Prologue
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"Where's your brother?"
Ben Cartwright watched his middle son halt what he was doing. Hoss was by the front door, taking off his coat. His ten gallon hat was already on the rack.
"I take it you're talkin' about Little Joe?"
Adam had come home the night before dog-tired from supervising the branding. His oldest hadn't made an appearance yet either, even though Hop Sing had given the ten minute warning for breakfast six minutes before.
"Yes, I'm talking about Joseph."
Hoss straightened his collar even as he nodded toward the stairs. "Little Joe's still in bed, Pa. Said he wasn't feelin' so good." His son hesitated before adding, "After what happened yesterday, well, I figured I'd just leave him be."
Ben looked toward the stairs as well. "You checked on him this morning?"
Hoss nodded. "I did, 'fore I went out to check on Maisie's new colt."
The rancher hid his smile. His huge son so loved small vulnerable things. "How is the colt doing?"
The gentle giant beamed. "Just great, Pa! He's one ornery little cuss. I weren't so sure last night he was gonna make it, but he's still with us."
Still with us...
Ben ran a hand over his chin and blew out a sigh. Joe was still with them as well.
Thank God!
"You want me to go check on Little Joe again, sir?" Hoss asked.
He considered it a moment and then shook his head. "I'll go. Why don't you take your seat at the table? Perhaps your presence will mollify Hop Sing's indignation."
Hoss snorted. "I'll tell him I'll eat enough for four. That should make him happy."
"Make that three."
They both turned to find Adam dressed and descending the stairs. He'd caught his oldest and had a word with him before he headed up the night before. All he had given him were the basics - Joe had been taken by the renegade Indians and been forced to kill one of them to save himself and the others.
"Good morning, son. Did you sleep well?"
Adam had reached the floor. He gave him a funny look. "You didn't hear him?"
Ben was puzzled. "Hear who?"
"Joe. He had a nightmare." His eldest pursed his lips. "You might have called it a 'lollapalooza'."
The older man thought a moment. When he'd finally dropped into bed, he'd been just about as exhausted as his youngest from the day's events. He must have slept through it.
And that was tantamount to sleeping through a hurricane!
"Did you wake him?"
Adam shook his head. "I waited outside the door. If it had gotten any worse, I would have, but..." His son ran a hand along the back of his neck - a familiar gesture of unease shared by all his boys. "Well, I didn't want to embarrass him."
So, there had been tears.
No wonder.
"Pa, I heard Joe mention Sharp Tongue. Was he the renegade he had to kill?"
Ben nodded. "Sadly, yes. Your brother had no choice. It was kill or be killed."
Adam was looking back up the stairs. "That had to be tough."
"They was awful close when they was kids," Hoss chimed in as he joined them. "At least for that one year."
'Close' being an operative word, Ben thought.
"Food get cold! You stop yak-yak! Come eat or Hop Sing throw it all out!" a sharp voice chided.
"I'll go get Joe," Hoss offered again as he headed for the staircase.
Ben caught him by the arm. "No, son. As I said, you go eat. I'll check on your brother. After what happened yesterday, it's possible he's really not feeling well."
As he ascended the stairs, the older man reconsidered his words. It was more than possible that Joseph was sick – it was a certainty. His son was sick at heart.
After all, he had been forced to kill a friend.
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Ben paused outside his youngest's bedroom with his hand raised above the door. Joseph was such a sensitive young man – so like his late mother. He felt things deeply. Where another man would weigh out a situation and take action and never look back, Joseph often agonized over the decisions he'd made, questioning whether or not they had been the right ones. In the last two years the boy had been through a great deal. From Seth Pruitt's choice to end his soon-to-be father-in-law's life and his request that Joseph lie for him, to his son's own rather dubious handling of his fear of heights, the boy's metal had been tested. So far Little Joe's character had come out as sterling.
Still, he knew his youngest boy questioned whether or not he was a man.
As he stood there, thinking, Ben heard a sound. He leaned in a little closer and listened. Yes, it was what he'd thought.
A sob.
Ben pursed his lips and considered his own choices and then rapped on the door.
"Joseph. May I come in?"
Silence greeted him; a silence so long he thought his son might pretend to be asleep. Then he heard it, a soft 'yes'. Opening the door, the older man stepped into the room to find his youngest boy was not in bed, but seated by the window. Joseph was still in his night shirt. The rosy light of dawn spilled in the window, highlighting the boy's rampant curls and turning them to spun gold. He had a book in his hands. He couldn't tell what the title was.
"Hoss said you were unwell, son. How are you feeling?"
For a moment Little Joe didn't stir. When he turned to look at him, the rising light glinted off the unspent tears in his eyes. He gave him a little smile.
"I'm okay, Pa. Sorry if I worried you."
"That was quite a fight you were in yesterday," he said softly. "I thought, perhaps..."
Joe looked at his left hand as he shifted it on the book. There were scabs forming on his knuckles and the rest was swathed in bandages. Underneath the bandages there were defensive cuts on his palms, just as there were on his arms and face - painful reminders of his one-time friend's betrayal.
The boy suddenly looked sick.
Quickly crossing the room, Ben knelt beside his son. He reached out to lay his hand on Joe's knee. "I'm sorry, Joseph. I shouldn't have said anything."
The tears were flowing now. "Pa, I..." Joe looked at him, stricken. "Pa, why?"
Why?
How many times had he asked that question? When Elizabeth died. With Inger. And, dear God, in such a grief-stricken voice when the Lord took Marie.
"Why...what, son?"
Why had Lucinda Melvaney gone off on her own? Why had Sharp Tongue turned renegade? Why had his childhood friend wanted to kill him? Why had Joseph been forced to kill his childhood friend?
And the greatest question of all – why did God let it happen?
Joe sucked in air like a drowning man and let the breath out slowly. "You know, Pa," he began, "it really surprised me when I heard he was leading the renegades." Joe snorted. "I mean, Sharp Tongue was always in trouble, but..."
And Sharp Tongue had gotten his young son into trouble as well.
Joseph's fingers had knitted together and they were working against each other, expressing some of the tension he felt. "What surprised me was that he didn't remember what we'd meant to each other." Joe shot him a look. "No, that he remembered and just didn't...care."
Ben rose from his kneeling position and took a seat on his son's bed. "It's hard to judge any other man's actions, son, without knowing his heart."
"He hated me, Pa! He hated me just because I was a white man!" Joe all but shouted. His son winced as his fingers tightened into fists. "Well, I was a white man back when we were boys and it didn't seem to matter then. Maybe it was just because I was always haulin' his butt out of trouble. Maybe he never...cared anything about me. About whether I lived or died."
"Son, men change."
Joseph looked up sharply. There was something in the boy's eyes – he might have named it 'fear'.
"I'm...scared, Pa," he said, his voice sounding small and very young. "I'm scared that I've changed too. And not for the better. How could I...? How can a man kill...a friend?"
Ben thought a moment, giving the question it's due. He cleared his throat. "A man does what he has to do, son. Just like you did when you and Sharp Tongue were boys. It wasn't easy being his friend, but you made the choice because you believed it was right."
His son sniffed. His lips twitched. "You sure didn't think it was right."
It wasn't that he hadn't thought it was right. It was that, like Joseph at this moment, he had been scared - scared by his young son's choice to befriend a troubled Indian boy.
Joseph's finely tuned moral compass – the one that he had instilled in him – had nearly gotten him killed.
Twice.