Each Life Has Its Place

 

By Asher

 

This story just barely PTL. The details about the Palouse horses (today called Appaloosas), the first Ft. Boise, and Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce are all historically accurate. The timeline is probably a little off. With thanks to Robin Wexler for encouragement and inspiration, and the Indigo Girls for much more than just the title….

 

Prologue

 

When my whole life is on the tip of my tongue

Empty pages for the no longer young

The apathy of time laughs in my face

You say “each life has its place”

 

Ben drained the coffee cup and sighed. “I don’t know what to do for him, Paul.” His deep brown eyes focused on some distant vista. “He’s been working so hard these past months, keeping the ranch running.” That in itself wasn’t the problem, though. “We all have. But even when he’s working with his horses, there’s no joy in it.”

 

Late afternoon on that spring day had wrought a clear azure sky that glowed like a finely cut jewel against deep green treetops and blazingly white snowy mountain peaks. The rain that had fallen earlier in the week had damped down the dust, and the air seemed to be scrubbed clean and glowing. Colts about to be weaned scampered awkwardly after their mothers, bumped against each other, full of themselves; cowhands returning from the day’s work contentedly joked and jostled elbows from the barn to the bunkhouse. The smoky scent of cook fires wafted on a gentle breeze.

 

And Ben was oblivious to it all. He sat back in his chair on the porch, staring at the open barn door. He knew very well that Cochise was not inside, that Joe was not about to appear, dusty and grinning after a long day of ranch work. If he let the memories come, he could easily conjure up Hoss and Adam trudging wearily behind his youngest, the three of them still with plenty of energy for teasing and laughing, enjoying the relief of the end of a day of good, hard work, and the promise before them of rest, and one of Hop Sing’s abundant dinners.

 

…Joe summarily dumped in the water trough by his older brothers, sputtering and giggling; Adam and Hoss and Joe ganging up on each other in ever-changing alliances, throwing snowballs or buckets of water, delighting in playing elaborate practical jokes; the terrible fear and boundless relief when one of them was in danger and somehow escaped it alive, and how they would risk themselves to take care of each other; the boys riding home together, late, after a raucous evening in Virginia City, backing each other up with outrageous stories that he didn’t believe for an instant, but pretended to, sometimes, just for the pleasure of watching them protect each other…most of all, the way it felt to have the dinner table, and the house, full of sons – full of life, of love…

 

“Ben?”

 

He shook himself out of his wistful reverie. God, I miss them… “I’m sorry, Paul, I was just thinking – “

 

Martin’s voice was gentle as he regarded his old friend. “Ben, Joe will be all right. You know him. He just has to work it out for himself, and it’s not easy.”

 

Ben nodded, but his arms, resting open on his chair, felt empty and bereft. Adam long gone, and now Hoss is dead – and Joe is out there, demons chasing him from fence line, to line shack, to…God knows what.

 

“I know, Paul, but…I miss him.” The unaccustomed acknowledgement of raw emotion caught the words in his throat, and startled Paul with their frankness. It’s not so easy sitting here and waiting, and hoping, either.  “Ever since Hoss died, and then Alice so soon after, he hasn’t been the same. Not that I would expect that he’d be unchanged,” Ben mused. “I remember how sad he was after Alice…” he shook his head. “It was terrible.”

 

He glanced at Paul, then stared out at the surrounding mountains again. They glowed in the waning afternoon sun, but their beauty did not move him. “But now it’s different. He’s quiet, but I can see a deep anger in him.” His gaze turned inward as he remembered a hot-tempered young man who could barely control his emotional impulsiveness, especially if he saw injustice being done. But there’s no one to fight against this time, nowhere to protest the injustice he’s seen. “There’s a…a rage, just under the surface. Once in a while I see it in his eyes. I think it’s why the restlessness is so much worse. It’s as if he doesn’t know what to do with his anger - with himself.” Ben looked down at his hands, wondering why they felt so useless. “He’s never been a loner, and now he won’t come home. It’s as if…as if he doesn’t know where he belongs anymore.”

 

Martin toyed with the empty coffee cup in his hands, staring through it to a vision of the man who was out there, somewhere, trying to find a place for his grief and his anger. He winced when he remembered the look of bewildered pain that had settled in Joe’s green eyes with Hoss’ death. Meeting and falling in love with Alice was the only thing that had displaced it, but then with her murder…he remembered standing with Ben at the top of the ranch house’s stairs. He had given him the narcotic he’d prescribed to help Joe withstand the agony of the burns he had suffered tearing his way into his burning house, his wife and unborn child inside. Delirious and incoherent, the words Joe had uttered while Paul was treating his burns had nevertheless made enough sense to give the doctor cause to fear the intensity of his patient’s despair. He remembered that terrible night too well, remembered warning the anxious father to keep the medication hidden from his son, lest Joe seek more than temporary surcease from the pain of his injuries – and in his heart.

 

The doctor sighed and sat back, focusing on the lengthening shadows draping their way across the mountains peaks in the distance. A few trees reached above the gathering dark, their tips still catching the last glowing rays of the sun. Joe hadn’t tried to end his pain that way – that Cartwright stubbornness; he always did have more than his share. Instead, he’d responded to the grief with his characteristic impulse to act, and had single-mindedly hunted down his wife’s killers. Paul had always admired Joe’s courage, even more so now in how the man was attempting to cope with a challenge far greater, and more insidious, than armed outlaws, or a stampede of cows. But the last time the doctor had seen him, the bewildered look was back, and the haunted eyes were edged with a darkness that he hadn’t been able to interpret.

 

Paul turned to his old friend, wishing his art offered something that could help him. He was sure that Ben was right about his youngest – and his last – son. He’d seen it often enough, the sadness after a tragedy turning to anger. More than anger – despair could sometimes become a bottomless, unending agony of destructive rage, especially if there was nothing that could be done to mitigate the pain of the loss.

 

Ben continued to stare at the distant mountains. They stood out in bold relief against the darkening blue of the endless skies beyond them. Paul knew that Joe had taken to drinking too much to try to dull the pain and grief, knew that Ben worried about that too – worried that a drunken, miserable Joe could get himself killed out there all alone, and it would be months before they found whatever would be left by then of his body. Ben swallowed hard. What Paul didn’t know – what Ben hadn’t been able to bring himself to share with even his closest, oldest friend – was just how lost Joe had become, how close he had already come to being claimed by that terrible despair. Paul didn’t know about the day that Ben had found Joe kneeling in the ashes of the burned out shell that had been his home.

 

It was a raw, cold winter afternoon, and the bitter chill seeped into his very bones. Ben had been making his way homeward, looking forward to reaching the warm welcome of the ranch house. Great drifts of snow from the day-long winter storm had transformed the Ponderosa landscape, and he glanced upward, wondering how long before it started again. Vast dark clouds loomed forbiddingly. Thick snow the same color as the clouds strangled the sound of his horse’s hoofsteps.  An unnatural silence hung in the air. No geese flew, no breeze whispered in the pines, no furry creatures darted over the cold expanse of white.

 

Hunched in his saddle against the cold, his hat pulled so low over his eyes that he had nearly missed it, a flash of green drew his eyes. Ben squinted against the cold that needled his eyelashes. There, along the tree line on the other side of the meadow’s white expanse, Joe and Cochise were picking their way through the snow and ice. They were headed away from the house. Ben drew a breath to call out to his son but stopped, realizing that Joe wouldn’t hear him. He hesitated. Suddenly the bite of the cold against his skin was muted by something else, something that was pushing him to follow his son. He pulled the horse around and set out after him under the desolate leaden sky. He followed at a distance, making no move to catch up. It wasn’t long before he realized where Joe was leading him.

 

The house rose starkly from the muting snow, a blackened skeleton that seemed to still silently scream the violence of its death. Half-fallen planking seemed to reach upward, a twisted hand frozen in throes of agony, grasping desperately at the sky. During all the days since the fire that had claimed his wife Alice’s life – and his happiness – Joe had been there only once, and Ben had found him there, had tried to comfort him, had brought him home. Home. This was to have been his home, Ben thought as he rode up to the last copse of trees that stood between the forest and the skeletal remains of the house. This…burned out ruin, this ghost of all he had hoped for, this was what was left of his son’s hopes, of his heart.

 

He found Cochise ground tied at a distance from the house. He hesitated. Perhaps it would be best to respect Joe’s privacy; he had thought he was coming out here alone, after all. But something pushed him onward, and he dismounted, leaving his horse to stand alongside the paint. He stepped silently over charred fallen planks and around the half-fallen wall. And there he found his worst nightmare: Joe, silent and at the end of his strength, kneeling on the ground, staring at something lying on the ash and soot stained snow. The green eyes were dark, fathomless. His body curled slightly forward around something he was holding in his lap. His shoulders were slumped as if he no longer could find the strength to hold himself up.

