Chapter 5

"Looks like a camp over there, Hoss?" asked Ben, rising a bit in his saddle, his arms thrust over the saddle horn, and eyeing a clearing across the stream.

It was late in the day, just past dusk. The sun was low on the horizon, coloring the sky with a red-orange flame. A night wind echoed through the pines. Both weary to the bone, the Cartwrights, older and younger, sat their equally jaded horses at the edge of the stream, a canyon wall at their backs.

The river was much less ornery here. Instead of a cutting knife, it was almost peaceful, respectful of its banks, not tearing them apart with the force of the current, so Ben and Hoss urged their horses on, splashing across, followed by the erstwhile ranch hands.

Once in the clearing, Ben looked around soberly. Curling smoke rose from a few old fires. Boats trimmings, pieces of hide, leather cord, and broken needles littered the shore. Hoss spotted a few poles which had been swapped out with new ones to repair the boat frames.

What had been a lively camp an hour or so earlier was now abandoned. The Indian tribe was nowhere in sight.

Kiowa's boats had pushed off late that afternoon. His scouts had backtracked through the brush a few miles and had seen the white men on their horses, steadily plodding down the stream. Since he had awakened the sleeping cougar, he was now taking no chances.

Now the prey instead of the hunters, he had decided not spend the night in this camp.

"I thought we had 'em, pa," said Hoss. "Dad-gum, I thought we had 'em!" He slipped off his chestnut gelding, grabbed a stick, and poked at the big, central fire circle. "They've just left, it looks like. Not more'n an hour ago."

Ben didn't say a word. Hoss climbed back on Chub and they rode out of the clearing. Ben wanted to push on, but his men and their mounts were too used up to go any further that day. So he made camp. It was a desolate one. Coffee was the only inspiration the men had.

Arnie's son Reggie prowled around the perimeter like a cougar himself, angry that his friend and sometime-sparring partner—Joe—was still 'lost.' He had a few ideas of what he liked to do to the Indians.

Ben had his own worries. In boats, the Indians could camp on either side of the river, so whatever side he and his men found themselves on might not be the right one. They might have to ford the stream again, if it was at all possible.

Next day, after a half-day's ride, the party of would-be rescuers came to a much livelier camp than the one which lay miles behind them. This one was on the other side of the stream, just as Ben feared it might be, the wrong side from where the horses were.

But here, at last, he had found the tribe! Relieved and hopeful, glad their journey was nearly over, he and Hoss got down off their horses in the brush, tied them up, and walked to the edge of the stream, crouching down to keep out of sight.

In pale brown dresses and leggins', several women moved between cooking pots at one large fire and two smaller ones, swatting half-naked youngsters out of the way. Smoke, tangy-smelling even from across the river, spiraled above the fires.

"Do you see him around anywhere?" Ben asked in a low voice.

"Not a bit o' him," said Hoss, wishing he'd brought a set of field glasses and wondering why no one had thought of them.

"It's 'ard to see much of him, he's that wiry," Arnie said in a dry, half-funny way. After tying his horse to a bush, he came over to where the two Cartwrights knelt on the bank.

Ben looked around and grinned at the comment, almost ear to ear. Hoss laughed, a belly laugh. But when he looked across the stream, and saw the camp again, his joy faded. The river was always in the way.

Pipe-thin here, a deathly gap in the canyon, the stream was very deep, and its current unpredictable. Joe, with his understandable fear of whitewater, must have been petrified to travel on it.

"Dadburnit, pa, couldn't they stick to one side or the other?"

Ben shook his head as Reggie too joined them. The brush hid them all from sharp Indian eyes. "It's too fast to cross here."

Everyone turned to Arnie as he spoke up.

"Remember that fordin' place a few miles back? I had a feelin' at the time we should've crossed it."

Gazing at the camp where his youngest boy was a prisoner, Ben could be easily exasperated, even by an old friend. "Why not say so then?" Just as quickly, he apologized. "Sorry, Arnie. It's just we're so close now."

Not knowing there were men in the brush across the stream, the women and their young ones continued to move about the camp, but not many of their own men were to be seen. They could have been off on a hunt, Joe with them.

His thoughts bleak, and somewhat emotional, Ben wearily got up and went to fetch his canteen, refilling it at the stream. He hoped, prayed, that nothing had happened to Joe.

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Joe had his own bow and a set of arrows, but he fetched his own kills. He didn't mind. He loved the freedom of splashing through the reeds and scooping up his own duck, shot by his own arrow, its head hanging limp over his arm.

He'd killed two birds that morning, and while chatting with another youth, he happened to glance down into a small valley bottom near the marsh where the kills had been made. There he saw the riders. He didn't see Hoss's big ten-gallon hat or the blond horse his pa rode.

So far from home, and its familiar territory, he recognized none of these men. He motioned to the other boy and together they crept back to Kiowa and the other bird hunters. At the top of the hill the boys had been sitting on, Kiowa soon saw what the trouble was, and what had so excited the red-faced Joe.

White men, they were making their way towards the camp, as if they knew it was there. Perhaps they did. One of the men had separated himself from the others, perhaps to scout, perhaps to avail himself of a tree, but he soon saw the smoke rising. With dramatic gestures, he ran back to alert the others.

Kiowa spoke a few words to his men, then to a man they ran as fast as snow-melt in spring down the hill and back to the river again. Joe, this time, was not running towards the white men. He was running away from them.

