Old friends and enemies from Joe’s past return to up-end the Cartwrights’ lives.  One wants to marry Joe, while others want to kill him.  With Ben away, the Cartwright sons – with a little help – will have to figure out who is targeting Joe, and how to keep the culprit from finishing the job.

This story is set during and immediately after “The Artist,” and is a What Happened Later for a number of episodes…but those details would be spoilers!  It is also part of my  AU series.

Rating: PG | Word Count: 44,416

Lady in the House Series
A Visitor from San Francisco
Older Brothers
Figures from the Past

1.

Joe Cartwright folded his poker hand when Hoss walked into the saloon – he only had nine-high anyway – and pushed his chair away from the table.  He tipped the chair back and his hat down, and asked, “Looking for me, big brother?”

“Nah, looking for Pa,” Hoss said, stumping over to the table.  “You seen him?”

“No, and we ain’t going to,” Joe said.  “Got a message that he’s staying on for a while with his new friend.  Apparently the man’s a famous painter or something.”

It had, all in all, been a strange day so far.  They’d finished their cattle run, all four Cartwrights together, sold their beef, and after a couple weeks on the trail, Joe had never been happier to hand a whole lot of animals over to someone else’s responsibility and go get a meal in the best saloon this tiny, dusty town had to offer.

And then somehow, Pa had got himself into a fistfight with a blind man.  Joe could just imagine what his father would have said if he’d ever come home and announced he’d fought a man who couldn’t even see him.  When he brawled in saloons with perfectly able-bodied, sighted men, he got told he was being childish and irresponsible.  But Pa had mixed it up with a blind man who’d plainly been itching for a fight and somehow that was supposed to be a good deed or something, and the man invited Pa over for tea.  And now Pa’d sent a message back that he was staying on and that Joe, Hoss and Adam ought to start for home without him.

It was a good thing Joe trusted his father’s judgment as a rule.  Made it a little easier at moments like this to shrug and figure Pa knew what he was doing, whether it made any sense to him or not.

“Huh,” Hoss said, face creased in a frown.  “Why didn’t you come to the hotel and tell me when you got the message?”

“I was busy,” Joe said, gesturing towards the poker game.  “Besides, wake you up when you’re taking an afternoon nap?  I like life too much to try that.”

He expected Hoss to laugh at that, but he didn’t.  He just grunted and said, “Yeah, guess you got a point there.  Don’t really matter anyhow.  We’re heading back to the Ponderosa without Pa?”

“That’s what the message said to do, yeah,” Joe said quietly.  Felt like Hoss hadn’t laughed at much he’d said lately.

“Adam know yet?” Hoss asked, running a hand over his hair.

“Nah, I ain’t seen him either.  Probably getting a shave and a bath, if I had to guess.”

“Mebbe I’ll go look for him and let him know.”

Joe waited a beat, waited to see if Hoss was going to suggest he come along.  But Hoss turned to go without saying that, and Joe let his chair thump back solidly onto the floor.  Fine.  That was fine.

And then Hoss did look back, but it was only to say, “How you doing there, anyway?” with a nod to the poker table.

“Eh, breaking even,” Joe said, and waggled a hand back and forth.  “More or less.”

“Alright.  Stay out of trouble, now.”

“Where’s the fun in that, big brother?” Joe said under his breath, and he didn’t think Hoss even heard him as he left the saloon.

He shook his head, scraped his chair back up to the table, said, “Deal me back in,” and stared at his new hand in a gray study once it came.

Something was going on with Hoss.

No, that wasn’t it exactly, because big brother seemed perfectly normal in every way except—there was something going on with him and Hoss.  He couldn’t define it or explain it, he only knew something felt wrong and had for weeks now.

It was so vague, it was hard to untangle when exactly it had even started.  Everything had been fine when Liza was around.  He knew that, but he tried not to think too much about that stretch of weeks.  He didn’t succeed all that often, but he tried.

And then his unexpected, unknown brother Clay had come, and—he didn’t like thinking about that period too much either.

Everything had been wrong with everyone right after Clay left.  All he’d wanted to do was get away from the ranch, away from his family, away from everything.  So he’d avoided everyone, slacked on his chores, got into a lot of fights in a lot of saloons that meant a lot of lectures about being childish and—yeah, that wasn’t a great time either.

It hadn’t been a great few months, really.

But things had been better lately, at least with Pa and Adam.  He’d taken on that big timber contract, and when everything went wrong there, they were both so pleased to be able to help, and so pleased that he’d asked them for help, that it had smoothed over most trouble.  And it had meant a lot to him too, that they’d been there for him when he needed them.

One brother had ridden away, but he still had the rest of his family.  He’d forgotten that –maybe even resented that – for a while, but it was better now.

So things ought to be better with Hoss too; he’d been just as involved with the timber project as Pa and Adam, but something still wasn’t right.  It wasn’t obvious anymore.  They weren’t fighting, they’d worked together herding the cattle here, they sat together for meals, they’d even played checkers by the campfire a couple nights ago.  It was subtler than that, somehow, in some way that Joe couldn’t put his finger on and definitely couldn’t put into words.

But why hadn’t Hoss invited him to come along to look for Adam?  Why hadn’t he volunteered to go along?  Why hadn’t the two of them left Adam to his own business and found whatever meagre entertainment this dusty town had to offer?

They just hadn’t, that was all.

Joe threw down another hand of cards in disgust.  Maybe, riding all the way back home again, he’d be able to figure out what was wrong.

 

The Cartwright sons got out fine in the morning, none of them too sorry to leave the scrap of town behind and head for home.  Hoss liked animals, as a rule, but it was a lot easier traveling without a herd of cattle to look after.  Everything went smooth as could be for the next few days, all quiet, and if it felt a little bit—flat, well…it had been a long trip, and it felt kind of strange, Pa sending them on back home without him.

They crossed over the border onto the Ponderosa in the late afternoon of the third day, but that left a far enough ride back to the house that they’d need to camp another night.  Still, it felt like a significant shift.  Maybe that’s why Adam picked that moment to stir things up.

They’d been riding along in silence for a while when Adam suddenly spoke up with, “So is one of you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

Hoss and Little Joe both looked at Adam, and Joe said, “What are you talking about, older brother?  Nothing’s wrong.”

“Yeah,” Hoss said, slightly distracted by suddenly noticing that he and Joe hadn’t exchanged a glance, a what’s going on with older brother now glance.  “Nothing’s wrong.”

Adam shook his head.  “I don’t know.  Here we’ve been riding for days, without Pa around, and you two have been model citizens.  Nobody’s gotten into any trouble.  You haven’t even started any arguments.”

“Must be because we’ve got you to keep us in line,” Joe joked.

Adam cracked a smile.  “I would have expected the two of you to slip off by now and…let’s see, maybe be mistaken for outlaws, or accidentally get engaged, or wind up accused of murder somehow.  The sort of scrapes you regularly get into together.”

“You aren’t really complaining because we didn’t do any of that, are you?” Hoss asked.  Except he thought he knew what Adam was driving at.  He just didn’t want to admit it.

“Just observing,” Adam said cooly.  “It all seems a little unnatural.”

“Yeah, well, I’m gonna ride on ahead and see if I can observe a campsite,” Little Joe said, Cochise picking up his pace.  “I’ll try not to get married by accident, all right?”

Joe disappeared out of sight through the trees within a few minutes.  Hoss waited, and it was only a few beats before Adam started again.

“Is this still about the new horse?”

“Aw, come on, Adam, nothing’s wrong!” Hoss protested.

“Then why didn’t you ride up with Joe there?”

“He didn’t ask,” Hoss said flatly, and Adam just stared at him.  Hoss let out a loud, gusty sigh.  It was no good.  Once oldest brother got a hold of something, he didn’t let it go.  Especially when he wasn’t wrong.  Hoss glared at the nearest pine tree.  “Yer metaphor didn’t account for what happens when the new horse leaves and Joe still doesn’t go back to Cochise.”

Out loud, none of this appeared to make any sense.  Especially since Joe had just ridden away on Cochise.  But it was easier to talk about Adam’s horse metaphor than it was to talk about how much Little Joe’s new older brother Clay had seemed to get in between Hoss and Joe, and how, even with Clay gone for weeks now, they hadn’t got back to how it used to be.

Hoss had tried, after Clay left.  He’d been that dadburned angry with Little Joe for trying to leave with Clay, but he’d tried.  And Joe hadn’t wanted anything to do with any of them for weeks, cutting up and getting into trouble in town with the likes of that Dave Donovan he’d met in some poker game.  Then there’d been the big timber contract, and everyone else seemed to think that had smoothed everything over again.  Only, Joe’d gone to Pa for help, and Adam had come up with the solution for the broken flume, and Hoss felt like he’d only just kind of ridden along, and while there’d been a lot of good feeling spread around for a while there, when the dust settled things still weren’t—exactly right.

“I thought so,” Adam said, in that calm tone of his.  “I wasn’t sure, when we were all busy at home or herding cattle.  But we’ve been riding together for a few days now, and it’s become very obvious.”

“Not to Little Joe,” Hoss muttered.

“Are you sure?  Have you talked to him about it?”

“Aw, what good would that do if he can’t see it for himself?”

Now Adam sighed.  “You want me to talk to him?  Shake some sense into little brother?”

“No,” Hoss said sharply.  “There ain’t no need and—anyway, it ain’t like that, I didn’t mean to blame Joe.  I’m just being—what’s the word, when you get bent out of shape about something small?”

“Petty?” Adam offered.  “Narrow-minded?  Shallow?”

“Yeah, yeah, all that,” Hoss interrupted.  “I just got to work on that, that’s all.  Just because he was kinda distracted by Clay for a while, that ain’t that big a thing.”

“And he tried to leave with Clay,” Adam reminded him, as though it was a thing Hoss might forget.  “And pushed us all away for weeks.”

“It’s all over and done now,” Hoss said firmly.  “We’ll be all right.  I just—well, it’ll be all right.”

 

2.

Liza Montgomery looked indifferently at her landlady, who had come in to announce that a gentleman wished to see her.  It wasn’t going to be the one who counted, so it was hard to get much interest up.  “Did he give his name?”

The landlady sniffed.  “No, he was somewhat mysterious about it.  He said you wouldn’t be expecting him, but you’d want to see him because he’s Joe Cartwright’s brother.”

Liza flinched at the suddenness of that name landing in front of her, then felt a ridiculous, absurd rising of hope.  Why would one of Joe’s brothers want to see her?  She couldn’t imagine a reason for Adam.  Hoss might be in the city on business and just felt friendly.  Or…  No, it was no good speculating.  “You can tell him I’ll be down directly.”

She smoothed her hair and her dress, paced the floor a few times just to pass a moment or two and not seem embarrassingly eager – and to try to find her balance again.  It had been four months since she’d left the Ponderosa, and she hadn’t heard from or much about the Cartwrights since.  In her job with The Morning Call, she had easy access to Virginia City’s Territorial Enterprise, but the Cartwrights hadn’t been making any major headlines.  There’d been only a couple small items – a mention of one of their ranch hands being involved in a shooting in the Silver Dollar Saloon (and shootings in Virginia City saloons came up so often she’d nearly missed the one-line item), and a paragraph in the business section about a big timber contract going to the Ponderosa.  Nothing more personal than that.

She would have been embarrassed to admit how carefully she’d been reading the newspaper for any Cartwright references.  She had ridden the stage away from Virginia City, and the Cartwrights might as well have become nothing more than figures in a story for all the expectation she had of ever meeting them again.  She had thought that was best, safest, the only real option because surely she couldn’t really claim what Joe had tried to offer her.  They had known each other only two weeks, and she couldn’t believe that a man with so many romances behind him could really be serious about proposing to her.

And now four months had gone by, and she was still waiting for the day when she was going to stop missing the life she had concluded she couldn’t have.  When she was going to stop missing the family she had chosen not to accept.  And when she was going to stop missing Joe, but it hurt too much to think about missing him so she tried to focus on the barely more impersonal missing of them, and she read The Territorial Enterprise for mentions of the Cartwrights.

So it was all very disconcerting, to have a Cartwright appear at her home.  She’d prefer Hoss, but even Adam would at least be an emissary from the life she’d left, the one she’d only realized how much she wanted when the opportunity was already lost.  But she didn’t know why either Hoss or Adam wouldn’t simply give his name…

Speculating wasn’t doing any good.  She took one last deep breath, then descended the narrow stair to the parlor.  And found herself looking at a complete stranger standing by the window.

Disappointment washed over her and made her voice sharp as she said, “Who exactly are you claiming to be?  Hoss or Adam?  Because it might interest you to know that I’ve met both of them.”

“Neither, ma’am,” the man said, taking off his hat and giving a polite nod.  He was dressed like a city-dweller, like he belonged here in San Francisco, not like someone who had come from the Ponderosa.  “I’m Joe’s brother on the other side, Marie’s son.  I didn’t think the name Clay Stafford would signify anything to you.”

He was right, the name didn’t mean anything – and didn’t that give the lie to the story at once?   “None of the Cartwrights ever mentioned you,” Liza said stiffly.  Surely it had to be a con of some sort.  Though he’d pivoted to a new and rather creative story quickly, if he had intended to pretend he was…Adam, probably; he didn’t have the build to claim to be Hoss.  Unless he’d planned this story all along, but what could he possibly intend to accomplish?

“They didn’t know about me, ma’am.  I only learned about them recently, and went to the Ponderosa to meet my brother.”

It was the kind of improbable circumstance that did seem to happen to the Cartwrights, but that proved nothing.  “I don’t see any reason to believe you, and I don’t understand why you’re here talking to me.”

The strange man smiled, and she realized for the first time that he was quite good-looking – and that he had Joe’s coloring, though that still wasn’t proof of anything.  “The explanation for my presence isn’t going to make much sense unless you believe I am who I claim to be.”  He reached into a jacket pocket, drew out a locket and offered it to her.  “Joe gave me that.  He also told me that the prettiest thing he ever saw was you playing with a kitten Hoss gave you.”

She recognized the locket, and the picture of Joe’s mother inside.  Joe had showed it to her one evening when the family had been reminiscing, and the talk had turned towards the boys’ mothers.

The locket might have been stolen, but it would be hard to come up with that detail about the kitten.  Or maybe the wave of longing that crashed over her with the words made it hard to stay suspicious.  She wanted this man to be telling the truth, as improbable a truth as it seemed to be.  “Very well, let’s say I accept your story.  You do have Joe’s locket.  And…”  She looked at him more closely.  “…you have Joe’s eyes too.”  She sat down in one of the room’s spindly chairs, gestured him towards the nearby settee.  “So explain to me why you’re here.”

The strange man—Clay—sat down slowly, fidgeted with his hat brim held in front of him for a moment.  “It’s like this, ma’am,” he said finally.  “I want to ask you something no one on the Ponderosa could answer.  Joe said you turned down marrying him because it was too soon and you weren’t sure and you didn’t believe he was serious.  So now that it’s been longer – what do you think about it now?”

The sheer audacity of it took her breath away.  For a complete stranger to come and ask about the most personal matter of her life – he had no right – unless…  No.  Joe wouldn’t handle the situation like that.  Of course he wouldn’t.  But all the same… “Did Joe send you to ask me that?” she asked, folding her arms over her chest.

A trace of a smile crossed his face.  “No, ma’am.  None of the Cartwrights know I’m here.”

Of course.  “Then I don’t see how this is any of your business,” she said flatly, and meant to leave it at that.  But somehow a slightly plaintive, “And it’s too late anyway,” escaped her.

Joe Cartwright, the charming Joe Cartwright who wooed all the girls, could not possibly still be thinking about her.  She missed him every day, but he probably didn’t give her a single thought anymore.  He’d probably gone on to some other woman – or two or three, by now.

Clay’s smile broadened.  “Do you know, I was hoping you’d say that?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Well, ma’am, it seems to me there’s a few possible situations here.  Either you’ve thought about it and you don’t want to marry Joe, or you’re still not sure you do, and then I won’t try to persuade you.  Joe doesn’t need a reluctant bride.  Or you’ve thought about it and you wish you’d said yes, only you think it’s too late now.”

“Isn’t it?” she said, and heard the bitterness in her voice.  She had had her chance, but it had all come up too quickly, too suddenly, and by the time she had caught her breath, it had gone.  Almost as soon as she came home, she had known it wasn’t really home anymore and never would be, had known where she really belonged now.  But the chance had passed.

“No, ma’am.  That’s what I came to tell you, just in case you needed someone to tell you that.  It’s not too late.”

“You don’t know—you can’t know—”

“I know that a cheap barroom tune about a lost love had tears in Joe’s eyes.”

“Joe cries easily,” Liza muttered.  She had heard his brothers tease him about it.  And even if it meant something – just because he got sentimental now and then, it didn’t mean he’d forgive her for not being sure enough soon enough.

She wanted him to so much that she was afraid to believe he might.

There was a bigger reason to dismiss the story anyway.  “And there’s no reason to think it was about me.  Joe’s loved a lot of women.”

“You were the one he mentioned, when I asked.”

That – was not even close to what she would have expected.

“What I can’t understand,” Clay continued, “if you needed a little more time, was why you didn’t just wait a while.  On the Ponderosa, instead of making it final.”

Liza shook her head, made an impatient gesture with one hand.  “It wouldn’t have worked.  Joe would have been watching me all the time to see if I’d changed my mind, and I would have been watching him watching me, and he probably would have proposed again after three days or a week, it still would have been too soon, and we just—would have hurt each other worse in the end.”  She had said that to Joe even at the time, known that option would have been a disaster for everyone.  Even if she couldn’t exactly see how it could have hurt any worse, some other way.  “So I left instead.”

“I see.  You know, ma’am, I think we have some things in common,” Clay said, setting his hat on his knee and folding his hands over it.  “We both spent a few weeks on the Ponderosa and, speaking strictly for myself, that was long enough to find out that I loved my brother.  And then we both left Joe.”

She started.  “You—?”

“But I can’t go back.  The fact of it is, I’ve been knocking around on my own for too many years.  I’m a card-sharp and a quick draw, and trouble follows me wherever I go.  I was only going to bring trouble to Joe if I stayed.  I was only going to bring bad things into his life.  And that’s why I’m here.”  His gaze was intent on hers, and his eyes weren’t exactly like Joe’s but there was an uncanny resemblance.  “I want to bring something good into my brother’s life, and Hoss thinks you could be the best thing that ever happened to him.”

“Hoss said that?” Liza whispered.  Good old Hoss.

“Yes, ma’am.  But he’s not going to come here and tell you that because Joe doesn’t want him to.  So I came, because I don’t have anything to lose.  I came to tell you that it’s not too late.  That if you didn’t believe Joe really meant it after a couple weeks, well, four months later he’s still all hung up over you.  And maybe that makes a difference.”

He stood up, put his hat back on.  “Good day, ma’am.  It’s been an honor to meet you.  You won’t want to lie to Joe about where I am, so I won’t tell you where I’m going.  But you can tell him for me that I wanted to do something good for him.”

He was out the door and gone before she had finished reeling from his words.  But after a few moments and a few breaths, she stood up.  She needed to check the stagecoach times.  She needed to find the next one leaving for Virginia City.

 

3.

Clay paused in the street outside the severely-neat boarding house, glancing up at the window one more time before continuing on his way.  He had to hope he’d done the right thing, though he still wasn’t sure which instinct had driven him here – his more sensible side, or the recklessness he’d never been able to tame.

But it was finally done, one way or another.  He’d been knocking around San Francisco for weeks, trying to find that woman, and had just about given up the idea that he ever would.  All he’d had to go on was a name and a city; maybe in Virginia City that would have been enough, but San Francisco was a bigger place.  He doubted Hoss had thought about that, when he’d told him just enough to get him here.

If he hadn’t got a little more help…  He had to smile, as he remembered what he had told Miss Montgomery.  No Cartwrights knew he was here.  But he had bumped into one less-recognized member of the family the previous evening, as he had come out of a none too savory saloon, enough money won at poker to keep him for a few more days.

If someone had yelled, “Hey, you,” or the equivalent, he might have gone for his gun just as a caution.  But as it was, what he heard yelled was, “Mister Clay!”  Few enough people knew him by name, and fewer called him that.  Just one person, in fact, so on some level he hadn’t been surprised to turn around and find the Cartwrights’ cook Hop Sing standing on the sidewalk behind him, glaring at him in fierce disapproval.  The man was flanked by two others, both Chinese, and both matching Hop Sing’s frown.

“Hop Sing,” Clay said, nodding his head and touching the brim of his hat.  “You’re a long way from the Ponderosa.”

This was ignored, as Hop Sing jabbed a finger towards him.  “What you do in place like this?  You should be at home with family!”

The man probably didn’t mean to stab him in the gut with that reference to his family.  To the family he’d left behind.  “You’re in the same place I am,” he countered, a very weak argument he wouldn’t have bothered with if he hadn’t been trying to recover.

If anything, the Chinese cook looked more affronted.  “Hop Sing not in saloon.  Hop Sing visiting cousins in city.”  He indicated the two men with him.  Both nodded their heads, but didn’t join the conversation as Hop Sing resumed his tirade.  “Why you not go back to family, Mister Clay?  Little Joe very sad when you leave.  Not good, very bad thing!”

Clay could feel the weight of Joe’s locket in his jacket, the picture of their shared mother inside.  But he had made the only choice he could make.  “Joe’s better off without me,” he muttered.  “I’d only get him hurt.”  He didn’t exactly mean to say more than that, but Hop Sing just looked at him, half in sorrow and half in anger, and somehow he found himself saying, “I want to make things better for Joe, but I can’t do it by going home.  I came to San Francisco to try to help him, but it’s not working out.”

Hop Sing’s face took on a knowing expression.  “You come to San Francisco looking for Missy Liza?  You try to get her go back home to Little Joe?”

He hadn’t thought it was nearly that obvious an idea.  “How did you—”

“Hop Sing hear things.  Hop Sing know things.  But you not find Missy Liza?”

“All Hoss told me was her last name, and it’s a big city…”

Hop Sing sighed.  “Mister Hoss, he should have said more.  He not tell you?  Missy Liza work for Morning Call with Mister Sam Clemens!”

Clay didn’t know who Clemens was, but he could find the office of The Morning Call easily enough.  It wasn’t a place it had occurred to him to look for a young woman who’d turned his brother’s head, but he’d go there in the morning – and if he couldn’t find her there, he could try to wheedle something about where she lived out of someone there.

It also occurred to him that Hop Sing had revealed a view of his own with this information.  “Then you think Liza should go back to Joe too?”

Hop Sing shrugged.  “Maybe.  Think Little Joe chase lots of girls who very bad ideas.  Also chase some girls who good ideas.  This one maybe good, and this one he keep thinking about.”

“Then why haven’t you gone to talk to her?”  At least Hop Sing had met her.  He’d probably be able to convince her more easily than Clay could, a complete stranger who could barely prove he knew the Cartwrights.

Clay found himself confronted with three withering looks from the men in front of him, and Hop Sing said, “You think it work if Hop Sing go to newspaper office, ask to talk to white lady?  No.  Ask about where she live?  Even worse.  But you, you look right, they let you talk to her.”

“I suppose you make a good point there,” Clay murmured, ashamed without being able to articulate what he was ashamed of.

“Besides,” Hop Sing said with a shrug, “then Hop Sing not have to explain to Little Joe, if all go wrong after all.”

“You’re a very wise man, Hop Sing,” Clay said with a wry smile.

And it had turned out as predicted – he hadn’t been able to find Liza at The Morning Call, but he’d spun a story about being an old family friend and got her address with little difficulty.  Likewise her landlady had been willing enough to let him in the door, and Liza herself had been willing to meet with Joe Cartwright’s brother.

As for what came next…  Clay shook his head as he walked down the street.  He had done what he could, and he’d only cause trouble if he tried to do more.  Better if he left it alone now.  In fact, it was probably time for him to move on.  There was a good chance now that Joe was going to find out he’d been in San Francisco, and Clay didn’t want to turn a corner one day and bump into him.  That would definitely lead to trouble.

Maybe he’d head back down to Mexico.  He still had friends fighting for Juarez, and if he wasn’t going to have a family – well, at least he could have friends and a cause to fight for.  He didn’t want to get too far out of touch though.  He’d need to keep an eye on The Territorial Enterprise.  See if there were any Cartwright wedding announcements.

 

Even after crossing onto Ponderosa land, it took camping one night and riding most of the next day for the Cartwright sons to reach the main house.  They could have made it faster, but they took the route that swung back off the Ponderosa and through Virginia City, to hear the latest news (nothing too exciting) and to send a telegram to Pa to report that they’d traveled fine.  There was no message from Ben to tell them when he would be home.

They continued on to the house from town, though once they were pulling their horses up in the front yard, Joe for one thought they might just as well have stayed in town.  The house was dark, with no sign of life anywhere.

“Doggone it,” Hoss grumbled, “I didn’t think about Hop Sing still being away.”

“Didn’t you?” Adam remarked, swinging down from his horse.  “I did.  We’re early, and he isn’t due back from visiting his relatives in San Francisco for a few more days.”

“You could have said something,” Hoss complained.  “We could have had a proper meal in town.”

“That steak you put away at Daisy’s Café wasn’t a proper meal?”

“Aw, that was just kind of warming up…”

While his brothers bickered in an idle sort of way, Joe said nothing.  He was still sitting on Cochise, studying the dark house, feeling a grim wave lapping at his feet and rising.  Nothing was wrong.  Nothing was wrong.

Everything just felt wrong.

Returning home, walking in through that front door there, that was the safe end of every adventure, every crisis, every journey.  This hadn’t even been a journey with any meaningful dangers in it, and it should be fine to walk inside with his two older brothers.

It was just – with the house sitting there all dark and cold and empty, the picture was too painfully far from the one he wanted.  And it made it all too easy to think about the people who weren’t there.

Pa and Hop Sing, of course, but they’d be back.  That was all right.

But if things had gone differently – maybe they would have left Clay at home, and he would have been coming out to meet them, to ask about the trip and speculate on when Pa would be getting back.  Or Clay would be with them, four of them riding into the yard to fill up the empty house with voices and work and activity.

Or—if different things had gone another way, maybe he could have walked inside right now and found Liza sitting on the settee – or rode down the path a little piece to a house of their own, to find her waiting to welcome him home.  And she’d smile at him and he’d sweep her into his arms and…

There’d been plenty of women he’d imagined coming home to, women he’d had to let go of one way or another, but he hadn’t made his peace with this last one.

