A/N: Written in response to the Bonanza Brand 2022 Ponderosa Paddlewheel Poker Tournament (words dealt: blizzard, wind, drawing, and doubloon).
Ben looked up from his seat by the large fireplace as the front door opened and the howling wind outside slammed it open. A second later, sixteen-year-old Adam came through the doorframe. He turned around, struggling to close the door against the strong wind.
"The animals are all fed and settled inside the barn, Pa."
"Thanks, son."
Adam hung up his coat by the door before heading over to the fireplace to warm up. "That wind sure is blowing outside and I even saw a few snowflakes begin to fall. By the looks of the clouds, we are going to be in for quite the storm."
Ben nodded his head in agreement. He knew all about dangerous and mighty storms from his time out at sea. There was a certain look the sky had just before a powerful storm. The only difference here on the Ponderosa was instead of torrential rainfall, there was blinding snow.
All heads turned towards the window as a particularly strong wind gust made the window rattle and creak. Ben's wife Marie had headed back to New Orleans to visit with family and friends and while he was grateful she made it out of town before this storm hit, he also wished she had stayed home with them. Who knew how long this storm would last and he could only pray that she'd be able to make it back safely.
By the next morning, a full-on blizzard had set in. The wind continued to rage, blowing the snow to near whiteout conditions. Visibility outside was reduced to mere feet, making leaving the house nearly impossible. That meant everyone was confined inside.
The first few days went smoothly with everyone excited to get some time off ranch chores and the usual daily routine. By day four, though, cabin fever had set in, and everyone's tempers were beginning to show.
You would think as enormous as the ranch house is there would be plenty of space for everyone. Instead, everyone seemed to be stepping on everyone else's toes. Adam, who just wanted to sit in his favorite chair and read one of his books, was constantly being asked a billion questions by his youngest brother. Four-year-old Joe only was bothering his oldest brother because his Pa told him to find something to do. Poor Hoss was just caught in the middle between entertaining his little brother and being a big kid like Adam.
Day six of the blizzard was when the tension peaked in the house. The snow continued to fall outside and although the wind had diminished slightly, it was still too windy, cold, and snowy to even think about leaving the house.
It was early afternoon and Ben sat at his desk working on some of the latest paperwork for the ranch. Adam was finally able to bury himself in that new adventure book he'd been trying to read all week. Hoss sat on the hearth whittling a new wooden toy for Joe while Joe himself was upstairs supposedly having a nap.
Scratch that. Little Joe had firmly proclaimed that at four he was too old for naps, much to his parent's disagreement. They had settled on quiet time in his room instead. If he was exceptionally tired, he would be taking a nap, but most days he was just allowed to play quietly in his room.
All was peaceful until a high-pitched shriek was heard and then the thundering of little feet down the upstairs hallway. Joe reached the stairs and ran down them so quickly it appeared his feet never even touched the stairs.
Ben stood up from his desk anticipating the worst-case scenario with his youngest son. He met him halfway between the stairs and his desk, catching him by his shoulders and kneeling down in front of him to more appropriately access the situation.
"What's wrong? Did something happen upstairs?"
"I lost my gold coin!"
Grandfather Stoddard had acquired several Spanish gold coins called doubloons from his sailor days. He had little use for them now that he was growing older by the day, so instead of letting them just collect dust at his house, he sent them to all his grandchildren a couple Christmases ago.
Adam had his displayed prominently on the top shelf of his bookcase and Hoss had put his in a treasure box under his bed. Little Joe on the other hand carried his coin with him night and day, to town, on the ranch, and even on overnight trips. There was never a time he didn't have it with him, except now. Now it was missing.
"Wait, there's no emergency?"
Tears had started falling down Joe's face and his small head shook back and forth. "Nuh-uh. Just lost my co-coin."
Ben stood back up and raked his hands through his hair and then pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Why were you running in the house if there's no emergency then?"
Confusion as to why his Pa wasn't as concerned about his lost coin as he was had replaced the tears on Little Joe's face. "Cause of my coin."
He let out a deep breath in an attempt to calm himself before he spoke, but it did little good. "You know running in the house, especially the stairs, is extremely dangerous. Tell me, when are the only two times you're allowed to run in the house, young man?"
By now both Adam and Hoss had stopped what they were doing to watch the interaction. Little Joe waivered in his response, giving a side glance to his oldest brother. They locked eyes and Adam gave him a small nod of encouragement to answer their father.
