Chapter Four

Adam's final semester at Harvard flew by, punctuated by several "last nights out" with his friends that typically ended with at least one young man, including Adam in turn, being horribly sick. Most of Adam's friends were headed to jobs in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, and they teased him good-naturedly about returning to Nevada to build the grandest barn the country had ever seen, though more than one secretly wished he, too, was heading west.

In April, Adam received a letter from his father saying that Little Joe was recovering from the measles and would not be traveling with Ben and Hoss to Adam's graduation the following month. Adam was disappointed he would have to wait longer to be reunited with his youngest brother, but he was glad he was not the one who had had to tell Little Joe he was staying behind. The fit that boy must have pitched probably shook the entire Utah Territory. Regardless, Adam felt bad for Little Joe and resolved to take him on a grand adventure someday.

Four days before graduation, Benjamin and Hoss Cartwright's steamship arrived in New York City, where Jacob, Hannah, and Josie met them, just like they had done for Adam nearly three years prior. Jacob and Ben had not seen each other since before Adam's birth twenty years ago, and neither man could stanch their tears.

"Jacob," Ben said huskily, "thank you. Thank you for looking after for my boy."

"Don't mention it." Jacob's voice wavered, too. "You would have done the same for Josephine."

At the mention of his niece, Ben glanced around for the girl. When he spotted her, his breath caught, much as Adam's had the first time he had met Josie. As Ben greeted his niece for the first time, Josie dutifully took a handkerchief from her dress pocket and dried his face.

"You look so much like your Aunt Elizabeth," Ben said softly.

"That is what I have been told, sir," Josie sweetly chirped. "People mistake Adam and me for brother and sister all the time." This fact clearly pleased the little girl, and it made her uncle smile. He was glad Adam had found someone to belong to and who so clearly belonged to him.

Then Josie spotted her cousin Hoss.

"Whoa!" The little girl's exclamation was so loud that several other people on the boat dock turned to look. "You're huge!"

Hoss blushed and ducked his blond head. "Reckon I am," he said, looking around at the more diminutive New Yorkers around them. A month shy of his fourteenth birthday, the boy already stood six feet and one inch tall, the same height as his twenty-year-old brother.

"Are you sure you are as young as they say you are, and you haven't been misinformed?"

Hoss furrowed his brow at this unexpected query and tried to work out a response. Hannah shushed her daughter and reminded her to be polite.

"Sorry," Josie said to Hoss. "Adam just told me you were his LITTLE brother, that's all."

"Oh, well, I was littler than him last he saw me. Not by much, though."

"Hoss here hasn't been little a day in his life!" Ben said, slapping his boy's back. "Now let's go put some food in him!"

The Cartwrights departed the dock for their hotel, and the next morning the five of them set off on the train for Boston, where they received a polite if chilly greeting from Rachel Stoddard, at whose house they were staying. Rachel and Adam had reached an understanding after the events of last Christmas, but she still felt no warmth toward the man who had come for her nephew. She did, however, find herself unexpectedly delighting in Hoss's presence, despite her determination to remain strictly anti-Cartwright. Though man-sized, Hoss maintained the sunny disposition of a happy-go-lucky boy and was uncommonly kind to man and beast alike. He unwittingly endeared himself to her forever when that first evening he gently removed a splinter from the paw of Rachel's beloved white terrier. The dog had bared its teeth and snarled at anyone who had tried to render assistance, but after an hour of sitting near the dog and talking softly to it, Hoss had coaxed the animal to him and pulled out the splinter with surprising deftness for someone with hands the size of saucers.

Jacob observed that perhaps his older brother should send Hoss back east for school when the time came. "He'd make quite a doctor himself," he said approvingly.

"Oh no, sir," Hoss replied politely. "I don't much care for book learnin'. I can read and write and do my figures, but I'd rather be out there doin' stuff than sittin' around reading about it."

"I couldn't run the Ponderosa without him," said his proud father.

