Disclaimer:   I do not own the Cartwright characters but they do linger in my mind, readily available whenever I choose to imagine.  My thanks to David Dortort for creating the Cartwright family.

Adam rode home and dismounted from Sport in front of the barn.   He was still in an angry mood.  It had been a scorcher of a day and he was dirty, tired and miserable.  He wouldn’t have had to put in such a long day if it hadn’t have been for Joe, that damned youngest brother of his.

Joe was fifteen.  He was supposed to be helping out on the ranch, just like Adam and Hoss had to nearly every day of their lives.   He was supposed to have been helping Hoss with mending fences in the morning and he was supposed to have been helping Adam and the ranch hands on the branding later.  That's what he was supposed to have been doing but was he there to help?  No.  Instead, Joe had deliberately caused a near free-for-all fight at breakfast, which led Ben to send his three sons in three different directions for the day.

As Adam entered the barn to bed down Sport, he noticed that Joe’s horse, Cochise, was not in her stall.  “Damn that little…” Adam muttered, “He still isn’t back from town.  Hoss and I will probably end up doing his evening chores, too.”

On top of being furious with Joe, Adam was also angry with his father for letting Joe get away with so much.  “What’s wrong with Pa that he puts up with this?  He didn’t let me get away with half of the things he lets Joe get away with.  Hoss neither.”  Adam continued to grumble to himself.

As Adam was rubbing down Sport, Hoss came into the barn.  Adam looked up and noticed that Hoss looked pretty tired too.  “So, did you get that fence mended?” Adam asked, knowing already that Hoss would have.  Good ole dependable Hoss.

Hoss sank down upon a sack of grain before answering.  “Shore, I did.  But I had to chase down about 20 cows, rope ‘em and drag ‘em back to the right side of the fence before I did.  Miserable, mean, no-good, stubborn, stupid animals,” complained the animal-loving Hoss.

If Adam hadn’t been feeling so sorry for himself, he might have had a little sorry left over for Hoss.  As it was, he just glanced at his middle brother and groaned, “Well, I guess your day wasn’t any better than mine and we can both thank our little brother for this one.”

In his angry state of mind, Adam jerked Sport’s bridle off the short wall of the stall where he had temporarily placed it.  The bridle caught on the edge of a board, then broke when it snapped loose.  Adam slammed the bridle down on the floor in exasperation.  He was just about at the end of his own rope.

He looked to where Hoss was sitting, then ground out his words.  “It’s a damned good thing Joe isn’t here.  If I had to deal with him right now, I think I’d just about beat his brains right out of his head.”

Hoss snickered a little, “Naw, that wouldn’t work.  Remember, we ain’t even sure he has one of those.”

The muscles in Adam’s jaw tightened as he retorted, “Fine, there’s another part of his anatomy that I wouldn’t mind beating.  Pa never seems to think of it.”

Adam snatched the bridle up from the floor and stepped into the tack room to find the tool he needed to mend it.  He started jerking things around on the small worktable at the far end of the room.  The tack room was a mess.  One more chore his little brother hadn’t gotten around to doing.  Adam couldn’t find the needle-nose pliers he needed.

He jerked open a small drawer in the worktable and started shoving things around inside the drawer looking for the tool.  He found the pliers at the back of the drawer and grabbed them to pull them out.  In the process, a small, round, blue object caught his eye.  Well, it was small and round all right, but it had so much oily grime on it that it only held the promise of blue.

Adam picked it up and rolled it around in his palm.  It was a marble.  A strange, far-away look flickered across his handsome face, then the corners of his mouth began to tug into the beginnings of a slight grin.  He rubbed the marble against his thigh, adding yet more grime to the existing grime on his jeans.

“Hey, Hoss,” he called, “Come here a minute.”

“Nah, you come ‘ere.  I’m sittin’ down.”

Adam snorted, then walked the seven strides from the tack room to where Hoss was sitting.