"Only if there's a fire or someone's hurt."
"Exactly. Those are the only two times. Now, you know—"
"Pa." Adam interrupted his father knowing this conversation wasn't going to end well for any of them. Ben shot him a look that would silence most grown men, but Adam wasn't deterred. "Joe is just upset about his lost coin. He's always had it since Grandfather gave it to him. We're all tense at being stuck inside for so long. May I please try to occupy his time with something else?"
Ben was dumbfounded. He wasn't often interrupted when he was dealing with one of his children and this threw him off slightly. "Your brother, here, disobeyed a major rule."
"I'm not denying that, but if you punish him right now, we're all going to be in even worse moods than we already are right now. Please, Pa, let me try to distract him with something fun."
Ben hesitated in his answer, almost so long that Adam was sure he would deny his request. Finally, he answered after what seemed like an eternity. "Fine, but if there's one more rule broken, there won't be any saving your brother. Blizzard or not, I won't have my sons acting like a bunch of savages in the house."
Adam let out a smirk at the comment before answering. "Thanks!"
As Ben headed into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee, Adam called both his brothers out to the dining room table, telling them to take a seat.
"What are we goin' do? You told Pa we're goin' do something fun."
"Oh, we are, Hoss." Adam's voice sounded much more confident than he really felt. It was a different activity, one he was positive his brothers had never done before. He just hoped they all had fun as well as keep them busy and out of trouble for a while.
With his brothers seated, he scurried away to get all the needed supplies. Five minutes later, he returned to the kitchen, laying a couple paper tablets and graphite pencils down in the center.
"What I thought we could do is all have some fun drawing." Little Joe's face lit up and started to reach for the supplies, but Adam stopped him.
"We're not going to just draw anything. It'll be a sort of game. We'll take turns with each one of us thinking up an item or scene that the rest of us have to draw. In the end, they'll all look different, but they should look a little like the topic. We can then give all our drawings to Pa and Marie to help brighten their mood."
Adam took one of the tablets and gave Hoss and Joe each a sheet of paper and then passed out a pencil to each one. He glanced towards the open window and noticed the snow had finally stopped falling. "How about I go first? I'm going to have us all draw the mountain scene outside the window. It has to have at least one mountain and a tree on either side of the paper."
The hours passed quickly that afternoon and the afternoons for the next few days. In the end, they had accumulated a wide collection of drawings of everything from trees to animals to structures and even attempts at drawing some people.
Naturally, Little Joe's drawings were merely vague pictures of each subject. Hoss' pictures had more detail and were generally pretty good. Not surprising even though he was only ten years old as his wood carvings always turned out almost better than a professional. He just had a natural gift of seeing something in his head and then putting it down in wood or in this case paper.
What was surprising was Adam's pictures. They were exceptionally well done with almost everything to scale and lots of detail. Adam always did well in school going above and beyond what was required. However, that was mainly in the academic subjects. He never thought of himself as one to have the most creative eye or imagination, at least not until now.
He sat at the desk in his room admiring the drawings when his father came in. "You know those are very good son."
"Yeah. Who knew I was so good at the arts? I thought I was just good at things like arithmetic and reading."
"I'm not surprised. You always do well at anything you put your mind to."
"Guess it was a hidden talent I had, one that even I didn't know about." Both exchanged a laugh before Adam put the pictures away for now.
Two weeks later, Marie was able to make it back home. She enjoyed all the drawings, but she was especially impressed with Adam's as well. She said with talent like that, he should consider going to college to study architecture or engineering. Adam had never thought about going to college before, but now that seed was planted in his mind. Perhaps one day, but he still had another year or two of regular school and for now he just wanted to focus on that.
As far as the fate of the lost doubloon goes, two months later Marie was beginning her spring cleaning. Wedged in a crack in the floorboard under Little Joe's dresser was the gold coin. Ben convinced Joe to allow him to punch a tiny hole near the top of the coin and lace a leather cord through the hole. This way he could keep it with him without losing it or just hang it up in his room. Thanks to Adam's intuitive activity and two months without it, he chose the latter option as he had learned to live without having it with him all the time.
And thanks to his own activity, Adam learned to keep exploring, learning, and doing new things because you never know when or where you might find a new talent that could open doors to your entire future.