Hoss Cartwright was in danger of slipping sideways off his horse. The monotonous plodding gait of the animal was hypnotic and sleep was rapidly encroaching on his need to keep alert. His eyes were struggling to stay open, no matter how much he strained his forehead to keep his eyelids up. He tried to fix his eyes on his brother's horse ahead of him, but the animal was just a blur. The measured thud-thud-thud of his mount's hooves on the dry earth brought to mind the regular ticking of the old grandfather clock which had stood sentinel in the Ponderosa's ranch house for as long as he could remember. And on a quiet night in front of the fire, that metronomic beat never failed to make Hoss doze off. It didn't help that the oppressive heat of the day still lingered, keeping Hoss's head bowed against the glare of the low sun. He could feel his head nodding as he momentarily lost his battle to stay awake. It was only when he began to sit at an angle in his saddle that he was roused by a sharp call from his younger brother behind him. He raised his head, lazily lifted an arm in acknowledgement and mumbled he was okay.
He wasn't the only one who was tired. His horse was displaying signs of exhaustion. Hoss watched the animal's head pumping up and down as it walked; its breathing heavier than it had been only an hour before. Hoss blinked away his lethargy, sat up straighter in the saddle and then leaned down to rub his mount's neck. It was at times like these he missed Chubb more than ever. Dandy was a reliable replacement, and like his predecessor was half Quarter-Horse and half Thoroughbred. Yet the poor animal was a constant reminder of what had been lost on that fateful day, nearly two years earlier, when marauders had attacked the wagon train Hoss and his family had been accompanying across the desert. The outlaws had murdered their way through the entire caravan, leaving the dead for the carrion and spiriting away anything of value, including the horses. Chubb had been taken, as had Buck, the buckskin ridden by Ben Cartwright, the patriarch of the Cartwright clan. Cochise, the horse belonging to Hoss's younger brother, Joe, had been left at the site of the attack. It was presumed the paint horse's uncommon markings made it too distinguishable to be sold on, even in whatever disreputable markets the outlaws frequented.
But the horses weren't all that were lost that day. Hoss blinked against the glare reflecting off the white sand of the desert and settled his gaze on the gently rocking motion of his older brother, Adam, on the Appaloosa leading the way ahead of him.
Hoss relived the day of the attack over and over in his waking mind and in his dreams. He could recall—as if it was yesterday—the moment he had revived from insensibility, his shoulder screaming in pain from the bullet lodged in there, and his head dizzy from the deep graze along his temple. He had hauled himself to his feet, balancing unsteadily against the large boulder in front of him and had looked for the one member of his family he'd been aware of before the bullet in his shoulder had sent him into temporary oblivion. But Adam was nowhere to be seen, and so Hoss had stumbled down what remained of the once orderly caravan, past the dead and the dying, tripping over the debris left behind when the outlaws had upended boxes and trunks looking for anything of value. Hoss had careered from one wagon to another in an effort to stay upright, all the while scanning, searching, hunting for his family.
He had found his father at the head of the wagon train with the body of Kaufman—the train's leader—sprawled across him. Hoss stumbled quickly towards the two men, and dropping to his knees with a grunt, used his good arm to pull the prostrate German off his father. Kaufman was dead, a bullet to his neck having killed him instantly. Ben lay flat on his back beneath him with a gunshot wound in his side. He wasn't moving. But now the weight was off his chest; his eyes snapped open and he heaved in a breath which quickly became a cough. Hoss would always remember the relief he had felt. He had sat back on his butt and, closing his eyes, raised his face to the heavens to deliver a silent thank-you. Ben's arm groped out towards Hoss and with a strength Ben should not have possessed, gripped his son's sleeve. "Find your brothers," he whispered, before laying his head back against the earth and sucking more air into his lungs.
And Hoss had searched, despite feeling nauseous from the pain in his head and shoulder and the dreadful sights unfolding before him. He lumbered all around the disarray of wagons. Bodies were carefully pushed over onto their backs; he peered behind boulders and clambered into wagons; all on a ceaseless search for his two brothers. In the end, he returned dejectedly to his father with the news both Adam and Joe were missing, and they stayed together on the hot earth, unable to speak, or even to formulate thoughts. Hoss paid no mind to his injuries; he merely sat with his shoulders bowed and his head hanging loosely from his neck.
