The Hour of the Wolf = "The hour between night and dawn. The hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fears, when ghosts and demons are most powerful, the hour of the wolf is also the hour when most children are born." -From Ingmar Bergman's Film HOUR OF THE WOLF

I also heard the term, "The hour of the wolf," used in, of all things, an episode of Murder, She Wrote.

The narration switches on occasion from semi-omniscient narrator to 1st person POV. Some pieces of information are necessary to convey and they wouldn't be known by Adam who narrates parts of the story.

The Hour of the Wolf

Chapter 1

The dark-haired, swarthy boy sat up, his heart thumping, his body covered with a sheen of sweat. Actually, he was on the cusp of manhood and of being driven by all the desires and impulses that have driven men for centuries. His shoulders were broadening and he was as heavily muscled as older men from ranch work; he could throw a calf or ride a wild mustang as well as a full man. His father, Ben Cartwright, believed that everyone who lived on a ranch should contribute to its upkeep so Adam, after supper before his evening studies, cleaned the barn, mucked the stalls and fed the horses and both milk cows which he had to herd inside to keep them safe from wolves and bears. Other ranches hired barn boys, young men who were basically apprenticing to be ranch hands, but Adam had heard his father say to the owner of the feed store, that he didn't need a barn boy—he had Adam and once Adam left for school, he'd have Hoss and then young Joseph.

I should have stood up to my father when he said I'd have to postpone college at least a year, maybe longer. I should have protested and shouted that I didn't need to travel to New Orleans with him—after all, he was a grown man and once before, when I was about 10, he'd taken me with him while Hoss remained back on the Ponderosa with Hop Sing. I'd wanted to go that time, thinking it'd be a new adventure, something like all those towns we'd traveled through on our way west. But it wasn't. I'd spent most of those two weeks in our hotel room, a shabby, hot hotel room being bitten by insects, while he sold furs he'd trapped on our land to buyers from England. During that trip, my father also met and courted Miss Linda Lawrence who I didn't take to and she didn't take to me either. But it ended up not mattering because in a few months' time, she threw my father over for a count from England-something he later revealed to me. She wrote him a letter informing him she wouldn't be arriving in Nevada after all.

I should've insisted on starting college, thrown my father's promise in his face. For a few years now he had said that with my ability, I could go back east to college but there were certain conditions; my father made nothing easy for me. He said that as long as I didn't leave school after 8th grade as most boys did, but stayed until I was at least 17, and if I still managed to do my share on the ranch, then I must be serious about an education and he would willingly pay the tuition. He often brought up the "small fortune" it would require to educate me but always smiled when he said it. But I didn't have the courage to face him down on the matter of going to New Orleans again because there was something else playing into it.

Adding to it was my father's grief over the death of Marie, his third wife, the woman he finally married instead of Linda Lawrence, and Little Joe's mother. After Marie died, he seemed to depend on me more and more, far more than he had before her death. My father didn't seem to have the energy to run the ranch or even to pay attention to the minutest of matters. I made Hoss and Joe wash their teeth before bed, even having to check Hoss' neck to make sure it was clean for school. I drove them into what served as a town nearby, for haircuts. It wasn't a town really just a small establishment of a few merchants who sold mining supplies and dry goods, an assayer's office, an undertaker who also served as a doctor of sorts, and a barber cum dentist, along with two saloons and three brothels. Houses were beginning to rise on the outskirts of this little ersatz city, and every day, new buildings of every type were going up. I would visit town and sell orders and then check with our small mill that we had recently opened, to make sure they were fulfilling the orders for cut and planed boards and delivering them to the construction sites. I was burdened and wanted more than anything to go away to school where I could use my head more than my back.

I also worked alongside our foreman, Will Regan who managed the herds; the Ponderosa was branching off in more areas than I could handle alone. And now, with his beloved wife dead, my father sat staring into the fire and none of us existed except Joe who would crawl into his lap, clinging to the only parent he had left. I grew to resent my father's lack of industry, of his even caring about whether the Ponderosa burned down about his ears because he'd expect me to haul the buckets to put out the flames.

I knew that paying for college back east would put financial stress on not just my father but all of us. I wanted so much to get away, to get out from under my father's thumb and the burdens that were now suffocating me. I would wake up at night, the ranch problems springing on me like a panther in the dark and the lie awake until breakfast, going over solutions to the latest problem, worrying about bills, how to pay the ranch hands and what would be the next plague to hit the cattle. The Farmer's Almanac became my Bible and I studied it daily.

I was certain that with my knowledge of the ins and outs of running a ranch, I could get a job on another ranch and not necessarily one in Nevada, but in Arizona territory or Utah depending on whether I preferred, as Will Reagan put it when I asked which climate was better for ranch work, herding and all, "It all depends on whether you'd rather freeze your balls off in five feet of snow or fry your ass on a hot saddle." I considered going off and working for someone else, especially with the secret I hid that fought to get out.

