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Part 6: Full House

"You did what?" Pa's voice cut its way through Joe's dreams like a bolt of lightning. "Of all the foolhardy, irresponsible, half-witted… How could you, Adam?"

Adam? Joe blinked himself awake. Adam was being half-witted and irresponsible? But Joe's dawning smile fell with his pa's next words.

"You could have gotten Hoss killed!"

Curious and concerned, Joe eased himself up as a pair of familiar but much softer voices tried to quiet his pa down with words he couldn't hear.

"Roy?" Pa shouted then. "He agreed to this nonsense?"

Moving wasn't easy. Joe's back stung and his head swam. But the doc said he should try getting up now and again to help keep his muscles from stiffening up. And Joe couldn't think of a better reason to drag himself out of bed than to find out what his half-witted, college-educated oldest brother had gone and done to his other brother with the approval of Sheriff Coffee.

"Calm down, Pa," Adam was saying when Joe reached the top of the stairs.

"Calm down?" Pa hollered back. "Aren't you listening to yourself? For Heaven's sake, Adam, I—"

"Hey, Joe!" Hoss called out happily. "It sure is good to see you, boy!" He was already halfway to the stairs when Pa turned his tirade on Little Joe.

"Joseph Francis Cartwright! You get back to bed this instant!"

"Aw, Pa," Hoss answered for him. "How can you expect him to sleep with all yer hollerin'?"

"My hollering?" Pa shouted even louder than before. "My…." Then something changed in him. He sagged. "My hollering," he said more softly, nodding. "Yes. Of course. I'm sorry, Joseph. Hoss, help your brother get back to bed, would you? I have more things to…discuss…with your older brother, here."

"Sorry, Pa," Hoss said as he moved steadily up the stairs. "But it don't seem to me you're ready to do much discussin' just yet." Reaching Joe, he gave his young brother a wink. "Which do ya' want?" he whispered conspiratorially. "Yer bedroom or downstairs?"

"Has this whole household gone mad?" Pa argued.

"He's right, you know." Adam pulled Pa's attention toward him once more, leaving Joe and Hoss temporarily forgotten. "You won't even listen to me!"

Joe grinned back at his middle brother. "Downstairs." He was tired and he had a lot of healing yet to do. But he was feeling better. And he'd napped plenty of times on that settee before. And he sure wanted to hear whatever was going to be discussed if Pa could ever get himself to calm down like Adam had told him to.

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The discussion began in earnest before Joe was even fully settled. Hop Sing was pulled into it, too. Usually a gentle caregiver, Hop Sing jammed pillows beneath Joe's head and back with enough force to catch Joe's breath; and in between a bunch of nerve-rattling Chinese jabber, he scolded Pa for raising his voice.

Shortly after Hop Sing returned to the kitchen, Joe realized he ought to have stayed upstairs. He put his hand across his eyes and pressed his fingers and thumb into his temples. "Hey," he said then, hoping to catch his pa's attention.

"But did you try, Adam?" Pa went on yelling. "Did you even try?"

"Hey," Joe said again, his hand still shielding his eyes.

"I didn't get the chance, Pa!" Adam hollered back. "As soon as Hoss left that hotel, Scott was on him!"

"And you, Hoss," Pa said next. "How could you let your brother connive you into this? Joe, I could understand. But Adam? You should have known he wasn't thinking clearly!"

"How could any of us think clearly?" At least Hoss wasn't shouting. "After we saw what happened to Joe that night, we had to do somethin'. We couldn't let that man get away!"

"Well, you did something, all right!" Pa answered, his voice no softer than before. "You very nearly gave me a heart attack! Can you even for one moment imagine what I was left to think after I saw Adam's note? Hoss and I are riding to Swift's Station. What kind of a message is that?"

Joe's head was pounding. He cleared his throat. "Pa?"

But Pa still didn't hear him. "You gave no explanation," Pa went on, "and I couldn't think of a single good, honest reason for you to head up there right now, especially with your brother as ill as he's been. Not a single one!"

Okay, it was time for Joe to do some shouting. "Please, Pa!" It wasn't very loud, and it made his headache worse…but it worked.

"Joe?" Pa's voice was soft and cautious. "Are you all right, son?"

"No, I'm not all right!" Joe shot back more bitterly than he'd meant to. He kept his hand over his eyes while he explained. "I thought you were going to be discussing what Adam and Hoss did."

"Well…." Pa was hesitant for some reason. "That's what we're doing, son." He sounded confused.

"No, you're not! You're hollerin' at each other about it!"

There was silence for a few minutes. Joe relished every one of those minutes as the pounding in his head began to ease. Still, he kept his eyes shielded.

"I'm…sorry, Joe," Pa said finally. "I suppose you're right. Hollering is no way to discuss anything properly. I should know better. Like I thought your brothers knew better than to put their own lives at risk!"

"But we didn't, Pa," Hoss said. "We didn't put our lives at risk. We knew better'n that. I wanted to shoot that man myself, but there weren't no good reason to put any'a you through the mess of my gettin' hung on account of it."

"Me, too," Adam added. "I had the same thoughts. Pa, don't you see? We had to stop him! Joe wasn't the first man he shot, and he wouldn't have been the last. There just wasn't any other way to catch him."

"You didn't have to make Hoss a target!"

"He wouldn't've," Joe said.

"What?" Pa asked.

Maybe Joe should have looked at his family then, but he wasn't quite ready to let all that afternoon sunlight back in just yet. "Adam wouldn't've let Hoss get shot. You know that."

"Yes, well…Adam allowed a back-shooter with a rifle to take aim at Hoss, didn't he?" Pa's voice was rising again.

