Forward:

This is a collaboration by four otherwise intelligent women who decided to write the real story behind it all.  You see, we discovered what the Ponderosa really needed: women. Not “girls”, not “ladies” but women. Flesh and blood, strong and reliable women. Women who could hold their own either with a gun, a horse or an argument. and wouldn’t be shoved into the background (or the kitchen) just because the “menfolk” were there.  And, we knew that these women had to be just as passionate as they were tough. After all, if all the cowboys kissed their horses, how did we populate the West?  When we started to flesh out our Ponderosa women in discussion, we argued amongst ourselves about what they would have to be like, physically as well as personality-wise.
And this is that story.  It is dedicated to our fathers, our husbands, our lovers but most importantly, to our sons
 

    When she came to Virginia City, she'd had no idea just what she wanted from her life and Nevada wasn’t planned to be her final destination. It just happened that it was for a very simple reason: she was out of money.  She had pawned nearly all the valuables she had just to get that far. Now that money was gone. And she had one thing left. That she might have trouble replacing it later, she considered, but right then and there she was hungry, tired and cold.

    So upon leaving the stage platform, she inquired as to the whereabouts of the nearest doctor.  The gentleman who gave her directions had leered at her because even as tired and travel-worn as she was, she was still a beautiful woman. To dispel the notion he might have had that she was also a weak woman, she picked up her bags once more and headed down the street, fully aware the man was still following her with his eyes.
 

    Doctor Paul Martin was just finishing with his patient that morning when he heard the outer office door open and close.

    “You know Ben, those boys of yours could have taken care of that wood,” he admonished as he helped the older man get his vest back on.  Two weeks ago, his friend Ben Cartwright had badly sprained his back while chopping wood and it was only with a great deal of effort on his sons’ part that he had come to see the doctor at all.

    “Paul, I’ll remind you again that I am not an old man.  I can still chop wood!” Ben Cartwright admonished and it sounded to Paul Martin as though he was a bit touchy concerning the whole incident. But then of course, the doctor still didn’t know all the details. He did know however that Ben was still threatening to take a stick of that chopped wood to his son Joseph for something said about “getting on in years.”

    “Well, you still need to take it easy for another week or so. Give your muscles time to heal before you start taking Joe on.  Considering how that young man has filled out in the last few years, you may want to think real hard about taking him on at all! That is if I were you,” the doctor cautioned. He still remembered the tiny fussy little boy who had lost his mother much too young and grew up in the shadows of big men, over -protected and rebellious. He had watched that youngest of Ben’s sons grow up and was surprised from time to time how much the devilish young man had changed over the years and not just in physical appearances. But emotional ones too. The feistiness was still there but the death of his beloved brother Hoss followed by the loss of his wife Alice so soon after they married had tempered the flame.

    Ben just snorted. “ I can still handle my son!  Now how much do I owe you?” Ben half bellowed as the two old friends stepped out of the inner room together.

The young woman waiting there turned at the sound of their voices. Although she wasn’t really all that tall she carried herself like she was: head up, shoulders back.  Unlike the other ladies of her day, she wore no hat or bonnet, so one of the first things both men saw was her auburn hair, which fell nearly to her waist, held back only by a ribbon at the nape of her neck. And her worn traveling clothes couldn’t hide her full figure. But what took their full attention were her eyes. Blue, so blue it was like looking into the ocean, and they were flashing angrily right then.

    “My apologies, ma’am.  I am not usually given to staring at pretty ladies but, in your case, I am afraid I may have to make an exception,” the bigger of the men said to her when she caught him staring at her. She'd had a remark about manners on her lips ready to hurl but was taken aback when he made the apology.

    “Yes miss, what can I do for you?” Doc Martin stepped up to try and diffuse the situation quickly.  Every red head he had ever known had a quick temper and judging from the set of this one’s expression, she was no different.

    “I wonder if we can make a deal, sir. I've an excellent surgeon's traveling kit here I am willing to part with for some ready cash. Say, oh, twenty dollars?”

    Ben and Doc Martin both were looking at the leather bound kit together, the doctor in awe.  He had seen only one like it, in San Francisco and knew they usually went for much more than twenty dollars. Suspicion grew quickly in the doctor’s mind.

    “Where did you get this, miss?” he asked, thinking it might have been stolen from a colleague.

    Lifting her chin again, she said, “I am a surgeon. Doctor Honor Whitaker," and she put her hand out. Martin shook her hand and found some strength there. “I assure you that it is mine to sell. I seem to have fallen on a spate of bad luck and as such, am forced to part with it.”

    “Well, I don’t know...” Paul seemed to hesitate, wanting the kit but also knowing what it took to part with something like that. As a doctor, the last things he would have wanted to part with were his instruments.

    The other man spoke up. “You're a real doctor?” and when she nodded, continued by saying, “Seems to me that you could do better for yourself if you kept your tools and went to work somewhere you were needed.”

    “Would that this were so, sir! But it is obvious, at least to me, that this town has a fine physician all ready. My decision is not an easy one to make,” she explained, with fingers crossed behind her back that the questions and doubts would cease.

    “I don't make too many snap decisions, miss, but I think I'll make one right here and now. I'll buy it from you under one condition: that you stay here and work with Doc Martin. He needs help and if you are what you say you are, you would be doing this town a service.”

    Paul Martin was a bit taken aback by what had just been said. Yes, there were times when he needed help but he couldn’t afford an assistant. What was Ben trying to do to him? And he said so right out loud.

    “Now, just think on it Paul. How many times in the past have you wanted someone to give you a hand?”

        The woman reached out and collected the kit as the two men started arguing. If the big man had stayed out of it she would have the money right now and be headed towards a meal. As it was, her head was reeling from hunger and she felt hollow. The men didn’t even notice her as she headed towards the door; they were so intent on their argument.

    They did notice when she slumped to the floor.  Exhaustion and lack of food had caught up with Doctor Honor Whitaker and she found she could go no further.

