Summary:  Joe persuades his father and a very reluctant Adam, to tell the story of the black powder.
Rating:  G  (5,500 words)

The Gunpowder Plot

             “It’s still snowing, Pa and you promised.”  Thirteen-year-old Joe Cartwright gave his father a hurt look.  In fact, it was his best pathetic puppy dog look, which he knew his family found hard to resist.  He was standing in front of his father’s desk and obviously didn’t plan to move until he got a satisfactory answer.

“I did no such thing, Joseph.  I told a story yesterday because you found your great, great-grandfather’s picture in the attic.  It doesn’t mean I can stop working and do that everyday,” his father replied.

“But it’s only boring bookkeeping and you know you hate it.  Adam could do it for you and you could tell us the story about the black powder,” Joe persisted.  “I wanna know what he did.”

Hoss looked up from his seat on the hearth and grinned at his older brother.  He could see that Adam wasn’t at all keen on this idea and not because he didn’t want to do the account books.  “Yeah, Pa.  I wanna hear, too.  I don’t remember much about it ‘ceptin’ that you was real mad at him.”

“That’s the part I want to forget,” Adam mumbled, sinking back into the blue chair and trying to hide.

Ben could see that Joe wasn’t about to budge and if thwarted would be a real nuisance all afternoon.  He hated doing the monthly accounts and any excuse was tempting.  If Joe was denied a story then he’d make everyone’s afternoon miserable and Ben had experienced too many confrontations this winter to relish the thought of another.  “Let me finish this page and then we’ll see,” he prevaricated, hoping Joe would find something else to occupy him.  He glanced over at his eldest son, or maybe Adam would find something for him.  He could tell, from the way Adam held his book, that the prospect of this particular story was causing a certain amount of tension.

Joe grinned; he’d got his own way as usual.  He knew now that it was only a matter of time.

“Little Joe, why don’t I give you a game of checkers?”  Adam suggested.  “You’re getting good at it now and Hoss isn’t a real challenge for you anymore.”  He hoped a little flattery would steer Joe away from the story idea.

Joe’s eyes crinkled up in laughter; his brother was so obvious sometimes. “Sure,” he replied taking down the box of checkers from the shelf as he passed and then spreading them on the coffee table and perching himself on the arm of the sofa opposite his brother.  “It’ll pass the time while Pa finishes those figures.”

Adam’s mind was not on the game and Joe almost beat him, but he managed to salvage it at the last moment.  Immediately after the game was finished Joe began to pack away the checkers.  He had seen his father stop writing and stretch and knew a further campaign was required.  “Hey, Pa, you ready now?”

“Ready for what?”  Ben feigned ignorance.

“The story, Pa.  The one about Adam and the black powder.”  Joe sighed, impatiently.

Ben got slowly to his feet and raised an eyebrow at Adam.  “Doesn’t look like I have much choice, son,” he chuckled.  “All right one story, but you sit properly on the sofa.”  He admonished, Joe, giving him a gentle push down on to the settee as he passed to his own chair by the fire.  “I’m not sure I can recall all the details…” he hid a smile as he glanced over at his eldest son  “…you might have to help me out in spots.”

Adam groaned.  “Pa…!”

“I’m sure you can recall the incident, can’t you?”  Ben grinned openly now.

“Oh sure, in vivid detail,”  Adam grunted, resigning himself to the inevitable.  “Anyway it was all Hoss’ fault… it started with him wanting candy…”

*****

Hoss pressed his nose wistfully against the glass and licked his lips.  It was hot and he was tired and hungry. Breakfast seemed like a lifetime ago and Pa’s hard biscuits and oatmeal hadn’t nearly filled Hoss’ stomach.  That candy sure did look good.  Maybe, just maybe Pa would buy some today.  The five-year-old wasn’t too hopeful.  Pa always said ‘another day’ when he had asked before.  He wandered back to the family wagon and leaned against it.  His older brother, Adam was sitting on the wagon, dangling his legs over the end and with his head stuck in some paper or other. Hoss couldn’t read yet but he liked it when Adam read him stories.

“Whatcha readin’?” he asked.

Adam didn’t even look up.  “It’s a paper for grown ups,” he replied.

“Then why you readin’ it?  You ain’t growed-up,” Hoss challenged. He didn’t like it when Adam shut him out and pretended to be a man.  He wasn’t so much bigger after all.  “You reckon Pa’ll buy us some candy today?”  Hoss persisted, this time tugging at his brother’s worn shirtsleeve.

