Chapter 2

"My god…" Ben swore, pulling his hat from his head. He watched his feet as he picked his way up out of the river, eyes not big enough to take in the way the land had changed in only a few moments. Even the grass had been uprooted. He could see the line where the tornado had gone through back along their trail as cleanly as if it had been drawn with a pencil. On one side of the line, trees were stripped bare and missing most of their upper limbs, bushes were uprooted and rolling around like tumbleweeds and there were bits and pieces of houses and barns scattered around that must have come from miles away.

On the other side of the line, next to nothing had changed. By God's grace, he, his cowhands, sons and cattle were all on the unchanged side of the line. The sky above them was clearing, the clouds following the tornado, and Ben could hear his men moving around behind him. Charlie Black had the cowhands calling out their names, tallying the horses and going after the cattle. Ben looked back to make sure he knew where both of his sons were.

Hoss knelt at the river's edge using a cloth to clean the blood from his broken nose and take down some of the swelling. Joe was limping around on a twisted knee picking up fish. The storm had plucked them out of a lake somewhere ahead of them and tossed them all up and down the river. Those that were still flopping around, Joe was tossing back into the river. The dead ones, Ben figured would be part of their supper that evening.

His own injured arm ached miserably and he was certain there was damage to the bone. He could still move his hand some, and all things considered, had come out of the storm miraculously well. In fact it had been a storm named Clyde that had done most of the damage to his person, and not the twister. Ben scanned the cowhands for the young greenhorn and found him weakly slapping his rope against his trousers, chasing cows out of the brush. Ben nodded to himself, satisfied, then went to see to his horse.

Once he had his saddle on a fresh animal it took Ben and the others an hour to set up camp, and the rest of the day to recover the cattle. They found twenty head that were so wounded by the storm that they had to be put down. Ben ordered the biggest of the beeves butchered, the chuckwagon loaded with the meat and hides, then led the wounded among his men into the nearest town. There was little left of the place, but there was evidence that the residents had begun to dig themselves out.

At first Ben's arrival with rough looking cowhands wasn't terribly welcome. When he told the town sheriff that he had brought with him nearly a thousand pounds of beef, and that there were an additional thousand pounds that could be butchered by morning the reception got a little warmer.

It was Ben's hope that he might trade the meat for doctoring services but the sheriff was quick to tell him that their doctor had been among the casualties in the town. The telegraph wires were down but the sheriff had sent a rider out to the next nearest settlement to bring their doctor back. The man was due any time, according to the sheriff, and sorely needed.

The sheriff offered to pay him for the beef and Ben took half what they were worth. He sent his hands back to the drive and stayed with the chuck wagon until it was empty. A few boys in the town helped him clean it out and Ben set his teeth hard against the ache in his arm and traveled back to the herd.

The next few days, the wake of destruction from the tornado proved to be the worst he'd ever seen. Whole towns were reduced to toothpicks, but a little ranch outside of the town might be untouched. One side of the street would be nothing more than bare foundations, and the other side barely missing shingles.

Ben sold the meat from the butchered cows until it began to sour, pushing his cattle drive out of Texas, through Oklahoma and into Colorado territory. The further they got from the damage of the sudden storm the better things seemed to get. The wounds suffered began to heal, the cattle became more accustomed to the trail, and young Clyde more confident. They entered Navajo country ten days after the storm and as he always did, Ben cut some yearlings, cows and at least one bull out of the herd to take to the reservation. Joe and Hoss joined him, bringing the cured hides of the butchered beeves.

He had made the acquaintance of one the leaders of the Navajo tribes only a year after they had been settled on the reservation. Since then any cattle drive passing near their territory was an excuse to visit, and Ben brought the beeves and hides for trading. As much as his youngest son joked about the "junk" that Ben picked up from the Navajo, he was the biggest collector of artwork and trinkets. He tended to be the biggest attraction for the young Navajo women when they came to visit and Ben knew Joe felt no pain from that.

While they visited, ate and drank, he noticed that Joe's recovering knee injury had inexplicably become more painful, requiring his youngest to lean heavily on the shoulders of sympathetic young ladies. Hoss was submitting himself to a great deal of fussing as well with his broken, and slightly crooked nose. Ben let it be a young man's game and enjoyed the few days away from the drive in his own way, practicing tomahawk throwing, enjoying the healthful benefits of a sweat lodge and picking up the vicious Arizona peppers that Hop Sing was entirely too fond of.

He spent a day looking for a piece of native jewelry that Adam had wanted, finding just the right piece by noon. He used the telegraph at the nearby fort to send word to his son that they had reached the reservation in "good health" and he had been successful in his search.