    It was late afternoon when she came to herself. There was the doctor across the room from her and when he heard her move, came towards her with a cup in his hands.

    “Drink this,” was his order and she sipped the sugar water, grateful for something to possibly stop the pounding in her head.

    “You weren’t stretching the truth one bit about a run of hard luck, were you?” The doctor looked at his patient critically as he took her wrist and felt for her pulse. Good, steady, strong. “Does your head hurt? How about your shoulders? “ As he spoke, he moved his hands expertly over her, looking for other signs of possible injury. There were none.

    “I seemed to have troubled you more than I expected, sir. I apologize,” she said, true remorse in her shaky voice. “I have no money to pay for your services so why don’t you just keep the kit?” She tried to push her way around him and stand but he shoved her back onto the cot.

    “It isn’t going to work that easily for you, Doctor Whitaker.  If you were really a doctor, you would take up the offer and stay here.  I need help badly. This town needs another doctor badly.  If you don’t want to stay and work with me, that isn’t a problem either. I will understand, I think,” he said, pulling a blanket over her chest.

    “But I have no means of…” she started to get up again but again he stopped her.

    “That has been all taken care of, Doctor Whitaker. The man who was here earlier, Ben Cartwright is his name; well, he is a patient of mine upon occasion. When he left here, he overpaid me. Now I could have chased him down but I think he would have rather I used the extra to make sure that you have a good meal and a good night’s sleep.”

Paul started explaining but by the time he had finished with his speech, she was again asleep, not having heard all of it, only up until she heard the name of her benefactor: Ben Cartwright.

    “That laudanum took long enough to work,” the other doctor said grumpily, turning back to his inventory to put the bottle back.

    She awoke the next morning to clear and bright sunshine.  And the smell of food as a tray had been left beside her with a pot of coffee.  There was no one about so she pulled it over to her and ate with relish, sitting up in the bed and enjoyed, for the moment, the wonderful feelings it all brought to her. She was into her second cup of coffee when she heard footsteps coming and Doctor Martin stepped into the little room he had moved her into the night before.

    “Well, Doctor Whitaker, you are taking on a better look to your cheeks this morning,” he said brightly, picking up her hand to take her pulse. He knew that she was fine but had the overwhelming urge to just touch her, she had looked so angelic, sleeping.

    This time she had the strength to pull back her hand when he held it longer than she thought necessary. “Yes and I think that I shall be going on my way, sir”

    The other doctor was more than just a bit crestfallen. He would try once more. “Please reconsider.”  He put as much pleading into his voice as he dared. One look at her convinced him that she would not. What demons were chasing her? he wondered.    “Well then,” he sighed and from his vest pocket, he took a twenty dollar gold piece and put it into her hand.

    She got up from the bed and dressed after he left the room. Down the steps, she found him at his desk in the small front office, waiting.  She set the physician's kit at his elbow.

    “No,” he corrected, putting the handle back into her hand.

    “But the twenty dollars…” she stammered.

    “The twenty dollars came from Ben Cartwright.  He said to give it to you when you decided to leave and for you to keep the kit.  He knows the value of good tools in competent hands”. What Paul Martin didn’t tell her was that Ben had also offered to pay his “assistant’s” salary for a year should she decide to stay.

    For a long moment, she looked at the gold piece in her hand, thinking that it had been a long time since someone had been this kind to her without wanting something in return. But she didn’t want to take charity from this stranger and would return the money.

With that thought, Honor Whitaker spoke seven fateful words: “Where do I find this Mr. Cartwright?”

    On her borrowed horse, Honor was able to easily follow the doctor’s directions to the Ponderosa where he had told her she would find her benefactor. It was a bright early autumn day and the crisp air made her feel good. The breakfast hadn’t hurt either she reasoned with herself.  Once she had returned the money and the horse she would find another way to get on her way.  It wasn’t as if she had to go anywhere, she just didn’t know if Virginia City was where she wanted to stop. She tried to lay it off on her restless nature, this desire to push on but as she rode on, the beauty of the land and mountains around her gave her a peace that she hadn’t felt in a long time. Instead of fighting it, she let that peace flow through her. She decided it wouldn't hurt, at least for the moment.

    When she crested that last rise, she looked beyond the sloping valley floor and up to the magnificent log home that graced the opposite side. Mentally, she compared the house to the fleeting image she remembered of the man she had but briefly met the afternoon before: Strong and solid looking.  And considering what he had done for a total stranger, wealthy to boot? Maybe , she thought as she chastised herself for being so shallow, he was just a kind man.

    As she rode past the lower corrals, she looked at the horses there. The cattle over in the adjoining meadow were not the ordinary long legged ugly steers she had seen on her way west but white faced Herefords. Upon getting closer to the house, she decided that perhaps what she should do is simply thank the man for his generosity and keep the money as he obviously had it.

    So she had her mind made up when she dismounted in the yard, walked up to the massive door and lifted the knocker. It sounded loud in this tranquil setting but when no one answered the first time, she did it a second time.

 And still no one answered.

So she opened the door and stepped in and was surprised by what she saw: the great stone fireplace, the massive walnut furnishings, the rich carpeting on the floor and the huge dining room table with its white cloth. The smells coming from the kitchen made her mouth water.

    “I had a feeling you would be here today,” came the baritone voice right behind her and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

He put out a steadying hand to her shoulder, which she simply glared at. Thinking it was better to keep the hand, he pulled it back onto his hip.

    “I came to return the twenty dollars Doctor Martin said you had given him on my behalf.  Thank you, sir, but that was not the deal I was willing to make with him. Or you for that matter.” Digging in the ragged pocket of her skirt, she found the piece. She stepped up closer to him, pulled his hand out and slapped it into it. “Now good day, sir.”

    And out the door she went, mounted the now tired horse and trotted from the yard, back towards town.