 

A dull glint of light reflected blue against the black-gloved hands, and Ben realized. Joe was holding his gun in his hands. As if in a final, desperate bid for release from the grip of the implacable demon that had gutted his soul as thoroughly as the house around him, he had pointed it at his own heart.

 

Ben stepped forward, searching his son’s face, but Joe, entranced, didn’t acknowledge his presence. He looked where Joe was staring as if at a religious relic before which he’d dropped in some kind of obeisance. There, lying on top of a charred timber, was a small object made of silver and mother of pearl. Ben’s heart contracted when he realized – it was a special, ornate teething ring he’d ordered from San Francisco when Joe had proudly and excitedly shared with him that Alice was pregnant. It had been engraved with the name Cartwright, and a space for the baby’s name. He never had gotten a chance to find out whether they’d received it before…

 

He felt his heart breaking for his youngest son all over again. He had always been able to find words to help Joe through the difficult moments, but not this time. Exhausted beyond words himself, Ben simply dropped to his knees beside Joe in the bitter cold snow and put a hand on his shoulder. He waited, barely breathing, praying hard, wordlessly. After a long, long moment in which Joe neither moved nor spoke, Ben felt the shoulder give slightly under his hand. The gun wavered and dropped. Without a word, Joe rose and walked away, back toward Cochise.  Neither of them ever spoke of it afterward.

 

The doctor who had brought Joseph Cartwright into the world saw the emerald eyes again in his mind, remembered the easy laughter they used to reflect. Now they were steely and distant most of the time, and reflected something that Paul couldn’t treat. He mightily wished that he could.

 

He turned his gaze back to Ben. “How long has he been gone this time?”

 

The two old friends had gone out to the porch to share coffee and conversation in the afternoon breeze, for though the heat of the late spring day was past, it was still close, indoors.

 

Ben could hear Hop Sing opening windows throughout the house, followed his progress by the gentle bang of shutter against wood. There were two windows that wouldn’t be opening, though, no longer how long he waited, no matter how much he strained to hear:  Adam’s room, shut up for years now, kept just the way he had left it; and Hoss’ room, more recently closed, even as a part of his father’s heart had closed on that day. Ben heard a pause, and then another window banged open, almost as if to defy the absence of the one who slept there. Ben smiled to himself. He realized that he had, once again, not been listening to his patient friend. He glanced over at Paul, and gave him a small smile. He didn’t bother to apologize again. Paul’s eyes were soft and understanding.

 

“How long has Joe been away, Ben?”

 

“This time? He left a week ago. But before that, he’d been out following the fence line in the far northern pastures for nearly three weeks. I was beginning to wonder if I should go after him, make sure he was all right.” Like in the old days, when I would have sent Adam and Hoss after him to make sure a hot-blooded, impulsive young man hadn’t once again gotten in over his head somehow, somewhere. “And then one evening he rode in, just at nightfall, looking too tired to move. He was here for three days – long enough to rest up, I guess – and then he was restless again, and the next morning he told me he was going back out to continue the fence-riding.”

 

“A thousand square miles – that’s a lot of fence,” Paul observed quietly.

 

Ben shot him a glance hooded by dark brows, and nodded with something between resignation and despair. “And I think he means to do all of it.” He set down his empty coffee cup, stared distractedly at the delicate red pattern in the white porcelain. Once he’d known someone who claimed to be able to read a person’s destiny in the patterns coffee grounds left on the inside of a cup turned upside down after the coffee was drunk. He had a sudden urge to upend his cup, to look for his youngest son’s fate in it. Let me keep just one son, please, God. Keep him safe and please…please, God, bring him back to me.

 

The shadows were lengthening. Ben could see the hesitant, momentary glow of a few fireflies, flitting and blinking in the encroaching dusk. When he tried to discern the firefly itself beyond the flickering light, he found he couldn’t, no matter how hard he tried. Just a momentary flash, like a memory of something that’s over. They reminded him of shooting stars, how they streak across the sky and disappear so quickly, before you’re ready to let them out of your fascinated sight. Like sons, he thought to himself, and the thought nearly ripped away the control he’d marshaled against the sobs that sat at the back of his throat. His second-born son materialized in his thoughts. Why? Why was your life such a brief flicker of light, my boy?

 

Something in the set of Ben’s shoulders made Paul’s heart ache just looking at him. He reached out a hand to soothe the tension and the sadness, and the muscles under his hand relaxed just slightly, responding to the compassion in the touch. Ben took a breath, then shook himself slightly and straightened in his chair. He smiled at Paul and stood, forcing himself to breathe deeply of the cooling evening air.

 

“Stay for supper, Paul? Hop Sing would love to have another mouth to feed.” The ironic laugh was half-strangled in his throat. “And…I would love the company, too.”

 

Paul smiled. “Sure, Ben, and thanks.” They gathered up the coffee cups and turned to head inside. Ben gave one long last look over toward the mountains where he knew his youngest son would be. Again, this evening, there was no sign of him. Ben swallowed a sigh and turned to follow Paul into the house.

 

Darkness was falling. It was that hour when light faded into ambiguity, and everything was vague and murky. Shadows merged with the encroaching darkness, and the blue of the sky, the green of the trees, and the dark brown of tree trunk and dirt path all lost their color, fading with the light until edges melted and nothing was easily discernable – a time neither day nor night. The animals were beginning to settle down for the evening, and so were the cowhands. The birds’ song fell quiet, and a cooling breeze carried the evening song of the crickets in its place. Throughout the ranch, lamps began to wink against the night. It was the hour when nothing is certain: neither darkness nor light. Neither memory nor desire. Neither past nor future.

 

**********

Half a Second

 

The horses made their sure-footed way along the rough path, high up on the side of the mountain. Sprays of spring wildflowers raised their delicate yellow faces to the shafts of afternoon sun piercing the dense branches, heavy with new growth. The rider’s body echoed his horse’s movements easily, and with the pack horse trailing behind they balanced together on the steep slope, attuned to each other without need of conscious thought. Contrasting with his horse’s distinctive black and white paint markings, the rider presented a more colorful picture: a dark green jacket echoed the rich color of the leafy cover through which they moved, and a tan Stetson hat shaded a face framed in dark hair flecked with grey, curling over emerald eyes so deep that the most fertile leaves of the lush spring growth dulled in comparison. The rider considered his surroundings.

 

No one had been here in years, Joe was certain. There was no sign of clear markers or witness trees, much less fence line here, in the remotest part of Ponderosa territory. There was also no sign of any trespass. That wasn’t so difficult to believe, he thought to himself. No silver here to mine, and the ground’s too rocky and uneven for pasturing cattle. He stopped Cochise at the tree line; the pack horse stopped obediently behind. He breathed deeply and took a look around him. But it is beautiful, beautiful country. He stared out over the surrounding mountains, stroking Cochise’s neck idly as the horse patiently shifted from hoof to hoof. He remembered the incredible beauty of the country around him when he had gone wandering after Alice had died, trying to outdistance the grief that tightened his chest so badly that he couldn’t breathe deeply for months. Still, he had noticed, however dispiritedly, the beauty around him as he had followed backwoods trails and paths forsaken by all but the most intrepid pioneers. The soaring spaces – tall snow-covered mountains, deep green valleys, transcendent azure skies – had helped him to put the endless depth of his sadness into some kind of perspective. It didn’t hurt less, but somehow, he sensed that there was an answering, profound kind of endlessness in the circling of hawks above him, the unstoppable movement of the creeks and rivers he crossed, the way the sun kept coming up every morning, and the moon each night.

 

And here I am again, doing it again, he grimaced to himself. At least this time I’m staying on Ponderosa territory, doing something to help Pa run this ranch. He shook himself and urged Cochise forward with a gentle shift of his hips in the saddle. The horse gave a swish of his tail and began picking his careful, sure way down the path again, followed by the obedient pack horse. The sound of hooves was muffled by the deep carpet of fallen pine needles, and horses and rider moved nearly noiselessly along the property line. Birds darted through the branches above them, singing songs of warning to each other regarding the unaccustomed presence of a human being.

 

He didn’t know why he couldn’t tell Ben what kept chasing him away from the familiar comfort of home, from the company of the father he loved. But he did know that the rage that had been building up in him was dangerous. Instinctively he knew that he had to stay away from that which he loved, lest he destroy it. Until he had dealt with the tearing anger that weighed down his heart and clouded his sight, he knew he couldn’t come home.