If Pa had been with them to take charge of things, if Hop Sing had been home to complain that he wasn’t prepared for supper and why were they home early, if it had been busier and louder and just—more, he probably could have pretended that it was enough, and that everything was fine.  If not to himself, maybe, then at least to his family.

But this empty, silent house made everything painfully stark.

“Hoss, why don’t you take care of the horses?” Adam said, directing the situation the way he always liked to do.  “I’ll go in and get a fire started in the kitchen.  Joe—”

He didn’t wait to find out what oldest brother was going to tell him to do.  He just pulled back on the reins, and turned Cochise’s head away from the house.  “I’ll do a patrol around,” he threw over his shoulder, “make sure everything’s all right.”

“Joe, that’s not—” Adam started, but by then Cochise was already carrying him away, further words lost in the comforting, familiar rhythm of hoofbeats pounding on the dirt.

 

Hoss watched Joe disappear around the corner of the barn, frowning, wondering if he ought to go after him.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Adam shake his head.  “When is that kid going to stop trying to wriggle out of work?”

“I don’t think that’s what’s going on,” Hoss said, which didn’t exactly answer the question – because yeah, Joe still dodged chores sometimes, when he could get away with it.  But this didn’t seem like that.

“What are you talking about?  He just rode off when we need to do a dozen different things—”

“I know, but…”  Hoss shrugged.  “Did ya see his face?  He had his broody look on.”

Adam cast a glance in the direction Joe, now out of sight, had gone.  “He’s been pretty all right lately – except for whatever nonsense you two have going on.  What do you think he’s brooding about?”

Hoss shrugged again.  “I dunno exactly.  Maybe a dark empty house hit him all of a sudden-like with who he’s missing.”

Adam sighed.  “You think he’s still worrying about Clay?”

“Yeah, probably.  And about Liza, could be.”

Adam’s eyebrows shot up at that.  “You’re kidding.  He’s not still thinking about her, is he?”

“Well, he ain’t said anything for a while.”  Joe hadn’t said much of anything about anything to Hoss lately, but Hoss didn’t say that out loud.  “Just a feeling I get.  And you ain’t seen him chasing any other gals, have you?”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“I dunno.  I just get a feeling.”  Hoss looked again in the direction Joe had gone.  Maybe he should go after him to see if he wanted to talk.  But—Joe wouldn’t ride off like that unless he wanted to be alone, right?  Maybe Hoss ought to leave him alone.

He picked up Chub’s reins, started leading him towards the barn, grimacing.  He was pretty sure that pretty recently, he’d found it a whole lot easier to understand little brother than he did right now.  Or maybe he’d just lost his confidence in his own instincts.

 

4.

Something felt distinctly unreal to Liza about boarding the stage for Virginia City.  Not the stagecoach itself, which was as all such contraptions are – crowded, lurching, and more real than she really wanted it to be.  But the destination, that seemed impossible.  For the past few months, she had tried so hard to put the Cartwrights and their world out of her mind (failing entirely), and to accept that that door was closed (more successful at that), that they had begun to feel impossibly far away and unreachable.  Even having made this journey before, it seemed incredible that she could simply board an ordinary stagecoach and ride it all the way to Virginia City.

She managed to get a window seat, and thought the whole business would have seemed even more improbable if she couldn’t at least watch the world go past outside.  With four other passengers filling the coach, she put Bronte’s basket below her seat.  The black cat had been decidedly put out by the whole business, but had finally deigned to go to sleep, with a sulky air of disapproval.

Liza watched out the window as they rattled through the streets of San Francisco.  They would have to cross the bay by ferry, and then on to the hills beyond.  It was a long trip – but after all, it had taken months just for her to get to this point, setting out.  Trying.  Maybe failing, because maybe Clay was all wrong about everything.  But she was trying.

And she did have at least a little other evidence to be working with.

The newspapers had been remarkably light on any Cartwright news over the last few months, but she still had their one mutual acquaintance – Sam Clemens, penname Mark Twain, friend of the Cartwrights and her coworker at The Morning Call.  Though he had a far better job there than she did.

She hadn’t wanted to tell him, or anyone, the details of her experience visiting the Ponderosa.  It was too painful and too personal to let it become newsroom gossip.  And Sam, for all that she did like him, was too fond of telling stories for her to risk telling him something in confidence.

But because he liked to tell stories, he occasionally dropped a Cartwright story.  And one day a month ago, on a rainy afternoon during a lull in the newsroom, she’d managed to casually drift into the circle around Sam as he talked about his days working for The Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City.  She didn’t even have to mention the Cartwrights.  He brought them up, as part of his tale of bringing down a mayoral candidate with well-aimed jokes.

She had felt terribly daring, though, when she seized a pause in the round of stories to ask, “Why haven’t any of the Cartwrights ever got married?”  She felt as though surely she was blushing at the question, as though the secrets of her own experience in this very particular area had to be written all across her face.  But no one seemed to notice anything, or to give her any special attention.

Maybe that was because Sam had responded immediately with an upraised forefinger and a dramatic inflection as he said, “Now that is because of the Curse!”

“The what?” another writer asked, even as Liza resigned herself to another of Sam’s tall tales with no real answers in it.

“You will have noted, of course,” Sam continued, “that among the Cartwrights we have family patriarch and widower Ben Cartwright, and his three fine, grown, very eligible sons.  And yet, not a one of them has a wife.  And that is a strange state of affairs indeed, because every time one of them becomes engaged to marry – disaster strikes.  Often the poor unfortunate damsel dies, just like Ben Cartwright’s three wives before her.”

“You’re not saying the Cartwrights are murdering women?” someone in the crowd asked.

“No, no, of course I’m not saying that,” Sam said, with some heat and apparently genuine indignation.  “The Cartwrights are the most honorable, most upstanding people you could want to meet.  I’m saying there’s a curse.  The Curse of the Cartwrights, if you will.  Adam Cartwright was involved with a saloon girl a few years ago who was tragically murdered, as were two different women Joe Cartwright became engaged to.  To say nothing of the tragic illnesses that have befallen young woman involved with both Joe and Hoss Cartwright.  The Cartwrights are simply doomed to remain unwed.”

Liza turned this over, tried to sift between the facts and Sam’s fondness for exaggeration.  It was true about Ben’s three wives, she knew that; she’d seen the pictures on his desk, heard about how each son had a different mother.  But the rest of it – had those engagement announcements Joe had featured in, the ones that hadn’t led to wedding announcements, ended up far more tragically than she had imagined?

She wished she had asked him about that.  This new possibility didn’t entirely do away with all the other evidence suggesting that Joe fell in love quickly and often…but maybe he took engagements more seriously than she had thought.  Maybe it did mean something, when Joe asked a girl to marry him.

“What caused the curse?” Liza asked, daring to re-enter the conversation.  It was luckier than ever that she hadn’t told Sam her own history with the Cartwrights.  She’d never be brave enough to have this discussion if he knew how close she’d come to the supposed curse herself.

“Ah, now that is the mystery,” Sam said, tapping his nose with one finger.  “Ben Cartwright traveled the world in his younger days.  Perhaps he stumbled upon some ancient mystery that has haunted his line to this day.”

There were glances around the circle, communicating silently that this was an unsatisfying conclusion to the business, and people began to stand up and drift away.

“Better work on that ending a little more, Sam,” one of the editors advised.  “You might have something if you can get a proper conclusion on it.”

“I’d have to change the names anyway,” Sam said with a shrug.  “I promised the Cartwrights not to write about them.  But maybe if I try the story in the saloons a few more times, something will come to me.”

Liza stayed in her place in a chair near Sam’s desk as the rest of the crowd drifted away, back to their work.  Finally, when no one else seemed to be listening, Liza said, “Mr. Clemens?”

He glanced up from the newspaper he had begun perusing.  “Miss Elizabeth?  Something I can do for you?”

Probably not, but…  “You don’t really think the Cartwrights are cursed, do you?”  She didn’t believe in curses herself, so she didn’t know what good his answer would do her.  But she’d like to know, maybe, just how far Sam Clemens’ invention went.

He glanced around as though checking for eavesdroppers before he confessed anything, then leaned in closer and said, “No, I don’t really think so.  Ties up a lot of details nicely, though, and puts a sort of flare on the thing.”

“Then it did all happen – the women who died?”

He nodded.  “Yes, that’s all true enough.  But I expect that’s merely the result of living in a dangerous place – or perhaps the Cartwrights are simply unlucky.”

“I suppose the women they fall in love with are even more unlucky,” Liza pointed out.

“Now that you mention it.”  Sam squinted at her, expression going thoughtful.  “Miss Elizabeth, when you took that trip out to Virginia City—”

“Excuse me,” Liza said hurriedly, rising to her feet, “I believe I’m terribly behind on my copy-editing.”

She didn’t suppose she’d fooled him, but she’d at least avoided saying anything.  And she had turned the details over in her mind now and then ever since, and told herself that at least she was luckier than she could have been.  At least she hadn’t died from a curse.

And now – well, if she believed in a curse, it would be very foolish to be riding a stagecoach back towards the Cartwrights and their terrible luck when it came to engagements.  But she didn’t believe in a curse.  This was the 19^th century, after all; surely such ideas had gone out long ago.

She leaned her head against the side of the stage, watching the buildings go by out the window, and thought that there was quite enough stacked up against this ending happily without throwing a curse into the midst.  But – at least she was trying.

 

5.

Hoss hit the horseshoe he was working on with his hammer, checked its shape, and hit it again.  The barn where he was working felt quiet today, which was ridiculous when he was banging away with a hammer, and Chub was right over there stamping his feet now and then, and there was even a little breeze whistling through the open doors.

Only, all the rest of the horses’ stalls were empty, and all the rest of the family were – not here.  The front yard and the house beyond it were standing empty, and usually that would be all right too, but today it itched at him.  Adam was in town, and maybe he’d get word on when Pa’d be coming home, and Hop Sing’d be back tomorrow, and Little Joe…

Hoss frowned, and hit the horseshoe another time.  Joe should be here; there was plenty of work to do around here, but no, little brother had made some vague excuse and taken off with Cochise.  And Hoss had just grunted and pretended that he didn’t know Joe was going to brood on that big rock he liked out by the lake.

Hoss hoped Pa would get home soon.  Maybe things would feel a mite more normal then.  Maybe Pa would know how to get through to Little Joe, who’d been brooding all over the place ever since they’d got home.  Definitely he wouldn’t stand for him spending all hours cutting out on work to mope around.

Or maybe Hoss ought to haul Joe off to Virginia City and shove him towards the first pretty saloon girl they saw, and while that might not solve anything, it would at least break up the gloom.

Joe’d probably turn him down on a trip to town though.  It wasn’t like he hadn’t tried, right after Clay left…  Hoss sighed, because he was pretty sure that now he was brooding, and he wasn’t even the brooding type usually.

Joe’d work it out, he always did, and right now Chub wasn’t going to shoe himself.  Hoss dropped the horseshoe into a pail of water, steam hissing up in a great cloud, and turned towards his horse.

And then stopped when he saw the figure standing in the open door.  She lifted one hand and even though he couldn’t see the expression on her face very well, with the light behind her, everything in how she was standing said she was uneasy – and her voice was too when she said, “Hello, Hoss.”  She laughed a little, but it sounded forced.  “Surprised to see me?”

“Yeah, guess you could say that,” Hoss said slowly, because he wasn’t sure just what to make of this yet.  “Hello, Liza.”  And then he didn’t know what he ought to say next.  Pa or Adam would’ve known, probably, and Little Joe was the one famously good at talking to women – and he didn’t know what Joe was going to say to this one, because Hoss was pretty certain Joe’d been missing her, but why was she here, and what did it mean and…  “Uh.  How have you been?”

“Fine.  I’ve been…”  Then Liza sighed and walked farther into the barn, saying, “Oh, this is silly.  I know it’s strange, me being here, and maybe I shouldn’t have come at all.  But I just wanted to talk to Joe and – at least tell me you don’t hate me, all right?”

That sounded more like the Liza he remembered – the one he had always thought could be a real good idea for Little Joe.  Right up until she left, but he had thought since then about how it might not be a bad thing at all if she was to decide to come back…  “Of course I don’t hate you.”

“Really?” Liza whispered, and sank onto a hay bale.  She twisted her hands in her lap.  “Even though – I know I hurt Joe, before…”

“Yeah, but I never reckoned you wanted to.  And anyway, I figure you’ve got a perfect right to not marry that no-account little brother of mine.”  He eyed her closely, tried a little fishing.  “You know, if you didn’t want to.”

“But that’s why I came back,” Liza said in a low voice, gaze fixed on her hands.  “I realized – that I do.  Want to marry him, I mean.”

Hoss beamed at her.  That was a better fishing catch than he could have hoped for!  “Yeah?  That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long, long time!”  If that didn’t shake Joe out of his brooding, nothing ever would.

She didn’t smile back.  “But – what if Joe doesn’t want to see me, or…”

“Of course he wants to see you!”  Hadn’t he been moping around about her?  Clay too, but if Hoss had to pick one to come back, he’d’ve gone for Liza.  They’d both broken Joe’s heart, but Clay’d been a lot nastier about it, as far as Hoss could tell.  Not to mention Liza hadn’t shot anyone in any saloons.  “Joe’s pride might make him kick a little bit first, but he’ll get over that.  Pride and heart kinda tussle in him, but heart usually wins out.  And if he gives you any trouble, you send him to me to shake some sense into him.”

That got a half-smile at least, though her eyes still looked worried.  “Is Joe in the house?  I almost knocked, but I could hear hammering in the barn so I looked here first.”

Hoss shook his head.  “Nah, he’s out at that rock by the lake he likes to sit on.”

“The one he broods on?”

“Yeah, he’s been real broody lately.  But seeing you’s going to cure that.”  He reached out a hand to help her up off the hay bale.  “Come on, I’ll drive you out that way.  You got a carriage outside?”

“Yes, but – I really shouldn’t trouble you, and I’d like to walk, after the stagecoach and the carriage ride—”

“All right, I’ll walk with you,” Hoss agreed.  “Wouldn’t feel right, letting you go unescorted.”

“I got all the way here from Virginia City – from San Francisco, even,” she pointed out.

“Well, yeah,” Hoss acknowledged, “but it’s not like I knew about that.  I’d like a walk too, and I promise I’ll back off once we’re in shouting distance of Joe, all right?”

Because he might be a little muddled about some things about Little Joe right now, but he did know little brother wouldn’t want him hanging around for some real important courting.

 

Liza wished she had Hoss’ confidence about what her reception would be from Joe.  She told herself, as they walked together down the trail, that Hoss ought to know.  He was Joe’s brother, a much closer one than Clay, with more recent information.  What he said tallied with what Clay had said too, and that was reassuring.  But somehow the reality of it, now that she was here, now that it was happening – it was terrifying, that maybe they were all wrong after all.  That Joe might be brooding about her, but not in a way that meant he wanted her coming back.

They turned Bronte loose in the barn and the black cat, freed of his basket, took off like a streak towards the hayloft, his first home.  She hoped he’d forgive her the journey enough to come back, but it wasn’t the primary forgiveness she had to be worrying about right now.

As they walked out of the yard and along the trail, Hoss kept up a cheerful, aimless, not particularly heavy conversation, clearly trying to ease the awkwardness and the uncertainties of the moment.  It reminded her afresh of the Cartwrights’ inherent kindness, if the impression had gone dim at all in the past few months.  It was an almost painful clarity, when she didn’t know yet if it was something she’d be allowed to keep.

True to his promise, Hoss halted when they were coming up on the edge of the trees, where she remembered the pines thinned out into the more open area that held Joe’s rock on one side of the trail by the lake, the meadow where they’d first picnicked on the other.

“Expect you’ll be all right from here,” Hoss said, and winked.  “And remember, you send him to me if there’s any trouble.”

She smiled, and said, “Thank you – for everything.”  But she wouldn’t be sending Joe to have Hoss convince him to take her back.  If he didn’t want her back, that was going to be the end of it.

Hoss lifted his hand in a wave, turned, and started back down the trail towards the house again.  Liza took a deep breath and walked on, out through the last few trees, the view opening up before her.  It was as she remembered it – the rock, the meadow, and the great sweep of the lake and the mountains beyond.

There was no black and white horse, no figure sitting on the big rock.  Her gaze scanned quickly across the landscape and – nothing.  She had been keyed up, tense, ready for this so important confrontation, and nothing.

Over the flood of her own tension and disappointment, Liza also felt badly that Hoss had walked all this way with her, and she was only going to go right back to wait at the house anyway.  She was on the verge of turning around, maybe try to catch up to Hoss for the walk back, when her still-roaming gaze snagged on something that didn’t belong.  She didn’t remember the big gray rock having a reddish patch—and wasn’t there something, down there in the long grass and shadows at the rock’s base…something green and tan that, although it did blend in with the brown-green meadow grass, wasn’t the right shape or the right shade…

Her heart started pounding harder before her mind could put together what she was seeing, and she started running before she was sure about what she suspected.

She dropped down to her knees next to the sprawled, motionless form of Joe Cartwright, stretched across the grass.  There was blood—so much red blood that she couldn’t understand how she hadn’t realized immediately—blood smeared down the side of the rock, matting down the brown curls on one side of his head, liberally spread across his green jacket.

His eyes were closed, the one meagre point of grace in all of this, because the sight of Joe’s green eyes staring lifelessly up at the sky would have broken her into a thousand pieces.

As it was, her breath was coming in shuddering gasps, she didn’t know when she’d started murmuring, “No, no, no, no,” and that wasn’t helping, she had to think—

Head wounds.  Head wounds often bled all out of proportion to how serious they actually were.  The thing to do was to stay calm, assess the situation, check for a pulse.

Her nursing training, unofficial though it had been, was apparently enough to lean on right now.

She pressed two fingers to the blood-sticky side of Joe’s neck, just below the jaw, and—yes, there was a pulse, clear and stronger than it had any right to be, considering, but wasn’t that just like Joe Cartwright—

She dragged the back of her other hand over her eyes.  This was no time to burst into tears.  He was alive, and that meant he needed help.  Quickly.

Her head snapped up at the thought, turning back the direction she’d come.  “Hoss!” she shouted with all the breath she could gather.  “Hoss!”  If she had to she could run after him, he couldn’t have gone too far—she waited a breath, gaze darting between the trees and Joe—definitely a head wound, and all that blood everywhere made it hard to be sure if he was injured somewhere else, but wasn’t there a heavier spread on his right arm?

“Hoss!” she tried one more time, and was gathering herself to stand when he burst out of the trees.

“What’s wrong?” he called, gun in one hand.  That wasn’t going to help, but at least he was trying to act quickly.

“It’s Joe,” she called back, though he had to have guessed.  Joe hadn’t stirred through all the shouting, but just in case, she leaned down and said, “Joe, can you hear me?  Hoss is coming.  It’s going to be all right.”

No response.

And then Hoss was there, dropping down next to her, face anguished and big hands hovering above his brother as though he didn’t know quite what to do.  “What happened?  Is he—?”

“He has a good pulse,” Liza said quickly.  “I don’t know what happened, but his head’s bleeding—check his arm, there?”

She sat back, fumbled at her skirts so she could get at the first layer of petticoats, and tore a strip off the bottom even as Hoss took on the sleeve of Joe’s jacket.  The petticoats didn’t worry her, but the tearing sound of the jacket made her wince.

“Yeah, another wound here,” Hoss said gruffly.  “Looks like a bullet.”

So that ruled out an accident.  He hadn’t slipped on the rock and banged his head, or fallen off his horse—  “Was he riding Cochise?” she asked, winding the strip of cloth around Joe’s head as carefully as she could.

“Yeah,” Hoss said, squinting around them.  “And Cochise should’ve stayed with Joe or come home, but he didn’t.  I should’ve heard the gunshots—”

“You were hammering,” Liza said, ripping off another piece of cloth.  “We’ve got to get Joe home—if you go for a wagon—he shouldn’t bump over that trail, but—maybe fill it with hay—”

“That’ll take too long,” Hoss said, shaking his head.  “And I don’t like the idea of leaving you two alone here anyway.  Whoever did this might still be around.”

That hadn’t even occurred to her.  She’d been too worried about what had already happened, and what they needed to do, not what else could happen next.  “All the more reason we can’t stay here—we’ve got to get back to the house somehow.”  The wagon still seemed like the best bad option.  She finished tying the second makeshift bandage around Joe’s arm – the wounds needed cleaning and better bandages, but for the moment—

“Here,” Hoss said, handing her his pistol as soon as she lifted her hands from the bandage.  “Just in case whoever it was shows up while we’re walking.”

Her hand closed automatically around the cold metal.  “Walking?  And why don’t you keep—”

“I’m gonna carry Little Joe,” Hoss said, reaching for his brother.

“But it’s almost two miles.  You can’t carry him that far!”

“Watch me,” Hoss said grimly, rising to his feet with Joe in his grasp.  He adjusted his hold and then, with just the faintest ghost of a smile, added, “Little Joe ain’t as heavy as a full-grown steer anyhow.”

That tiny flash of humor felt like—hope.  And it was enough to get Liza back onto her feet, and following Hoss down the trail.

“You should probably know that I don’t actually know how to use a gun,” she said, looking down at the weapon in her hand.

“Huh,” Hoss said.  “Well.  Hold it and try to look convincing.”

As a plan, this was not reassuring at all.

The distance back to the house felt twice as long as it had seemed walking the other way.  But Sam Clemens really hadn’t exaggerated Hoss Cartwright’s strength by much, and the big man’s steps didn’t falter the entire way.  Liza was watching his feet, because that was so much easier than looking at Joe, crumpled in his brother’s hold.

Little Joe.  He didn’t seem so tall, right now.

This was not how she had imagined coming back.  This was not how it was supposed to go.  An angry Joe who told her that Hoss and Clay were wrong, that he never wanted to see her again, still would have been better than this.

But Hoss didn’t stumble and no outlaws burst out of the trees.  They came at last into the front yard of the ranch house, rounding the barn to see Adam’s red horse at the hitching rail and Adam beside him.

“What happened?” Adam demanded, long strides carrying him to Hoss’ side.  “What’s wrong with Joe?”

“Somebody shot him,” Hoss said, only the tight set of his jaw giving any hint that it was any kind of strain, carrying Joe this far.

“Who?  Why?”

“Don’t know,” Hoss grunted, “but we’ve got to get him inside.”

And then Adam’s gaze landed on Liza, a step behind Hoss, and his face creased with an entirely new kind of confusion.  “What are you—why…?”  Then he looked from her to Joe and back again, and it felt very much like he was looking at all the blood on her hands, or maybe the gun—

“I didn’t shoot him!” Liza protested.

“I wasn’t thinking that,” Adam said quickly, maybe too quickly.  “I just—don’t understand…”

“I came back to talk to Joe,” Liza said, because that was as much explanation as she could give Adam, especially right now, especially like this.

“Lucky thing, since she found him,” Hoss put in.  They were nearly to the front door by now, and Liza hurried ahead to open it.

“We’re going to need a doctor,” Adam said.  “Can you get him up the stairs?”

“Got this far.”

“Fine.  I’ll go for Doc Martin.  And the sheriff.”

Then Adam was running for his horse and Hoss was stepping inside and Liza pointed out, “The guest bedroom’s closer.”

Hoss hesitated, but shook his head.  “Nah.  Let’s get him to his own room.  Better that way.”

He started up the stairs, and Liza set down the gun on the sideboard with some relief.  She turned towards the kitchen.  “I’ll get some hot water and cloths.”

 

6.

Liza didn’t like nursing.  She didn’t like blood and pain and how sometimes you had to hurt someone to help them heal.  This was why she had followed her father’s footsteps into journalism, not her mother’s into nursing, even though newspapers were a far less conventional path for a woman.  But she did know a few basics of nursing, and could use them when she had to.

She came into Joe’s room – a place she would have been very curious about under different circumstances – balancing a basin of hot water, a stack of cloths, and a bottle of whiskey.  She assumed that Hop Sing would forgive the loss of the cloths, and Ben the loss of the whiskey, considering the situation.

Upstairs, Hoss had got Joe’s jacket and shirt off and started wiping up the worst of the blood.  Aside from the stray bruise, they seemed to have already identified the chief injuries – a gash across the left side of Joe’s head, just above his ear, and the bullet wound in his right arm.  Though maybe the head wound was a bullet too, a near-miss.  She didn’t know that much about bullet wounds.  The nursing she’d seen her mother do had been more in the realm of accidents – cuts and gashes – and the occasional cough or fever.

“Looks like the one in his arm went straight through,” Hoss said, and Liza exhaled in some relief at that.

“Good.  I’ve cleaned wounds before but I’ve never tried to get a bullet out of someone.”

It was all terrible anyway.  Joe didn’t stir for most of it, until the whiskey hit his head wound.  Then he suddenly jerked and thrashed and yelled for his pa, and Hoss had to hold him down and tell him it was all right, ol’ Hoss was here, everything was all right.  Liza bit her lip so hard it ached and didn’t say anything because—what good would it do?  Joe collapsed back into unconsciousness and mercifully didn’t react again when she cleaned his arm.  At least, she hoped it was a mercy.  Her nursing knowledge only went so far.  But she did know that if he died of an infection that would be much, much worse, and if this could help—it had to be worth it.

When it was all over, even the cleaning up, Liza sank into the chair in front of Joe’s desk and wondered if this was an appropriate moment to have hysterics, or if she’d better put that off a while longer.

“I hate to ask you,” Hoss said, gaze fixed on Joe lying in the bed, “but do you think you could keep watch for a bit on your own?”

Hysterics later, then.  “Of course,” Liza said, because what else was there to say?  Then she thought a little more and asked, “What are you going to be doing?”

Hoss grimaced.  “I want to see if I can pick up the trail of whoever did this, and if we wait too long it’ll be nightfall and too late to track until morning.”

She had been so focused on each next step that she hadn’t thought about the larger picture like that.  But of course, they needed to know who was responsible, and why – but it was an alarming prospect too, because suppose Hoss found whoever it was?

“If you get shot too,” she said, voice suddenly unsteady, “I can’t carry you back here.”  Never mind that she wouldn’t even know.  She’d just be waiting here until Adam came back and then…Adam wouldn’t be able to carry Hoss either.

“I’ll be careful,” Hoss said, which wasn’t as reassuring as, say, telling her that of course that wouldn’t happen.  He squeezed her shoulder, briefly, then was out the door and clomping down the stairs.

Liza looked at Joe, face tan and curls dark against the contrast of the white pillow and the white bandage wrapping his head – a better one now than her makeshift petticoat strips.  She let out a slow breath.  “Looks like it’s just you and me now.”  She bit her lower lip.  “Feel free to wake up any time.”

