EPILOGUE

But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the Lord. Jonah 2:9

Adam Cartwright leaned on his father's desk, rereading the letter Pa had received from Sheriff Whitaker that morning concerning the late Weston McCloud and Stanfield Hawks'. The lawman had backtracked on both men to see if there was any connection between them. It seemed they had known each other, as McCloud had been in Hawks' employ at one time, but there was nothing to connect the crooked businessman to the robbery or any of Weston's other crimes. In the end, Hawks had dropped his case against them and relinquished the right to the land he'd claimed to own.

And that spoke volumes more than any paper trail the sheriff could have followed.

The interesting thing was, Stanfield Hawks knew Hoyle and DeLoyd Beaumont as well. He actually owned the Louisiana plantation where their father worked. Adam shook his head as he reread that part. Another lie. The elder Beaumont wasn't dead as the brothers had told them. He was actually the overseer of the plantation and well-off in his own right. Which begged the question as to why his sons felt the need to rob other people of their hard-earned money when they had plenty of money of their own.

They'd probably never know.

Adam folded the letter and put it back in its envelope. According to Sheriff Whitaker Del and Hoyle had pulled a number of heists in Louisiana over the last year or so. It had become too hot for them there. So hot, in fact, that their father sent them away and then set about negotiating with Hawks, asking his boss to obtain a pardon for them from the governor. For whatever reason, the brothers had chosen to come to Nevada. Weston McCloud came about that time too, looking for men who would work for him. McCloud's specialty? Robbing banks. DeLoyd and his brother came highly recommended, or so one of the surviving robbers told them, and the three of them soon joined forces. Apparently they had been considering a raid on the Ponderosa before Joe fell into their laps. That occasioned the formation of plan 'B' in which the trio would court and then use Joe and the stolen bank draft to get them into the new 'guaranteed secure' Genoa City bank vault. One of the men Sheriff Whitaker had taken into custody told him that Weston McCloud meant to murder Joe all along. Apparently McCloud was the man who had wanted to deflower Madeline O'Malley. He resented Joe's interference and for that he was willing to kill a fourteen-year-old boy.

Adam Cartwright shook his head, disgusted. With a sigh, he let the envelope fall to the top of his father's desk.

How could someone who was such a nothing cause their family so much grief?

Weston McCloud was a nobody from a nowhere town who had made himself something of a somebody by pretending that's what he was. Apparently McCloud had worked average ordinary jobs where he was mostly ignored – bank clerk, accountant, night watchman, even custodian – all the while acquiring the knowledge he would need to round up a bunch of desperados and wreck havoc on the banking industry in Nevada. Until Genoa, Weston had never actually taken part in one of the robberies. He'd always remained on the sideline. One of Sheriff Whitaker's 'guests' told him he didn't understand why it had been different this time. Adam turned and looked at his little brother where he sat in their father's chair, bundled up in front of the hearth with a thick plaid blanket wrapped tightly around his shrunken frame.

He did.

The nobody from a nowhere town that no one noticed had made a success – an industry almost – out of 'ordinary'. Wisely, Weston McCloud had chosen small to middle-size banks to rob in not too big, but not too little towns. He'd taken just enough money to make the risk worthwhile, but not so much that the law found it worth the effort to run him to ground.

Until this last time.

Until someone mentioned a name that carried with it a big enough pay-out that Weston could retire from crime as a middle-size, middle-weight, middle-aged wealthy man with money and power that weren't his own.

Until someone mentioned the Cartwrights.

His pa had known all along that he and his brothers would be targets for unscrupulous men – Benjamin Cartwright, timber baron, cattle king, owner of mines that oozed precious metals from their rock-hard veins. He'd been the safest as a boy as he was most often at his father's side and the empire his pa was to build was in its infancy. Hoss had started young with the hands, mastering quickly the physical side of the work they had to do, so he was always in a crowd. And, of course, there was the simple fact of Hoss' size. It was a rare man who would take on a boy who was just shy of six feet and built like an ox.

No, it was Joe who was the most in danger.

They all knew it though none of them said it aloud and so they all kept close watch over him. Adam chuckled. Poor kid, if you added Hop Sing, he had four mother hens! It was probably the reason why Joe was just next to being spoiled – most likely why he rebelled too. Adam ran a hand along the back of his neck and glanced at his sleeping brother again. He wasn't sure what he thought of the belief that a name had power, but sometimes it seemed Marie's choice to call his brother Petit Joseph had branded the boy. Joe was small in stature; a scrawny vulnerable kid whose mere existence begged other men to take out their own fears of inadequacy on him. Just so they could prove they were nothing like him. The black-haired man snorted as he move toward the hearth. No. They were nothing like him.

There was no one like Joe.

