Summary: Joe and Hoss meant well.  They always do.  But somehow they find themselves falling into a series of misadventures, and getting out of one only lands them in another.  This story is a compilation of 2025 Pinecone Challenges, which form an ongoing narrative – thank you to AC1830 for so many wonderful prompts!

Rating: G

Word Count: 6,042

1. 

“Courage is not having the strength to go on, it is going on when you don’t have the strength.”

President Theodore Roosevelt

It was like this, Pa, Hoss imagined saying, sitting on the front porch steps.  Little Joe had this idea, and you know how it is when Little Joe gets ideas…

Nah, that was no good.  You couldn’t know unless you’d been dragged along behind one of Little Joe’s ideas, and Pa was the one person Joe couldn’t drag.

Hoss cut his gaze sideways to Joe sitting next to him.  His brother was picking disconsolately at the feathers stuck all over his green jacket, which wasn’t helping.  Hoss wasn’t even bothering with the flour, egg shells and cooking oil stuck to his clothes.

You always taught us, Pa, to stand by each other, and once Little Joe was into the thick of it, I couldn’t leave him…  No, Pa would ask why he hadn’t pulled Joe out.

“We meant well,” Joe said into the heavy silence.  “We can tell Pa that.”

Hoss just grunted.  Little Joe always meant well.

“We did the best we could, under the circumstances.”  Yeah.  Joe always believed that too.

“He’ll ask how we got into the circumstances.”  Chickens flying everywhere, broken plates strewn across the floor…

“Well – it was all right, at first,” Joe said.  “And once we were into it – you just have to go on with things.”

That was usually the way of it too.  Once things began to go wrong, it was already too late to get out.  All Hoss could do was keep running.

Joe grimaced.  “This never would have happened if Hop Sing wasn’t in San Francisco.”  Then he brightened.  “Hey, we could blame it on Hop Sing.  Maybe he won’t mind.”

Hoss cast Joe a sour look.  “He’ll mind.”

Joe slumped again.  “It wouldn’t convince Pa anyway.”

Then through the half-open window behind them came a truly terrifying sound – footsteps descending the stairs.  Hoss hunched his shoulders, waiting.

The deep baritone voice exclaiming, “What in the blazes happened here?”

“He saw the settee,” Joe guessed.

“Yeah.”

More footsteps, coming to an abrupt halt.  That’d be the dining table.  And…Hoss could just make out the steps moving towards the kitchen.

A distant shout: “Fire and brimstone!”

Hadn’t heard that one in a long while.  This was bad.

“Hoss!  Joseph!”

Little Joe sighed.  “Why does he never assume it was Adam?”

That did not deserve a response.  Instead, Hoss heaved up to his feet.  “Come on.  I’m exhausted with sitting here trying to plan what to say.  Let’s be brave, go say something and get it over with.”

Joe slumped over backwards, sprawled across the porch, legs hanging off the end.  “I don’t think I have the strength, Hoss.  Not after all those chickens.”

Hoss regarded him.  “Well, little brother, going on with a thing when you haven’t got the strength,” he said solemnly, “that’s what makes it courage.”

Little Joe groaned – but got to his feet.  And side by side, covered in feathers and flour, the Cartwright brothers went inside to face their fate.

2.

“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer someone else up.”

Mark Twain

“We meant well, of course,” Joe explained, running a brush over Cochise’s already-shining side.  “But that didn’t make much difference with Pa.  So he ranted and yelled and – you know, the way he gets.”

The pinto tossed his head in agreement.  He’d been with Joe for years.  He knew.

“Yeah,” Joe said with a grin.  “Pa’ll simmer down after a while, but I think Hoss feels pretty bad about it.”

He dropped the brush into the bucket hanging on the wall, leaned back against that wall with his arms crossed.  “And I feel bad about that.  The big lug’s got too big a heart sometimes, and he’s taking it rough this time.  I’m not feeling too happy about the whole thing myself, but mostly I wish I could think of a way to cheer Hoss up.”