Nothing.

Sleep was good, usually, for most injuries.  Not always for head injuries, but she didn’t know how to judge that, and if Joe shouldn’t be asleep she didn’t know what to do about that anyway, and—

She stood up and paced, as though that was going to help her outrun her fears.  She had no idea how long it would take Hoss to return, but Adam and the doctor would surely be hours yet, and how was she going to get through all that time?  Her gaze roamed almost desperately around the room, trying to focus on something – a painting of an Indian chief on one wall, a small portrait of a beautiful woman she recognized as Joe’s mother next to the bed.

Her gaze snagged on the desk under the window.  She shouldn’t go poking around in Joe’s things; she had no right at all to do that.  But there were a half-dozen books stacked untidily on top of the desk.  They were right there, in plain sight (in his private bedroom, but still) and—they were books.  It was instinctive in her to reach for books in a crisis.

So she drifted over to the desk and picked up the top two books.  Both were slim dime novels, one a slightly-lurid looking mystery while the other had a cover featuring a cowboy on a rearing horse.  The book under those was some sort of farmer’s almanac, probably a useful enough thing on a ranch.  Nothing very unexpected or terribly distracting in those three.

But then she got to the fourth book down in the stack, and had to swallow hard and touch the embossed words on the cover to be sure she wasn’t imagining them.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë.

She turned slowly to look at the man lying in the bed, as though there might be some sort of answer written across his face.

She knew he hadn’t owned this book when she’d been here before.  They had talked about it.  Joe hadn’t read it, Adam had disdained to own a copy – and some time between then and now her favorite book had ended up on Joe’s desk.

It couldn’t be a coincidence, but—why did he have it, and had he read it, and what did it mean…other than that he really had been thinking about her.  He must have been.  Clay had said so, and Hoss had said so, and a book in his bedroom should have been a less clear sign than the word of his brothers, and yet—somehow this mute, unfiltered evidence struck her hard.

She picked up the book, held it tightly.  There was so much she wanted to talk to Joe about, so much she wanted to say and to ask.

She lifted her head to look at him again.  “Don’t die,” she whispered, eyes burning and voice wavering.  “Don’t you dare die.”

Then she sank down to sit with her back against Joe’s desk, book clutched in her hands, and cried.

Sometimes hysterics just happen.  It hadn’t been the blood, or the feeling of a gun in her hand, or the yelling after the whiskey, or Hoss going out to possibly get shot and leave her really, truly all alone.  It was the book that had finally undone her, tore apart the last shred of her self-control and brought her to desperate, choking sobs, tears slipping down her cheeks and dropping onto the leather cover of Jane Eyre.

It was the reaction.  Everybody had a reaction, and remembering Joe telling her that only made her cry harder.

But nothing lasts forever, and at length she dug a handkerchief from her pocket and dried her eyes and the book, stood up and set Jane Eyre back on the desk.  It all seemed too confusing, too complicated, too involved to read it right now.  The last two books in the stack were old, battered copies of King Arthur and His Round Table and The Adventures of Robin Hood.  She picked up Robin Hood, with its hero in green, sat down in the chair again, and tried to settle into keeping vigil.  For however long it took.

 

7.

Hoss spent more than an hour out tracking, and there was no sign yet of Adam or Doc Martin when he got back to the house.  He knew how long it took to get to Virginia City and back, but he had still irrationally hoped…

He shook his head and hurried on inside.  Upstairs not much had changed either, which was maybe for the best.  Little Joe was still lying in bed, eyes closed, and Liza was still sitting next to the bed, though she’d picked up a book from somewhere.  Looked like Joe’s old copy of Robin Hood.  Hoss could remember when Joe used to read that over and over.  Hadn’t thought about it in a long time.

Liza’s black cat had come inside at some point, was all curled up in a furry ball at the foot of Joe’s bed.  Pa didn’t like animals on the furniture, but that was the last thing Hoss was going to worry about right now.

Liza looked up when he appeared in the doorway, face lighting with relief.  “Oh good, you’re back.”

She looked so dang happy to see him—and he knew it was only because of everything going on, but all the same, it struck him that if she looked at Joe with anything like that expression—yeah, if he’d had any doubt about whether little brother was going to be happy to see her, this’d settle it for sure.  Who wouldn’t be happy to have a pretty gal look at you like that?

“Everything all right then?” Hoss asked, nodding towards Joe.

“Nothing’s changed and—I think that’s good?” Liza said, screwing her face up doubtfully.  “I wish—I don’t have any real nursing training, so…”

“Probably know more’n you think,” Hoss said, because reassuring people came pretty natural to him.

“What did you find out?”

Hoss sighed.  “Not much.  Lemme get a chair…”  He pulled a big wooden chair over from his own room, sank gratefully down into it.  “Near as I could figure, from what signs there were, one rider came in, then went out again leading Cochise.  Trouble is, they made straight for the main road, and there’s too much traffic to track beyond that.”  Not that he hadn’t tried.  He would’ve sworn he could trace Cochise (or any of the family horses) through just about anything, but luck would have it that somebody’d been herding cattle along that same road and churned it all up into something unreadable.

“So what does that tell you?”

“Not much,” Hoss said again, frowning deeply.  He stared at Joe, trying to think through his own troubled thoughts.  “None of this makes much sense.”

“No,” Liza said softly.  “Who would want to do something like this?”

“Nah, that part I can understand.  There’s enough people with grudges against Little Joe, and more people with grudges against Pa or the rest of us.  Somebody might’ve just wanted a Cartwright and didn’t care much which one.”  He could think of a handful of names with motives, without even trying too hard.  None that they’d had any special reason to expect trouble from right now, though he’d worried some about that Dave Donovan Joe’d tangled with recently over that timber contract.  He ought to be in jail, but he’d got off when the rival timber company hired fancy lawyers to get out of charges of sabotage.  “It’s the way they went about it that I don’t understand.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well—if they wanted to kill Little Joe, they didn’t do it very well.”

“They shot him.  Twice!”

“Yeah, but…”  Hoss grimaced, trying to put this into words.  “It ain’t that it couldn’t get serious – maybe it is serious, I ain’t a doctor – but it just seems like if you’ve got an unconscious man, a gun, and no one to interfere, it ain’t hard to make a lot more sure that he’s dead.”

“So what does that mean?”

That was the trouble – that was the part he couldn’t work out.  “Maybe they weren’t very good at this.  Or maybe they didn’t actually care that much about killing Joe, only I don’t know what any of this was about, in that case.  If they wanted Cochise, there’re easier ways to steal a horse.  Or…”  And this was the unsettling possibility, the one he really didn’t like, because it was ugly and because it made the odds likely that this wasn’t over yet.  “…maybe they just didn’t want to kill Joe fast.  Maybe they’d rather he was out in that meadow bleeding for hours, figuring by the time Adam or me found him it would be too late, and we’d know that, that if we’d got there sooner…”

“But that didn’t happen, we did get there!” Liza said, a sharper note in her voice that Hoss would’ve paid more attention to, if he wasn’t sunk so deep in his own thoughts.

“Yeah, but we more easily might not have.”

Maybe what troubled Hoss the most was recognizing, not just how bad this was, or even how much worse it could’ve been, but the reason it could’ve gotten so much worse.  It would’ve been his fault.  Little Joe could’ve died, and it would have been because he’d been shot now, when Hoss had let things get so strange between them, and then just let it stay that way.

A few months ago, Little Joe probably wouldn’t’ve been out in the meadow at all.  He would’ve been hanging around the barn with Hoss, helping with the work or, depending on his mood, finding ways to get out of helping with the work.  Even if he had been out in the meadow – well, they wouldn’t have expected him back until suppertime, which wouldn’t be anything real exciting with Hop Sing away, but he and Adam would’ve rustled up something.  And Adam would’ve complained about Joe not showing up, and Hoss would have laughed and gone to go get him, and it all would’ve been later than it had actually been, but still, he would’ve gone by late afternoon and maybe, probably, that wouldn’t have been much worse.

But today – if Liza hadn’t happened to come along – Hoss had a sickening feeling that today, Adam would’ve complained and Hoss would’ve shrugged and figured it was Joe’s business whether to show up for supper.  And maybe one of them would’ve gone looking after supper, but maybe they would have let it go until they realized in the morning that he’d never come home.  And if they went looking in the morning…

He didn’t need to be a doctor, or have any amount of nursing training, to feel sure it would’ve been too late by morning.

And that was wrong.  That was all wrong every which way, that he’d let things get like that with Little Joe.  It hadn’t happened that way, but it could have, and that scared him right down to his boots.  And all right, Joe’d been involved in how things were too, but that didn’t matter.  Hoss should’ve fixed it.  He was Little Joe’s older brother.

“That’s horrible,” Liza said, and it took Hoss a blink to recognize she wasn’t talking about what he’d been thinking but only the last thing he’d said, about someone wanting to leave Joe out there.  “That’s—hideous and depraved—and I can’t see why…”

She had her arms wrapped around herself and her voice was shaking and Hoss mentally cursed himself for not paying enough attention to what he was saying and who he was saying it to.  He should’ve saved all this until he could say it to Adam, he shouldn’t’ve dumped it all on Liza like this.  He’d been looking at Joe and he hadn’t been thinking about who he was really talking to…  “Aw, that might not be it at all,” Hoss said hurriedly, “maybe somebody just didn’t stop to check, or—maybe they really did just want the horse.  Anyway, it’s all right, Joe couldn’t have been out there long at all, and the doctor’ll be here soon and—it’ll all be all right.”

“You don’t know that,” Liza said in a low voice, but summoned half a smile from somewhere.  “But thank you.”

 

She had already had her flirtation with hysterics, and Liza fought back the temptation to do it again – not right now, not in front of Hoss, not when he was counting on her to help in this awful situation.

After all his horrible theorizing, he was trying to reassure her now, and he shouldn’t need to do that.  He had enough to be dealing with, with his brother lying unconscious on the bed.  But if she stayed sitting here, staring at Joe and thinking about what someone had tried to do to him, she might have hysterics yet.  So she stood up, because it might be a little better moving, but she had nowhere to go.  She should probably come up with some excuse to go down to the kitchen, look for some way to be useful, but for the moment she just paced the room, rubbing her hands against her skirts and trying to keep a good grip on herself.  She’d like to pick up Bronte, but she didn’t want to wake the sleeping cat, who was still touchy from their trip; she figured it was why the cat had chosen the bed instead of sitting with her to begin with.

She paced a few steps further than she had before, crossed beyond the foot of Joe’s bed and glanced at the corner of the room that had been hidden on the other side of the bed – and before she could make her excuse about going downstairs, her gaze snagged on a glimmer of green just peeking out from under the bed.

They had forgotten about Joe’s jacket.  They had taken it off him and it had been tossed aside in all the chaos and they’d forgotten about it.  She went over now to pick it up, carried it back to her chair with her gaze fixed on the crumpled fabric.  The garment was liberally stained with dried blood, a nasty rip torn into one shoulder.

She sank back into the chair, suddenly newly exhausted.  She held up the jacket for Hoss’ view.  “I don’t think we’re going to be able to save it.”

Hoss gave a low whistle.  “Yeah, that looks pretty done in.”

Liza nodded, let it drop back into her lap and ran her fingertips over a cleaner patch of the soft green corduroy again, blinking hard against a sudden burning in her eyes.  It was ridiculous to care so much about a jacket.  Part of her knew it wasn’t really about the clothing; she was identifying the jacket with the man and the two felt painfully linked in peril right now.

Though maybe it was a little about the jacket.  It had caught her eye that very first day when she’d met Joe out riding, and not a day went by during her first visit here that he didn’t wear it.  It was how she had always pictured him, all these months since, in his green jacket among the pines.

“It’s too bad.  I mean—he must really like it, and—”  Her voice caught and she had to swallow.  “And it’s such a good color on him…”

An unexpected chuckle from Hoss brought her gaze abruptly back to him.  He must have seen her surprise on her face, because he quickly said, “Sorry, Liza, it’s just—if there’s one thing you don’t need to be worrying over right now, it’s Little Joe’s jacket.  Here, lemme show you…”

Hoss crossed over to the heavy wooden wardrobe in one corner of the room, pulled open the door and revealed…an entire row of green corduroy jackets.  Quite a few similar shirts and pants too, but that seemed much less remarkable than the procession of green jackets.

“Why…”  Liza struggled to find the right words.  Maybe it was just too many shocks today.  “Why does Joe have – what, ten, twelve? – identical jackets?”

Hoss shrugged.  “He really likes that jacket.”  He sat down in the big chair again, glanced at Joe, and said, “Lemme tell you about this trip we took to San Francisco a while back, when Little Joe decided to buy a new jacket.”

There followed an improbable tale worthy of Sam Clemens himself—and, in fact, featuring Sam Clemens himself—which, knowing the Cartwrights, was probably perfectly true.  Joe shifted here and there, but didn’t wake.

In the quiet that followed the story, Liza and Hoss both contemplated the row of jackets hanging in Joe’s wardrobe.

“You know, it’s funny,” Hoss said at length, “they make me feel a little better, sometimes.  When Little Joe’s got himself into a bad scrape.”  He looked away from the jackets, to his brother lying on the bed, undisturbed through all the conversation.  “Makes me feel like, I dunno, like he’s sure to be all right.  He’s still got a lot of jackets to get through.”

Liza smiled.  “I like that.”  Or maybe it was that Joe was a little like his jackets.  He got all battered and bruised, then somehow popped up again and carried on.

 

8.

Hoss had rarely been so relieved to hear the rattle of buggy wheels out in the front yard.  He got up from his seat by Joe’s bed to check out the window and confirm – yep, it was Dr. Martin, with Adam just now dismounting from Sport.

“That was sooner than I thought they could get here,” Hoss remarked.

“Felt like forever,” Liza murmured from her seat across the room, and Hoss couldn’t disagree.

“You stay here with Joe.  I’ll go let ‘em in.”

Dr. Martin came in the house with his medbag already in hand and a reassuring air of competence about him.  “So Little Joe’s got himself into trouble once again, eh?”

“Yessir,” Hoss said with a nod.  “Adam must’ve told you – Joe’s upstairs—”

“I know the way,” Dr. Martin said, “I’ve been out here often enough.”

Hoss felt Adam’s hand on his arm as the doctor ascended the stairs, and turned towards older brother.  “How’s Joe?” Adam asked.  “Wake up yet?”

“He’s been sorta restless, but ain’t woken up properly.  You got the doctor fast.”

“Yeah, I met him on the road, so I didn’t have to go as far as Virginia City.”

Hoss frowned.  It was good the doctor had got here quicker, but that meant—  “So you ain’t talked to the sheriff yet?”

Adam shook his head.  “No, I thought it was more important to get the doctor here.  You have any luck figuring out who did this?”

“Nah.  They rode onto the main road and I couldn’t track farther’n that.”

Adam sighed, a weary sigh, but just said, “All right.  Liza still here?”

“Yeah, upstairs – she’s been helping me watch Joe,” Hoss said, and watched how older brother’s gaze lingered on the stairs.  “Hey, I’ll go put your horse in the barn – you go up and see little brother.”

After a beat, Adam nodded.  “Thanks.”

Hoss moved as quick as he could taking care of Sport, but it was still some time before he got back inside.  When he came back in, he found Liza pacing in front of the big fireplace, while the cat had taken up a sentry position sitting in front of it.

“Thought I’d give them some space,” she said in explanation when he looked at her.  Her glance moved over towards the kitchen.  “Maybe I’ll try to sort out something for supper…”

“Yeah, good idea,” Hoss said, suddenly surprised he hadn’t thought of the subject sooner.  There had been a lot going on.

Liza grimaced.  “Don’t get your hopes up too high; I can’t actually cook.  But – I’ll see.”

“Sure.  Thanks, Liza,” Hoss said, then headed up the stairs.

Adam was pacing in Joe’s room, while the doctor secured a new bandage on Joe’s arm.

“How’s he look, Doc?” Hoss asked.

“Better than you boys have looked sometimes when I’ve been out here,” Dr. Martin said.  “These wounds have been cleaned well, no sign of infection.  Rest is the key thing now – let that Cartwright constitution get to work on healing.”

“Yessir,” Hoss said.  “You think he’ll wake up soon?  Maybe he can tell us something about who shot him.”

The doctor shook his head.  “As I said, Little Joe needs rest and quiet.  In fact, with how restless he is, I’d like to give him an injection to make sure he’ll sleep through the night.  If he gets agitated, it should be repeated.”

“Well – you’re the doctor,” Hoss said, and glanced at Adam, who was frowning but didn’t comment.  If the doc said that was best for Joe, that’s what they ought to do – but it sure would’ve been nice to get some answers.  If Joe had them.

 

The prospects for supper were regrettably bleak.  Liza suspected Hop Sing would have known how to whip up something delicious with the limited supplies in the kitchen, but her skills did not extend that far.  She found beans and she could manage to heat them up, alongside half a pan of cornbread someone had mixed up earlier.  It was pretty evident all over the kitchen that the Cartwright boys had been on their own for food for at least a few days, but she was in no position to significantly remedy that.

Oh well, no one would starve, at least.

Focused on getting the oven to warm up, she didn’t realize the doctor was leaving until she heard the rattle of his buggy and the clop of horses’ hooves through the kitchen window.  Now that she listened, she could also hear the murmur of voices out in the great room.  She moved the tray of cornbread into the hot oven, just to warm it, and, wiping her hands on an apron she’d found in the kitchen, started towards the other room.

The voices became much clearer as soon as she entered the brief passage between the kitchen and dining room – no wonder Hop Sing always knew everything going on in the house – and the words she was hearing made her pause.

“I see how this all started, but I don’t understand why she’s still here.”  That was Adam, voice pitched in apparent frustration.  And while she had missed the beginning of this conversation, Liza had a bad feeling she was the only relevant she at the moment.

Hoss’ low rumble followed.  “Come on, Adam, you know Little Joe would want her here.”

“I don’t know that, and Little Joe can’t tell us right now how he feels about a woman coming to stay with us after she broke his heart.”

“He’s been moping about her for months—”

“All the more reason why this is complicated.”

“You know this ain’t the most important thing right now—”

“No, but I think we should have sent her back to town with the doctor.”

“She can help, Adam.  And how would you feel about it if one of the gals who left you came back and wanted to think again?  Wouldn’t you want us to keep her around?  And wouldn’t it make you want to get better in a hurry?”

“I don’t know, Hoss, and you’re just throwing theories now—”

“Suppose it was that Shoshone spirit woman you liked so much?”

“Don’t call her that,” Adam said in clipped tones, “and don’t bring Ruth into this.  It’s completely different.  She was trying to save my life when she left.”

“Well, Liza probably saved Joe’s.  When would we have gone out looking for him?  After supper?  Tomorrow morning?  You would’ve wanted to explain to Pa how Little Joe got shot and we didn’t even check on him until the next day?”

“It’s not a fair parallel—how would you feel about it if it was Helen Layton?”

“Now that ain’t fair, Adam, and don’t you go dragging Helen into this, you know I don’t like talking about her—”

“But Ruth is fair game?”

This was only getting worse, and Liza knew she’d been listening for too long already.  With Joe unconscious and unable to decide this, she had to find some kind of peace with his family—and, really, the way the Cartwrights all moved together, she’d need to do that even if Joe was able to say he wanted her here.  Assuming Hoss was right that he would.

Taking a deep breath, she walked forward into the dining room, the conversation stopping abruptly as she emerged into the room.  They were both looking at her by the time she got to the end of the table.

“Please don’t fight,” she said.  “Especially not about me.”

Hoss the kind-hearted looked abashed and said, “Aw, reckon it wasn’t exactly about you anyway, we’re just sorta keyed up.”

Adam looked uncomfortable, but more grim than guilty.  “I apologize if I was undiplomatic.  I didn’t realize you could hear us.”

“I should have said something sooner,” Liza acknowledged, and went ahead to cross the room to the sofa.

“We ought to have realized,” Hoss said, “seeing as we’ve all heard Pa in here arguing with one or another of us.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Liza said, sitting down.  “The question is what we’re going to do.  I know it’s awkward, me being here.”  She looked at Adam on that one, couldn’t tell if he was softening.  “But I’d like to help.  Aren’t you Cartwrights big on helping strangers passing by?  Don’t you accept help from passing strangers too?”

“But you’re not a stranger,” Adam countered.  “You’re more complicated than that.”

“I know,” Liza said, and swallowed.  She couldn’t do much of anything about it if Adam won this argument, if they ended up by saying she needed to pack up her cat and her things and go back to Virginia City, and they’d let her know when Joe wanted to see her.  If he wanted to see her.  If he was ever in a position to want to see her.  And she didn’t know if she could stand that, to ride away while Joe was lying injured upstairs, to wait and wonder and not know what was happening.  To not be able to help.

“You two do need help, don’t you?  You three,” she amended, with a gesture towards the stairs.  “Your father is away, you have a ranch to look after, an injured brother who needs help, and someone has to go after whoever injured him.  Two of you can’t do all of it.”

Hoss and Adam were exchanging glances, and she didn’t know them well enough to read those glances.  “She ain’t wrong, Adam,” Hoss said.  “Even Hop Sing’s away, and the ranch hands’re all out on jobs…”

“We could go to one of the neighbors for help,” Adam countered.  “And the two of us could handle Joe and the ranch anyway.”

“It’d take time to get more help,” Hoss pointed out, “and she’s already here.  Doc Martin liked her nursing too.”

“You are going to go after whoever shot Joe, right?” Liza asked, because that seemed to be missing from Adam’s calculations.  “They could come back, try again—”

“Might’ve just been a random bushwhacker,” Adam said.  “Saw an opportunity, kept on riding.”

Hoss frowned.  “I dunno, Adam, this close to the house?  Seems more likely somebody had an aim.”

“Even if it was a bushwhacker, they have Cochise, don’t they?”  Liza looked between the two faces.  “You have to go after Cochise!”

“He’s a horse,” Adam said without meeting her gaze, “and this is a ranch.  We have a lot of horses.”

“He’s Joe’s horse,” Liza persisted.  He loved that horse.  When the world felt wrong, when something upset him, he went out and talked to his horse.  “You know as soon as he wakes up he’s going to want to know what happened to his horse.  You’re going to tell him you didn’t do anything about finding Cochise?”

Hoss rubbed the back of his neck.  “You know she ain’t wrong about that neither, Adam.  Little brother’ll just about lose his mind when he hears his horse is missing.”

Adam sank into the tall blue armchair, pinched the bridge of his nose.  “Of course I’d like to get Cochise back for Joe, but as Liza pointed out – there are two of us, and a lot to deal with.  We can’t go searching for a horse right now.  Especially when Hoss couldn’t even find a trail to follow.”

“Sorta makes it sound like we ought to keep around any help we can,” Hoss remarked, tone pitched innocently, and Liza was truly grateful that Hoss was taking her side in all this.

“All right, all right,” Adam groaned.  “Liza, please accept our hospitality and we appreciate your offer to help – at least through tomorrow.  I’ll need to go to town in the morning to talk to the sheriff and telegraph Pa about what’s going on.  And Hop Sing is due back on tomorrow’s stage, so I would have needed to meet him anyway.”

“Thank you,” Liza said quietly.  It all might change again by tomorrow – they’d need her less, if Hop Sing was back – but at least they weren’t throwing her out tonight.  And maybe, hopefully, by tomorrow Joe would be well enough to weigh in on the question.  Even if he told her to leave – well, it might be worth it, since it would mean he was recovering.  And at least she would know there wasn’t any future here, instead of being left to wonder.

“You could ask around about Cochise in town tomorrow too,” Hoss said.  “Pretty distinctive pattern on that horse, somebody might’ve seen him.  Might give us a lead on who shot Joe.”

“It might,” Adam agreed, and frowned.  “Which raises some questions about why someone would steal such a recognizable horse, if they didn’t want to be suspected of the shooting.  But yes, I’ll ask around about Cochise too.”

 

9.

They divided the night sitting with Joe.  Liza wasn’t supposed to have a shift – Adam had said it wasn’t necessary, and she hadn’t wanted to argue – but she woke up at four in the morning and, after staring at the ceiling for awhile, concluded she wasn’t going back to sleep anyway.  She was in the upstairs guest bedroom this time around, so it was easy enough to put on her robe and slip across the hall.

Joe’s door was already ajar, so she eased it the rest of the way open, to find Hoss dozing in the big armchair by the bed.  He blinked and straightened up as she came in.

“How is he?” she asked softly, looking at the shadowed figure lying on the bed.

Hoss shrugged.  “’bout the same, I guess.  Still sleeping.”  He scrubbed at his hair, opened his eyes wide in the manner of one trying very hard to be awake.  “It ain’t dawn yet, you oughta be in bed…”

“I can’t sleep.”  She nudged his shoulder.  “You go get some rest.  I can sit with him until morning.”

“I dunno…”

“He’ll need you in the morning too.  Go on – I’ll call you and Adam if anything happens.”

She didn’t expect she could have convinced Adam, but Hoss nodded slowly, heaved up to his feet, and shuffled to the door.  “You call us, if anything happens.”

“I will,” she promised, settling into the big chair.

And then it was just her and Joe again.  It had been, fairly often, the last time she was here.  But not like this.

Liza sat next to Joe’s bed, watching his still face, and wondered, despite all her fine words to Adam the evening before, if she really had any business being here.  There was nothing to do right now except to watch and to wait.  And that made it harder, because there was nothing else to do but think and worry.

The doctor’s report had been reassuring, but she knew she wasn’t going to feel much easier until Joe was awake and talking.  Until she could see for herself that he was going to be all right.  And maybe not until she could have a real conversation with him and settle her own strange, uncertain status.

Joe stirred, shifting in his sleep without opening his eyes.  A frown creased his face, as though something was troubling him.  Pain, or a dream?  His hand, lying by his side, curled into a fist, then uncurled to grasp at the blankets as though he was reaching for something.

Automatically, Liza reached out, put one hand over his.  “Shh, it’s all right.”

His fingers clasped onto hers, held on tightly, and she froze, looking at their hands.  It didn’t mean anything; he didn’t even know who she was.  “Everything…is all right,” she said slowly.  “Or—will be soon.”

Maybe she should stop talking; if he could even hear her, it would probably only confuse him to hear her voice—but as she looked at his face again, the frown was relaxing and he was subsiding back again.  So maybe talking actually helped.