 Ben had no idea what to make of her. She obviously needed the money. Or at least a job. Yet there she stood, barely chest high to him, fierce as could be, red hair flying and blue eyes blazing, saying “no.”  It suddenly struck him where he had seen that sort of stubborn streak before.  He had raised him and called him Joseph.

Out on the road, Honor was now angry with herself. She hadn’t meant to do that. I had been the plan to just take the money graciously, say "thank you" and leave.  Her temper had flared, why, she didn’t know, for the man had been most kind. Beyond that, the smell of the food was tantalizing; the warmth of the fire blazing welcoming.  Maybe what had angered her so was his comment about knowing she was going to be there.  It didn’t matter now.  She was headed back to town. Once she got there she would collect her things and move on. How, she wasn’t quite sure. And the longer she rode, the more confused she became about what she was really doing with her life. She didn’t want to stay but yet she didn’t have the wherewithal to leave either.  Maybe she would stay on and work with this other doctor for a while until she got some money put by.

Deep in thought, she was letting the worn old borrowed horse just walk along. Okay she told herself, let’s take this one step at a time. Let’s tell Doctor Martin that he has an assistant for a while.  See what happens.  If you like the ways things are going, stay. If not, in 6 months, pack up and leave. Virginia City isn’t Philadelphia or even San Francisco. It isn't like it's home! But then neither of those places is home… any more.
 
 

The coming of the lady doctor was a success for Virginia City immediately. Doctor Honor Whitaker and Doctor J. Paul Martin made a loose partnership; each would have their own practice but share the job of the clinic and would trade off on manning it. But as a lady, Honor Whitaker also drew the attention of many of the eligible bachelors in the area. She was polite in dealing with them, firmly shaking her head "no" when they came calling, bearing gifts of wildflowers and the like.  Paul Martin finally asked her what they needed to bring her to get her attention because the confusion around their medical practice needed to stop. For that she had no answer. He had to have one, if only for his own peace of mind.

He was out at the Ponderosa, checking up on Ben Cartwright’s back problem and decided to tell Ben just what he thought of his new colleague.  They were sitting having lunch together. One of the bonuses of being the Cartwright doctor was that you were always invited to partake in a meal of Hop Sing’s cooking while you were there.

“She is an extremely competent physician, Ben. The only problem is that she is a very beautiful woman, too! And because of it, we have had more than a dozen ‘suitors’ dropping by the clinic just to flirt with her have.  She has been nothing if not professional about it all but it is distracting! Don't know which ones are the patients and which ones are the lookers any more."

“Well, Paul, it sounds to me like the young lady is not at fault in the least.”

“But Ben, she is at fault. If she would just pick one or two and go out with him, the others would go elsewhere, at least for a while. But she won’t go out with any of them.”

About that time, the doctor and Ben heard the front door open and around the corner came Joe and Candy.

“You two are kind of late for lunch,” Ben scolded as the other two sat down at the table and reached for platters. "“Get the herd settled in the south pasture? Winter coming on we don’t want them getting itchy hooves and go wandering.”

Accepting a cup of coffee from Hop Sing, Joe looked over at Doc Martin and smiled. “No ‘Gee son, glad to see you back home. Been a long two weeks without you. How was it?’ Just that we are late for lunch. What ever happened to gratitude?” Joe complained half-heartedly, his lop-sided grin taking in everyone at the table.

Ben had a sharp retort readied but remembered their guest and just glared at his son. Then he noticed that Paul Martin was staring at his son across the table, jaw slightly agape. “Is everything all right, Paul?” Ben asked.

“That’s it! It never dawned on me… Should have, but didn’t” the good doctor was saying.

His face a question mark, Joe turned to his father. “Has he been acting this way long? Think he’s sick or something?”

As fall moved into winter, the overcast skies and shortening days lent a quiet somberness to the Ponderosa. The herds had been moved into the lower pastures and enough firewood cut.  Now was the season the two men in the big house felt their losses all the more keenly.  There simply wasn’t enough work to keep their minds occupied and, with Jamie away at college finishing his studies, the house seemed enormously empty. Perhaps because of his age and life experiences, Ben felt the emptiness far more than his son did. And since Joe seemed somehow content with the emptiness, Ben knew it was up to him to change it. And Paul Martin had supplied the key ingredient.

Joe had finally gotten beyond the loss of his beloved Alice. He had dated some women but just watching the fleeting expressions on his father's face, knew his father wasn't exactly enamoured of them. He had to agree upon closer inspection. Most of them, Joe felt, were out for one thing and one thing only: The Ponderosa. He didn't matter as long as they wound up with the ranch and all it represented. That was more than a little disheartening and after a few times, he just let the whole matter drift into limbo.

 So it was that when Ben insisted he go with him to the Cattleman’s Club for dinner that late winter evening, Joe, more to silence his father than anything else, had agreed to go. He was certain his father and Doc Martin had set something up. But what could it be? Joe knew that he and his father were going to be having dinner with Paul and his wife and the new doctor in town. Could there be anything less sinister?

     There they were, dressed in their finest when, half an hour late, the door to the Cattleman’s Club opened and in walked the Martins with Honor Whitaker in tow. The clatter of silverware on china halted for just that single moment in time then resumed. The dress Honor wore that night was a sky blue silk, bodice cut low enough to show that she was every bit a woman. Her hair hung loose to her waist in an auburn cascade that rippled and caught the light like a million stars. It was obvious to every man there when she walked that she didn’t just walk into the room; she possessed it.

 Ben didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he heard his son beside him groan softly. Before Ben could move or say anything, Joe got up from their table and went towards her.

The first words Joe Cartwright said to the beautiful woman were spoken softly but with humor. “We have been set up,” he whispered then smiled at her.

Everyone in the dining room that night saw her smile and take his arm to be escorted the rest of the way into the room and to the table to be seated. What they hadn’t heard was her  “We sure have.”

