The Talk

"Please Adam, just go up and talk to him."

"It's none of my business Pa, he probably wants to work through this himself."

It was safe to say that Ben did not understand the concept of none of his business, not if one of his boys was hurting.

"Now Adam, you are his oldest brother. You go up and have a talk with him. Tell him come down and eat. Tell him Hop Sing has made his favourite stew and dumplings."

"Oh for heaven sake," Adam muttered under his breath as he walked up the stairs.

He had no problem talking with Hoss, he just resented the fact that his father thought their complex life problems could all be solved with stew and dumplings.

He took one last look at Ben's eager face as he crossed to the landing.

~o~

Hoss was sitting on the chair by his desk. He sat and stared at a point in the far corner of the room. He wore just a light shirt though the room was cold and his face was darkening with thick bristles.

"Adam...I don't want company," he said,

"I ain't got nothin to say."

Adam sat on the bed looking at his brother with grave concern.

"Did you fight?" He asked quietly.

Hoss shook his head and swiped at a tear welling in his eye. "She jist got sense Adam. She's a young girl, pretty as a picture. What would she want marrying me."

"You've got a lot to offer Hoss."

Hoss shook his head. "She can have any man she wants Adam. As beautiful as she is they'd be lining up. I was a fool to think she could settle down with me. Please Adam, I know you're tryin ta help but I'd sooner be alone."

Hoss's heartbroken words tore at Adam but he knew too that sometimes a man needed to be alone to work through things himself.

Adam stood and going to the large pine bed he took up the rug Inger had crocheted and threw it over Hoss's shoulders. Then he left.

~o~

All hoped that time would heal the wound but as days turned to weeks Hoss just seemed to sink deeper into himself. He had to be told to shave, told to go to church. Sometimes he even had to be told to bathe. Everything was an effort for him. Ruby had soundly and completely broken his heart.

Adam's wife Anna assured him that it was God's will. Maybe it just wasn't meant to be and they should just stay out of it but Adam couldn't help feeling just a little bit of anger towards the girl. When Hoss was with Ruby there was no hint of what was to come. The date for the wedding was set, they had even started in on plans for the ranch house they were going to build for the pair and then suddenly it was all off. She dropped him from a great height.

~o~

Anna was visiting with her mother in Sacramento when Adam rode towards the Tate ranch house. He wasn't going to do anything he was just going to ask her why she had totally devastated his brother. Hoss had spent another night walking the halls. Did he get any sleep at all these days.

He wasn't going against Anna's wishes though she did expressly tell him to stay out of it. He WAS staying out of it but he hadn't seen old man Tate, her father in ages and it would be good to catch up on all the news. If Ruby was there too, well he wasn't going to just ignore her, was he?.

~o~

Old man Tate smiled as Adam rode up.

"Did you see my back fence, that old bull went straight through it," he grinned.

"I wondered what happened," Adam smiled as he got down from his horse. "I don't recall any mad storms lately."

"Naw, that cuss just mowed it right down. I aught to sell his hide to the gypsies. Come on in the house Adam, you look like you could use a coolin."

Old man Tate led the way into their ranch house.

As they sat drinking the lemonade Ruby had made that morning, the conversation inevitably turned to Hoss and Ruby's broken engagement.

"I don't know what ta tell ye Adam, she's a good girl. She ain't never hurt no one in her whole life, I guess she jist got cold feet. She won't talk ta me about it. I tried. I plumb told the girl she won't never marry iffen she treats a man like that. She jist took off up to her room crying. I'm sorry for your brother Adam, he's a good man."

"Can I talk to her," Adam asked.

"She's up in the barn."

Adam got up to head in that direction.

"Eh Adam..."

Adam turned. The old farmer couldn't voice his feelings but Adam could see in the old man's eyes the clear and anxious message. 'Please don't be mad at her, don't hurt her,'

He gave the old man a reassuring smile before heading out.

~o~

She gazed across with anxious eyes as he entered the barn. Still in her twenties, she looked so very young. Perhaps Hoss was right, perhaps she wasn't ready to settle down yet.

She continued sweeping slower now her face beginning to colour. Adam went and sat on a bail of hay.

"You're doing a fine job there, you can just about see your face in that floor," Adam spoke somewhat flippantly.

"Someone's gotta do it." She answered. She stopped her sweeping and looked up at him.

"Adam...how's Hoss?" she asked.

"He's devastated," Adam made no attempt to colour it for her.

For a moment it looked as though she would break down at that news but then with a firm resolve she took up a bucket to fill with water for the horses. "Well, he'll get over it soon enough, there's plenty others."

"He doesn't want plenty others," Adam told her.

"He wants you."

"Yeah well he doesn't know me, not really. How can he want me when he doesn't even know me."

