Chapter 1

“My life is over!” declared Little Joe.  “I want to go to the dance tonight with Maryann and Ginger, they both asked me and I said yes already!  You can’t make me take Cousin Dobie’s ugly daughter Pa, you just can’t!”  As he looked into the hard-hearted, unfeeling, uncaring, unsympathetic and just downright mean face of his cruel, cruel father, Joe burst into a wailing fit of tears.  “Oh, don’t make me do it, Pa!  Please, please, please, don’t make me show my beautiful face in public with that ugly girl!”

Ben watched as the tears flowed harder, actually sprouting up into a picturesque fountain as Joe threw his head back and bawled.  Amazing how Joe could look so good doing everything, he thought.  Why he had even looked good that day last month when he’d been in bed with two broken legs, a gunshot wound, an unsavory social disease picked up somewhere in town, a dislocated shoulder, a concussion and a really nasty head cold.  His nose had swollen a little from the cold, but he had still been magnificent!  Now, here he was all signs of illness and injury miraculously gone (as always) and in a state of purest heartbreak. Ben wanted to give in.  He nearly did give in when Joe fixed pleading water filled eyes on him and stuck his quivering lower lip out as far as it would go.  Then he hardened his heart.  “I’m sorry, son, but someone has to take Zelda to the dance.  It’s part of the rental agreement I made with Dobie over those water rights to his land.  We need that land for our cattle, your brother Adam’s new sheep farm and Chief Whatsittoya’s buffalo preservation project.”

“Well, maybe you can get the Chief to take her if he loves the sight of buffalo so much,” Joe retorted.  “I’ll bet he’d never notice the difference.”

“Joseph, that’s no way to talk about a pack of poor, innocent buffalo,” Ben barked, then realized that wasn’t quite what he had meant to say when Joe’s keening coyote laughter began ringing through the room. “My agreement with Dobie was that one of my sons would escort his daughter to every dance and social in Virginia City this year and I cannot break my word to him.”

“Well, why can’t Hoss take her?” Joe pouted, throwing his body down upon the settee, crossing his arms and defiantly placing his boots on the coffee table with a scowl.  He would show Pa what he thought of his orders!  “He hasn’t got a date, has he?”

“Joseph, you know Hoss had to take Zelda to the last dance, and Adam the one before that.  May I remind you that it was your turn that time, but that you couldn’t take her because you had just been shot in the foot?”  Ben narrowed his eyes as he said that last.  He’d been awfully suspicious of that wound, given that Joe’s gun had gone missing right about the same time, and that he hadn’t heard anything in town about the attempted bank robbery and gunfight that Joe had told him about.  Adam had spent days muttering the mysterious words, ‘Why didn’t I think of it first’, after a night spent in Zelda’s company.  Come to think of it, ever since that night, Adam had been spending an inordinate amount of time avoiding human contact and hanging out with his sheep.  Could the two be connected?  Hmmm.

“What am I supposed to tell Ginger and Maryann?” Joe whined.

Ben shook himself back to the present.  “I don’t care what you tell them.  You know I don’t approve of those two.”

“How come?  They’re really very nice girls, Pa.”  Joe felt honor bound to defend the two girls.  Was it his fault they had grown up on a small deserted island somewhere with no stunningly gorgeous men such as himself to while away their days and, more importantly, nights with?  Was it his fault they preferred to wear coconut brassieres and whoops-look-at-the-time, super-short, cut-off men’s pants to skirts and dresses?  “They promised to teach me a new dance tonight.  Something called the triple limbo.”

Ben’s mind boggled as he tried to think what that could be.  Well, anyway, it didn’t matter. “It’s high time you took your turn escorting Zelda, and that is final.  One more thing, Joseph, get your feet off the furniture!”

Joe’s feet hit the ground with a loud thud as he stood up and stalked toward the stairs.  “All right!  I’ll take her, but if my reputation is ruined I’m never speaking to anyone in this family again!”  He swept dramatically toward the stairs.  “Tell Hop Sing I’m not having any dinner tonight. Food and the sight of Zelda just don’t mix.”

“Perfectly understandable,” Ben muttered as soon as Joe had trudged out of sight up the stairs.

