Summary: A sudden wild ride on the Truckee River leads to Joe’s becoming a man.
Category: Bonanza
Genre: Western
Rated: PG
Word Count: 13,942
Chapter 1
He’d been sent out for wood for the fire, but as clouds moved over the half-moon, he stood watching, transfixed by the storm about to whip up. As rain started to fall, and the pines blew and blew, he never once moved to the log pile.
To Hoss, who had been sent out to see where Joe was, it looked like the two, Joe and the storm, were one. He moved over to the log pile. “Get a move on, Joe. It’s about to unload on us,” he said.
Joe, turning and seeing Hoss bend to pick up a few logs, laughed. “A job done by two is always cut in half.”
Hoss straightened, his arms practically full. He got that look in his eye that portended trouble for Joe if he kept it up. Eight years older, and about a hundred pounds heavier, he could menace most folks with a look like that, but Joe had learned a long time ago that, even with his eyes staring like that, Hoss was no tougher than cottonwood down. That’s why he enjoyed poking him.
“You better stop listenin’ to Hop Sing,” said Hoss. “Oriental wisdom don’t cut it out here.”
“Pshaw!” cried Joe. “I heard that in the saloon the other day.”
“Jus’ what were you doin’ in there?”
“Havin’ a sarsaparilla.”
“Yeah, I bet. Clem will serve to anyone, even a boy whose pa told him he’d tan ‘im he caught him in that place again.”
Laughing and almost too sure of himself, Joe walked over to the log pile to pick up a couple of sticks. He began to whistle as he walked past Hoss into the big log house, his arms half-full.
Hoss heaved a big sigh, chuckling to himself. Joe was always trying to get out of work.
The next day, the Cartwright brothers took a load of planks, a keg of nails, and some tools up to a line shack in the north pasture. This was the best time to repair it, summer, before the fall round-up.
As they unloaded the wagon, bickering, as usual, Joe doing less than half of his share of the work, tall pines moaned and swayed in the wind. Dark clouds tumbled about in the western sky.
“More rain’s comin’,” the sixteen-year-old Joe said, wiping an eye laden with sweat on his tan shirt sleeve as he took one end of a small anvil out of the wagon.
“We ain’t goin’ stop work on ‘count of it,” said Hoss, walking backward with his end.
“Just thought it looked like more rain.”
But could any rain be left after last night’s wild blow?
“Set it up on the porch,” said Hoss. “Right here. Get the stones for a fire. I’ve got to check this wall.” During a gale sometime that past winter, the shack’s stove wall had tumbled in.
Soon, next to the shack, Joe had a fire going in a circle of brown river stones, in which he was heating old crooked nails.
“Hoss, there’s a whole keg of nails in the wagon. Why don’t we use those?”
“And waste all of these old nails?” Hoss hollered from the shack. “They’re as good as new ones any day.”
“You’ll make some girl a thrifty husband someday, Hoss,” said Joe.
“What’s that, Joe?”
“Never mind, it’s nothin’.” He took up a pair of tongs and lifted another bent nail out of the low flames, laid it on the anvil, and began to hammer it.
He straightened a few more, just to keep Hoss happy, then gazed upon the fast river running thirty feet below the shack. In a sudden feeling of doom, he shivered. It felt like a ghost had just walked across his grave. It was going to be a spooky night, wind, more rain, a crashing stream.
“We ought to use the new nails, Hoss,” he began again.
“We will, little brother, if there’s any big need.” Screwing his eyes shut, Hoss grunted as he lifted yet another stone to mortar it into the collapsed wall. Some of these stones were huge. They’d been hauled up from the river by what must have been—then—a race of giants, instead of only his pa and what few hands Ben Cartwright had at the time he started the ranch.
Joe sighed. Straightening bent nails when they had a whole keg of them made no sense. He grabbed his canteen and told Hoss he was going down to the stream to fill it.
“Just be sure you come back,” Hoss called to him, slapping another layer of mortar on the stones.
“Yeah, don’t wait up!” Joe climbed down the bluff to the river. Standing on a rock overlooking it, he could feel the pounding of its strong, whistling waters. His ever-changeful eyes looked down the steam a-ways, as far as he could see past the trees at the edge. He shivered again.
He started to climb up the bluff again. With all that recent rain, he ought to have been more careful. At least that’s what Hoss thought when a portion of the bluff cleaved away under Joe’s feet. He rushed out of the shack at Joe’s outcry, in time to see him roll over and over, striking rocks, into the rushing stream.
Not thinking he might be hurt, Hoss yelled, “You’d use any excuse, little brother, to get out o’ work!”
But the rapid waters carried off Joe’s body like a spiraling log. He couldn’t swim, had never been able to, though, as any young’un would, he liked splashing around in the lake near the ranch.
Stripping off his gun belt and holster, not having time to kick off his boots, Hoss ran down the jagged bluff towards the water. Sliding over rocks, squelching through dangerous mud, he looked up every two or three seconds to see Joe’s body hurling along.
At the river’s edge, he cupped his mouth and yelled, “Joe! Little Joe!” But it was to no avail. The fast stream had carried him out earshot. In the split second before he himself jumped in, a flash memory struck.
Joe was just a tadpole, trying to keep up with Hoss as he climbed a knoll of pines. He was going after a deer, and Joe just had to tag along.
“Hoss, wait for me to catch up!” the younger boy called. “You’re like a runaway horse and I’m tied to the back of it!”
He’d lose the deer he’d been hunting all morning, but he paused and let Joe catch up. It was like that between them. More than a brother, Joe was his friend.
He’d looked after him that day. Today was no different.
Hoss ran out as far out into the fast water as he could, and then dove in and started swimming. The dark current raced on, even faster than he had first thought, drawing him deeper and deeper into it.
With strong strokes, he swam out to the middle, but finishing the distance to where Joe was proved too much even for his strength, and he had to jerk himself out. He fell upon the rocky shore and breathed like a bellows, then struggled up.
Above the beat and rush of the river, he called out again, “Joe!” Joe was even further away from him then and couldn’t possibly hear him.
Like a blind man, he lumbered through the entangling brush and trees along the shore, climbing up over the boulders and down again, always trying to keep his eyes on Joe’s slim, brown, somersaulting form.
The white-capped waves were not easy to see through, but he caught a glimpse of Joe as his head bobbed hard against a rock lodged deep in the stream, his tan shirt billowing out in the water as he paused, face-down, before moving on again in the swift waters.
After pinpointing where he was, Hoss dove in again, swimming as hard as he could muster towards the rock which had momentarily halted Joe’s progress down the river. He reached it, but Joe was already gone.
Clinging to the same rock himself, Hoss gathered breath and spotted Joe again. He had fetched up in the shallows on the other side of the stream. Hoss’s heart almost stopped at a sight which more than amazed him.