“You’d probably rather be hearing Hoss or Adam right now.  But they’re down the hall, just getting some sleep.  They’ll have to take care of the ranch in the morning, you know.  They can’t stop feeding horses just because you got yourself shot.  You probably turned your back on someone you shouldn’t have.”

He was smiling, just a tiny bit.  Probably it had nothing to do with anything she was saying.  More likely it would have been the same with any voice.  People found voices reassuring sometimes, during an illness.

“It will all be all right,” she said, as firmly as she could manage when she was still afraid that it wouldn’t be.  The shadowy room, the dark night with the pines outside – it brought back a whisper of another night, the night she had fallen asleep with Joe on the couch downstairs, and the conversation that had come before it.  About how Joe dealt with it, when he was afraid everything was going terribly wrong.  “You’re going to be fine, and when you’re feeling better – well, they tell me Hop Sing is coming back tomorrow anyway, and I’m sure your father will be home soon too.  And then we can all sit around the big dining room table downstairs, and eat Hop Sing’s fried chicken.  Just the way things should be.”

It was a lovely thing to imagine, remembering the warmth and kindness and fellowship that had been so present at the Cartwright table last time she was here.  If she felt that as a guest, what was it like to actually belong there?  She wished she knew.  And she hoped she wasn’t mistakenly inviting herself into the picture.

“I wish I knew if you’d really want me here,” Liza whispered.  “Adam doesn’t think so, but Hoss does.  And Clay said you would.  So I guess that’s two brothers against one.”  It was too bad Ben was away.  She knew the Cartwright patriarch well enough to know that he would have made a decision about her and that would have been the end of that—at least until Joe could say anything about it.  “I suppose two votes is enough reason to be here for now.  But you should hurry up and get better, so that you can tell me if you want me to go.  Or—so that you can ask me to stay.”

Her voice caught, and she brushed her free hand over her eyes.  “I would, you know.  Stay.  If you asked me to.  I’d stay here and marry you, if you asked me to.”

She stayed where she was, holding Joe’s hand and watching his face, until dawn broke outside the window and she heard stirrings from down the hall.  It was no real reason to move, but—she imagined Adam coming in and finding her holding Joe’s hand, and the picture was enough to make her extricate her fingers.

She stood up, paced a few steps, rubbing her hand against her skirt as though that could take away the feel of Joe’s fingers around hers, take away the sense of absence now that they’d let go.

 

10.

With one thing and another at home, it was late morning by the time Adam made it into Virginia City.  He went straight to the telegraph office, intending to send a message informing Pa of the current situation.  Instead he was greeted with the news that a message had come in for the Ponderosa, to inform them that Ben was on his way home, though by Adam’s calculations it would be a couple of days at least before he could arrive.

Adam sent a message to the biggest town on the route home, just on the off-chance it could reach him – though Pa probably couldn’t get home any faster than he already was anyway.

That chore done, he turned to the next business.  Eating up the blocks between the telegraph office and the sheriff’s office in long strides, halfway there Adam came to a halt so abrupt a man walking behind him stumbled into his back.

“Sorry,” Adam said automatically without turning around, without even blinking.

“Watch it, will you?” the man said, stepping around Adam.

“Sure,” he responded, and the man kept going, muttering something under his breath that Adam might have cared about at a different moment.

But right now, every bit of his attention was focused on the horse across the street, standing in a row of others outside the saloon.

It was a black and white paint, and as improbable and unlikely as it seemed, it was Cochise.  Adam knew his brothers’ horses like he knew his brothers’ faces, and that was Cochise.

He crossed the street, with just enough presence of mind to check for riders or oncoming wagons first, and swung under the hitching rail to look the horse in the face.  Yes.  Definitely Cochise.

“Hello, boy,” Adam said softly, giving the horse a rub on the nose.  Cochise responded by pushing his face into Adam’s shirt, warm breath puffing from his nostrils.

Adam looked the horse over – not Joe’s saddle, but still definitely Joe’s horse – and found no obvious signs that Cochise had been ill-treated, although his coat wasn’t at its usual glossy sheen.  Adam ran one hand down the horse’s hind leg, feeling the dried mud caked into the hair and the layers of still-wet mud over it.  So the horse hadn’t been cared for to Cartwright standards, but not apparently abused either.

Cochise was twisting his neck around to look at him, nickering.  Hoss or Joe probably would have told him the horse was relieved to see a familiar face.  Adam guessed that was more projection than anything else.  He was relieved, because he knew even better than Liza that Joe would have been likely to murder someone if they had to tell him his horse was missing.  Or to kill himself trying to go hunt Cochise down.

Relief was his first emotion, but it was short-lived, swamped very quickly by pure, righteous anger.  To leave a man for dead, and then ride into town on his horse, and casually leave that horse hitched up outside the saloon – that spoke to either the lowest levels of stupidity or the highest levels of audacity, and Adam would bet on the latter.

With still-wet mud on his legs, Cochise hadn’t been standing here for long.  So whoever’d ridden him here hadn’t gone far, and the most obvious destination was the first place to start.

Adam shoved open the swinging doors of the Silver Dollar Saloon, and strode inside.  The place wasn’t busy this early in the day, but a good half-dozen men were inside, at the bar or the tables.  “Who was riding the paint hitched outside?” Adam demanded, voice carrying over the low hum of conversation and bringing it to an abrupt halt.

Anyone who believed that it was the youngest Cartwright who had the temper in the family was about to find out differently.  Not that Joe didn’t have a temper, but right now, Adam felt just about as angry as Joe on his worst day.

For a few seconds, silence reigned in the saloon.  And then a voice spoke up from the end of the bar, from a man mostly out of sight behind two others, speaking in a casual, provoking drawl.  “You like my new horse, Adam Cartwright?  Thinking of buying him?”

The men in the way weren’t fools.  They moved aside quickly, and Adam saw a face he might’ve expected, that he half had expected.  Dave Donovan.

It made sense.  The man had a grudge against Joe, and the kind of grudge that meant he’d have a special, twisted interest in owning whatever belonged to Joe, horse included.

“That’s Joe’s horse outside,” Adam said flatly.

Donovan cocked an eyebrow, sauntered a few paces closer, half-full beer mug in one hand.  “Only the high and mighty Cartwrights have the right to own a paint?  When was that law passed?”

“I know my brother’s horse, and we didn’t sell him.”

Donovan took a long drink from his beer, smirked, and asked, “Which didn’t you sell, the horse or your brother?”

Some men were just asking to be shot.  But Adam wanted answers, and there was a better way to wipe the smirk off of Donovan’s face anyway.  He took two strides forward and used the momentum to carry his fist straight into Donovan’s jaw.  The man tumbled over backwards, beer spilling everywhere.

Adam stood over Donovan, glaring down at the man sprawled on the floor.  “Someone shot Joe yesterday and took his horse.  If he dies, it’s murder—and you have his horse.”

Adam grabbed the protesting Donovan by the shirt, hauled him up out of the mess on the floor, then out of the saloon and down the street to the sheriff’s office.  The door was open, letting in the fresh air, which meant Adam could drag Donovan straight inside and throw him at Roy’s desk.

“Here now, what’s this all about?” Sheriff Roy Coffee demanded, rising up from his seat behind the desk, papers scattering as Donovan crashed into it.

“He attacked me, Sheriff,” Donovan whined, “I didn’t lay a hand on him, and he just hit me and dragged me here—”

“Joe’s been shot, Roy,” Adam said shortly, breathing heavy from anger and exertion.  “Joe was shot, his horse was stolen, and Donovan’s got the horse.”

“Little Joe was shot?” Roy said, voice rising in alarm.  “Is he going to be all right?”

“Doc Martin thinks so,” Adam said, and gave Donovan’s shoulder a shove.  “And you’d better hope so, or you’re going to hang for murder.”

“That’s a serious accusation he’s making, sheriff,” Donovan said, leaning heavily on the desk and daring to grin again.  “And just because I have a horse, that doesn’t mean I shot anyone.”

“Where did you get the horse then?” Roy asked, fixing him with a hard stare.

“We know where he got the horse,” Adam growled.  “He shot Joe, left him lying out in a field, and took his horse!”

“Now hold on,” Roy said, putting a hand up, “you know there’s an order to these things, and I have to ask him.  Where’d you get the horse, Donovan?”

Donovan’s grin grew.  “I bought it.  All nice and legal-like.”  Then he reached for his vest, and though Adam’s and Roy’s hands both moved closer to their guns, all he brought out was a folded paper.  “Got the bill of sale and everything.”

He handed the paper to Roy, who unfolded it, gaze moving over the text.  “Roy, it’s a fake,” Adam said shortly.  “It has to be.”

“Maybe,” Roy acknowledged.  “Maybe not.”  He tapped the paper.  “The date on here is yesterday.”

“That’s right,” Donovan said.  “I bought the horse from a stranger yesterday evening.”

“You expect us to believe that story?”  Adam shook his head. “As if you wouldn’t know it was Joe’s horse after all those weeks you were palling around with him.”

“Maybe I haven’t got a good memory for horses,” Donovan drawled.  “Or maybe I believed Cartwright sold it.  Either way, it ain’t illegal to buy a horse.”

“It is to buy one you know is stolen!  Not that it matters, I don’t believe you bought him at all—”

“Adam, when was Little Joe shot?” Roy interrupted.  “Yesterday?  And it was out on your place?”

“Yes,” Adam said, a new uneasy feeling gripping him.  “Mid-afternoon, not far from the house.”

Roy shook his head, folding up the paper.  “It’s no good, then.  I don’t know how Donovan got the horse, but he couldn’t have shot Joe.  He was in my jail yesterday.”

“I ain’t got a fancy Eastern education,” Donovan said, grinning in a way that made Adam itch to hit him again, “but I believe they call that an alibi.  Ain’t that right, Roy?”

Adam had been so sure – it all made sense – and now the ground had gone unsteady beneath his boots.  “He’s involved, he has to be—”

“You tell him, Roy, you tell him you’ve got nothing to hold me on—”

“All right, that’s enough out of you,” Roy said shortly, seized Donovan by the arm and pulled him towards the inner room and its jail cells.  “And I do have enough for conspiracy to commit murder.  You’ve got motive and stolen goods.”

“But I couldn’t have done it – you know I couldn’t have done it!” Donovan protested, even as Roy closed the cell door on him.

“You just cool down in there and then we’ll talk about it,” Roy said over his shoulder, and closed the door leading onto the cells too.  “And you,” he said, pointing at Adam, “you cool down too.”

Adam hadn’t said anything, so he could only guess what was on his face that had prompted that from the sheriff.  Or maybe Roy just knew him well enough to know how much was brewing under the surface.  “He hates Joe, he had Joe’s horse—”

“Like I said, motive and stolen goods.”  Roy shook his head, sitting down behind the desk.  “That’ll be enough to hold him for the day, maybe.  Enough to try to get something out of him about how he bought the horse, if he really bought it.  But he didn’t have opportunity.  He got himself into a fight in the saloon night before last, and I didn’t turn him loose from jail until late yesterday afternoon.  Unless you’re going to tell me there’s a secret route from here to the Ponderosa that cuts the time way, way down, he couldn’t have shot Joe yesterday afternoon.”

“No, I’m not saying that,” Adam muttered.  That wasn’t the answer this time.  He sank into the chair in front of the sheriff’s desk, pinched the bridge of his nose.  “If he didn’t shoot Joe, he still knows who did.”

“Maybe,” Roy acknowledged, “and I’ll try and get whatever information I can.  But we both know I don’t have enough to hold him for long.  Not with that alibi.”

“That very convenient alibi,” Adam said, and even though he had no proof at all, he just knew – Donovan knew who had shot Joe, had known something was going to happen ahead of time.  An alibi that good, that convenient, didn’t happen just by chance.  “Let me talk to him, Roy, try to find out—”

“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Roy interrupted.  “You ain’t an officer of the law, and you’re too involved in all this.  He’s not going to talk to you, and if you go too far trying to make him, I’ll have to lock you up.  Let me handle this.  It’s my job.”

Adam thought of arguing.  He wanted to argue.  But he knew Roy was right.  He’d have to trust the sheriff to do this job, and he did trust Roy Coffee.  “All right,” he said at last.  “You’ll let us know what you find out?”

“Of course,” Roy said, and was looking at Adam a little more intently as he asked, “I take it Little Joe can’t identify who shot him?”

“I don’t know.  He’s not awake,” Adam said, then added, “Yet,” but wished he hadn’t said it.  It felt so painfully tacked on that he didn’t blame Roy for looking even more grave.

“Well, you give your youngest brother my best, and tell him I’ll expect to haul him in for busting up the saloon real soon.”

Adam had to smile at that.  “I’m sure he’ll appreciate that.”

The smile faded fast as he stepped out of the sheriff’s office, trying to think through his next move.  He’d have to wait for the stage bringing Hop Sing, so in the meantime—

“Hey, Cartwright!”  Donovan’s voice slipped out through the prison window, pitched to carry but not sounding like a man who was any too troubled by his situation.  “I’ll be seeing you again real soon, Cartwright, because you know they don’t have anything on me.”

Adam wanted to just keep walking, but he found himself rooted to the spot, held by that insidious voice.

“I ain’t going to pretend I’m sad your brother got himself shot, but I didn’t do it.  I wouldn’t do it like that, you know.  I wouldn’t kill Joe.  I’d kill all the rest of you Cartwrights, and leave poor sad Little Joe all on his own.  See how big a man he’d be then.”

Adam gritted his teeth, and seriously considered going back inside, marching over to that cell—he forced himself to start walking instead, to keep on going down the street.  He told himself it was because he respected the law in the abstract and Roy Coffee in the particular.  And it may also have been because he knew youngest brother most definitely would have gone back in hot-headed and raging, and he was the levelheaded one.  Besides, if he got himself locked up for attacking Donovan, that would leave Hoss holding down everything alone, and he couldn’t do that to middle brother either.

The way things were going, it wouldn’t have shocked him if Cochise had disappeared while he wasn’t looking – but no, the horse was still standing right outside the saloon, right where he’d been left.  And that was some consolation, as Adam picked up the reins to lead the horse over to where he’d left Sport near the telegraph office.  He couldn’t go home and announce he’d dealt with the man who’d shot his little brother – but at least he could bring his brother’s horse back to him.  That was something.

 

At a back table at the Silver Dollar, a lone figure sat and nursed a glass of whiskey, brooding on the encounter between Adam Cartwright and Dave Donovan.

So Little Joe Cartwright wasn’t dead.  Shot twice, blood everywhere, left alone in a secluded meadow, and somehow the boy wasn’t dead.  Should have checked, but that would have meant getting close to all that blood, and riding away safely required not being covered in Cartwright blood.

It only made everything worse.  It was all part of the charmed life of Little Joe Cartwright, who strolled through gunfights and bar brawls and came up unharmed and smiling while other men lay dead in the dusty street.  Men who hadn’t deserved to die, while Little Joe Cartwright went on his untroubled, unconcerned way.

I’m sorry, Little Joe had said, because he knew it was his fault – and yet still he’d walked away.  Still he’d made the choices that left one man dead and destroyed a wide circle of lives, and walked away with never a backward glance.

No, someone had to finally end Little Joe Cartwright’s charmed existence.  Someone had to stop him from continuing on, continuing to leave death in his wake.

Doing this personally hadn’t worked out as planned.  It hadn’t seemed as if shooting a man could require all that much skill, not at close range, not when Little Joe wasn’t expecting it and didn’t have his gun drawn.  But it was time to enlist someone with more experience.

Luckily the right person was already at hand, someone who not only knew how to use a gun but intimately knew the layout of the Cartwright house.  Because now was the time to try again, immediately.  Ben Cartwright hadn’t come back through town yet.  Adam Cartwright, with any luck, wouldn’t head back home for at least a couple of hours.  That left only the big one, the one they called Hoss, at home with his wounded brother.

So it was the perfect time to end this.

Decision made and whiskey drained, it was time to act.

 

11.

Liza surveyed the contents of Hop Sing’s kitchen, and did not feel hopeful about the prospects for lunch.  It might be best to just wait until Hop Sing himself had returned – but even though Adam had left some hours ago, they didn’t expect him back with Hop Sing for a few more, especially if the stage ran late, as it often did.  Besides, it seemed unkind to expect Hop Sing to return from a long trip and plunge straight into preparing a meal.  Though it also seemed possible he was the type who wouldn’t really feel at home until he was mixing something up in his kitchen…

A gunshot broke through the quiet air and Liza’s musings, shockingly loud and sudden.  She dropped automatically into a crouch, head turning and heart pounding, but she couldn’t see outside or judge the direction the sound had come from.  After a few seconds of silence, she obeyed her instinct to run and did – out into the dining room, across the great room towards the stairs.  She had just noticed Bronte crouched under the coffee table, hissing, and was passing the settee when a thud rattled the front door – locked ever since Adam had left.  The next gunshot was even louder, and confirmed that this was no innocent hunting or signaling going on outside.

Hoss was already thundering down the stairs from where he’d been up with Joe, and she met him at the bottom.  “Outside…” was all she managed to gasp.

“Yeah,” Hoss said, pulling open a drawer from the cabinet beside the stairs, and taking out two handguns.  He pressed them into her hands and turned to get a rifle off the wall.  “Take these, they’re already loaded.  Go up to Joe’s room and lock the door.”

The guns were cold and heavy in her hands.  “I still don’t know how to shoot!”

“Yeah, well, point and press the trigger.  Aim don’t matter so much up close.  And hopefully it ain’t going to come up anyway.  I’ll try and hold ‘em off down here.”

This did not make her feel better.  “Right,” she said faintly.  She cast a glance at her cat, nearly invisible in the shadows and in a very defensible spot under the heavy table, and ran up the stairs.

She pushed Joe’s door closed once she was inside the room, but it only had a simple latch.  She locked it anyway, then shoved the big armchair in front of the door.  It might slow someone down, at least.

Her glance darted between the window and the door and then over to Joe’s face on the pillow, and swallowed hard.  This was no time to have hysterics.  This was no time to lose control.

Joe was restless, hands moving across the blankets, but it was hard to tell if that was because of the sound of the gunfire – she flinched at more gunshots, shockingly loud even though she thought they were still down at the front door – or just because he had been less deeply asleep today.  They had thought he might stir a few times, but he hadn’t quite woken up yet.

And now they had to make sure he – and they – didn’t get shot before he had the chance.

“I hope you don’t mind this,” she said, sitting on the foot of his bed, a decent vantage point to watch both the door and the window.  She set one heavy pistol on the blanket next to her, and rested her wrist holding the other pistol on the top of the solid wooden footboard.

A shatter of glass from a window downstairs, more shots – she couldn’t tell what was happening, but surely Hoss was firing back.  Was it only a lone gunman out there?  What were they actually facing?

Then an even closer shot came, with a much nearer crash of glass, and Liza instinctively threw herself flat, half across Joe’s legs, as the glass fell from the room’s single window.  The window looked out on the slope of the lower roof, and just at the edge of the window she could see a man’s shoulder, someone crouching on that roof.

She aimed the pistol as best she could and fired.

It was much, much louder when it was her own gun firing, and she wasn’t prepared for the way it would jerk in her hand.  She wasn’t positive where she had hit, but with no one falling off the roof she didn’t think she’d hit the man out there.  She fired again and he pulled back farther – but it was only a moment before he was leaning closer again, light glinting off a gun barrel of his own.

She fought every instinct to close her eyes, and kept firing.  Just point and shoot, Hoss had said, and if her aim was terrible – well, there wasn’t much else she could do.

At least the man outside shouldn’t know that she didn’t know what she was doing.  Maybe that was why he backed away again – but he still didn’t leave.

She dragged a shaking hand across her forehead, looked down at the gun in her hand.  He’d retreated but he wasn’t leaving and—how many shots had she fired?  Five?  Or was it six?  The chambers she could see were empty, and if she checked the last one he’d probably try for the window again right at that moment—she pushed the gun behind her and picked up the second one, positioned it again, barely in time as the man outside moved into range again.

All she could do was fire and hope, but it was only after several rapid shots that she realized – she should have saved the bullets for a better, clearer shot, assuming she could actually hit him then – and by that point the trigger was clicking on an empty gun chamber.

The man outside had been waiting for that.  He moved fully in front of the window, a grinning man in dusty clothes, a surely still-loaded gun in his hand.  “My fight isn’t with you,” he said, “so get out of the—”

Another shot, and Liza jerked instinctively but—the man at the window was clutching his arm and cursing and that made no sense—  She looked behind her.

Joe had picked up the gun she’d put down, was glaring at the man in the window with eyes that didn’t look entirely clear but apparently were lucid enough.  “Next one goes between your eyes,” he rasped.

The man let out a string of expletives, but he was also backing away, sliding down from the rooftop.  Liza had a vague feeling she ought to stop him, but she didn’t see how, and she was more relieved than anything else anyway to see him go.

Joe let his hand, holding the gun, drop back onto the blankets.  Something in the movement demonstrated how hard it must have been to hold it up to begin with.  Liza sank out of her crouch to sit with her back to the footboard, suddenly breathless.

It must have been five shots she had fired with the first gun.  Which meant…  “Your gun’s empty too,” she said faintly.

Joe cracked some shadow of his usual grin.  “Wasn’t aiming for his arm either.”

Liza didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or to cry – probably both, but that would qualify as hysterics so she tried very hard to keep a tight grip on herself.  And on the gun, for all the good it was likely to do her now.

“Also,” Joe said, head sinking farther back again in the pillow.  “I’m holding you to it.”

“To what?”

“If I asked you.”  His voice was getting fainter and more slurred, eyes starting to slide closed.  It must have taken a heroic effort to stay awake and focused for this long.  “Said you’d marry me.”

She swallowed.  “I didn’t know you could hear me.”

His eyes were already closed, but he was smiling.

Liza pressed her empty hand against her mouth.  Did it count – did it mean anything really, if he was half-conscious, still drugged on laudanum and whatever effect a head injury had?  After—they’d have to talk after, and—

Pounding footsteps on the stairs and she groaned, turning towards the door now, lifting the gun but it was empty, so—at least if Hoss had given her a rifle it could have made a club but a pistol was so much smaller—could she find anything else—

The door shook, rattled, then fairly burst open, the chair blocking it sliding halfway across the room.  She hoisted the gun higher, but—

Hoss appeared in the doorway and she had never been so glad to see him.  He took one look at the scene and raised his hands, rifle in one of them.  “It’s just me.”

So she must have looked slightly convincing, at least.  She lowered the empty gun.  “I’m out of bullets anyway.”

“What happened?” Hoss asked, stepping into the room, gaze scanning around.  “Little Joe all right?”

“Yes.  Somebody tried to get in the window, but Joe shot him in the arm.”

“Joe shot him?” Hoss repeated, casting her a quizzical look as he crossed the room to look out the window.  He raised his rifle but lowered it again almost at once, shaking his head.  “He’s just gone around the corner of the barn.  Looks like he’s in a hurry to get out of here.  I already got the one from downstairs.”

Did that mean he’d killed him?  Liza shivered.

“How’d Joe shoot anybody?” Hoss asked.

“He woke up,” Liza said, with a vague gesture at the once-again sleeping Joe Cartwright.  “Just for a minute.”

“Huh.  Guess gunshots at close range might get somebody stirring.  And Joe never did like to miss a fight.”

“What do we do now?”

Hoss frowned, forehead furrowing.  “I ought to go after the one who got away, but I don’t want to leave you two.  Although it seems like you did all right.”

Maybe, but that didn’t make the idea of Hoss leaving any less terrifying.  Liza swallowed, managed to say, “You should go after him.  That’s the only way to end all this.  I just need another gun that’s still loaded.  Or to reload, I guess.”

Hoss was still frowning, but said, “Yeah, all right.  And I’d better make it quick, before he gets more of a lead.  Come on downstairs, you can get another gun.  That’s fastest.”

Liza slid off of Joe’s bed – only then did it occur to her to wonder what Hoss thought of her sitting there to begin with, but she wasn’t going to ask – and followed Hoss out the door and down the stairs.

Downstairs he handed her a rifle and went to the front door carrying another one, but then the situation all changed again when he opened the door.

“Hey, somebody caught him for us,” Hoss said in surprise, looking outside.  “Looks like – yeah, that’s Danny Kidd behind him.  And the one Joe shot, that’s Bob Stevens.”

Liza hurried over to look out past Hoss, and saw the man from Joe’s window walking back into the yard, hands raised.  Behind him, holding a pistol aimed at his back, rode a man she just recognized as Joe’s friend Danny.  They’d met briefly the first time she was here.  The gunman still didn’t look familiar, and the name Bob Stevens didn’t ring any bells anyway.

As they walked out onto the porch, she could also see a body lying over near the horse trough, a bearded man, unmoving.  She averted her gaze.

As he drew his horse to a halt, Danny called, “I was riding in for supplies and saw Stevens running away from the house with blood on his arm.  I had a feeling you might want him.”

“Thanks, Danny,” Hoss said.  “He and a friend tried to shoot Joe.”

Danny’s eyebrows rose.  “You still carrying a grudge from being fired last year, Stevens?”

Liza really would have liked to know more of the story behind all this, and maybe she’d get a chance to find out some time, but not immediately.  Stevens just glowered at the world at large and said, “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

Hoss fixed Stevens with a stare that Liza wouldn’t have wanted aimed at her.  “Yeah, well, our family takes a pretty dim view of anybody trying to kill one of us.  So whatever you do or don’t say, this ain’t going to end well for you anyway.  And the sheriff’s going to be real interested in your story too.”

 

From the shadows inside the barn, another figure watched the happenings in the front yard through the barely-cracked barn doors.

She could have screamed with frustration, if it wouldn’t have given her away at once.

Stupid, useless, incompetent men.  How hard could it really be to kill Joe Cartwright when he was already wounded in bed, with just one brother and some woman to defend him?  Not that she didn’t know well that a woman could be deadly too, but still!  All they had to do was creep up on the bedroom – Stevens had known the right window, after his time working for the Cartwrights – and end this thing.

But no, Little Joe Cartwright’s lucky star just kept protecting him.  And now another man was dead, and while she didn’t feel any special grief over a hired gun, it was still another to add to the tally.  And with Stevens apprehended and Donovan already in jail, she was running low on allies.  Though it appeared that it had been a mistake to rely on them anyway.  At least she had managed to wound Little Joe, and to escape unscathed.  They hadn’t managed either one.

Across the yard she could hear Hoss Cartwright demanding answers and Stevens refusing to give any.  If he stuck to that – and he might, because he’d never been very comfortable about the idea that a mere woman was orchestrating all this – this might not be all bad.  Already her mind was turning over the possibilities, organizing and arranging these new factors.  She had long experience managing people, managing a business, and in some ways the skills translated.

