One of the first things I figured out was that you don’t mess with Ben Cartwright’s boys.

Yeah, “boys.” That’s what he called them. I’d been working for the Cartwrights for more than a year when it all happened, but I don’t think I’d ever heard him call them “men.” Joe was around my age—probably halfway or more through his twenties—and Hoss had another handful of years on us, but their pa still called them “boys.” It was probably mainly habit, but I always suspected there was something more. Something I might have had with my old man if he hadn’t died when I was a kid. Something that says, “I know who you are, even if you’re not sure, because I’ve known you forever, and I won’t let go of it no matter what anybody says.” Something that stands beside you no matter what, that believes better of you than you do. Because that’s what family does.

You don’t mess with Ben Cartwright’s boys. We all knew that.

Except somebody forgot to tell Emily Anderson.

* * *

I remember how Joe looked that day he ran into her. He came into the sheriff’s office, and he was trying to tend to business with the rest of us, but there was something in his face that I’d never seen before. It was like he’d seen the dead walking right down C Street. When we got outside, I teased him about having been kicked by a mule, and he said in this dazed voice, “No, I didn’t get kicked by a mule.” Then, it was like he couldn’t hold it in any longer. He said to Hoss, “Guess who I just saw.” Hoss grunted, and Joe said, “Emily Anderson.”

Ben came out then, and they all spent a minute talking about Emily Anderson without remembering that I didn’t know who she was. So, as soon as Ben and Joe started walking, I grabbed Hoss’s arm and asked, “Who’s Emily Anderson?” He said she was a girl Joe had almost married. I already knew that there had been plenty of those, and I wouldn’t have thought much about it except that Joe seemed . . . different.

There was a whole lot more, but we didn’t know it then. Turned out that Joe was still in love with her, even after all these years. I’d never even heard him mention her. But like I already knew, there are some things a man keeps to himself, and one of them is how he feels about the woman who broke his heart. From what I’d gathered from some of Hoss’s and Ben’s comments, Joe used to be the kind who couldn’t have kept a thought to himself if you paid him. Growing up can change that—well, growing up and getting your heart broken. At least, I guess it did with Joe.

It all came out that night when we went to a lecture on some professor’s trip to Egypt. Damned if I know why Hoss wanted to go, but he did. Joe and me didn’t have anything better to do, so we tagged along. Looking back, I think Joe wanted to do pretty much anything that would get his mind off Emily Anderson–that, or maybe he wanted to be in Virginia City in the hope that he’d run into her again. Hard to say. In any case, they found each other, and just as they were heading off for a night of . . . well, just as they were heading off, some yahoo pulled Joe out of the buggy and started beating him up. Except that it wasn’t just some yahoo.

It was Emily’s husband. The one she’d conveniently forgotten to mention to Joe.

I can still remember standing there in the street as the crowd broke up. Joe looked stunned, like somebody’d ripped his heart out of his chest and stomped it on the ground and even as he stood there bleeding, he couldn’t quite believe it had happened. And Hoss—well, Hoss couldn’t even look at him. The two of them just stood there. They didn’t talk, and they didn’t move. I ended up being the one to say, “Let’s get out of here.” Even then, it took Hoss’s hand on Joe’s shoulder before Joe seemed to remember we were there. We walked down to the livery stable, and I could almost feel the pain radiating off Joe like heat off a rock in the desert sun. He didn’t say a single thing the whole way home. I’m not even sure he knew we were with him. To be honest, I almost wished we weren’t. When a man’s been hurt and humiliated like that, the last thing he needs is to be around people so that he has to hold himself together.

When we got home, I said, “I’ll take care of the horses.” Hoss grunted a thank-you. If Joe heard me, he didn’t let on. I left them standing out there in the yard as I led the horses into the barn, and I made sure I took a good long while tending to them. Those horses probably thought they were going to get baths and barbering the way I was lingering.

Truth is, I was wishing right about then I hadn’t taken Ben up on his invitation to move into the house. Granted, there were some real nice things about being inside—better bed, quiet, clean. Plus, it had meant something to have him make that offer. It meant that he saw me as something more than just a ranch hand. I’m not saying he thought of me as a son or anything like that, but he knew and I knew that we were in some sort of a middle place. Friends, maybe. Hard to say.