Cochise nosed up against Joe’s shirt, and Joe rubbed between his ears.  “Sorry, pal, no apples today.  And I don’t hide coffee in my shirt either.  I’d go get you an apple inside, but I think I ought to stay out of Pa’s sight for a while.”

Cochise pawed at the ground, swung his head around towards the open end of the stall, then rolled his eyes back at Joe.

“And you definitely can’t go get an apple either,” Joe said, and shook his head at the picture that conjured up.  “Pa won’t simmer down in a hurry if you come trotting in the front door.”

The horse pawed at the ground again, and this time swung his head over in the direction of the next stall.

“Yeah, I bet you and Chub would both like to get out for a while,” Joe said absently, and then suddenly straightened up.  “Hey—hey, that’s an idea!”  He snapped his fingers.  “I’ll get Hoss, and we’ll go out for a ride.  That’ll keep us away from Pa, and I bet Hoss’d feel a whole lot better if we went and did some fishing this afternoon – yeah, and we’ll bring some fish back for supper, and that’ll make Pa feel better about the mess we made of the kitchen!”

Joe gave Cochise’s nose a pat.  “You’re a real smart horse, you know that, Cooch?  Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

And then, because Joe never moved slow if it could be avoided, he was off and running out of the barn in search of Hoss.

Cochise looked across the way at Chub, who nickered in amusement.  If he’d been able to talk, Cochise would have told Joe that going fishing had really been Chub’s idea.  They both fancied an afternoon out by the pond, and Chub knew Hoss had been hankering after some fishing.  But that was all right.  Cochise and Chub always agreed, as long as their boys cheered up, it didn’t matter who got the credit.  Most of the time, the horses even let their boys think they were the ones having all the ideas.

3.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

Martin Luther King Jr. 

Sometimes little brother managed to hit on a good idea after all.  Hoss stretched as he sat on the sunny bank of the old fishing hole, rod in one hand, and reflected that once in a while, it didn’t go wrong when Little Joe came rushing up with a notion.  Joe himself was sound asleep and snoring a little way down the bank, hat over his face, fishing rod tucked into the crook of one elbow as though it was fooling anybody.  Even the horses, happily chomping on meadow grass, surely saw through that.

This had not been Hoss’ plan for the afternoon.  He and Joe had faced up to Pa and taken the very loud lecture they thoroughly deserved.  And then they’d slunk out of the house and gone in opposite directions.  Joe, predictably, had gone to tell Cochise about it, while Hoss had hunted up the darkest, chilliest possible spot under a clump of pine trees to brood.

He wasn’t a brooder by nature – both his brothers tended more that way – but Pa’d talked about responsibility and good sense and his role as older brother to keep Little Joe out of trouble.  And while Hoss mostly knew that last one was a Herculean task, it was gnawing at him.  And once that started gnawing, other things started up too – all the things in life that had ever gone wrong.

Girls he’d loved and lost.  Friends he hadn’t managed to help.  Animals who had needed more doctoring than he could give.  Lots more things than Pa had surely had in mind.

In the middle of all that brooding, along came Little Joe, bursting with the idea about going fishing.  Hoss had wanted to stay in his dark spot and think about dark things – but it wasn’t a strategic position for resisting Joe’s whirlwind ability to drag him along on a scheme.

So he ended up on Chub, riding with Joe out to the fishing hole.  The fish weren’t biting much – and they weren’t trying hard anyway – but even so, the longer he sat here in the sun with his little brother, the lighter all those bad memories got.

He should have known – he usually did know – that it was no good trying to get away from dark thoughts by sitting in darkness.  You couldn’t come to terms with all the bad, hateful things in life by coming up with more of them.  Sometimes things needed to be thought on for a while, but other times you needed to get out into the sunlight and let the light drive the darkness away.