Five or six tall, strapping men had a hold on Joe and were lifting his limp, unresponsive body up out of the water. Hoss, seeing them before they saw him, crouched down behind the rock and peeked around it. He didn’t know their buckskin outfits, not Paiute, at any rate.
When the men showed signs that they were going to make off with Joe into the woods, and with a frenzy born of terror, Hoss shouted and waved, his hold tenuous on the wet rock. His bellowing drew the bead of their cold, hard eyes down on him.
Choking on the fast water, his heart hammering in his chest, and finally too spent to yell, he just watched, mystified, at what happened next.
Taking Joe with them, the hunters disappeared into the woods at the edge of the stream. His eyes bored holes in the trees like an awl through wood, but not even a faint outline of their buckskins could be seen. They’d vanished.
Diving into the waters again, he fought to swim across, fifty or sixty yards remaining, but about midway, he again had to admit defeat. He could not swim to Joe’s side of the stream. Running high, the river was like a freight train derailing and plunging down a cliff.
Struggling back to the Ponderosa side of the river, he pulled himself out and lay spent, staring at the spot he had last seen Joe and the Indians who took him. He couldn’t forget how his mother had died. Indians had killed her.
Inger Borgstrom, Swedish by birth, had been like Hoss tall and fair. She’d been so gentle with Ben’s first boy, Adam, who was not even her own son. Though his pa had memories of Inger which were very kind, Hoss, being only a few weeks old when she died, had no memories of her at all.
In the hot summer air, he loped back to the shack, fetching his gun belt, with its holster and .44 six-shooter. He untied Sue, one of the two wagon horses, from her picket and let her roam, while he climbed aboard Bob to ride back to the ranch for more men. She’d have plenty of grass and water to drink.
He didn’t spare either himself or the saddle-less horse. The hunters who had taken Joe traveled swiftly in the forest, and what a tiny trail they were likely to leave! In a day, it’d be too old to follow.
He had miles and miles to go, but he crushed that distance in no time and stirred up a lot of dust in the yard when he beat it back to the ranch house.
“Chet, see he’s rubbed down and give ‘im plenty of oats. Water him good, too. Thanks, bud!” he said as he threw the reins to one of the older men who helped out in the barn.
“Right you are, Mr. Hoss!” said the old stableman, already pulling the tired, lathered wagon horse towards the barn.
Hoss rushed into the house in such a lather himself that his pa looked up from a book he was reading, White-Jacket, by Herman Melville, published just the year before in 1850, with a definite scowl.
Ben was on his feet as Hoss filled him on the details of what had happened that morning. “How many were there, Hoss?” he asked.
Ben Cartwright loved all his sons, three boys of different mothers. But the half-wild, headstrong Joe tugged on his heartstrings the most. He saved his fondest paternal feelings for him. What he, and sometimes Hoss, couldn’t get up to had not yet been invented.
“About six, pa.”
Not a man to fall apart at bad news—he’d had so much of it in his life—even this bad, Ben reaction to Joe’s mishap and disappearance was stoic and grim. Rounding up what men he could find on short notice, he left Chet behind to tend the barn. He also sent a rider to a few of the cowhands, instructing them to follow as soon as they could get away.
As the spur of the moment posse galloped out of the yard, Hop Sing, Ben’s Chinese cook, waved goodbye. He’d pulled off a miracle to get the grub ready that fast, but sometimes he wished he could ride as well as the Cartwrights and their men. This was one of those times. He’d create a big meal to greet everyone when they returned with Little Joe.
With bedrolls, grub for a week, a clean shirt for each man, and extra cartridge boxes, Ben and his men rode up the Virginia City road, then turned off onto a long, ascending track that led to the north pasture and the old line shack, up near the Truckee River—the same river which had taken Joe.
Ben rode a buckskin with a deep brown mane and tail, the first in a line of similar horses, all named Buck. Hoss had under him a chestnut gelding sturdy enough to carry his weight of over two hundred pounds.
The draft horse he had ridden home, Bob, unbroken to a rider until then, was now in the barn, worn out. Chet, the whiskery old-timer, gave him a good rubdown and an extra measure of oats. He admired him for his hard work and grit, but he grieved that Sue was still up at the line shack.
As he rode, he could see Marie, Joe’s mother, slim, beautiful, of French blood from New Orleans. Hands of a delicate, soft brown, eyes—secretive, tragic—set back from high cheekbones, and hair, golden, shimmery in the sun.
She had been as ready for a brisk ride as for a quiet walk in the pines. She loved setting table, putting out lots of things Ben could not fathom the use of. On tables everywhere she kept vases of wildflowers, her favorite being yellow buttercups.
A miniature of her hung on the wall beside Joe’s bed. It was all he had of his mother, besides a few trinkets and a couple of fan-style combs Ben had brought for her on a Missouri steamboat. Though he’d given her dresses away, Ben couldn’t part with those.
Marie had been the last love of Ben’s fading youth. He no longer had time to keep marrying, so he planned that she’d be around for a while. However, when Joe was quite young, a fall from a horse ended that soft-eyed and soft-spoken Gallic beauty.
Conjuring up the face of the son who so resembled her, Ben pressed his horse and his men as hard as he could. Ben was single-minded. One thing was clear above all else, nothing must happen to him.
*****
Chapter 2
Joe woke, being carried belly-down on the shoulder of a man in a hide shirt. As soon as he started to squirm and fidget, his bearer pulled him off his shoulder and dropped him in the leaf litter at the foot of a tree. As the tall man stood back, Joe scrambled up. Bravely staring back, he favored his left arm, the one he used to write and shoot with. That stream—a powerful, cold hammer—he must have cracked a bone in it on a rock.
The men stood around him in a semi-circle, protecting his exits. Who were they? They dressed in buckskins, had strange markings on their faces, and around their necks they wore strings of beads of a green stone he had not seen in those parts. They weren’t Paiute, the closest Indians he knew of.
He’d had enough for one short day, so he didn’t put up a fight when Tall Indian, as he dubbed the first man, stocky, well-muscled, with a lean, unbearded face, set him on the trail they were following. It was a hunting party and he wondered if he was going to be their first ‘kill’ of the day.
For miles along this path in the trees they walked, until the sun, never bright all day, had faded out altogether, leaving for a few moments a red-orange glow in the sky. Then, at dark, the hunters broke their wordless pace with a suddenness that caught Joe half-napping, so routine had it become.
It was a fireless camp. Everything was too wet to burn. He sat with his back against a tree and drank a cup of something that tasted like the forest, for want of a better way of describing it. It was suggestive of wet pine needles and the tree sap that made his hands and face feel feathery, so he called it ‘forest tea.’
Soon he was far away from the deep and fragrant woods, and from his companions. All, except for the man on watch, lay prone. Day one ended. As Joe himself slept, he felt like he was almost home.
