5
Adam was still standing at the head of the road when Cochise, Chub, Sport and one of the mules limped up to the door yard. He put his hands to caring for each of the animals, his mind blissfully numb to anything but the work he was doing. He checked each animal for wounds, brushed them down and fed them. He removed the saddles and blankets. He cleaned out the stalls and was stepping out of the barn into the morning sunlight when Doc Wilson's buggy pulled into the yard. Hop Sing rode in the buggy with the doctor, his head wrapped and arm in a sling.
Joe came up the road a few seconds behind, looking weary in the saddle atop their father's horse, but alive and well. Joe stepped down from the saddle and asked, "Pa's inside?"
"Upstairs."
"How is he?"
"I don't know...I've been out here. The horses came back. I was taking care of them. Hoss is with Pa."
"Come on, Doc." Joe called, helping the doctor down from the buggy before leading the way into the house.
Adam stepped to the other side of the buggy and offered Hop Sing a hand.
"Little Joe find me under woodshed, bloken arm, bloken head. Take me to doctor in town." Hop Sing explained. "Sorry you come to empty house, Adam."
Adam planned to follow the others into the house after he had taken care of the horses. The work felt normal. It was work he always did. Work he could do without thinking about it. Work that didn't rely on whether or not his father was dying in his bedroom, meters away.
Adam felt reluctant to go into the house and he stopped inches from the blood that Goliath had left in the dirt of the door yard, staring up at his father's bedroom window. He'd told his father, "Cold comfort." Freeing Goliath from the barbed wire, even after he had delivered the wound that would likely kill the animal...that had been a cold comfort. A comfort that came too late. Compassion that arrived after the worst that could be imagined had been done.
Arriving, at home, at last, after hours of pain and struggle and fear, only to find a cold abandoned house standing open. Another cold comfort.
Having two of your sons safe, but knowing another was risking his life to save yours. Cold...comfort.
How many times had he, Adam, been ailing and feverish and the press of a cloth to his forehead provided cold comfort. It was a bitter thing. Bitter as the land could be. Bitter as the winters could be. But familiar...and comforting.
Lost in his own cyclical thinking Adam headed into the house, climbed the stairs and stood outside his father's bedroom door for a moment before his body demanded he sit. He listened to the doctor, Hoss, Joe and Ben as they worked quietly.
He drifted into sleep plagued by memories of Goliath's attack, the shrieking of the terrified horses, his father's pained moans on the long journey back to the house and the rumble of the snow and debris as it crashed down over the line cabin.
He woke with a start to Hoss' hand on his chest. "Doc wants to look at what Goliath did to ya." Hoss helped him to his feet and Adam stepped into his father's room, letting the doctor tear open his pants and remove his boots to get at the wounds.
Ben was sleeping, covered in blankets and bandages.
"How is he?"
"Hurt. There's some bruising on his lungs I think. He'll need to stay abed for a week at least, and that wound will need to be cleaned and rebandaged regularly." Doc Wilson used a cloth to roughly dig into the wounds on Adam's legs, his hands rougher than Adam thought they needed to be.
"Something else on your mind, doc?" Adam asked testily, after the older man practically dug a fingernail into the wounds.
"No. Nothing in particular. Just wondering why a man's son would stay out in the barn and the yard for hours, when that man is calling for his son, pleading for him. Not what I would have expected from you, Adam." The doc stood and tossed the cloth into Adam's lap before he moved to the bed and jerked open his bag. He pulled a roll of bandages out, but when he turned Adam was already on his feet, limping out of the room.
"Adam.." Hoss said, turning from the wall where he had been leaning and stepping into the door frame. "He ain't done yet."
"I'm done." Adam said, even before Hoss had finished speaking. Adam went to his room and stepped into fresh clothes. He stomped his aching legs into his boots, pulled his coat over strained shoulders and plopped his hat on his head before going back into the hallway, and down into the main room.
"Adam!" Hoss called.
Joe followed Adam down the hallway and into the main room. "Where are you going?"
"After Goliath."
"Goliath?"
"The bear."
"I'll go with you." Joe said, crossing to where he had dumped his coat on the settee.
"You'll stay here." Adam barked, picking up the buffalo rifle and stuffing his pockets with shells.
"You can't go after that thing alone." Joe argued, jerking his coat on.
