Hoss and Clay bump into each other again, with some brotherly conflict to work out, in a What Happened Later for The First Born.  Written for the 2026 Brothers Day Challenge.

Rating: G | Word Count: 994

Hoss glowered across his beer.  There weren’t a lot of familiar faces he wouldn’t cross a saloon to say howdy to, but the one currently approaching his table – well, if he hadn’t already been sitting down in the back corner when the man came in, he well might have walked out the door to avoid him.  The odds of bumping into him here, a hundred miles south of the Ponderosa…probably even Adam couldn’t calculate those odds, but they had to be long.

“Hello, Hoss,” Clay Stafford said, stopping in front of his table.  “You in town selling cows?”

“Mebbe,” Hoss rumbled.  “You here cheating at cards?”

Somebody else might’ve winced.  Clay, the dadblasted charmer, just smiled that cool, collected smile, said, “That was never proved,” and sat down across from Hoss.  “Let me buy you a beer.”

“I don’t want another beer.  And I ain’t playing cards with you, I ain’t loaning you money, I don’t want to hear a sad story—”

“How’s Joe?” Clay asked quietly, eyes giving nothing away.

Hoss hesitated.  He was mad at the man, but unfriendliness didn’t come natural to him.  But what right did Clay have to be asking about Little Joe anyway?  “He’s all right.”

“Ribs healed up?” Clay pushed.  “And no more trouble with the miners?”

“Nah, that all blew over after you left.  And Little Joe’s gotten hurt worse falling off horses before.”  The words slipped out natural enough, but Hoss felt as though he’d conceded something by answering.  He retreated to repeating, “He’s all right.”

Clay just nodded.  “I don’t imagine you’d believe me if I told you I was trying to do the right thing by him.”

“Which part?  When you popped up outta nowhere claiming kinship, when you got Joe tangled up in a feud with a bunch of angry miners, or when you abandoned the family again?”

It stung, when a new brother turns up and then just rides away again.  And Hoss could take it for himself, but Clay’d hurt his little brother real deep, and that wasn’t so easy to get past.

Clay exhaled slow.  “The last one, mostly.  I knew I was just going to keep bringing trouble.  I didn’t want to get him killed.”

Hoss fiddled with his beer and tried not to soften.  Only, he was pretty invested in the idea of Clay not getting Little Joe killed too.  He summoned up the view he’d had from the top of the stairs, the night Clay’d rode off and Joe’d come back home all battered and bruised and clung to Pa like his life depended on it.  It hadn’t been a scene to step into, but he’d got a glimpse.  “Joe really doesn’t like it when people leave,” Hoss said, making his voice gruff.  “Not since he was a little fellow and his mother died.”

That one did make Clay wince, just a trace.  “I imagine a lot of things would be different, if our mother had lived.”

“Yeah.”  And thinking about Marie, the only mother Hoss could actually remember, did not make it any easier to stay angry with her son.  He sighed.  “Pa says we ought to be glad you sent Little Joe back to us.  And I am, you know.  It would’ve been a lot worse if he’d gone haring off to Mexico or somewhere with you.  But it sure tore him up bad.”

“I didn’t know how to do it better.”  And then Clay smiled, but it was a forced smile.  One that looked an awful lot like how Little Joe looked when he knew he was in the wrong but hoping somebody’d let him off the hook anyway.  “I don’t have much experience being an older brother.”

And being Little Joe’s older brother could be a tough job even with a lifetime of experience.  Keeping him out of trouble, well, that was pretty near impossible.  “Reckon we all do the best we can,” Hoss conceded.  By now, all of his natural instincts to look out for people, to look out for family especially, were overriding the last traces of his anger.  “Joe’s all right now anyway.  What about you?  Are you living here, or…?”

Clay shook his head.  “No, just passing through.  Just going where the trail leads.  Might head back to Mexico.  I have friends there.”

Hoss hesitated first, but the words still felt right when they came out.  “You’ve got friends other places.  Family.  If you ever decided to have another go at the idea.”

Clay stared at him, a kind of confusion on his face.  “I can’t imagine I’d be welcome at the Ponderosa anymore.”

Hoss shrugged.  “Can’t say it’d all go perfectly smooth.  But, you know, Little Joe hates people leaving, but he really likes it when people come back.  Reckon there’d be some dust to settle, but we’d none of us say no to a brother coming in the door.”

“I’m not your brother,” Clay said in a low voice.

“I dunno, I don’t figure it that way.  Maybe you ain’t by blood, but it seems to me that my brother’s brother is still my brother too.”

“You were pretty mad when I first sat down, though.”

Hoss rolled his eyes.  “Well, yeah.  Nobody scraps like brothers either.  Didn’t you know that?”

“Not really.  I never had brothers before.”

And wasn’t that a thing to think about.  There were still things about Clay that Hoss wasn’t so sure he liked – but who would any of them be, him or Joe or Adam, if they hadn’t had each other?  “Come on back home, if you want to explore having brothers.”

It was a long moment before Clay shook his head.  “I don’t think I should.  Not now, anyway.  Maybe some day.”

“All right,” Hoss said, because he wasn’t going to throw the man over his saddle and drag him home.  Maybe some day was probably good enough for now.  “How about you buy me that beer after all?”

Author’s Note: I explored the dynamic between Hoss, Clay and Joe more fully in my story Older Brothers.  This snippet isn’t exactly a sequel, but it does fit in with that.