Almost.
*****
Ben eyed the darkening forest. “There’s not much of a trail to follow, Hoss.” Trying to spot it in the gloom made his eyes weary.
The group of men from the Ponderosa had crossed the river at a low place a few miles back and were now standing at the spot where the tall Indian and his braves had fetched Joe out of the water.
“C’mon, pa, let’s get going,” said Hoss, putting a big, considerate hand on Ben’s back. “The sooner we find Joe, the better.”
*****
Morning came. He woke, stretched, and winced, all at once. He had a hundred bruises and aches, and his limbs had seized up over the chilly night. Day two had started even before the birds had begun their dawn chorus. The fire was extinguished, and the ashes buried in the sandy dirt.
Brushing his jeans off, Joe stood up and looked at each man in turn, then he raised doubtful eyes to Tall Indian and said, “I don’t belong here. Let me go back.”
Only a stare met his gaze. Not looking back, he turned and made off into the woods. He would find his own way home. Fearing he’d get too far ahead, or lost, Tall Indian and his fellow hunters loped out of the clearing. In the wet forest, Joe’s steps were easy to follow, even if his slim form did not make much of a dent in the brush.
Heart beating as if it would burst, he ran, striking branches out of his way. Thorns and tangling vines tore at his arms and clutched at his boots, slowing his progress. When the men outran and toppled him to his knees, he was angry, bursting to fight, but still as death, he wisely waited their next move.
Tall Indian pulled off Joe’s shirt, the buttons popping. Tying the sleeves around his neck, he made him a kind of sling for his arm, then gave him a drink out of his own waterskin. After that, having no plans to spend all day in that stretch of woods, he set Joe on his feet again and pointed to the trail. Further down the river, Tall Indian’s people waited for him and his braves to return.
Moving north to fish and swim in cooler waters, the camp was following the Truckee River—the river that had almost proved fatal to Joe. While the camp fished and smoked its catches over hickory wood fires, Tall Indian and his men had gone out to hunt rabbits, birds, deer, or whatever they could bring in to fill the cookpots.
Instead of a deer though, or even a rabbit, he had picked up just another stray, like the many he had cared for as a boy, though this was the first human he had brought home. All of the others had been baby cougars, fawns, and even a cub brown bear once. He’d never learn, would he?
He kept up a swift pace, taking large steps, at times urging Joe to hurry along, to forget his hurts and aches and to keep moving. For Joe, in many ways, both good and bad, it was an unforgettable hike in the woods.
Where was Hoss? At over six feet, and most of it gristle, hand to hand he’d have given the Indians a peck of trouble, no matter how many there were.
Something else Joe missed. As he struggled to keep up, nothing would have been better just then but to be on the back of his black and white paint, Cochise, or Cooch, for short. Most days, even before Hop Sing had laid out the breakfast table, he’d be up to the meadows and hills around the ranch putting his Indian pony through his paces.
Both wild and free as the wind rippling through the grasses, two of a kind, and of one heart, he’d been unable to ride him that morning he and Hoss left for the line shack. The wagon with its nails and boards and anvil had been half-loaded up in the barn the night before, and had to be finished.
Tall Indian led them deep into the Sierras, up to the richest meadows of the Truckee. As much as ever before, when he’d been up this way with his pa and Hoss, Joe was taken by the view. Folds and folds of hills and trees and mountains, the stream running by, sometimes slow, sometimes fast. Now though it all held for him a sinister look.
At one point, Tall Indian stopped, raising his hand. At his signal, his men stopped too and crouched down. Joe saw it, too. A young buck was lapping at the river, the only male in an early morning scattering of does and fawns nibbling the grass.
Moving along on his belly like a rattler, Kiowa came to a stop, took aim, and with a well-placed arrow, shot it behind the shoulder, hitting the lungs. A good, clean kill. Joe smiled at it and almost congratulated him with a whoop.
The does fled, but the in about twenty yards, the buck succumbed. That night, no dried strips of jerky, but fresh kill. Joe ate his share of it, then slipped down to the stream to bathe his arm in the cool waters. It was still swollen, purple-colored, but not as painful-feeling.
Feeling a mite warm behind the eyes, he splashed his face, drank his fill of the sweet water, and then sat back on the bank, looking up at the pines. His shirt still serving as a sling, he felt how good it was to be bare-chested in this late summer heat. His green jacket, gun and holster had been left at the shack, now very much south of where he was then.
He wished he could just break free, or barring that, that he had someone to talk to. For want of a word from the others, at least a word he could understand, he was all but talking to himself.
How could a simple day’s work turn out this way? An unexpected tumble into the river—it should only have been a good drenching, not a miles-long walk through the Sierras, much less a full-scale kidnapping.
Refreshed by the stream, reveling in a slight breeze kicking up, he nodded off. He didn’t dream, but if he had, it might have been about a bath, a good book, and his own bed to sleep in instead of on pine needles.
Thunder rolled in the sky, but still he didn’t wake up. Storms were a nightmare on a cattle drive, stirring up the herd, but at home, he could listen to one all night.
He did however wake slightly as he heard the hunters muttering among themselves. As rain spattered the ground, they were looking up at the sky, tense and ready to spring.
Seeing him awake again, Tall Indian came to fetch him back to the fire where he could keep an eye on him. Or rather twelve eyes, two for each of the six men.
*****
A cool, dry breeze blew up the next day, signaling the end of the rain. Joe helped cut up the meat in order for it to be carried back to camp. He had to admit that the fire-roasted hunk of deer meat he had eaten last night had been good.
At home, he was a hungry enough fellow. His pa often had to tell him to eat slower. But how could he? If he didn’t attack the food at once, and keep at it, Hoss got it. No second helpings with that big galoot at the table. If he went for the last baked potato, he might be more likely to get jabbed with Hoss’s fork.
The hunters took up the trail again even before the sun peeked over the tall trees. Joe was more aware of himself now and of where he was, his head still warm but less so than last night. Even his arm hurt less. It might not have been a break, after all, just a bad, bad bruise. No way to tell in these trackless pines.
His focus, for so long narrowed on the trail, now broadened out when they came to a camp by the stream, where smoke curled up into the clear, crisp air. With hugs and outcries, all ages and descriptions rose to meet the hunters. Joe stood off to one side and wondered when it would be his turn to be mauled.
Tall Indian greeted an older man with a manly hug, gripping each other’s arms, a man who may have been his pa, by the look in their eyes. Then he turned back to Joe and led him to a bare spot where he could sit down and rest.
Grateful, Joe nodded his thanks, while Tall Indian squatted down in front of him and pointed at himself.
“Kiowa,” he said, repeating it a couple of times. Joe lit up when he realized it was Tall Indian’s real name.