 

The sun was decidedly past its zenith and heading determinedly toward the trees on the opposite ridge before Joe began to think about shelter for the night, and the bottle of whiskey in his saddlebag. There was a line shack, he remembered, that should be fairly close by, along the property line and over the next hill. Oblivion, it was called. He hadn’t been there in years. Wonder when anyone last stocked it, or even checked to see if it was still standing. Wonder if it’s one of the ones Adam designed – he could think of his oldest brother without anything more than a dull ache; Adam had been gone so long, and he had never really believed that his oldest brother would return – if so, I’ll have to try to find some of those built-in hidden drawers that he loved to include. Maybe find something long forgotten…

 

Long forgotten… his ride toward the line shack, like the rest of his long day in the saddle, was quiet and undisturbed by human or animal life. He rode without a thought for his surroundings, or, for that matter, his horse – he and Cochise so attuned to each other after so many years that they communicated with the most subtle of movements and gestures. Somehow, merely the thought of that line shack oriented his mind, and his body, toward it, and it was enough for Cochise to make his way unerringly in that direction, without overt signals of guidance, or even a sign that his rider was aware that he was still on horseback. Meanwhile, that rider continued in his reverie.

 

Just up ahead, the fence line resumed. As he drew near, he could see a section of fence lying, with its post, half-covered by overgrown brush. He pulled the horses to a halt and ground-tied them, unpacked the repair materials he would need from the pack horse.

 

He was tired, bone-tired, but not tired enough to stop his thoughts. Wearily, he set about clearing away the underbrush, excavated the still-serviceable post. His mind kept conjuring up his brothers, lost to him, and to his father. He deepened the hole and set the post into the ground, wrapped the end of the new coil of barbed wire around it, and heaved the heavy sledgehammer against its head.

 

Adam might as well be dead, for all that we hear of him…even when a letter did arrive in the post – over the years that they had been apart, their lives had inevitably diverged in ways more profound than just geographical distance.

 

He swung again, harder.

 

And Hoss’ death had been so sudden, so entirely undreamed of – there were enough times that the two of them had been shot, beaten, stomped, run over, fallen in rivers – had survived so many near misses that, he realized, they had probably both just assumed that they would dodge the next bullet too, no matter in what form it might come.

 

The hammer bludgeoned the post again, and again.

 

And then, in a half a second, you were gone….it had happened so fast. There was no way to get used to the sudden tearing away of Hoss’ presence from their lives.

 

Once again he swung the heavy hammer over his head, chest muscles rippling, now glistening with the formation of a fine sheen of sweat. Again he brought the hammer down, harder this time.

 

His breathing grew ragged; it was as if a half-healed wound had reopened, and the too-fresh memory of grief and loss came pouring out like heart’s blood. There was no way to understand Hoss’ early death. It just isn’t fair. You should have been around for a long time to come.

 

He swung again, so hard that the hammer striking against the post sent a shock wave through his entire body.

 

He knew no one more deserving to live a long life, Joe thought, and the shaft of blinding pain that sliced through him without warning was like a gun shot, nearly knocking him down with its suddenness and intensity. No one except, maybe, a baby that isn’t even born yet, and a woman, just married, killed for no reason, no reason, no reason…

 

The hammer dropped at his feet, and he stumbled forward blindly, put out a hand, and gripped the post with all the desperate strength of unresolved grief, of unmitigated rage. He leaned against it, staring with eyes unfocused by agony, his breathing coming in gasps as he tried to control himself. The tightness in his chest was back, so deep and profound that he couldn’t breathe past it, couldn’t form coherent thought. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, trying to block the thoughts, trying to re-bury the anger and the pain. But he saw her, the memory as clear as day.

 

They were standing together in the half-finished room that would be the baby’s, talking about where to put the crib. The happiness in her eyes when she looked up at him fit perfectly with the elation he felt at the feeling of her, warm and gentle, leaning against him. She leaned back against him as his arms encircled her. Somehow, although he was holding her, he felt as though he was the one being held, wrapped in secure arms that rocked him, that kept him safe. This was where he belonged; this was his place.

 

Then it came, unbidden, inescapable: the vision of the flames. He struggled to keep from being sucked into that memory again, and found it tangled with a vision of Hoss, lying still, so frighteningly still. Cold invaded him, and he shivered despite the warmth of the sun’s rays on his face. I should have been able to do something, if only I had acted in time, I should have known…

 

He didn’t know how long it took before he could see again, could raise his head and take a deep breath, and think about returning to some semblance of normalcy. He realized that he had been gripping the wire he’d wrapped around the post so hard that the barbs had pierced through the black leather glove. He pulled it off his hand and regarded the blood that streamed from his fingers with dispassion, noting dully that he didn’t feel any pain.

 

His eyes moved then to find Cochise and the pack horse both standing a few steps away, grazing calmly. The afternoon shadows were lengthening; the pine-scented mountain air was growing cooler. He could feel the haze of rage in his mind abating with the heat. Then Joe saw his brother in his mind’s eye; Hoss was grinning at him, blue eyes twinkling. He could never stay angry for long. He shook his head to clear it out, wiped the bloody hand against his leg, and pulled the glove back on. Silently, he went back to the task of restringing the fence.

 

The emerald eyes were dry. In them was something that cut deeper than the kind of pain that can be alleviated by the release of tears. He returned the hammer to the pack horse and continued heading toward Oblivion.

 

**********

 

The Tahoe lake stretched wide and deep and dark in the night. In the stillness, he could almost hear the lapping of gentle waves against the shore.

 

The night air was cool against his face as he approached them. Stopping a way off, he tethered the horse and walked forward quietly. The moon, just rising, gave off only a pale silver glow against the velvet darkness, but he had been this way many times before, and his feet were sure and noiseless upon the pathless ground.

 

The tombstones glowed with a pale luminosity. He moved to stand before them, studying each in its turn. Marie….Mama…to stand before his mother’s grave was to invite the first sorrow of his life to rouse to wakefulness, to touch the lingering grief that still emanated from his heart’s first wound. He stared through the headstone, lost in a haze of ancient memories.

 

After a time he moved to the second grave, where lush new growth had already reasserted its claim over the disturbed earth. Hoss…he was slowly realizing that he didn’t yet know how to let Hoss go. But, unaffected by his angst, the mound of earth over the relatively fresh grave of his beloved brother had settled. Joe gazed, wondering, comparing it to his mother’s: Hoss might as well have been buried for years from the appearance of the grave. His eyes focused beyond the gathering of headstones toward a vista of the long, long sleep of death, in which his brother had joined his mother. He felt a deep longing for this man who had been friend and confidant, protector and companion. Despite the pain, Joe smiled gently at the memories: when Hoss had been at his shoulder, he had felt supremely fearless before the challenges they had faced together.

 

But Hoss wasn’t here to support him in the challenge he now had to face alone. Finally, with reluctant steps, he moved to stand before the stone beneath which they had buried Alice and the baby…What would your name have been, my child? What would we have called you? He found himself without coherent thought, and simply stood, staring quietly, unmoving.

 

I should have been able to do something, if only I had acted in time, I should have known…

 

Finally he turned and headed for a nearby boulder, settled himself on it and pulled out his bottle. He uncorked it and toasted Hoss’s grave marker. “Wish you were here to get drunk with me, ya big ox.” He brought the bottle to his lips and leaned back, tipping the fiery contents down his throat. As he bowed his head again, the tears began, scalding his face.

 

The risen moon, nearly full, plowed a shining track across the lake, lent an incandescent glow to the scattered clouds sailing overhead. It completed a good part of its journey through the starry sky that night, and still the solitary figure sat, trying to drown the memories. Streaks of lighter charcoal were beginning to trace their way across the velvet deep black of night when he gave up. Rising to leave, he staggered slightly as the world lurched around him. He grabbed at the rock behind him to steady himself, then stopped for a moment longer, and, suddenly more sober than he had planned to be, contemplated the mute stones. He didn’t notice the breeze gently ruffling the long, curly hair that rested against his collar. As he turned to leave, he only knew that whatever he was looking for here, he hadn’t found it.

 

**********

 

Early evening, and the sound of hooves in the front yard brought Ben up out of his desk chair, accounts forgotten. He headed for the door, hoping.

 

And sighed in relief to see his youngest son in the waning twilight, dismounting wearily from his horse.

 

“Joseph! Welcome home, son,” he called as he crossed the yard.

 

Joe turned to meet him, and the father’s arms opened instinctively. Was it a sign of how tired Joe was that he walked into those welcoming arms so willingly, this painfully independent man who tried to deal with everything in lonely isolation? Ben didn’t know and didn’t care; he just held his son gratefully, drinking in the living warmth of him.