Outside the man on horseback was dismounting, and the rest were moving back inside.  She retreated across the barn, because they might bring the horse in here, and there was nothing to be learned from here if they moved the conversation into the house.

Best to get back to town.  She could flee, but that would mean giving up, and she wasn’t ready for that.  She’d be able to learn more at the saloon as events unfolded.  If Stevens identified her she would be in trouble, but there was a real possibility he wouldn’t.  And gentlemanly Sheriff Coffee would probably be so uncomfortable arresting a woman that there’d be ample opportunities to escape if it should come to that.

No, she wasn’t going to give up yet.  She’d wait a bit, see how things unfolded, let the Cartwrights relax out of their vigilance.  And then she’d act again, try again to do this thing herself.

It would be more satisfying to kill Little Joe personally anyway.

 

12.

After the upheaval of the morning, the relative quiet of the afternoon was a positive relief.  Hoss sent Danny into town with Stevens and the dead man, a job he would have done himself any other time, but he definitely wasn’t leaving Little Joe and Liza alone out here.  He could’ve left Danny with them, but he felt better staying himself.

There were more hoofbeats in the yard an hour or so after they left, too soon for Danny to have got to town and back again.  Hoss went to the front door and cracked it open with gun already in his hand.  But he relaxed as soon as he saw who was outside, dropping the gun back into its holster and opening the door wide.  He couldn’t be gladder to see Adam riding back in – sure could have used him earlier – with Hop Sing on a second horse behind him.  Hoss’ grin only got bigger when he saw Cochise trotting on a lead line behind Sport.

Hoss walked out onto the porch and hadn’t even got a word out before Hop Sing was swinging down from the horse and launching into a tirade in Chinese.  When he finally shifted into English it was to ask, “How Little Joe?”

“Doing just fine,” Hoss said quickly.  “Woke up for just a minute earlier, but he’s sleeping now.”  Getting into the full details…could wait until Hop Sing was calmer.

The cook glowered at him as though he was personally responsible for the entire situation.  “Hop Sing go away for one little trip, see what happen!  Probably no decent nursing while Hop Sing gone – definitely no decent food!”

“Well,” Hoss said, and rubbed his stomach, “I am plumb hungry at that…”

Hop Sing flung his hands into the air.  “Cartwrights all useless!  Hop Sing go make supper.”  He stomped off towards the kitchen door, but stopped just outside it to ask, “Missy Liza still here?”  So Adam must’ve mentioned her.

“Yeah, she’s upstairs with Joe,” Hoss said.  She’d coaxed her cat out from under the coffee table, then carried him upstairs to sit with Joe.

Hop Sing nodded.  “Good.  Cartwrights make one smart decision.”  Then he was slamming off into the kitchen.

Adam was down from Sport by now, and looping the reins over the hitching rail.  He looked tired, face set in a frown that seemed like more than the result of listening to Hop Sing’s tirade.

“You found Cochise,” Hoss remarked, because that seemed like a good reason to be cheerful.  Especially since Cochise looked to be all right, if muddy around the legs.

“Yeah, I found him,” Adam said shortly, leaning on the hitching rail.

“So why’re you frowning like that?” Hoss asked, moving to look Cochise over more closely.

Adam ignored Hoss’ question, just saying, “The horse is fine.  I already checked him over.”

“I know,” Hoss said, and went on with his inspection.  He ran his hands down Cochise’s foreleg, while the horse nosed at him, warm breath ruffling his hair.  It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Adam, it just felt right to check for himself.  And he wanted to be able to tell Little Joe he’d done it.  “So what are you frowning about?  And how’d you find Cochise?”

“Dave Donovan had him hitched outside the saloon in town,” Adam said, frown deepening.  “Roy arrested him, but he has an alibi for when Joe was shot.”

“Huh,” Hoss said.  “Donovan and Stevens must’ve been in it together.”

“Stevens?” Adam repeated, eyebrows going tight.

“Yeah…” Hoss said, and filled him in on what he had missed.

It was just as well they were having the conversation outside.  There was some yelling involved, and it probably was better not to wake Joe up.  Maybe Hoss could make that argument to Hop Sing, when he had to tell him about recent events too.  And Pa’d be sure to raise the roof once he heard about all of this – but even with that to face, he still wished Pa would hurry up and get home.

 

Liza had wondered if Hop Sing’s return was going to shift her own uneasy status as a guest.  Once Adam came up to see Joe, she descended the stairs and stood uncertainly in the great room, not sure if she should venture into the kitchen or if that domain was now forbidden.

She was still standing by the fireplace when Hop Sing emerged from the kitchen himself and fixed her with a harsh stare.  “Well?” he demanded.  “Missy Liza just stand there, or come help chop food in kitchen?  Everyone always expect Hop Sing do everything!”

“I’d be glad to help,” Liza said quickly, recognizing this for the very generous invitation it was.

Hop Sing shook his head and stomped back into the kitchen, muttering at length about unreasonable demands, the mess in his (as far as Liza could see) spotless kitchen, and the unlikelihood that anyone had eaten anything edible while he was gone.  Liza was handed a knife and a basket of potatoes to peel and chop.  She had learned the last time she was here that this was how it worked in Hop Sing’s kitchen – you accepted the most menial tasks and recognized that being permitted to do them was an honor and a privilege.

She ate Hop Sing’s excellent stew with Hoss, while Adam sat with Joe, and then went upstairs when Adam descended.  There were no further arguments (Hop Sing’s mutterings couldn’t really be counted), no one else shot at the house, Joe remained asleep but his color was improving, and it appeared that, without anything too specific being said, Liza was continuing to stay.

 

The first thing Joe was aware of, as he woke up to a more clear-headed consciousness, was a low rumbling noise.  It was so familiar that he didn’t even have to open his eyes to identify it.  Hadn’t he slept down the hall from that sound all his life, not to mention shared any number of hotel rooms and campsites?

Sure enough, when he did crack open his eyes, squinting against the light, there was big brother Hoss, asleep in the armchair with his mouth agape, loud snore issuing out.

Joe smiled, then rubbed a hand over his sleep-sticky eyes.  The movement felt more difficult than usual, but possible.  Which was more than could be said after some injuries he’d had.  He knew that was what had happened.  He’d been through this enough to recognize the signs, both in the situation – Hoss didn’t usually sleep in his room, after all – and in his own body.  He shifted carefully, checking.  There was a low ache in his head, not too bad.  And when he moved his right arm – yeah, that hurt a little, but still not too bad, and he was left-handed anyway.  All in all, it had been worse other times.

He wondered what that meant for how long he’d been out.  He could wake up Hoss and ask him, but he glanced at his snoring brother, and thought he’d let him be.  He’d like to have a little more clarity in his own mind first too.

He frowned at the ceiling as he tried to think through the recent past.  Everything was a confused jumble of possible events and possible fever or medicated dreams, and the line between the two was a very fuzzy thing.  He remembered being out by the lake with Cochise.  He was sure that was real.  And he remembered being shot at out of nowhere.  After that, everything got more uncertain.

He didn’t really know how he had got back home, though he had the faintest wisp of an idea that Hoss might have got him here.  Hard to say if that was memory or just a good guess, but at least it made sense.  He had jumbled impressions after he’d got back home.  He might’ve heard Doc Martin’s voice in there somewhere, and that made sense too.

He also had memories he knew had to be dreams, from their sheer unreality, though they’d felt real enough at the time and stood out as clearly as anything else from the past however long.  He’d been playing in a meadow with his mother, a pleasant dream that had morphed into a more troubling one of chasing Cochise across field after field, his normally cooperative horse always a little too far away to catch.  He’d also fought and refought gunfights and fistfights he’d lived before.  John C. Regan and Asa Moran, Vince Dagen and a host of others had appeared to fight the old fights again.

He even had a memory of shooting someone out his bedroom window.  That memory made him frown deeper, because it was more confusing than most.  It seemed especially clear, especially solid, but it was pretty unlikely.  Not impossible, maybe, except—except for who else was in that memory.

He sighed, rubbed a hand over his face again.  Liza was in that memory.  She was in a lot of his recent, blurry memories – her voice and her face and her hand holding his.  And wasn’t that just the sort of dream his mind would conjure up?  That Liza had come back and wanted to marry him after all.  So if he remembered shooting someone at his window while Liza sat at the end of the bed, gun in hand to defend him, clearly that all had to be a dream too.

Joe turned his head to look at Hoss again, and tried to be glad that it was Hoss sitting there, instead of someone else.  It wasn’t actually that hard.  Hoss wasn’t pretty, but he was still one of Joe’s favorite faces to see.  And that rumbling snore was one of the most reassuring sounds in his world.  Sure, he’d tease Hoss about it, complain that it would keep the whole ranch awake, but really, deep down, he didn’t mind.  Because it always meant that his big brother was somewhere nearby, and that everything was all right.

 

Hoss woke up with sunlight pouring in through Little Joe’s window and Joe himself watching him from the bed.

“About time you’re waking up, big brother,” Little Joe said with a smile, and if his voice wasn’t quite at normal, it was much closer than it had been.  His eyes looked normal too, tired but open, and not hazy from fever or laudanum.

“Some of us ain’t been sleeping for two days, little brother,” Hoss retorted back.  He shook himself, ran a hand over his hair.

“That long, huh?” Joe said, voice distant, like he was trying to think through something.

“Yeah, but seems like you’re finally back on the same range as the rest of us.”  Hoss reached out to tousle Joe’s already-rumpled curls, avoiding the wound on the side of his head and surreptitiously checking that he didn’t feel too hot at the same time.

“I must’ve been pretty far out of things,” Joe said, smoothing his hair again – also a good sign, that he was bothering.

“I dunno, I’ve seen ya worse.”  He had a suspicion about what Joe might be trying to think through.  “How much do you remember?”

“It’s all pretty blurry.”  Little Joe’s face scrunched up in concentration.  “I know I was out by the lake.  And somebody jumped me.  I’m not sure—hey, I rode Cochise out there,” he said, sudden alarm in his voice.  “Did they get Cochise?”

“Yer horse is fine,” Hoss said soothingly.  Liza really did know little brother – she’d predicted he’d ask about his horse straight off.  “He’s out in the stable, stuffing himself on oats.”  They could get into the details of the steps in between later.  He wouldn’t put it past Joe to want to climb out of bed immediately and go check on Cochise himself, if he knew the horse had been missing for a while there.  “What do you remember after that?” Hoss asked, watching Joe closer.

“I’m not sure.  It all gets hazy.”  Little Joe frowned.  “I remember some things, but it’s pretty blurry, so—not sure what happened and what was just…”  He closed his eyes, shook his head slightly.  “I even thought I saw—but I guess that doesn’t really matter.”

“Who?” Hoss prompted.  “Who did you think you saw?  And were you happy about seeing her?”

Joe shot him a look.  “How do you know it was a her?”

“Little brother, how many years have I known you?”

That one got a smile out of Joe.  “Yeah, all right, good guess.”  He heaved a big sigh.  “I thought Liza was here, but clearly I was somewhere very far off.”

“Actually, I’ve got a surprise for you…” Hoss began, but before he could get further a knock at the half-open door interrupted.

“Hoss, I have those fresh blankets—oh.”  Liza stopped short a step into the room, eyes suddenly going wide as she looked at Joe.  “Sorry.  I didn’t realize…”

As for Little Joe, he was looking at her like she was some kind of miracle.  “You’re—real.”  He reached out without looking away from Liza, grabbed Hoss’ arm.  “Right?  She’s really—?  I’m not—?”

“No, little brother, she’s really here,” Hoss said, grinning.

So that was a point he’d won over Adam.  He knew Little Joe would want her here.

 

All Liza had wanted for days—months, even—was to talk to Joe.  Those few delirious exchanges didn’t really count, but he had a different look now.  The laudanum haze was gone and for the first time he was really here.  And suddenly she felt unprepared.  Panicked, even.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said unsteadily.  “I should let you two—”

“Don’t go,” Joe said before she’d managed more than half a step back.  “Stay here.  With me.”

Her cheeks burned.  He had to hear the echoes, didn’t he?  He had to know he’d used the exact same words when he’d asked her to marry him.  And he was looking at her—in a very similar way.

It couldn’t really be this easy, could it?  Yes, he’d said some things while he was drugged and possibly bordering on delirious.  He wasn’t either anymore and it couldn’t be this simple—

But wasn’t that the kind of thinking that had caused all the trouble between them to begin with?

“All right,” she managed.  “I’ll stay.”

“I’ll just be going downstairs,” Hoss volunteered.  “Make sure Hop Sing is getting breakfast together all right.”  As if Hop Sing ever needed help in that area.  The panicked part of Liza wished he would stay, but most of her appreciated what he was trying to do, and she didn’t try to stop him as he went out the door.

“You should be resting,” Liza said, setting down the blankets and taking Hoss’ vacated chair.

He ignored that, still looking at her as though nothing else existed.  “I thought I dreamed you,” he said softly.  He reached out one hand towards her face, stopped with it suspended between them.

She took his hand, drew it the last distance to touch her cheek, her own hand curled over his.  His hand was calloused but his touch was soft.  “I came back,” she said, words catching in her throat.

“You came back,” he repeated, smiling.  “Good.”

And that was enough, at least, to settle whether Joe wanted her to be here.  Whether she ought to stay.

It was all that was settled, for now, because Adam came up the stairs to see Joe, and then Hop Sing wasn’t far behind with a special breakfast tray, and Joe wanted to know more about what had been happening, and there was the business of the day to discuss, and once that had been thoroughly covered everyone but Joe agreed he needed to rest, and so it was no time for more sentimental conversations.  But still.  Something had been settled, and it was enough.  For now.

 

13.

As though Joe waking up had triggered a change in the entire atmosphere, the (mostly) quiet waiting of the previous day gave way to a flurry of activity today.  Hop Sing pressed Liza into service for more meal preparations, and she had just finished peeling potatoes out on the front porch and was teasing Bronte with a long curl of potato peel, when a thunder of hoofbeats brought her gaze up sharply.

Luckily, before she’d risen to go yell for Hoss and Adam, she could see it was the familiar shape of Sheriff Roy Coffee.  She had met him on her previous visit to the Ponderosa, and even if it had been awkward then, she’d much rather see him than a stranger toting a gun.

He swung down from his horse, tugged the brim of his hat as he approached.  “Miss Montgomery, good morning.”

She dropped the potato peel for Bronte to pounce on, then stood up so she wouldn’t have to look up at the man.  She returned his greeting with a nod and, “Sheriff.”

“I see Hop Sing has you at work,” he said, gesturing to the potatoes.  Perhaps he also was remembering their previous meeting, a trace of awkwardness underlying the friendly words.

“I like to be helpful if I can.  I assume you’re here about Joe being shot?”

“Yes’m,” Sheriff Coffee said with his own nod.  “How is Little Joe doing?”

“Much better.”  It was a relief to be able to say it.  “He’s resting, but he was awake earlier.”

The obvious relief on the sheriff’s face went a long way towards making her feel kinder towards him.  “Well, that is good to hear!” Sheriff Coffee said.  “That Cartwright constitution, it always pulls ‘em through.  Hoss and Adam around?  I’d like to have a word if I can.”

“They’re inside,” Liza confirmed, hesitated, then decided she may as well be direct.  It had to be better than wondering, or finding out later.  “Sheriff, do you think I was involved in shooting Joe?”  She didn’t see why he would, but she hadn’t expected him to think she was involved in a bank robbery either.

His expression of surprise seemed genuine.  “No’m, no, no one’s thinking that.  No reason anyone would.  And I do apologize for any awkwardness I caused on your last visit, suspecting you of that bank robbery.  You understand it wasn’t personal – just looking at the circumstances and doing my job.”

“I do understand that,” Liza said slowly, because she’d had time by now to grapple with the question – even if it had been upsetting at the time.

The sheriff looked relieved about that too.  “You know, it’s not always a comfortable job, being sheriff.  I’ve had to arrest the Cartwright boys more than once too, though they never have been guilty of anything serious.”

Liza half-smiled.  “I can’t say it surprises me.  Any part of it.”  She’d heard more than enough stories to believe they’d got into various scrapes like that.  And that they’d been innocent in the end.

“Do come in,” she said, just as though she had any right to play hostess here, and reached for the bucket of peeled potatoes.  “We’ll find Hoss and Adam.”

“Oh no, let me,” Sheriff Coffee said, hoisting up the bucket before she could.

They went in through the kitchen, where Hop Sing pronounced grudging approval on the potatoes then shooed them out of the room.  They found Adam in the great room, but had barely got past pleasantries before Hoss appeared at the top of the stairs.

“Hey, is that the sheriff?” he asked, looking down the steps.

From down the hall behind him, Joe’s voice could distantly be heard calling, “I want to hear what Roy says too!”

“I see he’s feeling better,” the sheriff said with a grin.

“We may have to tie him to the bed soon to keep him there,” Adam said wryly.

“Better come on up,” Hoss advised, “before he tries to come down.”

So they all moved upstairs to Joe’s room.  Liza wasn’t positive that she was invited, but she wanted to hear what the sheriff had to say too.  So she just hung at the back, and felt justified in coming when Joe’s gaze searched her out in the group, and he smiled on seeing her.

“You’re looking well, Little Joe,” Sheriff Coffee said with apparent sincerity.  Liza thought he still looked pale, a little worn around the eyes, but much better than he had been.  Joe Cartwright awake and talking was so much better than Joe Cartwright unnaturally still, silent, unconscious.  He wasn’t a man who should be still or silent.

“Yeah, I’ll be up and around again soon,” Joe said easily, visibly ignoring the glance exchanged by his two older brothers at the words.  “What’s the news?  They tell me you’ve got the man that shot me.”

“We-ell…” Roy said with apparent reluctance, “it seems that way.  Only it’s a mite complicated.  I’ve got Bob Stevens in custody.”

“Nasty son of a snake,” Joe said with a nod.  “Doesn’t surprise me he’d shoot at me.”

“Yeah, he’s got motive and opportunity and we know he came shooting at the house,” Roy agreed.  “But he ain’t confessed to shooting you out by the lake.”

Adam spoke up.  “What about Donovan?  I know he’s alibied for the first shooting, but he must be involved somehow, maybe knows something.”

The sheriff was shaking his head.  “Donovan and Stevens are both keeping their mouths shut.  They won’t admit to working together, but I’ve got Clem searching around for anyone who’s seen ‘em together.  They won’t identify the third man, the one Hoss shot.  And they won’t say if anyone else was involved.”

“Anyone else?” Liza echoed, feeling a sinking in her stomach.  Surely not.  Surely everyone was accounted for, dead or arrested, and this whole episode was closed.

“How many people do you reckon want to kill Little Joe?” Hoss asked.

“I mean,” Adam murmured, “there’s a few.”

“Not that many,” Joe said, glaring at his oldest brother.

“I wanted to find out if you saw anything when you got shot,” Sheriff Coffee intervened before it could become a true wrangle.  “Could you identify Stevens or anyone else as the shooter?”

Joe grimaced, and shook his head.  Which wasn’t good as an answer, but it was good that he didn’t wince moving his head.  “I barely caught a glimpse of whoever it was.  I think…they shot my arm first, from behind.  I was sitting out on that big old rock out by the shore, and I tried to turn around, get my gun, but…nah, it all goes black after that.  I saw somebody standing by a horse, but it could’ve been anybody.  He was dressed like a ranch hand, hat pulled down low – I don’t think I saw his face.”

Sheriff Coffee frowned.  “That’s too bad.  If we can’t get something more, I may have to let Donovan go – but I’ll do my best to keep him while we look for evidence,” he concluded over the immediate objections that arose.

“I know he’s involved, Roy,” Adam said, face dark.  “He has to be.”

“Likely so, but we’ve got to have evidence.  And he was in jail during both shootings.”

They might have gone around these circles more times, but were interrupted instead by a new knocking at the door downstairs.  The sheriff put his hand on his gun and the Cartwrights all looked tense, which did not reassure Liza at all.

The sheriff began, “Maybe I ought to—”

But before anyone actually moved to do anything, the knocking was followed by the sound of the door opening and Hop Sing’s voice mingled with another that Liza couldn’t recognize – but at least it sounded friendly.

It was more familiar to the rest of the room, who visibly relaxed.  “That’ll be Doc Martin,” Hoss said, and moved towards the bedroom door.  “I’ll bring him up.”

“He’s going to tell you I’m fine and can get up,” Joe predicted.

“You go on hoping,” Adam said dryly.

“I’d better make way for the doctor, then,” the sheriff said, moving to the door, and Liza thought maybe she’d better do the same.  Maybe see if Hop Sing needed help with any coffee – or, if he didn’t need help, would permit it.

She followed the sheriff out to the stairs, and they met Dr. Martin coming up.

“Hello, Roy,” Dr. Martin said, pausing on the landing. “I see the Cartwrights need your services today too.”

“I expect we’re both all too familiar with the trail out to the Ponderosa,” the sheriff said with a chuckle, “the way the Cartwright boys get into trouble.”

“And I see our nurse is still here,” Dr. Martin continued, addressing Liza.  “How’s the patient looking today?”

“Much better,” Liza was very glad to be able to say.  “Maybe not as well as he thinks.  And I’m not really a nurse.”

“But the Cartwrights can certainly use whatever nursing skills are available.”  And with that somewhat troubling compliment, Dr. Martin continued up the stairs, and Liza continued down the stairs to put her efforts towards coffee instead.

 

14.

To Joe’s great exasperation, Doc Martin did not clear him to get out of bed immediately, despite his obvious recovery.  The doctor even complimented him on his remarkable improvement, which seemed like enough of a reason to get up to Joe – but not to anyone else.

However, Joe was an expert at finding loopholes in doctor’s orders (and sometimes family members’ orders).  He stayed in bed for the rest of the day because the doctor had ordered it directly, and both his older brothers had backed it up.  Even though he wanted to go downstairs and find Liza and have a private word and – well, anything after that would depend on how the private word went.  It shouldn’t be impossible to have a private word in his bedroom either, but somehow between Hoss, Adam and Hop Sing coming in and out, and Liza disappearing off to other parts to do something or other, it didn’t happen all day.

But the next day – well, the doctor hadn’t directly said anything about the next day.  Sure, he’d probably thought it was implied, and Joe was reasonably certain Hoss and Adam thought it was, but he hadn’t said it.  Joe bided his time through the morning, until finally in the early afternoon everyone was off and busy doing something else.  Hoss and Adam were out dealing with ranch business, even though both had been quick to make clear they wouldn’t be going anywhere very far.  Joe got up and got dressed and from the top of the stairs he could hear Hop Sing banging pots around in the kitchen, so that was another person accounted for.

It wasn’t so easy to account for Liza.  He’d hoped to find her downstairs, but there was no sign of her immediately visible.  After some thought, he had to conclude with regret that it wouldn’t be smart to go searching all around for her.  He was too likely to get caught at it or – and this was the more difficult one – it really would prove too much after two bullet wounds.

But at least he had other business he wanted to do nearly as much.  So he went out to the barn.  Nobody saw him go, so nobody could object.  It wasn’t like it was that far away, and he needed to see Cochise.

The black and white paint snorted and tossed his head as Joe approached, thrusting his head out over the rail.  “Hey, boy,” Joe said, reaching out to rub the horse’s soft nose, and offer the apple he’d brought from the house.  “You all right?  Feeling better now that you’re home?”

He had wanted to come the moment Hoss and Adam had confessed that the shooter stole Cochise, that Dave Donovan of all people had been riding him.  Hoss had threatened to sit on him if he didn’t stay in bed, and followed up with extensive reassurances that he and Adam had both thoroughly checked Cochise over, that everything was fine, that Hoss had spent a long time brushing and combing and clearing away the mud from the horse’s legs.  And it wasn’t like Joe didn’t believe that his brothers could either assess or take care of a horse.  But Cochise was his horse. So he still checked him over himself, then picked up a brush to run over the horse’s already-groomed side while he talked.

“I feel better that you’re back home.  I would’ve gone out looking for you, you know, if you weren’t.  Hoss and Adam wouldn’t have liked it, but I’d have done it somehow.  But I guess we’re both all right.  It could’ve been pretty bad for a while there, but you’re back home and the doc says I’ll be fine.  And you know who else is here?  Did Hoss tell you that Liza came back?”

The horse nickered, tossing his head, and Joe smiled.  “Yeah, surprised me too,” he said, even though he didn’t really believe the horse was saying anything of the sort, or that Cochise even understood him.  It didn’t matter.  He liked talking, and the horse was a good listener, so he went on, talking out the last few days.

He fell silent eventually and was just watching Cochise eat, maybe leaning harder on the railing than usual, when he heard the barn door creak open.

A moment later, probably about the amount of time it took to peer through the relative dim of the barn, Hoss’ voice filled the space.  “Little Joe, did Doc Martin say you could get up this quick?”

Joe turned his head, gave Hoss his most winning smile.  “You know, my memory’s kinda blurry of the last few days—he could’ve.”

Hoss glowered at him, but it was his concerned glower, not his actually angry glower, and stomped closer.  “I ought to throw you over my shoulder and haul you back to the house.”

“I’m fine.  And I promise I won’t go any further than this, all right?  I just needed to check on my horse.”

“You and that dad-blamed horse,” Hoss grumbled, but he leaned on the stall railing too, so that was all right.

The exchange had reminded Joe of something else.  Gaze fixed on Cochise, he said, “Liza mentioned you carried me back to the house.”

Hoss shrugged.  “Faster’n getting a wagon.”

“Long walk, though.”

Hoss turned then to grin at him.  “You ain’t that heavy, shortshanks.”

“I think I remember.  Kind of.”  He did have a vague impression – probably couldn’t have put it together, if Liza hadn’t given him the story too, but he did sort of remember—just Hoss being there.  That everything had been horrible and terrifying and then Hoss was there and that meant it was going to be all right.

“Yeah?  You seemed pretty far unconscious to remember anything.”

“Just kind of.”  But something in the vague half-memory, and maybe also in the way they were talking now, made him think about—how it had been, these past few months.  Things had been strange with Hoss, and right now they weren’t, not that he could even explain the difference – except he was pretty sure Hoss hadn’t called him ‘shortshanks’ in a while – so maybe he ought to leave it alone.  Except that getting shot didn’t really seem like the right way to resolve whatever’d been going on.  And he still didn’t understand.

Joe turned, to lean with his back against the railing, elbows resting on it, and said, “Adam was right, wasn’t he?  What he said when we were riding home.”