Chapter 2

Joe arrived at his date’s house exactly on time.  He would have done anything to avoid arriving early and being forced to sit in the front parlor with Zelda.  She always tried to cuddle with him and steal a kiss when he wasn’t looking.  Turning suddenly only to find himself inches from that grotesquely puckering face was enough to give him indigestion.  Zelda had crossed eyes and crooked teeth, and unlike Joe, she had managed to grow a pretty decent mustache.  It was bad enough just trying to keep her on her own side of the buggy on the way to the dance, especially since she kept trying to slide her hands into his lap, to ‘warm ‘em up’.  There was a picture of some kind of ocean creature called an octopus in one of Adam’s books and Joe was beginning to notice the resemblance between it and his date.

When they reached the dance hall, Joe stuck his head inside for a look around, hiding the girl in the bushes behind him lest anyone see who he had brought with him.  At the sight of the gathered crowd, Joe nearly started bawling again.  There were only a few other fellas in sight, nobody he hated enough to try and shove Zelda off on, and nobody stupid enough to volunteer.  Even worse, the room was teeming with girls, all the wonderful, beautiful, sweet-smelling, delectable girls his heart could have possibly desired.  There was Jeannie winking at him from over in the corner where she stood with her escort from the local army fort, Major Nelson.  In the opposite corner, the lovely and bewitching Samantha was chatting with Ellie May, who was dressed in her usual low cut blouse and matching pigtail ribbons.  By the punchbowl, Joe’s own beloved Maryann and Ginger were cuddling up to some professor friend of Adam’s.  Every man in the room stopped what he was doing when the Professor ‘accidentally’ dropped his pen and sweet Maryann bent over to get it, and Joe could not stop the tear that trickled down his cheek over what might have been.

“Joe, these sticker bushes are getting mighty uncomfortable,” Zelda whined from behind him.  Pulling his hat as far down his face as he could manage and still see, Joe stalked inside.  Zelda clung to his arm like a leech.  The music started and she hauled him onto the floor, galloping around the other dancers with no care for rhythm, meter or the fact that she wasn’t supposed to be the one leading.  Joe didn’t care, he was too busy doing his best to keep her hands away from all the places they weren’t suppose to go, all the while trying to keep his feet from getting trampled any more than they already had been. 

“Can we go now?” he begged, several torturous dances later.  “We’ve must’ve been here for hours already.  Your Pa will be expecting you back.”

“It hasn’t been even an hour yet!” she protested.  “I could use something to eat though.  Come on!”  Zelda clamped her hand around his wrist tight enough to cause a yelp of pain and made a beeline for the food table.  The other folks gathered there saw her coming and ran for their lives.  Nobody got between Zelda and her vittles!

Taking advantage of the fact that she needed both hands to shovel at full capacity, Joe slunk away into a corner to hide.  He found his brothers already there, using the long tablecloth over the buffet table to hide their presence and scrunched down between them. “What are you two doing here?”

“Zelda challenged me to an eatin’ contest next time we wound up at the same social,” Hoss said dismally. “That gal eats like a pig come to the trough.  I ain’t got a prayer of winning and lookin’ at her is enough to flat kill my appetite.”

“That’s what I told Pa!” Joe shouted, then slouched down with both hands clapped over his mouth.  Had she heard?  No, he was still safe.  He looked at Adam,  “What about you?”

“She wants to dance with me,” he said, a peculiar mad gleam coming over his face.  Adam pulled his hunting knife out of his boot and began fingering it, laughing a weird low cackle, a trickle of drool escaping from the corner of his mouth.  “I’m never going through that again!”

“What the heck happened to you last time?” Hoss asked him, having seen this same reaction every time Zelda’s name was mentioned.  “You two left the dance and I never saw you again.”

Adam plunged his knife into the floor, leaving it quivering in the boards.  He turned and clutched his youngest brother by the arms.  “Joe, for your own sake, don’t let that woman talk you into going outside for some air!  I don’t care what you have to do, tie her up, punch her out, anything!  Just do not take her anywhere other than her home tonight!”

Joe’s eyes grew huge.  “What will happen?”

Adam shuddered.  “She’ll pretend to feel faint…and then…I just can’t say it!”

“What?” his brothers both demanded, biting their nails in frightful anticipation.

“The moment you bend down to check on her, she’ll drag you down on the ground and kiss you.  Open-mouthed!” Adam clutched his stomach, looking a little green as he uttered the fateful words.

Joe and Hoss both drew back with deep gasps of horror.  Joe laid a hand on his distraught brother’s arm. “Adam, is that why you’ve hardly had a date since that night?”

