IX
Hoss and Joe were riding the pastures with Tor. Uncle Little Joe had taken a liking to the boy's ability to change his shooting hand from left to right without even a blink, and given him a new holster to help him hang a revolver to whichever side it was that he needed to shoot from. Elin had been frowning at the skinny boy who had too-short sleeves and too-short cuffs, but who had been wrapped in two gun holsters, and murmured something about the beasts that hadn't eaten her boy when he was armed with only the traps and the bow and the arrows. Secretly, though, she admired the boy's sharp eyes and the good instinct he had with the weapons. She herself could probably hit a bull, but only from a very short distance, and it wasn't a skill that would have brought the luxurious feel of pelts to her in the wintertime.
Hoss smiled at the memory of Elin's shining eyes, when she used to stroke over the soft pelts and the fur, and how she would press her own smooth cheeks against the fluffy skins that the boys brought to her. His Elin. Silly gal. Maybe he should take her to some place. To San Francisco, perhaps?
The blue sky shone in the late summer, and the clouds were just faint shadows from the hopes of the people who were expecting the rains and the cooler breezes of the autumn already. Between the rocks and the evergreens, the three riders seemed to melt into the landscape in their dusty clothing and at their leisurely pace.
Joe pulled Cochise to a halt, and raised his hand. "Whoa, boy, hold it." He examined the ground, and Hoss could imagine his words and silent murmuring, even though he was too far to be heard exactly. He reined his own horse to catch his brother, who was looking at the ground and raising his head to make sense of the tracks he had come across.
When Hoss came near, he could see also what had alerted Joe. A group of shoed horses had travelled over the terrain, and though out of sight for the time being, the riders could be somewhere close. Hoss raised his eyes to the trees and the hilltops around them, and picked up his rifle without a further thought. He whistled between his teeth and called Tor closer to them. Cochise danced under Joe a bit nervously, and Joe pulled himself together to ease the tension of his horse.
"I'll go to the left side, you stick to the right", Joe said, and spurred Cochise in the direction he had mentioned.
Hoss motioned Tor to stay behind him, and kicked Chubb to a light trot to circle to the other side of the path of the trespassers. "You stay behind, and no playing a hero, you hear me?" he warned the boy, and frowned deeply under his hat. The grim look of his blue eyes was sharp and lacked any mercy, and the stare was emphasized next to his brown skin that had gained color from the sun and the dust equally. His chin was protruding even more than usual, when he thought of the possible scenarios ahead of him, and the sound of Tor's mare's hooves behind him made him twice as angry to the men they were tracking.
Hoss and Tor could see Little Joe holding his hand up at the top of the ridge, where he reached the spot to have a view to the next valley, shaded by the leafy branches of the trees. Hoss searched for a safe way to climb up, too, to be safely hidden behind the vegetation and the landscape, but to be able to see what had stopped Joe.
Cattle thieves.
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There was no lying there. The sound of gunshots were not more ominous, neither did the cliffs echoing in a way that would have been any different to the normal bangs of the shooting they came to witness every now and then.
Hoss could remember pushing Tor very hard to the ground, to make him stay ducked behind the rocks and bushes to take cover. The boy's arm was hurt and a bruise was searching its way up his tender skin, anticipating a huge map of blue and yellow that wouldn't appear on the surface before night or the next day.
None of them, not Tor or Hoss, were worried about the boy, though. Hoss had aimed his rifle along to shoot back, before a determined push had thrown him to the ground, too. "You've got family, stay down!" Joe had shouted.
And now he lay on Hoss' arms, the dead weight of his body melting down heavily in front of him and the smell of blood making Chubb nervous. The bullet was somewhere inside; the throbs of blood had become so feeble that Hoss was afraid his brother had already lost too much. Tor had shot two horses of the men, and Hoss had wounded at least one man. But Hoss hadn't been able to differentiate the men, who they were or where they rode off to. He had pressed his hand on the bleeding wound on his brother's shoulder and assured him they would bring him home.
Hoss' home was closer. He pressed the motionless body of his brother against his chest, to slide down as smoothly as he could, and nodded to Tor. "Boy, take a fresh pony and ride to town. Get Doc Martin as soon as you can, will ya?" The boy was pale as a ghost, and he hadn't been able to speak all the way from home, but he nodded firmly to Hoss and sprang to the barn. Hoss closed his eyes for a moment, and hoped that the little gesture would be enough to pray strength for the boy. He felt so tired.
Hoss looked at the blood on Joe's clothes, the blood on his skin, blood on his own clothes and all over his hands and his arms, but he didn't see nothing more than the sweating cold face of his brother who was drifting between delirium and unconsciousness. His hat was resting back on the saddle horn of Cochise. He should remember to take it in the house.
Elin walked out and gasped, and flung her hands over her mouth. "Joe."
She ran to Hoss, who was walking towards the house, carrying his brother in his arms. She took Joe's head in her hands and peeked through the clothes to take a look at what happened, and her eyes glimmered in tears when she realized. Tor came out of the barn and flew on the saddle, and Elin waved at him hastily, when he disappeared to the darkening horizon, his brown hair and brown jacket reflecting the shadows in a way that made his surface look like the feathers of a preying bird. "Ride safely, my son", Elin whispered behind him, and turned her attention back to Hoss. "Bring him in."
