Revised November 2011

Disclaimer: I do not own any rights to Bonanza or anything affiliated with it.

Breakfast was the time of day Ben treasured the most: where peace and quiet reigned over those too groggy to speak and those too hungry to argue. It was the time of day where a man, such as Ben Cartwright himself, could sit down and read- uninterrupted- from the Territorial Enterprise by the light of the morning sun that gently warmed his back as the homely smell of coffee wafted around the sturdy table. When Ben's three sons would find trouble- and boy, they never had a hard time finding trouble- he would close his eyes and picture himself back at the breakfast table, reading the paper without interruption. The memory never failed to relax Ben's muscles and clear his head enough to untangle his family from the clutches of the Cartwright ingenuity when it came to Ben's least favorite seven-lettered word.

The grandfather clock struck seven and Ben sighed in defeat. Just like that, breakfast was over. He slowly refolded the paper and placed it next to his plate before he looked up at his three sons, waiting for their list of chores. "I'm going to do the bookkeeping all day today, as it's tax season-" Ben closed his eyes and wished breakfast could last another twenty minutes. "So I want you, Adam, to help with the other ranch hands in moving the cattle that aren't calving to the south pasture so Hoss and Joseph could start mending the east fence without too much-" here Ben paused. It was still too close to his precious breakfast to say the T-word. "-difficulty. I asked Hop Sing this morning to pack three lunches for the day. Don't forget them before you leave." Here, Ben looked at his youngest: fourteen year old Joseph.

Little Joe was immediately on the defensive. "It wasn't my fault!" His voice cracked and he scowled before swallowing and going on. "Adam wanted to get out of here quicker 'n lightning so I didn't get the chance-"

"I gave you enough time but you were too tired to be anything faster than-"

"Boys," Ben interrupted, "please. It's too early in the morning for this. Remember your lunches and I'll see you three washed up for dinner tonight."

"Yes, sir," all three replied. Ben nodded and left for the alcove where bills of sale and other hodge-podge covered nearly every inch of his desk. It was going to be a long day.

Adam rode out alone to the east pasture before Hoss and Joe arrived with the buckboard full of beams to mend the fence. He looked out ahead of him to the Ponderosa landscape bathed in the early morning light of the sun and he couldn't help but grin. Back in the east when he was still in college, the wild Nevada landscape was the thing Adam missed most, next to his family. Now, three years after he graduated, he still didn't take the Ponderosa for granted. He shifted his gaze to look toward the east pasture and saw a few men on horses milling about, waiting for more instruction; Adam narrowed his eyes at the sight and urged on his horse to see what the problem was. "What seems to be the trouble?" He asked when he was within earshot of the ranch hands. No one gave any indication that they heard, so Adam decided to aim his question at someone, more specifically at Isaac- a hand the Cartwright's have employed for over a year now. "Isaac?"

Isaac was a man of few words, but the words he spoke were simple and straight to the point. "These boys don't know how to separate the calving heifers from the others."

"What?" Adam asked flatly, "When my pa and I hired them, we specifically asked if they could separate cattle. They all said they could."

Isaac nodded and looked back at the inept hands with his sky-blue eyes, "Yes, but they can't tell the difference." He turned to look at Adam, who had a confused expression on his face. Isaac reiterated, "They don't know the difference between cattle that're calving or not."

"How do you not know?" Adam asked. "Good grief, those heifers are obviously a lot larger than the rest of them. You can pick out a pregnant woman among other women, can't you?"

"I can. I don't know about those boys."

Adam sighed and looked out at the grazing cattle where he could spot five of the first-calf heifers offhand. "Do they know the difference between a bull and a cow?"

Isaac smirked. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Best we take things slow."

Shaking his head, Adam muttered a quick, "They better be fast learners," before he rode up to the greenhorns to start their first lesson of the day.

Back at the house, Hoss and Joe had finished stacking the last of the beams and had gathered their supplies before heading out in the buckboard for the east pasture, where Adam should have been finishing up herding the cattle. After a small dispute about who got to hold the reins, Hoss held them in his large hands while Joe was sulking next to him, his large hat pulled down low over his eyes. A few minutes past in this manner before Hoss spoke up. "Did ya remember your lunch, Little Joe?"

