{"id":2926,"date":"2013-08-24T16:33:52","date_gmt":"2013-08-24T20:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/?p=2926"},"modified":"2026-07-22T13:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T17:18:13","slug":"not-a-normal-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/?p=2926","title":{"rendered":"Not A Normal Day (by frasrgrl)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"label\">Summary:\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span>This was my entry for Round Three of the Ponderosa Paddlewheel Poker Tournament.\u00a0\u00a0Not a typical day on the Ponderosa.<\/p>\n<p>Word Count: \u00a01,795\u00a0 \u00a0<span class=\"label\">Rated:<\/span> K<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0Not A Normal Day<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Story Notes:<\/p>\n<p>The cards I drew were:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Three of Clubs \u00a0 \u00a0&#8211; The Scarlett Letter<\/li>\n<li>Jack of Hearts \u00a0 \u00a0 &#8211; Ink<\/li>\n<li>Two of Diamonds &#8211; Breaking Horses<\/li>\n<li>Queen of Spades &#8211; Mine<\/li>\n<li>Wild Card \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0&#8211; The Ponderosa<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It was late afternoon when Joe Cartwright rode into the yard of the Ponderosa. He had just dismounted when an old-time hand offered to take care of Cochise. This was one of the few chores that Joe enjoyed doing and normally wouldn\u2019t allow anyone else to do; but today was not a normal day. The young man gladly surrendered the reins and watched as his horse was led away.<\/p>\n<p>Turning, Joe looked at the house, most particularly at the front door. Usually, he would stride into his home and more times than not, slam the door behind him to announce his arrival; but today was not a normal day. Heaving a sigh of surrender, the youngest Cartwright, with his right arm held close to his chest, limped forward.<\/p>\n<p>Slipping inside, Joe softly closed the door behind him, removed his gun belt and dropped it and his hat on the credenza. When he turned around he spotted his brother Hoss sitting in his father\u2019s favorite chair reading a book.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHey, Big Brother.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Startled, Hoss about jumped from the chair. \u201cYou stop sneakin\u2019 up on me like that!\u201d snapped the bigger man, keeping his face averted from his younger brother.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSneakin\u2019? I wasn\u2019t sneakin\u2019, you just wasn\u2019t payin\u2019 attention.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou was sneakin\u2019, normally you slam that door as hard as you can. The only time when you don\u2019t is when you\u2019re trying not to get caught comin\u2019 in.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, I ain\u2019t sneakin\u2019 and I haven\u2019t done nothin\u2019 to worry about getting\u2019 caught,\u201d Joe shot back. \u201cI\u2019ve been breaking horses all day, and I sure can\u2019t get in trouble there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHa! That\u2019s what you think. You can get in trouble just by breathin\u2019,\u201d teased Hoss.<\/p>\n<p>Joe just shook his head. He knew he did tend to get into more trouble than his two brothers put together, but it took a lot more than breathing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhere\u2019s Pa and Adam?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey had to go up to the mine. They should be home before dinner.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hoss went back to his book and didn\u2019t notice Joe\u2019s abnormal gait as he made his way to his father\u2019s desk. Sitting down in the green, leather chair he pulled out a ledger from the desk drawer. Running his hand over the smooth front cover, he couldn\u2019t help but smile. This wasn\u2019t one of Pa\u2019s books, it was his, and his alone. Ben had put Joe in charge of the horse operations, and one of the things Joe started doing right off the bat was keeping a record of how many horses they had gentled and trained. After opening the book, Joe reached for a pen, and dipped it in the ink. When he pulled the pen towards him, it caught the edge of the bottle, spilling ink all over the desk.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDamn it!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hoss\u2019s head snapped up at the exclamation. \u201cJoseph, you best not let Pa hear you talkin\u2019 like that.\u201d He stood and strode over to find out what had happened to cause such an outburst.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOh, Lordy,\u201d Hoss gulped seeing the ink spilled all over his father\u2019s desk.<\/p>\n<p>Joe glanced up at his brother, his face pale, while he tried to mop up the mess with scrap paper. \u201cPa\u2019s gonna kill me.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNaw, he may yell a little, well maybe a lot, but he won\u2019t kill ya.\u201d Surveying the desktop, Hoss chuckled. \u201cProbably won\u2019t even be that bad, seein\u2019 as how you only ruined your things and not his. But then again, I don\u2019t think the blotter can be salvaged,\u201d predicted Hoss.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHave fun, Little Brother,\u201d he threw over his shoulder as he turned and walked back to his chair.<\/p>\n<p>Joe glared at his brother\u2019s back. <em>Can this day get any worse?<\/em> With it not being a normal day, he should have thought before tempting the gods.<\/p>\n<p>The desk clean, Joe stared at his now ruined ledger, closed it, and dropped it in the wastebasket. Pushing himself up, the younger man limped over to the settee and eased his body down. A soft sigh escaped him as he rested his head against the back of sofa and closed his eyes.<\/p>\n<p>Looking up from his book, Hoss scrutinized his brother\u2019s appearance. He noted the arm that was held closely to stomach and the tight, drawn look on his face.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou okay?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m fine,\u201d Joe said without opening his eyes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThen what\u2019s wrong your arm?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Joe raised his head and looked at the older man. \u201cJust a little sore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA little? The way you\u2019re protectin\u2019 it, I suspect it\u2019s a might more than sore.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOkay, it hurts. Dang horse threw me and I landed funny.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat else did you hurt?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNuth\u2014\u201d Joe stopped mid-word when he saw the look on his brother\u2019s face and knew he wouldn\u2019t get away with any type of denial. \u201cMy ankle, if you must know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Closing his book and setting it on the table, Hoss moved over to his brother and sat down in front of him. \u201cLet\u2019s get that boot off of you and see how much damage you did.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019d rather leave it on,\u201d groaned Joe.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou keep thinkin\u2019 that, Little Joe, and I\u2019ll get this here boot off.