5
The day the clearing was ready for new trees to be planted, Ben brought all of his children along for the occasion. The morning was breezy, warm, sunny and perfect. They spent a few hours planting a variety of saplings in the hay that had sprouted quickly on the hillside. Elizabeth, who was fond of grabbing at anything she could and trying to put it into her mouth, loved the soft tips of the hay the best and Ben, Joe and Hoss each suffered strands of hay across their faces while the baby explored how it moved in the breeze. They had brunch in Thomas' cabin, then took the wagon and horses down toward the lake for the afternoon.
Ben hadn't been to the lake much at all that spring. The big snows that winter, had raised the water level higher than usual, but there hadn't been any reports of flooding. While his boys set up a rounder's pitch, intent on teaching the game to the hands who had been invited to join them later in the day, Ben took off his boots and socks, rolled up his pant legs and walked with Elizabeth along the shore. He held Elizabeth upright and let her legs splash in the water after making sure the lake wasn't too cold. She giggled and played, kicking and slapping her pudgy hands against the surface of the water.
Ben delighted in watching her learn and explore. Even as young as she was, he knew her mind was working and he talked to her softly, using words that she answered with babble. After the rounders pitch had been set up Hoss and Joe grabbed fishing poles, shucked their socks and boots and headed out to the dock to fish. Adam joined Ben on the shore staring west toward California. After a few minutes his son stretched out on one of the rocks, crossed his arms behind his head, and his ankles over one another, tilted his hat down over his eyes and appeared to go to sleep.
Ben listened to his two youngest boys talk and laugh. He listened to the soft snores coming from his oldest. Ben fished in the sand below the surface of the water, finding shells for his daughter to hold, watching carefully that they didn't end up in her mouth. He thought of the women that he had named his daughter after, wishing each one of them could be there in that moment.
He wished Elizabeth could see that their dream had come to fruition, and that her son had grown up strong, straight and true. That he was a leader in their community.
He wished Inger could see both Adam and Hoss. To see that Hoss had become exactly what his uncle thought he would become. That he was a friend to all, kind and gentle, even as he was bigger than almost anyone around.
He wished Marie could see Joseph. Smiling, laughing, a bright brilliant spark that mirrored his third wife in every way.
He wished desperately that they could see his daughter, dote on her and spoil her the way Ben knew she would be. Ben closed his eyes and for a moment he saw each of his loves splashing in the water, talking with their sons, sitting with Ben in the warm sun and extolling the wonders of spring. Then he tucked those dreams, wants and desires away where he kept them. He covered them with the contentment he felt with his sons, and with Elizabeth. With their friends and neighbors, and the land he watched over.
He bent to the waters of the lake, helping Elizabeth clean the sand off her hands before he stood and walked back to the wagon.
The hands arrived in trickles, most of them ahead of or following the wagon that Hop Sing drove, loaded with food. Ben and his boys helped their long time cook and friend set up the meal before he called all of their hands together. This celebration was had every year. It was a way of marking the end of the winter and the end of the first accounting of cattle before the summer's work began. Ben said grace as he always did then welcomed the men to eat, enjoy and celebrate.
Shortly after the first of the men had eaten, the rounders game began. A few of the men had brought a canoe down with them. Adam and Bucky launched the canoe onto the lake and started paddling across it. Hoss took over looking after Elizabeth, and Ben joined the rounders game as one of the umpires. Even Hop Sing played a few rounds, serving as pitcher for both teams.
The afternoon continued on, fair and pleasant. When the last of the rounders games ended his men helped to clean up the area, helping Hop Sing put the paraphernalia back onto the wagon. Ben looked out to the brilliant waters of Lake Tahoe, saw his son and Bucky as little more than specks on the horizon, and knew that it would be pointless to shout. Before Ben could ask, Hoss went to the end of the pier, pointed his gun in the air and shot three times, the sound echoing across the water. A few minutes later Ben looked up and thought that the canoe was a little bigger.
"Joseph, Hoss. Go on up to the house with the buggy. Take your sister with you. I'll be along with Adam and Bucky."
Ben went to the end of the pier and he waited, watching the canoe creep closer and closer. The sun was low when Ben grabbed the drag rope tied to the front of the canoe and guided the craft to the shore. Both Bucky and Adam were tired, covered in sweat and sunburn, but happy as larks.
"There's somethin' being built over on the California side." Bucky said as soon as his feet were on solid ground. Adam pursed his lips and shot his father a sidelong glance before busying himself with the canoe. "We couldn't see it through the trees, but we could hear it. Sounded like a whole crew of men and women, singing and carryin' on." Bucky was saying.
"Bucky…" Adam said quietly, trying to cut the young ranchhand off.
"Adam heard it first. He had us creepin' along the shore in that ol' canoe, peerin' in through them trees over there. We could see tents and wagons. Looked like a big spire headin' straight up into the sky, too."
"Bucky!" Adam snapped sharply, straightening and drawing a line over his throat.
Bucky looked at Adam, blinking, then back to Ben. "I thought you said we ought'a tell him right away."
"Timing has never been your strong suit, Bucky." Adam said, rolling his eyes, before bending to the bow of the canoe and dragging it up the bank.