“Hoss, look at this.  I think this is one of the marbles I used to play with as a kid.  Do you remember me passing my bag of marbles on to you when you finally got old enough not to lose all of them in the first day?   Geez, Hoss, this brings back some memories.”

Then Adam felt a laugh beginning to work its way up his tall, lean frame, starting way down in his gut.  In fact, it felt like that laugh started way down in his toes.  He handed the marble to Hoss and watched closely for a reaction from his middle brother.

Hoss took the marble, puzzling over the reason for Adam’s laughter.  He turned the fat, blue marble over in his hand.  The marble was still deeply smudged with grime.  A slow flicker of remembrance then danced across Hoss’s wide, good-natured face, quickly followed by a huge face-splitting grin.

“Well, I’ll be dad-burned.  Don’t this take us back a few years?”

**********

Little Joe Cartwright, barely five years old, was playing at the large wooden coffee table in front of the huge, stone fireplace in the great room of the Cartwright home.  Playing wasn’t exactly a good description.  He had his toy soldiers spread out in front of him and he was jerkily moving them around on the coffee table, but the outward thrust of his lower lip did not give Hoss the impression that he was playing.   It seemed to Hoss that Little Joe more likely had revenge on his mind.

Hoss continued to move the checker pieces whenever it was his turn.  Adam had condescended to play checkers with him tonight and here Hoss was, completely unable to concentrate.  Not that he ever won against Adam anyway.

Hoss’s thoughts kept going over the incident that happened earlier in the evening.  It all started when Little Joe sneaked into Hoss’s room and took a bag of marbles that belonged to Hoss.

Technically, the boys were supposed to knock and get permission before entering each other’s bedrooms, but five-year-old Little Joe conveniently seemed unable to understand that.  He pretty much went where he wanted to go.  After putting Hoss’s bag of marbles in his pocket to play with later, he ran out of Hoss’s bedroom and skipped down the stairs.  Unfortunately, his foot missed the last step and he sprawled forward into the great room.  The bag of marbles in his pocket flew open and Little Joe watched in horror as marbles scattered, bounced, rolled, and skittered in all directions.

Little Joe was mad at himself for accidentally exposing to Hoss that he even had the stupid marbles.  Hoss was yelling that Little Joe had no right to be in his room and that he ‘stole’ the marbles.  Pa was yelling because Little Joe had scattered the marbles where people would be walking, for God’s sake.  Marie, Little Joe’s mother, quietly left the room as she had had enough for one day and was fast developing a headache.  Adam pinched the bridge of his nose and grimaced when all of the yelling began.  He had been trying to read a book and, not for the first time, found himself fervently wishing he had a dog in his life instead of brothers.

Hoss didn't know it yet but, when Pa furiously insisted that Little Joe pick up all of the marbles and return the bag to Hoss with an apology, Little Joe had managed to slip the biggest marble into his own pocket.  Later, after all the yelling and the storm of activity swirling around him had died down, Little Joe was rather proud of this accomplishment.  He didn’t know what he wanted to do with that marble yet, but there was no way he was going to give it back to Hoss.

The next morning at breakfast, nobody mentioned the marble incident and it was starting to look as if there might be a chance for a less argumentative day ahead.  Everyone was respectful to each other.  Nobody noticed that Little Joe was a little too respectful, especially to Hoss.  This was not a good sign.  Sure enough, Little Joe had figured out what he was going to do with Hoss’s marble and he couldn’t wait to go to the outhouse to execute his plan.

A short time later, Little Joe was able to slip out of the house and run to the two-holer outhouse.  He carefully held Hoss’s marble over one the holes and watched in fascination as the bright blue marble dropped through the hole and into the cauldron below.  Curious, he pinched his nose and moved his head above the hole to peek down.  The large, blue marble had landed on the very top of the heap and had then rolled off to one side a bit.  Little Joe giggled.