Life wasn’t all bad, after all, when a body could sit out fishing with his little brother.  Or when that brother was so sound asleep that Hoss could sneak his hat right off his face, dip it into the pond, and then dump water over his head.

Joe spluttered and thrashed and his rod went tumbling into the pond, and Hoss’ laughter rang out loud across the meadow.

4.

“I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.”

Jimmy Dean

“Let’s go fishing, you said,” Hoss rumbled.  “It’ll cheer us up, you said.”

“And it did, didn’t it?” Joe countered, then flinched as a large drop slid off a pine branch overhead and landed on the back of his neck.  “Right up until this storm blew in.”

Hoss hunched his shoulders, leaning back against the tree’s rough trunk.  “I don’t feel cheered up now.”

“It’s not my fault it’s raining.  It was sunny when we arrived.”

“It is your fault you kicked all our supplies into the pond.”

“That could’ve happened to anyone, the way the horses spooked at the thunder.”

Hoss merely snorted at that.

At least they’d caught Cochise and Chub.  Just, not before they and the horses were drenched.  Sheltering under some dripping pine trees wasn’t helping anyone dry off.

“We still have the fish,” Joe said without much spirit, glancing at the string of fish hanging off of Chub’s saddle.  He squinted out at the rain.  “You sure that trail back towards home is too dangerous now?”

Hoss grimaced.  “Don’t be ridiculous, rain turns it to pure mud on that downhill slope.  The horses could break a leg quick as anything.”

“Yeah.  Maybe Pa’ll come looking for us?”

“He can’t get up the slope.  Besides, the mood he’s in…”

“…he won’t want to look for us for a week,” Joe finished, and threw up his hands.  “All right, so we’re just stuck here, getting dripped on!  See what I get for trying to cheer you up!”

“I didn’t ask you to!”

“Yeah, but you’re my brother!”  And that – kinda said it all.

Maybe Hoss thought so too, because his tone was different when, after a long moment, he said, “We could try for the old line shack near here.”

“What line shack?”

“Ain’t been in use for, oh, ten or fifteen years. But it should still be there, closer’n home and across flat terrain.”

“So let’s go!”  Joe seized Cochise’s lead rope.  The horse nudged up against his hair, then pulled on the rope away from the tree.  “See, Cooch agrees we should go.”

Hoss frowned at the streaming rain.  “It’s mighty wet out there.  Blowing hard too.”

“It’s mighty wet right here.  And we can’t get any more soaked anyway.  If we can’t get home through the storm, let’s change direction and go where we can.”

It proved a very wet, windy trip, but across flat land and not too far.  And the shack was still standing, mostly, with even a covered overhang for the horses.  By the time they got a fire going and the fish frying, everyone was calmer and life looked tolerably brighter.

After sitting quiet by the fire for a while, Hoss said, “Thanks for trying to cheer me up.”

Joe shrugged.  “I wanted to go fishing too.  Sorry it didn’t turn out better.”

“Oh, I dunno,” Hoss said.  “We could be trapped inside at home, with Pa glaring at us.  Better off getting soaked than that.”

5.

“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment, until it becomes a memory.” 

Dr. Seuss

Ben paced in front of the roaring fire in the big stone fireplace, lost in thought.  But he looked up eagerly as soon as the front door opened.  He saw only one son coming in from the rain, the same one who’d volunteered to go out mere minutes before.

“Well?” Ben asked, trying to sound stern instead of anxious.  “Are your brothers hiding out in the barn?”

Adam shrugged out of his rain slicker and hung it up dripping by the half-empty hat rack.  “No, but their horses are gone too.  They must have decided to ride out somewhere until the, ah, storm inside had passed.”  He moved closer to the fire, extending his hands to the warmth.

“I suppose that’s likely,” Ben admitted.  He certainly had raised the roof this time.  But after all – all those feathers everywhere…  He frowned, looking out at the driving rain through the dining room window.  “I hope they’re all right out there, the way this rain storm blew up so suddenly.”

