THREE
Charles took the girls to the Edwards' the next morning. During the night Joe had taken a turn for the worse. The injured man woke them all with his raving. In no time at all Carrie was crying out of fear and he found Laura and Mary – though they had been exposed to illness and death before – huddled together in the loft, their sweet faces streaked with tears. It was apparent Joe had come to some sort of crisis point and just as apparent that he might not make it through. The small amount of laudanum Nels had given him was gone and there was nothing to dull the pain, and so the injured man screamed out in his delirium, calling for someone named Hoss and for his pa.
And a woman named Alice.
Charles looked up as Caroline entered the sick room. He was bodily holding the man on the bed. Sweat poured down his face, plastering his brown curls to his cheeks, stinging in his eyes. He was afraid to let go. Joe had already tried to rise from the bed once, putting an unbearable strain on his wounded leg, opening the tear in his flesh again and setting it to bleeding.
His wife placed a fresh bowl of cold water by the bed. Her eyes were haunted with lack of sleep and by compassion.
"Oh, Charles. He's so sick."
He nodded as the man quieted momentarily and he was able to sit back. "There's nothing to do, Caroline, but pray."
She glanced at the window. "Do you think Doctor Baker is on his way?"
Charles sighed. "If God is watching."
He felt her hand on his shoulder. She waited until he looked up at her. "Charles, you know He is."
Reaching up, he covered his wife's hand with his own. "I know." The brown-haired man's eyes went to the restless figure on the bed. "It's not just the fever or the bear attack, Caroline. I don't think Joe wants to live."
"But he's so young."
He rose and took her in his arms. "There's somethin' dark gnawing at his soul. I'm not sure, but I think there was somethin' – some one he lost – a wife, a child." Charles paused. "Maybe both."
Caroline moved past him and went to sit on the other side of the bed. She reached out and pushed the tousled mass of silver-grey curls off of the injured man's forehead.
"He needs a reason to live. Something or someone to fight for instead of to mourn." She paused and then looked at him. "I know you're worried about her, Charles, but maybe Laura..."
"Charles! Caroline!"
They turned in unison toward the door.
It was Doctor Baker.
A moment later the golden-haired man appeared in the passage leading to their bedroom. As he removed his coat, he asked, "I thought maybe it was one of you. Thank God, it's not. Who's this?" the doctor asked as he rolled up his shirt-sleeves.
"All we know is Joe," Caroline responded as she rose from the bed.
"Nels told me you had come for laudanum. A she-bear attack, he said."
"We did our best to clean and bind his wounds, Hiram." Charles shook his head. " 'Fraid it didn't help much."
"It may have. Just because there's fever, doesn't mean it couldn't have been worse," he said as he sat on the bed and reached out to lay a hand on the sick man's forehead. After that he lowered the coverlet and examined Joe's wounds, ending with the leg. After replacing the covers the doctor looked over his shoulder and said, "Charles, I think you better go for ice. From the look of that leg wound, the fever's going to go higher before it falls – if it does."
"Do you think he has a chance?" Caroline asked.
The blond man smiled. "There's always a chance. It's up to God and him."
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He'd found as many barrels as he could and then gone to the ice house. After filling them, he placed them in the back of his wagon and covered them with a tarp. It was a crisp cold morning and so he knew they would keep while he finished a few other chores. Doc Baker had asked him to go to his office while he was in town to pick up some supplies and a change of clothes for him. As he was coming out of the office, Charles ran into Lars Hanson who was headed to the Oleson's mercantile.
When Lars saw where he was coming from, the older man asked, "Did Hiram make it out to your place, Charles?"
"Earlier this morning. He came straight out without stopping in town. That's why I'm here gathering some of his things."
"How is the young man?"
He shook his head. "Sick. Real sick."
"You know, Charles, I've been thinking. That other name on the list..."
"Other name?"
"Benson."
He'd forgotten about it. "It mean something to you after all?"
"I'm not sure." The older man shook his head. "But I haf been thinking. Maybe it vas not Benson, but 'Ben's son'."
He considered it. "Maybe, but that doesn't get us anywhere."
"Perhaps." Lars had a curious look on his face. "Come vit me, Charles."
"I've got ice in the wagon. I'd best be going."
"It's important, Charles. It vill only take a minute."
The brown-haired man nodded and then followed his friend and employer to the mill office. Once inside, Lars went immediately to the desk and opened the drawer.
