ain’t President Lincoln.”

“You’re a little short for Lincoln,” he replied as he pulled up a chair.

Joe chuckled and then coughed.

“You want some water?”

“Sure.  Thanks.”

The water was in a pitcher on his brother’s dresser across the room, along with a glass.  Hop Sing was getting tired of replacing both.  Joe had been having nightmares and in his thrashing had broken two sets.

“You look tired,” Joe said as he accepted the glass.

“Well, you’ve been kind of…vocal in your sleep lately.”

The glass sunk to his brother’s blanket.  Joe got a faraway look in his eyes and turned toward the window as if expecting someone to come through it.

“Joe?”

A pale smile curled his brother’s full lips.  “She’s been here, you know.”

“She?”

Joe looked right at him.  “Cheayka.  She said to tell you thanks for the blanket, even though she didn’t need it.”

A shiver climbed from his tailbone right up his spine to his neck where the hairs stood at attention.

“How do you know about that?” Adam asked, his voice robbed of strength by wonder.

“I told you.  Cheayka told me.  Or maybe I should say, Ajei.  That’s her real name.  Cheayka is kind of the way her people say ‘the girl’.”

If it was possible for the chill to become more intense, it did.

Or ‘the maiden’.

“Joe…” he began.

“I know. What I’m saying doesn’t make any sense, but it’s true, Adam.”  Tears entered his brother’s eyes.  “It was real!”

“Joe, the dead can’t speak.”

“This one can.”  His brother frowned.  “You know, I should have known something was wrong when she started speaking in English.  She didn’t know English, and then, suddenly she did.”  He turned to look at him.  “That’s why she came, Adam, to tell me it wasn’t her.”

“What wasn’t her?”

“The one who came that last time.  The…girl who led me up to the mountain.  That was….”  Joe shuddered.  “Something else.  Something…dark.”

A Navajo witch, maybe?

Adam wanted to smack himself for even thinking it.

“Ajei lived a long time ago.  Hundreds of years ago, in fact.  There was a man in her tribe who claimed to be good, but was bad.  Very bad.”  Joe’s voice shook.  “He was…he was her father.”

“What?”

“Ajei’s people were dying.  Something was killing the corn.  It blackened and died, and their tribe was starving.  Her father was their medicine man and he believed in the old ways.  He told them they had to sacrifice something of great worth – something of the greatest worth.”

Adam was horrified.  “And he chose his own daughter?”

Joe nodded.  “Her mother argued against it, but the people were scared and he convinced them that there was nothing else to do.”  His brother’s breathing was rapid and he’d grown pale.  “Ajei walked all those miles alone, Adam.  She…thought she was dying for her people, but that wasn’t the truth.  Her father was evil.  He sacrificed her to feed the Dark Wind.”

“Joe, maybe you better stop.”

“No!”  The teenager was wide-eyed.  Joe swallowed and got hold of himself.  “Adam, please.  I have to tell someone who believes me.  You believe me.  Don’t you?”

He had to be honest.  “I want to believe.”

His brother stared at him and then leaned his curly head back against the pillow.  “Pa knows because he was there.  I guess that has to be enough.”

“Pa?  What do you mean, he was there?”

Joe’s eyes were growing heavy.  He spoke without opening them.  “He saved me.  He saved Ajei.  Pa’s love brought us back.”

Adam had risen to stand at his brother’s side. ‘Us?”

Joe nodded sleepily.  “That’s why Ajei came.  To say goodbye.  She’s free now….”

The man in black placed a hand on his brother’s arm.  “Well, all I can say is that I’m glad we didn’t have to say goodbye.”  Adam reached up to brush a tear aside.

It was a good thing little brother was fast asleep.

Adam pulled the cover up to Joe’s chin and tucked him in like he had when his brother was a little kid, and then, on impulse leaned down to brush Joe’s forehead with a kiss.  After that, he turned the wick down, darkening the room until it was illuminated by nothing but the moon.  The poet in him made him turn toward that pale white orb before he left – the muse of many a literary dream.

Only to find he was in his own.

She was there, standing in front of the window.  The Indian girl wore the same leather dress and red cloak he had seen on her mummified remains.  Her lustrous hair was a mass of black braids, and upon her head she wore a tall white hat edged with white-feather wings that gave her the appearance of a queen.  Adam stood stock-still, incapable of movement as she approached.  Once a t his side, Cheayka – no, Ajei – held out her hand.  She grinned and wiggled her fingers, indicating he should take them.  Adam reached out and for just a moment felt the brush of soft lips on his skin.

Then, she was gone.

THE END

________________________________

Author’s Note:

This story came about as a result of several things.  The first was discovering and watching a National Geographic documentary entitled ‘Child Mummy Sacrifice’ that told the story of three 500 year old Inca children found frozen at the top of a 20,000 foot high inactive volcano.  The documentary explained that these children were sacrificed (the youngest was app. 8 years old) to appease the Inca’s ‘god’ and to ask for a famine to end.  I did further research on the oldest among them, a 15 year old girl named ‘La Doncella’ or ‘the maiden’ by those who found her.  The state of preservation of the mummy is so phenomenal that you expect her to lift her head and look at you.  The story of this innocent girl, sacrificed – or so the archeologists believe – by her shaman father, has haunted me ever since.  I had to find some way to purge it.

Writing is often the ‘way’ for me.

The second inspiration came from a real-life experience, which was a harrowing visit several years ago to a cliff dwelling in New Mexico called Mt. Gila.  The climb up was intense and the way down, traumatic.  A friend and I climbed over twenty stories to enter the ancient dwelling and explore it.  Mt. Gila is one of only a handful of cliff dwellings in the United States you can actually enter.  In it was a primitive Native American domicile, perched on the edge of a 100 plus foot drop.  There were markings or cave paintings remaining on a few of the walls, left by those who had once lived there.  At the time I told my friend that ancient dwelling would find its way into one of my stories someday.

It finally did.

For those of you who understand what organic writing is (writing with no outline and no idea at all of where you or the story are going), this tale is a good example.  I planted those two seeds and let the characters and my ‘muse’ take off, growing and developing ‘organically’ or as they wanted.  I had no intention of involving a Dinétah/Ute shaman, or indeed, of Ben Cartwright riding in pursuit of his boys.  (After all, they were in Utah, for goodness sake!)  The muse had other ideas.  I would like to apologize up front for crunching a few miles so Ben could make it on time, and any missteps I have made concerning the Navajo Indians’ beliefs or ceremonies.  I did my best, but was working from the limited resources of my own understanding and what I could find online.  Last of all, I changed the maiden’s cultural heritage from Incan to Anasazi since those ancient Indians were found in America’s West.

In other words, this story is a bit of a fantasy.  Not particularly surprising, I am sure, if you have read it.

 Shizhé’é – father

Bighangi – home

Wóshdę́ę́ – come

Ajei – my heart

Hóchxó, the polar opposite of hózhó,

Chʼikę́ę́h – maiden

Yas – snow

Hania – spirit warrior

Tags: Little Joe, Ben, Hoss, Adam, supernatural, SJS, ghost, spirit, romance