{"id":14629,"date":"2017-08-02T23:58:09","date_gmt":"2017-08-03T03:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/?p=14629"},"modified":"2025-09-25T15:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T19:41:07","slug":"we-meet-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/?p=14629","title":{"rendered":"We Meet Again (by sklamb)"},"content":{"rendered":"
Synopsis: \u00a0Adam Cartwright is home again, but not everybody seems pleased about it….<\/p>\n
Adam Cartwright commented in a dreamy voice, “Next December I’ll likely be up on the rooftop playing at being St. Nicholas.”<\/p>\n
“No doubt,” I said waspishly. “You’re nothing but a broken-down warhorse come home to green pastures and permanent retirement.”<\/p>\n
One eyebrow went up, then the other. “You don’t approve,” he commented as his lips began to quirk.<\/p>\n
“I don’t believe it.”<\/p>\n
“And<\/u><\/em> you don’t approve.”<\/p>\n
“Your father still works as hard as he’s able. Harder than he should, or so Dr. Martin tells me.”<\/p>\n
“There’s always plenty for a rancher to be doing,” Adam agreed. “Pa likes to be useful.”<\/p>\n
“Oh, and you don’t, of course.”<\/p>\n
Abruptly he swung around and put both hands together on the table. “So what is it you’re trying to tell me, eh?”<\/p>\n
What he actually said was a name he should have known was as good as a slap in the face to me. I made myself stay calm. “There’s always plenty for anyone to be doing around here, Mr. Cartwright. Rancher, or miner, or even social engineer.”<\/p>\n
Amusement–feigned or real–evaporated from his face. He watched me with all the expressiveness of a top-class poker player.<\/p>\n
And for a moment I could find nothing more to say to him.<\/p>\n
+ – + – +<\/p>\n
What I felt, of course, was anger. What I wasn’t entirely sure of was wh<\/u>y<\/em>. Well, besides that flip way he seemed to dismiss all his obligations now that he was home. Or, even worse, my suspicion that the flippancy was intended to conceal a conviction that he couldn’t meet his obligations and might as well stop trying. He’d taken on the world, and the world had won. In a landslide, as the newspapers might say. He may have been trying to pretend he didn’t care, but all I could think about was the defeated slump in his shoulders.<\/p>\n
If that was how Adam Cartwright felt about the future, we were all in deep trouble here.<\/p>\n
Not that gloom-and-doom mongers had ever been far from the Comstock. They weren’t a very loud thread in the clamor and bustle of a place that took pride in reinventing itself at least once a decade, but the mere fact that so many reinventions were necessary suggested we were all treading on unsteady ground. No mine is bottomless, and here in particular if the pumps were ever turned off they would never come back on. No one would bother to invest in restarting a mine that had to be pumped dry before even a test assay could be run. Our big bonanza had come and (probably) gone–and Adam had missed it.<\/p>\n
There had been so many ways he could have helped us all make better use of the opportunity. Better management of the money poured into the Storey County Courthouse, for example. Better ideas for what should be taught in our schools–or for how teachers should go about their work. Better solutions to the problems of the Paiute Indians, who had gradually vanished from the land they once had understood so profoundly. He’d always been good at getting Virginia City to live up to the “better angels of its nature.” Not as good as his brother Hoss, perhaps, but Hoss seldom meddled in the city’s affairs; and, anyway, Hoss was dead now. Another event Adam had missed. No wonder I was angry at him.<\/p>\n
+ – + – +<\/p>\n
Just then, though, my mind went to more personal places. To the people who might have benefited from his presence here. Some who had known him, like Sarah Winnemucca, and others whom he hadn’t met, but might have liked. There were causes enough at hand to occupy his attention for twenty-four hours a day without his ever leaving Nevada. Foreign travel was a gift he’d given to himself, and if he’d gotten less pleasure from it than he’d expected, he had only himself to blame.<\/p>\n
But now he was back. With his wife, whom I counted my friend, and their daughter, who was too much like each of them to seem entirely real.<\/p>\n
Did he think I was angry that he was happy with them, even if with nothing else?<\/p>\n
Did he think I meant to be malicious?<\/p>\n
Oh, dear God, did he think I was jealous<\/u>?<\/em><\/p>\n
But I’d spent all my adult mind trying to keep him from reading my mind. I could hardly blame him if by now I’d learned to conceal myself all too well.<\/p>\n
I took a deep breath, forced a smile, and hoped he would recognize the disinterested (but never, never<\/u><\/em> uninterested!) friend I wanted him to believe me.<\/p>\n
“I guess–” inwardly I winced at the tremor in my voice–“I guess I just wanted to tell you you were missed.”<\/p>\n
The End<\/p>\n
Written for the 2017 Ponderosa Paddlewheel Poker Tournament.<\/p>\n