“Nope,” Adam said, shortly.  “We don’t have money for truck like that.  Pa’s gotta buy flour and molasses and coffee and things we can eat.”

“We can eat candy,” Hoss responded eagerly.

“It ain’t real food, silly.  You’re too little to understand.”  Adam folded the paper and put it in his pocket and turned his attention to his little brother.  “Pa don’t have much money right now, Hoss, he’s gotta go sell our furs first.”

“Then will we have candy?”  Hoss’ voice wavered a little.

Adam put an arm around his little brother’s shoulders. “Yeah, maybe,” he comforted, though deep down he knew that there was never enough for treats like candy.  He had almost forgotten what it tasted like.  The last peppermint sticks he’d had was at Christmas and he knew Pa had gone without tobacco to provide those.

Hoss climbed wearily on to the wagon beside his brother.  As he did so there was a loud bang from behind the store, this was followed by several more and two boys ran into the street throwing small brown sticks into the road.  Hoss grabbed the side of the wagon and Adam stuck out a hand and hauled his little brother in by his shirt.  The horses reacted in terror and stamped and tossed their heads almost making off down the street.  Luckily Pa came out of the store at that moment and grabbed for the reins, dropping his packages as he did so.

Ben managed to calm the frightened team but cursed under his breath when he saw the split sack of flour and the molasses seeping out in a gloopy mess on to the sidewalk.  He quickly bent to pick up the barrel and stop it all leaking away, pushing the bung back in tighter this time.  Then he tried to salvage what was left of the flour.  The combination of the two left him covered in a brown sticky goo.

Pa sure did look funny, Hoss thought, but one look at his father’s face and then at his older brother fiercely shaking his head and he knew better than to laugh.   Adam scrambled down from the wagon to help but Ben waved him away.

The journey home started in silence.  Adam knew that his father was angry and it was never wise to try to make conversation when Pa was mad.  Hoss scrunched up against his brother in the back of the wagon and waited until they were well out of town until he could no longer contain his curiosity.  “What was them things, Adam?  Them sticks that made a noise?” he whispered.

“Firecrackers,” Ben snapped from the wagon seat.

Hoss bit his lip and glanced at his older brother, wishing he hadn’t spoken.

Adam held a finger to his lips to quiet his younger brother and whispered, “I’ll tell you later.”

*****

“But when did ya make ‘em.?”  Joe interrupted.

“I’m coming to that,” Adam replied, trying to keep patience.

“He’s putting off the best ‘til last,” their father laughed.  “And it was a good thing you didn’t laugh at me.  As I recall I was quite angry at the amount of supplies we’d lost.  Money was tight in those days.”

“Yeah, yeah, but what about the fireworks?”  Joe persisted.

Adam shook his head.  “All right, I’ll get there.”

*****

Much later as the two boys settled for the night in their loft bedroom, Hoss raised the question again.  Rolling on to his side he peered across at the other bed.  “Tell me ‘bout them fire things, Adam?” he whispered.

Adam sat up for a moment and glanced nervously at the ladder down from the loft to the main cabin as if expecting his father to appear.  Then he relaxed and lay back with his hands behind his dark head.   “Be quiet, then,” he whispered back.  “They’re called firecrackers and they make a bang when you set light to them.”

“Why?”  Hoss asked, truly puzzled.

Adam shrugged  “It’s fun, I guess.  They’re fireworks and folks let them off on special occasions, like… well, like Independence Day and stuff.   I remember once when I was a kid, Pa took me to see some real pretty fireworks.  They made bangs but they had pretty colored stars and lights, too.”

Hoss resisted the temptation to tell his older brother that at eleven he was still a kid; he was too fascinated by the thought of stars and lights.  “What sort of colors and how did they do it?” he asked, eagerly leaning forward to hear.

“All colors like in a rainbow,”  Adam replied, his expression growing sad as he remembered that Hoss’ mother had been with them.  “I dunno how they make them.”  He glanced across at Hoss, anticipating the next question  “An’ they’re expensive so don’t ask Pa if you can have some,” he said sharply.

“I wasn’t gonna,” Hoss protested, though it had been the next thought in his head.  “You think we’ll ever have lots of money for stuff like that and candy?”  he spoke wistfully.

“Oh, go to sleep.”  Adam’s voice was frustrated and angry now as he turned on his side away from his brother’s hurt expression.

A few days later Adam managed to be in the store alone and he peered at all the goods on display.  He was thinking of buying some candy, it had to be enough to share with Hoss but he couldn’t afford two peppermint sticks, maybe they could share one.  Then he remembered the fireworks.

