Synopsis: Hoss communes with Nature while thinking about the unique characteristics of each member of his family and their ties to the land.
Rating:  G
Words:  1,200

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Snow, Falling Softly

Snow stretched out in an endless vista in the mountains, the trees weighted heavily as the sky was achingly-blue. The color matched the eyes of the big man leisurely drinking a cup of coffee by his campfire.

Hoss Cartwright was wearing his big, brown winter coat, his ten-gallon hat keeping his head warm. A rifle was set on the ground beside him, and his horse Chubb contentedly grazed on a bag of oats. It was cold, but not dangerously so, and Hoss was wearing brown gloves to keep his hands warm. He gazed up at the sky, watching a flock of crows fly by, and his attention shifted to a chattering squirrel in the branch of a pine tree.

He tossed out the dregs of his coffee and put out the fire. He’d spotted some cougar tracks and wanted to be prepared in case the big cat made an appearance. Hoss always regretted the destruction of such a fine beast. Still, he understood the ways of Nature.

He broke camp and was soon on his way, heading to check a line shack. Out of all his family, he was the most attuned to Nature and her ways. He was one with the mountains, streams, soil. Lake Tahoe was like looking into his soul.

His father had a special reverence for the land. He had left Boston to come to this vast wilderness to forge his dream into reality and had raised his family here to love it as he did. Hoss greatly admired his father, whose strength of will and purpose had seen his family through bad times as well as building an empire.

He didn’t know if he could have survived the loss of three wives as his father had through the years. Ben Cartwright was the strongest man he knew.

He was not blind to his father’s faults. He could be as irritated as Adam and Joe at being treated like a child, but it was worse for Adam, he reckoned. Being the eldest son and a partner in ranch-building and raising his brothers would naturally make Adam feel that he should be treated as an equal at all times, and not just when it suited his father. Hoss was glad that his natural love of harmony kept him from some of the rows that Adam and Ben experienced, but there was always the quiet of the hills to keep him centered.

He also admired Adam greatly. His older brother was the smartest man he knew. Adam read as voraciously as Hoss ate, and that was saying something! Hoss smiled. Adam could quote Shakespeare and poetry and knew complicated engineering and could tell you the exact dates of Julius Caesar’s battles and the customs of the Egyptian Pharaohs if he had a mind to. His hunger for knowledge and for sharing it had driven him to Boston for four years.

Hoss had missed Adam terribly, and had feared that the allure of the Athens of America would just be too much for his older brother. In Boston, Adam had attended the theater and concerts, heard lectures and poetry readings, and had studied to his heart’s content. He had joined the New England Abolitionist Society and had gone to political and anti-slavery rallies. A whirlwind of intellectual excitement had been at his fingertips, but he had chosen to return to Nevada, his own love of the land and his family making his decision for him.

Adam had toiled beside his father in building the Ponderosa, and he wasn’t about to let it go. Not now. Not yet. Maybe someday he would see the world, but for now he was content to view the center of his world as the Ponderosa, getting his cultural fixes through correspondence with friends from Boston and trips to San Francisco. And Virginia City’s silver barons wanted to be cultured, so they were bringing opera and plays and all kinds of literary things to the town.

Adam loved a hunting trip or just a nature journey with Hoss, neither of them needing to chatter incessantly. The silence suited them both, and it was comfortable.

Hoss was content that Adam was content.

Little Joe. Hoss smiled as he nudged Chubb a little faster. If Adam’s faults were a tendency toward stubbornness, bossiness, and a touch of arrogance, Joe’s were endless: impatient, quick-tempered, reckless, lazy, and a few others for good measure.

Yet he was loyal, brave and the light of the Cartwrights’ lives with his infectious humor and good cheer. Hoss might know horses, but Joe seemed one with them in ways that even outshone his father and brothers. He was always there when you needed him for something important, and the Ponderosa would be a lot less full of life without him.

He had been born and grown up on the Ponderosa, and so held a special bond with the land, too.

Snow began to fall, but it was no threat, just a light volume. Hoss had volunteered to check the line shacks, in need of some time alone. Adam called it his ‘balancing time’, and he figured that was about right.

Hoss loved helping people, loved helping animals even more, loved his family, yet sometimes needed time alone. Naturally sunny in personality, he nevertheless feared the rare times when his temper did blow loose. A man of his size and strength always had to be careful. He could not let people rile him. His good-natured personality was a part of him, but was also a good defense against what his strength could do unleashed. When the world bogged him down, he requested time away, and Ben always granted it.

A bird sang close by, and he watched it fly out of a Ponderosa pine and soar against the snow-laden sky. He stuck out his tongue and tasted clean snow, his eyes crinkling with laughter.

Chubb whinnied softly and he patted the loyal horse’s mane, gently urging him to continue as the snow blew into their faces.

The line shack soon came into sight and Hoss took care of Chubb after he dismounted. He made a quick check of the shack, noting the full cupboards of supplies and plenty of firewood, then remounted Chubb and rode off.

The silence settled around him as the snow fell softly. Hoss came down from the mountains and directed Chubb to Lake Tahoe. A long-winged bird skimmed across the water, Hoss’s large fingers curling around Chubb’s reins. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, the cold air filling his lungs.

When he opened his eyes, he said quietly, “Home, Chubb.”

He had been rejuvenated. It was now time to rejoin the family.

He smiled a half hour later as Chubb crested a rise and the great house came into view, a curl of smoke twisting up to the sky. Snow frosted the roof and spread out from the yard, surrounding the Cartwright home with pristine white. Talking to Chubb, horse and rider started down the road for home.