Still, there were times like this when the last thing I wanted to do was to walk into the house, right smack into the middle of some family thing. So I stayed out in the barn as long as I could, but eventually I couldn’t stay out there any more. When I went inside, Joe was nowhere to be seen, but Hoss and Ben were in the living room. Ben looked up when I opened the door, and the look in his eyes stopped me dead for a second. He looked . . . shattered. It was almost exactly the same thing I’d seen in Joe’s eyes, only without the surprise. It was almost like he’d known that what had ended so badly the first time wasn’t going to go any better this time around.

There was no point in pretending that I didn’t know what was going on. My first reaction is always to leave people alone to lick their wounds in private, but I knew by now that this wasn’t the Cartwright way. Not all the way, at least. Ben might have let Joe go off to be by himself, but he and Hoss were going to talk or maybe just be together about it in the hope that somehow, it might make somebody—one of them, or maybe even Joe—feel less horrible about the whole thing.

Like I said, I wasn’t real sure of my footing with the family at that point. Years later, when I came back after being away, it was a lot clearer to me, but we were all older by then and a lot had happened. The night Emily Anderson broke Joe’s heart for the second time, I still wasn’t sure where I belonged. But nobody was telling me to get out, so I stayed.

For a minute, I stood there in the silence. Then, I did something that was probably kind of presumptuous, but I thought it was right at the time and I still do. I went over to Ben’s liquor cabinet, and I took out a bottle and three glasses. “Mind?” I asked, like it was something I did all the time. I don’t know what I’d have done if he said he did. He straightened up a little, like he was about to ask what the devil I thought I was doing with his things, but Hoss shook his head ever so slightly, and Ben didn’t say anything. I brought the bottle and glasses over and set the glasses down on that long, low table where Hoss was sitting. Nobody said “no,” so I poured us each a glass and handed them around. We all held the glasses for a second, almost like we were making some kind of silent toast, and then we drank.

The next morning, Joe was stone-faced when he came down. I could practically feel his pa wanting to go to him and hug him and make the hurt go away, but of course, he couldn’t do that. For one thing, it was impossible; nothing makes that kind of hurt go away. For another, Joe was a grown man, and he wasn’t about to go crying on his daddy’s shoulder about some girl. Even so, there was something in the way that Ben watched Joe pushing eggs around his plate that made me envy them. Joe might not have Emily Anderson, but he had someone who hurt when he did, because he did and for no other reason. I don’t know whether my pa would have been like that with me. Probably not. I don’t think a lot of people are.

Nobody mentioned Emily Anderson, of course. There wasn’t much talk, and what there was focused on that Wells Fargo shipment. Ben handed out marching orders that meant that Hoss and I would ride together, and Joe would be about twenty minutes ahead of us. I didn’t necessarily think it was a good idea for any of us to be riding alone, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was Ben’s way of taking care of his boy.

Joe mounted up and rode out without ever having said a word to anybody. Hoss and I stood in the yard and watched him go. I don’t usually meddle in other folks’ business, but all of a sudden, I said, “Is he gonna be okay?”

Hoss didn’t seem even a little bit surprised at the question. He gave me a long, sober stare that had so much sadness in it that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d ridden out after Joe and left me standing there. But he didn’t. He just said, “I hope so.”

It was so much more information than I’d expected that I said, “He really loved her, didn’t he?”

“Still does, I reckon.” He heaved his bulk up into the saddle. “Let’s go.”

I mounted and rode out, barely paying attention to where we were going. Something about Joe and Emily had started me thinking about Ann. My wife, Ann. How I’d been riding along one sunny day, living my life, not even thinking about her and what might have been. When we ran into that military unit out in the middle of nowhere, she was honestly the farthest thing from my mind. And then, she came running down to where a bunch of us had been shooting, all worried about some trooper who’d got hit, and I was seventeen again. Seventeen and in love with the most beautiful girl in the world.

Ann. Beautiful Ann. My wife.

Except that now, she was some officer’s wife. Mrs. Ann Purcell Harris.

Make that Ann Purcell Canaday Harris.

Remembering that day, I almost didn’t hear the shots. But Hoss stopped short at the first one, and I did the same. We waited for a minute, but there was no sound other than some birds chirping. Just when I was about to ask if he thought it was somebody hunting, four shots fired in quick succession.

Four?

I looked at him, and he looked at me, and we were both confused. Three would have been a call for help, but four? That didn’t make sense—unless three of those shots had been calls for help, and the fourth was the reason help was needed.

