ELEVEN

"Hey, Joe. You gotta wake up."

Joe moaned. He was both too hot and too cold. His shoulder was on fire and his legs were like ice and he just wished he had the energy to tell whoever it was that was trying to wake him to go to Hell.

Moaning again, he curled into a ball and whimpered instead.

"Go...way..."

"Dang it! If you ain't the laziest thing this side of Reno! What do I got to do, come down there and drag your sorry hiney out of trouble?"

Down...there.

Where?

Where was...down there?

"Joe, you gotta move." Worry colored the voice as whoever had spoken came closer. A second later Joe felt fingers comb through his muddy hair and then land lightly on his injured shoulder. "I know you're hurtin', boy, but there ain't much time. Joe, come on. Bella needs you. She needs you real bad."

Bella.

Needs.

Me.

With a groan, Joe forced open his eyes. There was a man – a big man bending over him making a 'tsking' sound with his tongue. The bulk of his massive form blocked out the blinding light that bathed the forest all around them. Joe scowled. Abel Ramsey was big, but this wasn't Ramsey. If it had been, the man wouldn't have been trying to get him to his feet. He'd be looking down the barrel of a gun instead of into a beefy face framed in concern.

A familiar beefy face.

An impossibly familiarbeefy face.

Maybe he was dead.

But then, if he was, all the preachers he'd ever heard had lied. They all said the Good Book promised there'd be no more pain when you got to Heaven and he was in a heck of a lot of pain.

"You c...can't be real..." he finally managed to stutter.

The big man snorted. "If you ain't the orneriest cuss, little brother. You can see me. You can hear me. How is it I cain't be real?"

Joe swallowed over a grief not yet a year old. "Because you're...dead."

His brother Hoss shifted back on his haunches. The big man lifted the white ten gallon hat on his head and pushed it back, revealing his thinning hairline. He looked much the same, but younger. Or maybe it was healthier – more vital.

"Well, now, there's dead and there's dead, little brother. I just ain't dead like you understand the word."

Joe's head was swimming. What other way was there to understand the word?

"You see, to me, Little Joe, you're the one who ain't quite livin' yet. You're down here on Earth where things are pretty uncertain. Where you get a just about a day of happiness for every year of sufferin'." Hoss paused and then he chuckled. "Course you always got more than your fair share."

Joe pulled himself up a bit so he could look directly at the man addressing him. It had to be Hoss. No one else had that cherubic face holding a pair of crisp blue eyes bright as the sky. No one could look so damned content no matter the fact that it was numbingly cold and he was kneeling on a muddy bank knee-deep in wet grass.

"How?" Joe rasped.

He was kneeling too – well, lying was more like it, except he was only half on the bank. The other half was immersed in icy water. He'd plunged into the creek and made it to the tree and hidden among its roots for nearly a half-hour while Abel Ramsey searched the area. Once the man had disappeared over the top, he'd managed to swim the few feet to the bank, but that was as far as he got. He'd laid there looking up – giving up – even though he knew he had to make it up the side of the hill. A prayer had escaped his lips, but it seemed to no avail. God, he'd pleaded, I have to find the strength. I have to follow Ramsey! I've gotta get Bella away from that madman before he kills her or...

The horrific scene he hadn't witnessed but could not forget flashed before Joe's eyes. Alice fighting off the men who killed her as they had their way with her. Her body had been burnt beyond recognition, so there had been no way to tell, but he knew... Joe sucked in air, suddenly feeling like he might drown.

Even though she was pregnant, he knew what they had done.

"Joe. Joe!"

Blinking his eyes to free his lashes of tears and mud, Joe looked up. "Yeah?"

"There's somethin' you gotta learn little brother. And you gotta learn it quick." Hoss paused. "You gotta stop over-thinkin' things like Adam."

That was not what he had expected to hear.

"Somewhere's along the way, Joe, you started thinkin' like our big brother. Broodin', you might say. It don't suit you."

"What? ...what?"