Ben found a telegraph there waiting for him. "Ponderosa running fine. Small fire near the house, but no major damage. Painting the barn red."

Ben raised a brow at the message, but was glad to have heard from his son at all, and tucked the telegraph into his pocket.

The rest cure at the reservation had made him feel a new man, and with the medicines he'd collected, along with Adam's jewelry, blankets, bedrolls and a bow and quiver of arrows that Joe had traded for, Ben returned to the trail drive in high spirits.

Adam held the reins in the crook of his bad arm, letting the team sidle for a bit while he read through the mail. The last of the supplies that he would need for the barn re-build were behind him in the wagon, along with new shingles to cover the repaired hole in the kitchen roof and new glass panes for the china hutch. The china itself had been ordered while he was in town. His dislocated shoulder had been declared healing well, if, Doc Martin had warned, Adam kept it in the sling and didn't put too much weight on it.

With a half-busted crew Adam had still managed to get the framework for the barn and the bunkhouse wall up, filled in the walls and roofs, rebuilt the loft, stocked it with hay, rebuilt the corral fences and the stalls in the barn and managed to get some branding done...well away from the barn of course. None of that had been done with his arm in a sling, and none of it would be finished with his arm in a sling, but Doc Martin didn't need to know that.

Adam had saved the telegraph from his father for last. "New hands working out fine. Red Hawk sends greetings. Found your necklace. Only lost twenty-head so far. All in good health."

Adam grinned at the telegram and whipped the horses up to a trot, noting that Ben hadn't questioned his decision to paint the barn red. With any luck at all, the work would be done before the first steer set a hoof on the Ponderosa and apart from new china, Ben wouldn't know that anything had happened while he was gone. Adam told himself that he was saving an old man the hardship of worry and disappointment, and not simply lying to his father.

When he passed the corrals where they broke horses he called Billy and Jimmy over and handed them the bags of sweets he'd bought for them in town. Like his middle brother, the twins were sugar hounds, and Adam had learned that if they had a steady supply, they were a sight more gentle with each other, and with the other hands and stock. When they ran out, they got ornery. Adam figured sugar could be as addicting as whiskey or tobacco and he'd seen men starved of both for too long before. It was an inexpensive habit to support, and so far as he could tell, it didn't cut down on their wind at all.

He talked with the twins for a spell then headed up to the main house where Bucky Weems had agreed to meet him and help finish putting the new doors on the barn. When he pulled into an empty yard he called to the barn as he stepped down from the wagon and heard a faint mewling sound in return.

"Bucky?"

The mewling turned into a soft, "Help."

Adam charged into the barn, ripping the sling from his shoulder and stared at the man dangling by his leg from the main beam of the barn. Bucky's eyes were rolling, his face was nearly purple and he had a line of blood across his forehead that looked like he'd cracked it on the sharp edge of a board. Adam could barely touch Bucky's dangling fingertips while standing on his tip toes. He followed the rope that had tangled itself around Bucky's leg up to the pulley on the ceiling and into the loft.

Adam rushed to the ladder and started to climb it, but Bucky's voiced stopped him with a croaking, "Outside...out...side."

"Hang on...hang on, Bucky."

Adam ran out of the barn and rounded the corner. On the ground, under the hay loft door he found the source of the problem.

"I warned him..I warned him about stacking hay on his own. Man thinks he's an acrobat." Adam grumbled stepping to the pile of baled and scattered hay. Only one of the bales was tied to the rope keeping Bucky suspended in the barn, but that bale had probably been knocked out of the loft door and buried by four or five other bales. Bucky's solution to being short handed, and wanting to please Adam, had been to tie the rope around a bale, climb into the loft, ride the rope down to the barn floor, tie the rope with a slip knot, then guide the suspended bale into the loft.

It meant a lot of climbing and jumping and swinging that Adam didn't have the energy or the desire for, but Bucky seemed to get a real kick out of. Adam had told him once already that it was best for Bucky to wait until he had help. Bucky clearly hadn't listened.

"Hang on...I mean...just...you'll be down in a second." Adam called. He gritted his teeth, used his sore shoulder to add tension to the rope and started dragging and kicking the bales out of the way. When the bale that the rope was tied to began to slide across the ground, freed from it's brethren, Adam bent to grab his knife from his boot, braced himself to take on the weight of Bucky's body, and started sawing at the rope.

"Hang on, Bucky!" He called again, putting one foot on the bale to keep it from flying up, cleaving the rope carefully in two. He wouldn't have thought that Bucky weighed more than he did. He found out that he was wrong when the rope snapped. The rough fibers cinched around his hand like a vice, his shoulder was jerked painfully upward and the rest of his body followed, flying toward the loft door at a distressing rate.