There was a pause, then Hoss’ voice sounded careful as he said, “Oldest brother thinks he’s right about a lot of things.  Which one do you mean?”

“You know,” Joe said, because he was pretty sure Hoss did.  Apparently big brother was going to make him say it, though.  “About something strange with you and me.  Because it has been strange, hasn’t it?  For a couple months or three.”

“Didn’t think you noticed.”

Joe squinted at him.  “Of course I noticed.  I didn’t understand, but I noticed.  What happened?  Were you mad at me or something?”

“Not mad exactly, no,” Hoss said slowly, which didn’t actually sound like a denial.  “And I was just being sort of petty, getting bothered anyway.”

“Yeah, but what’d I do?” Joe demanded.

Hoss sighed, and sat down on one of the hay bales alongside the stalls.  And that was a relief, because it meant Joe could sit down on another one.  He was feeling tired, though he would’ve walked to Virginia City and back before he’d admit it.

“It started when Clay was here,” Hoss said, voice reluctant.

Joe stiffened, because he didn’t like talking about Clay.  He drew in a careful breath.  “Why?  What happened then?”

Hoss’ face twisted up.  “It’s sort of easier to explain with a—a metaphor.”

Joe’s eyebrows shot up, because that was not a word he expected out of middle brother.  “A metaphor.”

Hoss frowned at him.  “Hey, I can use fancy words too!”

“Sure, sure…”

“And—Adam may’ve sort of come up with the thought…”

“Uh-huh,” Joe said, carefully keeping his face blank.

Hoss studied him for a moment, then sighed again and said, “So, imagine Pa gave you a new horse.”

“All right,” Joe said, though he didn’t see what this had to do with anything.  “Why’s Pa giving me a new horse?”

“I dunno.  Maybe it’s your birthday.  And it’s a good horse, you know.”

“Well, I should hope so.  Pa wouldn’t give me a bad horse.”

“Yeah, but it’s, you know, really good.  You’d get pretty excited and start riding it a lot, right?”

“Sure, you have to work with a new horse.  Get to know it and everything.”

“But it would be more’n that—if you had a fancy new horse, you’d probably want to sleep in the barn with it the first couple nights or something—”

“So it’s that good of a horse?  Hey, do you think Pa would actually get me a horse that good?  I mean, he might, but—wait.”  Joe frowned at Hoss, because for a minute there he’d gotten sidetracked trying to picture a horse that fine and whether or not he might actually get one someday, but what was the point of all this?  “Why’re we talking about horses?”

Hoss pointed a finger at him.  “When you were getting excited about the idea of a new horse…”  He shifted aim to the stall behind Joe.  “…how much were you thinking about Cochise?”

Not even a little bit.  “Well—you had me talking about a new horse, and Cochise hasn’t got anything to do with—I mean, if it was real, sure, I’d be a little distracted, but I wouldn’t—I’d eventually…”  And then suddenly he got it.  He stared at Hoss, thunderstruck.  “It wasn’t like that when Clay showed up.  I didn’t forget about you!”

Hoss rubbed the back of his neck, looking uncomfortable.  “It’s dumb, I know that.  Only, lotta times, it’s you and me, ain’t it?  Riding together, or getting into trouble, or agreeing with each other when Adam’s got some different notion stuck in his head.”

“Sure,” Joe said, because he knew what Hoss meant.  Sometimes it was all three of them, sometimes it was Hoss and Adam, sometimes it was him and Adam.  But a lot of times, it was him and Hoss.

“Then along comes Clay and suddenly you’ve got this—brand new brother who’s all charming and polished and exciting and—guess it made sense, you spending more time with him.  And that was all right, really.”

Maybe Joe would’ve believed it was all right, if Hoss hadn’t tried to say it was.  But Hoss had never been a good liar and everything in the way the big man was sitting, in the hunch of his shoulders, said it hadn’t been.  And he, Joe, hadn’t even noticed.

Hoss shrugged and said, “And then you started pushin’ everybody away, after Clay left.”

“Yeah,” Joe said, and that was when he had started to realize something was wrong between him and Hoss in a way it wasn’t with the rest of the family.  “I was running off to town and getting into fights and everything.  That was my fault.”  He kicked one heel against the bale of hay he was sitting on.  “But I guess I sort of—thought you would’ve come after me.”  He hadn’t seen it any too clearly at the time, but with the vantage point of looking back, he thought it had made things worse when his big brother didn’t stop him.  Maybe that was when the problem had started on his side.

Hoss shot him a look that was hard to read.  “I did go after you.  Me and Adam pulled you outta that saloon fight with Dave Donovan, and you were ready to pound us for interferin’—”

“Nah, I didn’t mean like that, coming in with Adam.”  He didn’t know just exactly what he did mean.  But Hoss treating him like a troublesome kid wasn’t it.  “I just—I know I was pushing everyone away, but I wouldn’t’ve thought you’d let me push you.”

“Seemed to be what you wanted,” Hoss said gruffly.

Joe ran his hand through his hair.  “Guess it wasn’t.”

There was silence for a long moment, broken only by the horses continuing to chew on their hay.

“The part I didn’t understand,” Hoss said at length, “the part I still don’t understand, is how you could try to leave with Clay.  Just—off in the night without even saying good-bye.  Why was he more important than Pa, or Adam—or me?”

“He’s not,” Joe protested, jolted.  Had Hoss really been thinking about it that way, all this time?  “That wasn’t—I knew you’d all be here, on the Ponderosa.  And I knew if Clay rode away—I’m probably never going to see him again.  If I had gone with him—it wasn’t about leaving all of you, I knew where you’d be.”

Hoss shrugged.  “What if I wasn’t?  What if you rode off for months, and I took a notion to go somewhere too?”

The words sent a stab of purely instinctive fear through Joe that felt all out of proportion to the probably idle words.

But suddenly he was six years old again, waking up in the dark middle of the night, afraid as only a small child can be that everyone might be gone.  His mama was gone away to heaven, and his oldest brother had gone off to college in the mysterious East that felt almost as far away, and Pa was down the hall but he was so sad about Mama that it was almost like he was gone, and Little Joe was just so—afraid.  So more than one night he’d crept out of his room and gone next door and crawled into Hoss’ big bed.

And Hoss had grumbled sleepily and pulled the blanket up over him and Little Joe had whispered in the night, “Promise you’re not ever going away?”

And his big brother had whispered back, “Promise.”

“Never ever never?”

“Never ever never.”

And here, in the present, sitting in the barn, Joe found the idea of Hoss leaving just as awful as it had always been.

“You went out to the barn, that night Clay left,” Joe said in a low voice, looking at his boots.  “And Pa went out after you.”

“Yeah.  What about it?”

“I stayed awake.  Until you both came back in.”  The memory was flooding over him again – he’d pushed it away along with all the other horrible parts of that really horrible night.  But there’d been that moment in there, when Hoss had seemed mysteriously angry, possibly with him, and had gone stomping off towards the front door and he had really thought—that here was another brother, about to leave.  That Clay didn’t want to be around him anymore, and now Hoss was storming off somewhere too.

But Hoss had come back.  Because Hoss was—he was Hoss, he was the one who stayed.  “You’re not going anywhere, are you?  Adam talks about the East sometimes, but you’re not going anywhere, right?”

Hoss looked at him, sighed, and then reached out to tousle his curls – carefully, considering the bandage.  “No, I reckon not, little brother.  Doesn’t mean I like the idea o’ being left.  Or o’ being replaced.”

Joe ducked his head down, hunching his shoulders.  It was easy to look at big, tough Hoss and think he must be just as tough on the inside.  But Joe knew better.  He knew how big his brother’s heart was, knew how bad he could feel, and he’d been too wrapped up in his own feelings to even notice.  “I’m sorry, Hoss,” he said, and swiped one hand across his suddenly burning eyes.  He always did cry easy – when he was happy, when he was sad, when he felt guilty.  He cleared his throat.  “And nobody’s ever going to replace you, big brother.  I’m sorry—that I ever—”

“Nah, it’s alright,” Hoss said, and this time he sounded like he meant it.  He gave Joe’s good shoulder a shove, so much lighter than the force he could have put behind it.  “It’s a little brother’s right to take advantage sometimes, ain’t it?”

Joe threw a punch back at Hoss’ arm.  “Yeah, but you’re supposed to shake some sense into me when I’m doing it!”

“Alright, next time you’re bein’ an idiot, I’ll tell ya.”

 

15.

Doggone if Adam hadn’t been right.  Hoss could see now that he should’ve talked to Little Joe weeks ago, but—well, at least they’d finally done it, even though it shouldn’t’ve taken Joe getting shot to make it happen.

“Hey, I got an idea,” Hoss said, rubbing his hands together.  “Hop Sing made donuts earlier, and they’re just sitting there in the kitchen now.  Let’s go sneak ourselves a couple.”

Joe looked doubtful.  “I don’t know, big brother.  Hop Sing’s cooking fried chicken tonight, and he might change his mind if we mess around in his kitchen and get him upset.”

“Yeah, but just think how upset he’d be if nobody even bothered to steal one of his donuts.  It’d be plumb insulting!”

Adam might’ve told him that was a ridiculous argument – and he would’ve been right about that – but Little Joe chuckled and said, “All right, all right.  But if we get caught, it was your idea.”

Hoss slung an arm around his little brother’s shoulders as they headed back to the house, both because it felt good and because it meant he was in the right position to catch Joe if all this exertion turned out to be too much.  But Joe was still on his feet when they stepped in the door of the empty kitchen – empty except for a big plate of golden donuts on the counter.

“Aw, dadburnit,” Hoss said, screwing his face up.  “Hop Sing didn’t put any powdered sugar on ‘em.”

“Yeah, ‘cause he probably got tired of washing it out of your shirts.  You know how that stuff sticks.”

Hoss sighed.  “They just ain’t the same plain, but I guess I’ll have to make do.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Little Joe said in a different tone, “I bet we could put sugar on ‘em ourselves.  It can’t be that hard, right?”

“Hop Sing won’t want us messing with his baking—”

“He won’t know if we eat the evidence.”  Joe was scanning the shelves, pointed towards a canister on an upper level.  “That’s the powdered sugar, isn’t it?  Let me get it down.”

“Hold on, you got a bullet through your arm—”

“I can grab it with the other one,” Joe said, rolling his eyes.

Hop Sing must’ve used a chair or something to get to that shelf, the way Joe had to stretch up for it.

“Let me, little brother,” Hoss said, stepping in and reaching up.

“I’ve got it, Hoss,” Joe protested.

“No, no, I can do it easier—”

They both grabbed at it at once, and the canister shifted and tipped on the shelf.  Joe danced backwards and Hoss tried to save it and it all might still have been fine if the lid had been on tighter—but as it was, the canister came crashing down and powdered sugar came bursting out in great white clouds.

“Dadburnit,” Hoss muttered, trying to wipe the fine powder off of his face.

Then he realized Little Joe was staring at him, mouth twitching.  Somehow he’d avoided the worst of it, which wasn’t fair at all.

“Now don’t you laugh at me, Little Joe,” Hoss warned, pointing a finger at him.

“It’s just—your face—”  Joe erupted into chuckles that grew into chortles and swiftly escalated into a full-blown cackle – what Hoss and Adam called Joe’s hyena laugh, usually with irritation, especially when they were the cause of it.

Little Joe’s high-pitched laugh rang through the kitchen, fairly bouncing off the walls – and Hoss realized he hadn’t heard that particular laugh in a long time.  Definitely not since before Clay had left.  Maybe not even since before Liza had left.

That meant he wasn’t really angry about it – but there was a matter of honor at stake.  “I warned ya, Little Joe,” he said, and scooped up a fistful of sugar from one of the drifts.

“Hey—you wouldn’t,” Joe gasped between laughs, “I’m wounded—”

He was fine when he wanted to go out to the barn, but now he was suddenly needing special treatment?  Nope, Hoss’d been an older brother too long to go for that one.  He flung the handful of powdered sugar at Joe, liberally dusting his hair and face despite his efforts to get his arms up in a block.

“Oh, now you’ve done it – I’ll get you for that—”

Joe made a lunge for Hoss, who stepped back out of the way, without looking to see where he was going – and he smacked right into a barrel of dried beans, knocking it over and scattering its contents across the floor, into the swirls of sugar.  Suddenly they were both scrambling to keep their footing on the rolling beans – Hoss flailed, tried to grab at something for balance, and only succeeded in knocking down a row of hanging frying pans in an ungodly crash and clatter as his feet slipped out from under him and he went down onto his backside.

Joe kept up only about two seconds longer before thumping down onto his back among the mess.

That did worry Hoss a little – if Joe came down on his bad arm, or bumped his head – “Hey, you all right?”

Joe snickered, sprawled on his back, and busted up into laughter again.  Hoss gave up and gave in to a gale of his own laughter – because it was pretty dang ridiculous.

Liza appeared in the passage out to the dining room, a worried frown on her face that dissolved into confusion as she looked around.  “What…happened…?”

Adam was only a few steps behind her.  “I heard a big crash, what…”  He also trailed off, looking around the kitchen.  Then he leaned against the wall, a satisfied smile on his face.  “So I see you two are finally back to normal.”

“Hoss—wanted—donuts,” Joe managed between chortles, sitting up unsteadily.

“You—thought of—the sugar,” Hoss countered, trying to swallow his guffaws.

But then a much more alarming prospect appeared behind Adam – Hop Sing, carrying two chickens, eyes going wide.  He pushed past Adam, looked wildly around the kitchen.  “What happen?  What you do to Hop Sing’s kitchen?”

That sombered Hoss up pretty quick.  “We’re sorry, Hop Sing – we didn’t mean to—”

The cook waved his arms, a few feathers flying from the birds.  “Hop Sing out getting chickens – but Hop Sing not cook when kitchen big disaster!”

“Aw, no,” Joe protested, real alarm on his face, “Hop Sing, you promised!  I’ve just been dreaming of your fried chicken—”

“You no use flattery,” Hop Sing said, shaking a finger at Little Joe.  “It not work!”

“No, it ain’t flattery, I mean it!  And we’re real sorry about the kitchen, really—”

“It’s just because your donuts are so good,” Hoss tried, “we just had to come in—”

“Hop Sing not make donuts anymore either, just cause trouble!”

The general shouting was broken by a sound not heard all that often in the Ponderosa ranch house – a distinctly feminine giggle.  Liza had one hand over her mouth as though she was trying to keep it in – but after a moment she gave up, dissolving into laughter.

That set Little Joe off again, which made it real hard for Hoss to keep a straight face too.  “Hop Sing, we—”  He coughed.  “We really didn’t…”  It was no good, he was losing the fight against the laughter trying to crawl up his throat.

Liza was laughing so hard by now that she slid down to sit with her back against the wall.  Joe, clutching his side with his good arm, wheezed, “Stop, I can’t…”  Lucky he hadn’t hurt his ribs – this time – or he might have been doing some new damage.

Hop Sing flung his arms wide.  “Cartwrights crazy!  Cartwrights all crazy, and Hop Sing crazy to cook for crazy Cartwrights!  Should have stayed in San Francisco!”

And in the middle of this scene, Ben Cartwright’s deep baritone voice sounded, demanding, “What in the sam hill is going on in here?”

 

Ben had traveled back to Virginia City unaware of any news from home on the way.  It was only when he arrived in town that he was met by the sheriff, who informed him that Little Joe had been shot.  Roy had also assured him that Dr. Martin had been out, that Joe was recovering nicely, and that everything would be fine.

This had not greatly calmed his alarm, or his guilt that his son had been gravely injured and he hadn’t been there.  And after all, Roy’s information was a day out of date.  Anything could have happened by now.

He’d ridden back to the Ponderosa as fast as his horse could carry him, accompanied all the way by fearful imaginings about what he would find when he arrived.  He pictured a house wrapped in silent, sickbed vigil.  Or worse, one echoing with the delirious shouting of his youngest son, probably calling for his absent father.

The worst possibility, the image of only two sons to greet him, bereft at the loss of the third, was unbearable.

All in all, none of that prepared him for the scene of laughter and shouting and general chaos going on in the kitchen.  And once he had a moment to think, he was going to be overwhelmed with relief and gratitude that the situation was so vastly better than he had dreamed it could be.  But for this first moment, he was baffled and thrown off course and felt slightly ridiculous for his own fears.

“Hey—hey, Pa,” Little Joe greeted him between chortles, lifting one hand in greeting from where he sat on the floor of the kitchen.  A bandage cut across his strangely white-stained curls, and why was he even out of bed?

“Roy told me you’d been shot,” Ben said, the words almost accusing, as he stared at his youngest son.

“Well—only a little bit,” Joe allowed.

“How can you be a little bit shot?” Ben roared.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Joe said.  “Doc Martin said so, and Hoss and Adam and Liza pulled me through all right.”

That last name made Ben blink and wonder if Joe’s head injury was serious after all.  But then he looked around a little more and—Hoss was sitting on the ground next to Joe, covered in white powder, and Hop Sing was standing by the counter, glowering at the room at large, and Adam was standing by the passage to the dining room, and sitting against the wall – what was everyone doing on the floor anyway? – was, inexplicably, Liza Montgomery.  Roy hadn’t mentioned her.

She lifted a hand in a small wave when his gaze stopped on her.  “Hello, Mr. Cartwright.”

Before he could try to make sense of that development, Hop Sing spoke up.  “Mr. Cartwright, you see what boys do in Hop Sing kitchen! Very bad, big mess!”

“I’ll clean it up, Hop Sing,” Hoss said.  “But you know Little Joe’s got his heart set on that fried chicken, and it was really all my fault anyway—”

“No, no, Cartwright brothers stand together,” Joe said, waving one hand.  “It was my fault too.”

“Bad boys, both of you!” the irate cook snapped.  “Hop Sing not fry chicken for big clumsy galoots!”

Ben suddenly found himself struggling very hard not to break into laughter himself.  He always tried to avoid laughing at Hop Sing, as it generally only made matters worse.  Hop Sing and Adam had that in common; Hoss could usually see the joke, and Joe could too, if he wasn’t too caught up in his own head.  Right now, though, laughing wasn’t going to help – but it was hard to resist, and it wasn’t really about Hop Sing anyway.  It was because the relief was catching up to him – Little Joe was so much better off than he’d dared to hope, his other boys were smiling, and nothing was more important than that.

Though he also rated Hop Sing’s fried chicken pretty highly.  “How about frying chicken for a tired man who traveled a lot of miles to get here and is very glad to see everyone still alive and well?”

Hop Sing frowned, but did seem to take the words on board.  He glanced at Little Joe, or maybe the bandage on his head, and said, “Very well.  For Mr. Cartwright, Hop Sing will cook.  But only if Little Joe go rest until supper, Mr. Hoss clean up kitchen, and everyone else go away and let Hop Sing work!”

Little Joe’s face screwed up in an expression he’d been using in just this situation since childhood.  “Aw, I don’t need to rest—”

“Just take it, little brother,” Hoss interrupted, heaving up to his feet.  “You ain’t going to get a better offer.”

Hoss extended a hand to his younger brother, who took it without hesitation, and something in the gesture or the way they exchanged a glance, warmed Ben’s heart too.  His boys liked to think they could hide things from him by not talking about them, but he knew full well something had been wrong between his two youngest for some time now.  From the way they looked now – and from the trouble they’d very evidently got each other into – something had finally shifted.

And then he was caught up in the general tide as Hop Sing shooed everyone but Hoss out of the room, and Ben caught Adam’s eye with a meaningful glance.  Because as good as things seemed to be, he wanted to know just exactly what had been happening while he was away.

 

16.

Whatever Hop Sing’s feelings might have been in the afternoon, he didn’t let them interfere with his cooking.  The fried chicken was excellent, as delicious as Liza remembered, every accompanying side perfect.  Ben sat at the head of the table, Adam and Hoss on one side, and Liza sat next to Joe on the other.  The conversation was lively, the lantern light cast a warm glow over everyone, and it was all as idyllic as Joe had described such a scene, all those months ago, or as she had pictured just a few days past.

And—they had both mentioned fried chicken specifically, hadn’t they?  It suddenly struck her partway into the meal that this was exactly why Joe had been so set on fried chicken tonight.  He had wanted exactly this scene.

Which brought up the question of whether he actually remembered her saying anything about it.  Or her saying she would marry him, if he still wanted her to.  Comments made while still in drugged delirium couldn’t really prove anything.

When she glanced his way she found he was looking at her—and when their gazes met, he just smiled, unself-consciously and unconcerned.  She blushed and looked away.

He had been warm and friendly and charming and they hadn’t actually talked about…the future, or what they were doing, or why she had come back and why she was still here.  Which, well—she was the one who hadn’t wanted to move too fast before.  But it did make things precarious.

So after supper, when Ben and Adam were still at the table discussing the finer points of Matthew Raines’ paintings, and Hoss was sitting in one of the big armchairs by the fire apparently dozing, and Liza was trying to decide if and where she ought to sit down – the couch?  The other armchair? – it felt somewhat momentous when Joe beckoned her towards the side door off of his father’s office.

“Let’s take a walk,” he said in a low voice, glancing back towards his father.  And then, when he looked at her and apparently read the hesitation on her face, quickly added, “Just a short one.”

He probably should be resting, but she wanted to go take that walk.  She wasn’t certain this was wise, but she could square a short walk with her conscience.  “All right.”

As she passed Hoss, he murmured, “Holler if you need me to carry ‘im back in,” and winked.

It made her smile even as Joe shot Hoss an exasperated look, then took her arm and they slipped out the side door into the moonlight.

 

Maybe he shouldn’t have said that, about carrying Little Joe, but Hoss couldn’t really regret it.  Liza had smiled and Joe’s exasperated look had been—well, the right kind of exasperated.  The kind he’d been giving Hoss since he was a kid, and desperately plagued by the terrible fate of having two older brothers.  It was the comfortable kind of exasperated.

Couple minutes more went by before Pa looked up from talking to Adam and realized Joe had made his escape.  “Little Joe go upstairs?”

Hoss hesitated.  There was covering for a brother, and then there was lying to Pa…  “Nah, he went outside with Liza.”

And that brought on Pa’s worried frown.  “Should he be outside on his own?  I know he seems well, but that brother of yours never admits when he isn’t well.  Maybe one of you ought to go out too, just in case.”

Pa was just about the wisest man Hoss knew, but sometimes he could get the wrong end of a thing when he was worrying about his sons – and doggone if Adam, who was generally pretty smart, was standing up as though he meant to go outside.  “Pa, he ain’t on his own,” Hoss said patiently.  “He’s outside with Liza.  And that means Joe don’t want one of us hanging around.”  That wasn’t going to get him just an exasperated look.  That’d probably start a full-on blow-up between them.

“Oh,” Pa said, the situation visibly dawning on him.  “Oh.  Of course.”

“Don’t worry, he ain’t going to walk too far,” Hoss said with a grin.  “Little Joe ain’t good at limits but he ain’t stupid either, and he won’t want to collapse in front of his girl.”

“If that’s what she is,” Adam muttered.

“Of course she is,” Hoss said, surprised.  Adam had had a bur under his saddle about Liza ever since she came back, but he couldn’t be that confused about things.

“She was,” Adam said.  “Do you know what the situation is now?  Do they?”

“Well, mebbe that’s what Little Joe’s hoping to figure out.  And he don’t need you and me around trying to help with that.”

 

Joe breathed in the cool, pine-scented air, Liza’s hand warm in his as they walked, and felt better than he had in days—weeks—months, even.  And he knew full well that had more to do with Liza’s fingers curled around his than it had to do with the night air.

It had a little to do with Hoss’ teasing too.  While on the one hand, he didn’t want Hoss pointing out that he might collapse, especially in front of Liza, on the other hand—well, it was exactly the kind of comment Hoss hadn’t been making lately.  They’d been too careful with each other, he realized now, and it had all felt wrong and strange.  So the remark tonight felt as right as it did annoying.

And the actual point Hoss was making wasn’t entirely wrong either, so he didn’t try to walk too far.  He’d like to go out to the meadow where they’d had that first picnic, where he’d proposed, where Liza’d found him just a few days ago—which made for a complicated mix of events, but somehow, still, it was the place where all the most important things had happened to them.  So it felt like the right place, but—it was two miles by the road, and he was feeling good in one way but physically he had been shot (twice) recently, so…better not push it.  Better to just aim for the bench only a little piece away from the house.

They sat down there, Joe careful not to move as though he needed to sit down.  He rested one arm along the back of the bench and she leaned into him and they sat together without speaking for a while, and he thought this could be a really nice way to spend a really long time.  But it wasn’t exactly what he was aiming at tonight, and now that Pa was back home to worry and hover over him, he might not get a good chance again for a while.  He just wasn’t perfectly sure where to begin.

While he was still thinking, Liza spoke first.  “That was a nice supper tonight.  One of the nicest I’ve ever had.”

That had been exactly the goal, when he’d talked Hop Sing into the menu this morning.  And he’d had this moment in mind at the time.  “Definitely one of the best we’ve had in a long time too.”

He could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “The fried chicken lived up to its reputation.”

And when he shifted just enough to be able to look into her face, he knew he didn’t need to remind her about why it had been that menu, or about that night they’d sat talking on the settee, and she’d fallen asleep with her head on his chest…

He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, and wished he could be sure about that other memory, the one that had maybe just been part of the fever.  “It wasn’t—really about the fried chicken, you know,” he said, voice low, and when she tilted her head and kept looking into his eyes like she was really listening, it was easier to say the next thing.  “It was always about the people at the table.  That was always what really mattered, whenever I got into a dark place and tried to picture how life ought to be – how it would be, when it all got better again.”

The last few months had been full of dark places – less dramatic ones than being held hostage, mostly, but still a lot of hard ones.  “The thing of it is, I’ve been trying for months to get that picture right, and—I couldn’t do it.  It never felt right, because you weren’t in it.  And I wanted you there.”

Probably he was moving too quickly again.  But hang it all, he didn’t know what timeline they were on now.  Where was he supposed to count from?  From when Liza came back?  From when he woke up and knew she was back?  Or—and this was the math he liked better—from when they had met the first time?  That one felt the most real somehow, the most true.

If Hoss or Adam rode off down the road tomorrow and stayed away for months, they’d still be his brothers.

Clay did ride away – but he was still his brother too.

And this thing between him and Liza, it felt that way too.  Different, obviously, but somehow like the distance hadn’t changed things.  Like they’d always belonged to each other, somehow, all along.  At least—he hoped she saw it that way too.

