{"id":65816,"date":"2026-07-17T22:07:30","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T02:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/?p=65816"},"modified":"2026-07-20T08:07:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-20T12:07:20","slug":"truth-and-rain-by-janeyvanne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/?p=65816","title":{"rendered":"Truth and Rain (by JaneYvanne)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary:\u00a0 Jamie barely knows his eldest brother, so he writes a letter to Adam to tell him about himself.\u00a0 Based on “A Matter of Faith”, with a bit of pre-canon background.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Rating: PG
\nWord Count: 1901<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n

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Truth and Rain<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Dear Adam,<\/span><\/p>\n

I guess you might be surprised to get a letter from me, seeing how you came for a visit not so long ago.\u00a0 It was really great finally getting to meet you.\u00a0 When you were here, you said you wished there was more time for us to get to know each other better.\u00a0 I feel the same way, so thought I’d tell you some things about myself, starting from the beginning.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, here it goes.\u00a0 A long time ago, my ma and pa and me lived in a little house in Kansas.\u00a0 Ma took in sewing, raised chickens and sold eggs.\u00a0 And Pa, he did odd jobs for other folks.\u00a0 To my memory, though, there was never much money.\u00a0 Pa fancied himself to be a scientist and inventor, and it seems when he took those odd jobs, instead of bringing any pay home, he would come back with some new book or gadget or tool to help with his inventing.\u00a0 I can still see him sitting at the kitchen table, scratching away on paper, working out different theories he had in mind.\u00a0 Otherwise, he could be found out back, tinkering away at something,\u00a0 He had a shed full of chemicals and equipment for experiments, and a special black notebook to keep track of it all.\u00a0 He wrote everything down in the book.\u00a0 Pa was sure he would someday change the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

But all Pa’s science couldn’t save Ma when she got sick, and after she died when I was still real young, Pa didn’t want to stay in our little house any more.\u00a0 He outfitted a wagon into a traveling home for him and me.\u00a0 We went on the road, and after a while, I almost forgot the house in Kansas and our old life there.\u00a0 It felt like we’d always lived in the wagon.<\/span><\/p>\n

We traveled all over.\u00a0 I didn’t have to go to school.\u00a0 Pa took good care of me, and he was a smart man.\u00a0 He taught me to read, write, and do arithmetic.\u00a0 On long rides between towns he talked of science or history.\u00a0 Told stories about ancient Romans and Greeks, Aztecs, Marco Polo and the Silk Road.\u00a0 So I wasn’t stupid.\u00a0 I just believed everything Pa told me.\u00a0 And what he told me most often was that he could make it rain.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

From town to town, wherever there was drought, he told people the same thing.\u00a0 He called himself B. Barnaby Garibaldi, because it sounded like a name with authority.\u00a0 The name, along with “Master of the Atmospheric Arts” and some other claims, was printed big as life on a rolled up canvas attached to the side of our wagon.\u00a0 When we got to a likely town, Pa would tug a rope to drop the canvas like a curtain, and once he started his pitch, a crowd would start to gather.\u00a0 Pa had a keen spark of light in his eyes, and a way of talking to get folks excited.\u00a0 He was going to end the drought, make the rain come.\u00a0 Farms would be saved, rivers and creeks run full again.\u00a0 A lot of people believed him.\u00a0 So did I.\u00a0 Of course, I believed in a lot of things back then.\u00a0 You know – like Santa Claus?<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, we were chased out of plenty of towns by people who weren’t about to spend money to find out if the claims were true.\u00a0 Even with his wagon full of equipment and the book full of formulas, some people just wouldn’t listen.\u00a0 When I’d get mad, Pa would say, “Jamie, you’ll see the day when news of our rain-making success is on every printing press in the country.\u00a0 Folks will change their tune then, and they’ll be lining up.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe a day or two down the road, a town would hire us.\u00a0 With the advance payment, we’d buy all the chemicals and mix them in a cauldron boiling day and night on a tower tall enough to reach heaven.\u00a0 At least it looked that high to me when I was little. \u00a0 Pa consulted the book again and again, measuring, figuring, making adjustments and new notations.\u00a0 He analyzed the sky without end.\u00a0 I swear half my childhood was spent with my head tipped back and my eyes all squinty, watching the sky.\u00a0 And sometimes, in the two weeks Pa had promised, it did rain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mostly it didn’t.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember him waking me in the darkest middle of night, saying it was time to leave.\u00a0 “Black clouds rolling in,” he’d say.\u00a0 “Best get on the road before the storm hits and muddies it up.”\u00a0 I didn’t know any better.\u00a0 It was too dark to see if clouds were gathering or not.\u00a0 Once, after waking in the morning to see we were still driving through brittle grass, I asked Pa why, and he explained.\u00a0 Said the kind of rain we made would only fall over the area where we applied our technique, which was already many miles behind.\u00a0 <\/span>Our <\/span><\/i>technique.\u00a0 The rain <\/span>we<\/span><\/i> made.\u00a0 That meant Pa and me were a team.\u00a0 I was so proud of him, and of being his boy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Bit by bit, though, I did begin to wonder.\u00a0 Just like with old Santa Claus, things started to not add up.\u00a0 I hadn’t been too awful old when I figured out there was no way Santa could find our wagon, leave a candy cane for me, then do the same for every single child on the wide prairie, all in one night.\u00a0 With Pa’s talents, though, it took a lot of years for me to have doubts.\u00a0 After all, Santa was a fairy tale for little kids.\u00a0 Rainmaking was science.\u00a0 So, could a man actually make rain?\u00a0 And if he could, why didn’t it work every time?<\/span><\/p>\n