One morning, a few months after Marie died, the postmaster who was also owned the mercantile, had a letter hand-delivered to my father by his boy; the envelope was marked important. My father read it at the breakfast table, closing it up once and then opening it and reading it again while I kept Joe from building a house out of all the toast slices, something our father needed to be doing. But he finally folded the letter, slipped it into his vest's inside pocket and left the table. He said nothing more about the letter until that evening.

Hop Sing had struggled with Joe to take a bath and Hoss had stood by and laughed as Joe had his hair soaped and rinsed. Joe cried, claiming the soap stung his eyes and ran into his mouth, tasting awful. I heard the whole thing and so I knew my father did as well but he stayed in his chair, drawing on his pipe, gazing at nothing.

Finally, after Hop Sing had turned a fussy Joe over to me to put to bed and while Hoss sat in the kitchen eating a snack of cookies and milk, I dropped in the chair opposite my father. Joe had been exhausting, crying loudly about, well, just about everything. Finally, I told Joe he needed to go to sleep and I didn't want to hear any more from him. I was tired and I'd had it.. But he wanted "Pa." I said he'd be up in a while even though I wasn't sure he would be but Joe'd be asleep soon anyway.

I dropped into the chair opposite my father. I needed to read. I'd already received my letter from the college dean welcoming me; they were "pleased" to have me "matriculate at their institution" and looked forward to meeting me. But after dealing with Hoss and Joe and all the other ranch maters, I was too weary to study.

Then my father spoke. "Adam, I'll need your help." My heart fell; I knew it wasn't going to be good. He handed me the letter that'd come during breakfast and I read it twice as well. It wasn't particularly long or even convoluted, but it was surprising. Joseph was to inherit a house in New Orleans now that Marie, his mother, was dead. The house had been owned by an aunt of Marie's who died.

"You…well," My father seemed a bit embarrassed to admit such a thing to me but he went ahead anyway. "Adam, you seem to have a talent for understanding contracts and the law and Hiram told me when I went out to see him today that the laws in Louisiana are…different. He said that we would have to hire a lawyer there since the laws are based on French law and something about 'laws of succession' being different that they are here. I'm hoping that we can handle it ourselves, you and I. Since we'll be strangers in New Orleans and I did leave a few enemies behind, I don't know who I could possibly trust. Marie's cousin, Edoard D'Arcy, had quite a few prominent people in his pocket years ago, and if he's still as wealthy and as influential as he was when I met Joseph's mother, and if he still loathes me which I'm sure he does, well, as I said, I don't know who to trust so I need you to accompany me.

"I'll need you to interpret the legal language and hopefully, together, we'll understand the laws of inheritance and make certain Little Joe will receive what's rightfully his. But even if you didn't accompany me, I couldn't send you away to college just now. Hopefully Old Will can take care of ranch matters while Hop Sing takes care of the home matters, but I just couldn't send you all that way and then leave for New Orleans alone. After all, you may need something and neither Hop Sing or Will would know what to do or have access to the funds if that would be what you need. And I may have to…dip into the money I've earmarked for your education. I hope you understand." I did but said nothing. I just went upstairs and fumed; I knew I wouldn't sleep and if I did, I'd wake up again in the early hours and see Marie again, see her shocked face as she fell from the horse.

~ 0 ~

Adam knew what his father said was true; he couldn't refuse to go to New Orleans although he sulked while packing and during the start of what would be a long, arduous, overland journey from Nevada Territory to Louisiana. Eventually though, his good humor returned and the land through which they passed intrigued him far more than when he and his father had traveled at the beginning of his life. The further they traveled, most of it by stage but part by train, Adam was struck with the sheer number of people who now populated the country and the landscape changed drastically the further south they went along with the climate. It was all vaguely familiar and yet had an exotic strangeness about it, so unlike his earlier trip to Louisiana.

Besides, Adam's conscience was troubling him. His secret knowledge of Marie's trysts, the times he had seen her with another man, was distasteful but Adam hadn't felt he should shift his burden on his father who had suffered so much already. It wouldn't help anything to sully Marie's memory, his father had loved her so.

Adam, swung his legs over the edge of the hotel bed and glanced over at his sleeping father who had stirred when Adam, driven by an upsetting dream, had woken with a painful gasp. But Ben Cartwright continued to softly snore and Adam stared out through the gauze of the mosquito netting hanging from a ring above and draped over the bed and now clinging to his legs. It was not yet summer but Adam felt suffocated by the damp air and for the time, no breeze came through the open window. But even if there had been, it wouldn't have evaporated the sweat that slowly trailed down his temples, chest and back. There was some light from the street below. Although their hotel, L'Hotel Mazarin, was in a better section of the city of New Orleans than the one in which they had stayed years earlier when Adam had accompanied his father, people still seemed to be on the street at all hours, just not the sailors who had caroused the streets near the shabby hotel where they had lodged during the first trip six years ago.

Adam lifted the netting, escaped it and dropped it down behind him. His father's pocket watch was on the bureau and Adam picked it up, the engraving on the silver case partially obliterated from the many years of handling by his father and grandfather, and popped open the case. He held it up at an angle to read the time—3:05. He had been waking at about 3:00 in the morning ever since he saw Marie and the other man. If he slept any more that night, Adam knew it would be sporadic and fitful.