Salvation came in the form of a lone trader who used Juniper Pass as a convenient cut-through on his constant travels across the western territories. He had rolled gently down the trail, grinding to a hesitant stop at the scene of devastation that opened out before him. At Hoss's desperate plea, he somehow managed to squeeze his cart past the broken wagons and scattered debris and hightailed it as fast as his mule could manage to the nearest town—a three-hour wagon ride away—where help was mobilized. As a cavalcade of riders and wagons rolled up the pass in the early evening, following the same route as the doomed train a half-day earlier, their weapons were at the ready as their eyes scanned the rocky walls and high ridges for any sign of trouble.
A mile before the attack site a keen pair of eyes noticed the body of a young man partially hidden beneath a scrubby bush on the side of the trail. He was approached with care, but they soon discovered he was barely alive as he lay like a broken and discarded toy, his limbs at awkward angles and his skin torn and bloody. He was carefully lifted into the back of a buckboard before the rescue party continued to the site of the massacre.
Hoss choked at the first sight of his younger brother, convinced straightaway no one who looked the way Joe did could possibly be alive. His eyes filled with tears and he jaggedly cried out Joe's name. He was barely able to keep himself upright and clung to the side of the buckboard as his legs grew weak beneath him. It took a tentative touch from one of the rescuers to draw him from his grief and to gently put his misconception right. The boy was alive. But only just. He staggered over to his father and told him that Joe had been found, at which Ben insisted on being taken to him. "You cain't hardly walk, Pa, you'll only bleed out more than y'are." But Ben was adamant. It had taken Hoss and a helper on Ben's other side to lift him to his feet and bundle him over to the wagon, one bloody hand clutching the wound in his side. He stared down at the broken body of his youngest boy. And as Hoss had done before him, he clung to the side of the wagon so tightly his fingernails made indentations in the wood. He extended his hand slowly, his fingers hovering over the still features of Joe's battered face, afraid to touch his son for fear of hurting him more. Hoss watched his father, noticing how his expression remained vacant except for a slight flaring of his nostrils. But then it was though all the weight in his body dropped to his legs and Ben crumbled to the ground in a dead faint. He was placed beside the body of his son.
With two members of his family on their way to the doctor's surgery in the town, Hoss stayed behind on a desperate search for Adam. Whilst the bodies of the dead were gathered, and the few remaining survivors were found, Hoss stumbled across the wreckage, one hand pressed against the hole in his shoulder, ignoring the pleas of the townsfolk for him to rest, or to follow his family to the doctor's. Hoss had only one objective in mind: to find his older brother. And with the help of the rescuers he traversed the sloping, rock-strewn walls of the pass. They looked behind every boulder, cut their hands tearing apart scrubby thicket; they scrambled to the tops of the ridges to search for any sign of the missing man. But their search was fruitless.
The moment it became clear in Hoss's mind that Adam was gone would haunt him for months afterwards. He had half-ran, half-stumbled down the pass away from the wagons, frantically circling and scanning; his hope fading. His helpers could do nothing more than stop, stare and shake their heads sadly at the wounded man whose desperation poured in torrents from his distraught eyes. He had paused mid-step and turned haltingly around. And as the realisation of his family's loss had gained magnitude, Hoss's body had given up and his legs had crumpled beneath him. He had fallen backwards onto his rump, collapsing onto his side with an elbow breaking the rest of his fall. He lay back on the hot earth as the pain he'd been keeping at bay finally consumed him; all he could do was gaze upwards at an oblivious blue sky. For months after, Hoss would wake, lying on his back, and stare at the ceiling of his room. A tear would trickle down the side of his cheek, and he would feel his shoulder start to ache. And each time, an overwhelming sense of loss and despair would engulf him.
