Hoss had been fifteen when Jim had died. It hadn't been dramatic or noisy; he'd just slipped away quiet and easy like, much the way he'd lived his life. It had been fitting, but it had also taken Hoss a long time to realize that he wasn't just gone up into the mountains and would be back in a few days with a bundle of furs to sell. And that was the first time that he had realized the full extent of the cabin's emptiness and how isolated their little world was. Always before the solitude had been a comfort, a place to retreat to from the world that was so harsh and unpredictable, a place where a man could hear God whisper if he paused and listened. But after Jim died, all he could hear was the lonely whistle of the wind through hollow woods and the echo of silence off the rocks.
Still he hadn't been able to leave it for good, even when he started guiding settlers and hunting stray lobos for farmers; he'd always come back to his little piece of desolate heaven. And now Hoss almost wished he was back on it now, that he'd never left. What good had he been on this trip? He hadn't been able to stop Tom from being shot or Joe from leaving.
Hoss glanced away from the reflection of their hotel room in the window that he'd been staring at and looked at Adam, immersed in a book. Or so it seemed. Hoss noticed that his eyes weren't moving back and forth, and he had yet to turn a page. Either he was stuck on a word he didn't know – which Hoss doubted – or he was chewing something over. Something inside him snapped, and he stood.
"You know what we need to do?"
Adam lifted his head from his book. "What?" His voice was almost bleak, and Hoss knew it was time to stop stewing about things they couldn't change.
"We need to get out of this old hotel room. Come on."
"To where?"
"Just come on." Hoss led him out of the hotel. The saloon was down a street and to the left, and he pushed through the swinging doors and nodded in satisfaction. The place was crowded with cowboys, farmers, miners, and girls. A hazy smoke from cigarettes drifted lazily to the ceiling where it mingled with the rich scent of alcohol and laughter to create thick, swirling air.
"Two beers." Hoss said to the scurrying bartender. He lifted his mug in tandem with Adam.
"Well?"
Adam shrugged. What did they have to toast to?
"To the philosophy that all men are created equal and the society that ignores it." He finally said.
"You seem to be in a good mood."
Adam shrugged and downed his beer. It was good, but he barely noticed. He felt about as civil as a bear with a sore head.
"Want to play poker?" Hoss asked, trying to pull his brother out of his black mood.
"I'm not all that good at poker." Adam answered.
"Now that I can't believe. Adam, you could bluff the devil himself."
"Maybe, but do you have any money? Because I sure don't."
Hoss frowned. "Where'd you get the money for the horse?"
Adam reached in his pocket and pulled out the voucher Bates had written for him. It let him draw money out of Bates' bank accounts, and it was good in practically any bank in California since Bates had an account in virtually every bank. Something devilish broke free in Adam, and a deep, dark grin spread slowly over his face.
"Come on." He said to Hoss. He went over to the table where a game was starting up.
"You boys want to play?" One of the cowboys asked.
"I don't have cash, but I've got this." Adam showed him the voucher. "If I end up owing, I'll get money out of the bank first thing in the morning."
"Sam Bates, huh?" The cowboy glanced at the signature. "He owns half the town. You work for him?"
"In a way."
"Have a seat. I'll take an I-owe-you for any losings. I'm Jake Harding."
"Adam Cartwright. This is my brother, Hoss." Adam pulled up a chair, and Hoss followed suit, slightly puzzled at the sudden change in Adam's demeanor. But since it was for the better he decided not to dwell on it.
The other players introduced themselves as Wes Green and Charlie Lowell. Jake dealt, and Adam studied his hand for a moment. It was decent, and he decided to play to win for now.
Three hands later he was winning and Hoss dealt him three kings. Adam felt his face nearly stretch into a smirk again, but he forced himself to remain looking neutral. Then he tossed two of his kings.
"Give me two cards." He said to Hoss.
"Looks like your luck's running out." Charlie said when Adam lost.
"Looks like." Adam dealt five cards to each player and then picked up his hand. This one didn't need much help to be a loser, but he tossed a ten just to be sure.
"I might come out on top after all." Jake said when he won. "You gonna keep going?" he asked Adam and Hoss.
"I'm out." Hoss said.
"I'll stick around." Adam bet the remaining of his winnings from the previous hand, and Hoss looked at him with a nervous expression that almost made Adam laugh as he threw out two of his three of a kind.
"Adam, don't you want to head back to the room?" Hoss said two hands later when Adam owed two hundred dollars. It was late, but Adam knew that wasn't why he was asking. The stakes were getting higher. Charlie was out, and Adam bet another three hundred of Bates' money.
"I'm just getting started." He said. He drew a three that actually gave him a straight, and he beat Wes in that hand, but then lost the next two. Hoss shifted behind him, and Adam nearly laughed out loud. Poor Hoss was in for a lot of concern tonight.
Three hours later the bartender told them to wrap it up, and Adam drew a full house. He grinned to himself and tossed two aces and a ten.
"Not your lucky night." Wes said.
"Or yours." Jake gathered up his winnings. "That's six thousand you owe me, Carwright."
"That much, huh?" Adam wrote out a note and signed it. "I'll go down to the bank and get your winnings in the morning."
"Mr. Bates sure is gonna be ticked that you lost so much of his money." Jake said with a grin.
"Oh, I'm counting on it." Adam replied.
"Bates is gonna be spitting mad." Hoss muttered when they were back in the hotel room. "How are you gonna explain losing all that money in a poker game?"
"I'll think of something." Adam pulled off his boots and flopped on the bed. He could very easily imagine the look on Bates' face, and it made him grin. That night he slept more soundly than he had in months.