"The Man upstairs, Joe, Him and me have had some talks about you. He's got somethin' mighty special in mind for you and yours. That's why you're the one still with Pa." Hoss let out a sigh. "But Joe, you gotta make the choice to grab that future. You gotta make it now!" The big man thought a moment. "Remember how you was when we was kids? There was no holdin' you back, boy! You'd find a way when the rest of us had decided there wasn't any – maybe just 'cause we decided it." Hoss reached down. His big hand cupped his face. "You gotta make a way now, Joe. No one else will come in time. You gotta save Bella."

"I...can't..." His shoulder was throbbing and his head was pounding like he'd just awakened from a deep sleep. He felt sick. "Hoss, I don't think I can..."

"That's your problem, Joe. You need to stop thinkin'. Sure you can. You can do anythin' you put your mind too." His brother leaned in so close he could smell him – smell the scent of hay and horse, of tiny animals cuddled to his massive chest, of leather and sweat. "Just keep your eyes on the prize, little brother. I promise you, there's a rest at the end. You hear me? Now you get up and you take my hand and you get goin' and save that little gal."

It took everything Joe had in him to do as his brother demanded. As he moved, a tidal wave of pain crashed over his tired and sore body and he felt a deep yearning to sink back into the mud and be swallowed by darkness. Denying it, he lifted his upper torso and caught his brother's hand. As he did, Joe felt strength pass from Hoss into him.

A strength that got him to his feet.

A strength that took him up the hill from the creek to flat land.

A strength that sent him running when he saw the flames rising into the night, consuming the small wooden line shack that stood silhouetted against the trees.

A strength that turned him to steel as he heard Bella scream.

They were lost.

He couldn't believe it, but they were. Between him and Candy Ben had been sure they could find their way through the woods in the dark. Inopportunely, the moon had decided to retreat behind the clouds, taking the stars with it, and there was no way to anchor themselves and know exactly where they were. A creek ran at the bottom of the bank to the left side of them. They'd used its voice to continue on through the dark after the light was gone. The ribbon of water ran near the old line shack on the north end of their property. He'd thought about tearing that old shack down, but it held such memories, he'd let it be. It was there Adam had found Elizabeth Carnaby, and from there the two of them had gone on to rescue Little Joe from Fleet Rowse. Somehow he'd known that line shack had a part to play in their lives that was yet to come.

He couldn't imagine what it was.

"Pa?"

There was fear in the boy's voice. Crossing over to Jamie quickly, the older man asked, "What is it, son?"

Before the boy could reply, Ben knew. He could see it in the faces of the two men who stood beside him. In fact, the answer to his question was written in the fact that he could see them.

There was a light burning brightly, shining through the trees ahead of them.

The older man's heart sank.

God.

No.

"It's the shack!" Candy shouted. "It's on fire!"

Ben regretted now that they had dismounted. It had been impossible to direct the horses through the woods in the pitch dark, but he would have cherished their speed now. From what he remembered, they were still a good half-mile from the shack. On foot, it would take them at least fifteen minutes to get there – if not longer.

More than enough time for everything Joe had dreamed of to go up in smoke.

Bella crouched against the back wall of the shack, making her body as small as she could and keeping low to the ground where the air was cleaner. When Abel Ramsey had forced her into the line shack, she had known what he intended and she wasn't about to let him have what he meant to take. She'd feigned weakness and slumped to the floor, forcing him to bend down over her, and then she'd kicked him for all she was worth where it counted most. Unfortunately, while she knocked the wind out of him and caused him to stumble back, he knocked into the table that held the coal oil lamp he had placed there. The lamp fell to the floor, shattered, and spread oil everywhere, setting everything on fire – including Abel Ramsey whose clothes and hair went up like a torch as he ran screaming for the door.

He didn't make it.

She'd tried to get out, but Ramsey's flaming corpse had blocked the doorway and she'd been forced to retreat into the back room where once, many years before, she had found Adam Cartwright crawling in the window and knocked him silly using a sack of flour.

Sadly, in the intervening years, someone had fixed the window. She couldn't get it open.

She hoped it hadn't been Joe.

So here she was, coughing and breathing hard, leaning against lower portion of the wall, watching the smoke creep under the closed door and listening to the crack of the flames as they gnawed at the slender wooden barrier that was all that separated her from a horrible death, and all she could think of was the man she loved.

