Summary: A WHIB (what happened in\u00a0 between) for the episode “A Matter of Circumstance”. Ben and Hoss worry and wait for word of Joe’s condition.<\/p>\n
Rated: K+<\/p>\n
Word Count: 975<\/p>\n
(This missing scene would come in between the final two scenes of the episode<\/em>.)<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Some men have a knack for business; others for numbers. But not Little Joe. He has a talent of a different sort entirely: finding trouble wherever he goes! It\u2019s gotten him into some mighty difficult situations over the years, but nothing we couldn\u2019t handle as a family. Generally speaking, there\u2019s always been someone there to get him outta the fixes he\u2019s found himself in. Sometimes it\u2019s been pa or Adam, but a lotta times that job\u2019s fallen to me. It\u2019s a task I\u2019ve always taken seriously. I was good at it too, but this time…this time I failed, and it almost cost my brother his life.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I<\/i>t still could.<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYou couldn\u2019t have known,\u201d pa said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I shook my head. \u201cI should have,\u201d I replied, and I believed it. Ever since he took his first breath, Joe and I have been thicker than thieves, and when he got himself into a difficulty, I always knew it. Don\u2019t ask me the why or the how of it, it\u2019s just a gift. Whenever my little brother\u2019s life is in danger, I get a funny feeling. That \u201cfeeling\u201d has helped me get him outta more scrapes than a body could shake a stick at. It\u2019s a sort of tugging sensation near my heart that I\u2019ve learned to listen to over the years. This time though, I\u2019d blamed that feeling on the rain. We\u2019d had us a real old timey gully washer, complete with a pretty impressive show of lightning and thunder so loud that my ears were still ringing an hour after it blew over. The change in the weather had me aching all day, so I missed out on what my heart was really trying to tell me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I should\u2019ve known, I should\u2019ve seen the signs. They were there, just buried underneath everything else. But I didn\u2019t. And now my kid brother was busted up something terrible. He\u2019d been hurt and alone in the house for days, and I wasn\u2019t there to help him.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Restless, I stood and began to pace in front of the hearth. The grandfather clock struck twelve, a sound I had found comforting when I was a boy; it was anything but soothing now. The doc had been up there with Joe for well over three hours.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n What\u2019<\/i>s taking so long<\/i>?<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I scrubbed a hand over my burning eyes, willing guilty tears back. \u201cThis is all my fault,\u201d I whispered.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cEric,\u201d the use of my birth name caught my attention. I stopped pacing and looked into the serious brown eyes of my father. He sat in his red, leather chair, fingers steepled in front of him. \u201cThis isn\u2019t your fault.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I opened my mouth to reply, but he made a silencing motion so I held my peace. \u201cJoe\u2019s a grown man. He was born and raised on this ranch, and he knows the dangers. It was an accident.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cBut, Pa\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cNo, Hoss. You can\u2019t predict the future. You didn\u2019t know that this was going to happen. But if you want to blame someone, blame me. I knew that Jeb* was high strung and terrified of storms. I should have made sure he was secure in the barn before we left; I should have remembered that nervous animals are unpredictable and can be dangerous. I should have done a lot of things differently, but, son, there\u2019s no point in you or I dwelling on what could have been or what we should have done. It happened, and we can\u2019t change the past; we can only learn from it and move forward.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cIt was an accident. It could have happened to anybody at any time. I won\u2019t let you blame yourself for something beyond your control, and you know that Joe won\u2019t let you do that either. So you\u2019d best get that idea out of your head for once and for all, is that understood?\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cYes sir,\u201d I nearly choked on the words. \u201cBut, pa, his arm\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n He pressed his lips together so hard that they turned white.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Joe\u2019s arm<\/i>.<\/i> I shuddered to even think about it. When we found him laying in the middle of the kitchen floor, unconscious, the limb was swollen up so bad I could hardly stand to look at it. If he lost it, it just might kill him. He was so full of life, always moving and doing. Taking his arm off would be like plucking the wings from a butterfly – cruel and unusual punishment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then again, I\u2019d seen th<\/span><\/span><\/span>at medical book lying on the table and noticed the meat cleaver left on the counter. Joe was out of his head with fever when we found him, but he did mumble something about \u2018amputation\u2019. Had he <\/span><\/span><\/span>been about to take<\/span><\/span><\/span> off the limb his own self? <\/span><\/span><\/span>I <\/span><\/span><\/span>tried to <\/span><\/span><\/span>sh<\/span><\/span><\/span>y<\/span><\/span><\/span> away from the <\/span><\/span><\/span>idea<\/span><\/span><\/span>, but it stuck in my mind. If I had been in his position, could I have done it, even if it meant the difference between life <\/span><\/span><\/span>or<\/span><\/span><\/span> death? I wasn\u2019t so sure. <\/span><\/span><\/span>I was strong, but it took a whole different kind of strength to make such a choice and to follow through on it.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ll wait and see what the doctor says about it. There\u2019s no use borrowing trouble,\u201d pa said, pulling me from my musings.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I hate waiting. Joe would say I\u2019ve got the patience of a saint, but that only applies to everyday tasks like fishing and putting up with sassy, little brothers. Of course, anyone who could sit still for longer than five minutes had more patience than him. When it comes to life and death situations though, I\u2019m antsier than a sinner in church. With a sigh, I settled down on the settee, eyes trained on the staircase \u2013 willing the doctor to appear.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019ll be all right, son,\u201d Pa said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I could only hope and pray that he was right.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ~ Finis<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Author Notes: I wrote this one-shot for a writing challenge on Bonanza Boomers called Bonanza Ballads. I was given the song title “Blame It on the Rain” by Mili Vanilli, and had to write a story using only the title for inspiration. This is what I came up with.<\/p>\n *The name of the horse that trampled Joe isn’t mentioned, so I gave him one: Jeb.<\/p>\n Tags: Angst, Ben Cartwright, Joe Cartwright<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Summary: A WHIB (what happened in\u00a0 between) for the episode “A Matter of Circumstance”. Ben and Hoss worry and wait for word of Joe’s condition.<\/p>\n Rated: K+<\/p>\n Word Count: 975<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":159,"featured_media":3741,"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_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,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[1006,41,61,8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hoss-cartwright","category-hurtcomfort","category-missing-scene","category-short-stories","category-whn","wpcat-1006-id","wpcat-41-id","wpcat-61-id","wpcat-8-id","wpcat-13-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\/Hossb.jpg?fit=444%2C339&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36415","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\/159"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}