What could he tell him of his own? He decided that only ‘Joe’ was necessary. “Joe,” he said, repeating himself, too. “Joe.”
“Joe,” Kiowa said, then he grinned and left to go about his chores. With the deer kill and the boats and just meeting and greeting all over again, plus a little bit of explaining as to what Joe was doing there, Kiowa had his hands full.
Leaning against a tree, Joe’s eyes, not entirely unhappy now, fell on the boats at the shore. No fewer than six were in various stages of completion. The elder men were busy stretching hides over the pole frames, while later on some of the women would come by with needles and sinew to sew them on.
The tribe would soon be on the move again. It didn’t take an interpreter for him to see that. Thirsty, and a bit of a faint heart, he got up and went over to his once mortal enemy—the river—and, bending down, drank from it almost without stopping.
It wasn’t as boisterous here at the shore, where young children were allowed to play in its waters as long as they didn’t stray too far out. But it still had a pretty stiff current out in the middle, where snow-melt from the Sierras and all the recent rains had plumped it up into almost a torrent.
He went back to the same tree where Kiowa had put him. Not having any other place to be at the moment, he intended a bit of a snooze before suppertime. He could almost come to like this life, he told himself, for up to now, he had been called upon to do very little work.
Not so at home.
On the ranch, he always had chores. Chores piled on top of chores. Chop firewood, mend harness, grease wheels—now round-up wasn’t too far off, which meant a lot of cutting out and branding before the trail ride up north. He’d be on that, too, traveling in the herd’s dust all the way to Laramie, where the cattle would be fattened over winter.
Before he could go all the way under, he was awakened by the swish of a buckskin dress. Raising his head slowly, he first saw tiny moccasins, then leggins’, then the fringed hem of a beaded dress. What the—
A girl of nine or ten was offering him a cup. He took it, nodded, and sipped. It was the same forest tea, or something like it, he’d had on the trail. All pine needles and tree sap. Remembering how good it was, he gulped it down.
He had certainly pleased her, for she smiled as if her heart would break. Making a low bow, she took the clay bowl and ran back to the pot to fetch him some more, then handing it to him, she fled into a knot of other young people and gaped at him from afar.
All with eyes of the deepest brown, they watched wide-eyed as he sat pensively and drank the forest tea. He lowered the cup once and shot them one of his old smiles over the rim. It charmed them. One of the girls, laughing, brought him a bunch of cornflowers she had picked just for him in the long meadow grass.
How could he refuse such a swell gift? He smiled again as he took the bouquet, but in the next moment, a frail-looking boy tossed himself upon him in an all-out attack. As they rolled over and over in the sand, play-fighting, they crushed the blue cornflowers into dust. Rightly miffed, the girl hollered and tugged on them to pull them apart.
Laughing as hard as the boy, Joe hoisted him up under his good arm and walked to the river. Dropping him in, he watched him splash and splash. When he reached up a hand, Joe helped him out. Shaking off the water, ‘Otia’ tried next to push Joe in, and almost succeeded.
On a rock at the stream, the now idle Kiowa sat gazing over the blue water and smoking a pipe, while naked toddlers splashed in the shallows at his feet. A boy or two with sharpened poles hunted among the rocks for little silver fish, spearing them and throwing them up on the bank for dinner.
Eventually, Otia tired of the game and flew the coop. His place was not empty for long, though. Enter a black-spotted mutt, trotting over to sniff Joe, who reached out and rubbed its scruffy neck.
“Hey, Spot!” he called, a name he was fond of, if not a very original one. “Here, take a bite of this!” he said, giving him a bit of his tattered shirt to chew on.
While the dog had one end of it in its teeth, a man walked up. It seemed he didn’t like English talk. He grunted and ran the dog off. Joe felt bad about that. Once, in Virginia City, he saw some men act the same way around a Paiute family, showing hostility to them for what they were and trying to run them out of town. He remembered what Hoss had done to those men, Joe, only nine, egging him on. Sore heads, that was their lot the next day.
That evening, as the needles and sinew came out to sew the hides onto the boats, Kiowa squatted down next to Joe again and gave him a piece of cooked meat on a stick.
Taking it gratefully, Joe spoke up. “Are you plannin’ on a trip, Kiowa?” He nodded over at the boats at the river.
Kiowa signaled him to eat. Joe complied, rather greedily too for he was famished and tired of jerky. Kiowa grinned a bit, then left him and went over to Opa, his father, who it turned out, was also the tribal chief. Both of these two men began an animated talk, possibly about Joe himself, he didn’t know.
At the commotion, everyone’s eyes fell on the two chiefs, young and old. Kids throwing a ball back and forth came to a stop, while the boat workers stopped sewing and stared mutely. Joe didn’t like it. Were they discussing his future with the tribe? He wished he knew what they were saying to one another.
Opa, he knew, didn’t like him, probably thinking of him a danger to the tribe, which in a very real sense he was. Taking white captives would bring down the wrath of not only the captive’s family, but also the law, on the heads of the captors.
The meat dropped from his hand into the dirt. He got up and slowly backed away, half-stumbling over a downed log. At the edge of the stream, he turned and began to run, splashing through it in places. Kiowa, alone this time, without his men, ran after him, taking hold of his arm. Broader by half than Joe, and a foot taller, he dragged him back to the camp.
“Let me go!” he cried, but struggling wasn’t getting him anywhere.
Bravely staring up at Kiowa, he wasn’t prepared for his next move. At one of the cookfires, Kiowa picked up a piece of charcoal that had fallen out of the fire circle. It wasn’t hot. Still holding Joe’s arm, he used it to streak a dark line across his nose and along his cheeks, making marks Joe himself couldn’t see.
After Kiowa tossed it back into the fire, Joe bolted, running again to the stream. He bent and threw handful after handful of water over his face to wash off the charcoal smudges. What had Kiowa done that for? To make him a member of the tribe? He wasn’t an Indian and never would be.
If anything, Joe was a true scrapper, a fighter born. Just ask that half of Virginia City which didn’t wear petticoats what kind of scrapper he was. He had his dander riled up now. He was game enough if that was the way the older man wanted it.
Quick as a shot, he raced up to Kiowa and laid a fist against his jaw. Kiowa backed off, but remained on his feet. Joe’s eyes, fixed on his, those of the man who had saved his life, grew even more despising when Kiowa didn’t readily fall to his blow.
Eyes grim, Kiowa studied him with a bit of remorse. As a young chief, he’d been ready to accept him into the tribe. Joe registered Kiowa’s sad, defeated look and hesitated a moment, then turned and fled out of the camp towards the river again.
Shouts, like arrows, rained down. He dragged his arm out of its sling and used it push through thickets and brush at the river’s edge. He splashed through the shallows, and heard others splashing behind him.
