Paid in Full

10:30 p.m., October 25, 1875, Virginia City, Nevada

            "How long has it been since you and I hooked a boot heel over the same bar rail?" Joe Cartwright asked but honestly didn't expect his brother to answer him. Adam was already hoisting his beer mug and drinking in long swallows. Joe lifted his own heavy mug and sipping, letting the beer wash down his throat.

            "How long has it been since you offered to buy?" Adam quipped back, setting his now empty glass on the polished bar of the Bucket of Blood and signaling for another.

            Joe eyed his brother over the rim. He lowered the mug and let the beer swirl around in his mouth before he swallowed it. "I'm only buying the first one!"

            Adam smiled broadly then lifted his second beer in a silent toast. "That's not what I recall you saying!"

            "You boys in town for the big doin's up to the Opera House?" Cosmo asked as he pulled Joe another beer even though Joe hadn't asked for it.

            The word 'boys' made Adam's shoulders twitch. Looking at himself and his brother in the mirror over the back of the bar, he thought "boys" would have been the last word used for them. Joe's hair was a wild torrent of gray even though his face still showed some youthful lines. Adam, on the other hand, with his neatly trimmed beard heavily sprinkled with gray, kept his graying locks under his dark hat. The ends were the only telltale sign of what hid beneath and those laid close to his neck, all but hidden by his shirt collar. No, he thought as he looked at their reflection, they were men in their prime. Okay, maybe he was creeping out of the "prime" stage but Joe was still firmly entrenched there, he considered. And as long as he could keep up with his brother, Adam would consider himself the same.

            "No, we just got in on the late train from Reno. Been away on business. If junior here," and he threw a thumb in Joe's direction, "hadn't gotten involved in a card game, we would have made the early one and been home by now! Why, what's going on up to Piper's?"

            Cosmo paused in his wiping of the mahogany. "There a play up there with gals that…well, that Adah Menken when she come through years ago-- 'member her? Well, these gals got on less that she had!" Throughout his discourse, the bartender's voice had dropped lower and lower until at the end, he was nearly whispering.

            Joe looked around him. Besides the two cowboys playing poker, he and Adam were the only ones there. "Cosmo, why you whisperin'?" he asked, only to see Cosmo color from the tight collar of his shirt upwards. "Besides, ain't it a little late to be getting to the show?"

            The bartender gave Joe a dirty look and eased down the bar, still wiping furiously at unseen marks on the planks. Both of the Cartwrights laughed.

            "Well, I think I'll get a room for the night. Head home in the morning. How about you?" Adam asked as Joe tossed down the requisite payment for their drinks.

            "Sounds like a good idea."

            Stepping through the swinging doors, the cold blast of wind from the west reminded them that it would soon be winter.

            "Brr!" Joe blurted out and pulled his jacket collar up higher. "Yeah, I think you got a right smart idea, big brother. Hole up some place warm until the morning. International?"

            Adam chewed on his lip a moment as he too hunched into his coat. "You buying?"

            Joe rolled his eyes at his brother.

            "I mean after all, you won that last hand of poker…" Off into the night the two went, happy to be home, or nearly there.

            The two rooms they took at the International Hotel were on the top floor with an adjoining door. Adam had no more than dropped into his bed before he heard the snores coming from the room next door. He shook his head. His brother never failed to surprise him, falling asleep that quickly. As for Adam, he found himself gazing at the ceiling and remembering other times when they had not been so cordial with one another. Tempers had flared on both of their parts too many times and they had butted heads like two billygoats way too often. But first and foremost, they were brothers. While Adam had been gone for many years, his baby brother had grown into a man. When he'd returned, he found that man to be much of the same as the youth he had left: fun-loving, yes, but with a maturity he hadn't had before. Quick tempered, yes, but it was hardened now into a steadiness Joe had not previously been known for. This brother, Adam recalled thinking, was the brother he had always hoped Joe would become. And he had. Together now, they ran the Ponderosa with their father retired to the wings, watching. Was this what his father had hoped for his sons to become too? Adam smiled into the night then sobered. Probably had been his father's dream but his father had included Hoss in it as well.