Joe wouldn't survive this.

The fire would kill them both.

Joe had managed to keep upright and on his feet. He didn't know how, but he wasn't going to question it. As he staggered out of the trees and into the yard, he realized he was on the back side of the line shack. Involuntarily, his eyes went to the window Adam had used to climb into it all those years ago. What he saw there made his heart stop.

Bella.

In the window.

Calling his name.

As he ran toward the burning building, Joe looked around for something to use to free her. For the most part the yard was empty since no one was living in the shack right now. Even as he began to lose hope that he would be able to find something, he spotted it. Someone had been negligent, God bless them! There was an axe struck into the stump of a tree beside which lay a pile of ruined kindling. In one movement Joe caught the axe in his hand, finished his run to the shack, and swung it hard. Bella had seen him coming and shifted back. He lost sight of her as the bubbled glass shattered and the bars of wood that had held it in place flew into his face or hit the ground. He could only hope the rush of air wouldn't suck the flames toward her. He could see the bedroom door was closed. There was time.

God, there had to be time!

"Bella!" he screamed. "Bella! Jump!"

She appeared again. Her face was ghostly pale, but not blackened. Her hair was not on fire.

She was alive.

Joe reached through the broken window as she approached and pulled her out, mindless of his wounded shoulder and the glass that cut into his skin and hers. Her skirts caught on the jagged edges of the wood, halting them briefly. He ripped her free with an almost supernatural strength and they both fell to the ground. At that second there was a sound deep within the structure – a crack! – and the roof fell in. The reenergized flames exploded through the door that had kept Bella safe and raced into the room where she had been. As the fire continued on, consuming everything in their path, streaking across the burning floor and toward the window, Joe felt Bella's arms circle his waist, lending him strength. He gave her a weak smile and then leaned heavily on her as she led them away from the ruin. Together they made it to the other side of the shack, upwind of the flames that were now dancing among the dry grasses and leaves. As they stood staring at the devastation one sick man had wrought, Joe's knees buckled and he dropped to the hard earth. Bella followed him. She circled him with her arms and drew him into her embrace and the two of them sat there, together, both horrified and amazed.

They were alive.

Ben Cartwright plunged through the trees, heedless of the stinging bare branches that struck him and cut his exposed skin. Candy and Jamie were shouting for him to stop, that it was too dangerous to get any closer. Telling him he was risking his life needlessly.

'Nothing', his foreman had said, Candy's own grief choking the word as he stared at the flames licking high into the night. 'Nothing in that shack could have survived.'

He had faced many hard things in his life – Elizabeth's death, facing his small son as they traveled and having to tell Adam that they had no money or food; that he had no idea where their next meal would come from. The wagon train west. Inger with an arrow jutting from her breast. Marie and that damned horse.

Forty years of his son's illnesses and injuries and all the times Doc Martin had told him in a solemn voice, 'It's up to God."

If he died going too close to that burning shack. Well, that was up to God too!

Candy and Jamie were still yelling. Ben could hear Little Ben too and he thought Rafe as well. He'd outpaced them all by minutes, driven by a strength that was not his own to arrive in time, and so he was alone when he broke through the edge of the trees and came upon a scene straight out of Dante's Inferno. The autumn wind was brisk. It had caught the flames that consumed the line shack and fanned them out, setting the forest on fire. The only blessing was that it would find very little fuel there. Most of the leaves and brush had been driven to the east by the strong wind. The fire would be hot and it would leave nothing but blackened matchsticks trees and brush behind, but it was likely to burn out just as quickly as it had arisen.

Ben's bleary tear-filled eyes scanned the barren land surrounding the shack, desperate, hopeful.

Afraid.

It took a moment. Then he realized there was another blessing.

The sight of two wretched figures huddled together on the side of the shack, away from the fire.

Candy shouted again and then Jamie too. They were close and would be upon them any moment. The sound of their voices freed Ben's legs and he began to move. He covered the ground between them in record time and then dropped to the earth beside the two weary, battered, and bloodied children he loved. Reaching out, Ben drew them into his arms. He planted a kiss first on his son's sooty hair and then on Bella's.