“Doctor Whitaker is my partner now, Joe. She's a tremendous assistant,” Paul crowed, a little too enthusiastically for Joe's taste

Smiling that particular little lopsided grin of his, Joe looked the lady square in the eye and said, “Doctor, huh?”
 

Doctor Honor Whitaker settled into Virginia City life well. She made her practice one for women and children primarily, but she turned no one away from the clinic door. Much to Paul Martin's dismay at times, she seemed to take her Hippocratic oath too seriously. Although the clinic was busy most of the time, there were only so many chickens, so many jars of preserves and loaves of fresh bread the two of them could handle. Honor's patients, unlike Paul's, seemed to stem from the poorer side of the community and insisted on paying her in goods. But, with a deep sigh for a conscience rubbed sensitive, Paul let her continue. After all, it was what being a doctor was really all about, he told himself repeatedly, having another bite of fried chicken.

There was another good thing and it followed the arranged dinner meeting between Honor and the Cartwrights. The onslaught of suitors one by one fell to the side until only one in particular stood out: Joseph Cartwright. Even though after the first evening at the Cattleman’s Club, she was more than a little embarrassed by the attention, Joe wasn’t. Nor was Paul Martin. She would tell no one that when he took her hand that first night, her stomach had lurched and her knees weakened. Instead, she tried time and again to duck the advances of the rancher until Paul Martin put his foot down.

"Go out with him," Paul had insisted that winter afternoon when they had seen the last of their patients for the day. He finished with the silent thought that it would be good for both of them, Joe and Honor but tacked on the thought that it would be good for him too.

"No," she stated flatly and started to slip into her woolen cloak.

"Why not? Trust me, Honor; Joe Cartwright is a gentleman if I ever met one." Paul deliberately turned away from her as he spoke because he flinched. It wasn't a lie he was trying to hide from her. Joe was a gentleman and Paul knew he was, but he also knew him as a fun-loving and impetuous young man who had been much too good looking for his own good at times. True, Joe had settled down some over the years, but that had only enhanced his allure to most of the female of the species.

"I don't want to look like some husband hunting woman, out to snag a rich husband for myself. I am a doctor, a healer, and a husband would just get in the way of things. Besides, I am not interested in him," she protested but suddenly became all thumbs as she tried to tie the bow to close her cloak.

"Is that why you get all flustered and go red-cheeked when he shows up?" Paul coolly asked, still keeping his back to her as he arranged his instruments for the second time.

"He is just so-" she started then became just exactly what the other doctor had just described: flustered and red-cheeked. It aggravated her to lose her composure so and she nearly stamped her foot but she knew it would be a dead giveaway that he was right. Instead, she whirled and headed out the door for her boarding house only to return and sheepishly fetch her shawl. It didn't help that she could hear him chuckling.

Telling herself that it was more to appease her working companion than her own curiosity, she yielded to Joe's persistence and kept a date. He took her to a barn dance that spring evening and when she felt his hands on her shoulders, she very nearly fainted. To calm her skittish nerves, she tried to look at him with a critical eye.  He was now in his mid-thirties. Those smoke green eyes could sparkle and twinkle and he apparently loved to wink at her as they danced.  His laugh and lighthearted manner set her at ease as he whirled her around the barn floor and out into the night.  She found herself wanting to run her fingers through all those gray-frosted curls as they stood there in the magical moonlight together for the first time. As she leaned against his arms, she became intensely aware that he was a strong man even though he had a slight build. Still trying to maintain her calm professional appraisal, she pressed her hand to his chest and felt the beating of his heart, its rhythm perhaps a bit fast but strong. His hands, she noted as they caressed her face, were gentle and knowing. But she lost all critical point of view when he kissed her. Thinking back over the emotions that had flooded her, she thought maybe Paul Martin was right: Joe Cartwright made for an all right date. But would he ask her out again?

For their second date, she consented to a picnic with him one warm early summer Saturday. He took her riding and showed her the beauty that was his home, the beautiful Lake Tahoe region with its towering pines.  He told her that her eyes were the same color as the lake and, while she thanked him for the compliment, she considered him just so much a charmer. Charmers were a dime a dozen in her world. All she had to do to find one was lift her skirt enough to show a little ankle and half the men in Virginia City became one. But what set this man apart was when she caught him absolutely speechless while looking at her and obviously desiring her. Yet he made no untoward move on her!

     Finally, high up on the east side of the lake, they stopped for lunch. They ate in silence, enjoying not only the view but also each other’s company.

“I have a confession,” she said as they lay back in the warm sunshine digesting their meal.  She watched as Joe merely raised an eyebrow in her direction. “Ever since the barn dance at Reilly’s last spring, I have wanted you to do something for me.”

His pupils dilated as she watched him and she had an idea of what was running through his thoughts. She couldn't have been more wrong.

He took a moment for the lump in his throat to clear then simply came up with a weak “What?”

“Do you think that you could kiss me just once more? Like you did that night?” she asked, a picture of guilty innocence.

Again that night as she lay in bed, she ran down his list of attributes which was, strangely enough, getting longer and longer. He was still a charmer and that hung like a bright red sign on the negative side of her list. There had to be more substance in the man she would marry, she reasserted to herself. Then, with a self-deprecating laugh at what she had just done, rolled to her side to sleep. She had just thought of Joseph Cartwright as husband-material. Well, she sighed; Paul Martin would be pleased.
 

It wasn't nearly as hard to convince her the third time around. He invited her to the Cattleman’s Fall Ball, the height of the year's social events for bustling Virginia City. She dressed with care in her sky blue gown, the only fancy one she owned. With the same consideration she gave to the tending of her patients, she fixed her hair, sweeping it up off her shoulders. It proved to be the right thing to do since when Joe appeared at her door, he gave her small box. Her blue eyes wide in delight, she opened it to find nestled there a diamond pendant and a cascade of diamonds for each ear. With shaking hands and voice, she tried to give it all back but he would have none of such foolishness. He draped the necklace around her throat as she watched in the hall mirror. Something within her caved in at the sight the mirror gave back to her. Was it just the sparkle of the diamonds, dancing and twinkling in the lamplight? Or was it what she saw in his eyes? She was never sure.