            Hoss, Adam thought. How long had he been gone? Too many years for Adam sometimes, the memory faded and frayed at the edges. Too few sometimes as he still felt the loss too poignantly. He rolled over and pulled the blanket up over his shoulder. There were times, like tonight, when he missed his middle brother and longed to hear that big friendly voice chastising Joe while it wheedled more of whatever it was out of Adam. Hoss sometimes had his own brand of logic and Adam would ultimately give in to it, if only because of the way it was delivered: sincerely and truthfully, without guile.

            He smiled into the dark. Tomorrow morning he would ride out to his brother's grave and have a talk with him. It had been too long since he'd done that.

6 a.m. October 26, 1875, Virginia City, Nevada

            He inhaled deeply and the smell of something burning caught his attention. Adam's eyes snapped open and looked through the early dawn gloom of the room, searching for the source. Still groggy with sleep, he fought to shake the cobwebs away as he stumbled to his window and drew back the drapes. There seemed to be a good many people running in one direction but from what he could see, there was no cause for alarm. He was about to go back to bed when Joe burst into his room through the joint doorway. Out the window behind Joe, Adam could see a bright orangish glow.

            "There's fire on the back street, Adam. It's moving pretty quickly."

            Adam dressed quickly, stomping into his boots as Joe nervously paced between the two rooms, keeping up a running commentary as the flames leapt from building to building. Together the brothers went down the stairs, springing over landings and pushing by other hotel guests who had gathered in the hallways.

Once out onto the streets, they paused. The flow of people was so immense going in the opposite direction that the volunteer fire department, of which the city was justifiably proud, was having difficulty getting through. Behind the brothers as they stood on the wide plank walkway, the sound of ringing church bells combined with hoarse shouts to make a cacophony of sound.

"We can't get to the livery, Joe," Adam shouted to be heard and saw Joe nod in agreement.

Joe gestured towards where one of the hand-pulled water-pumpers was being hampered from getting up the street. The rushing crowd would not part and let it by and the four men, volunteer firemen, struggling with it were being pushed further from their goal. "They need help!" Joe shouted and before Adam could react and grab his brother's arm, Joe had gone into the fray and was bodily moving people aside. Adam had no choice but to follow.

Together they helped the volunteers get the pumper up the side street. There a wall of flame greeted them. As the flames licked at the brick wall of the International, Adam had a strange sensation flow over him. Where he had slept the night before, the room he had left not five minutes before, was going up in smoke. He shook himself, forcing himself to look away. In that brief moment, Joe had disappeared. Adam turned one way and then the other, searching, but he caught no sight of him.

He went with the firemen as they backed slowly down the steep street, retreating from the fire a grudging step at a time. When they reached C Street, Adam left them, swept away by the running tide of people. He managed to regain his freedom down towards J.J. Cooper's stable but turning back to look at where he had come was like turning back to see Sodom and Gomorrah burning. Like Lot's wife, he felt himself turning to stone. The flames, driven by a westerly wind, now danced as though they were of Hell itself. They raced through buildings, not caring if the building was brick or wood. It didn't seem to matter. As Adam stood transfixed, the fire jumped Taylor Street and used it to leap to below D Street. The inferno claimed the Catholic Church and as Adam listened, the bells stopped ringing but he only knew this because he saw the steeple crumble.

All around him, people flowed by, in their hands what they could possibly carry of their possessions. Their faces, some soot covered, others white with fear, were all turned away from the city; their voices, a constant babble of shouts and curses all claiming the same thing over and over: Nothing could be done to stop it. The fire would have to burn itself out. The rising pall of smoke attested that they might have been right.

He was about to turn and go with the flood of people when he saw across the street that Joe was with one of the fire companies, battling the blaze that threatened the Post Office. Across the heads of the people, their eyes met and Adam saw Joe smile at him then waved his arm, telling Adam that he needed his help. He wasted no time but plunged into the mob, almost swimming across to his brother.

Joe's teeth shone white against his soot covered face, his hair matted. With one arm, he pushed his hair out of the way and with the other, caught hold of Adam and pulled him to stand beside him.

"Come on," Joe shouted.