 

Wordlessly, they made their way to the barn, Joe to care for Cochise and the pack horse, Ben to watch for his chance to care for Joe. With the horses rubbed down and fed, they headed for the house.

 

Ben opened the door for his weary son. “Come on, Joe,” he urged, “Hop Sing made a great stew tonight, I’ll get him to warm up some for you.”

 

Joe placed the hat on its hook, the gun belt and saddlebag on the sideboard, and the familiar motions threatened to bring back the blinding pain that had all but knocked him out of his saddle, days before on the trail. In his mind’s eyes, he could see Hoss doing the same things, all too clearly.

 

Forcing himself back to the moment, Joe shrugged, glanced away. “I’m not hungry, Pa,” he murmured. “What I’d really like is a hot bath and a good sleep.”

 

Ben forced a small smile, eyes searching for his youngest’s, but Joe wouldn’t meet his gaze. The father hooked his thumbs in his pockets, forcing himself not to reach out to pull Joe around to face him. Whatever had let the son accept the father’s embrace just a few moments ago had passed; Joe seemed to be holding himself together with difficulty, as if he were just a breath away from breaking down.

 

“I’ll have Hop Sing heat some water,” Ben offered.

 

As if responding to the gentle attempt to reach him, Joe turned toward his father, and then, slowly, as if he had to rally his strength to do so, he met his father’s eyes. What Ben saw there nearly caused him to drop his own gaze. He didn’t remember ever seeing the emerald eyes look so cold, so hooded. The smoldering rage in them, glowing like a banked fire, leapt out at his father.

 

“Joe,” he breathed. Without thinking about it, he reached out to touch his son.

 

Joe didn’t lean in to the touch. In fact, Ben thought, he might have felt his body stiffen against it.

 

“Pa, I can’t…” He took a step back.

 

Ben nodded, but his eyes didn’t leave his son’s. “I’ll get that water, son. You go on upstairs.”

 

Joe nodded, dropped his gaze. He turned to go.

 

“Joseph…”

 

He turned back toward his father.

 

“I’m glad you’re home.”

 

Joe nodded, glanced away. “Thanks, Pa. I’m glad to see you.”

 

Without another word, he made his way up the stairs.

 

Ben watched him go, and then went to find Hop Sing. Emerging back into the great room, he turned as if to go back to his desk, and the accounts. He looked over at the books and realized that he wasn’t going to be focusing on end of the month calculations any longer that evening. He headed for the brandy instead, poured himself a generous splash and settled on the sofa. He stared into the fire, holding the glass loosely in his hands, and lost himself in his thoughts.

 

He was always so sensitive, he had the biggest heart of any of us, was never afraid to show his feelings. Ben shuddered, remembering those dulled eyes. Where have you gone, Joseph?

 

He put the glass to his lips, focusing upon the fiery path the liquid traced as it trickled down his throat. It occurred to him that Joe’s capacity for feeling hadn’t disappeared at all – but that he was witnessing the other side of his son’s intensity: the dark side of the moon. The contrast was breathtaking, he thought to himself. The unresolved rage was like a ten-foot wall – dark, forbidding, impenetrable.

 

The room grew dark, illuminated fitfully by the flames from the fireplace. Hop Sing had built it up carefully and well; it would burn for a few hours yet, Ben thought.

 

Watching the flames dance, he was suddenly staring through them, awash in a flood of memories. Images of Marie, of the horrible months of unrelieved pain and sadness he had struggled through after her death. I never would have wanted that for you, my son. He shook his head slowly, sadly. What a terrible thing to have in common. He found himself searching, in his mind’s eye, for happier images – those few years when Marie had made them a happy, nearly whole family. And we did survive, after all, Joseph – a vision materialized in his mind of his youngest son: the easy, confident tilt of his hat, the swaggering, low-hipped, gunslinger’s walk, and the light-hearted, brilliant smile. And above all, the flashing emerald eyes he loved. I miss those days. It all seems so very long ago.

 

Ben rubbed his eyes tiredly. The longing not to be in mourning was a nearly physical pain. How did I get past it before? How can I help Joseph survive this? He stared into the fire as if he might find an answer there. He suddenly realized the terrible irony: those same flames that warmed and comforted the dark night had destroyed his son’s happiness. But I didn’t stop riding horses after Marie was killed…And why not, after all? What had made him continue on? He saw his son’s faces in his mind: Adam’s eyes, dark and fathomless; Hoss’, sky-blue and twinkling; Joe’s, differing shades of emerald green, shining or darkening with his ever-changing moods. We made new memories, didn’t we, boys? We found new things to look forward to…Then I could think of Marie, and of Elizabeth, and of Inger, without despair.

 

He didn’t know how long he had been sitting there when suddenly he became aware of a light tread on the steps. He was surprised when he glanced up to see his son standing there, regarding him from the shadows. Joe had bathed, and wrapped himself in his robe. Making his way in quiet bare feet across to his father, he sat down next to him.

 

“Hi, son,” Ben smiled. “I thought you might have been asleep by now. Join me in a brandy?”

 

“Sure.”

 

Ben went to rise but Joe stopped him with a gentle hand. With a movement as light and fluid as a panther’s, he rose and brought a glass and the decanter over, gently set them on the table in front of them. Ben watched the quiet grace of his movements, saw the sadness in the way he held the broad, muscular shoulders. Joe poured himself a glass and his father a refill, and they both settled back to watch the fire.

 

Without taking his eyes off the flames, Joe spoke.

 

“Pa.” He stopped and started again. “I’m sorry….”

 

Ben stared at him, astonished. “What in the world, Joe, could you possibly...” he trailed off.

 

Joe didn’t look at him. Ben could see the flames mirrored in the green eyes. Almost as if the spark was there.

 

“Pa, I’m sorry because I’ve been thinking only about my own…about me, and it’s not as if you haven’t…” He couldn’t voice it. His face was twisted with pain and the effort to control it. He bowed his head, his features dipping into the shadows that danced across the room; he stared at the glass in his hands.

 

Ben regarded him with a mixture of love and relief. This was more than Joe had been willing to say since…since Alice’s death. For so many months we’ve both been holding it back, there’s so much to do on the ranch and we’ve both buried ourselves in the work – and now, finally, it’s here.

 

“Joseph, Joseph…you can’t blame yourself.”

 

“But Pa, you’ve been right here, working, steady as a rock….and I’ve left you alone.”

 

Ben smiled gently, patted his son’s knee reassuringly. “Well, you were doing work that needed to be done too,” he pointed out, “and it suited you, didn’t it?”

 

Joe bowed his head, and his father could sense his distress. “But it was wrong to leave you alone.”

 

Ben stared into his brandy, swirled it around his glass. It glowed in the reflected firelight. “Joe, there’s lots of help around here. You didn’t leave me unsupported.” He took a sip of the fiery liquid. “And if you hadn’t gone out to do the fence riding, we just would’ve sent Candy, or someone else.” He shot a sideways glance at his son to see if he was buying it. “It was work that needed to be done.”

 

Joe relaxed, the burden of guilt lifting. If his father wanted to give him this one, he would take it. He sighed and returned the glance.

 

“I guess I did need to get away for awhile. But when I thought about it, it didn’t seem right.”

 

Ben stared into the fire, his gaze somewhere far beyond it.

 

“Joseph, you know as well as I do that we all grieve in different ways.” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, absently swirling the brandy in his glass again, without looking at it. “You are who you are.” He turned to look fully into his son’s eyes, deliberately. “And I love you exactly as you are.”

 

The spark did not miraculously leap back into the emerald eyes he loved, but the depths seemed a little less pained. “I love you too, Pa.”

 

Ben took a breath, decided to go for broke. Maybe it’s time to create some new memories, find something new to look forward to. “Joe, I’ve been thinking. Since you seem to need to keep moving for now, I’m wondering if you’d like to make that trip we’ve been talking about for a long time now – to go up to the Oregon Territory and pick up those horses you’re interested in.”

 

That brought a definite glint of interest into those beautiful eyes. “You mean the Palouse horses we heard about?”

 

Ben nodded. “Yes, I was thinking that you could take Candy and make a trip up there. The work here is under control, and the weather seems to have warmed up enough to make the passes, well, passable.”

 

“It would take at least two months, Pa,” Joe warned. “Are you sure?”

 

It was appealing to him, Ben could see. His eyes softened as he looked at his youngest son. “I’m sure, son.”