“They’re used to storms – the literal and metaphorical ones.”  Adam cast his father a wry smile.  “Despite occasional evidence to the contrary, they’re two grown men of reasonable intelligence.  They know the Ponderosa very well, and are good at coping outside.  I’m sure they’re fine.”

“You’re right, of course.”  Ben moved over to the big blue armchair, sat down and tried to relax.  His fingers drumming against the arm of the chair contradicted his best efforts.  He just didn’t like the idea of his two youngest out in the cold and the rain, especially because he had come down hard on them.  “Perhaps I was a little too harsh…”

“Pa.”  Adam gave him an incredulous look.  “I saw what they did to the settee.”

Ben winced.  “Yes, well.  They meant well.”  Little Joe had taken pains to point that out.

“They always do,” Adam muttered.  He sat down on the edge of the fireplace, facing Ben.  “So we’re to that stage already?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know.  The point where you decide their latest misadventure actually has some humor to it, and they’re not complete reprobates and irresponsible hooligans after all.”

“They’re not,” Ben said, then amended, “Usually.”  He cast his mind back over some of the more memorable incidents his sons had put him through, and had to chuckle.  “They have given us some stories to tell.”

“They weren’t much fun in the moment.”

“No, mostly not,” Ben allowed, “but sometimes you can’t appreciate a thing until after it becomes memory.”

“If you say so, Pa.”  Adam yawned, stood up and stretched.  “I’m for bed.”  He crossed past Ben, saying as he went by, “Don’t worry.  They’ll be back in the morning, probably with some new mishap to report.”

“I expect so.  And Adam?” Ben added, and his oldest son looked back from the bottom of the stairs.  “Don’t tell them it was funny.  I can’t cede all my authority, you know.”

6.

“It was a splendid summer morning and it seemed as if nothing could go wrong.” 

John Cheever

The storm over the Ponderosa passed during the night, and the next morning brought a beautiful summer day, where everything seemed possible and nothing seemed as though it could go awry.  The world was still damp at dawn, but once the sun was shining it dried quickly.  Which was just as well, considering Hoss and Joe were spending this particular morning sitting in a tree, wearing not much of anything at all.

“Let’s go swimming, you said,” Hoss intoned hollowly.  “It’s such a nice morning it’ll be fun, you said.  As if we didn’t get wet enough already last night!”

“It was fun,” Joe insisted, ready to defend his own ideas to the last breath.  “Until the wolves showed up and treed us.”  He risked a glance downward, even though it made the world spin, and – yep, the entire wolf pack was still hanging around down there.  They mostly seemed asleep, but experimenting had already shown that creaking a tree branch brought every head up and alert again.

“That’s a real big until there, little brother.”

“They have to get bored and move on eventually,” Joe said hopefully, glanced down again, and then hung onto the tree trunk tighter.  “The mistake wasn’t swimming, it was leaving our guns on our saddles.”

“Along with the rest of our clothes?”

“Well, we weren’t going to swim in our clothes, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Hoss said dryly.  “Just with our guns.”

There went big brother trying to be logical.  Never mind the past, best to focus on the future.  “Maybe Cochise and Chub ran home.”  They’d galloped off at the first sign of the wolves.  “They know the way, and they can bring help back.”

“Oh, that’s going to be great,” Hoss groaned.  “The horses ride into the front yard with our clothes bundled on the saddles.”

“Right, and that’ll definitely get Pa and Adam…out looking for us…”  The words trailed away as Joe considered the full implications.

“And they backtrack the horses and find this!”

Joe sighed, and tried to rally.  “It’s still better than the wolves, right?”  No response.  “Right?”

“I’m thinking.”

“Sure, you think about it,” Joe said, hung onto the tree trunk and squinted down at the wolves again.  No change.

“Joe…” Hoss said at length, voice sounding like a toll of doom.  “I just had a real bad thought.”