We rode as fast as we could in the direction of the shots. When we got there, my stomach lurched. The wagon with the shipment was stopped in the middle of the road. Two saddle horses were standing beside it, and one of them was Joe’s pinto.

Lying on the ground about twenty feet from the road were two men. One of them wore a green jacket.

We were out of our saddles before I saw the man standing between us and the two men on the ground. It was the marshal we’d dealt with the day before. At first, he wouldn’t let us go near Joe; he said he didn’t know us and had to be careful. Fair enough. We threw down our guns the way he asked, and we ran to Joe. He was still alive, but he’d been shot in the back, up near his right shoulder. There was no way to know if the bullet had hit a lung. The other man was dead, and we didn’t bother with him. Slowly, carefully, we moved Joe to the wagon. Then, we tied Joe’s horse and Hoss’s to the back, and I took off for the doctor as Hoss drove Joe home.

Luckily, we were on the side of the Ponderosa nearest the Virginia City road. I hate to think how it might have gone if we’d been on the other side of the ranch. It would have added hours to the trip to town, and Joe might not have made it.

As it was, it was nearly three hours before the doctor and I got back to the house. When we ran into Joe’s room, it was clear from Ben’s face that Joe was in a bad way. Ben had stripped off Joe’s jacket and shirt, and they were lying in a small pile in the corner next to his boots. Joe was lying facedown on the bed. There was a compress on the wound which would normally have hurt like the devil, but Joe wasn’t complaining. In fact, he wasn’t moving at all. His breathing sounded rough, and I had to tell myself that if the bullet had hit the lung, he wouldn’t have been breathing at all by now, so it couldn’t be as bad as it sounded.

“How is he?” I asked Hoss in a low voice so as not to interrupt the doctor, who was already talking to Ben.

“He’s pretty bad off,” said Hoss. It was clear that he wanted to hear what the doctor was saying, so I shut up and let him listen.

“I’ll need Hoss,” Doc said. “Ben, you and Candy can wait downstairs.”

That was fine with me. It wasn’t like I’d never taken a bullet out of a man, but it definitely wasn’t my favorite thing. There were a lot of reasons I hadn’t become a doctor, and one of them was that the notion of having somebody’s life in my hands like that was too nerve-wracking. Not that I hadn’t had that experience in other ways, like having to be the one to protect somebody or shoot down an outlaw, but somehow, that was easier. To each his own, I guess.

I went downstairs with Ben. I wished that I was the kind who could promise everything would be fine without knowing whether it was true, because it was clear that Ben needed to hear that, but that’s not me. I don’t make promises I can’t keep, and I don’t say things I don’t know to be true. Since I didn’t know the truth this time, I did what I knew how to do, and that was to get out the whiskey.

“He’s still alive,” I said after we’d each had a couple shots. “That’s got to mean something.”

Ben kept staring at his glass. “I know,” he said after a long minute.

I wanted to say the usual kinds of things, like how Joe was a fighter and he was too stubborn to give in to something like this, but all of a sudden, I could see his face last night when Wade McPhail announced that Emily was his wife. When it turns out that the woman you love with all your heart is legally bound to somebody else ’til death do them part, it can knock the fight right out of you.

Believe me. I know.

The sun was almost completely down by the time Hoss appeared at the top of the stairs and said, “He’s through it.” I bounded up the stairs behind Ben, and we burst into the room as the doctor was drawing the sheet up over Joe.

“How is he?” Ben could hardly get the words out. Later, I’d wonder what it must be like to have somebody who was that worried about me. Right then, all I cared about was the answer to Ben’s question.

“I’m going to stay here tonight,” said the doctor. “I don’t think there should be a problem, but I want to keep a close eye on him. That was one of the luckiest shots I’ve seen in a very long time—barely chipped the shoulder blade, cracked a couple of ribs, and nicked the very edge of the lung, but that’s all. Half an inch over, and he’d never have made it home.”

“The lung?” Ben sounded like he wasn’t getting enough air.

“Just the slightest nick,” said the doctor. “No real damage that I could see. He’s going to need to be very, very careful until it heals, but as long as he takes it slow and easy, he should recover fine. No two ways about it—his guardian angel was working overtime today.”

“Thank you, Paul.” If I had to put money on it, I’d say that Ben Cartwright’s eyes were tear-damp. He swallowed hard and stroked Joe’s hair. Hoss was on the other side of the bed, his big hand resting on Joe’s good shoulder. All at once, I felt like I was intruding on a private family moment.

