CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ben, Hoss, Little Joe, and Hop Sing recovered quickly from their ordeal in San Francisco, and within a few days, the family regained their usual camaraderie, though Little Joe did crawl into bed one night to find his sheets full of poison oak. He scratched for the next week and ran through Josie's entire supply of calamine lotion. Adam feigned ignorance, but one morning at breakfast, Josie glimpsed a small spot of red rash on his wrist.
"You should have worn longer gloves," she whispered to him.
Adam pulled the cuff of his sleeve down over the spot. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," he insisted, but Josie noticed the small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
August faded into September, and the Cartwright men began prepping the ranch for winter. On the days Josie wasn't in the clinic, "her boys," as she had begun referring collectively to Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe, enjoyed taking her with them on their rounds of the ranch. She proved adept at spotting cracks and drafts in the line shacks. One afternoon while she was out with Joe, the cousins came across a huge, fourteen-point buck. In perfect unison, they pulled their rifles from their scabbards, took aim, and fired. The deer collapsed, and Little Joe and Josie exchanged grins, each believing they had been the one to bring the animal down. Upon inspection of the animal, they discovered two neat bullet holes, side by side, right through the buck's heart.
"Now that's what I call teamwork," Little Joe said, nudging Josie in the ribs with his elbow.
Adam learned to worry less about Josie riding alone to and from town, but he was always relieved to see her ride into the front yard at the end of the day. She was a little annoyed that Adam still waited for her on the porch, but his overprotectiveness was sweet in a way, and she always greeted him with a big smile. One Tuesday evening in mid-September, however, Adam didn't get his smile. His brow wrinkled in concern.
"Everything ok?" he asked as Josie dismounted. He no longer panicked so easily, but he was unsettled every time Josie looked unhappy.
"Sure." Josie gave him a quick hug and started to lead The General to the barn. Adam grabbed the reins.
"I've got him. You go inside and wash up. Hop Sing's cooking up the last of that deer you and Joe brought in."
"Thanks."
Adam watched her plod toward the house, her long, dark braid coming loose, and the weight of the world seeming to rest on her shoulders. She looked so small. He wanted nothing more than to fix whatever was bothering her.
Josie was the last to arrive at the supper table that evening, and before she sat down, she handed Ben a letter. "This came for you."
Ben tore open the envelope and extracted the letter. "It's from your father!" He skimmed the letter. "It says he's doing well and expects to be in Washington until after the first of the year." Then his brow wrinkled. "Josie, he says to ask if you need any help with your bank draft. Did you need to send money to someone?"
"No," Josie said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Papa wrote me, too. He sent a deposit to the Virginia City bank for me."
"That was nice of him!" Little Joe said. "I wish my father would send money my way once in a while."
Ben glared at him. "You work for it, same as everyone else. What my brother does with his money is his business."
"It's for my birthday," Josie mumbled into her mashed potatoes.
Adam slapped his forehead. Of course! Josie's birthday was on the twenty-third, less than a week away. And this would be her first birthday without her parents. Even when she was away at school, Jacob and Hannah had traveled up to see her on her birthday. In his own excitement over having Josie at the Ponderosa, Adam hadn't considered that she might be homesick. She was fitting into their lives perfectly, but of course she would miss her parents.
Adam remembered that feeling. When he went away to college, he had immediately fallen in love with Harvard and made lifelong friends, but he'd still missed his father and brothers, especially around the holidays and his birthday. He should have realized Josie would be no different, particularly when one considered her precarious social standing in Virginia City. More and more people in the area were accepting her as a doctor, but it was difficult for her to meet other people her age. She spoke to Sally Cass occasionally when she was in town and Simon whenever he came by the ranch, but she had no close friends. Adam decided to do something about that.
After supper, Josie excused herself to her bedroom, saying she was tired and going to bed early. Ben, Hoss, and Little Joe watched anxiously as she disappeared up the stairs. Adam, on the other hand, saw this as a brilliant stroke of luck. As soon as he heard her bedroom door close, he gathered his father and brothers and told them what he guessed was bothering her.
"Oh, goodness," Ben said, sitting down in his armchair. "I completely forgot her birthday was coming up. Of course she's homesick."
"What can we do?" Hoss asked, his bushy brow furrowed.
"I think we need to have a birthday party," Adam said. "A surprise one."
"That's a good idea, son," Ben said. "Her birthday is next Monday, so let's have a party here on Saturday evening."
"We should invite all the people we know who are around her age," Adam said. "Help her make some friends."
"Sally Cass," Ben said.
