Keep Your Eyes on the Sun
Prologue
"Is he still in there?"
Nineteen-year-old Hoss Cartwright glanced at the bedroom door and then at his older brother. Adam's face was carved out of the same rock as his – a granite-worry that, so far, nothin' had been able to chip away at.
"You know how he is," his brother answered, his voice breaking with the strain of the last two days. "With something like this... Well, all the wild horses on the Ponderosa couldn't drag him away from that bedside."
"Doc said it's pretty bad, huh?"
Adam had been the last one to talk to their family physician. It had been about an hour before the older man had left to return to town to make his rounds. Doc Martin had come out of the sick room and down to the great room ten shades paler.
His older brother ran a hand over his stubbled face. "Actually, Paul said it was hopeless."
It was as if a bolt of lightnin' had struck him. The big teen stumbled. He saw the floor comin' up and felt himself goin' down. A minute before he would have hit the carpet, Hoss felt his brother's strong grip on his arm. A second later he was seated in the chair they had positioned in the upper hall just outside of the sickroom.
"Breathe deep, Hoss. Come on, I need you here with me."
Adam didn't plead. Heck, Adam didn't admit he needed help. The fact that he was doin' both scared him witless.
Swallowing over that fear, he asked, "Do you think he's really...gonna die?" Hoss drew in a breath that was dangerously close to a sob. "What'll we do if he does, Adam?"
He sounded like a kid who needed his Pa's shoulder to cry on.
He was.
Adam's squeezed his arm. His voice choked too. "You know what Pa always says, 'Keep your eyes on the sun and you won't see the shadows.' "
Hoss's eyes went to the bedroom door. He didn't see any sun. All he saw was a door that looked way too much like a stone standin' stark naked over a freshly dug grave.
He drew in a breath. "You think we oughta go in? It's been a good half hour. I mean, somethin' might of...happened..."
Adam rose and turned toward the door. "No. He would have come to get us. But I think you're right. It's probably best we get him back to his own bed."
Hoss squared his shoulders as he stood. "That's right. We gotta think about him. He's still sick hisself. Ain't no tellin', I mean, with that fever he could still..."
Older brother had his hand on the latch. He pivoted to look at him. "Keep your eyes on the sun, Hoss."
Easy to say.
Hard to do.
The door opened onto cavernous darkness. Doc Martin had told them to shut out the light so his patient could rest, so even though outside it was a bright and unusually warm spring day, inside it was black as a tomb.
Hoss winced.
Bad choice of words.
As he and his brother moved into the sick room, the seated figure by the bed didn't stir. His tear-streaked face and glazed eyes were trained on the bed that held all that was dear in the world to him.
He and Adam exchanged a look. Older brother cleared his throat.
They waited.
It took a few heartbeats. Finally, that tear-streaked face turned toward them. The eyes it held were glazed with their own pain. He shouldn't have been out of bed, he was still sick as a dog hisself – but that didn't mean nothin'. They both knew he'd die sittin' there. Doc had told them before he left that if somethin' didn't change soon, he was goin' to sedate him since he wouldn't listen.
'I don't need two Cartwrights dying on me,' he'd growled.
It had been close.
Still was.
Adam moved first, like he always did, takin' things in hand. Hoss watched his twenty-five-year old brother walk over to the side of the bed. He placed both hands on those saggin' shoulders and gently lifted up.
"Come on. You're not well enough to be here. It's time you got some rest," Adam said softly. "One of us will stay."
At first it seemed his words went unheard. Hoss knew they hadn't. He saw that lean body beneath Adam's hands go rigid.
The words were hushed, grief-struck, and filled with rage. "It's all my...fault. I should be lying there, not him. Not him! It should be me dying!"
Hoss ventured closer. "You know he wouldn't want that. You ain't thinkin' clearly."
"I am thinking clearly!" Anger shot him up and out of the chair and away from Adam's grasp. He crossed the room to the door and stood there shakin', still hurtin' from his own wounds and battlin' a deadly fever that was tryin' its best to carry him away. "You don't know. You weren't there." The bluster went out of him, like a sail without wind. Tears fell. "I was! God...I was..."
The big teen exchanged a look with his older brother as the Doc's prediction shuddered through them both. Before them stood a vision straight out of some tale of the knight's of old – the righteous avenger, seekin' justice even at the cost of his own life. Hoss didn't know what to say or how to stop the rumbles that shook the ground under their feet, threatenin' to loose an avalanche of trouble.
Adam looked sick too. He was headin' toward the door and the forlorn figure standin' there when he stopped abruptly and turned back.
Hoss pivoted toward the bed. He'd heard it too. Two words. Just two words.
"Joseph...why..."
The big man heard a sharp intake of breath, a sob, and then the door slammed.
And Little Joe was gone.