"Doesn't matter," Joe answered. "He wouldn't've let that man pull the trigger."

"I'm sorry, Joseph, but that's exactly what he said he did."

"No, he didn't."

"Perhaps," Pa hissed, "you haven't been listening as closely as you thought."

"Oh, I've been listening closely, all right," Joe argued, gaining confidence from the simple fact that he couldn't see his pa's growing anger. "And Adam said he made sure that man adjusted his aim to hit the ground."

"Yesss," Pa sounded like he was barely holding that anger in check, "but he—"

"But, nothing!" And suddenly Joe didn't dare look at his pa. "He…he wouldn't've let Hoss get shot."

"Joe's right, Pa," Hoss said. "An' you know it."

"I was scared." Adam's soft voice cut into Joe's thoughts almost as shockingly as Pa's shout had earlier pulled him from his dreams. It was enough to take Joe's hand from his eyes.

Adam was leaning forward in his chair with his elbows on his knees, staring at his hands clasped together in front of him. "I'll admit, I was worried about everything that could go wrong. And…." Releasing his hands, he started rubbing them together. "I was terrified any one of those things could cause Hoss to get shot." He turned to look at Hoss, standing beside him in front of the fireplace. "But I was also determined not to let that happen."

"Determined?" Pa called out angrily from the chair by Joe's head. "Determination is hardly enough to stop a bullet!"

Joe kept his eyes on Adam.

"No." Adam nodded. "You're right." He looked at Pa then. "But I assure you I would not have let that bullet hit Hoss. If it came down to it, I would have shown my cards." His back drew straighter as he talked, inching taller with each word until his elbows pulled away from his knees. "I would have stopped him right there and taken him to jail for attempting to shoot Hoss." His voice grew cold, chilling. "And if that wasn't enough to send him to prison, I would have stayed with him. I would have followed every step he took, everywhere he went; and I would have watched every move he made. And one way or another, I would have found enough evidence against him to force even the most ignorant judge to send him to prison, or, preferably, to hang him."

"Adam," Pa sounded disappointed. "That's no answer. Vengeance is—"

"Vengeance," Adam spat back, "would have had me shooting Clayton Scott in the back. Or worse, someone close to him. Vengeance would have had me forcing him to catch his own brother in his arms, to see his brother's jacket drenched with blood, so much of it he couldn't possibly believe that brother would ever open his eyes again…." Adam's fingers dug into the armrests of his chair. "…To hear his brother's last words echoing around in his head for days on end, haunting him with their irony. Vengeance would have—"

"That's enough, Adam!" Pa demanded.

The reproach seemed to hit Adam like a slap. He blinked and pulled in a long breath of air.

"Dinner ready!" Hop Sing called out as he exited the kitchen with a platter of ham. "You come table now!"

Joe watched Adam's gaze skitter to the floor.

"Hop Sing bring to Little Joe. The rest of you come table, now!"

"Yes, Hop Sing," Pa said. "Of course."

Pa stood up. Hoss was moving, too. But Joe kept his eyes on Adam.

"Adam?" Pa asked. "Are you coming?"

"In a minute." Adam's chest heaved, pulling air in and pushing it back out again like he'd just chopped a cord of wood. Joe continued watching as those breaths grew slower, calmer, and the sounds of Pa and Hoss taking their seats at the table faded beneath Hop Sing's busy chatter in Chinese.

Then, finally, Adam raised his head, his eyes landing instantly on Joe's.

"Last words?" Joe asked.

Adam stared at him for a long moment, his chest filling once more. "I won," he said after exhaling.

"What?"

"That's what you said just before you collapsed. After I asked you what happened. Before I…before I saw all that blood. You said you'd won, yet it was very clear you'd lost far more than you could afford to lose…than any of us would ever risk losing."

"I did win, Adam. I survived." Joe smiled. "We all won, I'd say. That was quite a story you and Hoss told. I'd like to hear it again. Without all the shouting this time." His grin widened.

After a moment, Adam's lips began to quirk upward, too. "Maybe when we tell it again we should make sure Pa's not within earshot."

"Yeah. Maybe we should."

"Adam?" Hoss called from the table. "If you don't get over here, I'm about ready to take your share. I got a lot of hungry days to make up for!"

Adam's smile grew stronger as he pushed himself to his feet. "I thought all that pie you ate back at the Swift's should have taken care of that."

"Nah! All that did was remind me how hungry I was!"

As Adam stepped past Little Joe, he dropped a hand to Joe's head and patted him lightly. Joe wasn't sure whether to appreciate it or complain about it. "What's that for?"

"Winning."

"What? My poker game or yours?"

"Both. And the game you played just now. With Pa."

With Adam behind him then, Joe couldn't see his brother's grin. He knew it was there, just the same. And he let his own grin settle back into place while he allowed himself to sink further into all those pillows Hop Sing had given him. As a sense of comfort drifted over him at the sound of less inflammatory conversations coming from the table, he closed his eyes, his thoughts turning to the brotherly storytelling soon to come. And maybe a hand or two of poker.

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…If you're gonna play the game, boy,
ya gotta learn to play it right.

You got to know when to hold 'em,
know when to fold 'em,
know when to walk away
and know when to run.

You never count your money
when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin'
when the dealin's done.

Now every gambler knows
the secret to survivin'
is knowin' what to throw away
and knowin' what to keep

'Cause every hand's a winner
and every hand's a loser
and the best that you can hope for
is to die in your sleep…."

The Gambler,
written by Don Schlitz,
recorded by Kenny Rogers

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