"Reverend Lovejoy's daughter, Patience," Hoss suggested.
"I can ride out to the Lucky Star tomorrow and invite Simon and his little sister, Rebecca," Little Joe offered.
Adam considered this. "No, Hoss can ride to the Lucky Star. I want you to go into town tomorrow and hand out the invitations to anyone you think should be invited, especially young ladies."
Little Joe grinned. He liked the sound of this job. "What invitations?" he asked.
"The ones we're going to write up tonight." Adam crossed the room to his father's desk, where he took out a stack of blank paper, four pens, and two ink wells. He carried all these to the dining room table and set them down. "Shall we, gentlemen?"
The Cartwright men spent the rest of the evening writing out several dozen invitations. They jumped every time they heard a creak from upstairs, terrified that Josie would catch them and ruin the surprise. By bedtime, everyone's hands were cramped and stained with ink, but they had a neat stack of invitations, and they toasted their cleverness with shots of brandy.
It was hard keeping their secret from Josie the rest of the week. They all hated to see her miserable, and they were grateful when Friday arrived and she spent the day at the clinic. Hop Sing spent the day making the biggest cake he had ever baked, and Ben got two entire pigs cooking in the smokehouse. The response to the invitations had been overwhelmingly positive, and the Cartwrights were expecting nearly fifty people tomorrow. At Hoss's insistence, they'd even enlisted a few musicians from town.
"Josie loves dancin'," he pointed out.
At breakfast Saturday morning, Little Joe asked Josie if she wanted to go fishing down at the lake. She raised one eyebrow.
"You promise not to climb any trees?" she asked.
"Promise."
"All right."
The men let out a collective sigh of relief. They needed to get Josie out of the house so they could prepare for the party, and they didn't have a backup plan if she hadn't agreed to go with Joe. Josie looked at them quizzically but did not feel like inquiring. She hadn't felt like doing much of anything the past week, and she only agreed to go with Little Joe because it was just a matter of time before Adam or Uncle Ben started lecturing her about getting out of the house for something other than work.
As soon as Josie and Little Joe trotted out of sight, Ben, Adam, Hoss, and Hop Sing sprang into action. Rather, Ben, Hoss, and Hop Sing sprang into action while Adam gave orders about placing the decorations just so and making sure the house was spotless. The guests had been instructed to arrive around four o'clock—a little early for an evening party, but there had been uncertainty about how long Little Joe could keep Josie interested in fishing, so they decided that earlier was better.
By five o'clock, the front yard was packed with the Cartwrights' friends and neighbors. Adam and Hoss looked around approvingly at the dozen-and-a-half young ladies in attendance.
"Sending Little Joe around with the invitations was a good idea," Hoss said.
"I had a feeling we'd get a good turnout if Casanova invited them," Adam said, smiling at his own cleverness.
A few moments later, Josie and Little Joe rode into the front yard, a long string of fish hanging from Little Joe's saddle. Both were wet and muddy, as if they'd been trying to throw each other in the lake, which, Adam surmised, they probably had been. Adam watched as Josie stared at the crowd and decorations, her mouth hanging open. As she slid from her saddle, everyone yelled "SURPRISE!"
Adam darted over to her. "Happy birthday!" he exclaimed, grinning. Much to his surprise and dismay, Josie burst into tears and buried her face in his shirt. His arms automatically wrapped around her as he looked over her hat at Little Joe. Joe met his brother's bewildered gaze and shrugged his shoulders. This was not the reaction any of them had been expecting or hoping for.
Adam pulled Josie back a little way so he could look at her. "Josie, what's wrong?" he asked as Ben jogged over to join them.
"You threw me a nice party and look at me!" she wailed. "I'm a mess, and I smell like dead trout!" She plunged her face back into Adam's shirtfront.
"Oh, we didn't think of that." Adam looked helplessly at his father.
"Hey, Josie," Ben said, "don't you worry about a thing. You just go upstairs and get cleaned up. We'll keep the party going for you."
Josie nodded as well as she could with her face pressed into Adam's chest. She took a deep breath and stepped back. "I'm sorry," she said, wiping her eyes. "I really am happy about the party. I'm just-"
"Surprised?" Adam finished for her.
Josie smiled feebly at him. "Yeah."
Adam smiled back down at her. "Go on." He nudged her toward the house. "Get cleaned up."
Josie scampered into the house, waving shyly at the guests as she went. Ben turned to the crowd and announced, "The birthday girl will be back in a bit. I suppose we should have picked a cleaner activity to keep her occupied this afternoon." The guests laughed and returned to socializing.