The next morning, the five Cartwrights and Rachel boarded a train for the short ride up to Cambridge. Hoss could hardly sit still for the excitement of seeing his older brother again after nearly three years apart. Ben was equally excited but contained himself better than his 13-year-old son. He cared deeply for all three of his boys, but Ben and Adam had a special bond. For five years after the death of Adam's mother, the boy was all that Ben had had, and the pair had seen each other through many difficult situations, not the least of which were the deaths of Ben's second and third wives. Ben regretted that Adam had needed to grow up so quickly, but he was grateful he had been able to provide his son with a university education that allowed him time to discover who he was apart from his family and maybe even to let loose a little.

Adam was waiting eagerly on the platform well before the Boston train pulled into the Cambridge station. Hoss spotted him through the train window and nearly deafened everyone aboard shouting "PA! PA! There he is! There's Adam!" Forgetting all his manners, the giant boy shoved past everyone else in their car and burst out the door before the train had fully stopped. Adam had just enough time to register that his burly younger brother was charging full-speed toward him but not enough time to step out of the way. All 230 pounds of Hoss Cartwright slammed into him, knocking both young men to the ground and causing a chorus of alarmed gasps and "Well I never!"'s to erupt from the other people on the platform.

"Sorry 'bout that, Adam," Hoss said sheepishly. He rose to his feet and extended a hand to his older brother. "My excitement done got the better of me."

"S'ok," Adam croaked, clutching at his ribs and trying to regain the wind Hoss had knocked out of him. He took his brother's proffered hand and was startled by the ease with which the younger boy pulled him to his feet. Upright once more, Adam looked directly into the bright blue eyes of the boy who three years earlier had been six inches shorter than him. "Pa wasn't exaggerating in his letters," Adam said as he shook his head in wonder. "You DID get big!" He moved in for a proper hug and immediately regretted it when Hoss nearly squeezed the air right back out of him.

"Hoss! Hoss! Don't kill him!" Ben Cartwright called as he half walked, half jogged up to his sons. He pulled Adam to safety and into his own arms. Father and son embraced for several long moments, finally reunited after their longest separation. Ben eventually stepped back, holding Adam's face gently in both his hands and wiping a stray tear from his son's cheek. "Adam, you look good, son. New England has agreed with you?"

Adam smiled. "Yes, sir."

Ben dropped his hands and slapped his son's back. Then he stepped aside as a blue and white blur raced toward them and launched itself into Adam's arms. Adam caught his little cousin and swung her around. Josie squealed with delighted laughter and threw her arms around Adam's neck. Ben's heart melted at the sight of his son and his niece so overjoyed to see one another. He felt a brief spasm of pain as he thought how wonderful it would have been to have given Adam a little sister. Had Elizabeth lived, he realized, that little sister probably would have looked just like Josie.

"So," Adam said, still holding Josie and turning toward his father, snapping the man out of his reverie, "how angry was Little Joe when you told him he couldn't come along?"

Ben rolled his eyes heavenward. "It was pretty bad," he said, shaking his head at the memory of the colossal tantrum his seven-year-old son had thrown.

"Yeah," Hoss agreed, "he screamed for three days and then wouldn't speak to anyone for another three."

Adam's chuckling cut off abruptly as a horrific thought occurred to him. "You didn't just leave him on the ranch with Hop Sing, did you?!" The Cartwrights' cook and housekeeper was a kind man, but Little Joe could test anyone's limits.

"Goodness gracious, no!" Ben thundered. "He's staying in Carson City with the Larsons."

"That's a shame," Adam said. "The Larsons have always been good friends. Now they'll never speak to us again."

The Cartwrights' laughter was interrupted as Jacob, Hannah, and Rachel made their way through the crowd and greeted their nephew, who set his cousin down on her feet. The adults started fussing about getting to their hotel and cleaning up for supper, and before the three younger Cartwrights knew what was happening, the adults had whisked away off the platform, leaving the younger generation behind and confused.

"That was rude," Josie observed.

"Come on," Adam said, offering one arm to Josie and draping the other across Hoss's shoulders. "We better catch up. We wouldn't want to miss supper."