 

Joe sat back and considered it. “We’ll need to spend a few days planning, and getting ready. We could leave by the end of the week – that would give me enough time to make sure that the work with the yearlings is all finished…” He gazed into the fire again, lifted a foot that found its way absently to the coffee table before him. “They say those horses are really superior stock, Pa. That there’s no other horses that can hold a candle to ‘em for speed and agility.” His voice trailed off and Ben could almost see the horse breeder’s wheels turning in his son’s mind. “What they could do to our horses’ bloodlines…”

 

It had been years since Ben cared any longer about where Joe put his feet. He smiled fondly at the memory, and in his pleasure at his son’s interest in his suggestion. “And then, Joe, when you get back – “

 

Joe looked up at him, shaken out of thoughts of breeding and training strategies.

 

Ben continued. “And when you get back, Joe, maybe you’ll stay, for a while.”

 

Joe was quiet, but he didn’t demur. Ben could see that something in the lines of his face had relaxed.

 

They settled back to watch the fire again, shoulder to shoulder. The pain was still too great to be faced – but Ben was beginning to believe that the day would come when they would both be able to breathe deeply again. He found himself daring to entertain the hope that, sooner rather than later, he would hear Joe laugh again.

 

 

**********

 

 “They’re supposed to be some of the fastest, strongest, most sure-footed horses around,” Joe explained to Candy as their horses picked their way along the ridge which served as the Ponderosa’s eastern property line. They had started out at dawn on the first stage of their journey north. Already, the brush that covered the ground was drying out as the weather warmed up and rain became scarce. Rabbits and other small furry animals, foraging in the cooler morning air, darted for shelter at their approach.

 

The early morning dew was drying fast off the tall Ponderosa pine trees as the heat of the day rose with the summer sun. The woody scent of pine, cool and soothing, filled the air they pulled deeply, appreciatively, into their lungs. Soon enough, they knew, they would be breathing mostly trail dust.

 

Candy pushed the brim of his hat back to take advantage of the last of the morning’s cool breezes, rubbed his brow. “What’re they called again?”

 

“Palouse horses. I think it has something to do with the name of the river the tribe lives near.” Absently, Joe noted that the fence along which they were riding needed some minor repairs. “The tribe that breeds them is called the Nez Perce.”

 

“What the hell does that mean?” Candy dismounted to open the gate.

 

“It’s French for ‘pierced nose’.” Joe rode through and waited while Candy secured the fence, smiling at his friend’s snort. “Didn’t you learn a little French in high school, Candy?”

 

Candy laughed at the thought as he swung his leg over his horse’ back. “I mostly concentrated on fishin’ and huntin’ in high school – you know how it is…”

 

They turned the horses’ heads toward Reno. “I reckon I do at that,” Joe smiled at the memory of spring days spent with friends, sneaking away from school to go fishing at the nearest stream. Joe would stay out as long as he dared, careful to stay clear of his father’s known activities for the day, lest Pa or an annoying big brother discover him. Then again, I could usually convince Hoss to come along…

 

“…and I didn’t stay in school that long anyway. My Pa didn’t put much stock in it.”

Candy didn’t notice that a shadow had passed over his friend’s face. “And then, well, let’s just say that most of my learning ain’t from books.”

 

He chuckled, but when there was no answering riposte, he shot a look at his friend in time to see him visibly pull himself together.

 

“Joe?”

 

His traveling companion tried to settle his shoulders. The effort to control himself betrayed its presence in the way he ducked his head, avoided Candy’s eyes. “Dammit, I can’t seem to get past it, Candy,” he confessed. “I can’t seem to put it behind me. Every time I think I can…laugh again, it hits me in the stomach.” He could feel the rage starting deep in his chest.

 

Candy tugged the brim of his hat down to hide his unease. “I still miss Hoss a lot too,” he offered.

 

“You’ve got an advantage over me, Candy,” Joe continued, bitterly. “You’re a loner. You’ve had practice at being by yourself.”

 

The Ponderosa foreman shrugged in his turn, stared ahead. Their horses, continuing at a steady, mile-eating walk, had brought them into the flatlands that would take them to Reno. “When you don’t have a choice, you just sorta get used to it, Joe.” He squinted up at the sun, calculating how long they had before the sun began to beat down upon them in earnest. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take, talking like this. Knowing how much his friend was hurting was the only thing that could make him steel himself against the desire to change the subject.

 

“Well, I reckon I’m going to have to get better at it,” Joe said, his voice ragged, struggling to control the building anger that echoed in his tone and his posture. “I just can’t get used to how he was here one day and gone the next – and then how Alice was gone so quickly, too.” His voice trailed off. The pressure in his chest threatened to cut off his breathing. His throat was tight. “I don’t understand why they’re dead, and I’m not.”

 

“Huh?”

 

I’m no more deserving of life then they were. Joe’s tone grew darker, the edge of anger sharper. “I’ve faced so many men who wanted to kill me. It would only take a half a second more that I need to draw my gun, and I’d have been lying dead in the dirt years ago. Is that all there life is – a half a second? Why am I alive, why aren’t they?”

 

To that, Candy didn’t know what to say. He was mightily relieved when Joe urged his horse into a gallop, and spurred his own mount to follow. He hoped a good long run in the late morning sun would help his friend put the demon back under wraps. At the very least, he noted wryly, they’d get to Reno in good time at this rate.

 

 

**********

 

Once Joe had finally pulled Cochise from his headlong run down to a sane pace, Candy wasn’t sure how long they had ridden in silence. The sun was high in the sky when they heard a woman’s scream and the echo of gunshots.  They exchanged glances, and Candy jerked his head toward the ridge ahead of them.

 

“Up ahead, around the bend on the stage road.”

 

Joe nodded. “Looks like smoke. Let’s go!”

 

They urged their horses to a gallop and, rather than follow the road, headed directly for the ridge around which the road had been cut.  Within moments they had reached the crest of the ridge. Slowing as they headed for defensive cover, guns in hand, they worked their way carefully forward until they could see the source of the sounds of conflict. Then they heard the scream again.

 

The two cowboys squinted against the piercing midday rays of the sun. Before them was a vista of hell. A stagecoach lay on its side, on fire, its back wheel revolving at a crazy angle, the axel broken. Entangled in their traces, two horses struggled against the dead weight and their own injuries. Even from a distance, Joe could see that one of them was trying to get a broken foreleg under itself, and was panicking as it sensed that the leg would not hold its weight.

 

The horses’ terrified screams of pain mingled with the crackle and pop of the fire consuming the stagecoach and the nightmare staccato of revolver fire. As their eyes focused on the scene, the two men realized that several unmoving bodies were strewn around the coach. Four men stood nearby, and as they watched, one of them deliberately and slowly took aim and fired his gun – at what, they couldn’t see. The woman’s scream sounded again, more horrified and desperate this time.

 

The breeze turned in their direction, and the acrid black smoke reached their nostrils, unsettling the horses. Still unsure of what exactly they were witnessing, Joe settled for shooting in the air. Four figures turned toward the sound. All four aimed their weapons at the two men on the ridge.

 

Joe and Candy met each other’s eyes and nodded. They simultaneously yanked their horses to opposite sides, leaving an empty space where they had been seconds before, just as four bullets sliced the air between them. They saw the outlaws below leap for cover; one made a dash for a horse. The woman’s scream sounded again.

 

The two men had faced enough dangers together; as Joe sped through the cover along one end of the ridge, darting among the trees, he knew that Candy would be echoing his movement along the opposite side. They would approach the scene from opposite sides, keeping the men at the stage off balance, having to defend themselves from multiple angles.

 

His path brought him closer than he’d realized to the burning stage coach and the outlaws using it for cover. A bullet sang through the air close to his ear, and Joe pulled Cochise to a stop long enough to toss off an answering shot. He saw one of the men fall, watched the other two duck back behind the coach. He scanned the area but couldn’t find the source of the scream they’d heard.

 

Then something he saw made Candy pull his horse up and head directly down toward the stage, firing wildly. Joe instantly reacted, throwing Cochise into a headlong run from the opposite direction to cover his friend’s charge, shooting into the air to create the sense of covering fire. Until they knew where everyone was – and what the story was – he didn’t want to risk hurting innocent people.

 

But the noise of gunfire was enough, and created the impression he’d wanted. Candy’s horse had headed for the coach, and for a few long and worried moments as he raced toward it, the burning, slowly collapsing hulk blocked Joe’s view of his friend. The sound of gunfire coming from behind the coach continued, though, and it wasn’t aimed in the air. Joe fired back, into the billowing black smoke, directly at the source of the sounds this time. Whether it was Candy’s shooting or his, he wasn’t sure, but another body fell from behind the coach, sprawling face down on the ground.

 

Then he saw her –  a woman running away from the coach as fast as she could, her skirts gathered in one hand, her dark hair flying loose behind her. The next thing he saw was one of the outlaws urging a horse after her. In her blind panic, she was running directly into the path of Cochise’ onrushing charge. The outlaw behind her was gaining on her. Joe sent a warning shot over his head, but the man didn’t flinch. He also didn’t fire back, and Joe realized that the other was out of ammunition.