When Josie reemerged forty minutes later, she was all smiles. She had bathed and put on a dress of green-sprigged calico that complemented her hazel eyes. Hopeless with styling her own hair, she had pulled it up into a braided bun, leaving down a few wisps of black hair to frame her face. All eyes turned to gaze at her as she stepped onto the porch.
"You know something, Pa?" Little Joe said as the Cartwright men admired her. "We've got ourselves the prettiest little gal in Nevada."
"We sure do," Ben agreed.
"That's because she takes after the Stoddard side," Adam quipped. Ben sniggered and Hoss and Little Joe stuck out their tongues at their older brother, but Adam ignored them. He was already striding toward Josie. He took her arm and introduced her as the guest of honor. She blushed while everyone applauded. Adam then handed her off to Sally Cass with a quiet suggestion that she introduce her to some of the other young ladies.
"With pleasure!" Sally said. "Come on, Josie, I'll introduce you to Patience Lovejoy." Adam smiled as he watched Sally and Josie flit arm-in-arm through the crowd.
Despite its rough beginnings, the party was a resounding success. Before Ben had even produced the barbecued pork, Josie found herself surrounded by a gaggle of girls her own age who were all fascinated by her medical degree.
"Did you really set Delphine Marquette's wrist?" Patience Lovejoy, the reverend's daughter, asked in awe.
"Yes," Josie replied, and the young ladies gasped. Josie giggled. "It wasn't hard." She paused. "Though it would have been easier if Ross hadn't passed out on the floor." The young ladies burst into peals of laughter.
"It must be hard, for you, living out here with all these men, and no other women for miles," a girl named Margaret Crawford said.
Just then, one of the Cartwrights' new ranch hands, a handsome young man named Jimmy, walked by and tipped his hat to the ladies. Six sets of eyes, including Josie's, followed him as he passed.
"Oh, it's not as bad as all that," Josie said distractedly, eliciting another gale of giggles from her new friends.
After everyone had eaten their fill of pork, beans, and biscuits, Hop Sing proudly carried out the enormous cake. The cook had spent most of the afternoon getting the icing just right, and everyone complimented him on his handiwork. The cake wouldn't fit in the oven in its entirety, and Adam was impressed with the way Hop Sing had baked it in sections and then fitted them together. He would have made a fair architect. A thick layer of white frosting over the entire confection hid the seams, and on top, Hop Sing had carefully written "Happy Birthday Josie" in red icing. Josie cut the first slice of cake and then handed the job off to Hop Sing so she could get back to her friends.
Ben instructed the musicians to start playing as everyone finished their cake, and for the next two hours, the partygoers danced. Josie, Sally, Margaret, and Patience partnered up with one another for the Virginia Reel and shrieked with laughter as they tripped over each other's feet and landed in a big, giggling pile. Adam's heart soared as he watched Josie cut loose with her new friends. Ben watched the interaction, too, and clapped Adam on the back.
"Good job with the party, son," he said. "I haven't seen Josie this happy since before Bull Run."
"Me either. I know she's been happy here, but I think these friends are exactly what she needed."
As Adam had expected, Simon Croft did invite Josie to dance, but Adam was pleased to see the young man didn't monopolize her time. Simon understood that as the guest of honor Josie needed to circulate among her guests, and he gave her all the time and space she needed to meet everyone. By the end of the evening, Josie had danced with Ben, all three of her cousins, Simon, Dr. Martin, Sheriff Coffee, Ross Marquette, Joe's friend Mitch, and the banker's son, Thomas. Simon had to act quickly to get a second round of dancing with her toward the end of the evening. They danced to two songs before they heard the musicians announce their final number of the evening. Simon wasn't surprised to feel a tap on his shoulder, and he turned to face the smiling countenance of Adam Cartwright. No words were needed this time—Simon stepped aside so Adam could dance with Josie. The cousins swept around to the waltz Adam had requested. As the song ended, Josie hugged him tightly.
"Thank you for my party. It was wonderful."
"Happy to do it," Adam replied with a grin.
It was nearly midnight when they finished bidding farewell to the last of their guests. A few of the ranch hands, Jimmy included, stayed up to help the Cartwrights clear away the tables and the leftover food. It was nearly two a.m. before anyone got to bed, and they were all relieved when Ben announced that everyone should sleep in the next morning. Josie cheered and kissed her uncle and cousins goodnight before skipping upstairs. Adam collapsed into bed that night exhausted but overjoyed that Josie's birthday had been such a big success. He fell asleep with a smile still flitting about his lips.