Adam followed and found himself running through the hot air back towards the center of town. Here they found fewer people but more buildings were on fire, the roar almost deafening. He wondered if perhaps Joe had taken leave of his senses then he knew where Joe was headed: the mines. If the fire reached the mouths of the mines, the men below, oblivious to what was happening above ground, would surely be killed. The overheated air would find the shaft openings and plunge downward. Those men would have no chance. As Adam and Joe pressed through rising smoke and dodged falling walls, he could see that they were not alone. One of the engine companies was also headed towards the Ophir.

But the mines would be spared, apparently, as the men had been brought up from the lower levels at the first flames. The Virginia Consolidated had a quick breastwork thrown up and the men were throwing tailings and dirt over it. At the Ophir, the cages were pushed down the shafts and the openings blocked but at the Gould and Curry, the closest of the mines, the men had simply scattered and as the engine company and the Cartwright brothers came even with it, the hoists caught fire. The mills below where they stood on the mountainside, burned as well, the fire dancing and cackling along the flumes and tracks like a strange maniacal beast turned loose on the world.

One of the firemen offered Adam a drink he took then handed the canteen to his brother.

"Stay with us," the man pleaded. "Half our men couldn't get to the station house. We need men. Strong men like you two. Please?"

When the small group of men left, carrying their picks and axes over their shoulders, Adam and Joe went with them. Neither brother had spoken a word to the other. They just did what they thought they needed to do. Back down into the raging inferno that had once been their town, they went. Now they not only fought the fire but looters as well, drawing their pistols and threatening. Most of the time, the thief laid down what he had, backed away then turned and ran. Only once did they shoot and that was to put a trapped horse out of its misery. A hand pumper was struggling in front of the Opera House that the group stopped to help. One man pressed his axe into Joe's hand and shoved him towards a wall. Joe understood: make a hole for the water to enter. He shouted for Adam who now hefted a pick and together they attacked the brick wall that gave off heat like an oven. Shoulder to shoulder they again and again swung into the wall.

Adam saw the first brick begin to shake and a part of him threw out a warning to the rest of him. The wall was going to collapse. He had less than a second but in that available time, he grabbed Joe's arm and tried to move backwards, away from the wall. With a groan that seemed to overwhelm them both, the wall began its fiery descent. And Adam knew they were too late but he continued to pull at Joe even when he saw the bricks begin to fall, striking them both. He fell and Joe fell beside him.

Then he knew nothing.

There were hands reaching for him and Joe was calling his name. Adam pushed at the ground and rose to his hands and knees. When he lifted his head he was surprised to find that they were not on the street in Virginia City with the fire raging around them. No, they were in the front yard of the Ponderosa. All around him was silence, a strange pregnant silence. He continued to rise, with Joe's help, until he stood upright. But something was wrong, terribly wrong and Adam felt a sharp jab of panic.

"Do you know where we are?" Joe asked softly. "I do. I've been here before Adam. Remember what I told you a long time ago?"

Adam looked around, taking it all in. They stood within a circle of brassy colored light that seemed to originate from nowhere. The circle barely touched the front porch and going the opposite way, didn't reach to the barn. Beyond the boundaries of light, he could sense nothing. He took stock of himself and his brother. Neither of them showed any sign of their morning. He looked at his clothes, finding them clean and as though they had just been pressed. Joe, his hair combed and his jacket laying easy across his shoulders, just smiled into his brother's questioning face. Adam felt a weariness leaning down on him and he had the undeniable urge just to sink back into the dust at their feet.

"I've been here before, Adam. There's nothing to be afraid of," Joe spoke yet Adam didn't see his lips move. Joe's eyes were bright yet Adam could sense the tiredness there in the lines that seemed to deepen as he watched.

"What do we do?" Adam thought and heard his words aloud as if he had spoken them.

"Remember what I told you about thinking I had died and come back? This was it, Adam." Joe's voice, haunting with its familiar sound, washed over Adam.

"So we're dead?"

Joe nodded but neither man felt anything other than fatigued and spent. "All we have to do is walk into the dark and it's over. Come on, we can do it together. For once, Adam Cartwright, you can follow me."

