XxXxX

9

Ben paced the length of the cot. He took two steps in either direction before swiveling to look down at Little Joe and then taking another two steps.

“What’s keeping Paul?” he said finally, stopping for a brief moment and staring hard at the door, as though it should open just because he willed it so.

Adam pulled his own attention away from his young brother to look up at his father. He would be pacing too, if it weren’t for a sprained ankle and the bevy of cuts and bruises on his feet. Instead he was sprawled out on a cot of his own, though he’d insisted a chair would suffice. ‘Not until the doctor gets a good look at you,’ Pa had countered.

“It’s only been a few minutes, Pa,” Adam said. “And besides, Doc Martin’s got his hands full tonight. Those men Garrett hired can wait, but Garrett himself was in pretty bad shape. It’s hard to believe he survived at all, let alone walked out of that house on his own. Those burns were about the worst I’ve ever seen. I suppose it-”

The look Pa sent him stopped him cold. “I…I killed him!” Pa had told him earlier. It had been more than just a confession of guilt. It had been a recognition of responsibility, an acceptance of a burden a man like Ben Cartwright would bear for the rest of his life.  

“Pa, what happened to Garrett was not your fault.”

“I left him there, Adam. Knowing full well his men had been told to start a fire, I left him there to die in it.”

“You walked away from a man who was plotting murder in order to save the very people he had ordered killed.”

“Perhaps, but I could just as easily have brought him with me.”

“If anyone is responsible for what happened to him, it’s Garrett himself.”

“I beat him, Adam.” Pa raised his fist, exposing knuckles that had been rendered raw by the very beating he was describing. “I…I hit him again and again. I acted like a madman, without thought, without restraint. I acted like-”

“Little Joe?” Adam gave his father a small, half smile, but Pa did not seem to appreciate the comparison.

“Little Joe might act rash at times,” Pa answered. “But he would not leave a man to die. I’m sure of it. No man with any decency in him would-”

“Yes, Pa. Joe would have done exactly what you did. And so would I. And probably even Hoss.”

The look his father gave him then seemed stricken, as though he had failed both as a father, and as a decent man.

“It’s not that any of us would intentionally have let him die. But, Pa, he’d locked Hop Sing and that girl in a store room. They would have burned to death if you hadn’t left him right where he was and-”

“No, Adam. That’s where you’re wrong. Hop Sing’s Chinese friends were already there. They’d already been-”

“You didn’t know that at the time.”

“No. No, I didn’t. But…I beat him, and-”

“Whatever happened, Garrett drove you to it. He had you believing I was going to burn right along with Hop Sing. You didn’t act like a madman. You acted like a father protecting his son.” Adam was glad to see the slight upturn of his father’s lips suggesting he appreciated Adam’s words.

But Pa’s gaze changed then. He drew down his brows and stared at Little Joe. Maybe he was willing Joe to come awake, much like he had willed the door to open moments earlier. But there was more to it than that. It was as though he was seeing something else in his mind.

“His sons,” Pa corrected then. “Adam, you didn’t see…. I didn’t….”

“What is it?”

“Little Joe. Garrett’s men….” He shook his head. “It was so close, Adam. So…close. His men had put a rope around your brother’s neck. They would have hanged him. I’m certain of it. They would have hanged him if I hadn’t agreed right then and there to Eli’s demands. And then the explosion…. I was so sure Joe had been caught up in it. I still didn’t know, I couldn’t really know he hadn’t been. I could only rely on Eli’s word, the word of a man who had proven he could never be trusted.”

Now it was Adam’s turn to stare at Joe. “From what I hear, could be a whole lot worse.” He said the words aloud just as he’d read them, finally seeing what he had only been able to suspect before.

“What?”

Adam gave his father another small, sad smile. “Hoss. It’s what he said. What he wrote, actually. What I’m sure they made him write. They were using threats against Joe to get to all of us. To get you to front the partnership. To get me to draw up the plans. And to get Hoss…well, it’s only an assumption, but I think they expect to use his strength in working the mine.”

Pa tensed, the muscles in his back growing taut enough to pull his spine arrow straight. “If they have hurt Hoss….”