He peeked over the rim of the hole once more, but now he was completely taken aback by the blatant visibility of that marble.  The lumber that was used to build the outhouse years ago had been green lumber to start with and now those boards had shrunk significantly over the years.  Numerous small slivers of sunlight filtered between the boards into the interior of the outhouse.  That blue marble was now caught in one of those slivers of sunlight and it seemed to wink up at Little Joe.

As he continued to stare down at the marble, Little Joe became even more uncomfortably aware of just how bright, how blue, how big, and how visible that marble really was.   He began to have regrets.  In truth, he began to worry.  He had expected the marble to hide itself better than it was doing.  He figured that the marble would have plopped itself in deep enough that Hoss might not even have noticed it and then Little Joe would have the opportunity to gleefully point it out to him.

Little Joe really didn’t want Pa or Marie to discover that marble.  They would know right away who put it there.  He didn’t want Adam to discover it either.  Adam could be worse than Pa when it came to his youngest brother's misbehavior.

Little Joe pondered on the situation but soon came to the conclusion that there was just no way he could get that marble back out.  The hole was deep and he had nothing to poke the marble with.  His little nose involuntarily scrunched up at the very thought of poking in there with a stick.  He was starting to deeply regret that that stupid marble had not just stayed safely in his pocket where it belonged.

With trepidation, Little Joe once again looked down into the hole.  He was going to have to do something quickly.  He fully expected someone in his family would be in need of the outhouse soon.  It finally occurred to him that, if he could get the marble to roll a little further down the pile, it might sink from sight at its new location.   Little Joe giggled, unbuttoned the fly at the front of his pants, stepped up onto the small platform of wood at his feet, and took careful aim.

No luck.  He was out of ammo and the marble refused to roll.  Well, maybe he would get lucky and nobody would glance very far down into the hole.  He idly wondered if he was the only one who did that.   With tension drawing his little shoulders high, Little Joe exited the outhouse.  At this point, he no longer wanted Hoss to find the marble and he vowed that he would NEVER point it out to him.

Later in the day, there was a loud shout heard coming from the outhouse, followed by Hoss exiting the outhouse in a rage.  He had slammed open the outhouse door with such force that the door seemed in peril of parting ways with its hinges.  Hoss was livid and looked around frantically for the culprit.  He spotted Little Joe hiding behind the corner of the house and advanced on his little brother.

Moments later, Adam rushed out of the barn running as fast as he could toward the screams emanating from the outhouse.  “What the hell?” he muttered.  He was careful to keep this under his breath as he ran because Pa had definite ideas regarding any of his sons using swear words.  He glanced back over his shoulder to make sure that he was the only one making tracks for the outhouse.

When Adam got to the outhouse, he simply could not believe what was happening.  Hoss was dangling Little Joe upside down by his legs and was trying to stuff Little Joe headfirst down the hole.  Hoss’s face was red, he was breathing hard, and he was yelling something to Little Joe that sounded like, “You get down there and you pick it up.”  Little Joe was kicking as best he could and flailing his arms over the hole, desperately trying to thwart Hoss’s efforts.

Adam quickly decided that Hoss was deadly serious.  Hoss was a very large boy and was perfectly capable of stuffing his much younger and much smaller brother down the outhouse hole if he so chose.  Adam jumped into what little space remained in the outhouse and tried to separate the two.  Hoss was having none of that.  Good-natured, placid, kind-hearted Hoss was full of rage.  He merely leaned in hard, keeping Little Joe away from any attempts by Adam to rescue him.

If Hoss should decide to throw a punch in Adam’s direction, there was every possibility that he could lose his precarious hold on Little Joe, with disastrous results.  With this in mind, Adam decided it was best to back off.  He then tried to reason with Hoss but gave that up almost as soon as he began.  Hoss was cruising on pure adrenalin and was beyond the reach of mere words.  Beyond the reach of words from Adam, anyway.   With the sound of Little Joe screaming and sobbing at the same time, Adam frantically dashed off in search of their father.