"Yes. It's-" Joe stopped and sighed in defeat, "-it's on the water trough in the front yard. I'll go get it." Joe jumped off the moving buckboard and ran back to fetch his handkerchief that tied all of his lunch together. He ran as fast as he could on his gangly legs, not knowing if Hoss would stop the buckboard to wait, and Joe didn't bother to look back to find out. When Joe reached the water trough, he saw that his new paint horse, Cochise, was digging her whiskery nose into his lunch to get at the dried apple Hop Sing had packed. "No, Cochise! No!" Joe quickly took his handkerchief out of Cochise's reach and, in the process, accidentally dropped the rest of his lunch into the water trough with a splash. "Why is it always me?" He quickly scooped his handkerchief out of the water, but the damage was already done.

"Number three son always make trouble for himself!" Joe turned toward the house and saw Hop Sing come out of the kitchen door in an angry huff. Whenever Hop Sing was angry, Little Joe was always reminded of a clucking hen and Joe giggled, the image again appearing in his mind. "Wet food not funny!" Hop Sing shook his finger.

"Sorry, Hop Sing," Joe calmed down his giggles. "Could you make me another lunch?"

"Number three son worse than number two son! Number two son at least eat his food!" Hop Sing snatched Joe's wet handkerchief away and bustled back into the kitchen where Joe heard him clanging the pots and pans and bursting off into a tirade of Chinese.

From inside the solitude of the alcove, Ben could hear Hop Sing in the kitchen going off about something, no doubt about one of his sons. Breakfast was so quiet, Ben wistfully thought to himself as he pinched the bridge of his nose. If only it could have gone throughout the day.

"Number three son eat lunch. Not put in water!" Hop Sing directed when he gave Joe his second lunch in a red checkered napkin.

Joe saluted Hop Sing with a grin, "Yes, sir."

"Chore time, go!" Hop Sing waved Joe off with both hands. Then, as Joe was running off to catch up with Hoss, Hop Sing yelled once more, "No chores, no dinner!" He watched Joe's backside disappear and he shook his head as he turned to go back into the house, "Cartwright sons are much trouble. Hop Sing get gray hair like Mister Cartwright!"

It didn't take long for Adam to explain to the fresh ranch hands the difference between first-calf heifers and the other cows but it took longer than he wanted. Even after the lesson, the hands had a hard time judging which cows were which, so the going was slow. In the end, Adam and Isaac separated the thirty head themselves to speed up the process. Once the cows were separated, the hands, Isaac, and Adam worked together to herd the slow-moving bovines to the south pasture the same time Hoss and Little Joe appeared over the hill with the buckboard full of beams and supplies to fix the fence. "What took you two so long?" Adam called irritably to his younger brothers.

"Little Joe forgot his lunch back at the house," Hoss replied with a grin, "but it looks like we still got here on time."

Adam bit his lip to keep his comments to himself, realizing the hands would have heard him. Adam instead waved off his brothers with a "See you at dinner," before he turned back around on his horse and rode off with the cattle.

Adam and the hands were herding the cows smoothly for two hours until they stopped for lunch, where Adam saw one of the hands pull out a large bottle of whiskey from his saddle bag where he took a long swig of it before passing the bottle around to the other greenhorns. Isaac shook his head when he and Adam exchanged glances, "This is their second lesson, Adam. Consequences."

After the lunch break, the men mounted their horses again and took off. With alcohol in their systems, the new ranch hands weren't thinking as clearly as they should have, so when the herd reached a muddy, low laying creek, they accidentally led the cattle too close to the bank and before they could stop the lead cow, she slipped on the mud and slid down into the creek where it promptly became stuck. Three other cows followed the lead into the water before Adam could catch up on his horse from the rear to direct the other cows away. Once Adam rerouted the herd's path, he rode back to the hands seeing red.

"Who has that bottle?" He growled, staring down each of the hands. Once of them shakily took out the bottle that still held a mouthful of whiskey. "Give it here, boy." The young man tossed the bottle to Adam, too afraid to get within arm's length of the angry Cartwright. When Adam caught the bottle, he quickly dismounted his horse and threw the bottle out of sight and into the trees. Everybody heard the small tinkling of the bottle breaking on impact when it hit the ground. "From now on, the drink stays in Virginia City. If you can't handle that, then you can leave right now." No one moved. "Isaac brought rope with him. You're to help us take those four cows out of the creek. Get off your horses and start earning your pay."