 

Casting aside all thought of the last armed man behind the coach, knowing Candy would cover him, he quickly shifted his body’s weight, tightening his legs and leaning to the side. Cochise responded instantly, describing a smooth arc at full speed, bringing Joe between the outlaw and the fleeing woman. He reached down and with one smooth motion scooped her up into the saddle in front of him. The pursuing outlaw shouted something angrily and, still at a full gallop, pulled his horse to one side. Taking a long look at Joe, he headed away from the scene as fast as he could urge his horse to move.

 

The woman in Joe’s arms screamed again, and he struggled to keep her safely on the galloping horse as he looked for the closest nearby cover. “Take it easy, there, miss, I’m not gonna hurt you,” he murmured in her ear as he headed Cochise toward a nearby copse of trees. Distracted by his concern for the armed man they still had to face, he found time to notice that she was beautiful, and that she didn’t seem to be hysterical, despite good reason to be. She was gasping for breath and nearly sobbing, but as Cochise came to a halt, her arms found her way around his neck, and she looked up at him.

 

“Who are you?”

 

The frantic, deep brown eyes unnerved him momentarily, before he clamped back down on his heart. “Name’s Joe Cartwright, ma’am. You mind tellin’ me what’s going on?” He continued to fire at the source of the shots coming toward them, worrying about Candy’s whereabouts – and welfare. A part of his mind registered the horse and rider racing away in the direction of Reno. Automatically, he rehearsed pertinent details for the sheriff – red-haired, moustache, middle-aged, not too tall, blue jacket, bay horse… Suddenly he noticed that the gunfire had stopped.

 

The woman turned to gaze at the wrecked and burning stage. “Those men robbed the stage, they killed…oh, my God…”she began to sob.  “They killed…”

 

“It’s all right,” Joe tried to soothe her. “You’re safe now.” But she continued to weep, her body shaking with heart-rending cries. He held her tightly and guided Cochise down toward the downed stage. The sounds of gunfire had ceased, leaving only the crackling sound of the flames as they consumed the stage coach. Joe realized that the screaming of the horses had stopped. He looked over and could see Candy standing over them, watched him put a bullet into each one to end their suffering. He considered the weeping woman in his arms sadly. She won’t be so lucky, he thought darkly.

 

Joe pulled up upwind of the downed stage. Cochise stood obediently, blowing noisily, sides heaving from the exertion. Joe helped the woman slide down the horse’ side to the ground. She made her way, sobbing, among the bodies as Candy checked them. The Ponderosa foreman looked up at Joe as he came alongside.

 

“Looks like four stage coach robbers who managed somehow to wreck – and burn – the stage coach. Three are dead, one escaped.” Joe nodded, listening as he reloaded his revolver. Candy continued his grim assessment. “Whatever they were carrying must’ve been mighty attractive. Driver’s dead, so are these people – the passengers…” At this, the woman began to cry in earnest. Candy looked over at her, then met Joe’s eyes quizzically. Joe shrugged.

 

Candy walked over to her and took her by the elbow. “Ma’am…”

 

Whatever words of consolation he was going to offer went unsaid as he caught a flash of blue-tinged light out of the corner of his eye.

 

“Joe!”

 

The roar of a gunshot sounded, too close, and simultaneously Candy saw Joe whirl, revolver in hand. It wasn’t until after he saw a man, half-risen from the dirt near the smoking coach, fall back to the ground that Candy realized what had happened. One of the outlaws had still been alive, and had regained consciousness. He had quietly brought his gun up and aimed it at the nearest target he saw – Joe, as he stood there, gazing at the distraught woman. By the time Candy was able to focus his thoughts, Joe had reacted to the signs of danger in his peripheral vision and fired – faster than he thought possible, faster than thought itself. By the time he could take a breath, Joe was standing there with the gun still in his hand, his body relaxing as he realized that the danger was past.

 

The two men looked at each other wordlessly. Joe’s eyes were unreadable. Half a second, Candy thought. He kept the thought to himself.

 

 

*********

 

She noticed him when she came to the bar to fetch a round of drinks for the poker players at the back of the room. He was standing with another man; the two of them had just come in from the gathering darkness outside to the light and welcoming warmth of the saloon. They were walking to the bar, and he was grinning at something his companion had said. The brilliance of his smile caught her eye. She glanced at him sideways, not willing to give herself away by gazing directly just yet.

 

At first she was ready to categorize him as just another cowboy enjoying a night on the town after a hard day’s ride. She appraised him with an experienced eye. Broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, the hard muscles of his long legs speaking of a lifetime spent in the saddle. Luminescent green eyes centered on his friend, but took in the room as well. Long dark curls flecked with just a touch of grey escaping from under the light-colored Stetson hat, spilling over his collar. Suddenly her fingers itched to touch them.  Better looking than the average cowboy, she thought to herself, and he stands there like he owns the place. One boot was hooked over the bar’s railing, and he leaned casually on his right arm, resting the elbow on the bar’s polished wooden surface. Then she noticed that his revolver’s holster - slung low, for a gunslinger’s fast draw – hung on the left side of his body. She realized that he kept that side free of encumbrance, and his left hand casually – but carefully – close to the gun.

 

No, not a cowboy, or not just a cowboy. He looks younger than he does old, but he ain’t no innocent – he knows how to take care of himself, I’ll bet. Her eyes lingered on the gun and the lean, muscular thigh it was strapped to. Then the clink of glass brought her back to the job at hand, and she thanked the bartender and made her way to the men waiting for their drinks. Her gaze caressed the gunslinger at the bar one more time, and her hips swayed just a bit more seductively as she moved away.

 

The saloon was crowded, but it was a quiet night, and no one was pawing at her. She shot a look at her boss but he seemed unconcerned that she was making her way casually back to the bar. She found herself drawn back toward those green eyes. He was tipping the last of his beer down his throat. He caught the bartender’s eyes and nodded toward his friend. “How about another round for two hardworking cowpokes, friend?” His companion grinned and clapped him on the shoulder. “Long as you’re buying, boss,” he chuckled.

 

The gunslinger laughed outright at that. “Candy, I reckon it’s only for a beer that I’ll ever hear you say that to me.”

 

She was even more intrigued. Young, handsome, obviously good-natured despite the low-slung evidence at his hips that he knew how to kill. And somebody’s boss to boot? She came closer, the whiskey she’d had earlier making her bold.

 

“Hey, stranger,” she purred, “buy a girl a drink?”

 

He turned the emerald gaze on her and she nearly melted. Then he smiled, and his nod was both for her and for her request. “Whatever the lady is drinking,” he called across to the bartender.

 

“You’re not from around here.” She didn’t want to take her eyes away from his gaze. The bartender set a beer in front of him, a shot glass of whisky before her.

 

He nodded, not looking away from her, either. “We’re from over Virginia City way.”

 

“Well, welcome to Reno, then.” She leaned against the bar, turning to face him fully. The unfastened shirt buttons at his neck allowed her to begin undressing him with her eyes. She had to fight her impulse to reach out and touch him somewhere, anywhere. It was the policy of the establishment that the saloon girls were available for more than getting a cowboy a drink. She smiled to herself and hoped that she might be able to mix business with rather more pleasure than she usually anticipated from a night’s work.

 

He was remembering the entrance they’d made to Reno a few hours earlier, with a disheveled and emotionally exhausted young woman in tow. They’d headed directly to the sheriff’s office to report on the stage robbery and the deaths, and Joe had described the one that got away as carefully as he could. He’d even perused some wanted posters, but hadn’t seen anyone who clearly resembled the man who’d chased, on horseback, after the woman who was the lone survivor of the attack.

 

The sheriff had cautioned them to keep an eye out for the gang’s survivor. He had an idea of who it might be. “A real mean hombre, doesn’t leave witnesses, always starts by burning down the stage, or the house, or whatever he’s robbing. They call him Red, and not just for his hair. His gang’s been seen up and down the stage coach lines as far north as the Oregon Territory.” He had regarded the two cowboys in front of him with a measured look from under the brim of his hat. He took the wanted posters back from Joe’s outstretched hand and met his eyes. “Just watch yourselves.”

 

“If it weren’t for this man, Sheriff,” the woman they’d rescued had said, “and you, too,” she looked at Candy, “they’d have killed me too.” She looked at Joe gratefully. “I thank you, sir.”

 

Joe had nodded, tipped his hat to her, and had suddenly wanted to get out of that office in the worst way. She clearly wasn’t so eager to have him leave, but he gave her no opening, shaking the sheriff’s hand and promising to be available for further questioning while they were in Reno overnight. They’d be at the hotel later, and yes, they were probably headed over to the saloon. He got out of there as fast as he could, not bothering to examine what was pushing him out the door, despite Candy’s curious glance.