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Hoss sat in a chair next to the bed where Joe lay.
Elin had cut twigs and flowers and ferns from the garden and put them in huge buckets around the bed, and told him that the smell of the fresh plants should bring the boy home. She had washed the Joe's body with Hoss, before Doctor Martin had arrived, and said some prayers in her foreign tongue, trying to help the recovery in the best ways she could. The Doctor had dug the bullet out from the shoulder, where it had done some damage to the flesh and the bone.
Ben had fallen asleep in the armchair downstairs, and Elin hadn't had the heart to wake him up to go and sleep properly. She knew he would not catch sleep again easily, knowing that his boy was hurt and unconscious and hoping that he would come round any time. Adam was sitting on the porch in the night, being shackled to his wheelchair to which he had been condemned for some time after an accident at the house he was building for himself and Laura. His thoughts were nailed to something distant, too, and his dark face would be matching the shadows of the night and the trees around while he, too, would be praying for his brother. Sheriff Coffee had been over to their place, but he hadn't yet returned with word that the thieves would have been caught.
A fever had been rising in Joe, and Elin tried to wipe the sweat away from his face and his suffering body. When some cold shivers had taken over, she had covered his body with a quilt she had traded from some neighbors. 'Maybe this will remind him of Lake Tahoe, of how it looks like if you see it from on top of a mountain and look down at all the pictures of trees and the rocks and the sky and the clouds', she had said, and ran her fingers over the intricate needlework and the colors that had made her eyes glow and think of the scenery.
Sigrid had come to see her sleeping Uncle Little Joe, and she had sat next to her mother at the edge of the bed. Her eyes had not been sad, only puzzled, and she had tried to make Hoss calm. 'Farbro Joe is not far away. He's only lost the door from where to come back.'
The girl's words had made the edges of Ben's eyes all red. When Sigrid had seen the confined fear on her Grandfather's face, she had gone and hugged Ben very hard from the middle of his body where she could reach him, and Ben had lifted his hands to hold her head against his chest. 'Don't worry, Farfar', she had whispered against Ben's leather vest. 'He'll find the way soon.'
Hoss' head sunk slowly to his hands. He hoped as well, that Joe wouldn't be lost for too long.
Elin's hands curled around Hoss' shoulders so protectively, that he felt the tension of his body to ease. It had been so much he had gone through the last days. Her fingers covered his worried posture as gently as they were made of smoke and mist, but they were firm and solid as a tide enveloping a cliff by the ocean. Hoss was so close to breaking that he just wondered how he had been able to deal with this before the soft embrace of her hands had come to hold him together.
Elin pressed his upper body closer to her own figure, and rubbed his arm very tenderly. "My Hoss", she said in a voice the spoke to the world of the spirits around them as much as she spoke to him. She knew. "We aren't given a burden so hard we couldn't carry in our arms."
Hoss had no choice but to believe.
Although, he was very relieved and glad that she was there to hold his tired shoulders, that were too weary to hold his arms up anymore.
"He will be back", Elin whispered, and rubbed Hoss' back once more, casting strength over his spine and his crumbled rib cage, and squeezed his shoulders before she stepped to Joe's bed. She sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the creases of the quilt, and stroked Joe's curly hair and his cheek and wiped his sweating forehead. "He looks so beautiful even when he's hurt, all ready to charm any girl who'd be ready to come by."
Elin chuckled a bit wistfully, and kept her eyes sweeping gently on her brother-in-law's face. Joe's brown curls were long, and all disheveled after so long time in fever and hallucinations. Elin organized the brown locks around his face without any further thoughts or plans. "God wouldn't have made all this beauty to go to waste", she said, and looked at Hoss with her smoky eyes, before she fixed them at Joe again. "He comes from a family with big hearts, he'll come round."
Joe stirred, and Elin looked at Hoss, her eyes glimmering crystal clear. "Come, come, he's waking up!" She waved her hand impatiently, and made Hoss leap closer to the bed. Joe's eyes opened slowly, and it took some seconds for them to find their focus and recognize the sense of seeing yet again. He scanned the room slowly, and rested his eyes on Elin's smiling face, and Hoss leaned closer over her shoulders to be sure it was his brother who had returned to the living.
"Hey, Eelyn", Joe said faintly, and swallowed to wet his dry throat. "I was expecting a pretty gal to sit by my bed, but who let that oversized leprechaun in?"
Hoss pressed his lips into a thrilled smile and leaned his hand against the bed post, the relief erupting into a rumbling laugh and a gap-toothed smile. "Dad burn you, Little Joe, ain't I glad to see you awake again. You got us all scared for a moment, you know?"
Elin smiled at Hoss and at Joe, and rose up. "I'll fetch your Pa, and your brother; they've been so worried." She pinched the smooth cheek of Joe. "Welcome back to us, bror min", she said. "My brother."