“I doubt they have,” Adam offered. “Not yet, anyway. They still need him. I suppose they were finished with me the minute I gave them the plans. But they still need Hoss. As for Joe, something tells me they weren’t finished with him yet, either.”

“Not finished with him?” Pa’s voice went louder with each word. “Look at him, Adam! Look at what they’d already done to him! He looks to have been beaten near to death! Damn that Elijah Garrett to Hell, anyway! Where is Paul?” In four long strides, Pa reached the door and yanked it open. “He should be in here, treating Joe, not comforting the devil himself for burns he can blame no one but himself for incurring!”

“Exactly.”

“What?” Pa stepped back into the small room beside Doc Martin’s surgery, his gaze shifting from the hallway to Adam, his expression gone from rage to confusion.

“Garrett has no one to blame but himself. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, well….” Pa looked to the ground, seeming abashed. “No matter what you say, I should not have left him.”

“And I shouldn’t have left Joe.”

In an instant, Pa was Pa again, ready to impart certainties as only a father could. “You did what you felt you needed to do. And he was not caught up in that fire!”

“He wasn’t caught up in it only because he was too stubborn to stay put.”

“Or…because he was driven to move by….”

“By what?”

“I’m not sure. Perhaps by…by whatever angels of mercy were looking out for all of us tonight.”

Adam nodded, considering his pa’s words. “Then perhaps it was those same angels who made sure Garrett got out of that fire, but not until he felt the impact of it himself.”

Pa’s gaze locked with his own. For a long while, he said nothing. And then, “Perhaps you’re right,” he said softly.

“God moves in a mysterious way,” Adam recited the line from a favorite hymn as his eyes moved back toward Joe. He didn’t even count it ironic when his brother chose that moment to come awake.

XxXxX

“He’ll get away,” Joe said, breathless and panting, an instant before his eyes flew open. He tried to push himself upward, but apparently he was far less resilient now than he’d proven to be when Adam had left him in the Henderson’s kitchen. He didn’t get farther than his elbow before dropping back.

“It’s alright, Joe,” Pa’s hand fell to the top of Joe’s head. “It’s over.”

“Over?” Joe looked into Pa’s eyes, as though he was sure he could find all the answers he needed right there. “Hoss?”

Pa glanced toward Adam. It was quick. He was looking at Joe again in an instant. But that glance had to have been enough to tell Joe it wasn’t really over. Not yet.

“Sheriff Coffee is pulling a posse together,” Adam said, hoping to ease Joe’s thoughts. “Pa’s planning to join them, but I’m afraid you and I are going to be stuck right here.”

“We should reach Hellcreek by sunrise,” Pa added. “And, with any luck-”

“No!” Joe cried out, his voice weak, strained. “That’s too late!”

“What do you mean, ‘too late’?” Pa asked.

“That man…the rider…. Pa, if he gets there first, if he tells them-”

“What rider?”

“The one I was chasing. If he-”

“Son, you stopped him.”

“I…what?”

“You shot him, son. You stopped him. He didn’t go anywhere except to Roy Coffee’s jail.”

“I hit him?”

“Yes, Joe.”

Joe’s surprised smile moved Adam to smile as well. “It was still a stupid thing to do,” Adam said.

When Joe looked his way, the smile reached his eyes. “I know.”

This time it was Adam who was surprised. “You’re admitting you were stupid?”

“I wasn’t fit to ride…especially a horse like…like that. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“That’s just it, little brother. You weren’t thinking.”

“Not until it was too late. But I just…I knew I…had to stop him.”

“Why son?” Pa asked. “What were you worried he might do?”

“He would’ve told ’em, Pa. He would’ve…told those others.”

“Told them what, Joe?” Adam asked.

“About Garrett…gettin’ caught. Pa…they wouldn’t have any…any reason to keep Hoss alive then. And Clem…. He was pretendin’ to be me. They’d kill him, too.”

“Did Clem really think he could fool anyone into believing he was you?” Adam asked.

“From a distance…maybe. He…he was wearin’ my shirt.”

“How’d he even fit into it?”

“It was…torn up. Didn’t matter if….” Joe’s eyes started to slip closed again. “If he ripped it some more.”