“Relax, the worse that’ll happen is Adam’ll laugh at us, and never let us forget this, and—”

“No, not that – it’s Sunday, right?”

“Yeah, so?  Guess Pa and Adam’ll be at church, but they’ll be back, so—”

“No, not that either.  Ain’t it the day of the Sunday school picnic?”

Joe shrugged.  “I guess.”  Ever since hearing that Miss Abigail Jones was organizing it, he’d stopped paying attention.

“And didn’t Pa tell ‘em they could come have the picnic on the Ponderosa?  Like – right around here?”

“I guess,” Joe said again, and then it hit him.  “Oh.  Oh, big brother.  That’s a bad thought…”

7.

“Remember me with smiles and laughter for that is how I will remember you.” 

Michael Landon

“It seems to me,” Joe said, “we have three choices.  We sit in this tree until Adam finds us.  Or until Abigail Jones and the Sunday School picnic find us.  Or – we face the wolves down there.”

Hoss sighed.  “If we just had our pants on…”

“Yeah.”  Swimming had seemed like a good idea at the time.  “But really, there’s only one choice.”

“I’m still thinking,” Hoss growled.

“Then think about this – we don’t know when or if Adam and Pa will backtrack our horses and find us.  We know the Sunday School picnic is due around here now.  We can’t let kids face a pack of wolves.  It’s our duty, Hoss.  Half of the wolves wandered off in the last hour.  They’re losing interest.  If we yell and run, they’re gonna give all this up.”

Hoss glared at him.  “That don’t follow, Little Joe.  And if it does – you’re faster.”

Joe sighed, and put on his noblest expression.  “Fine.  You’re right.  All I ask is that, if the worst should happen, you remember me with a smile, and maybe, sometimes, even a laugh.”

Hoss was such an easy mark that he was already looking uncomfortable.  “Aw, c’mon, Little Joe, that ain’t necessary…”

“Because after all,” Joe continued, “that’s how I’ll remember you.”  And then he gave big brother a shove out of the tree.

Hoss gave such an almighty yell that the wolves were backing up even before he landed with an earth-shaking thud.  He threw his head back and hollered, “Little Joe, I’m gonna kill you!”  And that sent the wolves backing up farther.

“Good, keep yelling – and run!” Joe encouraged.  Then, because he couldn’t let Hoss face a wolf pack alone, he closed his eyes against the dizzying depth, and let himself drop out of the tree.

It wasn’t that far – he wouldn’t have pushed Hoss if it was – and once there was ground under him he set off with a whoop.  Hoss might’ve opted to chase him, but fortunately big brother stuck to the plan and ran the opposite direction.  The wolves seemed confused by this behavior, and didn’t immediately pursue.

They probably would have eventually, but a new sound filtered in from the distance – a chorus of childish voices raised in an off-key rendition of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”  This, apparently, was enough for the wolves, either because they were music critics or because they could recognize the signs of a large number of people approaching.  They turned tail and ran.

Joe angled his own run to intercept Hoss.  “See?  It worked!”

“Yeah, but…”  Hoss jerked his head in the direction of the voices.

Joe scanned the landscape.  No good cover immediately to hand, except for—  “The pond!”

Hoss moaned but followed him in, and by the time the Sunday School group, led by Miss Abigail Jones, broke through the trees, they were safely hidden in the water, under a convenient overhang in the shore.  Well – for a relative definition of “safely,” anyway.

8.

“One’s destination is never a place but a new way of seeing things.”

Henry Miller

Adam rode Sport along at an easy pace and felt, on the whole, pretty good this afternoon.  Pa had stayed in town after church, which was why he’d come back alone to the ranch house, only to find his brothers’ horses milling about riderless in the front yard.

If Pa was there, he’d probably be worrying about Hoss and Joe.  Adam wasn’t worrying.  Sure, if there had been blood on the saddles, or a ransom note, he’d be worried then.  But all that was on the saddles was what you’d expect from a fishing expedition – and also most of his brothers’ clothes.  Which demonstrated clearly that they had fallen into one of their typical misadventures.