Ben saw her again that evening. Watching her and his son, he allowed himself that satisfied smile that only a parent has the rights to. There were other eligible, landed men there that night and they tried to horn in but it was as if those diamonds had branded her Cartwright property.  Each and every time the intruders were met with her simple 'no, thank you' and to Ben's chagrin, that included himself. It was all right though because Paul Martin, his co-conspirator, got the same treatment.

Once the ball ended, she still didn't know what to make of things. As they rode towards her boarding house, she shifted through what she had learned that evening and with a sad sigh, realized the only items added to her list of his qualities was that he could waltz divinely and had excellent tastes when it came to jewelry. And that he was warm to sit next to in the carriage. But where was that magical something she called substance- that something that would put him above all the rest of the men she had met? Maybe he didn't have it.

She got her answer when a young Negro boy approached the carriage.

“Are you the doctor lady?” he asked.  When she said 'yes', he told her that his mother was in labor down in Shantytown and needed help. Without a second thought, she hauled the boy into the carriage and told Joe to take her home for her bag.  The boy pleaded that there was no time.

Less than a half-hour after leaving the bright lights, beautiful clothes and elegant manners of the ball, Honor Whitaker was arm-deep in a difficult birth in a dirty shanty. She was mindless of the conditions around her and the others there. The other Negro women in the shack were astounded that here was this elegantly dressed woman, down on her knees, trying to help one of them. They drew back, at first afraid of the intensity and the sheer concentration the woman gave to their friend's plight but little by little, as the night wore on and the white woman stayed and helped, they lost their inborn fear .At dawn, with the birth of the tiny squalling baby the women, all of them, had found a new friend.

When she finished with the woman, Honor was surprised to realize that during the whole horrible ordeal, Joe had been right there with her, wiping the mother’s forehead, giving her sips of water and speaking soothing words. But more than anything else, he had shared her delight at the sound of the newborn baby's lusty cry.

Honor was exhausted and after she had given instructions to the other women there, turned to Joe, placing a hand on his arm that shook with fatigue.

“Take me home, please,” she begged softly and felt herself being picked up and carried to the carriage.

  She was nearly asleep when he opened the back door to her lodgings to carry her in and place her on the narrow cot. She didn’t even murmur when he undid the buttons of the now ruined gown and threw it away. She never felt the warm water washing away the blood and sweat from her face and body. All she knew, surrounded by the haze of exhaustion, was that she thought she loved him. Honor would have chuckled at her own thoughts but couldn't find the time between being awake and being asleep. One thought made her smile as she drifted off to sleep: she had discovered that he had "substance."

Thus began the extended courtship that half of Virginia City watched with mostly silent amusement. The other half, the notably unwed, single female half, watched with dismay. When a party or dance occurred, Doctor Honor Whitaker was bound to show up on the arm of Joseph Cartwright. Fans fluttered before pursed lips and eyes watched the handsome couple with ill-disguised jealousy. When tongues wagged, it was speculation for the pair never made overt moves. Were they headed for the altar or not? If not, why did they keep seeing one another? You only had to look at their faces to see that they were in love so what was the hold-up?

For their part, Joe and Honor kept silent, laughing in private at the antics going on around them.  Whether the desire was to drive them apart or push them together with the gossip, they shrugged it off and went about their lives. They even found the machinations of J. Paul Martin and Ben Cartwright amusing since it became more obvious who were the guilty culprits behind putting them together in the first place. In short, they enjoyed driving the town crazy.

"You know," Paul Martin suggested bluntly one late fall afternoon between patients. "A nice Christmas-time wedding would be nice." On this subject he discovered he never was one to ease gently into it.

Honor turned from her reading by the clinic window, a distracted look on her face and a gentle "Hmm?"

"You are going to marry him, aren't you?" the good man pressed, taking off his glasses and cleaning the lens on his shirtsleeve.

"Him who?" she teased, knowing full well what her partner was up to.

Paul pursed his lips and frowned, his hands suddenly fumbling with his spectacles. "Joe Cartwright, is who! And don't tell me that you don't love him!"

Her brows lifted as she closed the book she had been thumbing through. "And you think I should marry him," she said flatly, and shook her head slowly. "Why? Because you think I love him?"

"I know you love him and more importantly, he loves you! I have never seen two people more in love with one another yet, the way you act, it's like there is something between you that you can't see over. For God's sake Honor, marry him!"

He wondered if he had pushed too far when he saw her eyes brighten with tears but she again only shook her head sadly. Nibbling her lower lip, he thought he heard her say something like "I wish I could."

"Well, why can't you?" he exploded but it was in vain as she simply gathered her things and said she had a housecall to make. He didn't see the smile on her face as she slipped out the office door. She had never said where that housecall would be and it wouldn't hurt Paul Martin to go on wondering a while longer. But as she rode towards the Ponderosa that afternoon, she thought back over what he had said. Yes, she came to the grudging admission; she had fallen in love at some vague point in time over the past year. But had Joe? She was pretty sure that he did but did he love her enough to get beyond a secret she carried deep within her soul? Or, once she told him, would he simply turn and walk away from her? She had no answers but kept thinking that if it were true love, it wouldn't matter. But what was true love and how could she know?

With the coming of that second Nevada winter, Honor Whitaker found herself more and more drawn into life at the Ponderosa. No longer did she go just for the parties and occasional Sunday dinner. When her work took her that direction, she could always count on a place to stay should night catch her. From the first night, Ben Cartwright made her welcome and even teased her about returning the gold piece. She blushed uncharacteristically and looked at her hands clasped in her lap. Joe, one arm across her shoulders as they sat together before the fire, laughed and teased her as well. When they went for a stroll in the cold moonlight, she was sure she had seen the curtains twitch.