“You lookin’ for something special, Adam?”  Will Cass asked him.

Adam looked embarrassed and stuttered a little then said the first thing that came into his head.  “Do… you sell… those firecracker things?”

“Sure do.  But you think you’re Pa would approve of you having them around your place with the animals and all?”

Adam bit his lip.  “I’d have to ask him first, but how much do they cost?”

Cass said a figure that made Adam’s mouth drop open.  He fingered the three cents in his pocket and sighed.  He had only wanted to buy them for Hoss, but even if he used all his money it wasn’t enough for even one.  He could see Cass was waiting to see if he wanted some so he moved away from the counter.  “Like I said I’d have to ask my Pa, first,” he said as he backed to the door.

Cass watched him go.  “And it ain’t likely he’ll say yes.  He can’t even afford to pay the bill for essentials,” the storekeeper remarked to no one in particular.

As Adam left the store he saw a spent firecracker in the alley and bent to pick it up. It didn’t look too complicated, just a tube made of layers of brown paper with a wooden stop at one end and what looked like burnt string at the other.  Maybe he could make a firecracker for Hoss.  He had no idea how they made them with colored stars but perhaps he could find out.

The family was seated at supper when Adam made his first enquiry.  “Pa, can I ask you something?” he began, alerting his father to the fact that this was a serious question.

“Certainly, son.  Anything, you know that,” Ben replied setting aside his plate and toying with his mug of coffee.

“Well, Hoss was asking about firecrackers and… well, why do folk have them? What are they for?”

Ben smiled at his youngest son “Fireworks have been around for hundreds of years.  The Chinese made them first and they use them to celebrate.  Don’t you remember those fireworks we saw in Independence just before we came west, Adam?”

Adam nodded.  “But what are they made from?  The colored stars and things I mean, how do they do that?”

Ben frowned in concentration,  “I’m not sure, son. I think they add different metallic powders and other things to black powder.  The black powder gives the bang when it’s fired, just like in a musket and the powders give different colors when they burn.  You’ve seen how the fire can burn with blue or green when there is something on one of the logs.”

Adam nodded eagerly.  “So you put all the stuff in a tube and then light it?”

Ben laughed. “That’s a little simplified but, yes, I suppose so.  I’ve never really looked at a firework that closely.”  He pointed a finger at his sons. “And I don’t want you two playing with them either, even if your friends have them.  Matches and fireworks are dangerous.”

Hoss’ face fell.  “Couldn’t you get us just one, Pa?” he whined  “I wanna see the stars Adam tol’ me about.  I promise not ta touch.”

Ben shook his head  “I’m sorry, son.  I can’t afford fireworks.”

“Firecrackers don’t cost so very much, Pa,” Adam suggested.  “I asked Mr. Cass and he said…”

“Adam, I said no.  We don’t have money to waste on such things.  You’re old enough to know that.”  Ben spoke firmly and rose from the table showing that the conversation was at an end.

Adam could never take no for an answer when there was a question burning in his brain.  His first stop next day was at Washoe Diggin’s.  He knew that some of the miners used blasting powder to open up the rock and he guessed that they would know how to make an explosion.  After a few pertinent questions he moved on to talk to one of the miners who carried a gun and who Adam had seen making his own bullets a time or two.  It all seemed fairly straightforward, now all he had to do was get the ingredients together.  It was kinda like cooking a stew, he chuckled to himself.  He was pretty sure after the conversation last night that Pa wouldn’t be too pleased at his experiment but he was sure Hoss would be delighted.  If he could produce real fireworks with stars then Pa would soon see how much money he’d saved and he’d come around.

He began by searching for anything that would burn with a colored light and soon realised that he also needed it to burn slowly once the explosion had taken place.  Pine- cones had pitch in them so he add those to his store and he knew charcoal burned slowly so he spent a day making some.  Finally, he shaved some rust off an old plough share as one of the miners had told him that it would make his firecrackers burned red and he knew from experimenting once before that sulfur would burn yellow so that was included.

The next day he hid himself away in the woodshed and began his work.  First he cut his paper into squares. He had only been able to find old newspapers and they tore easily but they didn’t look much like the firecracker tube he had acquired.  He soaked the paper in his flour paste glue and then rolled it around a stick.  For a moment he felt guilt at the amount of flour he had taken from the store but he soon put that aside.  The first time he tried he waited too long and the paper stuck to the stick.  The second time he didn’t wait long enough and he crushed the tube taking it off the stick, but after several attempts he succeeded in getting a recognizable tube, which he set aside to dry.  He made about half a dozen and then hid them on the highest shelf in the storeroom next to the woodshed.