On a nice, sunny day like this, now that the rain of the night had passed, it was positively a pleasure to take his horse out and backtrack the trails of his brothers’ horses.  He led Chub and Cochise along on a rope behind, because obviously they were going to need a way home.  On a whim, he’d even brought his guitar with him, because it just felt like that kind of day.  A day where it didn’t really matter where he was going, because wherever his destination turned out to be, the important thing about it wasn’t really the place.  What mattered was enjoying the beautiful Ponderosa around him, seeing her with new appreciation as Sport ambled along.

And, of course, looking forward to the prospect of finding Hoss and Joe in some kind of ridiculous situation wherever the trail ended up.  He was going to have fun with this.

He was coming up on the old swimming hole when he started hearing voices in the distance – voices that were far too high-pitched for either Cartwright brother.  It took him a moment to remember that the Sunday school picnic was happening up this way.  And there was something else about that picnic he should really keep in mind…

Adam was still trying to think of it when he broke through the trees into a crowd of small children, who offered up a chorus of greetings.

And another, definitely adult, voice said, “Well, Adam Cartwright, I do declare!”

Abigail Jones.  Leading the Sunday school picnic.  That’s what he should have remembered.

For a frantic moment, Adam seriously considered wheeling Sport around and retreating through the trees.  But…how much trouble could he really get into with a few dozen tiny chaperones running around?

9.

“The course of true love never did run smooth.”

Violet Grantham, Downton Abbey

Adam surveyed the crowd of picnickers, took in a steadying breath, and tipped his hat to Miss Jones.  “Ma’am.  Very nice to see you,” he said, surely the absolute minimum that courtesy required.

From the way she blushed and beamed at him, it still had been too much.  “And aren’t you the charmer, coming along like this to see me!  With your lovely guitar, even.”

“Ah…well…”

Then her eyes narrowed as she looked past him.  “Why do you have your brothers’ horses with you?”

It was all Joe’s fault.  If he didn’t have that flashy pinto, she’d think they were random horses, and Adam could have played this off with a dozen different excuses.  But how was he going to tell Abigail Jones that he was out looking for his probably mostly-naked brothers?

There was no way to say that.  “Ah…”

So maybe it was best that before he could really get any words out, she stuck her nose in the air and said, “Or are you not here to see me at all?  You Cartwrights are just going about your silly ranch business!”

“Well…”  Her strident tone was making Sport nervous, and trying to settle his horse wasn’t making it easier for Adam to think of the eloquent phrases he was usually known for.

“You shouldn’t toy with a woman’s affections that way!” Abigail Jones announced, turning dramatically away in a flourish of skirts.

Her voice had already been upsetting Sport, so the rising volume didn’t help – and neither did all these curious small children gathered around – and the impressive size and movement of her skirts were the last straw.  Sport didn’t rear but he did dance around, and if they had been on flat ground it would have been fine only they were near the edge of the pond, and Adam had been fairly unnerved himself too and – well, he was never afterwards sure exactly how it happened, but somehow he plummeted straight off his horse and right into the pond.

It was just deep enough for some serious splashes and to wind up soaked all over.  Sport retreated, because surely he could read the thunderous expression undoubtedly sitting on Adam’s face right now, as he sat up in the water.

Abigail Jones, apparently, could not, because she rushed forward again, right into the water too.  “Oh, you poor dear!  It’s all my fault, I was too hard on you – even if you had an excuse to be here, I should have known – the course of true love never did run smooth!”

William Shakespeare preserve him.  She was reaching out consoling arms and he desperately scrambled backwards, looking anywhere but at her – and that’s how his gaze landed on a shadowy patch near the bank, newly visible from this position, where his two younger brothers were hiding mostly submerged in the water.

Hoss sank down even lower until only his nose, eyes and hat were visible. Joe gave a little wave.

Adam was going to murder them.