"Pa's been asking for you all night. If he wakes up and finds you gone again it may well kill him. You stay here, get some rest, look after Pa." Adam said, his voice low, eyes intent.
"Adam!" Joe tried, but Adam didn't pause. He left the house, flipping the fur collar of his coat up around his ears, the door slamming behind him.
Joe turned when he heard a heavy foot behind him. "He's gone." He snapped angrily, looking up at Hoss. "He went after that bear."
Hoss's eyes were hooded, his face drawn. "Someone has to." He said finally before he turned and limped slowly back into his father's bedroom.
Adam crossed the yard and went into the woods where the bear had disappeared. He picked up the blood trail easily and followed it at a cautionary pace, his hands in his pockets, the gun balanced between his arm and his right side.
Did he feel guilt for staying out with the horses? For avoiding listening to his father announce his intention to die? For wanting to never again hear his father give him instructions on how to care for his younger brothers? Yes..he felt guilt. He felt shame. He felt foolish and immature and he wished he was strong enough to stand by Ben's bedside and write down every word that came from his fevered mouth.
But he wasn't. He couldn't go through it again. He would mend a thousand fences, herd a million cattle, ride a billion broncs before he ever wanted to hear his father again say, "I'm dying." The memory of those words, the pain and despair in Ben's voice, and thinking that his father was in his right, and sound mind when he said it. How could Ben Cartwright, the Ben Cartwright give up that way?
Adam knew that he had lost faith in his father. Was it fair to have done so? Had he ever felt the pain that his father was in? Felt like every breath came through a mouthful of mud? Had he lived his father's life, struggled as Ben Cartwright had?
Adam paused in a patch of snow that had been tamped down by a large body laying on the ground. His eyes traced the blood and tracks to where they turned west toward the mountains.
What bothered him most about it? Beyond that Ben might have been right. That he might yet die. What bothered him most was the fear that the next injury, the next setback and every setback after it, Ben would put up less and less of a fight. Adam knew the most powerful part of his father was his mind and heart. And now they had encountered something that bested his heart, overwhelmed his mind. The part of his father that was insurmountable had, it seemed, been defeated. Adam could do nothing to change it. He couldn't take back what his father had told him.
As Adam headed west, feeling the aches and pains in his body ebbing and flowing as he moved, he knew that the mind was just as fluid as the mountainside. It could be strengthened or weakened just as the body, and perhaps surviving this experience would empower Ben, instead of breaking him. The thought lifted Adam's spirits and he took longer strides, feeling a burst of energy against the lack of sleep and food.
Goliath's path was westward, but heading downhill and Adam could see more places where he tried to turn uphill, then grew too tired and turned down again. He realized, as Goliath's footprints grew closer and closer together that he had begun to think of his father, and the bear bull in the same light.
Goliath laying down in the door yard, seeming to give up, had torn at Adam as surely as Goliath's claws. He and Hoss had foolishly risked their lives to temporarily free him of his torment, and now Adam was tracking him again, his intention to put the animal down. Was he doing it out of compassion, for the sake of the bear, or necessity, for the sake of the ranch, or was it only an excuse to avoid watching his father die? And when it was done, when the bear was dead, would Adam feel comfort, peace of mind? Would he feel better? Would he suddenly have the strength to return to face his father's mortality?
Adam stopped and watched Goliath, bold against the bright white of the snow, shoving through the ground cover with slow, swaying steps. He started to raise the gun, aware of the hot tears on his face, competing with the numbing cold. It was as if Ben were at the other end of that gun. If he pulled the trigger he would put Ben out of pain. Something he should have done the first time he had the chance. Ben would no longer be clinging to an excruciating, dreary existence. He could finally rest, buried somewhere on the Ponderosa, no longer forced to worry about his boys or his land or his future.
But it would mean that Ben was gone. Adam and his brothers would be orphans. The Ponderosa would be left in their hands and despite his absolute assurance that he could run the ranch, Adam knew it would never be the same. It wouldn't have the same lifeblood flowing through it.
As Adam stood there, gun pointed, Goliath stopped, turned and faced him. The bear sniffed at the air then slowly sat, his hindquarters settling into the snow. He turned his muzzle up and a mournful roar echoed through the trees. Adam watched him shake his head, splattering blood on the trunks of the trees. He watched the white, aged tongue flicker out and sweep blood from his muzzle. The bear watched him, panting, waiting. When Goliath gave a grunt and lunged forward, Adam tightened his muscles and pulled the trigger.