Why couldn't I mend the fence today? Adam thought to himself with an inward groan.

"Hoss, why is it that mending a fence is easy but you need at least two people to do it?" Joe asked Hoss as they were unloading their buckboard.

"Well, Little Joe," Hoss dropped the post on the ground where he was making a pile and looked up at his wiry younger brother, "I think it's because if one is as scrawny as you, then you'll need someone as strong as me to help you hold the beams straight."

"I ain't scrawny!" Little Joe's voice cracked and he groaned in frustration. "How long is my voice going to crack like this?"

"Oh, I'd give it another five years."

"Hoss!"

Hoss laughed heartily and ruffled Joe's curly, brown hair, "C'mon, Short Shanks, we've still got some beams t' unload." The two quickly unloaded the rest of their supplies just as a calving heifer nearby gave out a soft moan. Hoss shot up his head and saw the cow arch her back, "Joe, I gotta go help that heifer, she's birthin' and it looks like that little calf can't wait t' get outta there." Then without a backwards glance he slowly climbed over the fence and crept over to the cow.

Little Joe watched his older brother pat the cow affectionately and thought out loud, "I can mend the fence myself. It's not that hard." He rubbed his hands together and got to work getting rid of the rotting posts and beams.

After two hours of hard work, Joe took off his corduroy jacket in an attempt to cool off and decided to take a break for lunch. "Hey, Hoss," he called, "You hungry?"

"I'm as hungry as ever, Little Joe," Hoss started, not moving from the arching heifer, "but this heifer's gonna birth sooner rather than later. Why don't you come up real slow with my lunch and canteen and I can eat it over here."

Joe didn't understand why Hoss thought the heifer would give birth at any moment, it could be hours from now, but he complied with the request. He slowly made his way to Hoss where he dropped his brother's lunch on the ground before he walked back to the buckboard to eat his own. While he ate, he admired the little handy work he had accomplished and visualized the finished product at the end of the day. Joe wiped the crumbs of his chicken sandwich off his face when he was finished and rolled up his sleeves to get back to work.

Hoss, meanwhile, was right in his prediction: as soon as Joe walked away, the heifer moaned louder with a new contraction. "It's all right, ma'am, you're doin' fine," he murmured to the cow. To get ready, Hoss washed his hands with the water in his canteen and found a better position to sit on his haunches. After three hours, the birth was over and Hoss was wet and slimy on his hands and front and couldn't wash his hands fast enough to tuck into to his forgotten lunch on the grass. There's nothin' like bringin' a new life into the world, he thought as he chewed on a piece of his sandwich, watching the new mother lick her calf clean, though it sure does make me hungry.

Very proud of his work, Joe took a step back from the fence and grinned as he surveyed his masterpiece. The new posts were tilting this way and that and none of the beams were straight, but Joe did all of the work without help and was blind to all the errors. Joe took another step back to appraise the rest of his craftsmanship, but a spare beam on the ground caught his heel. Joe gave a yelp as he fell backwards onto the brush that led into the nearby forest, though thankfully his torso fell on a soft patch of leaves. Little Joe let out a puff of air before he opened his eyes to the sky after his soft impact. A leaf of what he was laying on was dangling in front of his face and, studying it intently, he realized what it was. Joe's mouth opened wide in shock before he leaped up from the crumpled poison oak patch. Almost immediately he felt an itch on his bare arms.

"H-Hoss! Hoss!" Joe called with panic in his voice.

Hoss looked up from his sandwich, "What's the mat-" he noticed the fence, "-Joe, did you fix that fence blindfolded with one arm tied behind your back?"

Joe was too busy itching to even register what Hoss yelled before he called out, "I fell into poison oak!"

"Dadburnit, Little Joe!" Hoss cried. He swallowed the rest of his sandwich and jogged over to his brother. "I think mud helps stop the itch."

"You think or you know?" Joe asked as he tried to scratch an unreachable spot on his back. He shook his head and a new itch sprung up on his neck, "Never mind, I don't care. Where's the nearest creek?"