Taking a seat on the settee table, Adam looked hard at his baby brother where he was curled up in their father's chair. It had been six weeks since Joe had awakened from the coma. The poor kid had been through the mill since then. As Doc Martin expected he'd developed a case of pneumonia shortly afterward and there'd been another period there where they thought they might lose him. Standard for Joe he'd fought his way through, but the course of the disease – and the coma – had left him weak and irritable. He tired easily. Because of that, he wasn't up to his usual chores and was confined to the house a good bit of the time. Of late, it seemed he'd given up. Even when Hoss asked him to help with something in the barn, Joe refused, saying he was too weary. Sometimes you'd catch him staring at nothing and unaware he was doing it. Worst of all, Joe still had a hard time putting words together and that was probably the cruelest blow for an energetic, now fifteen-year-old boy, who before had never stopped talking. The Doc said it should get better with time.

Should.

Adam slammed a hand down on the table. It simply wasn't fair!

"Mmmm... You gotta make so much noise?" a sleepy voice asked.

"Sorry, Joe. Didn't mean to wake you, buddy," he said with chagrin.

Joe's wide green eyes blinked. He straightened up in the chair and then asked, "Pa home yet?"

"Not yet." Adam stood. "You hungry? Hop Sing's got some cold beef and – "

"No thanks."

Adam's eyes took in his brother's skinny wrists where they showed out of the cuffs of a flannel shirt grown too big to fit. He noted as well the way Joe's cheeks fell in.

"Look, Joe, you gotta eat."

"I do eat," he insisted with a scowl. "When I'm hungry."

"More," Adam added. "You've got to eat more."

His brother shifted uncomfortably. Joe had a sore hip too. Shortly after he'd began to show real progress in his recovery, Pa had let him out to do simple chores. Well, Joe being Joe, he'd overdone it – just to prove that he could – and had ended up lying flat on his face in the barn.

The kid gloves had really gone on after that.

Hence the bundling.

Joe ignored his words. "Where's Hoss? Is he back yet?"

Adam knew where this was going. "No. I'm afraid, you're stuck with me." He paused. It was probably pointless. Still... "Do you want to talk about it?"

His brother's eyes narrowed and his fingers gripped the arms of the chair. He was getting angry.

Still, Joe's nostrils hadn't flared yet, so there was hope.

"It? It, what?" he demanded.

"What happened. How you feel about it. What you're afraid of."

The boy practically shot up out of the chair "I ain't afraid of nothin'!"

Adam wanted to jump up and gather his injured brother in his arms and carefully return him to his seat. Instead he remained where he was.

He remained calm.

"Then prove it. Pa said you can do some simple chores again. Get out of that blanket and up out of that chair and prove that you're not afraid!"

"I wouldn't be in this chair if you three would stop coddlin' me like I was some whelp barely made it out of his mother alive!" Joe shot back.

Pa wouldn't like it. They were shouting at each other.

Adam's lips pursed.

Good. It was good to see some color in those cheeks.

Joe was standing, breathing hard. The blanket was at his feet now. "You got somethin' else to say, big brother?"

"Yes." He knew Joe's answer was only part of the story. They'd tried to get him to talk about what had happened. He was having no part of it. "Is that it, then? Coddlin' as you say, doesn't keep you from helping Hoss in the barn or riding along with pa to town. You haven't been to town in – "

"I don't want to go to town 'cause... Cause..." Joe wobbled. His brother looked surprised.

Then he went down.

It was a good thing Joe'd left that blanket athis feet.

A second later Adam had him sitting again. "I'm sorry, Joe. I just –"

Joe batted his hand away and turned his face into the chair. "Yrr rgghhht," he mumbled.

"What?"

"You're right!" his little brother shouted as he pressed his body back. "There! Are you happy?"

Adam took a seat on the table again. "Well, yes and no."

There were unspent tears in those green eyes. "Yes?"

"Yes, I'm happy you admitted I'm right but, no, I'm not happy that you're afraid."

The nostrils finally flared – for about five seconds before the tears fell. Joe looked down at his bony hands that were linked between his bony knees.

"I...can't..." His brother drew as deep a breath as his punished lungs would allow. "I can't trust myself anymore, Adam."

Adam's black brows peaked. That answer was not the one he had expected. Joe wasn't afraid of menacing men stealing him from his family, or of being trapped in the dark without air and almost dying – though there was plenty of fodder there for nightmares and he'd had them – or even of the fact that he could have been hung for a crime he didn't commit. His young brother was scared...

Of himself.

How had they all missed it?

"Del and Hoyle," Joe began, sucking in snot and air. "I trusted them, Adam. I thought... No, I knew they were good men." Adam watched as a tear splashed on the back of his brother's hand. A second later Joe looked up. "If I was wrong about them, how can I be right about anything?"

"They fooled us all, Joe."