"Well no, obviously he doesn't know you. If he did he would have seen this coming, would have prepared himself for the fall. But when Hoss loves he does so absolutely. When it doesn't work out, well..."

"Can't you understand." Ruby suddenly turned on him, "He deserves better, he deserves a woman who can be a woman, a proper wife to him, who can cook and sew and ...all that other stuff."

Adam looked up at her then, realisation beginning to dawn. 'Ruby, is this about the wedding night?"

Adam would be the first to admit, he deserved the stinging slap she dealt him. With a weak smile of apology he went to leave. But he could feel rather than see the devastation he was leaving in his wake. She stood leaning on her brush sobbing quietly to herself.

With some reluctance he went back, took her and brought her to sit with him on the hay bail. She continued to sob out her grief, her face a mess. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her.

"Maybe you could talk to the ladies in town," he suggested awkwardly.

But just as he said it he could envision the tittering and reducible she would incur from those fine women of the sewing circle. They would relish such a story. Dine on it for weeks, or so his wife would tell him. Anna would be away for the next two weeks at least, her mother was really quite sick, or attention seeking. Adam was never quite sure. Adam scratched the side of his face as he tried to come up with other women.

"It's the most important night of your life," she said miserably as she clutched his handkerchief.

"That's building it up a bit," Adam spoke honestly.

She looked at him, willing him to tell her more.

"What I mean is, Ruby, he knows you. He loves you. He doesn't want some practiced saloon girl for a wife. It'll take time to get to know each other. It doesn't all happen by magic on the wedding night."

Adam was aware he shouldn't be having this talk with her but stranded out here on a ranch with just her father, who else would step in. Much like Hoss, too many of Ruby's friends were of the four legged variety.

Adam winced as a sudden thought came to him.

"Do you know what happens on a wedding night Ruby?"

"Of course I know," she stood up and faced him. "I'm not a complete idiot."

Adam gave her a sympathetic smile. She wasn't a complete idiot, she was just very young and innocent.

"It's doesn't all happen by magic?" she suddenly repeated his words back to him.

"No it doesn't," Adam told her. "It takes time. Your wedding night might be the best night of your life or it might leave you feeling slightly disappointed but the point is Ruby it's not so much about the wedding night. You have the rest of your lives together. That's the important bit. Now Ruby you know Hoss well enough, is he going to die of disappointment if your wedding night isn't all stars and sparkles?"

A smile of realisation started to form on her lips.

"It doesn't have to be perfect," she said.

"No exactly. It doesn't have to be perfect," he reiterated.

Ruby suddenly frowned, "That's easy for you to say though, I mean yours was probably the stuff of romance novels."

"Our wedding night. " Adam smiled to himself at the recollection. "My Pa had made this very potent rum punch concoction. Damn him and his concoctions, he'll poison himself one of these days. Well anyway, I was nervous, much like yourself so I had some of this punch and felt great so I had some more."

"What happened?" Ruby asked, taking her seat beside him once again.

"What happened?. What happened was...nothing. I had a very sound sleep that night." Adam grinned down at her. "A very sound sleep."

Ruby gasped, "oh my gosh, what did Anna do?"

"She opened all the presents in the room and wrote to a college friend."

"On her wedding night," Ruby grinned.

"On her wedding night," Adam nodded. "The next morning she showed me all we got by way of presents and we went down to breakfast together."

"And she didn't mind Adam?" Ruby asked.

"She didn't have a choice, a whole camp of attacking Paiute's couldn't have woken me."

A sudden wind blew through the rafters and Ruby shivered. Adam put his arm around her shoulder.

"The point is Ruby, you have your whole lives to make memories. The wedding night is just that, one night. But it's one night in many happy years. That, I can tell you from experience." He smiled down at her.

~o~

Hoss was working in the far field. It was away from Joe and Pa and the ranch hands and anyone else who wanted to give him that look of sympathy. He could concentrate on sewing these corn seeds and that should fill up half the day anyway. He wouldn't think about the other half, he wouldn't think about the coming night hours. He wouldn't think about any of that, just these corn seeds.

He stood straight up and squinted at the red evening sky watching the lone figure approach. Ideally he should have remained neutral and stood to hear her out with little expression. But as she approached with a basket of food for him Hoss scowled as tears ran little rivers down his cheeks. The basket landed in the grass by their feet and the young couple clung to each other vowing never to be parted again. He kissed her wet face over and over as she told him how sorry she was, that she never meant to hurt him.

Hand in hand they went to a large oak tree and there they sat and talked, really talked until stars began to appear overhead.

Neither Adam nor Ruby ever mentioned that day in the barn to anyone. Ruby didn't even tell Hoss but she always held a special place in her heart for her wise and kind older brother.