 

He looked around the room again, maintaining the vigilance of his stance, and then returned his gaze to the woman in front of him. He was noticing the graceful curve of her neck, the swell of her breasts in the tight dress, the upturned chin and full lips, the implied offer of her posture.

 

“How long you all plan to stick around?” she asked.

 

“Not long.” The look in the green eyes was level, unconcerned, but interested in what her next move might be. He put the beer glass down carefully and gazed into her eyes. She let her own gaze drop somewhat lower, lingered over the lines of his lean, muscular body.

 

She saw him look over her shoulder briefly, guessed that he caught his friend’s eye out of the corner of his own, knew she was right when she felt movement away from her back. The friend was leaving them a bit of privacy. Her heart beat faster as he looked down into her eyes, giving her his full attention. She felt caught up in those green depths, and found her breathing going ragged.

 

I’m no innocent either, she reminded herself. ”My name’s Belle.” Her lips were parted, the tip of her tongue inviting.

 

He touched his hand to his hat. “Mine’s Joe.” The eyes were caressing, but careful.


She realized that she was forgetting to breathe. I’m a working girl, I do this all the time, she thought, trying to take a deeper breath. Get a grip on yourself, girl…

 

“I’m sure you’ve had a long day,” she offered. “You’re probably looking for a good night’s rest.”  Despite herself, her eyes dropped. At the last moment, she managed to focus to one side, to his pearl-handled revolver.

 

He smiled easily, gently. “I’m not really that tired. My friend and I came here hoping to find a bit of entertainment, actually.” He glanced over and saw Candy insinuating himself into a card game. “I think he’s found what he came for.” His eyes returned to the beauty standing before him. “Me, on the other hand, I’m not in the mood for poker just now.”

 

She knew her chance when she heard it. “I…I’d be more than happy to acquaint you with the…other kinds of…entertainment available in this establishment,” she murmured.

 

He gave another quick look around the bar, picked up his beer glass and drained it. “What did you have in mind?”

 

Her eyes were full of teasing promise. “What do you have in mind?” Her body swayed toward him, and he felt his own beginning to answer.

 

“You’ll have to find some place more private than this if you want that question answered,” he murmured.

 

She reached out then and took his hand, and felt the heat of her desire for him hit her, full-blown. The hand was work-toughened and strong, but gentle. She clung to it, and he let her lead him past the poker tables to a door that led to a dark hallway. The last sight she had of the main room of the saloon, over his shoulder, was of his friend’s grin in their general direction.

 

Belle stepped into the first empty room she came to, and with one long stride he was at her side. She turned to light the lamp next to the bed, but he caught her arm and pulled her against him. He shut the door behind them with his back, and reached to lock it as he took her in his arms. In the darkness, his mouth came down hard on hers and she opened to him, her hands reaching up to run through his silken hair. Her fingers knocked his hat off; she heard it hit the floor, softly.

 

He reached into his jacket and then toward the table, and she knew that he was leaving his payment for her services. Then his hands were on her waist, pulling her closer to him. She brought her hips up against him, and slid her hands down his chest, coaxing the rest of the shirt buttons free….

 

 

************

 

His eyes were focused somewhere beyond the bed. She looked at him closely. Long dark curls fell into his eyes, brushed against his collarbones. She studied his profile in the dim glow that the small, grimy window grudgingly allowed into the dark room. There was a quietness about him that communicated maturity to her, a sense of restrained power that would meet and master any situation that might present itself. Yet there was that about him that seemed startlingly young, but there was no serenity in it. A young face, but a wounded heart, she mused.

 

“Who are you?”

 

He met her eyes, but she could see that his thoughts were already somewhere else. The long lines of his lean body in the bed spoke somehow of sorrow; she could sense an underlying sadness in the dark profile of his face against the darker shadows. Then he seemed to gather himself, to push it away.

 

Perhaps he was about to answer her. She never got to find out. She felt his body tense almost before she heard the muffled sounds of struggle out in the saloon. She noticed for the first time that the piano had gone silent, replaced by the thuds of what sounded like a good-sized barroom brawl in full swing.

 

With a quick grace that reminded her of a cat, he was up and into his clothes, and easing carefully, silently, out the door, gun in hand.

 

 

**********

 

Candy ducked as a chair came flying across the room at him. His poker luck had been pretty good until one of the men in the game had decided that the dealer – it had been Candy’s turn – was cheating. Candy, trying to keep things from escalating, had attempted to calm the angry cowboy, but he had lost too much money, and drunk too much whiskey, to care. He had started swinging, and didn’t much care who he hit.

 

Candy found himself in the middle of a quickly growing brawl, which he rather enjoyed, generally speaking. The only problem with this one was that the angry cowboy’s friends seemed more than happy to join him in ganging up on the dealer, who was, after all, a stranger in town. And alone…by now Joe should have heard the noise, he thought in some small part of his brain as he feinted away from, and then slugged, his nearest attacker.

 

Candy had been enjoying the way his odds were coming up with the cards, but now, he reflected to himself, the odds had quickly gone south.  An uppercut he never saw coming dropped him. A black-booted foot headed for his ribs.

 

Suddenly, the sound of a gunshot reverberated through the saloon. It was a single bullet that kicked up dust between his unprotected body and the oncoming boot, stopping it, and its owner, cold. He sighed in relief. Only one person he knew could shoot like that. He heard the voice that went with the shot.

 

“Back off.” Joe’s tone was flat and full of menace, and the group who had been ready to beat Candy into the ground obeyed without a sound, staring at the revolver held steady in his hand.

 

Candy got to his feet, retrieving his hat and wiping blood from the corner of his mouth, while Joe covered his movements, eyes never leaving the drunk and angry cowboy who had been ready to kick Candy into insensibility. The man was seething. He drew a dirty forearm across his face, wiping away sweat and blood, and glowered at Joe. The gun held steady in the direction of his chest kept him in place.

 

“You okay, Candy?”

 

“Yeah,” the Ponderosa foreman winced. “Just a little misunderstanding’s all.” He stopped to pick up his winnings, glancing back at the drunk with the boots who had started it all. He walked over to the bartender and slapped the money down on the bar. “This oughta cover your damages. Sorry about that.” He straightened his hat and headed for the exit.

 

Joe walked backward behind him, the gun still trained on Boots, eyes taking in the room. An air of barely suppressed rage lent a dangerous edge to his movements.

 

Belle had found her clothes, and, still full of the pleasure of the last hour, walked languidly out into the barroom. She was just in time to see him back through the saloon doors without a look in her direction. She stopped by the bar, next to one of the other girls, who was staring at him appreciatively. “He sure knows how to use his gun,” she murmured.

 

“Yeah, he sure does,” Belle grinned. She watched the doors swing. And just like that, he was gone.

 

**********

 

A ragged, choked sob that tore from his own throat woke him. His fists were clenched so hard that his whole body ached. He’d been dreaming of Alice again. The familiar feel of a woman in his arms must have triggered it this time. And the stagecoach, burning and billowing black smoke, conjuring the horror of the night when she’d died. The dreams all started out happy, but then ended in a sudden pounding darkness that took over his vision like a live thing attacking him, and a sense of falling, falling without end, and Alice falling away from him, screaming his name. In the dreams he was always mute, always reaching out to her, always watching in voiceless horror as she slipped beyond his grasp.

 

His heart was hammering against his chest. With an effort, he took a deep breath, trying to relax the tension that coiled from his shoulders directly down into his heart, and opened his eyes.

 

Dawn’s golden fingers were pushing through the shabby curtains of the hotel room. Joe rolled over to regard Candy. The Ponderosa foreman was a reassuringly normal sight, still sleeping soundly in the other bed, bundled against the early morning chill. Joe contemplated the unmoving form and decided to give him a little while longer. He could go over to the livery himself and ready the horses before waking Candy. Maybe by then he would have been able to settle his emotions.

 

He pulled himself to sit on the edge of the bed, running a hand through his tousled hair, rubbing his eyes as if he could banish the terrifying sights his dream had conjured. He pulled on his jeans and fumbled under the bed for his boots. The sound they made as they scraped across the wooden floorboards seemed loud in the morning stillness, but Candy didn’t stir. In another moment Joe had shrugged into his shirt and found his hat.  He stood and took a deep breath, reaching for the gun belt. It settled on his hips with an easy familiarity, and, snagging his jacket in one hand, he moved silently to, and through, the door.