Goliath's head snapped to the side, he leaned forward, then slumped to the ground.
Adam dragged his boots through the snow and knelt by the bear. It wasn't breathing anymore. It's great rib cage had gone still. All motor responses had been shut down by the single shot to the brain. Out of his misery for all eternity.
Adam turned and sat, leaning back against the still warm bulk of the dead bear. He mourned his father's death as if Ben's body had taken the bullet. He wept until he had nothing left in him, then got to his feet and started the long trudge back to the house. As he walked, thin, anemic slow flakes began to trickle down. At first he thought it was just the breeze, knocking snow from the trees, and scattering it like a waterfall splitting over a boulder. As he walked on he realized that the snowflakes had increased in size and the wide, obvious tracks he had been following were beginning to disappear.
Turning up hill slowed him considerably. He was cold, tired, hungry. Climbing put pressure on the wounds in his legs and each foot he ascended was painful and exhausting. Adam convinced himself that he needed to prove to his father...something. He didn't know what anymore. But resisting the urge to lay down in the deepening snow, to free himself from the hot, tearing pain, to make it, no matter what. He had to. At the crest of the hill, with the smell of food cooking and wood burning in the fireplace drifting toward him from the house, Adam paused. His feet were poised shoulder width apart, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets, the gun clamped between his right arm and his side. Adam's left shoulder rested against the trunk of a narrow pine and he stared at the house, his goal, too tired to take that final step.
He rested, he did everything to convince himself to move. Just move. The snow now fell with near blizzard intensity, promising another couple of feet before nightfall. Adam wondered if the doctor was still at the house. If he would spend the night, caring for Ben, or if there was nothing left for him to do. His shame burned in his empty stomach, replacing the food he hadn't tasted in over two days, and Adam finally pushed away from the tree and up into the yard.
He remembered only some of the journey across the door yard. He remembered his first few steps through the door, and the intense change from outside to inside. He was on his feet one moment and on the floor the next. A chill ran down his spine from the heat of the fireplace, the warmth soaking into every part of him slowly. He came to on the settee, bundled in blankets, warm and dry. Hoss sat in one of the chairs by the fire place, stockinged feet up on a footrest, snoring softly, a blanket over him.
Adam sat up carefully, spotted a cup of tea sitting on the table and drank it. The house was dark but for the fire and Adam quietly added a few more logs, pacing around the main room with the blanket pulled over his shoulders. He went to the kitchen to find it cleaned and closed down for the night. Adam stoked the fire in the oven and set a pot of coffee on to boil, watching the snow fall through the kitchen windows until the bubbling coffee began to spurt out of the pour spout.
He poured himself a cup, poured a second cup, then set the rest of the pot on the burner farthest from the flames and walked quietly to the stairs. Joe sat by Pa's bed, tilted back in a chair, intent on a dime novel.
"Hey."
The chair legs settled back on the floor softly and Joe looked up, then stood stretching. "Hey. You look better." He said, his voice just above a whisper.
Adam offered the second cup of coffee to his brother but held onto the cup, waiting for Joe to meet his eyes. "I'm sorry I ran out like that."
Joe met his eyes and his lips quirked at the corner. "Hoss told me some of what Pa was saying while you two were alone with him. I'd have wanted to do the same thing."
"I'd like to sit with him."
Joe sipped from the coffee and moaned softly. "It's your turn anyway." He turned to leave the room, slapping Adam on the back before gently closing the door behind him.
Adam moved the chair close enough to the bed that he could sit with his feet propped on the mattress. He moved to the bedside to check his father's temperature, pulling the blankets back to look at the bandages.
Ben sighed softly. "You boys were never good at whispering."
Adam moved to put the blankets back but his father's hand escaped before he could. Adam felt his hand pulled to his father's chest again and his heart threatened to seize at the terror of another deathbed declaration. Adam forced himself to sit, turning his hand grasping his father's palm instead.
"Glad you're alright, son."
"I'm sorry, pa. I'm so-"
Ben's head rolled on the pillow, his hand patting Adam's before clutching it again. "No...no. No, son. We'll talk...talk in the morning. You just...stay here. You boys, stay safe. Let me rest. We'll talk later."
Ben drifted into sleep and Adam tucked his father under the blankets before going to the chair to sit the rest of the night.