"Chapter 4"
The Cartwrights had searched every available direction that was possible in three days' time and there was still no sign of either Little Joe nor of the mysterious Walter Sears. The storms of a few days ago had long since passed and thoroughly erased any signs of where the child and his captor could have gone.
It was Sunday, the Lord's day, but for the first time in a very long time Ben Cartwright was too anxious to listen to the reverend's sermon in church. He prayed only for his little boy's safety—if that made him a poor Christian he would feel badly about it at a later time. He just wanted Joseph sitting beside him in the pew no matter how fidgety the boy could become in his boredom.
The only promising thing about the situation, no matter how morbid the thought was, was the fact that they had not yet discovered a body. That alone gave Ben hope that Little Joe was still alive.
But the fact that there was no ransom note, nor of any hint at all as to why the boy had been taken in the first place, was disconcerting. There was no wish for money, no notes declaring twisted retribution. It was as if Little Joe had merely run away on his own, but that was one possibility that Ben knew in his bones was not why his youngest son was gone. No, he had been kidnapped for only God knew what and Ben was determined to find Little Joe and bring him home safely.
It was difficult for the family of three that still remained at the Ponderosa. Adam wrestled with a sense of guilt that he had not tried harder to discover why his kid brother had seemed so nonplussed by the old man standing on the porch all those days ago; Ben had tried to console him but he was still angry with himself that he had allowed Joe to irritate him past the point of even wanting to confront him. Thinking about it Adam had wondered if perhaps it had been Sears who had broken Little Joe's fingers. He didn't need to talk with his father about that to know that Ben suspected the same thing, and the Cartwrights wanted the old man arrested and punished for that one simple fact.
No one hurt one of their own and got away with it. No man should be cowardly enough to hurt a ten year old child.
Ben didn't sleep. At night the two brothers could hear him pacing downstairs and occasionally hear the scraping of a chair on the floor, and there was once or twice when Adam could hear his door creak open as his father looked in. It was the first time Ben checked up on his sons to see that the ones remaining were safe, but it certainly wouldn't be the last as the years passed. Hoss, though only sixteen, had a natural aptitude towards tracking and frequently asked Ben for permission to go out and look for clues that could help lead them towards his missing brother.
"I'll go with Hoss this time, Pa," Adam spoke up the fourth morning this occurred. Ben had all times before refused to allow Hoss to look, stating that their searches would be done together or not at all, and now Adam hoped to put some weight in favor of going. Little Joe had been gone too long now— they had to find him soon. "You know how Hoss is, you know. All this worrying is going to wear him into a shadow if he keeps it up."
"That's right, Pa," Hoss agreed (only partly joking). "I'm liable to jest start faintin' now I'm worryin' away so much. We'll find Little Joe. We jest gotta."
It was his middle son's optimism that broke through Ben's stubbornness. Hoss was the last to ever lose hope, and where both Ben and Adam had been doggedly ignoring the possibilities of Little Joe being lost to them forever, Hoss looked instead at the knowledge that his kid brother would be found safe and unharmed. There could be no other outcome.
"All right, son," Ben finally caved beneath both Adam's and Hoss's gazes. "I'll ride into Virginia City and see if Roy came up with anything. Just- be careful."
~/~/~/~/~
To Adam's surprise, Hoss chose not to check along the Ponderosa's borders or in the direction of the Indian's grounds. He simply stated that those areas had already been perused and that they needed to think like a man who had just kidnapped a child. He turned his horse's head towards the direction of the desert.
"The desert? Hoss, I can't see why an old man would take a kid out there, it's hard enough for a healthy man to survive—"
"That may be true, Big Brother," Hoss said as he rode, "but if it was Sears who hurt Little Joe before he oughta know that our little brother is slippery as an eel when he wants ta be. I don't think that the old man woulda taken the kid along the woods where it's easier ta lose someone in. And we both know that Little Joe will have tried to get away."
"True," Adam admitted reluctantly. His brother's words were working on him now, though, and his careful mind sifted through the possibilities that were born because of them. Hoss's instincts for Joe were uncanny sometimes, nearly as in-tune as Pa's were, and he was right— Little Joe would have tried to get away from his captive the first chance he could seize. "The desert would make sure that Joe was dependent on him," he thought aloud. "No food, no water— only the things Sears would have brought along to begin with. Take him out far enough in the desert and Joe would have to do whatever Sears wanted him to in order to survive. No more attempts to escape."
"And Joe don't know the desert all that well," Hoss interjected, pleased that Adam had caught on to his thinking. Clever old Adam. "He wouldn't know the way back home no how even if he did manage to give the old man the slip— least ways not in the time it would take to get back."
"And Roy and the posse didn't check out there," his older brother added, warming up to the subject. Sense was falling into place piece by piece. "Maybe Joe's captor was counting on that." He made a conscious attempt to stop himself from labelling Walter Sears as Little Joe's kidnapper— there was still no conclusive evidence to actually label the old man as guilty, and the founding fathers had purposely stated that any man was innocent until proven otherwise. He had remind himself that anger served no purpose when there was no known target for it yet.
It was harder than he thought it would be.
"They never found any evidence that Joe was in those ares." The final piece of knowledge fell between the two brothers as they rode along, hanging there like a sign. The desert, Adam decided, never seemed so far away in his life.