 

The town was still asleep, except for a few merchants arriving early at their stores to prepare for the day to come. Shrugging on his jacket, Joe looked around, could smell coffee brewing somewhere nearby. He promised himself to go in search of a cup after checking the horses, and made his way over to the livery on a street that was so quiet that he could hear the soft thuds of his booted feet in the dust. The sun had fully risen now, and its early rays on his back were surprisingly warm already.

 

Something about the entrance to the Reno livery in the quiet morning tripped a memory, and suddenly he was watching Hoss lead Chubb out of the shadows beyond the stable door in his mind’s eye. The vision was as clear as life, and his heart lurched. He gritted his teeth against the sudden wave of sorrow that broke over him and straightened his shoulders, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other.

 

He never heard the sound of the hammer being pulled back on the gun that followed his movement down the street, but the sound of the blast as the gun was fired echoed through the street.

 

He whirled at the sound, sensing the bullet before he saw it kick up the dust at his feet.  His revolver was already clearing the holster as his eyes searched the early morning shadows for his assailant.

 

It was the erstwhile drunk with the black boots who stepped off the opposite boardwalk and out into the street, brandishing his gun.

 

“That was just to get your attention, cowboy,” he called out. Joe turned to face him, his body unconsciously assuming a stance of readiness for battle, even as he spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

 

His eyes narrowed beneath the brim of the Stetson hat as he appraised the other man. “I don’t know you.”

 

The other was either still drunk, or suffering from the aftereffects. Whichever – it had only made him meaner. He took the gunfighter’s stance, the big black boots planted in the fine brown dust of the quiet street. Deliberately and slowly, he re-holstered his gun, his right hand hovering near it. “Your friend cheated me last night, and you helped him.”

 

Joe took a breath and returned his own gun to its holster. “Look, mister, what happened last night – “

 

“What happened last night was that you meddled where you and your fast gun don’t belong!” Boots was getting angrier. His hand dropped toward his gun, fingers flexing just above the butt. “You got in my way, and you made me look bad in front of the whole town.” The snarl grew in intensity. “Now you’re gonna get what’s coming to ya, right here and now.”

 

Years of experience took over, and Joe found himself unconsciously shifting into position, facing the other squarely, balancing his body to facilitate the fast draw. His voice dropped deadly low. “Don’t try it,” he warned. His own hand drifted down toward his gun.

 

First the stage robbers on the way into town, now this misdirected drunk. He could hear the echo of Hoss’ voice in his mind. You got a talent for trouble, little brother…

 

Time seemed to slow down as the two men faced each other. No sound disturbed the quiet of the early morning street. The bright rays of the morning sun threw a deep shadow across the other’s face below his hat brim, obscuring his eyes, making them harder to read. But the stance was confident enough.

 

For a moment the silence seemed almost palpable. No birds sang, no breeze ruffled nearby tree branches, no horses nickered in the nearby barn.  Inky black shadows stained the yellow-grey dust of the street, stretched from the feet of the two men who faced each other to the row of buildings behind Joe’s left shoulder. He could sense, rather than see, that the street was completely empty.

 

Images flooded his mind. Ben teaching him to shoot; Adam warning him when he got too good at it; times when his ability to hit just about anything without seeming to need to aim had pulled him or his brothers out of a tight spot; the men he had killed because his bullet got there first; Adam telling him that sooner or later, someone would be faster….

 

His practiced eye considered his challenger. This guy probably ain’t it, Adam. Then, suddenly, the distraction that had been plaguing him lately scattered his thoughts. Vaguely, he noticed that the usual alertness, the curl of healthy fear at the pit of his stomach, wasn’t there. Instead, a vision of his brothers kept threatening to materialize in his mind’s eye. They’re gone…

 

Joe took a deep breath of the cool morning air, felt the dry ache that threatened to close his throat. He tried to force himself to concentrate on the deadly situation confronting him. “Mister, I don’t know you, you don’t know me – seems pretty pointless to kill or get killed over a poker game…I wasn’t even there…”

 

“Dammit, I done called you out; you better draw, cowboy! In another half a second I’m gonna kill you!” Boots was furious, beyond reason.

 

His head lifted sharply and the emerald eyes flashed with a sudden, unbalancing rage. The sense of unreality grew stronger. As if in a dream, Joe felt himself surrendering to the inevitability of the situation. Something unreadable passed over his countenance. Eyes focused on some distant vista, his hand dropped decisively toward his gun.

 

***********

 

Candy had just pulled his boots on and was rubbing a hand over his face, yawning himself into wakefulness, when a blast of gunfire shattered the serenity of the morning.  Eyes widening in surprise, he focused on the room’s other bed and, in one searing flash of insight realized both that it was empty, and that there was a chance that a connection might well exist between that fact and the ominous sound outside. Not bothering to find his shirt, Candy grabbed his gunbelt and threw himself desperately out the door and down the hall of the hotel. He headed toward the street, and the sound of that blast. 

 

He didn’t even notice the chill of the morning as he darted out the door. His eyes darted from side to side, searching through the morning shadows for any sign of danger. A small knot of the townspeople who were already awake and about stared in the direction that he knew he needed to go. The livery.

 

Then he heard the second shot. It echoed loudly off the silent, empty buildings.

 

He ran.

 

…and, coming around the corner, could smell gunpowder hanging heavy and acrid in the air. He glanced quickly around, ready to draw his own gun. Before he cleared the corner he saw the other in the stark slanting shadows of the early morning sun, recognized him from the poker game and the brawl of the previous evening. He was standing there, gun still in his hand, his stance clearly that of a formal gunfight.

 

And then, stunned, he saw him.  My God, my God, he’s gone an’ –

 

Joe’s body lay, face upturned to the morning sun and unmoving, in the middle of the quiet street. A spreading circle of bright red blood saturated his jacket and shirt, soaked into the packed dirt beneath him.

 

The shooter was instantly banished from his mind. Candy flung himself down on his knees in the dust at his friend’s side. “Somebody get the doctor!” he flung the scream back over his shoulder toward the onlookers who had gathered. Distractedly, he heard someone run off obligingly, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Joe’s gun, lying close by. Driven by an impossible thought, he reached out to touch the barrel.

 

It was cold. It hadn’t been fired.

 

He looked closely at Joe, groping for evidence of a pulse; laid his bandana on his friend’s wound and pressed down hard, trying to slow the bleeding. The unconscious man didn’t even groan. Joe’s hat had been knocked off as he fell, and the dust of the street dulled the sheen of his dark curls. Past eyelids barely slit open, empty green eyes stared sightlessly up at the sky.

 

This must’ve been what he meant. Candy shook his head and looked away, struggling to take a breath past the lump that suddenly blocked his throat.

 

Half a second…

 

The fast draw had decided not to draw fast.

 

 

**********

 

The bullet had smashed into him with such force that it slammed him backward, down to the ground. Everything was going dark and he felt himself falling, falling endlessly. He'd been shot before but this was…this was somehow different. His body seemed relieved, seemed somehow to welcome the violation. It embraced the agony that washed over him and dragged him down into darkness. The searing physical pain that sliced through him left him gasping raggedly to pull a breath into his lungs. It displaced the deep sadness he'd been carrying for so long, lifted it from him. It was as if the bullet was offering him release.

 

Finally. He wouldn't have to hurt anymore. He felt no fear, no regret – just a terrible fatigue. He was so tired. He felt his body open up, give itself to the gaping, gushing bullet hole in his chest. The sadness was drowning in the blood that rushed forth with each beat of his heart. It would take him away...

 

The revolver dropped from his nerveless hand.

 

 

***********

 

For several days he hung between life and death. His father, summoned by Candy’s telegram, sat by his bed. Shrouded in the semi-darkness of the heavily curtained hotel room, a fierce light burning in his dark eyes, Ben watched and waited with grim determination, ignoring the progression of indeterminate days which followed nights indistinguishable from one another. He held on to his last son’s hand for dear life, trying to haul him back from the beckoning darkness by main force of will.

 

Joseph, Joseph, it’s not your fault. It’s mine, it must be mine – I’ve let you down in some way, I’ve failed you.

 

Joe, can’t you see? You’re not guilty of anything...one look at your beautiful face in sleep, or in this less comforting sleep of unconsciousness, and anyone could see that you are innocent.

 

Joseph, let it go. Joseph, can’t you see that I’m empty without you, that I can’t go on if you won’t? There’s no one left for me but you.

 

We can make it, Joe. I can’t change the way you feel, but I’m not going to leave you alone in this misery of guilt and anger that you’re fighting.

 

Joseph, Joseph, we all make mistakes, we all hurt – but you’re not to blame for what we’ve suffered, you’re not guilty. Joseph, if you would only let yourself believe…

 

Joseph. This isn’t the way. Joseph, my son…