“I’ll be downstairs,” I said. I didn’t think anybody noticed me leaving the room, but the next thing I knew, Hoss was behind me. For a second, I was taken aback that he wasn’t staying with Joe, but then I understood. He’d been in that room all afternoon, standing over his brother’s body as the doctor cut into flesh and pieced together bones. It was no wonder he wanted a little fresh air.

As luck would have it, it was one of those times when Hop Sing was off visiting relatives. Sometimes I wonder about the setup the Cartwrights have with him. As near as I can tell, he’s about as close to family as a man can be without having Cartwright blood. I know it’s been a long time since he came to the Ponderosa; I don’t know if it was before Joe was born or not, but probably somewhere around there. He knew Joe’s mother, so that puts him at at least twenty years or more. There are times when he stomps around and threatens to quit and shouts stuff in Chinese that I’m dead certain is curses. Other times, it’s clear that you couldn’t get him away from this family with a keg of dynamite.

Joe seems to understand some of his language. I guess he must have spent a lot of time with Hop Sing when he was a kid and Ben and Hoss and the older boy, Adam, were out building up the ranch. Joe sure seems to know his way around the Chinese part of Virginia City, and a lot of the older folks seem to know him. There’s one Chinese girl who works in one of the clinics, and whenever her and Joe see each other, there’s something about the way they look at each other that makes me wonder if there was ever something between them. I asked Joe who she was, and he said she was a friend and left it at that, which makes me pretty much certain something went on. A man’s much more likely to talk if there’s nothing to talk about.

In any event, as Hoss and I tried to figure out what to throw together for supper, the marshal showed up and wanted to know more about what had happened with Joe and the shipment. Emily’s husband came along. Turned out he was the deputy. When I heard that, I got kind of a knot in my stomach, because the last thing we needed was for somebody who hated Joe to be investigating whether he was involved in a robbery and murder. The marshal seemed to be a sensible sort, but you never know how much a fellow like that’s going to be listening to one person or another,. It wouldn’t surprise me to know he was listening to his deputy more than a bunch of strangers, even if one of those strangers was Ben Cartwright with all that means in these parts.

After the marshal left, Hoss and I went out to tend the stock. I offered to do it myself, but Hoss grunted that he didn’t mind. As we worked, I found myself watching him. There was something about his expression that I didn’t understand. It was more than just being worried about his wounded brother. It was almost like he was afraid there was something going on that he didn’t want to know.

“What?” I asked finally. I didn’t usually pry, but somehow, these weren’t usual times.

He looked at me. For a second, I thought he was either going to punch me or yell at me. Then, his shoulders sagged. “I hate to see him like this.”

It took a minute for me to figure out that Hoss wasn’t talking about Joe’s bullet wound. “Did he say something?”

Hoss shook his head. “Not since we found him,” he said.

“Then what are you talking about?” I was well and truly baffled by the way his mind worked.

“Last night,” he said. “If I ever see that gal again, I’m gonna wring her neck.”

I knew it was just talk, but right then, I realized that there was something I didn’t understand about the Cartwrights. Anybody else would have been worried about Joe’s bullet wound, but here was Hoss, fretting over Joe’s broken heart. Even with as much time as I’d spent with Hoss and Joe, I knew at that moment that I didn’t have a clue about what went on between those two. They were my friends, but somehow, there was a connection between them that went so much deeper than what we had that I couldn’t even begin to imagine it.

And the thing was, Hoss was right. In the days to come, I watched Joe, and I saw it with my own eyes. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen Joe banged up, but all the other times, he’d been fighting to get better almost from the moment he woke up. Not this time, though. This time, it was like he didn’t care. If he got better, fine; if he didn’t, that was fine, too. It was a scary thing to see, because even I knew that a lot of a man’s recovery depends on whether he wants to get better.

For the first few days, it wasn’t so bad. Part of it was because he wasn’t awake all that much, and part was because even when he was, he didn’t really know what was happening. It wasn’t until the marshal wanted to come out and talk to him that Ben had to tell him he’d been accused of murdering the Wells Fargo men. Troubling as that was, at least it was a distraction. I’d bring up a pitcher of water and find him lying in bed, book closed on the night table and a dark, angry look in his eyes. His jaw would be set, and if his fists weren’t actually clenched, they weren’t far from it. Then, as I stood there, he’d relax so that I wouldn’t see what he really felt. I tried to make small talk, but that’s never been my best thing anyway and he didn’t say much back. Most of the time, he just thanked me for the water or whatever I’d brought and that was all.