10.

“I don’t believe in ghosts but they have been chasing me my whole life.”

Edgar Allen Poe (attributed)

Adam was glaring at him from across the pond and over Abigail Jones’ shoulder, but Little Joe wasn’t worried.  In order to murder him and Hoss right now, older brother would first have to reveal them to Miss Jones and the Sunday School picnic, and Adam was a fast enough thinker to realize that revealing his two mostly naked brothers to that audience was only going to make it harder to get away – and would start off a story that would never die down.

Adam might try to murder him later, but Joe was never one to worry much about the future.

“We’re gonna die,” Hoss moaned, apparently without Joe’s sunny calculations.

It would have been better if Hoss did have Joe’s attitude – and had stayed quiet – because sound carries strangely over water and Abigail Jones, remarkably, was distracted from ministering to the soaking wet Adam and tried to look around.  “Did you hear something?”

“No,” Adam said through clenched jaw.  “Nothing.”

Abigail Jones had never been easy to dissuade from an idea.  “I thought…sort of a moan?”

She peered towards the deep shadows by the bank’s overhang, and Joe and Hoss, already in up to their chins, tried to sink even lower.

“I’m sure it was just the wind,” Adam said, struggling up to his feet in the shallower part of the pond.

“Maybe it was the ghost!” one girl piped up.  By now most of the picnickers were gathered on the pond shore, watching the unexpected sight of their teacher standing knee-deep in the water.

“Don’t speak nonsense, Angela,” Abigail Jones said sternly.  “Ghosts aren’t real.”

“But I’ve heard stories,” Angela protested.  “The Ghost of the Ponderosa!  A miner who drowned himself when he lost his silver mine.”

“No,” a small boy contradicted, “it was an Indian brave who lost his true love.”

More stories babbled up, and Joe wondered where they’d been hearing them.  There was no shortage of storytellers in Virginia City.

“This is ridiculous!” Abigail Jones insisted over the hubbub.

“Perhaps it would be a good idea to get out of the pond,” Adam interjected, trying to take Abigail’s arm.

“I know I heard something,” she said, glaring back towards Joe and Hoss’s concealing shadows, “but it wasn’t a ghost.  Surely an educated man like you, Adam, doesn’t believe in ghosts!”

“No, I don’t,” Adam said grimly, “but sometimes I feel they’ve been chasing me my whole life.  Poltergeists, leaving chaos and destruction behind them at every turn.”

Yep, older brother was definitely going to murder them later.  And as long as things couldn’t get any worse and there was some fun to be had in the meantime…  Joe lifted dripping hands out of the water, cupped them around his mouth, and let out his most blood-curdling wail.

Picknickers shrieked and scattered, and even Abigail Jones gave a yelp – then lost her footing, grabbed at Adam, and pulled both of them back down into the water.

“We’re gonna die,” Hoss repeated mournfully.

11.

“Am I walking away from something I should be running away from?”

 Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

Joe wouldn’t go so far as to say that Adam falling into a pond with Abigail Jones was a good thing.  But it was a very funny thing – if also a fraught one, since Joe himself was largely to blame.  And it was also, undeniably, a distracting thing.

“C’mon,” he hissed to Hoss, and began moving carefully through the water towards the far shore of the pond.  “Now’s our chance.”

Hoss groaned, but followed.

With any luck, all eyes from the Sunday school picnic were focused on Adam and Abigail Jones thrashing around in the water – and those two were surely even more thoroughly distracted themselves.

Joe and Hoss scrambled up onto the land, dripping pond water, bare feet muddy, and began pushing through the tall grass.  Unfortunately, the grass didn’t reach above their knees or hide anything important left unhidden by their missing clothes.  But if they could just make the tree line…

“Slow and steady, no sudden movements,” Joe breathed.  Keep it quiet, don’t cause any alarms, no one should look this way.  Though even as he said it and even as he did it, he had to wonder if they were walking away when they ought to be running.