Her gaze had dropped, but she didn’t move away, and he knew he had to ask—  “Why did you come back, Liza?”  He thought he remembered an answer from a dream, there was an answer implied just in her being out here with him, but he needed to hear it, to make sure.  Because he didn’t really fancy the idea of proposing and getting turned down twice.

She sighed, studying her hands in her lap, fiddling with the folds of her skirts.  “I’ve been expecting that question – I expected we’d have this conversation much sooner, but, well…”  But things had happened.  “So.  When I went back to San Francisco, before.  I thought I would…be sad for a while, and then sort of slip back into my old life.  But I couldn’t do it.  It was like my picture was wrong too, but not just one part of it.  The whole thing.  And I began to think I’d made a very, very big mistake, but—by then I was sure it was too late.”

She gave a small laugh, a not very funny one.  “Or maybe that was my excuse to myself, because I was still scared.  I was scared, you know, before.”

“I’m sorry, if I—”

“No, no, I didn’t mean—it wasn’t something you did, it was—well, I suppose it was, but it wasn’t something you should apologize…”  She closed her eyes briefly, drew in a breath, hands knotted together.  “I am saying this so badly.”

“It’s not that bad,” he said softly, though to tell the truth, he wasn’t positive he was following wherever she was going.  He’d got that part back where she thought she’d made a mistake though.

“Nothing important has ever been given to me easily.  I tend to be suspicious of anything that’s offered, especially if it’s too good and too easy.  And you were offering me the best thing anyone ever has, so—of course that scared me, but it’s still not exactly something to apologize for.  But because I couldn’t trust the offer, all those other girls made a very convenient reason to not trust it.”

“It wasn’t that many girls,” Joe felt compelled to protest.  She finally looked up at him, but her expression was incredulous, and he had to amend, “Well, maybe it was.  But that doesn’t mean anything about us.”

“I know.  I know that, now.  Anyway, I thought it was too late, because I did still think you’d probably moved on long since, and I was going to try to just live with that, somehow.  But then…”  She hesitated, and he thought she was weighing some words, although when she finally spoke it wasn’t a remarkable phrase.  “Then a friend convinced me that maybe it wasn’t too late after all.  That if I could fall in love in a couple of weeks, then maybe you had too.”

God bless her friend, whoever they were.  Later, maybe, he’d ask, but that wasn’t the important part of the story right now.

“So I came back,” she concluded.  She was looking up at him again, and now her eyes glimmering in the moonlight.  “I came back here.  I came back—home.  Just to find out.  And if you want me to go, I will.  But—if—”

He leaned that last bit closer, pressed his forehead against hers.  “Don’t go,” he whispered.  “Stay here with me.  Stay here and marry me.”

“Yes,” she breathed.  “Yes, yes—”

And anything beyond that was lost as he kissed her.

 

This was Liza’s picture.  Joe’s was sitting around the table at supper, and that was lovely too, but this—kissing Joe Cartwright on a moonlit, pine-scented evening—this was her picture.

Hoss and Clay had been right after all, more right than she’d dared to hope.  She hadn’t expected shootings and illness and all the rest to interfere before they could settle the important questions, but now, finally, everything was at last how she had wanted it to be.  How it should be.

And for a little while, that was all, and more than enough, to just sit in the moonlight together, reacquainting themselves in this particular way after months apart.

But it wasn’t very long before the rest of the world intervened again, if far more harmlessly than a gunman at a window.  It was only Joe leaning back a bit, and saying, “Hey, we have to go in—tell everyone the news.” His eyes were alight as though this was nothing but the next exciting stage of the evening.

The soaring thrills of the past few minutes faded and Liza thumped back down into the world again.  “Oh.  I guess we do,” she said unenthusiastically, heard how bad that sounded, and tried to soften it too late with a smile.  It wasn’t that she didn’t like Joe’s family.  She adored Joe’s family.  She just wasn’t sure anymore how mutual that was.  Hoss liked her, yes, and they’d all been lovely at supper, yes, but welcoming her to supper was a very different proposition from inviting her into the family.

“What’s wrong?” Joe asked, then proved he could guess by immediately following it with, “They’ll be thrilled.”

“Maybe they would have been before,” Liza said.  “But it’s more complicated now.”  If she hadn’t been able to guess that for herself, Adam had certainly made it abundantly clear.  “I mean, I turned you down once.  That complicates things.”

“Not to me, and if it doesn’t to me, why should it matter to them?”

“Because they care about you.”  And while Joe might forgive her for hurting him, she wasn’t so sure his family would.

“And they like you,” Joe continued.

“Hoss likes me,” Liza corrected, and tried to laugh.  “But I suppose Adam never liked me to begin with, so maybe that doesn’t change anything.”

She had said it casually, or tried to, but it was apparent on Joe’s face that he hadn’t taken it that way.  “No, that’s not true.  Adam doesn’t dislike you.”  A pause, then a more wary, “I mean, he didn’t say anything, right?”

And that just seemed like proof, because he never would have imagined that Hoss might have said something disapproving he was unaware of.  Only she couldn’t exactly say that Adam had either.  It seemed perfectly clear, but there weren’t words exactly that she could point to.  She wasn’t sure she’d want to if she could, either, if it was only going to make trouble between Joe and his brother.  “It’s just sort of a feeling,” she said finally, and watched Joe relax.

“Oh, that’s just Adam being Adam,” Joe said earnestly.  “He’s sort of stiff-necked and unemotional sometimes.  It’s how he is.  It doesn’t mean anything.  I mean, sometimes people think he doesn’t like me, and that’s not true.”

She smiled, and half-meant it.  “I suppose you’d know.”  She hoped so, anyway.

“You’ll see, Adam’ll be fine.  And Pa’ll be happy as long as I am.”

Her next smile was far more real as she asked, “And are you happy?”

“I’m very happy,” he said in a low voice, leaning in to kiss her again.

It was a few minutes more before they actually went back inside, but it had to be done.  And it played out much as Liza might have guessed.  Joe announced their news with great excitement, to be met with immediate, equal and apparently unfeigned excitement from Hoss.  Liza thought she saw just a second’s uncertainty on Ben’s face, perhaps a second more of a searching look directed at his son, and then he was everything a gracious and happy host and patriarch could be.  Adam’s face gave nothing at all away, but he was entirely pleasant and polite.  Liza found herself hugged by Hoss, hugged by Ben, and before she’d even begun to catch her breath, Hop Sing entered the room carrying a cake.

“Big news needs big celebration,” the cook announced, beaming as he set the frosted cake on the table.

“Hop Sing, how’d you manage to have a cake already ready?” Joe asked.  “I only just proposed!”

Hop Sing only shrugged.  “Cake baked hours ago.  Hop Sing knew would need it.”

“But you couldn’t know,” Joe protested, “I didn’t know—”

“Yeah, little brother,” Hoss rumbled, clapping him on the back, “but everybody else knew!”

 

17.

Ben stopped in the open doorway of his youngest son’s room, hand raised to knock on the doorframe, and paused to look at Little Joe instead.  He was stretched out on the bed, hands tucked behind his head, still except for his feet twitching in black socks.  Ben had seen his son in that position many times over the years, brooding over things.  He’d seen it too often in the past few months.

And now here he was, in that same position, only there was a difference.  Tonight, Joe was smiling.  Not the devil-may-care grin that gave Ben white hairs, but just a soft, happy smile.  He still had a bandage wrapped around his head, a reminder of how close he’d come to not being here at all – but he was here, smiling.

It made Ben want to walk away without saying anything, to leave Joe be.  But wasn’t it a father’s job to say the hard things sometimes?

He let his fist fall against the doorframe, rapped lightly.  “Mind if I come in, son?”

It took a few seconds for Joe’s gaze to focus on him, to come back from whatever visions he was seeing.  “Yeah, sure, Pa,” he said cheerfully, shifting as though he meant to get up.

“No, that’s all right,” Ben said, coming in and sitting on the side of the bed, patting Joe’s leg.  “You looked like you had a lot you were thinking about.”

Joe leaned back again, smiling up towards the ceiling.  “Yeah, Pa.  Ain’t it amazing the difference a day can make?  Turn everything upside-down on a person.”

“Yes…”  Ben had had days like that himself, that started in one world and ended in another.  Some had been good changes.  Some hadn’t.  He knew what Little Joe thought this was, but…  “Does it seem a little—too much, for one day?”

Nothing overtly changed about Joe’s posture, but Ben could feel his leg tense beneath his hand, could see his smile start to fade.  “What do you mean?”

“Well.”  Ben rubbed the back of his neck.  There was no good way to say this, was there?  “Do you think this might be moving too fast at all?  I mean, Liza only came back a few days ago, and you spent part of that time unconscious.  I understand you feel a great deal of gratitude towards her for her recent actions – we all do – but does this seem rather quick for an engagement?”

“It’s not about gratitude.  And it’s not as though she’s a stranger,” Joe said, smile gone now and a definite edge in his voice.

“No, but she is a woman who hurt you rather badly before—”

“Oh, here it comes,” Joe said, shaking his head and shoving himself up to a sitting position.  “You know, Liza was worried about this, but I told her, no, it’ll be fine, Pa’ll be happy for us.”

“I am happy for you, son,” Ben protested.  “I just wanted to be sure you had thought this through—”

“I’ve been doing nothing but thinking for months and months!”  Joe’s face had gone tight, his eyes starting the tell-tale glimmer.  “I tried, Pa.  I kept trying to come up with reasons I shouldn’t want her anymore, and I couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t convince myself it was a bad idea.  The only reason that mattered was if she didn’t want me, and she came back, Pa.  She came back.”

Ben looked into his son’s passionate, stormy eyes, and knew no words from him were going to make any real difference.  But he worried for his sons, and this one in particular lived life with so much intensity—  “If she wasn’t sure enough before—”

“She was taking time to think!  You’re telling me to take time to think, so how can you blame her for doing that?”  Joe squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again on more tears but somehow a calmer expression.  “I know what you all think.  Little Joe, he’s so impetuous, acts without thinking, always chases the wrong women.  This is different, Pa.  This is right.”

And in the end, only Joe could decide that, and only time was going to prove it one way or the other.  “All right, son,” Ben said quietly, and patted the boy’s leg again.  “All right.  If you say there’s no problem here, there isn’t one.  And I am happy for you, as long as you’re happy.”

“I am, Pa,” Little Joe said, smile finally starting to creep back onto his face.  “I really am.”

“And that’s all I want for my sons.”  He stood up, looked down at his youngest boy – a man, even if his father’s heart hated to admit it.  “Let’s talk in the morning about plans—for you and Liza.”

Joe nodded.  “I’d like that, Pa.”

Ben moved to the door.  “Good-night, Little Joe.  Don’t stay up too late.”  That last, fatherly admonition slipped out almost unintended, and made Joe roll his eyes.

“Yes, Pa,” he said in teasing tones, and then softened on, “Good-night.”

Ben closed the door behind him as he left, descended down the stairs and out the front door to the yard, where his two older sons were standing by the corral outside the barn.

“Well, Pa?” Adam said as soon as he was within a few steps.

Ben leaned on the railing between his two older boys.  “Little Joe is very sure about what he wants and what he’s doing.  And to tell the truth, I can’t say that he’s wrong.”

“Oh, come on, Pa,” Adam protested, “you don’t really think this is a good idea!”

Ben shrugged.  “I don’t know that it’s a bad one.”

“I think it’s good,” Hoss put in, face set in his stubborn expression, “and I don’t think we ought to talk Little Joe out of something good.”

“You always liked her,” Adam snapped off, as though it was an accusation.

“Yeah, I did,” Hoss agreed, “and I do.  What’s wrong with that?”

“You saw the way she hurt him before!”

“It’s not like she wanted to.  And she saved his life, coming back when she did and finding him out there.”

“You can’t give her credit for coincidence of timing.”

“Mebbe not,” Hoss conceded, “but I can give her credit for everything she did to take care of him.  And you didn’t see her when the house got attacked, and she was crouched at the end of Joe’s bed with a pistol, ready to shoot anybody who wanted to hurt him.  Any gal who’ll do that is all right by me.”

“But she didn’t shoot anyone – Joe did,” Adam countered, and it was more than obvious that he had dug into a position and was going to hold it, no matter the consequences or the arguments.

“That ain’t the point,” Hoss began, but Ben intervened before this could go any further.

“All right, that’s enough, boys,” Ben spoke up, before one or both of them said something they’d end up regretting.  “At the end of the day, this is not up to us.  We need to respect Little Joe’s decision about this.”

And it wasn’t as though objections from him, or any of them, were going to change Joe’s mind.  If anything, it was more likely to make him more stubborn on the subject.  Ben had learned that all the way back in the troubled days of Julia Bulette, and had tried very hard not to object out loud to any of Joe’s romances since.  He’d been tested more than once.  The one who thought she was a witch – that one had been a challenge.  But he’d given his approval, and when the woman blessedly left anyway, Joe hadn’t gone chasing after her.

If this was a mistake, Joe was going to have to conclude that for himself.

“I guess that’s it then,” Adam said, sounding as though the words were ground out.

He stomped off back to the house, and Ben watched him go, wondering if he ought to go up and talk to his oldest son before he went to sleep too – or if he’d already done enough damage for one night and it was best to just leave it all alone until morning.

“It’ll be all right, Pa,” Hoss said after a moment.  “Adam just wants to protect Little Joe.  Only he’s never exactly got over thinking he knows best.”

Ben let out a breath in a long sigh.  “Yes, I suppose that’s so.”  He had likely put too much responsibility on Adam when he was too young.  Sometimes it was hard to see his youngest as a man, and sometimes he thought he had seen his oldest as a man too soon.  He turned to the son in front of him, his big middle son who somehow stood between his brothers and reached to both of them.  “You really think Liza will be good for Little Joe?”  He had thought so himself, before.  Everything had happened so fast today, he’d hardly had time to work out just what he thought about it now.

Though he had to admit, he liked the image of the woman defending his bedridden son, ready to hold off all comers with a pistol if need be.  It was the kind of thing Joe’s mother would have done.

Hoss’ face split in a wide grin.  “Pa, I think she’s goin’ to be real good for him.  For all of us.  ‘Bout time we had a woman around here, and Liza’s got good sense and a good heart.  This’ll be just fine.”

Ben felt himself beginning to smile too.  Two of his sons were happy, at least.  It was enough to be hopeful with.  “I hope you’re right, son.  I hope you’re right.”

“You’ll see, Pa,” Hoss said.  “I know.”

 

No one paid any attention when Dave Donovan strolled into the Silver Dollar and started talking to the newest saloon girl.  It was the most ordinary of circumstances, just a cowboy and a saloon girl sharing a drink.  And they didn’t discuss anything of importance until they were well settled into a back corner, with no one at the nearest table, and the noise of voices and tinny piano music covering their conversation.

“So the sheriff let you out of jail?” she observed, even though it was pretty obvious.  He wouldn’t be here if he’d escaped instead.

“Yeah, that alibi worked a real treat,” Donovan said, leaning back in his chair and looking as puffed with pride as though the whole plan had been his idea.  Which it hadn’t.  “Stevens and me kept our mouths shut about ever even meeting each other, and since I was in jail during both shootings, they couldn’t pin anything on me.  Worked real nice to confuse things and keep me out of jail.”

It would have worked even better if, as intended, Joe Cartwright had died in either shooting.  Or if Stevens had managed to avoid getting caught, leaving the sheriff with no suspects except the man who’d been sitting in his jail at the time.  That would have confused everything much better.

“And the sheriff doesn’t suspect my involvement?” she pressed further, even though surely Roy Coffee would have been in here to arrest her if he did.  Still, best to confirm that nothing had slipped out.

“Hey, no way would Stevens or me let anything slip about you when we might still be able to take Little Joe out,” Donovan said, and she wondered if he realized the implication – that if Little Joe was already dead, he wouldn’t have nearly as good a reason to protect her.

It didn’t matter.  She didn’t expect loyalty beyond the most pragmatic kind from her allies.  She also wouldn’t give it, so that made them even, whether they realized it or not.

“Good,” was all she said aloud.  “Then we can start planning our next attempt.  Not the house this time.  It’s too well-defended.  We’ll need to catch Little Joe separated from his family.”

“Yeah, that’s the way,” Donovan agreed.  “We can handle him easy, without his family to back him up.”

She knew better than most how deadly Joe Cartwright could be all by himself.  But it was still a better plan than taking on the entire Cartwright clan at once.  “We’ll keep a watch.  And we’ll seize our next opportunity.”

 

18.

When Liza emerged from her bedroom the next morning, Joe’s door was firmly closed but she could hear voices downstairs.  She started down the stairs and found Ben, Hoss and Adam by the front door, donning hats and gunbelts, while Hop Sing cleared breakfast dishes from the dining table.  She was going to need to get used to earlier wakings, to adjust to ranch timing.

“Good morning!” Hoss called up as she descended the stairs.  “Little Joe still asleep?”

“I think so – his door was closed,” Liza said.

“Good,” Ben said, “we’re letting him sleep because there will be no making him rest once he wakes up.  We have some work to get to, but we’ll make sure one of stays in shouting distance, if you need anything.”

“Just breakfast, I think.”  When she had visited before, they had all gone out of their way to make sure she was escorted and entertained all the time.  This more relaxed attitude felt somehow validating.  More like she was simply one of them, responsible for her own time.  Maybe they just assumed that once Joe was up, that would account for the rest of her day, but they still weren’t working to bridge the gap.

“Breakfast is Hop Sing’s department,” Ben said, glancing over towards the cook.

“Good morning, Missy Liza!” Hop Sing said from near the table, smiling broadly.  “Come, come, join Hop Sing in the kitchen.  Have coffee, breakfast.  You miss breakfast with family, but I save some for you.  Not put all in front of Mister Hoss, or all will be gone.”

“Dadburnit, I have to keep up my strength!” Hoss protested, and they went out the front door laughing.

Liza smiled too, following the Chinese cook into the kitchen.  “Thank you, Hop Sing, that was very kind.”

“Sit, sit,” he urged, pointing her to a chair at the small kitchen table, and whisking around to produce a tea cup and a plate of toast, bacon and eggs.  An empty bowl on the floor in one corner was evidence that even Bronte had made it down for breakfast ahead of her.  “Hop Sing very happy you have returned.  Little Joe very sad for long time.  Rest of family all very worried.  So it good you have come back.  Everyone be happy now.”

“I hope so.”

Hop Sing set the plate in front of her with a thud and fixed her with a suddenly intent gaze.  “All happy, if you remember one thing.”

It wasn’t as though the man was threatening, exactly.  But Liza did feel her shoulders tense suddenly, and she realized she may have missed something.  She had known when she came back – before she ever left – that marrying Joe meant marrying into his family, and the Cartwrights were as tightly-knit a family as they came.  Joe wanted to marry her and Hoss already liked her.  She had reached some sort of détente at least with Adam, and she believed that Ben was open-minded and, as long as his sons were happy, would be happy too.

But she had forgotten about one family member.  Hop Sing accepted wages and had a different last name, but he was still a member of the family.

“What…would that be?” she asked carefully.  “That I should remember?”

“Hop Sing in charge of kitchen,” he said, rapping the tabletop for emphasis.  “I cook for Cartwrights.  I know how to run kitchen, make meals, manage house.  You marry Little Joe, very good, but your job not to run kitchen.  You have your own house, you do what you like, but in this house, Hop Sing in charge of kitchen.”

Liza let out a breath.  She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but this?  This she could handle.  “Hop Sing, I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that,” she said, with considerable warmth in her voice.

Hop Sing blinked, apparently expecting something quite different.  “Missy Liza—glad?”

“Yes,” she said fervently.  “You see, I don’t know how to cook.  I don’t know anything about running a kitchen.  I could make toast, but you can’t live on toast.  I’ve been living in a boarding house, and I didn’t even have a kitchen.”

Hop Sing seemed faintly staggered by this notion.  “What you eat then?”

“Boarding house food,” Liza said heavily.  “Restaurant food.”

“Oh, Missy Liza,” Hop Sing said, sitting down opposite her and patting her hand.  “It good you here now.”

“Yes, it is.  And I wonder—I know you’re very busy, and I don’t want to impose.  But maybe you can help me with something.”  She put her other hand over Hop Sing’s, and she wasn’t making this up, she really did need help.  Though if she judged Hop Sing right, this was also the best tactic to endear herself to him.  “You see, I do want to be able to cook for Joe – in our house, when we have a house.  Maybe – do you think you could teach me just a few things?  Only if you have time, of course.”

She knew she’d judged rightly when the man’s eyes lit up.  “Missy Liza, Hop Sing teach you everything.  Then you know right way to do things!”

“Are you sure?  I know I’m never going to cook as well as you,” Liza said, and it was probably true.  “I mean, just look at Hoss – he’s basically a testament to your cooking!”

“True, true,” Hop Sing agreed, “but you work hard, you learn.  Never could fatten up Little Joe, but we do our best.”

“Always,” Liza agreed, satisfied that she could count one more family member on her side.

 

Liza was sitting on the rocking chair on the front porch, a book in her hands, thinking more than reading, when Joe finally emerged from the house late in the morning.

“Hey, there’s my girl,” he said cheerfully, bending down to kiss the top of her hair.

“Good morning,” she replied, smiling up at him, feeling the familiar flutter go through her at the sight.  It still seemed incredible that she was here, that everything could be so right.

“Barely still morning,” Joe said, stretching.  “Can’t believe I slept so late.  Or that Pa let me.”

“You did get shot recently,” Liza pointed out.

“Sure, sure,” Joe said with a wave of one hand, as though this was a minor issue, easily dismissed.  “Hey, let’s go out for a ride before somebody in my family turns up and says I need to rest.”

Liza wavered.  “I should really be telling you to rest…”

And there went the charming Joe Cartwright smile.  “But you won’t, will you, honey?  Come on, we’ll take a buggy and a picnic blanket, that’s practically resting anyway.”

“We should tell someone,” Liza said, which was halfway to an agreement.  “I think Hoss and your father are working just behind the house.”

“So tell Hop Sing while I go hitch up the buggy,” Joe said, already heading towards the barn.  He did seem to be walking with something closer to his usual energy.  And she really didn’t have it in her to protest too much.

By the time she came back out from the kitchen, vaguely reassured that Hop Sing had made only a token grumble about the plan and then filled a basket of food to press on her, Joe had the buggy out of the barn, two horses pulling and Cochise on a lead rope behind.

“I thought you were riding in the buggy?” she said, setting the basket in the back and eying Joe’s pinto.

“I am.  Cooch is just coming along for the exercise.”  Joe stepped closer, caught her around the waist and pulled her closer still.  “Besides, he missed you while you were gone.”

She arched an eyebrow.  “Oh, Cochise missed me?”

“Sure.  It’s like they say, never marry a girl your horse doesn’t like.”

So that made Hoss, Hop Sing and Cochise on her side.  Not too bad a team.

 

19.

One minute, it was a picture-perfect afternoon, out on a picnic with the girl he wanted to marry, who had even agreed to marry him too.  While it wasn’t the first time Joe’d been in that situation, something he wouldn’t mention to Liza for worlds, it had never felt better.

Right up until a gunshot rang out, bringing Joe abruptly out of his light doze, sitting up and reaching for his gun even as he told himself it was surely only someone out hunting.

His hand was barely brushing the holster when Dave Donovan’s voice said, “Hold it there, Cartwright.  The first one was a warning, but don’t try anything.  Take off that gun belt nice and slow.”

He looked and found Donovan emerging out of the shadows of the pines, another, smaller man behind him.  Joe looked at Liza, sitting next to him on the blanket, and found her looking back at him with wide eyes.

“It’ll be all right,” he said, not because he had any idea how that would be true but because it was the thing to say, and very carefully unfastened his gun belt to drop it on the blanket.

He set his gaze on Donovan.  “Roy already arrested Stevens.  You could be in the clear on this whole thing, but you really think it’s a good idea to get…involved in this…”

His voice trailed away because he was distracted by the second person behind Donovan, the slighter one, who was pushing back a hat and—  “Sylvia Anne?” Joe blurted.

She smiled, a cold, glittering kind of smile.  “Hello, Little Joe.  So you bothered to remember me.”

Of course he remembered her.  He remembered every girl he’d liked as much as he’d liked Sylvia Anne – something else he wouldn’t mention to Liza.  But Sylvia Anne stood out too for how very badly the whole affair had gone, romantically if not in other ways.  He had been so proud to be named acting sheriff of Rubicon, and so sincere courting Sylvia Anne, the pretty mayor’s daughter, even bringing her passages from Shakespeare.  And the whole job had all been a trick, only offered to him because Sylvia Anne’s father and her boyfriend wanted an incompetent sheriff who wouldn’t interfere with their criminal activities.  Sylvia Anne’s interest in him had been no more genuine, just another part of the plot.

“I assume this is about Brock?” he said, naming Sylvia Anne’s boyfriend.  Joe’d outsmarted him at least, prevented his crime, though it had led to a shoot-out that ended up with Brock dead.

Her lip curled.  “Yes, it’s about Ab Brock.  I’m sorry, Sylvia Anne – that’s what you said to me.  And then you just walked off all smiles with your family, while the man I loved lay dead in the street!”

He remembered that moment as more somber, and Ab Brock had died while trying to murder someone else, so it wasn’t a death that weighed heavy on his conscience.  But maybe he should have paid a little more mind to Sylvia Anne.

He didn’t like the way both of them were standing over him, so he carefully got to his feet, with no sudden movements that might alarm the people holding guns.  He offered a hand to Liza, and kept holding her hand once she was standing too.

“I am sorry about Brock, Sylvia Anne,” he offered, because who knew, maybe a little of the Joe Cartwright charm, in its most sincere brand, would get him somewhere.  “I never meant for him to be killed.  But I had to stop him from committing murder.  You knew that was wrong too.”

“I tried to stop him to save him,” Sylvia Anne said, “not so he could end up shot down!  And did you ever even think of him again?  Or me, after you destroyed my life?”

Truth was, he hadn’t felt much responsibility towards Sylvia Anne, not after realizing she’d only ever romanced him because it fit Brock’s schemes.  “You weren’t alone.  You still had your father.”

“My father is in prison,” Sylvia Anne spat, “for being part of Ab’s plans.  I couldn’t even keep his businesses.  And even though I ran his saloon and hotel, all anyone could see when I tried to find a job was that I was a saloon girl.  And there you were off on the Ponderosa, never thinking about all the damage you’d done.”

It was a sad story, but Joe still didn’t see that it was his fault, and it didn’t look like apologies or sympathy was going to get him very far with her anyway.  He changed tack and target.  “So how’d she rope you into all this?” Joe asked Donovan.