Still, as angry as he was about being accused, he didn’t know the worst part: Emily was the one who’d put him in the middle of it all. When Ben told us that she was involved, I knew in my gut that something was up. I didn’t know much about the lady, but I knew two things: she was a liar, and she didn’t care how badly she hurt Joe if it would get her something she wanted. I could see from Hoss’s grim expression that he’d added two and two and come up with the same answer I had. The question was how to prove it.

“No,” Ben said flatly when I suggested that I should have a talk with her. “You’re not doing anything of the sort.”

“Why not? You know as well as I do that she’s tied up in this somehow. What was she even doing out there?” I demanded.

“Candy has a point, Pa,” said Hoss.

It irked me that I had to have Hoss’s approval in order for Ben to take me seriously, but this time it didn’t matter anyway. “I’m going to speak to her myself,” Ben said. “If she’s going to lie about my son, she’ll have to look me in the eye.” The glare in that eye was so fierce that for a bizarre moment, I actually felt sorry for Emily Anderson McPhail.

That notion lasted only until Ben came home the next day and told us what she’d said. “It’s impossible,” he pronounced as he paced. “Joseph would never have asked her to leave her husband. It’s simply impossible.”

I watched him stride back and forth. I’d have given anything to be as certain about anybody’s moral character as Ben Cartwright was about his son. Then again, maybe you have to have that kind of character yourself before you can see it in others.

I could never claim to be as upright as Ben believed Joe to be. When we were trapped with Ann’s husband’s regiment, I begged Ann to leave him. I even kissed her, which some people would say is worse, but I didn’t care. I kissed my Ann. Long and deep, the way I had back when we were together, when I thought I had a lifetime of kissing her ahead of me. If I’d had the chance, I’d have taken her that night as I never had the chance to in our brief marriage. In the end, when I bowed out and left her to her husband, it had nothing to do with respect for the institution of marriage and everything to do with the fact that I loved her so much that I was willing to walk away rather than force such a fine woman to become someone she despised–an adulteress, a divorced woman, a woman who would betray her husband and leave him for another man, even if that man was her husband first.

Ben knew I was trying to convince Ann to leave her husband, and he made it clear that he thought I was wrong. It was almost funny to see him struggle with what to say. If Hoss or Joe had been doing exactly what I was doing, they’d have heard the rough side of his tongue despite their ages, but he didn’t know how to handle me. He didn’t have the right to correct me as he did them. He couldn’t play the father card with me. The bonds that held us together weren’t nearly strong enough to withstand that kind of judgment.

Not that he didn’t make his position clear, of course. When I snuck into the outlaws’ camp, Ben let me know that he recognized it was about more than just getting water and ammunition: I’d done it to impress my wife. Then, when her husband went down to their camp to confront them and was captured and tortured, Ben said to me, “I guess he felt he needed to impress the lady, too.” Made me feel mad as hell and about two inches tall, all at the same time. In the end, when I played the gentleman and walked away, I knew he approved of my decision.

But now, as his furious indignation threatened to blow the roof off the Ponderosa, it occurred to me to wonder whether Joe might be more like me than his father thought. What if Emily Anderson wasn’t lying? What if Joe really had tried to get her to go away with him? I saw his face after he first met up with her, and again after he found out she was married. I know what a man in love looks like, and Joe was a man in love. You don’t get that many chances to be with the woman you love. You have to take them when they come along, or you’re likely to spend the rest of your life thinking if only. . . .

But if Ben or Hoss had any doubts about Joe, they gave no sign, so I kept my mouth shut. Joe was still spending most of his time half-asleep from laudanum, so I didn’t have to worry about him saying something they didn’t want to hear. Instead, a few days later, I helped Hoss get Joe down the stairs and out to the buggy so that we could all go and look at the place where the Wells Fargo men had been killed. What we needed to do was to compare Joe’s boots to the tracks that had been left in the dirt, but since Joe really wasn’t up for much walking, we tucked his boots into the back of the buggy and he wore a pair of slippers.