They rode for nearly six hours, making their way steadily lower and lower out of the Ponderosa's trees and out of the mountains entirely. Finally the wide expanse of sun-bleached sand spread out beyond them, hot and unforgiving, and Hoss and Adam glanced at each other nervously.
"Where could they have gone for shelter?" Adam questioned aloud. "There aren't any cabins or the like on this side of the desert."
"Then we'll look on the other side," Hoss replied with dogged determination. "Little Joe didn't jest disappear offa the face of the earth, Big Brother. He's here and we'll find him. C'mon."
Hoss's determination proved to be in their favor. As the sun finished its rise and started its descent for the afternoon, Adam let out a sudden shout of surprise. Over a slight ridge nearer the edge of the desert than in it he spotted a disturbance in the sand, the evidence of a scuffle spread out before him and on a cactus that stood sentinel above it all he grabbed a long strip of soft blue jacket from its spines.
"Hoss!" he cried. His heart was beating frantically in his chest as his brother hastily dismounted beside him, and he heard Hoss's sharp intake of breath when the latter caught sight of what Adam held.
"He's out there, Adam. He's out there!" There was a mix of excitement and nervousness in his voice as he latched even more securely upon the fact that at last they had some evidence that Little Joe was close by somewhere. It took everything Hoss had not to mount back up and ride like mad farther out into the desolate sand but common sense prevailed. He and Adam had not packed enough supplies to make a long trip into the desert and their canteens were low on water anyway. And he knew, too, that Ben would want to be with them when they found their brother.
"If that old man has hurt little Joe…" he growled, but he left the threat unfinished hanging in the air.
Adam didn't need to hear it completed anyway. He swallowed down his own anger and fear seeing the torn jacket and instead focused on the simple fact that there was no blood on the cloth he held. Hopefully their kid brother had done exactly as Hoss had hoped and had chosen to leave part of his jacket behind to leave as a marker for anyone following behind.
"Smart, kid," he whispered to himself, knowing in his heart that that was what had happened exactly. "Hold on, Little Joe. We're coming."
~/~/~/~/~
If Joe Cartwright could have heard Adam's words, he would have been tempted to reply with something sarcastic, but he would have nonetheless then heart from them. He loved his oldest brother— even though ever since Adam had come home from college and they hadn't been getting along real well recently, it still stood that Little Joe couldn't imagine a life without Adam there. As much as they fought and bickered and his oldest brother criticized his actions, all Joe needed to do was imagine Adam injured or even dead and the horror of those thoughts would successfully banish his anger before it could deeply root itself.
Yes, he loved Adam, and he would have ultimately chosen to love the words Adam had spoken aloud if only he could have heard them.
The old man had led the sway-backed nag farther and farther into the desert, along a route the boy was not familiar with, and had finally stopped when reaching a small outcropping of rocks nestled below a cliff, housing a small, rundown cabin that seemed to blend into the surrounding land. Sun-bleached wood shone a dirty grey and seemed to lean awkwardly on three of its corners where one of the cornerstones had worn away.
The door was heavily bolted from the inside by rusted locks that screeched in protest as Sears drove them home. He had deposited the boy roughly into a corner of the small, dusty cabin, sure that Joe wouldn't be able to get up to run anywhere.
Joe's hands ached and throbbed painfully from the punishment he had inflicted upon himself. It had been his decision to fall of the nag when he did, directly in front of that cactus, and although he had been successful in leaving a flap of his jacket sleeve latched onto its lower spines (luckily at an angle Sears in his anger missed) he had managed to impale several of them in his palms at the same time. Pulling them out had not been easy and it had been painful, and Sears refused to use any of the water he had to wash off the blood from Little Joe's hands. He had been sure that the old man was going to tan him good when Sears hauled him upright from the sand, and had nearly shrunk away when the old man's voice rose spouting off some Scripture about boys obeying the laws of those the Lord placed above the lesser, and respecting those older than themselves.
He would have liked it better if Sears had started cursing instead. He didn't know if he would ever be able to listen to another sermon in church after this.
"This is the Lord's day, boy," Sears told him shortly as he turned from the door. His grey hair sat crazily about his head and his blue eyes were cold with warning as he looked at the boy. Little Joe wondered if there was a warm bone in the old man's body at all. "You will observe it. You will respect it. You will not give in to any of your heathenish ways while in this cabin. When you see the sun again you will have learned to let go of the Devil in your soul and embrace the Lord. You will no longer have the mark of Satan."
"I never had it!" Little Joe exclaimed for what seemed to be the hundredth time. His fear and frustration rose for every response to Sears's rants but he couldn't keep silent in the face of such blatant hatred of what Joe's own father said was innocent. What did it matter if he was left-handed? Was one hand really that much more important than the other? If God really was a merciful, just God, then how could He form someone already evil? It was illogical to believe the use of one hand over another was evil, and Little Joe realized what Ben had been trying to tell him.
He didn't suppose that Sears would be willing to listen to reason, though. Like administering medicine to the dead. Little Joe couldn't remember who had written those words but they suddenly seemed very appropriate for the trouble he found himself in.
His thoughts turned briefly to his father, wishing Ben was there to protect him from this madman's ravings, but then he thought again about what Ben had told him before. God was in control.
Little Joe didn't have the faith that Ben Cartwright did, but at that moment he prayed that the Lord would be with him in this cabin until Joe's father could arrive.