No, it hadn't been only the horses that were lost when the wagon train was attacked. For nearly two years Adam's disappearance had been a gaping hole in their lives. At first they had presumed he was missing, perhaps taken by the marauders for ransom. But no letter demanding cash ever reached the Ponderosa. The months turned into a year and none of them would admit to the other they were all thinking the same thought: that Adam was dead. Yet to voice the belief out loud would make it a truth, and that they would never be ready for. And because Adam's fate was unknown, it was the elephant in the room; best not spoken of. It became a matter of sanity and survival to not mention his name, and eventually the routine of life and work took precedence. Ben and his boys were able, once more, to glean some semblance of enjoyment from their lives. It's not that they didn't mention Adam—a toast was raised to him on his birthday and he was remembered in prayers at Christmas—but it was easier to not speak of him on a daily basis. His brothers couldn't fail to notice, however, the faraway look that oftentimes crept into their father's eyes when he glanced at the empty chair at the dining room table. The passage of time didn't make Adam's absence any easier to deal with; instead the elephant seemed to grow larger and avoiding it became all the more difficult.
As Hoss watched his brother's easy gait on the horse in front of him, his shoulders rolling easily from side to side as the horse picked its way along the desert path, Hoss thought back to the day Sheriff Roy Coffee had thundered into the ranch yard. He had whipped a telegram from his pocket, and once more the Cartwrights' lives were upended. The façade they had maintained began to fracture with the news that a man called Adam had been found injured and alone in the desert. Hoss had refused to put any hope into the theory that it might be his brother. They had been disappointed too many times to think this would turn out any differently. But he'd kept up the veneer of hope for his father's sake. And this time, unlike so many others, the trip had not been a waste.
That had been ten days ago. And now the brothers were back in the desert, heading east towards what Adam called Urvare; he no longer referred to it as the Great Salt Lake. And that was only one of the ways in which their brother was different. Oh, he sounded the same, his deep rich tones exactly as Hoss remembered. And he largely looked the same too, despite the ponytail that trailed a short way down his back. He was leaner, that was for sure, and a lot more agile in his movements. There had been a time when he would sometimes jump down from one of the wagons and do a tiny sidestep when the hip he'd hurt as a child refused to behave and take his weight. But now, after nearly two years of living in a Ute Indian village in the mountains east of the lake, Adam moved like a loose-limbed cat. The first time he had dismounted from his horse by throwing his leg over the animal's head and jumping lightly to the ground had left Hoss and Joe standing with their mouths gaping open in surprise.
But one aspect of Adam's character hadn't changed. On occasion he could be a closed book, unwilling to share his thoughts and feelings on what was affecting him at the time. Unfortunately, two years away from his family had not improved that frustrating trait. Only hours after departing from Darwin—the town on the western edge of the great desert where an emotional reunion had taken place—Adam had urged his horse forward ahead of his brothers, opting to ride alone. Hoss had chosen to theorise that perhaps Adam had gotten used to riding single file, the way the Indians did to hide their numbers. He didn't like to speculate that perhaps Adam was choosing not to talk. Hoss had thrown his younger brother a questioning look and seen the same expression of disappointment he knew he wore on his own face. They were brothers, for goodness sake, separated for too long, and this voluntary isolation cut deeply into Hoss's unguarded heart.
There was a shout from the rear. Adam reined in, letting Joe lope up to him, dragging their packhorse behind him.
"Adam, I'm beat. Let's stop now. This is as good a place as any to camp."
Adam twisted in his saddle, looking behind him across the white expanse to where the sun was hovering above the western horizon. He leaned the heel of his hand heavily on the saddle pommel, his shoulders rising into his neck.
"Joe, we've got a good hour of sun left. We can't waste precious time."
Joe's head dropped. He tugged his hat from his head and wiped the sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
"Brother, I know you're anxious to get across the desert, but killing the horses in the meantime isn't gonna get us there any quicker."
Hoss kicked his mount forward a few paces from where he'd been slumped in the saddle.
"Joe's right, Adam. We've only been goin' three days and already the animals are plumb tuckered out. We need to slow it down a pace or we ain't ever gonna get ta the other side."
Adam drew his mouth up into a thin line, his cheeks bunching beneath eyes like dark gashes on his sun-darkened face. He looked towards the lowering sun and then scanned around to the east, to where his wife and child were. His gaze dropped to the ground. A hand gently gripped his forearm and he looked up into the determined eyes of his youngest brother.
"She ain't going anywhere, Adam. We'll get you across the desert; you've got my word on that."
"And mine," promised Hoss.
Adam twisted in his saddle, taking in the faces of his once-lost family. He snorted briefly through his nose as his closed mouth twitched into a smile, and with a nod, he gathered his reins together.
"Okay, let's get off the track; we'll camp between those rocks over there."