Looking back, the fact that a man as proud as Joe Cartwright would leave the house wearing slippers should have told us a lot, but none of us were paying the kind of attention we should have. The truth is that we didn’t actually need Joe at all, just his boots. I’m the one who suggested that he come. I wanted him to want to go, and when he said he did, he sounded almost like the Joe I’d known before. Ben didn’t look too happy, and the doctor was even less thrilled with the idea, but Hoss sided with me–probably for the same reason, although we didn’t actually talk about it. So, we all tried to pretend that Joe was coming around, and we let some of those details slide.

Someday, when I make a list of bad ideas I’ve had, dragging Joe out to that murder scene will be pretty close to the top. At first, he was doing all right; then McPhail and his wife showed up. I watched as Joe sat there in the buggy, not even able to walk away, and she told him how she’d lied about him to save her marriage. Then, just when it didn’t seem like things could get worse, she went to mount up, and her and her husband started having one of those low, private talks that should mean the end of things, except even I could see that this was something else. Damn McPhail if he wasn’t willing to give her another chance. I don’t know what charms or skills the lady possessed, but apparently they were enough that she’d managed to hog-tie him as well as Joe. I tried not to look at Joe, partly because I wanted to give him his privacy, but mostly because I was afraid I’d see that she’d broken his heart again and I didn’t want to watch my friend going through that a third time.

“Well, I should get my patient home,” the doctor announced. Joe was looking mighty pale by this time, and I could see the muscle working in his jaw. Anybody who didn’t know him–the marshal, for instance–could have thought he was just in a lot of pain. Well, he was, but I don’t think it had much to do with his bullet wound.

We got Joe home and into the house before it all caught up with him. Lucky thing Hoss and me were holding onto him, because otherwise, he’d have hit the floor when he passed out. As it was, he went down like a sack of potatoes. We carried him over to the settee and laid him down, and I fetched some water and a cloth. Ben sat on the table and sponged Joe’s face as the doctor slapped his cheek and called his name. Finally, Joe’s eyes opened a little, but that was all it took. In my entire life, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man look so devastated. That one unguarded moment gave it all away.

The doctor and Ben tried help Joe sit up, but it was no use. Finally, Hoss had to pick him up like he was a little kid and carry him up to his room. I could hear him mumbling that Hoss should put him down, but Hoss just told him to shush. We all trooped upstairs after them, and when Hoss laid Joe on the bed, Ben thanked us all and shooed Hoss and me out of the room.

* * *

Joe’s recovery took a lot longer than I’d have thought. If I had to guess, I’d say it was because he didn’t care if he got better or not. He didn’t have anything to get better for, maybe.

McPhail and his wife didn’t end up staying around Virginia City after all. I’ve always wondered if Ben had anything to do with that, but maybe not. If I’d been McPhail, I’d have wanted to get her out of there as fast as I could. She wasn’t a woman to trust, especially not where Joe was concerned. Even though it should have been obvious to everybody by then that Joe wasn’t interested in getting involved with her, the fact is that a man can only be so strong when the woman he loves keeps throwing herself at him. Once he was on his feet and Emily saw him again, there was no telling what she’d try. I guess McPhail felt the same way, because before Joe was recovered enough to do more than walk to the barn and back, McPhail arranged to be transferred to someplace in Utah Territory.

If I’d thought Joe would be relieved to be rid of her, I was wrong. One day, Hoss came in from town and announced that the McPhails had left. “Mrs. McPhail asked me to give this to you,” he told Joe, handing him a piece of paper that was folded and sealed with wax. I waited for Joe to say something about it, but he just took it and sat there on the settee, holding it.

“You want me to put it upstairs for you?” Hoss offered after a minute.

“Huh? Oh, sure. Yeah.” Joe handed him the paper, and Hoss went upstairs.

“You’re not gonna read it?” I asked.

“It’s none of your business,” he snapped. He was right, of course, but I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d ever gotten a letter from Ann, I’d have dropped everything and high-tailed it out of the room to read it in private.

I assume Joe read the letter that night, because the next day, he was stone-faced and silent. Not even his pa could get more than a grunt out of him. All he did was sit on the settee and stare into the fire. Pretty much what you’d expect from a man who got a letter from the woman he loved after she left town with her husband.

A few days later, I came back to the house to find the settee empty. “Where’s Joe?” I asked Ben, who was at his desk working on those infernal ledgers.

“Upstairs.” Ben’s voice didn’t invite comment, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Is he all right?” I asked.