Adam was irritated, to say the least. He was covered from head to toe in mud and grass from trying to pull out the cattle stuck in the creek with the help from Isaac. At first, the three new ranch hands tried to help the two, but in Adam's opinion, all they did was create more problems: they weren't nearly as experienced as they said they were when he and his father interviewed them. The hands took the hint and idly stood by, watching Isaac and Adam pull out each cow from the muddy creek. "After this, they're fired," Adam spoke through clenched teeth as he roughly tied Isaac's rope around the last cow's middle.

"Wouldn't expect anything less," Isaac commented, wiping a new splatter of mud off his cheek. He looked up from Adam and saw Hoss and Joe on the buckboard, Little Joe continuously shifting around in his seat. He looked back at Adam and nodded, "Looks like your brothers came to help."

"What?" Adam asked incredulously. He climbed up the muddy incline out of the creek, slipping once, to get a good look at his brothers. "They're supposed to be working on the fence. That's why we're moving these cows." Adam wiped his muddy hands on his equally muddy shirt, "Can nothing get done right around here?"

Hoss was driving the team too slow for Little Joe. As soon as he saw Adam rise up from the creek, he jumped off the buckboard and ran the rest of the way to the bank where he promptly gave a whoop of joy before jumping into the muddy water, scaring the last cow out of her wits and splattering everybody within a ten foot radius with water and mud. "At least Little Joe's enjoying himself," Isaac wryly commented once he got a good hold on the rope from the bucking cow.

The cool mud felt like heaven on Joe's itchy skin. He sat up to rub some more mud on the back of his neck and when he looked up after he saw that Adam's fists were clenched at his sides and that his jaw was working. Joe knew these weren't good signs for him and he shrank a few inches. "H-Hey, A-Adam. I didn't- didn't see you there."

Adam's lips formed a thin line, "You're supposed to be mending that fence."

"I finished it," Joe grinned. "But as I was lookin' it over, I accidentally fell into a patch of poison oak and Hoss said mud helps stop the itching, so we came over here."

"Wait," Adam held up his hand, "you finished mending the fence? Where was Hoss in all this?"

Hoss heard his name as he met them at the muddy embankment, still sitting on the buckboard, "A heifer was calvin', so I was helpin' her while Little Joe was mendin' the fence."

"Great. Just great." Adam turned around to face the open Ponderosa country, trying to calm himself down. He turned back a few seconds later. It didn't work. "So Joe mended the fence himself. How crooked does it look?" Then to Joe- "How much wood did you waste?"

"Hey!"

"Now, that ain't fair, Adam, and you know it," Hoss stood up for his younger brother. He jumped off the buckboard, confusion setting into his face as he saw that both Isaac and his brother were wet and dirty, "Why are you all full o' mud?" Hoss turned to Isaac and surveyed the situation with furrowed eyebrows. "Let me help ya, Isaac." He slipped past Adam and slid down behind the cow to help Isaac heave her up and away from the muddy creek. "There now. You want us to follow you in the buckboard?"

"You should probably fix the fence Joe tried to mend instead of watching Isaac and myself work," Adam snapped.

"Well, it ain't that bad," Hoss shrugged, causing Joe to grow taller. "Yeah, it needs some work, but it'll keep the livestock fenced in." Adam still didn't look convinced. "Adam, give him some credit. He mended that fence all by himself without any direction what-so-ever. It's probably a lot better than what you could do at fourteen."

Adam angrily replied, "It's also probably a lot worse than what we need."

"Lighten up, will ya?" Hoss looked down into the creek at Joe, who had returned to his normal height at Adam's comment, "Hey, Little Joe, I think Adam here needs a nice dip in the water to cool that hot head of his, what d'ya think?"

Little Joe's light returned to his eyes and he giggled as he slipped up the incline, "I think that's exactly what our older brother needs."

Amid Adam's frustrated protests, Hoss grabbed his arms and Joe snatched his feet up off the ground. Isaac laughed, "I think I'll leave Adam up to you boys, it looks like you got him covered." Then with a wave, Isaac mounted his horse and led both the hands and the cattle to the south pasture.

"On the count of three, Little Joe."

"Got it."

"You two put me down! This is ridiculous-"

"One, two, three!" Adam landed with a satisfying splash that left Hoss in guffaws and Joe in giggles. The two younger brothers slipped down the slope. "Are ya cooled down now, Adam?" Adam was still lying on his back, water flowing past his body in miniature rapids.