"I received this several months back. I'd forgotten about it." When he straightened up, he had a letter in his hand. "It may be nothing, but..."
Charles took it. He looked at Lars and then at the envelope. It was addressed to Mister Lars Hanson and had several postmarks on it. Some were from as far away as Nevada.
"What's this?" he asked.
"A letter from an old friend. A very old friend." Lars sat down behind the desk. He nodded. "Go ahead and read it."
Charles took the inner letter and opened it, noting how fine the paper was. The hand that covered it was a bold one with broad sure strokes, as if the man who penned it was a man of purpose. It was a letter of introduction from someone named Benjamin Cartwright.
The person he was introducing was his son. Joseph Francis.
"Benjamin and I traveled vest together over forty years ago," Lars said. "He had two young sons vit him at the time, one a motherless baby. Ve parted ways vhen I came to Minnesota."
Charles looked at him. "You think this is another son? One you never met?"
"I heard Benjamin married again. A voman out of New Orleans." He shook his head. "There vas some scandal attached to it."
He looked at the letter again and then he folded it and returned it to the envelope.
"Will you ask him?" Lars inquired.
"If I get a chance. There's no guarantee he'll live."
"Do you think ve should send a letter to Benjamin?"
"No. Not yet. There's no proof yet that the man in my house is this Joseph Francis Cartwright. And besides, if he is, he's old enough to make his own choices. He knows who and where he is and so far he's not sayin'." Charles looked at the other man. "Do you mind if I keep this?"
"Go ahead. Maybe you will have a use for it one day."
Charles nodded as he tucked it in his pocket.
"Maybe."
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Doctor Hiram Baker rose from his vigil at the young stranger's side, stretched, and walked out into the Ingalls' kitchen, drawn by the scent of coffee brewing. The day had passed and night was falling. Charles had returned earlier in the day bringing the items he'd requested. They'd packed the young man in ice and it had helped to keep his fever from spiking. He'd slept in his old clothes by the side of the bed and only changed a short time before into the fresh suit Charles brought him. He'd done everything he could to alleviate Joe's suffering but it could only go so far. He didn't dare weaken the man by giving him drugs. He needed the strength to fight.
He needed a will to fight.
"How is he?" Caroline asked as he emerged from the passage.
"Holding his own. The fever's broken several times, but gone right back up. The bite on his leg's infected." The man's skin was hot and the wound continued to ooze with a whitish discharge. There were red streaks running from his leg toward his heart. It was his fear that the bite was so deep complications might set in. "I've given him what medicine I can. It's up to his constitution now and, as I told Charles, to God."
"Will you go?"
He shook his head wearily. "No. It's too close yet." Hiram ran a hand through his disarrayed hair trying to tame it and smiled. "I could use a cup of that coffee and somewhere to lay my head for a few hours."
She smiled. "In that order?"
"Trust me," he laughed. "When you're a doctor it doesn't make any difference."
"You can lay down in Carrie's room," she said as she poured and then handed the coffee to him. "What do you need me to do?"
"Keep watch. If Joe rouses and seems to be in pain or out of his head, call me. Otherwise, just try to make him as comfortable as possible." He took a sip and then asked, "Where's Charles?"
"He just got back. He's in the barn. Why? Do you need him?"
Hiram shook his head. "I just wanted to talk to him. It will keep until later." Handing the cup back to her, he said, "Thank you. Now, I think I'll go get some sleep while I can."
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Caroline watched the doctor head for the room up front and then turned back to the stove. It took an hour or so to finish what she was doing and then she went into their room to check on Joe. She felt heartsick as she entered. It nearly broke her heart to see the young man covered with wet blankets and packed in ice. Not only did she feel deeply for him, but the sight brought back such horrific memories of the plague that had ripped through their town the year before, carrying off several of Walnut Grove's citizens. She went to the window and opened the curtain and looked out and then turned back to look at the injured man.
She was surprised to find him awake.
"Well, hello," the blonde woman said as she sat on the edge of the bed. "How are you feeling?"
He looked at her but he didn't see her. She realized then that, though his eyes were open, he was lost somewhere in a fever dream.
"Joe?" she called. "Joe?"
His cracked lips parted. "Thirsty..."
Caroline went to the other side of the bed where she'd left a cup. After filling it, she sat by him again. Placing her hand behind his head and entwining her fingers in his sweat-soaked hair, she lifted him up and placed the cup to his lips.