“Every time I try to kiss another girl, the horror of that night all comes rushing back to me.  Every girl’s voice becomes that screeching, grating noise that woman calls a voice.”  Adam hung his head, hiding his face in his hand. “I may never be a whole man again.”

Joe’s face took on a horrible pallor, his eyes straying toward Adam’s belt buckle, and then back up to his face.  “You don’t mean…”

Hoss laid a hand on his shoulder. “It’s true, Joe.  The little soldier ain’t takin’ orders no more.”

Deeply shocked and disturbed by the horrific revelation, Joe barely noticed when his date collared him a few minutes later and hauled him back onto the floor for another dance.  He only woke up the reality of his situation when she smiled a lettuce and corn filled smile and said, “Let’s go outside for some fresh air, Little Joe.  It’s awful stuffy in here.”

Joe let go a shriek that could have been heard in the next state and yanked his hand out of her iron grasp, little caring when he felt the wrist separate as he jumped into the arms of the nearest bystander.  It happened to be Doctor Martin and Joe clutched his coat gratefully as the man dropped him with a grumble about wild youngsters.  “Doc!  Doc, you gotta help me!”

“What’s that matter with you, boy?”  Martin demanded, tapping the side of his head as his ears tried to recover from the sound Joe had delivered into them.  “Have you gone crazy?”

Grasping the coat had really hurt and had alerted Joe to the damage done his hand.  He almost smiled at the scowling Zelda as he realized she had actually done him a favor.  “It’s my wrist, Doc.  It hurts something awful.  In fact it’s so bad I don’t think there’s any way I can drive anywhere tonight and I have to get rid of Zelda…uh, I mean I have to get her home.”

The doctor checked the hand Joe practically shoved up his nose in his haste to have it examined.  It was most definitely injured.  “How did you manage to dislocate your wrist?”

“Beats me, Doc,” Joe said cheerfully, then endeavored to make his expression a little more pain-filled as several girls gathered close to coo over his injury and offer to nurse him back to health.  “Could somebody please take Zelda home for me, while I go over to the doctor’s office?” he asked pitifully.

All the men in the room suddenly disappeared except for Joe, the doctor and Sheriff Coffee.  Roy looked around in surprise, catching hold of his hat as the force of wind caused by the mass exit threatened to blow it clean off his head.  “I guess I could see the young lady home,” he offered, secretly thinking he had seen sweeter looking faces on half the posters decorating his jail house wall.  “Hope you ain’t hurt too bad, Little Joe.”

Joe dabbed theatrically at a few artistic beads of sweat dotting his brow, leaning heavily into the supporting arms of his willing army of nurses.  “I’ll recover…in time,” he gasped. 

“Bye, Joe,” Zelda said glumly as she followed the sheriff out the door.  “Feel better.”

“I feel much better already,” he gloated as he last flounce of her skirt slid out of the room. 

Chapter 3

“Guess what, boys?”  Ben said the following morning at breakfast.  He noted with some concern the thick white bandage Joseph was sporting on his right hand and wrist, and filed it away to ask about later.  “Dobie stopped by early this morning to tell me Zelda has decided to stay a few months longer than originally planned.  Maybe she’ll even move out here permanently.”

“Aw Pa, did you have to go and say that just before we started to eat?” Hoss grumbled, pushing away his plate with a grimace.  “You ain’t sayin’ you expect us to go on escorting that gal around town are you?”

“Now boys, be reasonable,” Ben wheedled.  “It’s just a few dances and we really need those water rights.”

“I don’t care how much we need them,” Joe said flatly, holding up his injured hand so that his father could get a good look.  “I’m not going through that ever again!”

“Me neither,” his brothers chorused with feeling. 

Ben noticed Adam getting that strange gleam in his eye again, eyeing the cutlery, but did not know what to make of it.  “It’s only for a little while.  Next year we’ll work out something else.  You know I wouldn’t even bother with that low-down cheating third cousin of mine if he didn’t have me over a barrel.  Couldn’t you help out just a little while longer?”  He was not prepared to order them to take on the task, but Ben did not know how they would manage without those water rights and he was not above a little pleading.

“We’ll think about it Pa,” Hoss muttered, throwing his napkin down and making for the door, his silent brothers close behind him.

“What do you mean, we’ll think about it!” Joe demanded, the moment they left the house.  “You can just speak for yourself cause I’m not doing it!”