Ben looked like he was going to say yes, then he stopped himself. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

It was such an unexpected response that I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t remember ever hearing Ben Cartwright say he didn’t know something. “Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

I’m pretty sure if I’d been Hoss asking that, he’d have answered. Instead, he stood up. “I’m going to get some coffee. Want some?”

“No, thanks.” I watched him cross the room and disappear into the kitchen. Then, as quietly as I could, I went upstairs.

Joe’s door was closed. I tapped lightly. No answer. I knocked harder.

“Go away.” The voice from inside was irritable.

Ordinarily, I’d have respected what he said and left. To this day, I’m not sure why I didn’t, but instead of leaving, I lifted the latch and went in.

“I told you to go away,” he said. He was lying on the bed, his arms crossed over his chest.

“I know,” I said. “I just thought I’d see if you needed anything.”

“If I needed something, I’d get it myself.”

“So, you’re saying you’ve got everything you need.” I didn’t mean to goad him, but he glared at me anyway.

“Get out,” he snapped.

“Look, maybe this is none of my business,” I began, but Joe cut me off.

“My brother Adam used to say that if you have to start by saying something’s none of your business, you should stop there.” His eyes were fixed on me like he was daring me to continue.

I kept my tone easy. “Well, since I never met your brother Adam, I’m sure he’ll understand if I don’t take his advice.” I leaned against the door jamb and crossed my arms. “All I wanted to say is–if she was telling the truth and you did ask her to go off with you–I wouldn’t blame you for it.”

He half-sat up at that one. “You think I asked a married woman to run away with me?” He was trying to sound insulted, but he was coming in somewhere between angry and nervous, like he was afraid of being found out.

I shrugged. “I’m just saying that if you did, I understand.” I held his gaze, braced against the righteous indignation blazing in his eyes.

Then, he looked away. For a long minute, neither one of us said anything. Then he mumbled, “I didn’t ask her, but when she asked me–I wanted to say yes.” I didn’t say anything. He lifted his head and his voice. “If she didn’t care about her marriage, why should I?”

“Good question,” I said. “Why did you?”

“Because that’s how I was raised,” he said. “Marriage is sacred. You don’t cross that line, no matter what.”

But he didn’t sound convinced, so I came closer. “That the only reason?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Maybe I didn’t love her enough. Or maybe I was a coward. All I know is, I couldn’t do it.” He looked up at me. “You’d have gone with her.” It wasn’t even a question, but I nodded.

“I asked Ann to leave her husband,” I said. “He was a good man, but she didn’t love him. She loved me. I knew it. And I loved her. So I tried to get her to leave him, to go with me.” I watched as he tried to control his expression at this revelation. Even though he’d been there when we encountered her, I’d never told him what went on between us. When the shock on his face had smoothed itself out, I continued, “But it was different with us. She was my wife. I didn’t have anything to do with annulling that marriage.” For a minute, the anger that had simmered in me for the last ten years flared again.

“I didn’t have anything to do with Emily leaving the first time,” Joe reminded me. “And she was my fiancée. I loved her. And she loved me.”

I nodded to let him know I understood. Mrs. McPhail might be a world-class liar, but one thing I felt sure of was that she loved Joe. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have caused all this trouble. “But I also didn’t have to face your father the way you would have,” I pointed out. “He made it clear that he disapproved of the notion of me and Ann, but that didn’t matter to me. I could have left with her and never seen him again. You couldn’t. He’s your father.”

“You really think that’s why I didn’t go? Because my pa would be mad?” He was almost daring me to say it.

“No,” I said truthfully. I was sure the prospect of facing his father with another man’s wife on his arm would have been daunting, but it wasn’t the reason Joe had turned down Emily Anderson McPhail’s invitation. Almost without thinking, I said it: “I think the reason you didn’t go is that you’re a better man than I am.”

Joe looked startled. Truth is, I was kind of startled myself. I never really expected to say that out loud. Part of me wanted to take it back, but I could see that Joe was considering what I’d said, and it seemed wrong to take it off the table. “I don’t know about that,” he said at last.

I could feel a deep, serious moment coming. If he’d been having this conversation with Hoss, they’d have gone into that deep, serious place. They’d have talked the whole thing out, all about whether somebody was or wasn’t a better man than somebody else. Whether a better man would stand on his claim to a woman’s heart no matter the cost, or whether he’d watch her ride away with a man he knew she didn’t love but who she was bound to by man’s law and God’s. They could talk like that. Hoss was Joe’s other half, in every way that mattered.

