19

Justice was swift, in some ways. Hoss's testimony against the man who had shot Lucy resulted in a life sentence at the Territorial Prison, and the official ruling about the deaths of Ellingsworth and the men with him at the Cartwright's main house was that they'd been shot in self defense. Unfortunately, Adam's testimony against Ellingsworth's foreman was not quite as compelling to the judge.

No one was more upset about the final ruling against that man than Little Joe. Still recovering from his wounds, Joe had been forced to miss the trial. He'd spent the hours reading in the great room, though his attention had been drawn more to the clock than the book in his lap. When his father and brothers had returned, he would have shot right up out of that chair if he could have, to meet them at the door. Instead, he'd drawn himself so quickly to the edge of the high-backed, blue chair he dropped his book to the floor and awakened a cramp in the leg he had propped up onto a pillow set on the low table in front of him.

"Well?" he asked, absently rubbing his leg.

"Well," Adam repeated as he knelt down to retrieve Joe's book. "He's been convicted." He sat on the table in front of Little Joe and glanced at the title of the book before adding it to the small stack already resting there. Joe noticed the quirk of a smile, but it faded almost as quickly as it had come.

"So why the long faces?" Joe prodded.

Adam glanced up at Pa and Hoss, neither of whom had bothered to take a seat.

"The judge gave him ten years," Adam answered then. "He'll be up for parole in half that. Aside from him attacking me when we returned to the house…after you were shot…." He sighed and shook his head. "He never laid a hand on me. The entire incident at the corral was reduced to hearsay, my word against his and that of his men."

"He tried to kill you!" At that moment, Joe felt more eager than ever to jump to his feet, to pace, to do something…anything other than sit still for even a moment longer. But all he could manage was to curl his hands into fists and try to pant the tension out of his system. "And he was just as responsible as Ellingsworth for everything that happened! More, even! Those men listened to him! He could have—"

"Joe." Adam gripped Joe's knee. "He's going to prison. That has to be enough."

"It's not enough! What's wrong with that judge, anyway? Doesn't he care that—"

"Joseph!" Pa interrupted. "The law is the law."

"Well the law stinks! Or maybe it's Hiram Wood who stinks! He should have—"

"Joseph!" Pa yelled louder than before. "I will not have you speaking that way about anyone, particularly someone like Hiram! He's a good man, and a very good lawyer. He did everything he could, and the Bradwells were on our side in this, too. It's done. The man is going to prison."

"But he could have…." Joe's anger melted, turning inward. He could feel hot tears filling his eyes. He tried to blink them away. His panting began to shift to gasping.

"Joe?" Adam sounded concerned.

Joe could not look at him. "He could have stopped all of it," he said softly. "They wouldn't have…wouldn't have fired, if he'd…." Dammit! He sounded like a child…a little boy wallowing in self pity. The man had almost killed Adam. That mattered more than what had happened at the cabin. Of course it mattered more! In the corral, that foreman had taken full charge, making sure Adam would be killed. But Joe kept finding his thoughts returning to the cabin's doorway. He could still see those guns pointed at him, and the smoke as they fired. Oddly, he couldn't remember hearing them. He couldn't remember any sound at all. In his mind, there was nothing but silence. And smoke. He also couldn't remember what it had felt like when those bullets had pierced his body. He could only remember falling, and seeing that Millie had been hit, too.

"He tried to kill you, Adam," Joe said again, finally looking at his brother.

"And you." Adam's grip tightened on Joe's knee.

"No." Joe shook his head. "With me, he just didn't try to stop it."

"Same difference," Hoss said then.

No. Joe knew it wasn't the same. But he had no desire to argue about it. Not now. Not with his family. "Ten years, huh?" he said to Adam.

"Ten years."

"But he could be out on parole in five?"

Adam shook his head. "Not if we have anything to say about it."

"Do we?"

"When the time comes," Pa said, "we can…all of us," his gaze swept from Joe to Adam to Hoss and then back again, "speak to the parole board."

"With any luck," Adam added, grinning, "he'll get on the warden's bad side before then, and we won't have to say a word."

"With any luck, none of this would have happened in the first place."

Adam either didn't notice, or chose to ignore the fact that Joe's forlorn tone sounded even more childish than had his momentary slip into self pity. "Since when have you been interested in poetry?" he asked, glancing again at the book on the top of the stack.

Joe shrugged. "Hop Sing gave it to me."

"Hop Sing?" Hoss's sadness disappeared behind a scrunched up brow that almost made Joe giggle.

"From Missy Mi-wee," Hop Sing called from the dining room table, where he had already begun to set out the supper dishes. "Missy give book for Little Joe. She tell Hop Sing Tenn-y-son poem about loss of close friend. Maybe help Little Joe."

Adam picked up the book again. "Alfred Lord Tennyson," he read aloud. "In Memoriam." Then, noticing that several pages had been marked with ribbons, he opened to the first. "One writes, that 'Other friends remain,' that 'Loss is common to the race', and common is the commonplace, and vacant chaff well meant for grain. That loss is common would not make my own less bitter, rather more: Too common! Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break." He looked toward Joe. "Is it helping?"