"No," Adam grinned, "but this'll do the trick!" He sat up and grabbed his brother's belt buckles, pulling them down face-first in the mud. Hoss and Joe yelped in surprise before they landed, making Adam laugh with pleasure in his revenge.

Hoss spit out the muddy water that found the inside of his mouth before he pulled up his sleeves, "That's it, Adam. Whaddya say, Joe? Two on one?"

"Attack!" Little Joe's voice cracked, making his battle cry sound more like a squeal. He and Hoss mauled Adam, starting the rough housing that lasted a good fifteen minutes before they were all out of breath from laughing and rolling in the mud. While he was catching his breath, Hoss looked up to the sky and saw that the sun was setting in the west. He gave a cry of despair his brothers falsely attributed to pain. "You okay, Hoss?" Joe asked, his head locked in the crook of Adam's arm.

"We're gonna miss supper if we don't leave right this minute!" Hoss, in his eagerness to climb up the slope, had trouble and slipped and slid until he was absolutely covered in mud and soaked to the skin. "If we aren't there and washed up in time, Hop Sing'll really go back t' China!"

Adam chuckled as he and Joe followed Hoss up to the buckboard, "Hop Sing just says that because he knows it gets to you. It's the only leverage he has."

"Leverage or not, I'm hungry so I'm leaving now." Hoss climbed aboard the buckboard and Joe hopped in after him. Adam waved the two off before he got on his own horse in much higher spirits than he had earlier that day.

Inside the barn, Ben was whistling a tune as he was feeding and watering the horses before dinner. He had been in a fairly good mood all day, accounting to the fact that he had organized everything he wanted to and the Ponderosa broke even this year after taxes with a little extra profit. Soon Ben heard the buckboard come into the yard so he put a wide grin on his face and left the horses to their own devices as he met his sons outside. "Well, boys, how did the fence-" Ben stopped when he saw the state his boys were in: they were dripping with water and caked with mud. Their clothes were absolutely ruined beyond any hard washing from Hop Sing. Ben felt his blood pressure rise, but quickly thought of the calm morning light at breakfast earlier that day before he spoke again. "What happened to you three?" He asked sternly with his steady gaze. All three opened their mouths to answer, but Ben held up his hand. "On second thought, just get washed up. I have a feeling this is going to have a long explanation, so we'll discuss this over dinner." Ben shook his head and walked inside the house without a second glance.

"D'you think he's mad?" Joe asked as he, Hoss, and Adam watched their father retreat into the house. He scratched behind his ear to pick at a small cake of mud that had dried.

Adam dismounted and led his horse into the barn, "We'll find out soon enough."

Hoss looked over at Joe and sighed. "I don't like the sound o' that." Joe nodded his head in agreement.

Once the boys finished cooling off their horses and putting away the buckboard, they trampled over to the bath house where Hop Sing was pouring in the last bucket of steaming hot water into the tub. He looked up at the three boys and he pointed an accusing finger at them. "Cartwright sons big trouble for Mister Cartwright and Hop Sing! You three wash e'rywhere before Hop Sing feed you supper!"

Joe didn't need telling twice- he was itchy again now that the mud was starting to dry. He peeled off his clothes and jumped into the tub, beating his older brothers to the punch. Hot water sprayed everywhere, compelling Hop Sing to, for the second time that day, rant angrily in Chinese toward the youngest Cartwright. "Sorry, Hop Sing," Joe laughed amid Hop Sing's gibberish, "I was just itchin' t' get all this mud off!"

"Hop Sing give up! Give up on Cartwright's! Hop Sing go back to China!"

Hoss's frightened expression was almost comical in the way his mouth made a perfect circle and how a chip of mud fell off his chin at the sudden movement of his face. "Hop Sing, you can't go back t' China! What're we gonna eat? What am I gonna eat? You're only the best cook alive!" Hoss gave Joe a beady eye, "Little Joe, you better mind yourself, because if Hop Sing leaves, you're gonna have t' look forward to my cooking!"

Hop Sing's whole demeanor changed, "Number two son very good! Hop Sing stay!" He then left to take care of supper, though not before shooting a glare in Little Joe's direction.

Once Hop Sing left, Adam looked up towards the ceiling with a smirk on his face as he spoke the word "Leverage," in a sing-song voice. Hoss shoved Adam in retaliation and the latter laughed at how he struck a nerve.