"How's that?" she asked as he finished.
A little smile appeared. "...good.
"You look a little better." It was true. Though Joe was hot to the touch, the color in his cheeks was not as high as it had been. After placing the cup on the table, she touched his forehead with the back of her hand. "I think your fever's down."
The smile had faded into a frown. He looked at her obviously confused.
The blonde woman took his hand. "Joe?"
He didn't pull away. Instead, feebly, his fingers tightened on hers. "Alice...how?"
"Joe, I'm not – "
"Caroline."
She turned to find Charles standing behind her. He shook his head. Then he nodded toward Joe.
At first she frowned and then, realizing what he meant, scowled. It seemed, well, unkind somehow. Still, she knew why Charles wanted her to do it. They were desperate to learn something – anything – that would help pull this man back from the brink.
"Yes, Joe," she said at last.
His brows drew together as if he was puzzled. "Thought...you were...dead."
Tears entered her eyes. She squeezed his fingers. "I'm here."
For a moment Joe relaxed and then he began to breathe quickly. He tossed violently from side to side and a shiver ran the length of him. "No. ...fire. Fire! Burning. You...were burning... No! Not you. Not the baby...inside you..."
Caroline was stricken. She turned to look at Charles and found him crying as well.
"You better let me take over," Hiram Baker's weary voice intruded. "Seems we've got another crisis on our hands."
She rose and made way for the doctor and then looked at Charles again. A moment later, unable to contain her sorrow, Caroline ran through the kitchen and out the door and into the yard. Once there she gave way to sobs that wracked her slender form.
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Charles spotted her as soon as he stepped out of the house. Crossing to his wife, he took her in his arms. Soon he was caressing her head, shushing her and telling her it would be all right.
"Oh, Charles!" his wife sobbed against his shirt. "That poor man!"
He held her close. It had shaken him as well. Visions of his own house going up in flames with his wife and one or more of his babies trapped inside – himself unable to prevent it – had risen up before his eyes and nearly unmanned him.
"I know, Darlin'," he said, pressing his cheek against her hair. 'I'm sorry I had to put you through that, but we had to know. Maybe now we can help him."
"But his wife. His...child..."
He understood. It struck entirely too close to home for him as well. Their only son, Freddie, hadn't been dead a year yet. Still, as deep and as painful as that loss was, at least they had gotten to touch him and to know him for a little while. Joe was left with the emptiness of a man who never got to hold his child, and whose arms ached for a wife who was no more.
No wonder he didn't want to go on.
Taking his wife by the hand Charles led her over to the stump they often shared and sat her down. Dropping beside her, he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. Caroline laid her head on his shoulder. As she softly sobbed, he told her about something that had been forming in his mind ever since they'd carried the wounded man into their home.
"I think Joe was brought to us on purpose," he said softly.
She glanced at him and then returned her head to his shoulder. "By God, you mean?"
He nodded. "You feel it too?"
She took his hand. "He's so alone and so sad. Maybe we can help him."
"If he'll let us," he snorted.
"It's like any wounded thing, Charles. It's so frightened, it wants to hide." She drew a breath. "Joe is afraid. Afraid of life."
He sat a moment thinking, and then reached into his pocket and drew out the letter Lars had given him.
"What's that?" Caroline asked.
"The answer to who he is, I think," he replied.
His wife sat up. "Did you find his horse?"
"No. This came by way of Lars. It was sent to him some time back and comes from a Benjamin Cartwright of Nevada state. Seems his son Joe was traveling this way and he asked him to look in on Lars."
"Joe Cartwright? That's his name?" A hopeful smile brightened her cheerless face. "Charles, that's wonderful! Have you written his father?"
He stared at the letter. It was a hard call, but he felt he'd made the right one. "No."
"Why not? His family would want to know."
He pursed his lips and sighed. "I think Joe's running, Caroline, and – if he finds out we've sent for his father – then he'll just keep running. Maybe... Maybe God landed him here so he could rest and, well, find himself."
She looked back toward the house. "He's going to have a long recovery with that leg wound."
He knew what she meant. If they accepted Joe into their home, he would be with them for quite some time. "Are you all right with him stayin'?" he asked. Most of the burden would be on her in the beginning, until Joe was well enough to be outside. "We don't really know him."
"Oh," she said, her voice wistful, "I think we know him well enough. He was willing to put himself in danger to save our child."
"Mary thinks he' one of the James' gang," he said, hiding his smile.