Close as a whisper now, his pursuers began closing in. He could almost feel their hot breath on his neck. Seeing that he had no other choice, he climbed up onto a large rock, took a deep breath, and leapt off, landing twenty feet below in the water. With half a notion to swim across it, he flailed, and kicked, and dog-paddled.
It was cold, but no colder than the fact that the braves outswam him. Catching up, they dragged him out again, with so little fanfare it was embarrassing to a youth of his peppery temper.
He wrestled against them, threw punches, and landed some. Much as Kiowa had, the Indians bobbed back, but kept their hold on his arms. No one hit him. It was not their way. Chagrinned, he was forced back to camp, a surprisingly long way. Had he swum that far?
He passed the tree where he had taken a nap, where the girls had brought him cornflowers and tea, and near the place at the river where Otia had tried pushing him in, and where the dog had come to sniff him. He barely gave any of it a second’s glance.
Night was deep. Rain clouds, gathering again after a brief respite of sun, hid the moon, and the boats—magically complete—looked ready to go. The trip up north might begin as early as tomorrow.
In boats, the Indians would fly like eagles. Hoss would never be able to catch up, and Joe would again be lost to the swift river. With a thin hold on consciousness, he tried to make plans to escape, but came up empty-handed, with visions of what the Indians would do to him if he kept trying their patience that way.
He slept, but before going under the whole way, he sent up a silent prayer that when the boats took off downstream the next day, Kiowa would let him go, but would he? After bringing him this far?
*****
Chapter 3
Waking up, and at some loss to know where he was at first, he looked around. An early start to the day was being made as preparations were underway to break camp. He got up and fetched himself a drink at the river.
Since the camp was almost ready to move out—Hoss always told him he could sleep through anything—he helped the two women pack Kiowa’s boat, then he helped them in. Kiowa’s father already lay on top of a large bundle of hides, and Joe slipped in behind him. Kiowa, walking up, regarded him with a satisfied eye.
But that was the young chief. The old chief, Opa, never spared him a glance as he got in the boat. His sad, wrinkled eyes stared straight ahead, perhaps fixed on the memory of a distant buffalo hunt. It was as if the white captive was hardly visible.
Joe wouldn’t have known this, but Opa had that faraway look in his eyes for another reason, and it partly had to do with him. Opa was remembering a young Kiowa, his son, and all of the strays he used to pick up. As the tribe, much larger then, moved through forest and field, Kiowa couldn’t resist.
At only twelve, he became attached to a young cougar which had slipped off a rock into the stream, this very river, and nearly drowned. Opa had forced him to let it go at once. Now though he had saved another stray from these very waters, but that pale-faced, green-eyed boy was even more dangerous than the baby cougar.
One boat ahead of Kiowa’s, four others ranged out behind his in a jagged line, everyone talked low, if at all. Kiowa and his men, fearful of the shore, and the enemies it might hold, made no undue noise, their paddles flicking in and out of the water like river spirits.
On the first leg of the journey, hearing only birds, and the lulled by the gentle splash of the paddles, Joe slept. Sometime later, he woke up, groggy, and wanted to stretch his legs. Forgetting he was in a tippy boat with five or six others, he started to move. Kiowa’s paddle straightaway hit him in the neck. Joe turned, ready to say something, but thinking better of it, turned back.
He’d seen Kiowa’s piercing brown eyes moving along the trees, perhaps scouting for anyone or anything that might harm his people, even as he continued to push through the water with sure, even strokes, often switching sides with only a slight twist of his upper body.
Kiowa’s daughter, Ashi, the girl who had brought Joe the forest tea yesterday, and who was sitting in front of the old man, must have in her own childlike way sensed his restlessness. Perhaps to keep him occupied, she turned and threw Joe a piece of meat wrapped in a leaf.
He caught it nimbly enough. At first he didn’t know if this was play, or something to eat. Pulling off the decaying green leaf, he took a bite, and then another and another until it was gone. Leave it to Ashi to make him feel better.
At about midday, through some unseen signal that had passed from Kiowa’s hand—or eye—to the other men, the boats stopped. Just as they, he pulled his boat up under a branch and tied it off. Jumping to the shore, he held the boat for the others to get out.
Ashi went first. As soon as her moccasins hit the sandy shore, she turned and tugged on the old man’s shirt. He didn’t seem to want to wake up. He was comfortable on the hides, and the others could go around him. She kept it up, as she knew he needed to eat and walk. He frowned, then obliged, and with a lot of gruffling, pulled his bone-thin self out of the boat.
Joe smiled. One day, Ashi would be a leader like her pa, or as her grandfather had once been. Maybe, too, even chief. She had a lot of her father in her. In her intense eyes, Joe saw Kiowa’s own grave look, especially when the two, father and daughter, shared a look about him.
His legs as numb as his spirits, he got out and helped the two women, one of them carrying a baby, out next. Kiowa got out last. In short order, a couple of cookfires were started. On one a blue and gray graniteware coffee pot, of the trading post variety, had been set to heat. When it was done, Ashi, who would have loved being the hostess at her own tea parties, poured Joe another cup of forest tea and handed it to him.
“I’m havin’ a hard time believing you’re real,” he said, sitting cross-legged by the fire and taking it from her. “I’m not sure what’s real anymore and what’s not. I’m way off.”
Hard he dreamt up this adventure after a hard day’s work in rebuilding the shack? Or was it one of Hoss’s tricks? He was full of them and Joe was usually his ‘goat.’
Perfectly unafraid, Otia, the frail boy who he had wrestled with at the previous camp, came by and tried to snatch Joe’s piece of meat when it was done. He laughed and gave it to him. The cornflower girl brought him another bouquet, this time of purple lupines, mixed with a tiny yellow flower he didn’t know. Where did she find all of these? Or even have time to pick them?
“You’re spoilin’ me,” he told her, with a generous smile, tucking the bouquet in his shirt-sling, which he still wore when he thought about it.
After this quick halt, the tribe got underway again. Several men, though not Kiowa, left to hunt, birds, bucks, does, it didn’t matter as long as it fit in the cookpots. They’d catch up with the boats somewhere down the river.
The rest, including Joe, gathered up the children and stowed them in the boats on top of the bundles of hides and food. Shrieks of merriment accompanied this operation. Several runaway children had to be rounded up.
When that battle was won, Joe turned to help the old chief in, but he shrugged him off. Opa got in by himself, and seemed proud of it when he looked at Joe. Looked at him! It was the first time the elder chief had looked at him all day. Before that, Joe could have been a gnat.
Was this progress?
In his well-worn moccasins, craggy and weathered, Opa carried about him an air mixed of both mystery and honor. His age was hard to figure, but what a life he must have lived! How many trips to fish or trap had he made down the Truckee to the summer stomping grounds? How much sickness, war, death, what times of mourning had he known? Still he lived.