“Guess you’ll have to find another way to impress Ellie Lindstrom.”

Pa shot Adam an angry glare. “Ellie Lindstrom isn’t worth impressing!”

“Pa?” Joe asked, his eyes open, curious.

Once again, Pa looked abashed, only this time Adam had no idea why. “I’m sorry, Joe.” Pa cleared his throat. “All I mean is, we have far more important things to concern us right now than whether or not you can catch the eye of a young lady, particularly a young lady who…well, who-”

Pa looked grateful when Doc Martin’s sudden entrance prevented him from having to finish whatever it was he’d been struggling to say. But from the way Joe met Adam’s gaze, it was pretty clear Pa was going to be faced with some questions he’d have a harder time avoiding when this was all over.

XxXxX

With no notion of night or day, without any indication at all of the passage of time, Hoss found his thoughts going just as dark as the black space around him. It was as though that hole he’d been tossed into had planted another hole deep inside him, its roots driving a sense of hopelessness like a dagger through his heart. He saw Joe getting shot and Adam getting knocked off his horse over and over again until the images began to change, getting worse and worse all the time.

‘It’ll only get worse,’ that man had told him hours ago…or maybe it had been days, Hoss just didn’t know anymore. He couldn’t even measure time by the meals he was missing or eating. He never did get hungry, though he would take a bite now and then from the cloth wrapped bundle they’d thrown down with him. It was just jerky and hardtack, but it didn’t matter much to him. He ate only so he could be sure to still have some fight in him whenever he got out of that hole-if he ever got out of that hole.

He didn’t sleep either, except when exhaustion claimed him; and however long he slept-which he figured could never be more than minutes at a time judging by how tired he still was when he awoke-his eyes always came open to the same black, emptiness.

No, Hoss just didn’t know much of anything at all. He didn’t know why he was down in that hole, where his brothers were, or if they were even still alive. All he knew was the little bit they’d told him. Joe could lose his hand, or his life, depending on whether or not Hoss and Adam did whatever they were told to do. And aside from writing that note, Hoss hadn’t been told to do anything at all. Maybe there was no one left to tell him, because no one had come to him since.

Were his brothers still alive out there? And if so, where were they? What were they going through? He asked himself those questions constantly, and each time the answers came back worse than before. He saw both of his brothers in dark holes like this one: Adam with his brooding nature making it blacker by the hour; Joe with his hand bleeding and broken, the scent of it drawing critters like rats, or maybe even something bigger and hungrier.

Hoss didn’t like anything he saw in that blackness. But try as he might, he just couldn’t see anything else. The moment he’d proved to himself there really was no way out, he couldn’t see any way out for his brothers, either. And maybe the worst thought of all was seeing Pa alone in that big, empty house. How can a man go on after that, after losing all his wives, and then all his sons, all at the same time? Maybe some men could, but a man like Pa…. No, for a man like Pa nothing would much matter to him anymore. It would put Pa into a hole just like this one.

It was ironic to imagine the Cartwrights, every last one of them, swallowed by the very land they’d put all their sweat and blood into building. It was a sick and disturbing irony that led Hoss to begin to believe God had abandoned them. But why?

God moves in a mysterious way.

The words came to him not in the voice of angels, but in Adam’s. He could almost hear his older brother singing like he did in church. For some reason, Hoss decided to sing along-softly, though, not like what he was starting to see in his head, because the Hoss Cartwright he saw in his head stood up tall and straight; he wasn’t slunk up against a damp, rock wall. And that Hoss Cartwright sang like he was trying to get all the angels up in Heaven to hear him.

“God moves in a mysterious way,” Hoss started as a whisper, “His wonders to perform. He plants His footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.”

He could see himself standing in church, between Adam and Joe, and singing that hymn as loud as he could, despite-or maybe because of-elbows digging into his ribs to encourage him to lower his voice. He almost smiled at the memory, but his thoughts took a different turn as the next verse came to him. “Deep in unfathomable mines, of never failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs, and works His sovereign will.”