After mumbling Grace, Ben gazed at the other occupants of the supper table warily. His son's were clean, but they had yet to explain what had happened, which was making him nervous. Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe had tucked into the roasted duck as easily as Ben sipped his coffee during breakfast that morning, but he had yet to even touch his utensils. "Pa?" Joe asked, "Somethin' wrong?"

Ben hesitated. Would he really want to know the answer? Calmly, he cleared his throat and his son's ears pricked up on high alert, "Why were you three full of mud when you came in this afternoon? Please, one at a time."

His sons looked at each other with frowns on their faces and Ben inwardly groaned. It wasn't as bad as he thought. It was worse. Coffee, newspaper, he thought to himself, soft morning light warming my back and there are no interruptions, no problems, no trouble. The smell of coffee and the feeling of the paper between my fingers and the warmth of the sun on my back-

"Well, you see, Pa," Adam started off after losing the staring contest between his brothers, "the hands we hired recently don't know what they're doing, so after I taught them the difference between a calving cow and the rest, we led them out of the pasture like you wanted, but the hands led four of them into the creek on the way there and they got stuck. Isaac and I had to pull them out and by that time, I was all muddy-" he scratched his nose before going into a tangent "-We have to fire those hands, they're incapable of doing anything-"

"Meanwhile," Hoss cut in, scratching his shoulder, "I was helpin' a birthin' cow while Little Joe was mendin' the fence by himself-"

Adam cut in as he scratched his chest, "-Which we need to re-mend-"

Joe's hazel eyes narrowed, "Like you can mend a fence yourself as well as I can, you Yankee Granite Head!"

"You just watch! I'll fix what you did single-handedly tomorrow-"

"Boys," Ben pinched his nose and shut his eyes. Coffee, newspaper, soft morning light warming my back and there is no trouble, no problems, "Please. I just want to know what happened today that left you three all muddy. We will discuss the issue of the mended fence after supper." He pointedly looked at Adam and Joe.

Little Joe picked up where Hoss left off, "Well, I stepped back to look at my handiwork when I tripped and fell in a patch of poison oak-" he scratched his arm "-and Hoss said that mud helped stop the itch, so we stopped by the creek where we found Adam. Adam was pretty mad about the hands so once I jumped into the creek, Hoss and I threw him in and after that, we rough-housed for a bit until we left for supper."

Ben sighed. He looked at his three sons- Adam, scratching his arm; Hoss, scratching his chin; and Joseph, scratching the back of his neck- and he squeezed his eyes shut as if in pain. Soft morning light warming my back as I read the newspaper and there is no trouble, no problems, "Who was the first one to take a bath after all this?"

"I was," Joe answered happily.

Ben passed a heavy hand over his eyes, "Let alone the contact you had while the three of you were fighting was bad enough, did you not give it a second thought that maybe, since you had poison oak, you should have bathed last so as not to spread it to your brothers?" He looked up at the three boys still scratching themselves, though more self consciously than before.

"Um, well…" Joe shrugged and scratched his wrist before replying, "no."

Hoss frowned as he scratched his collarbone, "So does that mean Adam and I have poison oak too?"

Adam answered for his father, scratching his forearm, "Probably not as bad because we didn't fall on the plant, but it was transferred."

"So what do we do now?"

"I don't know, Hoss," Ben replied, massaging his temples. "Does Hop Sing have a salve you three could-" His head shot up at a realization that, at the same moment, Adam also had.

"Hop Sing." Adam said, "He doesn't know. You think when he was dumping out the water that he might have been splashed-"

A rapid string of Chinese was heard from inside the kitchen, followed by a "Hop Sing full of itches!" He entered the dining room scratching his arms, "Hop Sing itchy with bath water! Hop Sing go back to homeland where water not itchy!"

Ben looked up at the grandfather clock. Eleven more hours until breakfast. Eleven more hours until I can read the paper and smell coffee and feel the sun on my back through the window and where it will be peaceful and quiet. "It's poison oak, Hop Sing. Joseph fell into a patch this afternoon."

"Cartwright's are trouble! Too much for Hop Sing!" Hop Sing left for the kitchen were a series of crashes from pots and pans were heard amid more Chinese.

For the eighth time that day, Ben wished breakfast had never ended.