Joe looked up to him. Even in these times when the tribe barely had room to move, with the white men’s ranches and farms hemming them in on all sides, the chief still breathed and had his being. He had strength as deep as the Sierras themselves. He knew who he was, and where he was going. He had fantastic stories to tell. Would he, Joe, when he was Opa’s age? He might—look at this adventure!
As the boat again crept forward under Kiowa’s paddle, Joe thought of all these things, and one thing more. He wondered how Ashi’s mother had died. He thought of sickness, or her dying in childbed, but in no way could he picture the sweet-faced Ashi as being responsible for her ma’s death.
He’d never know, never discover that a bullet from a cowboy’s gun, intended for Kiowa himself at some dusty trading post, had ended her life, even while she was holding Ashi in her arms.
The night came on chilly. Joe pulled one of the hides, skin-side down, fur-side up, over him and gazed at the long watery, star-lit miles ahead. Kiowa’s slowly dipping paddle made the only sound.
Ashi had covered the old chief, then settled down herself to the gentle rocking of the river. She knew, Kiowa knew, and even the old man, snoring away, knew, but he had no idea where they were going, or how long it would take the boats to get there.
When his arm was better, he’d walk. On the trail, the braves had taught him how to find his way, just by example. He only had a few matches in his shirt pocket, no coins for a telegram, or money for the trip home.
He’d walk.
*****
Ben had slept no more than a few hours, and that in snatches, since he and Hoss and their men, all game to keep going, first came to the shore where the Indians had rescued their prize, wet and dazed, from the stream.
“I wish I’d never sent you two,” he said, though he didn’t mean it as deprecatingly as it sounded. “That line shack’s hardly ever used.”
“He won’t give the Indians no trouble, pa,” said Hoss, sopping beans off a tin plate with a bit of bread.
Ben knew Hoss was right. Joe might lack some horse sense, now and then, but he’d do his best not to offend the braves, if he could help it.
He smiled and nodded over his cup of coffee. “I know,” he said. “You’re both good boys. I can trust you.”
“Trust ‘em to fall in the river!” shouted one of the ‘hands.’ Bill Byrnes was always being a cut-up. “And then not be able to fetch ‘em out!” Was that a subtle jibe at Hoss?
“I’ll ignore that,” said Hoss, and took another bite.
Ben noted good-naturedly that not much could separate Hoss from his food. For the fourth night in a row, he set a two-man watch, then he and the others, about ten since the cowhands caught up, turned into their bedrolls for some rough sleep. A few hours later, they’d be up again, still not knowing when or where Joe would turn up.
*****
It was pitch-black. The boats at last came to a stop. Kiowa relaxed with a little sigh and, shipping his paddle, rotated his shoulders. Joe slept. That was good, he noted. His arm would mend faster. Ashi and Opa also slept. Not many others were awake enough to know day from night.
Like before, Kiowa made his boat fast to a branch and climbed out, pulling the entire crew onshore. As other men were doing the same, he gave orders to the groggy folk to start setting up a night camp.
Joe climbed out and immediately sank to his knees in the sand, not able to wake up. Kiowa moved him over to a tree where he slept all night, rocking slightly back and forth, as if he was still in Kiowa’s boat.
The next morning, quite early, Kiowa and some men were eager for a bird hunt. He roused up his sullen guest and invited him along. It was going to be a day! Hills to climb, streams to ford, fences, even fences, to vault over.
At a meadow where quail fed, the party stopped and took up positions in the brush out of sight of the prancing quail. Creeping through the grass again, Kiowa aimed and let his arrow fly. He shot well and true. A few more shots were taken, then as a couple of young boys were sent to run up the kills, Joe flared up as another man shot a bird and bade him go fetch it.
He shook his head, signifying he was no boy. He gestured for the man to go get his own bird.
Kiowa decided for his man. With a strong look, he thrust Joe forward. That look was enough—Joe grudgingly got out of the brush to go after the shot bird, an arrow sticking out of its neck.
Beginning to feel a bit like that quail, he had only taken a few steps when a shot rang out, a rifle shot. It rent the summer air in two. The braves didn’t have rifles. It had to be a white man, he rapidly thought, here in this meadow or the trees just beyond. Maybe he can help me.
Without being afraid, but cautious, the hunters moved back to the trees, but Joe ran towards the shot. Kiowa looked after him, stopping in the woods at the edge of the meadow. His other men paused, too, right behind him.
Horses suddenly appeared out of the forest and drove the braves into the field again. For Joe, these newcomers were saviors. This far north, they might even be Arnie Peterson’s men. He knew he could trust them. Peterson, a friend of his pa’s, would see he got home.
It was them! Arnie and Reggie, a dark-haired lad about Joe’s age, on a morning hunt of their own. Without ever dismounting, they pushed the tiny knot of men and boys before them at the ends of their rifles.
Joe ran out into plain view, waving his good arm, then he frowned. One of Arnie’s men, a young buck not even big enough for his saddle, put rifle to shoulder, drew a bead on him, and pulled the trigger. The aim was quick and way off, so he had time to dodge aside. But only just.
He was likely to be killed, and maybe the braves along with him, before he had a chance to explain their peaceful intentions.
Another shot from the same gun reverberated in the dense morning air. The kid was taking no chances of being killed himself, firing off the cuff like that. Joe dove into the brush and hunkered down, a quiet young man, if need be.
When the boy rode up, looking around with buck fever in his eyes, Joe leapt and jerked him out of his saddle to earth. He traded a few punches with him, then was flung aside by a stronger force. Kiowa.
Seeing Joe get shot at, Kiowa had broken out of the circle of men and horses and raced over. Pulling a long, store-bought knife out of his belt, he leapt on the boy. Joe fell on his back, trying to roll him off.
“No, Kiowa!” he yelled, as he rolled Kiowa aside. “Don’t kill ‘im! He wouldn’t have shot me!” He didn’t know that for sure.
Kiowa grunted and tried to throw him off, but Joe clung for dear life onto Kiowa’s back. Both rolled into a small, dry ravine as the alarmed kid scrambled out of the target area. Just as Joe was finding out, he now knew something of an older man’s power. He watched—from a distance his ma would approve of—as the two wrestled, Kiowa’s fingers still on the knife, Joe’s right hand over his.
Joe’s left fist, out of its sling by now, connected with Kiowa’s hard jaw. Man, that hurt! Kiowa sank sideways with a groan and Joe fell on top of him. It was like trying pin down a wild stallion, with four windmilling legs.
In the midst of the fight, Arnie Peterson and Reggie rode up. Both jumped off their horses and fell into the ravine. Reggie yanked hard on Joe’s back to pull him off Kiowa, while Arnie stood back with his rifle. Joe, spitting mad, was hurled aside. Kiowa struggled to his feet alone. No one, other than Joe, wanted to tangle with him.