Joe was nearly unconscious, but he stirred at the familiar touch. His son's lips curled slightly, he coughed, and then managed to rasp out a few words.

"You...don't have...to ask me...how we are...Pa." Those green eyes slid sideways to the woman he loved. Joe reached out and took her hand.

"Bella and...me. We're...fine."

'Fine', Ben found, in the next few days, was a relative word.

Getting Bella and Joe back to the Ponderosa had been an ordeal as they'd had to make certain they steered clear of the advancing fire, which kept changing directions with the wind. In the end it blew back in on itself, which proved another blessing. On the way back to the house they ran into a group of ranchers with a crew of men. They'd grabbed shovels and other tools and were headed into the woods to create fire breaks and contain the blaze. Candy and Rafe – who was proving to the surprise of everyone to have the Ashton mettle – stayed to help.

More and more he was amazed by the young man from the city whom he had thought all but worthless less than a month before.

In the end he helped his son into the saddle and carried Joe before him on his horse. Bella was able to sit one of the extra mounts they'd brought. Jamie and Benjamin returned to the ranch house with them and stayed until Joseph and Bella were settled. Then, after the pair had eaten and rested briefly, the boys insisted on going out to gather as many of the ranch hands as they could in order to aid of the other ranchers in putting out the fire. He sent his regrets that he couldn't join them.

Ben knew he was needed at home.

Joseph had been through the mill over the last two days. Not only did he have a ragged and ill-tended bullet hole through his shoulder, he'd lost a lot of blood and was completely exhausted. From what he'd been able to glean from Joe's fevered ramblings, he knew his son had lain in a creek, crawled up a hill, and then walked several miles before he reached the shack. What he had faced there was beyond ken. Bella was in better shape, though her lungs had been effected by the smoke and she had little strength. She was in the room next to Joseph's sleeping and gathering strength. He knew, once she was awake, that nothing on Earth would stop her from being at Joe's side and so, selfishly, he relished the time he had sitting with his sleeping son. It would soon pass as all things must pass. He would diminish and Bella increase in Joseph's life, as she should.

That was, if Joe still intended to marry her.

He simply couldn't understand how the Good Lord had allowed this to happen. How He allowed something as horrible as this to come to pass at a time when it seemed Joseph had made peace with his grief at last. He wondered if that fear his son had known – the fear that any woman he married might end up as Alice had – would be rekindled by Abel Ramsey's mad act.

As Ben sat there, holding one of his son's bandaged hands, the past became all too present and he wondered if Joseph had it in him to begin again.

As if in answer, Joe stirred. The older man leaned forward and ran his hand along his son's silver locks as he gently called his name.

"Joseph? Joe, can you hear me?"

His answer was a weak smile.

"You...came back," Joe said.

The older man frowned. "I didn't go anywhere, Joseph. That was you. You were searching for Bella and you found her. She's here. She's safe."

His son's eyes rolled behind the lids, but didn't open. "I got up," he said, clear as a bell.

Ben felt Joe's forehead. It was hot, but not as hot as it had been before the doctor had come and given him some medicine to bring it down. He didn't think he was delirious.

"What was that, Joseph?"

"I got...up," he repeated, more slowly this time and with less strength, "...no...holding back."

Ben wondered if he should get Paul since this was the first time Joseph had been able to link more than two words together. The doctor was downstairs getting some much needed rest. He'd been detained along the way to the Ponderosa by several burn victims and had only arrived at daybreak today. Paul had brought word with him that the fire was finally out.

Coming to a decision, Ben laid his son's hand down gently and pulled the cover over it and then rose to his feet. As he turned to leave, Joseph spoke again. Once more his voice was clear.

"Guess I showed you, middle brother."

Ben spun to look at his son, but Joseph was unconscious again. As he stood there, wondering, the older man shivered. There was a nip in the air. No, a tingle. Like the aftermath of a shock. He stood puzzling it over for a moment and then went to the door and headed down the stairs.