Ben's eyes had begun to bulge out of his head. The more he heard, the less he liked it.
"Someone is building out there?" He asked, heatedly.
"We don't know what it is." Adam cautioned. "But...it sounded an awful lot like..our friend..Noah."
"Our friend Noah is supposed to be in jail." Ben said.
"Looks like we'll be making a trip to Reno tomorrow." Adam said.
"No! No, you can ride into town in the morning and send a telegram. Fence mending starts tomorrow and clearing the mud out of that south pasture. The first load of stone has already arrived in Carson City and I want it brought out to the Ponderosa by nightfall. I won't have my boys doing the job of Reno's sheriff's office, and their own work on the ranch."
Bucky looked forlorn, like a whipped pup. When Ben walked away Adam patted his back in a meager show of support before he and Bucky hefted the canoe overhead and started walking with it to one of the broad branched trees. With ropes, Adam and Bucky hung the canoe several feet of the ground, upside down, securing the paddles inside.
The following morning Adam sent the telegram. He didn't get a response until after he had loaded the wagon with a shipment of stone blocks. These would be used to line the shallow drainage ditches that he would be digging into one of the south pastures. Water tended to collect there in the spring, turning the good grassland into a marsh. The ditches would route the majority of the runoff away from the grassland, while keeping it accessible to cattle. The stone, it was hoped, would make the ditches last longer with less need for repair.
It meant plenty of work ahead, but Adam preferred it to fence mending. He was nearly out of town when a runner from the telegraph office chased after his wagon with a reply. Someone had posted bail for Noah and the old man had been released into their custody the previous week. The same day that Ben's lumber had been purchased and taken from the rail yard. Adam hastily wrote out a response, and a second question for the rider, handing him coin and asking that the response be brought out to the Ponderosa as soon as it arrived.
Adam drove the wagon to the south pasture where he spent several hours unloading and stacking stone. He drove the wagon back into Carson City for a second load, returning and stacking further down along the lines that he had marked with string and posts.
Despite the gloves protecting his hands, he had new blisters. His fingertips had been smashed so many times, they were throbbing. Stepping up onto the seat of the wagon took the last of his energy, and Adam settled onto the bench with a long sigh. He took the telegram out of his pocket and stared at it again, astonished. How could Noah be so determined? Why would he start over again? What flood did he think was coming that he insisted on building a boat in one of the driest states in the union.
Adam whipped up his team and drove them back to the main house. When he got there a strange horse was standing at the hitching post. Adam eased to his feet, caring for the team at a snail's pace. He heard Ben yelling long before the patriarch left the house.
"Adam! What is this? Noah was released? An entire tent village of people disappeared overnight?" Ben stormed toward the wagon, the reply to Adam's second telegram straining in his grip.
Adam reached with sore hands into his pocket and gave his father the first response, leaning back against the wagon, struggling to keep his head up.
"Is no one in the entire state of Nevada capable of doing his job?" Ben demanded. "I'll have to ride out to the northern border and make sure no one else has seen fit to take my timber."
"About that…" Adam said wearily. "Noah was released about the same time that timber was purchased."
Ben crumpled the telegrams, shoving the wrinkled remains into his pocket.
"Does everyone think this is a joke?" He hissed.
Adam got to his feet and started limping toward the house, too tired to respond. Ben's ire cooled quickly at the state his son was in and he followed him into the main room, sitting at his desk to respond to the telegram and writing a few responses of his own. He paid the messenger, thanking him for his fast work before sending him on his way. While Adam crept up the stairs, mumbling that he was going to clean up for dinner, Ben paced the floor wishing suddenly that he could be everywhere at once.
He just as suddenly wanted to be free of the whole matter. If Noah was on the California side of Lake Tahoe building another silly ark, let him, Ben thought. And good riddance.
As they carried on into May, Ben kept a watchful eye on what was going on in California. Once a week he would send a man out to find the ark and report on it's progress. He was told that the boat had been launched from a dry dock once the lowest portion of the keel had been laid, and the construction site moved along the California banks from day to day. His men assured him that none of the timber along the banks had been touched, but the wood was coming from the California side in great wagons that were delivered once or twice a week. The tent city floated from place to place with the boat.
When Ben facetiously asked if any of his men had noticed pairs of exotic animals being held in pens, or flocking of their own accord to the site of the ark, to his astonishment his men reported seeing elephants, bears, wolves, long necked birds that couldn't fly, deer, and oxen in temporary pens. Each time his men went out and returned, the list of animals grew longer.
Ben began to suspect that the whole thing was a publicity stunt. Someone had convinced Noah to play the part of his biblical namesake, build a boat, and stock it with animals to draw commerce to the western side of Lake Tahoe. He wrote letters to the towns surrounding the lake, asking for any information they could gather, wrote a letter to the governor begging that he look into the situation.
Even while he wrote about it, Ben realized what he was doing to his reputation. He felt he was fast becoming the Don Quixote of the Ponderosa, obsessed with a man building a boat and collecting animals to put on that boat. Ben wrote to any zoo, circus or rodeo that could have possibly supplied the animals, even writing to San Francisco to see if animals of that species had come through, headed for Nevada.