“Neither am I,” said Adam, nearly convulsing as his body was wrapped in a deep shudder at the thought.

“How we gonna get rid of her, then?” Hoss asked glumly.  “Pa did make that agreement with Cousin Dobie.”

“Why the heck does everybody call him that anyway?” Joe said suddenly.  “He’s not our cousin.  He’s Pa’s cousin’s wife’s brother’s father-in-law’s cousin.  We aren’t even related!”

“I know, but Pa is trying to get Dobie to sell him that land and Dobie has a corner on the water in that area until he agrees to sell.  It ain’t as if Pa likes him none,” Hoss huffed.  “That measly, low-down snake cheats Pa any chance he gets, and this time we got cheated too, cause he found a way to palm off Zelda on us into the bargain.”

Joe scowled.  “Pa’s problem is his own from now on.  We didn’t have any say in the terms of that deal. I don’t care if we have to sell every sheep and cow on that range to Chief Whatsittoya, if it means no more dealing with the Ziffels.”  He spat suddenly. Speaking of them had left a bad taste in his mouth. “If only there was a way to get rid of Zelda permanently.”

“Well, we can’t just kill her,” Adam mumbled.  “Somebody would probably notice.”

Joe’s eyes brightened as a smile began to dawn on his face.  “I’ve got it!”

“What?” his brothers demanded.

“Adam, why don’t you ask Zelda to marry you?” Joe asked excitedly.

Hoss caught Adam as his eyes rolled up his head and all the color drained out of his face.  Lowering him to the ground, the big man began fanning his barely conscious brother with his large hat and scowled at Joe.  “Dadburnit, Joe, you know you shouldn’t say things like that!  Suppose Adam had a weak heart or something? You coulda killed him!”

Joe crouched down and began slapping Adam’s cheeks hard with his good hand, restoring him to sense.  “I’m not kidding.  She already got that kiss from you, Adam.  All you gotta do is tell her what you told us about not being able to be around any other girls for thinking of her, only don’t tell her about the puking and impotence part.”

“Why in the name of sanity would I do a thing like that?” Adam shouted, scrambling to his feet and backing away, eyeing his brothers suspiciously as if wondering if it was all some kind of fiendish plot against him.  “I want a girl who’s educated.”

“She done recited about a dozen dirty limericks to me the night we was out,” Hoss offered.

“Good looking…”

“You might get lucky and go blind from not getting any…” Joe yelped as Hoss smacked him in the back of the head.  “Well, I’ve heard it can happen!”

“Talented…”

“I hear she can burp the entire alphabet without stopping for breath,” Hoss said.

“Human!” Adam screamed.

Hoss and Joe were caught with their mouths open, not having any argument for that one.  “Come on Adam,” Joe said at last.  “It isn’t as if you’ll actually have to get married.  You know what happens every time one of us proposes marriage.  The girl either goes back east or dies!  Either way, our problems would be over.”

“Suppose she lives until the honeymoon, though,” Hoss said worriedly.

All three of them grimaced and shuddered,  “Ewwww!”

“Why do I have to ask her?” Adam demanded.  “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

“And cancel my entire dating schedule for the next month?” Joe said incredulously.  “It’s bad enough Ginger and Maryann had to do without last night, I couldn’t break the heart of every other girl in Virginia City as well.  It would be too cruel!  Besides, her Pa likes you best so he’d probably say yes to you.”

“Yeah,” Hoss agreed hastily, hoping to keep out of the sacrificial lineup, “Why I’ll bet he’d even make you a wedding gift of those water rights, if Zelda lives long enough to say ‘I do’, then Pa’s problems would be solved, and ours too.”

“But what if it doesn’t work?” Adam wailed.  “I’m not spending the rest of my life married to that, that, that Gorgon!”

Another hour of wheedling persuasion finally convinced Adam that there was nothing else to be done.  His brothers dragged him over to see Dobie before he could change his mind, and stood behind him, blocking the door to prevent him from escaping the moment they crossed the threshold of the Ziffel house. 

Dobie sat down on the only chair in the room, scratching his behind thoroughly before he did so and scratching other places after.  “What brings you by, boys?”  He curled his upper lip back to reveal what was left of his rotted brown teeth and squirted a stream of tobacco juice through a gap.  It was easy to see where Zelda came by her looks and charm.

Adam had frozen at the sight of that pigsty of a house and his brothers rose to fill the silence.  “Adam here has decided after his last date with your daughter, that Zelda is the girl for him,” Joe said cheerily.  “He wants your permission to marry her.”