The men of Grass Flats, they called Pa a swindler and a cheat, and they hurt him bad.\u00a0 I can hardly stand to think of the night it happened.\u00a0 The town was ablaze with light from torches, and there was fire under a pot of tar.\u00a0 Those men all but killed my pa then and there.\u00a0 They tarred and feathered him, threw him in the back of our wagon, and forced me up on the seat.\u00a0 Someone had been holding the horses and they let loose.\u00a0 The horses were so scared they took off like a bat out of hell, and I couldn’t control them.\u00a0 Not far from town we crashed into a ditch.\u00a0 Lucky the horses weren’t hurt, but I couldn’t get the wagon out.\u00a0 Then, out of nowhere, along came a drifter, Dusty Rhodes.\u00a0 He helped, and he stayed with us.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pa didn’t die right away.\u00a0 Me and Dusty took care of him, only he was hurt too bad to survive.\u00a0 He was sick for days, and then one night, the light went out of Pa’s blue eyes, and he died.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After that night, something strange happened to my doubt.\u00a0 You’d think anyone who’d gone through it all wouldn’t want anything more to do with rain making.\u00a0 Instead, with me, my doubts simply disappeared.\u00a0 I knew my pa was a good man.\u00a0 Even Dusty, who knew of the murderous hate from those townspeople, said he was one of the best.\u00a0 So it had to be true – he really could make it rain.\u00a0 I got real stubborn, doubled down on my belief.\u00a0 Only remembered the successes.\u00a0 My pa was gone, but I still had the wagon and the book, and if Pa could make it rain, then I could too.\u00a0 Dusty even went along with it.\u00a0 These years later, I realize he was just trying to take care of a dumb little kid who couldn’t admit his pa might not be the most honest man in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dusty went on the road with me.\u00a0 Now, here’s the part of the story you’ve probably heard, Adam.\u00a0 Dusty and me – our first try at making rain was in Virginia City.\u00a0 I don’t have my father’s silver tongue, but somehow I got the people there to hire me.\u00a0 The fact is, when people are desperate, they’ll do crazy things, and this had to be the craziest ever.\u00a0 I was 13 years old!\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It didn’t turn out so good.\u00a0 I suppose your Pa told you the main gist of what happened.\u00a0 How again, people got angry, attacked our camp, and tore all our stuff up.\u00a0 They burned the book.\u00a0 Your Pa found Dusty and me sitting in the wreckage.\u00a0 He’d never believed we could make it rain, but he wasn’t mean about it.\u00a0 He talked to me with such kind words and said he was going to take me home with him.\u00a0 And right after that – like a miracle – it did begin to rain.\u00a0 In fact, it kept on raining for a couple days.\u00a0 Your Pa and the mayor made the men who wrecked the camp say out loud, and even put in writing, the rain had come because of my pa – Tom Hunter.\u00a0 Of course, now I’m older, I see it was all a coincidence.\u00a0 No person has ever forced the sky to give rain, and as for myself, I never tried again.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The thing is, I’ll never be sure in my mind if Pa honestly thought he could do it, or if it really was a con.\u00a0 In my heart, I can’t believe it was.\u00a0 I want him to have been a genius, whose every little entry into his black notebook moved him closer to his dream.\u00a0 He might have someday changed the world – if only he’d had more time.\u00a0 What I do know is, we were a family and he gave me a home of sorts.\u00a0 It was just a wagon, but it was ours.\u00a0 We took care of each other, and he loved me.\u00a0 If that’s not a true and honest thing, I don’t know what is.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

You know that big shed here on the Ponderosa – the one where old stuff is stored?\u00a0 It’s quite a ways back behind the barn, and I don’t have reason to go in there much.\u00a0 But behind the shed, wheel-deep in weeds, there is something that belongs to me.\u00a0 A wagon.\u00a0 And sometimes, like today, I come out to look at it, climb up on the seat again, and remember when the wagon was my home.\u00a0 It’s where I’m sitting now, writing this letter.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I won’t lie.\u00a0 I’d bring Tom Hunter back in a minute if I could.\u00a0 It doesn’t mean I’m not happy with your family.\u00a0 Or I should say <\/span>my <\/span><\/i>family, now.\u00a0 I’m glad to have a real home to live in, and guess, in a way, my father brought me to it.\u00a0 Because if I hadn’t believed in him so much and tried to make it rain in Virginia City, I’d never have met the man, Ben Cartwright, who took this headstrong misguided kid in, treated me with such gentleness and understanding, and even took me to be his own son.\u00a0 Like Dusty would say, “one of the best”.\u00a0 And that goes for the rest of you.\u00a0 My brothers.\u00a0 It feels good to say it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This letter has gotten pretty long, so I’ll sign off for now.\u00a0 Like I said, it was great meeting you, Adam.\u00a0 I sure hope you can visit again soon and if not, maybe you could write me about yourself sometime.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/span><\/p>\n

Your brother, Jamie Hunter Cartwright<\/span><\/p>\n

–The End–<\/p>\n

Author’s Notes:<\/p>\n

Written for Camp in the Pines 2026.\u00a0 At camp I was given the following words to include: “printing press” (Easter egg surprise) and “ablaze with light” (fishing with Hoss).\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Tags:\u00a0 Ben\/Jamie, drama, family<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary:\u00a0 Jamie barely knows his eldest brother, so he writes a letter to Adam to tell him about himself.\u00a0 Based on “A Matter of Faith”, with a bit of pre-canon background.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rating: PG Word Count: 1901<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13340,"featured_media":13977,"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":[1301,23,40],"tags":[1564],"class_list":["post-65816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ben-jamie","category-drama","category-challenges","tag-a-matter-of-faith","wpcat-1301-id","wpcat-23-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\/2017\/03\/Jamie.png?fit=642%2C571&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65816","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\/13340"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65816\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}