When Ben realized that he had used a month's worth of stationary in only two weeks, and none of those letters had been related to running the ranch, or corresponding with friends or relatives, he took himself into hand. He had a daughter to raise, a ranch to run, a community to serve. The obsession had to end. Ben spent the next three days working with Adam in the south pastures, putting his back and arms to work.
As the ditches began to take shape, dividing the large basin of mud and grass into four different pastures, Ben felt the itch at the back of his mind easing. He worked with Adam on the ditches, or put his hand to the fences, and even sat a bronc or two until his skin had gained it's normal summer color, and the blisters became calluses.
He even helped Hop Sing to plant his summer garden of vegetables and herbs. While he worked with the Chinese cook he kept Elizabeth close at hand. Adam had bought her a wide brimmed bonnet that could be secured to her head. One of Joe's seamstress friends in town had made her a royal blue summer dress with ruffles around the sleeves, and a pair of ruffled bloomers. The bloomers and lace were white only once. Elizabeth began to crawl, and loved the feel of the dirt in her fingers. When Ben traveled down a row of piled dirt, plunking seeds down into the holes he had made, Elizabeth would watch, then dig down into the pile to retrieve the seed, holding it up for Ben to see with a gleeful giggle.
She learned early on that dirt wasn't for eating. To keep her from grasping things that might end up in her mouth, or might choke her, Ben had tried tying booties over her hands while she was outside. Not being able to see her fingers caused such a distressing fit of tears and screams, that Ben went in search of the smallest pair of gloves on the ranch. These he tied around her hands. The oversized fingers flopped around on the ground as Elizabeth crawled, sat and dug, but they did the trick. She could see something like fingers, could move relatively freely, but couldn't pick up anything small enough to fit into her mouth.
When Adam, Hoss and Joe fell over themselves laughing at his solution, Ben defended it defiantly, finally pointing out, "It works!"
When the work on the ditches was finally done Ben sat atop a horse driving the cattle into each of the small pastures they had created. They had given the land time enough to dry out, and rivulets of water were running down the stone lined ditches providing both for the cattle and for the grass. The concern was whether or not the ditches would prove a danger for the animals. The shallow nature of the canals had been intentional. The narrower the ditch, the greater the likelihood that an animal would sink one hoof into the canal, break a leg, become stuck, tip and fall, etc. Ben and his boys stayed with the herd for nearly a week, rotating one man up to the house each night, to ensure the success of the project. But for Joe stepping on a loose stone and twisting his knee, the solution appeared to be a good one.
Joe saw no end to the ribbing he received for being the only creature in the south pasture to stumble into a canal and hurt himself.
May went out, gentle and sweet and June was hot and dry. As responses started to flood in to Ben's letters, and more and more interested parties ventured out to stare at the giant boat on Lake Tahoe, Noah's on going building began to make the news.
When the water level of the lake sank so low that the ark was beached on the California bank, sunk hard in the mud, men were required to go in and shore the sides of the boat up, simply to keep it from keeling over and crushing the curious.
The menagerie that had begun to collect at the site became an erstwhile zoo. Observers would be quoted as saying that the animals were delivered to the site with no return address, feed was delivered, but no one could say what store had provided it, and the men and women of the tent city cared for the animals in each of their cages, as if they had always done so.
Those who wanted Noah, his menagerie, and the boat, gone as soon as possible, watched the animals like hawks, waiting for one of them to escape, attack one of their keepers, or attack one of the multitude that came to view them. The ark was wider than it was tall, most of the hull meant to act as a giant barn. There were stalls and cages built on the lower decks, and a hut in which Noah took up residence sat on the top deck.
Rumors spread that Noah had picked several of the young ladies from the tent city, and in the manner of the mormons, had taken them each as wives. Further rumors suggested that Noah already had progeny on the way but when sheriff's, alerted to the illegal behavior, investigated, they could find no proof of the rumors. Further, the newspaper couldn't get one word out of Noah, or the men and women that labored for him.
As Ben and his boys worked through each hot, horrible day, the conversation inevitably turned to Noah's continued endeavors. Meanwhile Ben signed a timbering contract that took the boys away from the main house for two weeks. When they returned, and Adam went to the south pasture to check on the water ditches, he found that bringing the water above ground might have been a mistake. With the heat, every ditch was dry, the water evaporating under the sun before it could get to the tanks they had begun to dig.
Ben defended Adam's ingenuity, saying that a summer that hot would have evaporated the water from those fields just as quickly, had it been in the mud, or flowing through the ditches. He argued that drying out the pasture had saved them hours or even days of digging cows out of the muck, animals that needed to be put down because of damage to their hooves or legs, or the necks of cowboys that remained unbroken because the ground wasn't pockmarked with deep chuck holes.
Adam was afraid they would lose the herd to thirst, or starvation, as the grass began to brown.
As the drought and heat continued, the question became, how could Noah, who appeared to be penniless, continue to feed, water and keep the 130 animals and 49 men, women and children, living in his tent city, when ranchers all around him began to look to their reserves with growing concern.