Adam's graduation from Harvard two days later was a grand affair. Ben frequently had to shush Josie and Hoss, who could not stop giggling over how ridiculous they thought Adam looked in his gown and mortarboard, but when the university president announced "Adam Benjamin Cartwright, summa cum laude," Josie and Hoss clapped until their hands stung.

"What's that mean, Pa?" Hoss asked, still clapping.

"It means 'With highest honors.'"

"So Adam did real good in school?"

"He certainly did." Ben unconsciously puffed up his chest.

"I am going to graduate with highest honors someday," Josie announced when the family had reunited with Adam after the ceremony. She decided her cousin's mortarboard was no longer so silly when he let her wear it, and she twirled around to make the tassel spin.

"I can see that," Jacob said amusedly.

Ben and Hoss accompanied Adam to his dormitory to help him move out his things. After Adam bade farewell to his friends and promised to write, they met back up with the rest of the family at their hotel.

The next day the entourage returned to Boston to deposit Rachel, whose farewell to Adam and Hoss was tearful but to Ben was chilly.

"Don't ever forget," she whispered into Adam's ear as she hugged him, "it was never your fault." Adam nodded, clasped her hands briefly, and followed his family to their waiting cab.

They continued on the train to Washington, where they spent a week helping Jacob, Hannah, and Josie prepare for the long voyage to Nevada.

Josephine attempted to pack everything she owned. "It might be useful, Adam!" she insisted whenever he tried to talk her into leaving a particular object at home. In the end, Josie's packing was limited by the spatial confines of the single small trunk her parents permitted her to take. Once her clothes, shoes, and a few books and hair ribbons were in the trunk, there was no remaining space for the letter opener, magnifying glass, or portrait of Thomas Jefferson she had insisted were vital to their journey.

The night before the Cartwrights' departure, Josie was too excited to sleep. She had never traveled more than three days from home, and the thought of traveling for four weeks to so distant a land as Nevada was unimaginable. As Adam sauntered down the hall that night to go to bed himself, he saw a light emitting from under his cousin's door. Adam knocked softly and heard a tiny gasp from inside the room, followed by the familiar sound of a small person diving into bed. Chuckling, he opened the door a few inches and stuck his head in.

"Oh, Adam, it's you," Josie sighed in relief. She had been about to pretend she had fallen asleep while reading, but she now set her book aside.

"It's past ten, Josie," Adam gently admonished. "You should be asleep."

Josie flung herself dramatically back onto her pillows. "How can I possibly sleep when the whole WORLD is in front of me?"

Adam smiled and stepped all the way into the room so he could sit on the edge of the bed next to Josie.

"If you don't sleep now, you'll sleep right through our train ride to New York tomorrow," he reasoned.

"I have been to New York plenty of times," Josie pointed out. "It really is not as exciting as everyone says. But the ship, Adam! I have never been on a steamship before! Do you think I will be seasick? I hear people get sick sometimes on ships."

"You come from a long line of sailors and sea captains. I expect you will be all right."

This failed to settle Josie down any – she continued to bounce up and down - so Adam pulled off his shoes, swung his legs up on the bed, and leaned back against the headboard next to her. She snuggled up next to him and laid her head on his chest. Instinctively, Adam wrapped his arm protectively around her thin shoulders. A wave of déjà vu washed over him, and his memory flashed back to a night when he had held Little Joe in just this way as the small boy sobbed into his shirt. Joe had been just shy of his fifth birthday when his mother died and Ben, nearly broken with grief himself, had been unable to comfort him. It had fallen to Adam to put his little brothers to bed that terrible night, and Joe had clung to him and cried until he fell asleep from exhaustion. Automatically, Adam began humming "Amazing Grace," which he had sung to Joe that night to lull the heartbroken little boy to sleep. His free hand reached up and absently stroked Josie's dark hair. Josie sighed contentedly, and her breathing slowed and evened out. When Adam was sure she was asleep, he carefully slid off the side of the bed and eased Josie onto her pillows. He pulled the covers up around her shoulders, kissed her forehead, and extinguished the lamp and left the room, closing the door quietly.