An Indian man usually fought alone. His braves fought alone, but Kiowa had doubted whether Joe could, as much for his age as for his injury. He had rushed in to save him from a bullet. Joe saw this, but Kiowa could have saved himself the trouble. He was among friends again.
The four men climbed out of the ravine as two others rode up. Kiowa pushed at one man’s horse and tried to flee, but the other cut him off and kept him pinned under a rifle. He grew still. He didn’t move, or try to run. Not then. He knew how to bide his time.
Let them turn their eyes away, just once—to fix a broken strap, to fetch a cup of coffee at the fire—it was then he’d make his move.
His eyes dark and heavy, mere slits, he fixed his gaze on Arnie, the oldest man there.
Joe stood, still holding Kiowa’s knife, and talking fast. Baffled by what he was hearing, Arnie wasn’t ready for Kiowa as he yelled and leapt forward to snatch the knife out of Joe’s hand.
In the same move, he spun Joe around, facing the Petersons with a knife pressed against Joe’s neck. He started to pull him backward through the horses.
Arnie had to stand back, dropping his rifle a bit. He was as worried as Ben would be about Reggie, his son. Reggie gazed hard on Kiowa, seeking an opening to take the knife away. The two men on horseback backed off for Kiowa to pass through, and Joe went without a word.
He feared that Kiowa, a man he honored, could be shot. Arnie Peterson was as good a man as any, like his pa, but he would shoot Kiowa if he had to.
No one spoke, not a muscle twitched. When he had room to turn, and still holding Joe, Kiowa began to lope across the meadow, dragging him along. Arnie Peterson’s men, holding the rest of the braves, sized up the situation for themselves, and backed off, too.
“What’ll I tell Joe’s pa?” murmured Arnie. “He’ll be devastated.”
“Hard doin’s, pa,” said Reggie, watching his friend disappear into the woods. The last time he had seen Joe, they were wrestling over the same girl at a church soiree in Virginia City. Both gave the other one a black eye, and loved doing it, too. “But we had to let him go,” he finished up.
With the knife at his throat, Joe would have had to agree. Now it was back to forest tea and jerky—back to the boats? More miles on the river?
But he had saved Kiowa and his men, by going back without a struggle.
*****
“If I ever saw a man look more woeful than Joe,” said Arnie Peterson to the two Cartwrights standing in his study, “I’d be givin’ condolences.”
Ben Cartwright, a man of about sixty with thick gray hair and a robust bearing, fingered his hat and looked over at his middle son Hoss, both thinking about Joe. For days, their existence had been all about him, with a bite of food here and there, some fire, a swig of water—on the trail of men who left no trails.
Arnie shared his thoughts, good and bad. “If he were my son, Ben, I’d go cautious. Push an Indian too far, maybe some fireworks. No guns, but they do have knifes.”
“I will,” Ben replied in a low, considerate voice. “Count on it.”
Hoss looked over at him now, not sure what he was hearing. Had his pa snapped, would he do something ‘unfriendly’ when he caught up with the Indians?
*****
Chapter 4
Joe panicked as Kiowa backed him away from Peterson and his men into the sun-warmed meadow, and from there into the trees. He could have struggled, Kiowa would not have slit his throat, but Joe knew that going back with them was the only way he could save Kiowa and his men.
In the evening of that eventful day, another camp was chosen further down the river, well out of range of the Peterson ranch. Joe was unusually quiet, not feeling up to much interaction. He leaned on a tree and toyed with a pine needle. He’d been so close, so close to going home. It was time to eat, but he refused to near the fire.
If Kiowa had not threatened him, the Petersons might have let him go, along with his men, even allowing them to keep the birds they had already shot. His pa would have let them go, he knew.
Now that the camp was safe, his thoughts turned to escape, even if it meant entering an area where he’d never been before. Looking up, he saw Kiowa coming towards him. He slipped his arm back into its sling and stood out from the tree to face him. It was all he could do. Kiowa had not spoken to him since the new camp was set up, and Joe didn’t know what to say, in any language.
Kiowa motioned him to come. Shrugging, he obliged. He had nothing to gain by being stubborn. He had to cooperate, or it might be even worse for him than just Kiowa’s silence.
At the camp, Kiowa’s braves had set up a target, an old farm board with a dark circle painted in the center and six outer rings, and nailed it to a tree. Taking turns with their bows, the men sent arrow after arrow into the six rings, but then Kiowa stepped up and put an arrow right at the edge of the center spot.
Joe was handed Kiowa’s bow. A good pistol shot, with a true eye, Joe removed his tattered shirt, took the bow and stepped up to a line drawn in the sand. He aimed, centering on the circle, and let fly.
The arrow flew so true, it hit the exact center of the black spot on the target. His hosts, all good shots, whooped and hollered at his achievement, especially with an injured arm.
But he didn’t feel much better to have made such a perfect shot. If Kiowa thought he was going to turn him Indian just by handing him a bow, well then just give him a pistol and he’d show what he could really do.
Without a word, he handed the bow back and turned away, walking to the river where he climbed a tall, overhanging rock and stood looking down at the water. How he wished he could just jump in and be taken by the current again. Where he ended up, he didn’t care.
Kiowa struggled up the rock and stood beside him. He took stock of Joe’s fallen eyes and knew he needed to find a way to cheer him up, so he gestured for Joe to jump in. It was at least twenty, twenty-five feet to the water!
Joe looked edgily at him. “Kiowa, what—?” he asked in English.
Kiowa pointed again at the river, and then made a swimming gesture with his arms. His meaning was clear. He wanted Joe to jump in.
“Nothin’ doin’,” he replied, shaking his head.
A fierce look came in Kiowa’s eyes. He was bent on Joe’s jumping off the rock. Or he’d pitch him off. Joe had a feeling he was going to learn to swim, or else. He bent down, took off his boots, and stuffed his socks in them. Then he stood, steeled up his nerves, and faced the river.
Once before, in a panic, he had jumped in the stream, at one of the old camps. Now he was clear-headed, for he was sure he was going to break his neck.
A half-dozen men and boys were looking on, some of them diving off themselves, plus a few girls who had been splashing in the shallows at the shore.
With a slight, ever so slight push from Kiowa, he jumped. Cold water surged up past his ears, and he soon found there was no sand below him, no bottom. Joe started some kind of swimming, but the current was moving him downstream. Kiowa jumped in, swam over, and took him by his pants’ belt. With that grip, he dragged him out of the water.
Wet to the skin and sputtering, knocking water out of his ear, Joe was a sight. His hair, long and uncut, hung in his eyes. He slapped it away and turned to his audience. Only the admiring girls clapped and rooted for him.