"We're being watched," she commented and let him put his arms around her. Above them the stars seemed close enough that she could have knocked them down with a wave of her hand. She looked up to study them and found him studying her instead. She changed her view and looked straight ahead, afraid of what she felt when she looked into his eyes.

"Does that bother you?" Joe asked, drawing her warmth closer. "Me neither," he replied when he felt her shake her head against his chest. "If it's too cold out here, we can go back inside." He could feel her shivering against him.

"No, I like it like this," she admitted and let her fingers catch at the buttons on his shirt. "Joe, I have something I need to tell you."

"Tell me later," he encouraged and lifted her chin so he could kiss her. She surprised him with the return of his passion and he moved to deepen the kiss. Honor drew back a bit and tried to speak but he leaned down and whispered "later" again. He covered her mouth with his, demanding her full attention. Her knees seriously weakening, she clung to him and the kiss. Later, she thought, later was soon enough.

She came to the decision that night that winter in Nevada was a glorious time to be in love. It was easy to love Joe, she came to realize. He was fun loving and had a sense of humor she enjoyed yet at the same time could be serious about the most mundane things that would bore her witless. But one thing he was, she found out as the winter drew out, was a passionate lover. Careful about appearances for her sake if not for his, they kept that newfound part of their relationship a closely guarded secret. Yet the physical joy it brought them continued to pull at them and they found that it was easy to give in to. And hard to ignore.

But that second winter brought heartache with it as well. They had been together that Sunday afternoon, decorating the Ponderosa ranch house for Christmas, acting so much like a married couple that even Ben began to wonder if they had eloped, then caught himself wishing they had. When it came time to put the angel on top of the tree, he watched Joe hoist the squealing woman by the waist up the steps and hold her while she placed the decoration on top of the tree. This, he caught himself thinking, was what love was supposed to be all about. It was late in the afternoon when she complained a little about a headache and asked if she could lie down to rest a while before dinner. When Ben went to wake her in the guestroom an hour later, he found her in full fever.

For three days, Joe wouldn’t leave her side. Finally her fever broke and it seemed as though everyone breathed a sigh of relief. She was weak following the fever and Doc Martin sadly suggested that she not stay there in the cold mountains that winter but go some place warmer.

 It was with great sorrow that Joe watched her leave, headed down from the mountains, reportedly to San Francisco, just after Christmas. Those people who saw him there at the stage depot spread the word. He loved her and had let her go. And it had broken his heart.

But he was anything if not persistent and when the first buds of spring graced the high passes, Joe went searching for her. Again, those who saw him leave on the afternoon stage spread the word: Joseph Cartwright had gone after the woman he loved to return her to his side. Of course, the gossips said that she had gone to away that winter to recover from a miscarriage; that she was married already and that Cartwright money had bought off her first husband. Why, Joe had been seen in Carson City buying a ring! On and on the gossip went. In the end, it all didn't matter because when he did return, she was with him and in apparent good health. And they were still in love with one another. And not married since she moved into a little rented house on B Street and he went home to the Ponderosa. Yet the good citizens of Virginia City saw a distinctive pinto tied outside that gate quite often; often enough that the mothers of eligible daughters decided to look elsewhere for husbands. Plainly, Joseph Cartwright was taken. When he went to Sacramento on ranch business for a week, the good lady doctor came up missing at the same time. Tongues all over Storey County wagged.

Finally, Ben had had enough and asked his son point blank about his intentions concerning the elegant doctor. “Are you ever going to ask her to marry you? Or are you two just going to go on like this forever?” he roared.

Joe raised both eyebrows and said as calmly as could be, “I have asked her every time I have seen her from the first moment I saw her. Unfortunately, she can’t hear me when I ask because I am saying it in my heart.” He turned and walked from the room. Ben, his dropped jaw snapping shut, decided he would never ask again.

Summer moved into fall and on into winter. Finally, two days before Christmas, Joe told his father he would be back later that evening. He had to go into town to get his father a very special gift, he said. Ben protested that the weather was making up horribly and that after Christmas would be just as well. No, his son showed his infamous stubborn streak and left that afternoon, never saying to anyone what he was after. He was gone all that afternoon and by the time twenty-four hours had passed, Ben was anxious to say the least but tried to control himself. After all, Joseph was a man now, although to a silent Ben, he would forever be his 'little boy'.

    On towards midnight, Ben stirred from his chair where he had fallen asleep awaiting Joe’s return. At first he though he had heard something but sank back, ready to wait a little longer.

Out in the yard, in snow rapidly piling up to mid-calf, Joe helped Honor dismount. “You take care of the horses. I’m cold and I’m going inside,” she said and kissed him before heading for the door, leaving him in the cold.

Once she stepped inside, she saw Ben sitting asleep beside the fire. She went closer to the fire to warm herself and her movements awoke him fully.

"Well," he smiled as he greeted her smile with one of his own. "This is a pleasant surprise."

Standing quickly, he helped her strip off the heavy coat from her shoulders and the shawl from her head.

“Not really a surprise, is it?" she teased momentarily then sobered. “Merry Christmas, sir,” she said softly and let her gloved hands fall gently to the arms of the man holding her as though she were made of spun glass.

“Merry Christmas. Have you seen Joseph today? He left here yesterday afternoon, saying he had to get me some special gift,” Ben asked and saw the sunrise in her smile as she looked up at him. "How about some brandy to warm you up?" he offered and moved towards the decanter on the sideboard.

“Actually, yes, to both questions. Joe is outside putting up the horses right now.  I told him I wanted to talk to you first.” She paused, starting to pull her gloves off, then looked up at him with those clear blue eyes again as he handed her a glass and turned to sit back down in his chair. Nervously, she cleared her throat and set the glass aside. Before he could react to the change washing over her, she was kneeling before him. “I took something from you, sir. Something valuable but I hope that I can make it up to you in the future.” She pressed her hand against his knee and Ben looked down at the slim fingers. There was an ornate gold band on the third finger of her left hand. “I took your son’s heart. We were married in Judge Snyder’s chambers yesterday afternoon.”