It was a few days before Adam could get back to his project but when he did the tubes had set hard.  He searched the storeroom for something to use as a bung and finally cut the bottom from the corks in two bottles, replacing the half corks so that the contents wouldn’t leak.  He then fashioned these to fit the tubes, sealing one end.  Next he crept into the house, checking to see if his father was around.  He hesitated for just a moment before lifting a blue tin down from the cupboard and cracking open the lid.  Good it was almost full, he could take some and Pa would be none the wiser.  Very carefully he tipped a handful of black powder into a mug and carried it out to the woodshed.

Once safely inside the woodshed again, he carefully poured the sulfur he had taken from the kitchen earlier in the day, into the cup with the powder.  Pa only used it to make awful medicine anyhow.  He wasn’t sure how much he needed of each to make colored stars so he simply poured until the cup was full then mixed them together.  He added some charcoal and some iron shavings to the mixture and shook it together.  Finally he surveyed the cone and tried to decide how to extract the pitch he needed.  Nothing came to mind so he simply crushed the cone into the mixture.  The whole concoction was then shaken into the tubes.  Using the end of a wooden spoon he rammed it down tight, jumping a little when a spark flew out of one of the tubes.  Now all he needed was a fuse and this he had seen at the mining camp, it looked like twisted lengths of string covered in black powder, so that was what he used.

It was getting late so he quickly packed away his ‘fireworks’ and tried to clean the shed so that no evidence remained.  The bench he had been working at was a little stained but he didn’t think Pa would notice, it was so dirty anyway.  He washed quickly and was a little disturbed that his fingers stayed black.  He’d just have to try to hide them.

His attempts at hiding his hands were unsuccessful.  In fact his father was made more suspicious by his fidgeting until he actually asked to see what the boy was hiding.

“I’m not hiding anything, Pa,” Adam protested.

“Show me both hands together,” Ben instructed, he’d long ago learned that any other phrasing got one hand and then the other and wasted a considerable amount of time.

Reluctantly Adam spread out his hands, revealing the stained fingers.

“Good heavens, boy!  What have you been doing?”

“I made some charcoal… for drawing,” Adam answered quickly, his brain working overtime to come up with an excuse.

Ben frowned.  “I thought I’d told you often enough not to play with matches.”

“I wasn’t Pa.  Jake helped me.  I gathered the wood and made the pit and he made the fire.”  That bit at least was the truth.  Adam hadn’t yet reconciled the reason for the charcoal or how he was going to light the fireworks with his promise not to use matches unsupervised.

Ben grunted.  “Well, go wash your hands properly.  I don’t know how charcoal stained them that way but you are not eating at this table until they are clean.”

Adam went into the kitchen and tried again and this time with the help of lye soap and a scrubbing brush he almost removed the skin but at least they would pass inspection.  By the time he returned Ben and Hoss had almost finished supper.  He put some rabbit on his plate and some sweet potatoes and then looked for the gravy and biscuits.

“You ate all the biscuits and gravy,” he accused his little brother.

“No, I din’t, there weren’t none,” Hoss replied with a quick glance at his father.

Ben bit his lip.  “I’m sorry, son.  We must have spilt more flour than I thought.  There’s hardly any left and it’s got to last until next week at least.  We’ll have biscuits for breakfast, okay?”

Adam bit his lip and nodded.  That was one complication he hadn’t considered.  At least Pa had blamed the spillage and not looked further.  He prayed Pa wouldn’t notice the black powder was less, too.  That would be harder to explain.

*****

“So you see, that’s how I made them and Pa was none the wiser,”  Adam concluded.

“Well, not then,” Ben added for him.  “But I think Little Joe is less interested in how they are made and more in how they worked and the consequences,” he grinned.

Hoss chuckled.  “I can remember that part.”

“You would,”  Adam grumbled.  “Pa, maybe it’s not such a good idea to tell Little Joe about it. I mean, it might give him ideas.”

Ben smiled and Adam knew his goose was cooked.  “It might, since you’ve only told him how to make the fireworks and not what happens to boys who steal, lie and disobey me.”

Adam sat up, shocked.  “Pa I did not…  oh, yeah, I guess I did, huh?”

“You did,” Ben confirmed, nodding for him to continue.

*****

The next morning after he had finished the chores Adam called Hoss over to the shed. “I got something to show you, but you gotta promise to keep it our secret.”