He stopped singing long enough to talk to God directly, though he wasn’t quite sure how to, not anymore. “Why, God?” he asked. “Why would you will a thing like this? We ain’t bad folks. Pa, he raised us right. Maybe we done some things we shouldn’t ought to have done, but mostly, we figured that out in time, an’ we do what we can to fix it or make amends somehow.”

When answers didn’t come, he started the next verse, keeping his tone even softer than before, as though he was afraid the devil might hear him way down in the earth as he was. “Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take. The clouds ye so much dread, are big with mercy and shall break, in blessings on your head.”

Is that the answer? Hoss began to wonder. “I hope so, God,” he said aloud then. “I really do. We sure could use some mercy and blessings right now. But it’s not clouds I’m dreadin’. Fact is, I’d rather see a big, ol’ black storm cloud than all this black rock.”

Taking a deep breath of damp, musty air, Hoss went on with the next verse. “Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace. Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.”

The strangest visions came to Hoss then. He saw two images of Little Joe. First, his saw his little brother as angry as a black storm cloud, and then Hoss saw him grinning like he always did whenever he was pulling a trick on his big, gullible brother. For some reason, Hoss always fell for Joe’s tricks. But this…this wasn’t a trick. And Joe sure wouldn’t be grinning now. And it was wrong for Hoss anyway to sing about God and then see his little brother. Little Joe ain’t God.

Oh, he was godly enough, godly as the rest of them, anyhow. Some might say he was less so, but Hoss knew Joe’s heart was about as good and God fearing as anyone’s could be. He maybe made more of those mistakes he had to make amends for than his brothers did, but his heart was good. It was just that, well, Little Joe was like an emotional powder keg, and sometimes, if that fuse got lit, he just couldn’t stop himself from going off.

He’d be going off now if he could, that’s for sure. Wherever Joe was, he sure wouldn’t be slumped against the rock thinking there might not be any hope left at all.

“No,” Hoss said out loud. “No, he sure wouldn’t. He’d be fightin’ mad. And he’d be fightin’, right up until they made sure he couldn’t.”

Hoss tried to shake away newer, more disturbing images, as he began to imagine all the things those outlaws might do to keep his little brother from fighting them.

“His purposes will ripen fast,” Hoss went on in a sad, breathy voice, still desperate to find some amount of hope. “Unfolding every hour. The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan His work in vain. God is His own interpreter, and He will make it plain.”

Maybe it was just a coincidence, or maybe God had been listening, because as soon as Hoss finished that verse, he started to hear voices in the distance. Someone was coming.

After taking a swig from the canteen beside him, Hoss put his hand against the rocks and pulled himself to his feet. Whatever was going to happen next, he sure wasn’t going to face it slunk up against the wall.

XxXxX

It was barely dawn when they brought him outside. Hoss couldn’t see the sun yet, but he could tell it was coming. The stars were mostly gone, chased away by a pale, colorless sky. It wasn’t anything he would ever have thought to call beautiful before. That word belonged to true sunrise and all the colors it brought with it. Even so, standing there at that moment, ‘beautiful’ was the only word that came to mind. However long he’d been trapped in the blackness, that pale sky amazed him more than he could ever have imagined.

“Go on!” One of the men shoved the barrel of a rifle into Hoss’s side. “Get movin’!”

Hoss took three unsteady steps forward. While his gaze was still locked on the sky, staring up into a lightness that seemed otherworldly, that third step brought something else into view at the edges of his vision. He turned to look and realized he was seeing the silhouettes of two people standing amongst the trees at the top of a hill.

“Well, Hoss Cartwright.”

He swiveled around toward this new voice, recognizing the exaggerated hiss that accompanied words like Hoss’s own name. It hadn’t been more than a few months since he’d heard that hiss challenging his father when that man had been fired from the last job he would ever get on the Comstock. “This is not finished! You hear me? There are many kinds of justice! I will have mine!”

“Pete?” The Cartwright’s old foreman looked like a ghost standing there, with a face as pale as the sky above them, icy blue eyes that had a colorless sheen, and blonde hair that looked even whiter than Pa’s.

“See what it feels like?” Peder Johansson replied. “Is not pretty, ya?”