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Closing his eyes, Joe braced himself against the onslaught of pain he knew was to come. When Hoss lifted his foot off the floor, Joe couldn\u2019t help his sharp intake of breath. Then when his brother started pulling the boot off the injured appendage, the younger man grabbed the edge of the settee with his good hand, and held on for dear life.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere, it\u2019s off.\u201d Hoss looked up at his brother and cringed at his pale face and sharp, rapid breathing. \u201cEasy, Little Joe, the hard part is done.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Placing his hand on his brother\u2019s ankle, Hoss started to prod the swollen, bruised mass.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOw! Leave it alone,\u201d Joe yelled and tried to pull his foot out of his brother\u2019s grasp, only to cause himself more pain.<\/p>\n<p>Reaching over, Hoss grabbed one of the pillows off the settee, placed it on the table and gently lowered his brother\u2019s injured foot onto it. He then switched positions and sat next to Joe.<\/p>\n<p>Feeling his brother\u2019s hand touch him, Joe tried to twist away, but Hoss was having none of it. After examining it, he patted the younger man on the shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNothin\u2019 seems to be broken. I think you just have a bad sprain. I\u2019m gonna get Hop Sing, you stay here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBelieve me, I ain\u2019t goin\u2019 nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Opening his eyes, Joe looked towards the fireplace and sighed. \u201cPa\u2019s not gonna let me leave the house for a month. Heck, he\u2019ll probably keep me in bed for half that time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Spotting the book sitting on the table, Joe remembered his brother\u2019s reaction when he greeted him. Curiosity peaked; Joe gritted his teeth, lowered his leg to the floor, stretched across the table and retrieved the book. Reading the title Joe\u2019s eyes grew as big as saucers. He had never completely read the book, but he knew what it was about. With a brother like Adam, how could he not. When he was thirteen he had overheard his oldest brother talking about the book with a friend. Joe being Joe, he couldn\u2019t resist reading it. He was only partially into it when his father caught him red-handed, so to speak. That little event cost him a trip to the barn.<\/p>\n<p>When Hoss returned from the kitchen he found his brother lying on his side, on the settee, both arms folded across his stomach, laughing his fool head off.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with you?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u201d Joe gasped. \u201c.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0reading\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0Scar\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0Scarlett\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0L-Letter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Finally looking up, he saw Hoss staring at the book lying on the floor next to the table, and the \u2018scarlet\u2019 blush that started on his brother\u2019s neck and quickly rose to his hairline. Unable to help himself, Joe laughed harder and louder until tears were streaming down his face.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDadburn your ornery hide!\u201d Hoss exploded and made a grab for his brother, who was still cackling so hard he was unable to defend himself. On a normal day, Hoss would never do anything to hurt his little brother, especially when he was already injured. But this was not a normal day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOw! Hoss, Let me go! You\u2019re hurting me!\u201d Joe yelled, completely sober from the pain tore through his ankle and wrist as his brother man-handled him.<\/p>\n<p>Just then the front door burst open and two men rushed in, guns drawn. Having heard the commotion coming from inside the house, Ben and Adam feared the worse. The scene that greeted them wasn\u2019t something they saw on a normal day, but today was not a normal day.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat in tarnation is going on here?\u201d Ben bellowed.<\/p>\n<p>Hoss dropped his younger brother, causing Joe to cry out in pain as his ankle came into contact with the floor and his wrist to bang against the table.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell? I\u2019m waiting for an answer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hoss couldn\u2019t look his father in the eye. He was embarrassed and felt guilty over reading a book like that.<\/p>\n<p>Before anything could be said, a hand shot up from the other side of the settee, a book grasped in it and the title facing toward his father and brother.<\/p>\n<p>Adam snorted, trying to contain the laughter that was demanding release once he realized Hoss\u2019s vivid coloring was due to embarrassment and not anger.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNew reading material, Hoss?\u201d Ben choked.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s all it took, the laughter exploded from Adam; the book dropped with a thud to the floor and high pitched cackling come from the unseen brother.<\/p>\n<p>Ben tried, he really tried, but he couldn\u2019t help it, not with Joe carrying on as he was, and Adam bent over, holding his sides as deep belly laughs escaped from him.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t see what\u2019s so funny about me readin\u2019 a book.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not you reading,\u201d Adam wheezed between bouts of laughter. \u201cIt\u2019s <em>what<\/em> you are reading.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn all my years, I would never have pictured you reading that,\u201d Ben gasped.<\/p>\n<p>Hoss looked at his father and oldest brother, and shaking his head, he stomped to the table and picked up the book. He glared at his younger brother, and then puckered his lips in thought before a gapped-tooth smile spread across his face.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy the way, Pa, Little Joe took a bad fall, hurtin\u2019 his wrist and ankle. You might want to get Doc Martin cuz they look pretty bad.\u201d His smile grew wider at the panicked look on his little brother\u2019s face. \u201cI\u2019m gonna go cleanup for dinner.\u201d Chuckling, he made his way to the stairs and the sanctuary of his room, leaving a sputtering Joe behind.<\/p>\n<p>This definitely was not a normal day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summary:\u00a0 \u00a0Not a typical day on the Ponderosa.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Word Count: \u00a01,795\u00a0 \u00a0Rated: K<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":11267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-full-width-post.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23,1092,40],"tags":[158],"class_list":["post-2926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drama","category-hoss-joe","category-challenges","tag-pppt","wpcat-23-id","wpcat-1092-id","wpcat-40-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/normal_pm_79.jpg?fit=400%2C271&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}