Hoss nodded vigorously.  “What is it?”

“Shhh…  you go out to the pasture down by the bend in the stream and I’ll meet you there in a few minutes,” Adam whispered, looking over his shoulder to where Ben was in conversation with Jake.

Adam gathered the fireworks and hide them under his shirt then checked his pocket for the matches he had borrowed from the mantelshelf.  With one last glance in his father’s direction he slipped away to join Hoss.

“What are they?”  Hoss asked, when Adam extracted the rather grubby tubes from his shirt.

“Fireworks,” Adam replied, proudly.  “I made them for you.”

Hoss’ eyes lit up. “Really?  Like them ones you tol’ me about, with stars?”

Adam didn’t want Hoss to be too disappointed so he tried to lower his expectations a little.  “They might not be quite like those.  I ain’t never made any before.”

“Whadda we do with ‘em?”  Hoss asked, jumping up and down in his excitement.

“You don’t do nothing,” Adam said sternly  “You’re too small to use matches.”

“You ain’t allowed, neither,” Hoss muttered.

Adam ignored him.  He’d done an awful lot of things he wasn’t supposed to lately; one more hardly made any difference. “You go hide behind that tree.”  He pointed to an old oak about five feet away.  “I’ll light one and then come over to you.  I’m not sure how much they move when they go off.”

Adam watched as Hoss did as he was bid and for the first time doubts began to creep into his head.  Pa was awful strict about touching the black powder and his gun. If the small amount of powder in the gun could move a ball enough to kill someone then maybe the tiny amount he had used would …  nah, there was no ball for it to propel, just metal shavings and powders and a bit of paper.

He took one of the tubes and set it up on a piece of bare earth. It took a few minutes to make it stand up but eventually it did and he carefully struck a match on his boot heel.  With a slightly shaky hand he touched the match to the powdered end of the string and almost fell back in surprise when it spluttered into a tiny flame.  His heart in his mouth he raced back to where Hoss was hiding. The flame spluttered for a moment then went out.

Adam waited a minute or two then sighed.  “You stay here, “ he ordered and I’ll go and light it again.

The fuse had shortened now and it didn’t occur to Adam that this presented a problem.  He re-lit the end and moved away as soon as it started to splutter.  This time the tube fell over but the fuse continued to burn.  When the flame reached the paper tube it ignited the black powder and with a small bang the tube shot across the bare ground spluttering and throwing out small sparks as it went, it finally came to rest when it hit the grass less than a foot from the tree.  Adam had made it behind the tree just in time.

Hoss frowned . “Don’t it do no more?   There weren’t no stars,” he accused.

After the initial shock that it had worked at all, Adam, too, was disappointed.  “It fell over, that’s why, I got a bigger one that I can fix in the ground better,” he said confidently.

Once again he instructed Hoss to stay put and he chose the largest of the tubes, this one he embedded into the dirt and packed a few small stones around the base.  He lit the match and slowly touched it to the end of the string fuse.  This time it burned much better and Adam stood up full of confidence that it would work.  He turned his back on the firework and headed for the tree.

Suddenly every bit of confidence drained away, coming across the meadow was Pa.  Uh Oh! There was no where to hide and no way to stop the firework.  He glanced from the spluttering fuse to his father striding across the grass.  Pa couldn’t know what they were doing from this distance maybe he could rush back and stamp out the fuse.  He stood for a second, undecided.  In that second, all hell broke loose.

The firework fuse reached the tube and exploded, sending sparks, and burning paper tube everywhere.  The base was firmly stuck in the ground and it contained most of the black powder, when this caught it sent showers of earth and pebbles in every direction.

Hoss ducked behind the tree and missed what few colored stars there were, he was the lucky one.  Ben and Adam were caught in the open.  Ben was peppered with tiny stones and earth, surprised but unhurt.  Adam however, was covered in burning powder and paper.  Sparks burned his shirt and pants, scorched his black hair and blistered exposed skin on his face and hands.

Not knowing what had caused the explosion and seeing only that Adam was hurt, Ben rushed to him and bodily threw him into the stream, landing almost on top of him but extinguishing any sparks.

It took a moment for them all to recover but soon Ben was standing on the bank hands on hips looking from one son to the other.  Adam was indeed a sorry sight, with small holes all over his clothes, his hair in disarray and water dripping from every inch of him.  “Would someone like to tell me just what you were doing?” Ben asked.  Then he spied the remaining fireworks in a small heap beside the tree.  “And what are these?” There was definite temper in his voice and Adam shivered both from the shock of the explosion and the cold water and from his father’s expression.