Ben rose to his feet, taking her with him. He held her hands in his and smiled broadly. “You took his heart years ago, you know. Just after you took mine. Welcome to the family." Finally, he thought as he hugged her.

And that was that…but not quite. The newly weds decided to wait until the spring to start building their new home and to Ben that was just one more blessing. During the dark day of winter, he dreaded the somber silence of his home. No, his new-daughter-in-law brought something to the house that had been missing: happiness. Just watching Honor and Joe together could make Ben smile, remembering his own days as a newly wed.

 There was one continuing problem however. Even though she was now a married woman and Joe had been most patient in dealing with the issue, Honor would not give up her practice. Ben witnessed some of the most bull headed arguments when they discussed it in his hearing.  But he also could hear that the arguments never went to bed with them. He was rather proud that this new force in their lives would not be ruled by them. She had a mind and will all her own and wasn’t afraid to exert either. He watched his son try to talk her out of it so often that when the discussion would start, usually after she had been gone for a period of time, he knew just how it would end.

“I am surprised at you, Joseph. You are usually good enough with women to talk them into or out of anything,” he teased one evening after a discussion at the supper table when Honor had gotten up and gone into the kitchen in a huff.

“The last thing I talked her out of was her clothes on our wedding night,” Joe confessed a bit bewildered by this headstrong woman. Ben raised his brows, surprised by the directness of the statement.

She came out of the kitchen just then to hear him. With her head high and her hand sweeping across his shoulders as she went by, she haughtily said, “ I don’t remember that there was too much talking that night!” but Ben saw she was smiling.

Finally, they reached a compromise and Ben secretly heaved a sigh of relief. She could keep her practice going as long as she moved it onto the ranch.  The plans drawn up for their new home were brought out and an addition planned for her clinic. Since most of her patients were from the outlying area, it seemed a good compromise.  In the meantime, they would convert the harness room there at the main house into her an office area. That first winter they spent a great deal of time working on it, cleaning it, building walls and shelves. When it was finally finished, Ben was as surprised as everyone else that it did indeed look like a doctor's office, not like a converted harness room, even though it had grown to take over the feed room as well.

Standing there in the center of the main room, Candy, drafted as well to help, clapped a hand to Joe's shoulder. "Better get used to it, old buddy. I think this is just the first 'building project' she'll have for you!" he teased. "Come spring, when we start that house of yours, I'm betting - well, let's put it this way- you can throw out those plans of yours."

Brow furrowing as he leveled a shelf, Joe was only half listening when he commented "What makes you think that? Those are good plans. Drew them up myself."

"Joe," Candy chuckled and sighted down the edge of the crooked shelf Joe had just fixed. "Didn't you say Adam was the architect in the family?" Pushing Joe aside, he realigned the shelf and nailed in the brace a little higher up the wall. "They may be your plans but I think Honor has a set of her own. Might not be on paper - yet. And I'll bet you a month's wages that when your house is built, it looks nothing like what you drew."

"Deal," Joe muttered then nudged Candy into silence when Honor pushed through the doorway carrying some of her books.

She refused the offer both men extended to help carry her books and in the fading early winter afternoon light, plopped them onto the counter. Telling them that there were more in the house, she did ask that they bring them out. Lugging the heavy trunk between them, complaining that Honor collected medical books the way some women did bric-a-brac, the two men wrestled it into her clinic.

Neither was surprised to find her standing on a chair, hammer in hand, moving the same shelf down to where she could reach something placed on it.

Smiling at Joe's scowl, Candy whispered "Wanna pay me now?"
 

There was, however, a pall that shadowed the decision to allow her to continue her medical practice. Since Honor had treated anyone and everyone who came to her for help, she was beginning to be a target for some of the more radical elements that believed this should not be.  The fact that she was now a Cartwright did not seem to protect her in the least.  It did, however, afford her the comfort of knowing that someone would go with her if it were to a housecall she didn’t know or trust. Those times were few and far between since she truly believed in the goodness of humankind. Her men, wiser in the ways of the West, weren't so sure.

Then came the afternoon that Joe and Ben had secretly dreaded since the problems and outright threats began. They came home to an empty house.  A quick search showed that her horse was gone, as was her medical bag.

"All Hop Sing said was that someone, a man, came and said his wife needed help. Something about a bad burn," Joe said, optimism warring with suspicion. "Would have thought he would have brought her here instead of taking Honor to her."

"Well, the way the weather is making up, maybe he didn't want to try. Maybe his wife is burnt so bad, in such pain -" Ben, shoving his hands into his pockets as he stood before the fireplace, quit talking, realizing that his words were only trying to convince himself. They both wanted to head out and search for her but in which direction? How long had she been gone? The light blowing snow obscured any tracks. Trying to think logically and sensibly through his own rising doubts, Ben suggested, "Why don't we just wait a bit. She could come riding up any minute now and chastise us for being foolish."

One hour stretched into two and the storm outside picked up, soft white flakes of snow that had floated languidly in the cold air before now drove to the ground.

“She’s probably holed up with whoever she went to help,” Joe tried to express a peace he was actually far from feeling. Ben tried to agree, trying to bolster his son, but he too had a growing panic. The day turned swiftly into night. Curbing the desire to race headlong into winter's fury, they went to bed, knowing realistically that there would be no sleep.

Both men were awake well before dawn. The snow had stopped but the temperature was now bitterly cold.  And worse upon worse, her horse had come back alone. They both wordlessly saddled their horses and went in search of the warmth in their lives she had become.