"NO!" a third voice joined theirs. Adam could just make out a figure, a large figure of a man on the edge of the darkness. With his head hung down and his hands jammed into his pockets, he stood there, shaking his head. "Ain't time yet. Fer neither of ya's so you just head back."

The joy that emanated from Joe seemed to brighten the pool of light. Adam, too, knew the man, the voice. It was Hoss. He wanted to walk over and slap the other on the shoulder, cuff him along side his head as he had when they were children and Hoss had done something of which Adam didn't approve. But now, in this place, he was happy yet at the same time, wanting to cry in sorrow.

"You heard me. Go on back. I done talked some up here and made them see that the two of you still got somethin' to do. Go on now. Do like I told you. I've taken care of things. Ever'thin's paid up," Hoss' voice fussed at them, his gossamer hands shooing them from the edge of the darkness.

Adam stood dumbfounded as the vision faded before them and silence weighed heavily upon them both. He turned to Joe, feeling the soul being ripped from his brother and with a firm hand gripped around his brother's arm, stopped Joe from running into the darkness.

"Look, Joe," his thoughts urged and Joe turned to see what Adam had seen.

On the porch stood their father, reaching for them, his gentle deep voice now calling their names, begging them to come back to him. Sorrow weighed down his shoulders, too.

"You heard what Hoss said. We still have something we need to do. Come on Joe."

"For a while," Joe whispered and turned to look over his shoulder into the waiting darkness. Adam's hand crept across those shoulders and held his brother to his side as he walked towards the porch………………

Noon, November 1, 1875, Virginia City Nevada

He awoke coughing. He would have fallen but hands pressed him back into the bed and supported him as he struggled to clear his lungs. Weakened by it, Adam Cartwright had no fight and he allowed himself to be resettled. He recognized the hand wiping something cool across his forehead. He didn't need to hear his father asking him to drink. For some reason, maybe it was the experience he'd had with Joe, he just knew that his father would be there when he awoke. And he was right.

"That's it, little sips," his father encouraged, holding the glass in one hand as he supported his son's head in the other. Adam did as his father asked and sip by sip, emptied the glass. He let his father lay his head back onto the linen-covered pillow and even smiled when he felt the work-gnarled hand brush across his forehead. In return, he saw his father smile, the lines around his tired eyes disappearing for the moment.

"You're gonna be all right, son," Ben said, and Adam had no choice but to believe him. "Took a wallop on the head. Got yourself a couple of burns, some ribs busted but you'll be all right."

"Joe?" Adam asked, surprised to find his voice a mere strained croak.

Ben shifted on the bed beside Adam. There behind his father, he could see Joe reclining as well on another bed. As he studied his brother's form, he saw the bandaged chest rise and fall.

"Like you, banged up some but alive."

"Alive," Adam repeated the single word and lapsed back into restful sleep.

Twilight, November 15, 1875

"Did you see the list of businesses burned? Fills two columns of the Enterprise. Even though the Enterprise was burnt, they go right on printing the news!" Joe chirped, his bandaged fingers clumsily turning the pages of the paper.

"Lot of people gonna be out of work because of those mines shutting down," Adam remarked. He sat at his father's desk, a pen grasped awkwardly between two fingers. Like Joe, his hands were bandaged but there was something he had to do so he had wedged the pen through the wrappings.

"Guess so," Joe responded. "What are you doin' over there? Seems to me that you'd want to get away from some of that book work."

"Just something I felt I needed to do. Joe," Adam let his words drop to a barely audible level, "when the wall collapsed on us…then we were-"

"I don't want to talk about it, Adam!" Joe hissed and angrily threw down the newspaper.

Adam was taken aback by Joe's response, his vehemence. "Why not? Joe, I need to know if what I felt, what I saw, what I heard was real. Or did I just imagine it?"

One of Joe's hands flew up and brushed at the side of his face. For some reason, Adam knew he was crying and he knew why as well. As close as he and Joe had become since he had returned home, his younger brothers had shared a closeness he could never have had. What Joe had just done proved that what he'd experienced in the yard had been real. And that the closeness Joe and Hoss had had over the years was still there for his youngest brother.

"Okay. I won't ask again," Adam soothed and for a while the only sounds in the great room were his scratching pen and Joe's uneven breathing.