“Fireworks, Pa,” Hoss piped up.  “Adam made ‘em!  Ain’t he clever?  They had stars an’ all just like he said…” His voice faded away as he saw the angry expression on his father’s face.

Ben drew in a sharp breath and tried to control himself.  “Hoss go back to the yard and help Jake with the chores.”

Hoss looked nervously at his brother.  Pa must be mad ‘cos Adam had used matches. With one last look he turned and ran back toward the house.

Adam shifted nervously from one foot to the other.  He had no excuses so he’d better just keep quiet and take whatever was coming.

Ben drew in a deep breath.  “How many times have you been told not to play with matches?”

Adam mentally counted but decided that an answer was not required and was probably inadvisable since the number was quite large.

Looking down at the remaining fireworks in his hand Ben studied the workmanship.  “So now we know where the flour went and quite a large quantity of black powder.”  He looked up and shook his head,  “Adam, what possesses you to do such crazy things?  You must have known it was dangerous.”

Again Adam considered remaining silent but Pa was waiting for an answer this time.  “Hoss wanted to see fireworks and I didn’t think it would be dangerous if we were behind the tree,” he excused himself.

“And what about when you were making them…  how did you know what to do?” Ben’s initial anger was being replaced by a fear of what might have happened.  Adam had obviously spent time surrounded by quantities of explosive and had been experimenting long before this morning.

“I asked at the Diggin’s.”  He spoke without thinking, and then swallowed hard.  The Washoe Diggin’s was one place he was not permitted to go.

Ben nodded. “Do you take any notice of ANYTHING I say?” he thundered.  “Oh, get on home and go to your room until I’ve cooled off enough to deal with you.”

*****

“Did Pa give you a tannin’?”  Joe grinned.  The idea of his older brother on the receiving end instead of him filling him with a certain dubious pleasure.

Adam shook his head  “No, I wish he had.  He got imaginative.”

Hoss and Joe both groaned.  They knew exactly what Adam meant.  Pa had a nasty habit of finding the most dreadful punishments that, as he put it, ‘fitted the crime’.

“I’m pleased to know I hit the spot, if you’ll excuse the phrase,” Ben grinned.

“You knew we’d prefer a tanning, didn’t you, Pa?  That’s why you always tried to find other things,” Adam asked.

“I never like to resort to physical punishment if I can find something that will last longer and make you think a bit more about what you did.”

“The tannings I got always seemed to last long enough,” Hoss observed.

“Mine, too,” Joe agreed.

Adam nodded and gave a wry grin.  “Well, this one was real imaginative.  He made me sit down with a sewing needle and darn everyone of those d….”

“Uh huh!” Ben warned, wagging a finger.

Adam blushed and changed his words.  “He made me darn over a hundred holes in my clothes and gave me yard chores for weeks.  Oh, and because I’d used the flour I wasn’t allowed biscuits for a month,” Adam grumbled.

Joe gasped.  “He made you sew?”  There was nothing worse to Joe’s mind than being made to do girls’ chores.

“There is nothing wrong with sewing.  All good sailors do it.”

“Yeah, but I don’t wanna be a sailor,” Joe muttered.

“And there weren’t a hundred holes and the month was two weeks until we went to town again for supplies,” Ben corrected.

“And we didn’t get to go to the Independence Day picnic either,” Hoss added.

“Well, I wasn’t about to let you two near anymore fireworks,” Ben laughed.  “Even if I did think you’d learned your lesson.  Mind you it didn’t last that long. I seem to remember a herd that got stampeded with firecrackers not so much later.”

“Pa that’s not fair, we all know that one.  Anyhow, next time its Hoss’ turn to be the star of the story,” Adam chuckled, nudging his brother.

“I never did nuthin’ to tell stories about,” Hoss said, rubbing his vest with his knuckles and examining his fist. “I was the good one.”

Adam got to his feet and moved away a little  “Sure, you were.  Now, was it a raccoon or a bear cub that you kept in your room?  And what about those snake eggs you hatched in Mama’s sewing basket?”

Joe jumped up between his brothers.  “Tell me about it, Adam.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Hoss growled, advancing on his older brother.

“I think we should all be getting to those chores,” Ben suggested.

“Tomorrow then, Pa,” pleaded Joe.

Ben looked from Adam to Hoss. “We’ll see, son.  After all, Hoss, it’s only fair.”

Three Cartwrights burst into laughter.  Only one, thinking of certain stories Adam could tell, was not amused.

*****