He kept one ear cocked for the splashing behind them.  It couldn’t be all that easy to get Abigail Jones and her big skirts out of the pond, but Adam was surely motivated to make it happen quickly.  They just needed another moment…

“Miss Jones, Miss Jones, look!” a childish voice cried out from somewhere behind them.

Joe flinched and Hoss groaned again and as bad as this was, what came next was worse.  Abigail Jones’ voice.  “What on earth – Hoss Cartwright?  Little Joe?”  And worst of all…  “Where are your clothes?”

“Run,” Joe said.

Hoss gave a jerky nod of agreement.  “Run.”

And they both sprinted for the pines without daring to look back.

Adam found them half a mile later, on the road towards home, still wet and increasingly muddy.  Oldest brother was not any cleaner, though at least he had the benefit of being on Sport, leading Cochise and Chub behind him.  Abigail Jones, fortunately, was not in evidence, though Joe couldn’t think how Adam had managed to shake her after all this.

Explanations weren’t likely to be coming immediately, or maybe ever, as Adam halted his horse, fixed them with his most dangerous stare, and said, “Give me one reason I shouldn’t shoot both of you.”

Hoss just groaned but Joe tried to rise valiantly to the moment.  “Sheriff Coffee wouldn’t like it.  Premeditated murder, that’d be.  Fratricide, even.”  It was a bigger word than he usually bothered with, but it had seemed such a relevant concept when it came up in a long-ago spelling bee that it had stuck in his brain.  “Think of the consequences.  Juries don’t like brothers killing each other.”

Adam slowly shook his head.  “No jury in Virginia City would convict me.  They all know you two.”

12.

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”

William Shakespeare (Henry V)

Ben was sitting on the porch playing checkers with Adam when two very bedraggled figures staggered their way into the yard, close to twilight.  They might have looked less pathetic if they had been fully clothed, although there was enough mud covering them to hide a great deal.

“What happened to you boys?” Ben demanded as Hoss and Little Joe slowly approached the porch.

The question prompted a babble of confused explanations from both, involving a pond, wolves, ghosts, and Abigail Jones.  Also their oldest brother’s name, liberally sprinkled throughout.

“You see, Pa?” Adam said calmly, as the babble began to die down.  “Just like I said.”  And Adam’s explanation, given some hours before when he had also arrived wet and irate, did seem to more or less tally, though his had been far more coherent.  He’d had time since for a bath and change of clothes, which made for a striking contrast now.

“He just left us out there!” Joe said indignantly.  “Our own brother!”

“You two got me into a situation I could only get out of by promising to escort Abigail Jones to the next church social,” Adam said, visibly unrepentant.  “You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you.”

Ben coughed, lifting his hand to his mouth to hide the smile he could feel flickering there.  As he studied his younger sons more closely, they did present a pitiful sight – but he could also see, at least in Little Joe, all the tell-tale signs of posture and expression that meant he was actively working at appearing as pitiful as possible.  Which was, in its own way, reassuring.

“Now, boys,” he said, trying to sound stern, “you know that I expect you to stand by each other, and try to help each other out of trouble.  As brothers.”

“And that’s the only reason I didn’t shoot them,” Adam said.

“We didn’t mean to get Abigail Jones involved!” Joe protested.  “We’re victims of circumstance, and you just abandoned us!”

“Perhaps it would be better,” Ben interrupted before the discussion could heat up even further, “to discuss this over supper.  After everyone is cleaned up.  I believe Hop Sing has already been preparing the bathtub.”

Hoss and Little Joe exchanged a long glance – and then were off and running to the house, racing each other to be first to the bathtub.

Ben shook his head, smiling, as a line from Adam’s beloved Shakespeare floated through his mind: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”  They had their own band of Ponderosa brothers right here.  And sometimes, as the Bard had intended, that meant standing by each other in a fight, risking their lives for each other.

And sometimes, it meant days like today.

The End