Caroline started and then sputtered. "An outlaw?"
"Wears his gun tied down."
Her eyes widened. "Charles, you don't think he could be – "
"No. I don't. And don't you go thinkin' it either. That letter was postmarked Nevada. He's a rancher, that's all. Things are different in the West."
"Charles," Doctor Baker called as he stepped out of the house. "Is there any more ice?"
He turned toward him. "In the sod house. Is Joe worse?"
The blond man's face was grim. "His fever's well over one hundred and two and climbing higher. If we don't get it down and he lives, he's liable to have damage to his brain." Hiram ran a hand over his chin. "I think this may be it. From here he'll live or he'll die. I just don't know."
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Ben Cartwright felt like a fool.
It was late at night, after another day with no responses to the multiple telegrams he had sent out about Joseph, and his wandering feet had brought him to Marie's son's room where he sat on the bed. He'd passed Jamie's room on the way and seen a light under the boy's door. He hoped that meant that he was reading and not that he too was unable to sleep. Ben ran a hand over his face. This was interfering with his work. At sixty-five years old he couldn't afford sleepless nights.
How many had he had since Joseph was born?
It had started when Joe was a baby. His son had been small like his mother, delicate and fragile. But the boy had strengthened quickly and so had his lungs and the house rang for months with the sound of his independent cries. As a child Joe had alternately raced, bounced, and stormed through life. As a teenager, well, the joke about his own hair turning white due to this youngest son's antics had roots in the truth. As a young man he watched Joseph mature. All the fire of his youth was not damped or put out, but it became a refining flame that burned away the dross and left pure silver. Ben snorted. Including in his son's riotous untamed hair! By the time Joe had chosen to marry he was a man in every way, strong, confidant in himself, sure of his path in life and what he wanted – content in what he possessed.
And then... Ben drew a deep breath and looked up, past the ceiling above his head, past the sky and clouds, into Heaven itself.
Then, there was the fire.
The older man opened his eyes and slapped his hands on his knees as if to rouse himself, and then stood up and went to the window and looked out once again, wondering if his son – wherever Joe was – looked at the same rising sun.
He wondered if Joe was still alive.
It wasn't something he wanted to think about. In fact, he barely could. But Paul had been worried when Alice died that Joseph might try to take his own life. His son had seemed to be healing, but then came the terrible encounter with the mentally unstable Corporal Bill Tanner. Joe had been driven mercilessly, tormented and tortured and, worst of all, for no reason other than he had done his Christian duty by offering sustenance and succor to a fellow traveler.
His own faith in God was what had gotten him through the dark days in his life – the death of his wives, all the times his sons had gone missing and were presumed dead, the loss of two in the end. It had taken him through floods and fires; through storms both manmade and ones that were acts of God. Each time he believed that there was a reason for it, a higher purpose, whether it be to mold him or someone he loved into a better, higher, and finer type of man.
But this. This...
Ben's gaze shifted to the barn where their horses were housed, including his missing son's current incarnation of Cochise. He thought about the sight, years before, of watching Joseph break his first feisty mount in. Most times the taming of an animal's spirit – like the rearing of a spirited boy – brought about a maturity that was profitable to both the horse breaker and the animal itself. But there were those rare times when the animal's wild untamed spirit was such a part of it that, once broken, it was of no use anymore. Without that spark, it simply pined away.
Joseph was pining away.
Turning, Ben walked to the door of Joe's room and took hold of the knob. Without a backward glance, he entered the hall and headed down the stairs into the great room where a small fire still burned. The fact made him smile and yet feel sad at the same time. His nocturnal wanderings had become so commonplace that Hop Sing always kept it burning, at least until the pale fingers of dawn crept through the window. They were there now, caressing the back of the old blue velvet chair that was a fixture by the hearth. Ben crossed to it and sat down. Reaching over, he took his Bible up from where he had left it laying on the hearth and opened it to the passage he had been reading the night before. This well-worn friend – ancient now with its whisper-thin pages notched from use and stained at the edges with years of trail dust and a father's tears – had been his constant companion through all the hours of trial he had had to endure. It was a much a part of him as his eyes, his lips, his heart and his lungs. Without the Word of God a man could not see or speak. He couldn't feel or breathe. He was made deaf and dumb; left unfeeling and uncaring.