Donovan smiled the slow and easy smile that had seemed pleasant when they were friends and felt very ominous now.  “Oh, I didn’t need convincing.  I’d rather kill your family and leave you to your lonesome, but I’ll settle for killing you.”

“It wasn’t hard, Little Joe,” Sylvia Anne said, “to find other people who wanted you dead.  Other lives you ruined!”

That wasn’t a line of conversation that was going to go anywhere good, so Joe kept focused on Donovan instead.  “You know they’ll pin this on you if I turn up dead,” he said steadily, even as Liza’s grip on his hand tightened at the words.  “Stevens is in jail, so Roy’s going to be looking straight at you.  And Sylvia Anne, you might think no one will suspect you, but Donovan here’ll turn on you when the cards are down.  Take it from me, you can’t trust him to be loyal.”

“You think we haven’t thought of any of that?” Donovan said, far too untroubled for Joe’s taste.  “That’s why we ain’t just going to shoot the two of you.  We have a plan.”

Joe’s hand tightened on Liza’s, but he didn’t want to look at her to see how her face was taking in Donovan’s words.  “Leave Liza out of it.  Your problem’s with me.”

“But she’s a witness now,” Sylvia Anne said, “and according to the rumors in town, she’s also the reason you didn’t die out by the lake to begin with, which would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

Watching Sylvia Anne, wearing men’s clothes, something suddenly clicked for Joe.  “You’re the one who shot me, aren’t you?”  He had only had a glimpse of the shooter, but something that hadn’t felt right came together now.  “I thought it was a small man, but it was you.  I should have figured it out – Stevens is too tall.”

“And too incompetent, apparently,” Sylvia Anne said.  “Now get back in your buggy.  We’re taking a little trip.  The two of you are about to have a terrible accident.”

There didn’t seem to be anything to do but follow directions.  Donovan and Sylvia Anne both still had their guns out, and both were too far away to jump.  He finally looked at Liza again, and she met his gaze with a shaky smile that wasn’t convincing at all.  But it was better than hysterical tears.  She had been uncharacteristically silent, but if that was how she was dealing with this, well, there were worse ways.

“It’ll be all right,” he told her again, even though any way for that to happen seemed to be getting increasingly unlikely.

 

Liza eyed the dark opening of the mine, a sharp contrast to the sunny day outside.  It was only very slightly less terrifying than the guns held by their captors.  “Do people try to kill you in mines regularly?” she asked Joe, an attempt at a bravado she wasn’t feeling.  The idea had come up the last time she visited the Cartwrights too, at the Ophir Mine.

“Not that often,” Joe said, voice steady and face grim.

“Inside,” the woman, Joe had called her Sylvia Anne, ordered, gesturing with her gun.  “Start walking, don’t stop and don’t look around.”

Joe shook his head but started walking, so Liza stayed in step with him, hand tightly grasping his.  He was a Cartwright.  They were good at this sort of thing.  Surely, somehow…

They’d walked perhaps a hundred paces, maybe more, when there was a thudding noise behind them.  Joe looked back, and in the dim light Liza could see his eyes widen.  “The bracings at the entrance—”

He ran back only a few steps before a rumble and shaking filled the entire world.  Dust and dirt spewed from the direction of the mine entrance and Liza instinctively flung herself down, arms wrapped over her head, as though it would do any good if the mountain collapsed on top of them.

But the rocks overhead, at least where they were, managed to hold, and after a terrifying interval the thunders and crashes from the entrance faded into silence, broken only by the pounding beat of her own heart.

Liza slowly pushed herself up to sitting, stunned by the suddenness and the darkness.  She’d hit the rocky ground hard, but nothing seemed to be hurt in a serious way…

“Liza?”  Joe’s voice, with an alarmed pitch that penetrated her brief daze – but it was such a relief to hear him too.

“I’m all—”  She coughed on the dust in the air.  “—all right.”

A rustle of movement, and then a hand brushed her shoulder.  He pulled her towards him and she sank willingly against him, clutching the already-familiar fabric of his green jacket.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, voice muffled against his shoulder.  He had been a few steps closer to the disaster than she had.

“No,” he said, firmly enough that she had to believe him, in the absence of any other evidence.  “But…”  The words trailed away, unfinished.

But the world was so black that there could be no doubt the mine entrance was blocked.  But they were trapped here, under a mountain.  But no one knew they were here, except for the people who had trapped them.  But there might be no way to get out.

 

“Maybe we should have shot them before we collapsed the entrance,” Donovan said, frowning at the wall of rubble blocking the way into the mine.

Sylvia Anne barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes.  “And then if the bodies are ever found, they have bullets in them, which defeats the whole point of making this look like an accident.”

“Yeah…but just to be sure, you know.”

“If they’re not dead already from the roof falling in, they’ll still die soon enough,” she snapped.  She wouldn’t mind if it took some time.  Why should Little Joe Cartwright have an easy death?  “We’re done here; let’s get back to town.”

She didn’t bother pointing out what was obvious to her – that the best they could do now for an alibi, just in case, was to be very visible in town today.  If Little Joe’s body was found a week from now, much better if dozens of people had seen her in the saloon the afternoon he went missing.  Even though she didn’t intend to still be in town a week from now.  She’d leave immediately, if it wouldn’t be more suspicious.

She had no idea what Donovan was planning to do with the rest of the day, and didn’t much care.  He could look after himself or not; it didn’t matter to her.

“We’ll drive the wagon away from here and then turn the horses loose,” Donovan said, as though they hadn’t already discussed it.  He went over to Little Joe’s pinto, reached to pat the horse only to have it shy away from him.  “Sure wish I could keep this one.  Joe always put a lot of stock in this horse.  I’d sure like to have it for mine.”

It had been stupid of Donovan to take the horse after the first shooting, when he had an ironclad alibi.  It would be downright suicidal now.  This time Sylvia Anne did roll her eyes; Donovan was looking at the horse anyway.

“Oh well, too risky,” Donovan said, and slapped the horse on the flank.  “Go on, get out of here.  Go join some wild herd or something.”

As if what happened to the horse was important.  “Let’s go, then,” she said impatiently, as the horse disappeared between the trees.  “The sooner we get back to town, the better.”

 

Liza and Joe considered and rejected trying to explore farther into the mine.  “I remember this digging,” Joe said, as they discussed the possibility.  “It’s too small for multiple exits, and just big enough that we’d get turned around in the dark and not be able to find our way back to here.”  While Liza didn’t like the idea of doing nothing, wandering around in the depths of a mountain sounded terrifying.

Instead of that, Joe tried to shift the rocks blocking the entrance, but it was an impossible task in the perfect blackness.  And when rocks shifted and fell and brought new ones down, they both agreed it was too dangerous to continue.  He was more likely to bring the ceiling down than to open up the way out.  For someone who could see what they were doing, for someone on the outside who had tools and bracings, it could be possible to dig out, but not like this.  Joe burned one of the three matches he’d had tumbling around in a pocket to get back to where Liza was sitting against one rocky wall.

The brief, flickering light was barely enough for Liza to see that he’d likely been honest about being uninjured – dusty, yes, but at least with no new injuries that were readily apparent.  He sat down beside her again just as the match burned out, and put an arm around her in the renewed darkness.  She leaned into him, cheek against his shoulder, feeling the already-familiar cloth of his jacket.

“I’m sorry,” Joe whispered, and though it was far too dark to see tears, she could hear a trace of them in his voice.  “I’m so sorry.”

“None of this is your fault.”  She didn’t fully understand the story of what had gone on in the past, between Joe and Sylvia Anne, or with Dave Donovan, but she was still firm in her conviction that Joe Cartwright could not possibly have done anything to justify all of this.

But Joe’s thoughts, apparently, were down a different track.  “I never should have proposed – I tried to swear off romance, and I never should have – especially tempting fate twice, when you’d already left once…”

Liza blinked, even though it was nearly meaningless in the darkness.  “What does that have to do with any of this?”

“Because every time that I think, this is it, it’s really going to work out this time, something goes horribly wrong!”

The Curse of the Cartwrights.  The words swam back into her mind, and for just a moment she wondered if maybe, after all…  But no.  That was ridiculous.  Even Sam Clemens didn’t really believe the story, and he was the one telling it.

A little part of her wondered just how many times Joe had thought this was it – but that kind of thinking had never been helpful, and wouldn’t be now either.

“Joe,” she said, and made her voice as firm as she could manage, “tell me about what happens when we get home from this.”

“There isn’t – honey, I can’t—”

“Please, Joe.  Tell me what happens when we get home.”

She both felt and heard him draw in a long, slow breath.  “Well.  I guess – we get out of this, some way or other.  And we go home.  We come into the yard and, let’s see, Cochise is probably already running for home, so he’ll be in the barn by then, right where he’s supposed to be.  And we’ll go into the house and – probably be coming up on suppertime, so Pa’ll maybe be at his desk, grumbling about the accounting, and Adam’ll be reading some big dusty book by the fireplace.  Hoss’ll be hanging around the table, getting into Hop Sing’s way until supper’s ready.  And then…we’ll all sit around the table.  And even though Hop Sing already made fried chicken once this week, we’ll call it a special occasion and have fried chicken again, and it’ll all…it’ll all be…”

“…the way it should be,” Liza finished in a whisper.

“Yeah,” Joe said, tightening his arm around her and pressing one cheek against the top of her head.  They were silent for a moment, but the world felt just a little less hopeless.  And then, in a different tone, Joe suddenly said, “Hey.  Cochise is probably already running for home.”

 

20.

Hoss frowned, stroking the velvety nose of the black and white pinto, and said, “I’m telling you, Adam, Cochise is upset about something.  I think Little Joe’s in some kind of trouble.”

The paint had come into the front yard alone just a few minutes before, moving at a steady trot, so it wasn’t like he was running full speed or lathered up.  But there was something off, the way he was tossing his head, the way he’d gone straight up to Hoss where he was chopping wood instead of to the hitching rail or the barn.

Adam, sitting on the porch edge, shook his head.  “I don’t know, Hoss.  If Joe’d gone out riding him, yes, it would be a bad sign if Cochise came back alone.  But we know he took the buggy out.  Could be he and Liza just got distracted and the horse decided to wander on home.  And Joe won’t want us interrupting his outing with Liza.”

“Joe’d notice if Cochise was wandering off.”  Even if he was distracted by a girl, even a very special girl.  “You know how he feels about his horse, and he brought him along on purpose even though he had the buggy.  If he didn’t stop Cochise taking off, there’s gotta be a reason for it.”

There was some logic to it, the best argument he could manage to make because Adam liked logical arguments.  And even more than logic, Hoss just had a feeling.  He knew his little brother, and something was wrong here.

Joe’d been shot only a few days ago.  It didn’t make Hoss inclined to ignore uneasy feelings.

“I’m gonna get Chub and try to backtrack Cochise,” Hoss decided.  “Can you let Pa know?”

Adam nodded slowly.  “All right.  I’ll get Pa.  Give us a couple minutes to saddle up Buck and Sport too.”

Hoss blinked.  “Thought you didn’t think anything was wrong?”

Adam just shrugged.  “Pa’s bound to get worried and want to go too.  And I’d hate to miss Pa letting into Joe for worrying him over nothing, or to miss a share of the glory when we rescue him.”

 

It was impossible to judge time in a dark mine.  Liza sat with her head on Joe’s shoulder and could only guess time was passing because the cavern seemed to be getting colder.  The side that wasn’t leaning against him felt a growing chill, until she found herself shivering.

“Oh – here,” Joe said, shifting away.  There was a rustling of cloth, and a moment later Liza felt his jacket dropping around her shoulders.

She clutched uncertainly at the corduroy.  “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m all right.  It’s not that cold.”

She didn’t want him to be cold, true, but it was more than that.  “It just – seems like a big thing, giving me your jacket.”  This jacket, the one he wore all the time.  The fact that he had a dozen just like it and even this one was a replacement for the one bled on a few days ago didn’t change the strangely momentous feel of the idea.

There was a trace of a laugh in his voice.  “This is a big thing?  I already proposed to you, twice, but this is big?”

“That was big too,” she protested.  “I ran away before because it was too big and I didn’t think you thought it was.”

“I did,” he said, fortunately without apparent bitterness, “and just because it had happened before doesn’t mean it wasn’t.”

Maybe it was being trapped in a mine, maybe it was just having had a lot more time to confront the idea, but it really didn’t seem to matter as much as it once had, that other women had heard proposals from Joe Cartwright before.  She was the one he’d asked now, and the one sitting here in the darkness, sliding her arms inside the sleeves of his jacket.  “I suppose,” she said, making her voice light, “you’ve offered your jacket to any number of girls before too.”

“No…” Joe said slowly, “I can’t actually think of a time that I have.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he said, wrapping an arm around her again.

It was nice to be first at something, and it would even better to be last.  As long as it wasn’t because they never got out of this mine.  She had been trying not to let her mind go too far down that path and she tried to pull it back again, but it might have been inevitable – so it was a breath-taking relief to hear a voice from beyond the tumbled rocks, shouting, “Little Joe?  Can you hear me?”

Joe surged up to his feet, hollering back, “We’re in here, Hoss!  We’re in here!”

“Don’t worry, son, we’ll get you out of there!”  Ben’s voice, if the son hadn’t been tip-off enough.  “Is Liza with you?

“Yeah, we’re both here – we’re both all right,” Joe answered.  “Did Cochise bring you?”

Liza could only shake her head when they received an affirmative response.  It seemed that even Cartwright horses were remarkable.

The Cartwrights worked with what was probably remarkable speed as well.  It was difficult to judge time and in some ways it felt as though this last portion stretched on and on, but in reality they had the rocks moved in short order, enough at least for Joe and Liza to scramble their way out.  Then it fell to a round of explanations, plans and an inevitable argument.

“If you’re going after Donovan and Sylvia Anne, I’m coming too!” Joe insisted, voice hitting the highest volume yet on his third repetition of this sentiment.

“Joseph,” Ben said sternly, “you’ve been shot, trapped in a mine—”

“The shooting was days ago and I didn’t even have any rocks fall on me!  I’m fine!  Ask Liza, she knows.”

And then suddenly everyone was looking at her.  Liza hesitated, with a distinct presentiment that this sort of thing could be coming up a lot in the future, getting caught between what Joe wanted and what good sense actually told her.  “Well,” she said slowly, “it is true we weren’t under the cave-in.”

“You see?” Joe said with a triumphant grin.

“And,” she continued, in a sop to her conscience, “if we go into town, Joe can stop in to see Dr. Martin too.”

“That’s a good idea,” Ben said, nodding.

Joe was frowning, but he just sighed and said, “Yeah, all right, fine.  Now let’s get going before Donovan and Sylvia Anne light out for Mexico or something.”

 

Sylvia Anne was not at her most focused in the saloon that afternoon.  As the hours wore on towards evening, the crowd grew livelier and she managed a reasonable show of joining in.  Donovan at least seemed to be having a grand evening, with nothing more on his mind than his next glass of whisky.  But Sylvia Anne’s mind was back at the caved-in mine.  Had Little Joe been dead since the roof fell in?  Or was he dying right now?

She had thought she’d left him for dead once already, but surely this time – surely even Little Joe Cartwright couldn’t fight a mountain falling on him.

She tried to believe it had nothing to do with her, when Sheriff Coffee came into the saloon with one of his deputies.  He was a proactive man when it came to law enforcement, and usually made rounds in the evening, just to see what was going on and if any trouble was brewing.  But there was a tension in the sheriff’s stance that wasn’t usual, and he was scanning the crowd like he was looking, not for any general concern, but for something or someone very specific.

So it wasn’t entirely a shock when Ben Cartwright entered just behind the sheriff and deputy, followed by the biggest of his older sons.  But when Little Joe came in behind them, barely more than dusty, Sylvia Anne sank down into the nearest chair, too overcome with despair and betrayal to even bother trying to come up with a new plan of escape.

Donovan didn’t take the same view.  If the fool had tried to bluff his way out he might still have made it, but before the sheriff took more than two steps towards him he broke for the back stairs.  He shoved through the crowded saloon, knocked over a table with poker chips flying, and drew his gun as he hit the stairs.  He fired once, only shattering a bottle behind the bar, and sending most of the room diving for cover.  Sylvia Anne didn’t move from her seat; she was well out of the line of the firing, and what was the point anyway?

The sheriff and Ben Cartwright both fired back, but Sylvia Anne would bet it was a Cartwright bullet that got Donovan in the leg, so that he crumpled down halfway up the stairs.  The sheriff charged up to seize him, and Sylvia Anne rose from her seat to approach Little Joe.  He watched her coming, his biggest brother looming glaring behind him.

“Why are you so hard to kill?” Sylvia Anne hissed, and lifted one hand to slap him.

He caught her wrist before she made contact.  “Just born lucky, I guess.”

She wrenched her hand away, even as the deputy stepped up and took her arm.  “You’ll be needing to come with us, miss.”  She didn’t bother fighting it.

“I’m sorry, Sylvia Anne,” Joe said, voice thick with sincerity, and when she looked at his face, his eyes fairly shone with sadness.

She didn’t know why he thought that should make anything better.

The deputy took her outside, and just beyond the doorway she saw the Cartwrights’ oldest son, standing alongside the woman who’d been on Joe’s little picnic, Joe’s green jacket around her shoulders.  They must have been watching from the door.  Of course.  Nice girls like this didn’t go into saloons, and girls who did go into saloons, even if their father owned the business, even if they were basically running the saloon, couldn’t be nice.

Sylvia Anne halted in front of the girl and the deputy didn’t immediately tug her on.  “He destroys the people around him, you know,” Sylvia Anne spat.  “He’ll get you too.  He’ll break your heart or you’ll wind up dead.  People are always dying around Little Joe Cartwright.”

The girl didn’t appear bothered by the idea.  “You know, I’ve had my life threatened three times already since I met him.  But I don’t think that was Joe’s fault.  And if there really is some kind of curse – some people are worth taking a risk for.  I tried running away already, and I’m not trying it again.”

She glanced then at the oldest Cartwright son, who was looking thoughtful.  “This all might work out then,” he said quietly.

Sylvia Anne did not care even the slightest particle whether things all worked out for the Cartwrights, and the deputy was pulling her on now anyway.  Which was fine.  Because apparently all she could hope for at this point was to never see any of them again.

 

21.

Arresting Sylvia Anne Goshen and Dave Donovan seemed to bring a close, remarkably quickly in fact, to the whole unpleasant affair.  Once they were both in jail cells alongside Bob Stevens, all three were quick to turn on each other, giving Sheriff Coffee all the information he needed and then some, as well as the assurance that no one else was mixed up in the plot and still at large.  The Cartwrights seemed prepared to move on at once, and Liza was also relieved to turn away from it all and towards the future instead – although that was a little daunting too, when Ben announced the next morning that he’d like to talk to her and Joe.

Liza studied Ben covertly while Joe pulled a couple of chairs over to the front of his father’s desk – positioning them close enough to hold hands while they sat – and if the Cartwright patriarch had reservations about her, he was hiding it well.  Everything seemed to be goodwill and pleasant expectations.

Ben clasped his hands on the desk, smiling at both of them.  “As I’m sure you both recognize, getting married is a very big step indeed.”

Joe’s fingers tightened around hers, and Liza glanced at him – but he was looking at his father, and only said, “Yes, sir,” in an even tone.  But she wondered what they’d said to each other when she wasn’t around.

“And that means a great deal of planning,” Ben continued, “not just for a wedding but for life after.  Fortunately, we have a few resources we can call on.  As you already know, Joseph, I always intended to leave the Ponderosa to my three sons some day, when I’m gone.”

“Hey, don’t talk that way, Pa,” Joe protested.  “That’ll be decades from now.”

“Well, we can hope so,” Ben allowed.  “But I also know that young people starting out like to have some independence for themselves.  So we’ve always considered that if one of you boys got married, we could set you up with your own piece of land.  Of course we can still be good neighbors, but you could run your own ranch your own way.  What do you think about it?”

Joe glanced at Liza, who gave him a slight nod.  They had talked this over yesterday, out picnicking, before the more dramatic later events had overtaken them.  They’d even talked about it months ago, before anyone was talking seriously about marriage.

“Actually, Pa,” Joe said slowly, “we’ve decided that’s not really what we want.  The Ponderosa is kind of a family business, isn’t it?  And a family responsibility.  And I’m a Cartwright, and Liza’s about to become one, and we don’t want to carve off a piece of the Ponderosa for ourselves.  We want to live and work on the Ponderosa as the Ponderosa, working with you and Hoss and Adam.”

It was a long moment before Ben spoke, but Liza could see the way the older man’s shoulders were slowly relaxing as a smile came onto his face.  “Do you know, Little Joe, I think that’s a wonderful idea,” he said at last.  “Not what I was expecting, but a wonderful idea.”

“We’d like to build our own house, though,” Joe said, and brought up a grin.  “And I’ll need a raise on my wages, Pa.”

“If I’m not giving you room and board anymore, I suppose that’s reasonable,” Ben said heartily.

“You’re not going to cut me off from Hop Sing’s cooking, Pa?” Joe said in tones of mock horror.

“Oh, I expect to see you two at dinner regularly.  Now where are you thinking you’d like to build a house?  Got a lot of land to choose from.”

“You know that little meadow, a couple miles north, by the edge of the lake?”

“That one where you go to brood?”

Joe’s face twisted while Liza tried to stifle her laughter.  “I don’t brood,” Joe protested.  “Anyway, I think on the rock, not in the meadow.”

“It’s a very pretty spot for a house,” Ben said, glancing at Liza.  “And it will make things easy if you need to kick him out of the house when he gets sulky.”

Even Joe managed a chuckle then.

“You’re sure you want somewhere so close, though?” Ben asked.  “We have a big spread out there.”

“But who wants to ride twenty miles just to go to supper?” Liza pointed out.

“Or to start work in the morning,” Joe added.

Ben rubbed his hands together.  “Well, then.  I think this is going to work out just fine.”

They talked through more plans, immediate ones and long-term ones, for a wedding and a honeymoon and a house.  And if Ben Cartwright had any doubts about her marrying his son, Liza felt some reassurance that he was at least burying it under a multitude of apparently enthusiastic, well-intended plans.

As the conversation seemed to be reaching an end, Joe flashed his father what Liza already recognized as his most winning smile and said, “Seems like maybe Liza and I should go out to the meadow and start planning where we’d put a house, don’t you think?  Best use of the day, really.”

Undoubtedly Ben had been seeing through his son’s charm for years, but he smiled and said, “All right, get out of here, you young scamp.  But don’t overdo it.  You were shot recently, remember.”

Joe jumped to his feet, seizing Liza’s hand.  “Don’t worry, Pa.  It wasn’t that bad.”

Whether to prove that or just to get out of sight before Ben could change his mind, Joe seemed determined to make it a rapid exit.  They were well-down the path behind the house before Liza caught her breath again from running and laughter.  She kept smiling as she thought back on the conversation.  “I think your father really liked the idea of you still working on the Ponderosa.  It’s funny, though, I don’t think it even occurred to him we might go somewhere else instead.”

Joe looked faintly puzzled.  “Go where?”

“I don’t know – San Francisco.  New Orleans.  New York.  Anywhere.”  The puzzled look didn’t seem to be lifting from Joe’s face, and Liza laughed.  “It didn’t occur to you either, did it?”

He shrugged, tugged her hand to pull her closer, and with a smile that had a little edge to it she didn’t know how to read, he said, “I guess I’m just Ponderosa through and through.”

She reached up with her free hand and touched his face.  “Why did that make you sad?”

He looked away.  “It didn’t.  Not exactly.  Just—someone I used to know said that to me.”

Clay.  Liza would have bet money he meant Clay, just from the way he said that.  They hadn’t talked about Joe’s half-brother.  No one had even mentioned him, but she had known they’d have to, probably sooner than later.  It was in some ways even more daunting than entering a dark mine, but maybe it was best to just plunge in.  “Was it your brother Clay?”

Joe actually stopped walking to stare at her.  “How did you guess – how do you even know about him?  Did Hoss say something?”

“No.”  Liza took a careful breath.  “Remember I said that a friend told me I should come back and talk to you again?  It was Clay.  Clay came to see me in San Francisco, to tell me it wasn’t too late if I wanted to come back.”

“Clay,” Joe said flatly, and then his face twisted into a frown.  “Why would he care?”

“Because he’s your brother.”

“My brother who left,” Joe said, with a bitterness Liza had never heard in his voice before.  “And when I offered to go with him, to give up everything else, he just wanted to get rid of me.”

Liza didn’t know exactly what had happened between Joe and his brother, but she thought she could see how a few of these pieces fit together.  “Because you’re Ponderosa through and through, like he said.  Clay knew you belonged here.  I think…”  She hesitated, because she didn’t know for sure, but it just seemed to make sense.  “I think he was trying to do the best thing by you.”

“You don’t know him.  You barely met him.”

“I know.  I talked to him for all of five minutes, but he still managed to tell me that he loves you.”  Another piece slipped into place.  “Maybe he wanted me to come back partly so I’d tell you that.”

Joe was silent for a long moment.  But he resumed walking again, and finally, with eyes suspiciously bright, he said, “Thanks.  I didn’t know that.”  He sighed, a slow breath, and asked, “Do you know where he is?”

“No.  It seemed like he was leaving San Francisco, and he didn’t say where he was going.”

“Figures,” Joe muttered, then seemed to shake some darker mood off.  With a probably deliberate shift in tone, he said, “You know, when he said that about me being Ponderosa, we’d been talking about you.  I think I’d just said something about how you were as pretty as snow on pine trees.”

“Oh, really?” Liza said, a smile growing on her face.

“I may have had a few drinks at the time, possibly explaining the ridiculousness of—”

“I think it’s sweet.”

“You know, I like that about you, honey,” Joe said, leaning in, a breath away from a kiss.  “You seem to like all my most ridiculous qualities.”

The End

 

For those who enjoy knowing episode references, Clay appeared in “The First-Born,” Dave Donovan is from “The Quest,” and Sylvia Anne was in “The Tin Badge.”  Bob Stevens and Danny Kidd tangled before in “The Friendship.”  Adam fell for Ruth, the Shoshone spirit woman (sort of), in “The Savage,” and Helen Layton broke Hoss’ heart in “The Courtship.” The show never explains how Joe’s jacket always appears undamaged after shootings, rips and getting lost at least twice, but my story “The Man in Green” is all about how he ended up with a dozen identical jackets in his closet, ready for whenever they’re needed.