Josie rose before dawn the next morning and set about waking everyone else in the house. Her excitement spilled over to Hoss, and by breakfast the two of them were dancing around the sitting room and shouting at everyone not to forget anything. When it was time to leave the house, Josie and Hoss raced each other out the front door and down to the two waiting cabs, where their fathers intercepted them and gave the children stern lectures on minding their manners or no one would be going anywhere. They were then directed onto separate cabs, the men loaded the luggage, and the entourage was off. Adam craned his neck to watch the house – his second home – grow smaller until they turned a corner and he could see it no longer.

Once on board the train to New York City, Josie insisted on sitting next to Hoss so she could tell him about everything they could see out the window. The lesson never came to fruition, however, as within ten minutes of pulling out of the station, both children were sound asleep, Hoss with his face smashed up against the window and Josie with her head on Hoss's broad shoulder. They woke for lunch and then, bellies full of hot food, fell asleep again. By the time they arrived in New York City late that afternoon, however, Hoss and Josie had come back around, and Hoss listened politely while his cousin showed off her knowledge of the city.

The next morning, the six Cartwrights boarded the steamship that would take them down the east coast and through the Caribbean before delivering them to Cristobal, Panama. Ben had booked a handsome two-bedroom suite for himself and his sons, and Hoss was glad that he would finally get his older brother to himself for at least a little time each day.

Adam's emotions were a jumbled mess as the ship pushed back from the dock and began its slow progress out of New York Harbor. He was thrilled to return to the Ponderosa and begin building the new house he had been planning for the past three years, and he could hardly wait to see Little Joe again. The boy could be an enormous pain in the neck, but he was also undeniably charming and had the brightest smile west of the Mississippi River. Adam still felt guilty about leaving his baby brother so soon after the death of the boy's mother, and he wanted to make it up to Joe somehow. With his father's permission, Adam planned to buy Little Joe a .22 rifle for his birthday at the beginning of July and take the boy raccoon hunting.

But leaving the East was also painful. The past three years had been the best of Adam's life to that point. The scope of his education had far exceeded his academic studies. The years away from his father and brothers and their ranch had given him time to discover who he truly was on his own, and the time with his mother's family had restored a piece of himself that he had always felt was missing. And Josie. The little sister he never had. From their first meeting, the little girl had held his heart in her delicate hands, and Adam had no expectation of ever getting it back.

So lost in thought was he that he visibly jumped when his father came up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder. Ben apologized for startling him.

"You are awfully preoccupied," Ben observed. Adam nodded without averting his gaze from the slowly shrinking shoreline. "What's on your mind, son?"

Adam sighed heavily. "I want to go home, but I don't want to leave."

Ben nodded his understanding and put his arm around his son's shoulders. "Don't worry, Adam, you'll see this city again. I know you will."

"I just don't know how I'm going to say goodbye to Josie," Adam ruminated.

This admission surprised Ben. His reserved oldest son typically did not open up this easily. "That little girl is something special," he concurred.

"She is."

"And she looks so much like your mother."

"It's more than that." Adam hesitated, not wanting to hurt his father's feelings, and then decided he had gone too far already not to proceed. "She's the first family member I've ever met who looks like me."

Ben gave Adam a look of comic shock. "What are you talking about?! You and Hoss look so much alike I have trouble telling the two of you apart!"

Adam smiled despite himself.

"Seriously, though, Adam," Ben said, turning his son to face him, "you have two more months before you have to say goodbye. Don't start dwelling on it now. Think of all the things you'll be able to show and teach Josie on the Ponderosa! Don't worry about the goodbye until it's time."

"Yes, sir."

"And who knows? Maybe she'll want to move west someday."

Adam smiled again. "I wouldn't be surprised. She and Little Joe could become outlaws together."

It was Ben's turn to smile. He put his arm back around his son, and the two of them watched New York City fade slowly away.