Once back at camp, Kiowa was in a fury to pack up. Joe pitched smoked fish, hides, and naked brown children into the flimsy boats, leaving only the cookpots. As the whim took them, or their temperaments dictated, the children either laughed or cried.

Along with his new friend, the other boy who had been on the hunt with him that morning, called Leni, Joe scuffed up the fires and threw dirt on the smoldering remains, hoping the men were still far enough away to mistake the direction of the smoke. Bruised, burned, and cut, bitten by one of the three-year-olds, he jumped in one of the boats and grabbed up a paddle.

Leni jumped into his mother's boat and likewise grabbed a paddle. He looked around, counting heads, and hoped that no one had been left behind. Together, he, Joe and Kiowa, and the others who had charge of a boat paddled far out into the stream. Ashi, Kiowa's budding daughter, and his father Opa, besides three or four others, women and children, and the black-spotted mutt as well, were in Kiowa's boat.

The ranchers, not in this instance Ben's party, clambered into camp, spotting the hide boats disappear around a bend in the river. On horseback, they took off after them.

From across the stream, Job Gaines, who Ben had set as watch over the camp while he and the others rode back to the fording place, saw the men, and Joe before that. A good swimmer, Arnie's cowhand loped to a rock where he could dive in and fought his way across the river.

Once across, tuckered out from his own battle with the current, he struggled to his feet and ran to join the Cartwrights after they had forded the stream.

"Mr. Cartwright, I saw him. Joe!" he gasped out, trying to get his second wind. By that news, he brought satisfied smiles and backslaps to all the men. "He was helpin' tear down the camp. But—"

"But—?" asked Ben, under a relentless drive to find Joe now.

"There were some other guys after them. They took off after the boats."

"So they're on this dad-blasted river again?" asked Hoss, using one of his characteristic expletives. It went along easily with 'dad-gum' and 'dad-gummit.'

"C'mon," said Ben, with as firm a jaw as he could muster. "Let's see what's going on."

Now on the right side of the river, the men from the Ponderosa and Arnie Peterson's ranch rode to the camp and gazed around at the wreck. It was evident that the tribe had left there in haste. Scattered fires, upended fish-racks, cookpots full of boiled fish.

The riders had left tracks all over, but, as Job had said, they were no longer there. Gaines proved his worth again when he waved them all over, pointing to where the tracks led—in the same direction as the Indians had gone, boats, baggage, and all, perhaps even Joe.

"What're we waiting for!" cried Ben, reaching for his saddle horn and stirrup to climb up on Buck.

Some of the men were still mounted, others had to mount up again. All of them poured through the brush like quicksilver, the horses suffering scratches on their flanks. When they had gone about five hundred yards, Ben saw the other ranchers up ahead. He put up his hand for his own crew to ride in a bit more cautiously. A couple of men pulled out their revolvers.

Hailing them, Ben saw them pull up, and as they did so, he caught a glimpse of the boats as they rounded yet another bend in the stream. He rode up to the oldest of the men and nodded down the stream.

"My son is in one of those boats."

"I thought I saw a white boy, but he was none too white," said one of these new men.

The older man Ben had addressed rode up close enough to shake hands. "Name's Dickerson," he said. "Troy Dickerson. I own this spread. I was going to run these varmints off, but they got away before I could. Who are you?"

Ben was not too taken by the man's use of the word 'varmints,' but wiping a hand on his shirt, he extended it. "I'm Ben Cartwright," he said.

Dickerson shook it heartily. "I've heard of you. Big ranch—the Ponderosa, right?"

Ben nodded. "We've been out for almost a week. Every time we get close, the tribe gets away. Or the river gets in the way."

"That river—it's a fickle thing, first it's your friend, then your worse enemy," said Dickerson, a graying man in his late sixties, with an ample paunch that hung over his belt. He had big hands on the reins, some of the knuckles gouty and enlarged. "What's your plan now, Mr. Cartwright? You'll never catch those boats. Not in all this brush."

Ben gave a husky laugh. "We go on. I've got to get my son back before he forgets all of us."

"I've seen it happen," agreed Dickerson, nodding. "But usually it takes years to forget like that."

"Look, what's that!" asked Hoss. "By gum, it's Joe. Pa, look, it's him."

Ben swung that way and saw a character out of a dime western: rugged, dark-eyed, his face shadowed by a growth of beard. It looked like Joe. It had the same wide grin, its white teeth bright in its tanned face. It had the same changeable eyes, and the same straightforward steps.

It was Joe. He held his arm to his side with the other hand, but other than that, he seemed fit as a fiddle, not the half-scared runt the other men on the Ponderosa joshed about for his size.

He strode up to Ben, frank and direct, and hugged him in a manly way. Hoss patted (beat) him on the back and couldn't help a small trickle rolling out of his eyes. As big as he was, Hoss was Ben's emotional son, unless one counted the old Joe, the way he used to be.

He'd still be called 'little,' for that name had stuck to him since he was a baby, for one reason or another, but from then on, he was going to prove it false. He was going to show everyone he was the name Kiowa had given him.

Just before Joe left the boat, each clasping the other's forearm, Kiowa had said, "Man of a true heart. We meet again someday, Joe." As Joe nodded, Kiowa winked. "Ashi not always be young."

Getting out of there before he could be given what passed for a tribal wedding ring, Joe ran back through the brush, intending to join up with the men on horseback, but to his surprise, he found he was staring at his pa and Hoss. He'd never know what they went through to get there.

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