******

Adam and Hoss came out of their reverie just as they heard the sound of Little Joe finally returning from town, riding his horse too fast as usual.  Hoss stood up from his comfortable grain sack, quietly slipped his work glove on, and carefully took the marble back from Adam again.  Adam cocked his eyebrow when he noticed a slight gleam in Hoss’s eye.  He wondered what Hoss had in mind for their little brother.  He took half a step backward to give Hoss a little more space.

Little Joe walked into the barn leading Cochise but stopped when he spotted Adam and Hoss standing there.  He knew they would have something to say about him getting out of harder work today.  Adam would anyway.  Hoss looked pleasant enough.

Hoss sauntered over to Little Joe and smiled in a friendly way.  He held out his hand as if to give Little Joe something.  Joe automatically reached out to let whatever was in Hoss’s hand fall into his own.  Joe looked down at the marble resting in the palm of his hand, then shot a quizzical look at Hoss’s face.

Hoss grinned, “Joe, do you remember me giving you my bag of marbles years ago when you were finally old enough not to lose ‘em all in the first day?”

Joe paused briefly, then nodded that he remembered.

Hoss looked into Joe’s eyes and continued, “I realize that you probably lost all of the other marbles I gave you but I thought you might like to have the particular marble that’s in your hand.  Joe, do you remember this particular marble?”

Joe glanced at the marble again then shook his head, “Nope.  Except for it being filthy, what’s so special about this marble?”

Hoss leaned in further toward Joe and took Joe’s hand in his own large mitt and gently folded Joe’s fingers snugly around the marble.

Hoss’s voice was soft and velvety.  “Do you remember throwing my favorite marble down the outhouse when you were a kid?  You must have been, maybe, five years old?”

Joe thought a minute and then grinned.  He did remember.  The memory was vague, but he did remember that awful day.   Then a suspicious look passed over his face.  He jerked his arm away from Hoss only to find his curled-up fist effectively trapped within the confines of Hoss’s large mitt.

Hoss nodded his head in the direction of Joe’s hand and continued to speak in his slow, laconic manner, “I never told you this before but I managed to get that marble out of the outhouse.  Don’t ask me how I did it because you really don’t want to know.  I wanted to put that marble, dirt and all, in amongst your toys or something to get back at you.  Pa caught me before I could do it though.”

Hoss continued, “Well, little brother, that was a long, long time ago and I thought I was over that little prank of yours.  Turns out I was wrong.  Uh...Pa isn’t back from checking the herd at the South pasture yet tonight so he can’t stop me from giving that marble to you now.  For keeps, Joe.”

After watching Joe struggle for a while to retrieve his hand, Hoss finally opened his own hand and released Joe.  Joe furiously threw the marble to the floor of the barn.

Adam and Hoss left the barn with their arms crossed over each other’s shoulder and bumping into each other with laughter as they walked.  The sound of their laughter drifted easily back to Joe.  Adam finally managed to stop laughing for a moment.

“Lord, Hoss, that was great.  You have no idea how much I needed that!  You know, I’m not nearly as tired as I thought I was.  How about we ride into Virginia City?  I’d like to treat my middle brother to a few beers.  Then we could have a couple more beers and go howl at the moon.”

Hoss was quick to nod in agreement, then they both burst into laughter again.

Before they reached the front door of the house, Adam stopped.  He couldn’t help himself.  He needed to know.

“Hoss, did you really dig that marble out of the outhouse later?  That isn’t really the same marble, is it?  Please tell me that isn’t the same marble.”

Hoss gave Adam the strangest look, then suddenly flung his head back and laughed harder than ever.  He had expected to fool Little Joe, but to unwittingly catch Adam in his snare as well had made this a rare, sweet day.

When he thought that Adam had squirmed long enough, Hoss slapped him on the back and said through lingering bursts of laughter, "Course that wasn't the same marble.  'Sides, Adam, you got the wrong brother.  Did’ja think I was ever small enough to fit down that little, bitty hole?” 

THE END

November, 2002

Revised:  January, 2004