Hoss glanced back toward the mine’s entrance. “Is that what this is about? You’re lookin’ for revenge for a cave in you caused yerself?”

“Was not my fault!” Pete shouted. “I did not cause the rocks to fall!” He turned his head to spit before going on. “But this, what we do now, is about silver. It is about all that silver the great Mr. Cartwright would not let us dig out!”

“Adam warned you. He warned you not to work that section. He knew it was dangerous, but you had to work it anyway. It was only by the grace of God no one was in there with you.”

“No. Not God. Just a man who thinks he’s God. Your father said not to go in, and all them fools listened to him. I was your foreman. I was the man you put in charge. No one knew that mine better. But no one listen to me.”

“They were right not to. You almost got yourself killed. You’re lucky you made it out. Not many men do after the rocks give out like that.”

“Oh, I made it out alright, but not quick. I spent eighteen hours in that black hole, eighteen hours thinking I been buried alive.”

“I suppose you blame us for that, too.”

Those icy eyes looked about to stab right into Hoss’s then. “Sure I do. I think maybe you figure it would serve me right to wait. And so I figured the same for you. It was my choice where to hold you. For me, it was good to hold you in there.”

“Your choice? Who you workin’ for, Pete? Who gave you that choice?”

Pete smiled. “A man big enough to stand against your father, that’s who. A man who listened to me when I told him there’s enough silver in there to let us buy that whole Ponderosa of yours right out from under you.”

“What’s this man of yours gonna do to you when he finds out whatever silver’s still in there is gonna have to stay in there? You know this mine can’t be worked.”

“Of course it can be worked! I just could not do it alone. And your father was too pig-headed to give me a crew.”

“So you got this big man to hire a crew of outlaws to work a mine that ain’t even yours.”

“These details do not concern you. You got bigger things to worry over.”

“What kind of things?”

“Getting used to calling me ‘boss’, for one. Think you can do that?”

Hoss stared at him, trying to puzzle out who Pete’s ‘big man’ might be, and how they could hope to get away with all this. Apparently, the man behind Hoss didn’t like the fact that he failed to answer as quickly as he should have. The rifle was jammed up against his spine.

“I asked if you can do that,” Pete repeated.

“Yeah,” Hoss said finally, setting his jaw into a tight line. “Boss. I got it.”

“Good. You remember that. I am the boss around here now, not you or your brothers or your father. I make the rules. You follow my rules, you do as I say, and that little brother of yours you been so worried about will still be able to stand on his own two feet, just like he is now. You don’t, and he won’t. It is simple as that.”

There was something in the way Pete said what he did that got Hoss to follow his gaze. It led him straight to that hilltop, and the two figures standing there. The sky was growing brighter, the sun rising now with a fiery, orange streak to the east. The figures were still little more than shadows, but those shadows were gaining definition. One seemed to be holding a rifle, resting it in the crook of his arm and pointing it casually toward the other.

That other was the one Hoss tried to focus on. He was standing with his feet apart. Hoss couldn’t see his hands; maybe he was holding them in front of him. His shirt fluttered some in the light breeze, sort of like a tattered flag after a terrible battle. He looked…familiar somehow, but not familiar enough to be Little Joe. There was something about the way he was standing, something in the span of his shoulders, or his height…. It just didn’t look right enough to be Little Joe.

“That man up there pulls the trigger,” Pete said, “he won’t aim for Joe’s heart. Not at first. He will give you a couple more chances before you must start to thinking about all that food Hop Sing will prepare for the wake.” He smiled and chuckled lightly. “Then again, maybe I should not have said that; man like you might be more interested in food than saving your little brother, especially after-”

“You touch Little Joe an’ I’ll kill you.” Hoss said the words with icy rationality. It was a fact; that’s all there was to it. It didn’t even matter if that was Little Joe up there or not…at least, not for now. Hoss would do whatever he was told to do until he could figure things out, until he could know for sure who was up on that hill and where both his brothers were. But God help Peder Johansson when Hoss was ready to put an end to all this, because Hoss didn’t know if he could boss himself at that point…because if anything did happen to Little Joe, Hoss was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from breaking that man’s neck.

XxXxX