VVVVVV
He heard soft voices coming from the foot of his bed when he woke up. He lifted his head to see the faces of the two children studying him from the safe distance of behind the footboard. When he looked at them, they seemed to shrink down a little. Joe smiled to himself and raised his hands. As the children watched intently, their blue eyes wide and unblinking, Joe covered his right thumb with two let fingers, tucking his left thumb underneath. He slid his left hand back and forth, making it look as if he was stretching his right thumb out and then pushing it back.
The trick worked like a charm, and Sarah and Mike crawled onto the bed. After investigating his hands for a moment, Mike looked up into Joe's face, his blonde hair falling back from his forehead.
"Are you a bank robber?"
His blue eyes were wide and ready to take everything in, and Joe's throat clenched as he thought of a similar question that he'd been asked by another boy with blue eyes. He shoved the memory aside and forced a smile. "No."
"A cowboy?"
"In a way. I break horses."
"How do you put them back together?" Sarah asked.
Joe's smile slowly gained legitimacy. "Not like that. I train them so that people can ride them."
"Then why did you fall off your horse?"
He had to laugh, and the sound brought Helen in from the kitchen.
"I thought I told you two not to wake Mr. Cartwright up." She put her hands on her hips, a wooden spoon protruding from one of them.
"Just Joe." Joe said.
"We're sorry, Mr. Joe." Sarah said.
Joe smiled down at her. "I was already awake."
"Breakfast is ready; would you like a tray?"
"I'll come out." Joe stood carefully, but the room barely shifted. His side was still tender, and he could feel a lump on the back of his head, but at least he could walk. Sarah and Michael 'helped' him out to the table, and for a moment he stood beside his chair, paralyzed.
There was a fire in the stove, and from it rose the scent of pine wood burning – the same scent that had come to him during his… dream? Memory? Vision? Whatever it had been the night he'd been unconscious, Joe remembered it now.
"Are you alright, Mr. Cartwright?" Helen asked.
"Joe." Joe said distractedly, pulling himself to the present. "I'm fine. Sorry." He sat, his mind still staggering.
It had been so real, so clear. It couldn't have been a dream. Joe remembered the joke of a prayer he'd sent up for a memory, no matter how small. Had it actually been answered?
"Joe?" Helen paused as she set a plate of flapjacks in front of him.
"Thanks. Sorry." He sure was saying that a lot this morning.
"Someone's coming!" Mike leaped out of his chair and raced out the door with Sarah close on his heels. Helen followed, shaking her head at her children's antics, and Joe stuffed a couple bites in his mouth before doing the same, limping slightly from the pain in his side.
"Mr. Parsons!" Sarah and Mike ran to greet the man who rode up on the back of a mule, leading a horse that Joe instantly recognized. He leaned against the porch railing with a grin and shook his head. Maybe there was a God.
"Glen, what brings you out this way?"
"I heard you had a visitor who lost a horse, and this one showed up at my doorstep last night." The man glanced at Joe. "Would he be yours?"
"He would." Joe stepped forward and ran his hands over Scout's body and legs, but the horse seemed uninjured.
"Well thank you for bringing him over. Are you staying for breakfast?" Helen asked.
"I'd better get back."
"Thank you again." Joe straightened and took the reins.
"No problem. Next time keep a better hold of him, eh?" Glen grinned and turned his mule.
"Mr. Cartwright." Joe felt a tug on his pants and looked down into Mike's eyes. "Does this mean you'll be leaving?"
He grinned down at the boy. "Not until I eat breakfast anyway." He said.
They went back inside, and he winced as he sat down. He wouldn't be going anywhere for at least a couple more days. Part of him was annoyed, but the other part was glad. After all, it wasn't like he had a destination in mind. It was like he was tumbling and he could land anywhere really. It was the same feeling that had accompanied him the morning he'd left Durham.
There hadn't been anything different about that morning. Fog had curled around his legs like wispy cats, waiting to be burned away by the sun as he walked down the road. He'd walked down it hundreds of times on his way to the mine, but this time he had kept walking instead of turning off to go down the dirt track. He wasn't going that way today or any other day either. He was done.
In retrospect, Joe realized that it was probably one of the stupidest things he'd ever done, second only to waiting so long to finally leave. He'd left without food, money, or any specific plan, carrying nothing but the clothes on his back and a grimly set jaw on his face. Three days later both his clothes and his jaw were limp and soggy as he huddled under the edge of a roof in a rain storm.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. He had thought. He had been supposed to have enough money for a stage to San Francisco. And he almost had. Then the money had been found, purely by accident when his Pa had drunkenly mistaken Joe's room for his and had knocked over the box containing the money. And while Joe was too big for him to be able to beat him anymore, he'd still borne the brunt of a screaming tirade laced with scathing insults and enough curses to turn the air blue. Joe had crossed his arms and stared at him with a sullen face until eventually the old man forgot what he was screaming about and passed out on his rocking chair. Then Joe had gone into his room and destroyed pretty much everything, the chair, the bed, the window, even the walls had holes punched in them. That money had been the result of almost a year of saving. But since there was no way he was waiting another year to have enough money to leave, he might as well leave now.
While watching water drip onto his soaking boots, Joe had wished he had waited a little bit longer, just enough to have some money for emergencies for example, when it poured down rain and he wanted a hotel room. He had wrapped his arms around his middle and shivered through the night then he'd left the town the next morning, always heading north. For what he didn't know, but he'd kept moving.
"Joe?" Helen asked softly. Joe blinked. He was back in the kitchen, and the smell of wood smoke was still in the air. It warmed him somehow, as if reassuring him that that cold, wet night, as well as everything else in his past was gone.
"Are you alright?" Helen studied him with concern.
"I'm fine. Sorry, I was just… thinking."