Joe shrugged again. "Some parts just make me think even more about both Jake and Laura. Others…I don't know. Maybe."

Adam opened to another section. "So find I every pleasant spot, in which we two were wont to meet, the field, the chamber and the street, for all is dark where thou art not."

Recognizing the verse, Joe looked away. He didn't want Adam to read more…and yet…he did. Joe did want to hear it. He wanted to hear it from someone else…from Adam, a brother who somehow always had the answers. Even when Joe didn't want to hear those answers, Adam had them. Now Joe realized he wanted Adam to help him make sense of…of things that had no sense to them at all.

"Yet as that other, wandering there," Adam read on, "in those deserted walks, may find, a flower beat with rain and wind, which once she fostered up with care."

Joe saw himself with Laura, sitting beside the pond at the cabin on that first spring day he'd taken her there. He could still hear Laura giggling, as she had when he'd fallen in, reaching for a white flower that had blossomed too soon.

Maybe Adam didn't notice Joe's discomfort. Or maybe…maybe he did. His tone softened. "So seems it in my deep regret, o my forsaken heart, with thee, and this poor flower of poesy, which little cared for fades not yet. But since it pleased a vanished eye, I go to plant it on his tomb, that if it can it there may bloom, or dying, there at least may die."

Joe felt a hand on his shoulder. He didn't need to look to know it was Pa.

Adam turned to the next marked section. "I envy not the beast that takes, his license in the field of time, unfettered by the sense of crime, to whom a conscience never wakes; nor, what may count itself as blest, the heart that never plighted troth, but stagnates in the weeds of sloth; nor any want-begotten rest. I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."

Suddenly Joe heard another woman in his thoughts. He heard the soft voice of Agnes, the young mother who had wandered into his room on that last day, when Hannah and her ragtag group of sisters had still been guests of the Ponderosa.

"She was blessed, Little Joe," she'd said of Laura, a woman she had never even known.

"She died!" Joe had argued.

The words she'd said next struck him, held him. He could hear them still. "Only after she lived," she'd said. "I would rather live twenty years as she did, than forty with the life I've known. If my child can have half the years I've had, knowing the kind of happiness your Laura knew, then we both will have been blessed. Don't you see?"

Adam was still reading, but Joe had stopped listening. Instead, he heard Agnes. And Laura telling him in his dreams to let her go. And…and then he heard Jake, telling him he was a fool. He had to live for the moment, because you never know if you'll have another.

Never morning wore to evening, but some heart did break, the poet had written. And it was true, wasn't it? It was all true. Agnes was right. Laura was right. Even Jake was right. No one is on this earth forever. And everyone has his own time.

Joe glanced around the room, looking at his father, at Hoss, at Adam, even Hop Sing, and he realized one by one they could all be pulled out of his life, or he from theirs. He almost had been, hadn't he? He remembered the fear they had all shown at his bedside.

"No, like a child in doubt and fear," Adam read, "but that blind clamor made me wise; then was I as a child that cries, but, crying, knows his father near; and what I am beheld again, what is, and no man understands; and out of darkness came the hands, that reach thro' nature, molding men."

Pa's hand tightened its grip on Joe's shoulder, and then pulled away as Pa came around the chair to face him. "Did you mark all those passages, Joseph?" he asked softly.

Joe shook his head. "No. But I read them." He tried a small smile. "And then I read a few more. It's not the easiest book to read." He chuckled. "But…I guess I can see why Millie thought it might help."

"That was awful nice of her," Hoss said.

"Yes," Pa agreed. "It certainly was."

"I suppose they all feel somewhat responsible," Adam added.

"Well, she is responsible for my foot," Joe said with mock indignation, trying to be light-hearted. "But I guess I can't blame them for trying to get shed of a man like Ellingsworth."

Adam looked pointedly at him. "No. I guess not." He continued to hold Joe's gaze, looking as though he wanted to say something further.

"Supper ready!" Hop Sing called.

It was enough to make Adam look away. Joe almost wished he hadn't. He couldn't help but wonder what had been on Adam's mind. But he was also pretty sure he knew. If the women hadn't brought their fight to the Ponderosa, Jake would still be alive, and Joe….

Well, Joe was already healing. But if they hadn't come, he would still be facing the ghost of Laura in that cabin. Now, with the cabin gone, Laura had found her way out of Joe's nightmares and into his dreams, willing him to let her go. And maybe that Tennyson fellow was right. Maybe it really was better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.

Reaching for his crutch, Joe found his brothers' arms instead, and he found himself grateful for the moment…because, as Jake used to say, you never know if you're gonna get another.

xxx

Come spring, when the white flowers blossomed once more at what Joe had started to call Laura's pond, he harvested several, roots and all, placing them carefully into a small bucket. And then he rode out first to Laura's grave, and then to Jake's. He planted flowers at each site, figuring if they can they there may bloom, or dying, there at least may die.

xxx

end

Chapter End Notes: Poetry excerpts are from "In Memoriam A.H.H.," by Alfred Lord Tennyson, verses VI, VIII & XXVII, CXXIV. "In Memoriam" is a vast group of elegies that were begun as Tennyson tried to make sense of the death of his closest friend. Written over a seventeen year period, they were finally collected and then first published in 1850.