Dobie adjusted himself and added a fresh plug between his cheek and gum.  “I can understand that,” he said. “My Zelda is the image of her dear departed Ma.”

“You’re kidding,” Adam said flatly.

“Nope,” Dobie went on, after a long pause in which he went spelunking through his left nostril as he remembered the good old days.  “Half-French and half-injun she was, and all woman!  There was nobody in the entire territory could compare to Gidget Flying None.”

“How did she die?” asked Hoss, looking for a little insight in case this plan of Joe’s didn’t go as they hoped.

“She didn’t die,” Dobie said indignantly.  “I never said she did.  Just said she departed.  Ran off with another fella.  Can you believe that?”

“It boggles the mind,” Adam said truthfully.

“Anyway, I reckon it’d be all right with me if you want to marry Zelda.  How’s Sunday for you?  I need her here Saturday to do the week’s cooking, but I guess I can hire somebody after that.”  Dobie scratched his head, checking to see if he’d caught anything afterward.

“She cooks?” Hoss asked in surprise, thinking that maybe Adam’s life wouldn’t be all bad if things didn’t work out, and Zelda lived past the wedding.

Dobie rose and opened the lid of a huge pot sitting on the fireplace.  “Best danged possum and turnip stew you ever ate!  One pot lasts a whole week, so you won’t be going hungry, boy.”

“I can’t wait,” said Adam faintly, looking as thought he might pass out again at any moment.  Joe and Hoss hastily rushed him outside, calling their thanks over their shoulder.

“I’ll be sure and tell Zelda about the weddin’,” her father called after them.  “We’ll be by the Ponderosa on Sunday afternoon.”

“How about that, you ain’t even gotta ask her!” Hoss said, trying to cheer his nauseous looking older brother. 

“Great,” Adam muttered, just before the world went black.

Chapter 4

Nobody saw hide or hair of Adam Cartwright for the next six days.  Rumor had it he had been seen out tending to the sheep, and one person reported seeing him sitting in a cloud of pungent smoke, with a peace pipe and a smile over at the Indian camp, but it could not be substantiated.  Ben was a bit worried by his continued absence, but only after he got over the mild stroke caused by the news that Zelda and Dobie were about to become his new in-laws. 

On Sunday afternoon the Cartwrights waited nervously with a preacher.  The only witness was Doc Martin, whom everyone had felt it best to have on hand in case of any emergencies.  An hour passed, and then another hour passed, and finally a third hour went by with no sign of the Ziffels.  Adam could be seen praying devotedly in a corner, while Hoss and Joe alternately wept and moaned because they felt so guilty for leading their poor helpless brother to the slaughter.  Finally, an excited ranch hand rode up.

“Hey folks, you’re not gonna believe this!” he said, his breath whistling between his large front teeth as he tried to get his words out through gasps and gulps of air.

“What is it, Beaver?” Hoss demanded.  “Is something wrong?”

“The Ziffel house collapsed this morning!” the man said.  “Its structure just wouldn’t hold up no more and a strong wind made it crash right down around the ears of them two folks living there.  Killed em both!”

Adam threw his arms out to his sides, flung his head back, and screamed “THE CURSE LIVES!!!”  He began to laugh and cry at the same time, and his equally giddy brothers rushed to ‘comfort’ him as a smiling Ben, and puzzled Doctor Martin and Beaver looked on. 

“Guess I’d better get back to work,” the hand said, thinking them Cartwrights was a mighty strange lot.

“And I’d better go see about arranging a funeral for the deceased,” the preacher said happily, tipping his hat as he departed.

“I suppose I’d better go too,” the doctor said, wondering if there was any money to be made in a tell-all novel about this family.  A niggling suspicion about the fate of this latest in a long string of dead Cartwright wives and fiancees nagged at him, and he wondered if he should talk to Roy.  Then he decided to keep his peace.  After all, it could have been an accident, and if not who could blame them? “Come into town for a game of chess later, Ben?”

“Sure,” Ben agreed happily.  He shut the door behind the doctor and went to check some papers on his desk.  Yes, with Dobie dead, that left his land free to public domain and Ben already had the papers drawn.  He wondered how much persuading it would take to get one of the boys to start dating Ed Post’s daughter. After all, he had a mighty fine piece of land adjoining the Ponderosa to the south…

The End…?