"But you didn't spend hours – whole days – with them like I did!" His voice was quiet. "Especially with Hoyle."

They hadn't told him about Hoyle's fate – or Del's for that matter – until a week or so back. The Doc hadn't recommended it. Even then, when Joe heard what had happened to Hoyle, it set him back for a couple of days.

"I wanted so much to believe what they told me about who..." His brother drew in another gasp of air. "...about who they were and where they came from, and about how much they wanted me to go with them." Joe's eyes flicked to his face and then away. "They listened to me. They were interested in my opinion. They thought I was smart and would be a good man to have around."

Joe's words were like a slap in the face. A richly deserved one, he had to admit.

"Unlike me."

Joe blinked back more tears. "I don't want to hurt you, Adam."

"You have, Joe," he said softly, "you have. But it's a 'hurt' I merit." For a second he was silent. "I blame myself, you know, for everything that happened to you."

His brother frowned. "How come?"

The question was so simple and came so easily it all but stunned him into silence.

"How come? Because I wouldn't listen to you. Because I – your own brother – made you feel like you were stupid and wrong and you ran away." He sucked in guilt and shame that threatened to rain through his eyes. "God, Joe! You ran away because of me and you almost died!"

Inexplicably, Joe was smiling.

"What are you grinning about?" he growled.

"You." Joe stifled a giggle. "Mister high-and-mighty-I-got-a-college-education-back-East, Adam Cartwright. I guess you don't know everything."

"What do you mean?" he asked, wary.

Joe looked off toward the window. "I'd pretty much cooled down before I took off with Del and Hoyle. Sure, I was mad at you, but that ain't nothin' I haven't been a hundred times before."

Adam felt a little weight lift off his shoulders. "So why did you go?"

"You oughta know, if anyone would," Joe said, looking sheepishly out from under his fringe of lambswool curls.

He shook his head. "No. I have no idea."

"Well, first of all, I wanted to be a man. Able to make my own choices and do what I thought best, you know? Second," his little brother ducked his head, "I wanted to see where my mama was born. I keep wonderin' if it's as pretty as she was."

Adam sensed there was more. "And third?"

Joe shrugged. "I guess I wanted to be like you."

That did stun him to silence – for about ten heartbeats. "You what?"

"Traveling. Seeing all those places you only read about. Seeing the world. Only," Joe looked around the great room, "I found out I don't like it so much. I think I'm happy right here."

He was still trying to find a balance. His ornery little brother wanted to be like him?

"That's great, Joe, but you can't hide in the house forever. You have to..." he hesitated. "You have to forgive yourself, just like I have to forgive myself."

Those green eyes were locked on him. "For what?"

"Being stupid." Adam laughed at his brother's expression.

Joe's eyes widened. "If that don't take the cake!"

"What?"

Behind him, he heard the door to the ranch house open. The footsteps told him it was Pa, followed closely by Hoss.

"What have you two been up to?" their father asked as he headed for them.

"Big brother just admitted he was stupid!" Joe whooped.

"I did no such thing," he corrected him with a scowl. "I merely said we both acted in a stupid manner."

"Meaning what? How can a man act 'stupid, if he ain't stupid?"

"'Isn't', Joseph," their father corrected.

"He's got you there, older brother!" Hoss said with a smile

"Stupid is as stupid does," Joe chimed, grabbing his sides as the girlish giggling rose to a crescendo.

"You take it easy with that laughter, young man," their father chided, stifling his own and forcing a stern look. "Those lungs of yours aren't healed."

Joe was sucking in air and sputtering. "No, Pa, but they sure are happy!"

Adam exchanged a look with their father and Hoss. Something passed between them. You might have called it 'delight'.

It was the first time they had heard that laugh in this house in months.

Paul Martin, however, was not going to be pleased. Joe was beet red and gasping for air.

Adam watched his father cross to Joe and lean over. The older man's hand wrapped around his brother's thin wrist and pulled. Joe's hand was thin too and it slipped straight through –

Tossing their father off-balance so he crashed to the floor.

"Pa!" both he and Hoss shouted.

The older man looked stunned. Then he looked at his gasping, giggling curly-headed boy and started to laugh as well – deep, heartfelt, bellows of laughter that lifted the rafters and brought tears to Ben Cartwright's near-black eyes.

What was there to do but join in?

When Hop Sing came in ten minutes later and found them all red-faced and gasping like fish fresh out of water, the Chinese man wondered aloud if they had all lost their minds.

Adam didn't wonder. He didn't care. His little brother had survived his days in the belly of the whale – first in the vault, and then two more days in what seemed might prove to be an unending darkness. The black-haired man glanced at his snorting father and his two red-faced brothers and then at Hop Sing.

The Chinese man had tears trailing down his face.

You know what they say?

The family that laughs together...