Not wanting to disappoint these buckskinned ladies, he climbed the rock again. Setting his feet at the edge, he dove. Again, trapped in a bottle of dizzy blue liquor, he drank enough water to drown in. In his mad efforts to find the shore, he kicked, curse, windmilled and sank, then bobbed up again, gasping.
Kiowa hauled him out again. Joe shook water off his arms and headed up the beach, hating Kiowa now, through and through, and hating Kiowa’s ancestors as far back as Moses. He couldn’t remember any one farther back, not right then.
Kiowa ran up and swung him around. He nodded back at the rock again. Joe shook his head. No, he would not. Ever again.
“Be a man,” Kiowa said. “Go, jump.”
Joe jerked a look his way, not believing what he was hearing. Kiowa must have learned English at the trading posts, where the blankets, the speckled blue coffee pot, and the store-bought knives had come from.
“Why didn’t you tell me you could talk English?” he asked, rather put-out over not knowing about Kiowa’s secret skill.
“Not necessary for you to know,” Kiowa said. “Now, go jump.”
Joe turned to the rock again. His rah-rah section was exhilarated, waving his arms to get him to do it. Too far away to even hear what he and Kiowa were saying, they knew what they wanted.
Joe gave in. He walked back to the rock and climbed it once more. He placed his feet just so, and dove in again, hitting the water with a stinging splash. He tried to dog-paddle, but the current caught him again.
Spitting water and flailing, he had almost succumbed to whatever ancient spirits lived in the water, when a man’s strong arms hauled him out again. Kiowa, of course.
Twice more he jumped in, the current trying to wash him downstream, but only once did Kiowa have to intercede to rescue him from it.
The second time, Joe got out of the stream on his own, proud of himself for doing it. He found that he didn’t hate Kiowa so much then, not through and through, and at least not all the way back to Moses.
*****
Arnie Peterson said his goodbyes to Molly and ‘Melia, leaving them to mind things at home. He and Reggie were going downriver with Ben Cartwright and his huge son Hoss to find Joe.
To get a fraction of the work done he knew was piling up, Ben set two men back to the ranch. A third went with them. One of the cowhands’ horses stumbled in a boulder pile and threw his rider off, so with a thumped head and a bandage, the drover too returned to the Ponderosa.
“I’m mighty sorry, Mr. Cartwright. I’m tired to the bone, as ye all are, but I wanna stay on,” said Jim M’Kell, in a wide Scottish brogue. “But I’ve had a wee bit of bad luck. At least Star is okay.” That was his horse, closer to him than his own saddle.
“Go with my thanks, Jim,” said Ben, helping him to mount Star. Looking up at him, he grasped Jim M’Kell’s hand firmly. “You did all you could. Don’t worry, we’ll find Joe.”
“I hope so, sar. I remember when he put warm tar in me boots ‘nd then yelled fire. I stepped in them with my wool socks on. It was sech a mess.”
Ben struggled not to laugh, but knowing his son, that’s about what he would do for a lark. M’Kell rode off with a big wave of his hand. He hoped, no prayed, that they got the little scamp back alright.
Arnie Peterson made up for the lack of men by bringing two of his own cowhands along, with extra horses, tack, and well-rested heads and bodies.
From the endless horse miles up and down hills, in and out of canyons, Ben’s back hurt. He longed for a hot bath in the big iron tub at the house, to soak for hours and hours. One bright ray of light was Molly Peterson’s breakfast that day, of eggs, bacon and toast slathered with her wild plum preserves.
The lovely ‘Melia, short for Amelia, had been of some help to her ma at the table. Dropping the plates in front of the starved men, she was more afraid of their forks than their hands. Others sat outside on the porch, joshing and back-slapping until Molly—wisely by herself—served them.
“You know, Miss ‘Melia,” said Hoss, knife and fork all ready to ‘dig’ in. “I could give up on ol’ Joe for a spread like this,” he said, referring to the breakfast. He addressed Ben across the table. “Any chance, pa, we could stay over another night?”
Ben knew he was kidding, but some of the other men at the table didn’t. A couple of them raised angry eyes at Hoss, but when they saw him break out into a big belly laugh, they broke into guffaws, too.
His eyes, big and round, Hoss looked up and down the table. “Did I say something funny?”
Ben only shook his head and wondered, for about the eightieth time in his short sixty years, why, oh why, he hadn’t had girls.
Breakfast over, they mounted and waved and rode out. In about an hour, Ben and his party rode into the last Indian camp, forsaken in some haste, with broken bits here and there and swiftly dowsed fires. Nobody was there, and no Joe.
Lying on a rock, however, was a cornhusk doll. It had been left behind in the rush to depart. Ben picked it up, and his eyes grew soft for a moment.
“I’ll make sure she gets this back, Joe,” he said, squeezing the doll slightly and looking at it, and talking to his absent son.
Hoss turned his head and heard him. He put out a consoling hand. “C’mon, pa. Joe’s waiting for us.”
After that, Ben and Hoss gathered up their men and, even with the brush they faced, the now seven men kept as close to the river as they could.
*****
That same day as Ben and his men set out, Joe was basking in the glow of his latest high-dive, from a rock much taller than the first, when he saw Kiowa walking up on the beach. His eyes unsure, he remained quiet. Kiowa had been stern with everyone all day, though usually he was soft-spoken, and playful with the children.
“Come,” he said and turned, beckoning Joe.
In some fear of being tossed into even deeper water, Joe left the rock at his back, but not his bewilderment. He wondered what he had done.
On a green hill, with trees scattered thinly across its brow, Kiowa tapped himself twice on the chest and then swept his arm out before him. Joe nodded. Even on his first try, he grasped what Kiowa was trying to tell him.
A shiver rippled through him as in sank in. Kiowa’s people had once dwelled in the land below the hill, fishing and hunting on its miles of lakes and rivers. Joe looked up at the blue, hazy group of mountains, and though he could not know it, that’s where the Great Spirit lived.
Kiowa, a grand man, and a very proud one, was showing him his old home, the home of his kind, on whose river they had hunted and fished and trapped. Kiowa had a love for it that he had only shown Joe, and no one else, not even Ashi.
Joe was singularly touched that Kiowa would confide in him this way, but it would take a while for him to fully grasp what the land and river, hills and mountains, meant to a man whose kind would never ‘own’ them again, in the way his people once had.
That day the camp spent fishing, playing, and mending boats. Joe’s boots never seemed to get on his feet anymore. He liked the feel of his soft hide shoes better, especially on soft sand.
And he was forgetting home a bit, too.
He could not tell anymore where he left off, and the Indians began. He was in their camp, a part of it. The sky mirrored in the river, the kingfishers diving beneath its waves, the sweet sleep against a warm rock—it all made him a mite sad at the prospect of going back.
*****
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.
*****
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.
***The End***
A/N: Thanks for reading.
WomenWritersBlock 
I enjoyed reading this story!
LikeLike