He walked to the long narrow window that opened onto a balcony that ran the length of the building and each room in the hotel opened out to it. There was another balcony about twelve feet above his head. Adam stepped out sideways onto the paved landing that felt cool under the soles of his feet, and there was a slight breeze. His long johns were damp around the waist and crotch from sweating. He would have shed them and slept nude with just the linen sheet over him, but sharing the bed with his father made him think better of it; his father wore a light, cotton nightshirt and had looked askance at Adam when the boy stripped down. Adam left his long johns on.

The iron railing felt cool under his hands as he leaned on it, looking out into the street. He admired the skill it took to craft the iron railing and its decorative design of swirls and curlicues. All the balconies had similar designs and the fences separating houses and protective barriers across the windows were made with the same art. Adam wondered if Paris did look like this as his stepmother had said.

"So tell us 'bout New Or-leens," Hoss had asked one evening as they sat in the great room after supper. Marie held her son, Joseph, in her lap, stroking his curls. Adam felt baby Joe was far too protected and spoiled. The firelight reflected on Marie's golden hair; she was truly beautiful and charming and 14-year-old Adam detested her—-or so he told himself. In actuality, she stirred him. He was on the verge of manhood and reluctantly embracing the carnality that had disgusted him as a young boy. Early on, the idea that a man, the most noble of all God's creatures, could be reduced to a beast driven by urges, had always repulsed him. A man needed to use his mind to embrace logic, not a woman. So Adam was torn by the duality of his emotions and often felt as if he was losing his own self, as if he was maturing into someone he didn't recognize.

Oftentimes, Adam didn't recognize the person who stared back from the mirror. He began to sprout dark hairs on his chin and his chest—his whole body changing with every passing day. Marie had recently remarked on it causing Adam to blush crimson. She had laughed at his discomfort, telling him that becoming a man was no embarrassment and that soon he would be pouring words of love into some sweet girl's ear hoping to get a kiss. Adam left the room, shaking—Marie was right. How did she know about Becky Simmons? How did she know how he had tried to coerce a kiss from Becky by telling her she was the prettiest girl in school? Marie must see through him, must know what he thought and felt—and if she did, she must know that he wondered what she must look like stepping out of the bath.

It was all Marie's fault, Adam felt—all her fault how he felt about her, how he thought about her as Adam had once seen her exposed breast as she prepared to feed infant Joseph, cooing to him in French. Adam froze and then had silently stepped backwards and into the kitchen again, hoping she hadn't noticed him; he was flushed with shame and embarrassment without understanding why.

But Marie was a force. That his father basically allowed his wife to lead him along in a dance of desire, embarrassed Adam and made him hate Marie, mainly because Adam knew that if she were his wife, he would follow after her as well. Adam tried to avoid her whenever he could. Nevertheless, he had to sit with the family after supper instead of going to his room—his father had insisted. Adam was part of the family, his father had stated, and would be gone away to school soon. And once Adam had mumbled, "Not soon enough." He was shocked by what he had said and his father turned on him and started to move toward him, but seemed to think better of it and left Adam alone.

But that night, Marie had laughed lightly at Hoss' pronunciation of the name of the city in which she was born and raised.

"My darling, Hoss. The name is pronounced New 'Or-lee-ahns' as the city in France would be. It is a reminder of the old in the new world and you must speak as if in France. And yet, there are many ignorant pronunciations."

And as Marie, her beauty on display, told of the music played by street musicians, of the pastel houses and the exotic gardens along with the laughter that rose up into the air at any hour, Adam found himself bewitched as well. It was when she finished speaking and put out her hand to draw 7-year old Hoss to her, that Adam snapped back to himself and asked for permission to leave with the excuse of studying. Adam considered how the New Orleans in which Marie had lived was not the one he had experienced on his trip with his father years earlier.

The balcony railing had been painted white but paint had worn away in the spots where many hands before his had held on to it and taken away infinitesimal specks of white with them. Adam couldn't help but wonder who the others had been who stood there, unable to sleep, others plagued by dreams and unpleasant thoughts that seemed to turn around and around in their minds like a wagon wheel—never coming to an end. He recalled an ancient symbol he had once seen in an old history text, the ouroborous, the dragon eating its own tail. Hop Sing who had passed by as Adam sat at the kitchen table writing his report, recognized the picture and said that it was a Chinese dragon symbolizing the cycles of life that begin anew as soon as the previous one ends.

"But Hop Sing, it says in the book that it's a Greek symbol, not Chinese." Adam knew his book wouldn't be wrong about such a thing.

"Greek? Hop Sing not know Greek. Dragon eat tail—Chinese Dragon. Kill self, bring back to life like phoenix. It mean all go round and round forever—never end—never end like spring, summer, fall, winter and spring again. Give hope." And Adam's "never ending" memories of what he had seen on the Ponderosa that day and the fear of what lay ahead had kept him from finding rest. Over and over, around and around, his worries never left him.