But things were different with Joe and me, especially back then. Hoss was Joe’s big brother, would be to the day he died. But me–I was more of a compatriot. We could compete with each other, laugh with each other, and look out for each other. As the years passed, though, the bonds between us would deepen until in the end, I was the closest thing Joe Cartwright had to a brother. Closer than Adam, who had half-raised him but who he hadn’t laid eyes on in years. Closer than Hoss, whose death would haunt him for the rest of his days. Closer than Jamie, who was a nice kid, but who would never be able to read Joe’s thoughts by the look in his eyes.

Joe and I never talked about Ann and Emily again after that day. It was just one of those things we knew, a reminder that there’s more to a man than what you see. Knowing this kept us from judging each other where we once might have. As a result, over time, we trusted each other more. We came to depend on each other. I stood by him in Angelus; he stood by me in Butlerville. We fought side by side to rescue Ben after that riot at the state prison. And when Joe found out that the fire that burned down his home wasn’t an accident, I was the one who rode with him to hunt down Alice’s killers. Because somewhere along the line, I came to see that even though we had different names, he was my brother and I was his. The Cartwrights had become my family. And like I’d learned long ago, you don’t mess with a man’s family.

But that time was far ahead of us. Neither one of us was ready for change to come too fast. So I strolled over to the window. Looking out at the yard, I said, “Well, don’t be getting a big head about it. I didn’t say you’re better in every way. Just one. Just this one thing.”

I turned around to see him studying me like he was trying to decide something. Then, he leaned back against his pillows. For the first time in too many days, I saw that crooked half-grin as he delivered his final word on the subject.

“Canaday, you need to learn to count.”

* * *

“Ride him, Joe!” I shouted from the corral fence. I’d already ridden a few to a standstill, and I was mighty sore, so Joe had announced that he’d finish off the last few.

“Wouldn’t want you to be hurtin’ too bad,” he smirked. I started to climb over the fence anyway, but Ben put his hand on my shoulder.

“You’ve done your share for the day,” he said, the same way he’d have said it to Joe.

“Don’t worry, Candy, I’ll show you how it’s done!” Joe called out as the hands positioned the next bronc. It was a bay roan that none of us had been able to get near for the first few weeks. Even today, it had taken three men an hour to get a saddle on it. Now, we all watched as Joe dropped down into the saddle and they opened the chute. Less than ten seconds later, he was in the dirt.

“That’s how it’s done, huh?” I called as he got to his feet, dusting himself off.

“I’m not finished!” he retorted. They got the roan back into the chute, Joe got on again, and again he was eating dirt in ten seconds. That stubborn cuss must have climbed back on that fool horse ten more times before he got a halfway-decent ride out of it, and twenty more before he was riding that horse for real.

“Good going, Joe!” Hoss shouted, applauding.

“Nice work, son!” Ben called.

“Not bad, Cartwright!” I yelled.

When he slid out of the saddle at last, he sauntered on over to the fence as best he could after being thrown onto that hard-packed dirt dozens of times. As he climbed up and over the fence, he shot me a look of pure triumph.

“Good job,” I said, figuring to head off an evening of gloating.

The gleam in his eye told me that I’d have no such luck. Instead, he leaned over and said, barely loud enough for me to hear, “It’s like I told you, Canaday. You need to learn to count.”

It took me a second to recall what he meant. Then, I couldn’t help it. I threw back my head and laughed. Ben and Hoss stared at me like I must have been sun-touched, and when Joe joined in, I saw them looking at each other and shrugging.

“Wait ’til tomorrow, Cartwright!” I wheezed. “I’ll show you how it’s really done!” That distinctive cackle of his just made me laugh harder, and finally the two of us were crumpled on the ground, trying to catch our breath. Ben and Hoss had already gone to get their horses, and we helped each other up, but every time we looked at each other, we started laughing like a pair of schoolboys.

“Tomorrow,” I managed as I got on my horse and shook my finger at him.

He swung up onto the pinto. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d stuck out his tongue. “Tomorrow,” he agreed.

There would be a lot of tomorrows for me on the Ponderosa. For a time I’d move on, but I came back. I’d always had a wandering foot, but something inside me was putting down roots.

Once in the saddle, Joe and I sat still, watching each other. For a long, long minute, neither of us moved. Then, in the same instant, we kicked our mounts, hollered like Indians, and took off into the setting sun in a race for home.