"You writing in your journal about the fire?" Joe finally asked, noting the bound pages before Adam on the desktop.

"Kind of," Adam answered but didn't look up. "Actually I am just doing a little editing on something I wrote years ago."

Putting aside any lingering emotion, Joe stood and limped to where Adam sat. He was surprised to see not one of the leather and gilt-edged volumes that Adam usually wrote his thoughts in. No, this one was older, the cloth covered boards frayed. Instantly, Joe recognized it. Right after Adam had returned home, rustlers had caught them and nearly killed his oldest brother as he'd tried to save Joe's life. At home, with Adam still struggling to survive, their father had shown him something Adam had written years before. The haunting phrases still clung to his mind, the images of the Fates measuring and cutting threads that were men's lives. And the pleading of one brother that they spare the other. The last lines had remained with him:

"…But do not ask again, for this is Time

Only borrowed and must be repaid..."

            "Adam?" Joe asked softly and his brother looked up at him. "This time…here..in the yard…in the light. I wanted to go. It was him that stopped us both, wasn't it?"

            He could see the bright tears in the green eyes across from him and again Adam felt the oldest brother urge to protect the younger brother. "Yes," he whispered. "I wanted to go, too. I wanted to sit down with him, talk with him, just be with him again." His voice cracked at the last word.

            "But you heard what he said, same as me. And you made me listen to it. He said he'd taken care of things there for us." Like Adam, Joe's voice broke and stumbled, rising and falling with each heartbeat.

            "He said we still had something to do, remember?"

            Both of them smiled, recalling not just the words but the way they were spoken, so sure and in command by a man long since gone from them yet the voice had been his.

            "Wonder what it is?" Joe asked, a hand dashing across a cheek to hide the track of a tear.

            "Don't know," Adam replied, so low Joe had to strain to hear him. Then he picked up the pen and dipped it again into the inkwell. He crossed out what he had written and in his bold hand began again.

Within her grasp she held

Three threads that were their lives.

One black with many knots;

One green with places frayed

But curling in about and through ran a blue.

Wrapped round them both in places; in others, only one

But always it was there, that cord of shimmering blue.

So Atropos untangled it and pulled it to her shears.

She cut the blue and to her sister, gave the ends.

Clotho took them, the blue and black, the blue and green

And spun them again into full lengths.

"Because there was love, I did as I was asked.

Though now there are but two.

The Debt unto the Tapestry of Life

Shall now be marked Paid in full."

            When he finished, he handed the book to Joe and walked away. With shaking, clumsy hands, he poured two glasses of brandy and went to stand before the fireplace. In a few minutes, Joe joined him and accepted one of the glasses.

            "I never thought of it that way, Adam. Why he died so early in life."

            Adam took a swallow of the brandy and let it burn down his throat. "Sounds very cavalier to say that the gods wanted one of us but maybe it's true."

            "And they chose Hoss?" The whisper was full of doubt.

            Straightening, Adam looked into the flames and paused before he answered. "No, Hoss chose. Not like a sacrifice but like a …" He couldn't pull his thoughts into line as the pain crept into his heart again.

            "Like a gift," Joe answered.

            The older brother nodded his head once.

Sipping his brandy, Joe smiled. "That's what we still have to do then. Figure out the best way to use his gift."

Carefully, remembering that one of Joe's shoulders had been hurt in the accident, Adam draped an arm across his brother back. "I'm still working on that, little brother." He smiled into the flames. The gift Hoss had given them, Adam knew what it was: each other.

FINIS

Historical footnote: The fire briefly described here did occur. While the whole of the business section of 1875's Virginia City burned, and three mines were closed for a time following it, there were only two people killed. But the impact on the economy was devastating with the figures of the loss estimated in 1875 dollars to be between seven and ten million. The list of places burned did indeed fill two columns of the Territorial Enterprise as the burned area encompassed nearly ninety percent of the downtown area. Many buildings presumed to be fire-safe were consumed right along with their lesser neighbors. Explosions ripped through the town and were felt as far away as Dayton (five miles distant). One of the buildings that exploded was Piper's Opera House. The depiction here of the fire and the reaction of the population is true.

The Tahoe Ladies

April to May 2003