As Ben's footsteps fell silent, the shadows in the room shifted. For a moment it seemed they coalesced into a giant form that hovered over the sick bed and then, with a wind that kissed Joe Cartwright's sleeping form, was gone.

Bella stepped out into the hallway of the Ponderosa ranch house. Her gaze went to the stair and then so did she, watching as Joe's father headed over to the table to talk with Doctor Martin who was sitting, reading a newspaper. It was the second day since she and Joe had been rescued and borne away from the fire. Mister Ben had allowed her to make her feeble way to Joe's room the first night to see that he was all right, but then had promptly marched her back to her room and told her to remain in bed – her own bed.

Only Ben's impressing upon her just how much Joe needed his rest had kept her away.

Until today.

She just couldn't stand it any longer.

Creeping back from the stair, Bella put her hand to the door of Joe's room and pushed it in. She found him sleeping, which was no surprise. Once she understood what he'd done to save her – deliberately rolling down that hill into icy water, laying on a muddy bank half-frozen, and then walking several miles to the shack with a gaping hole in his shoulder – not to mention pulling her out of a house on fire – she marveled that he was alive.

She marveled that they were both alive.

Taking a seat on the chair that was pulled up beside the bed, Bella reached out and took hold of one of Joe's bandaged hands. He'd cut them both pulling her through the window. His poor hands bore the scars of the two times he had faced death in order to save the woman he loved. The first time he had failed and that failure had nearly killed him. This time he had won. Still, she wondered if he knew he had. Would the Joe Cartwright who woke up be the man he was meant to be, or would he instead be the man he had almost become? A man afraid of life, afraid to take a chance on love.

Afraid to love her.

Bella sniffed. A tear fell on the white bandage.

"Hey," a soft voice said.

She looked and was surprised to find Joe watching her. His green eyes were dulled by pain but seemed clear and focused.

"Hey," she answered back.

His lips curled in a wry smile. "...gotta stop...meeting...like this."

She reached out and brushed a lock of sweat-soaked hair from his forehead. "I talked to Doctor Martin about training to be a nurse. Seems I'm going to have need of it."

Joe laughed and then winced.

"Oh, I'm sorry! Should I get –"

He'd squeezed her hand. "No. Stay." He licked his lips and swallowed. "You'll be chased out...soon...enough, I figure."

She raised up and kissed him on the lips and then sat back down.

"Good..." Joe murmured as his eyes closed.

He seemed to be weakening. Bella was suddenly scared that she had done something wrong by coming to his room. "Do you need me to get the doctor? Or maybe your Pa? I can come back."

There was a motion, like he was shaking his head. He drew in a breath. When he began again, his voice was stronger.

"I...need to tell...you something, Bella."

"It can wait," she said with a frown as she watched him shift, painfully pulling his sore body up onto the pillows so he could look at her.

"No, it can't," he said. "You...need to understand. The fire...was...well...a gift."

For a moment she thought he was out of his head. When she placed a hand on his skin to check his temperature, Joe laughed.

"I ain't crazy."

Her lips quirked. "You could have fooled me."

"Bella, for so long...all I could see... Didn't matter if...my eyes were open...or not. All I could see was Alice in that window with the flames behind her." Joe's eyes closed. "Alice...burning. My child..."

Tears spilled down her cheeks. What happened at the shack had given her a deeper understanding of what he had been through.

"I'm sorry, Joe, that you had to go through it again."

"No!" His voice softened as he opened his eyes and took hold of her hand. "No. It was God's gift. I...I couldn't save Alice." Tears rolled down his cheeks. "I couldn't save her, but I saved you."

She lifted her other hand to brush a tear away. "Yes, you did."

Joe slid down a bit. His head sank back into the pillow.

"It's over," he breathed. Seconds later, he was asleep.

"Well," a stern male voice declared from close behind her, "I hesitate to think what those grandchildren of yours are going to be like Ben. Neither Bella nor Joe seem to know the meaning of the word 'no'."

Bella turned to smile at Paul Martin and Joe's father and then she looked back at the man she loved. There wasn't a 'no' left in her life now.

From now on, for both of them, it was only 'yes'.