He'd found his son's Bible in his room. Joseph had left it behind. His youngest boy had never been one to open the book daily or to study it by the hour. Joe was a man of feeling and for him God was everywhere and in everything, in this house he lived in, in the land he was born to, and in the people he loved. Sadly at this moment, from what he had seen, his son's faith in a loving Father was as dead as the wife and child he had buried in the meadow nearly two years before.
Ben ran his fingers across the aged paper. He found the verse where he had left off the night before. It was near the end of Hebrews in chapter ten.
For yet a little while, and he that shall come shall come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith, but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. Bu we are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.
The older man closed the book with his finger still in it and bowed his head. As he placed his other hand on its battered surface, his lips began to move.
"Lord, it's Ben, the child You love. I come to You this night in humility, asking for the life of the child I love. Father, hard as it is, I accept that there is a reason Joe is in this place, but he's so lost, Lord, so alone. So scared. I'm..." Ben drew a sharp breath and let it out slowly. "I'm afraid for him. I'm afraid he will try to do harm to himself, or that he'll simply give up and fade away." The older man straightened in his chair. "I know, Father, that this is not what You want, that Joseph is a unique creation and You have allowed him to pass through this fire – through so many fires – in order to make him into a man after Your own heart. As it says in Isaiah, You have refined him, but not as silver. You have chosen him in the furnace of affliction." His voice choked as an image of Joe going up in flames came before his eyes. He closed them even tighter, accepting blindly that the fire his son was going through at this moment was of God and not of the enemy. "Let him walk through the fire and not be burned, but only strengthened. Wherever he is, Lord, bring strong people of faith into his life to support him. Amen."
Ben felt a tear land on his gnarled hand. He drew a breath like he was coming up for air and opened his eyes. He'd had no idea he was crying.
A quiet voice, always there but never intruding, spoke from close by. "Mistah Ben need anything Hop Sing can bring?"
He looked at his old friend and shook his head.
No.
Not unless he could bring him Joe.
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Charles had risen early from his bed of hay in the barn and gone into the house. After looking in on his sleeping wife and daughters, he went to the sick room and checked in with Doctor Baker. The weary physician told him it had been a long night and, while Joe was not out of danger, he was holding his own. After grabbing a cold breakfast from the larder and downing a little of the cold coffee in the pot, he'd headed back outside to begin the day's chores. It was early morning and the world outside was hushed in anticipation of the new day. The breaking rays of the rising sun streamed through the line of trees at the edge of their property, reaching with fiery pink fingers toward the house he had built, turning all that God had given him to gold. It was a rare moment, peaceful and unhurried, and Charles found himself humbled. He put down the bucket he had picked up when he intended to head to the well, and walked out into the bountiful field of corn and sat down amidst the ripening stalks. There were so many things that raced through his mind as he sat there. At first they turned on the family's needs and wants. On the girls safety and how they were growing. On Caroline and all the work she had to do. Then, his mind went to the injured man laying in his bed. Who was this man God had deposited on their doorstep? Why was Joe Cartwright here? Was there something the Lord wanted him to do? Some way he could ease Joe's burden?
Something only he could provide?
Closing his eyes there in the midst of his crops, Charles bowed his head, admitted his sin, offered himself, and waited.
Into the silence came an early morning breeze that rustled his curly brown hair. The still small voice it contained spoke to him, bringing visions of a sad but resolute older man with pure white hair sitting by a fire. His hand was on his well-worn Bible and his eyes were turned toward the waxing sun. The man's lips were moving. He was praying.
Praying for his lost son.
Charles turned his palms upward and rested them on his knees, entreating God's wisdom. This man, Benjamin Cartwright, was hurting. He had it in his power to relieve Joe's father's pain – to send him word of his son's whereabouts – but at what price? If Joe lived, he would be little more than a dead man walking – his spirit broken, all hope lost. It was autumn; the season of dying, when all things turned to dust and returned to the earth. Hope was born in the spring as green shoots pushed up through the remnants of the cold white blanket that lay upon the land. 'He giveth snow like wool. He scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes', he thought, hearing the words of the Psalm.
And then other words came to him. This time from Lamentations. 'He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace. I forgot prosperity.' Charles shifted and opened his eyes. Looking up, he contemplating the dawning day with all its promise. 'It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in Him. The LORD is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.
' It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.'
No, he would not wire Joe's father. Not yet. Right now Joseph Cartwright was walking through the valley of the shadow of death in more ways than one.
It was in his hands and the hands of his family to show him the light.