Adam dropped the knife and grabbed the rope with his other hand even as he was flying upward, loosed his inured arm and aimed his feet at the loft door. The minute the upward momentum slowed Adam swung his legs hard and jumped toward the opening in the loft, rolling once across the soft hay and coming to a stop in a pained heap against the ladder.

The pain in his shoulder wrenched a groan out of him that ended in almost a sob. He wasn't too proud to admit to crying, either. He rolled onto his good side and lay in the hay happy to never move again if he could get away with it. After a time he heard boots on the ladder and Bucky's own pained grunts as he limped up toward the loft. He heard a soft, regret-filled "Oh" come from Bucky and felt a hand gently lay on his hip. "Adam?"

"Go away, Bucky."

The hand lifted quickly then rested on his hurt arm. Adam flinched and hissed and the hand lifted again like Bucky had been stung.

"Sure am sorry 'bout that."

"I told you not to stack the hay." Adam moaned. "Didn't I tell you not to stack the hay?"

"Yeah. You sure did." Bucky admitted. "Should I fetch the doc?"

Adam groaned again. Getting Doc Martin, as wise as the idea was, meant hours of pain, followed by more pain, and then yet more pain. Without the doc, Adam had only pain to look forward to. The main difference between the two options would be whether or not he had to suffer the tongue lashing from the man, mere hours after being given a clean bill of health.

"No." Adam said finally. "Just...help me down."

"I can fetch the rope."

"Don't get the rope! Don't touch the rope, don't think about the rope. Don't even talk about the rope!" Adam barked.

"Alright…" Bucky said, placatingly. "But...how you gonna get down without the...the long dangly thing."

"Get my sling. It's on the floor of the barn." Adam said, rolling gently onto his back. He let his body relax against the hay listening to Bucky climb back down the ladder, one rung at a time, scratch around in the dirt, then head back up the ladder.

"Got it for ya."

Adam put his hand out and felt the cloth come to rest against his fingers. Still laying prone in the hay he slipped the thin part over his neck and settled it against his good shoulder, then gently guided his arm into place. He rested after that, turning his head to see Bucky still standing on the ladder. He'd wrapped his right arm around the side rail and had his head bowed slightly, fiddling with strands of loose hay. He looked about as chagrinned as man could get and Adam felt some of the heat drain out of him.

He sighed softly and sat up, moving until his legs dangled over the edge of the loft. The one end of the blasted rope was there next to him, the other end coiled in the middle of the barn floor. Adam picked up the unraveling end beside him, pursed his lips then handed it to Bucky.

"Tie a loop knot into that. I'll put the rope under me like a swing, you can lower me down."

Bucky's face brightened the same way the twins had when Adam had given them sacks of candy. Adam suddenly felt like his father, putting up with the disastrous antics of his three grown ranch hands, and he began to understand the fits of rage that he and his brothers had weathered over the years.

Bucky tied the knot and handed it to Adam who inspected it closely then played out the loop and slipped both his feet into it. Adam shifted and shimmied the rope under his thighs, then nodded to Bucky. "Pull it tight and let me swing free of the loft before you lower me down."

Bucky was already scrambling down the ladder, eagerly pulling up the slack in the rope, beaming up at him from the floor.

"Uh..Bucky. If you drop me.." Adam began, "You're not only fired. But I may also shoot you."

Bucky swallowed a bit and the grin dimmed some, but he nodded tightening his grip on the rope. Adam swung out of the loft and had to admit that he understood the fun Bucky had been having. The ranchhand lowered him gently to the ground, helped him get free of the rope and guided Adam to his feet, all while studiously avoiding even going near Adam's injured arm.

"No more hay stacking." Adam said.

Bucky nodded eagerly.

"You should get yourself cleaned up, then you can help me out by unloading the wagon."

Bucky nodded and started to leave the barn but Adam's hand on his sleeve brought him back.

"There's glass for the china hutch on that wagon, and I don't want it broken."

Bucky nodded again then scampered out of the barn. Adam stood, holding both ends of the rope in one hand, swaying slightly while Bucky disappeared into the bunkhouse. Once he heard the bunkhouse door close Adam used the rope to guide his suddenly 80-year-old body right back to the ground. He lay down on cool dirt and admitted that if he had to die in that moment he couldn't have picked a better place. There was a blessedly cool breeze blowing through the barn, he had shelter from rain, and he could easily scrounge enough hay from the floor to make a soft pillow.

Perfectly good place to die, he thought, letting the blackness close in and send him to dreamland.