Tracking her horse was no problem in the fresh snow; controlling the panic was. The horse had taken a direct path and as it was, they found her not an hour and half later. To Ben’s greatest relief, she was alive, unconscious but to their horror, saw that she had been beaten. And although she had pulled her clothing back to a semblance of right, that she had been raped. Quickly, gently, they wrapped her in blankets and, settling her across the saddle in front of her husband, headed for home.

The doctor summoned from town confirmed their fears. Yes, she had been raped and rather brutally at that. She had also suffered a miscarriage. Honor had told no one that she was three months pregnant.  The only thing that had kept her alive was the fact the cold weather had virtually stymied the blood loss.

The room was dark, the only light coming from the glow of the coals in the fireplace at the foot of the bed. Yet in the dimness, Honor could see Joe sitting there beside the bed, asleep in her favorite rocking chair. She longed to reach out and touch his face, seeing the strain there that she knew she had caused. She dared not move, afraid that the motion would awaken him but then she nearly chuckled aloud. If nothing else, her husband had proven time and again that he was a deep sleeper. The thought of lying wrapped in his arms caught her and a short sob broke through into the night. Seeking to muffle her cries, she turned and pressed her face into the pillow.

"Shh, it's gonna be all right," the whisper in her ear said and the arms she had just thought of encircling her, did so. Honor pressed back against them, shaking her head, crying softly. The arms continued to hold her, her body now shaking both in memory of what had happened and the denial that she deserved the love now given her. Again, the voice whispered to her, the arms protected her and the body now pressed to hers spoke of love.

Her recovery was slow and painful. Where once had been an intense fire in her, Ben saw only coals glowing. She took no interest in her work any longer. She was merely content to sit and watch the winter turn into spring. For long hours she would stare into the bleak winter landscape, held in her husband's arms yet never acknowledging his presence.  Finally, Ben decided he had to do something before she simply melted before his eyes.

He chose one afternoon while Joseph was busy with the branding and away from the house.  Hop Sing and Candy had gone into town for supplies and it was just the two of them home alone.

“Honor, we need to talk about something,” he said, approaching her and settling across from her on the porch in the bright April sunshine. When he looked at her, he saw the same intense blue eyes, but like her hair, they lacked luster, life. Within her something was missing. There was only a vacant blink of her eyes as the sole outward sign that she had heard him as she looked up at him, saying nothing.

“I will never forget how you came to me and told me you and Joe were married.  With the exception of the birth of my sons, it was perhaps the most wonderful moment of my life.  That is how important you have become to me. Why, even the first meeting there at Doc Martins’ office, I knew you were something special. Something…” He just let his words hang between them a long moment. “Now, I feel as though you are slipping away from us, little by little. I want you back, Honor. So does Joe. You must know that. What can we do? I'll do anything, just come back to us. We need you."

“You can’t turn back time.”

“No I can’t,” he admitted and reaching out, caught both her shaking hands in his to hold. She tried to pull them back but he wouldn’t give in to her. “I know that you were scared, Honor. We were too, so afraid. We still are. Are you?”

It was then that she exploded and had Ben not been holding both her hands, she would have run. As it was, she had to just let it all go and Ben found himself holding the hands of a wild woman. "Scared? Afraid?  I didn’t think that you men knew the meaning of the words much less the emotion behind them. Two others have never held you big men to the ground; you never had your clothes torn off as you helplessly scream and kick. You've never had your dignity stripped from you time and time again just because…just because you tried to help someone else. So don’t speak to me of fear!” As she finished, unable to pull away from him, she collapsed to her knees at his feet, crying and shaking with the long pent up emotion.

Ben knelt there with her and held her while she cried. He wanted to cry for her because what she said was true: In that sort of thing, women knew real fear and pain; men knew but a shadow. With no knowledge of how to help her, all he could do was hold her.

When she was cried out, he continued to hold her awhile longer. He spoke with her as though she was his daughter, not his son’s wife, in low tones that spoke of love and a father’s protection. In him welled up all the care and love that came from being a parent that some how over the years had gotten put aside because he had raised sons, not daughters.  And in those hours there grew a relationship between them that had not been there before. He found something that he had not known was missing in his life: a daughter to love and cherish.  She found peace and understanding.
 
 

"No," she said flatly.

"But you must remember something about the man who did this!" Joe reasserted. Once more, Honor had said that she remembered nothing of the man who had attacked her, beaten her and left her to die along that snowy road.

"What if I did? What would you do?" she hissed but she knew the answer. She had known it from the beginning. "Hunt him down?"

"Like the animal he is, yes!"

She pulled her robe closer around her as she sat beside the hearth. The fire there kept her warm but his words still sent a shiver of ice down her spine. "Kill him?" she continued.

"Yes!" Joe exclaimed, his eyes narrowing as he paced the sunlit room. He came to a stop looking out the window, his back to her so she couldn't see the hate in his face. "With my bare hands, I'd kill him!"

"No-" she began but Joe whirled on her.

"Honor, the man is a monster. He deserves to die. If you won't tell me, tell Roy Coffee. Tell Clem Foster. Tell someone so the man can be dealt with. He's a killer, sweetheart."

She shook her head no. How could she tell Joe that she knew what he would do if the man were caught? The scene had played out in her imagination many times since she had awoken to find herself wanting to be in her husband's arms that night. She had no doubt that Joe would do just what he had said: kill the man with his bare hands.

"How can you use those words together - killer- then turn and call me 'sweetheart'? I took an oath to protect life, Joe."

Joe ran a hand through his hair. Why didn't she understand? As a man, if he didn't go after this monster, how could he even think of himself as a good husband? Slowly, weary of the argument, he sat on the foot of their bed, his hands between his knees. He finally said the words that had plagued him. "Honor, he killed my child."

Taking a deep breath, Honor slipped unsteadily to the floor and eased herself to where Joe sat. "No, he killed our child," and some day, she would have the advantage and the man would pay but it would be at her hand, not Joe's. Until then, haunted by the memory, the pain and the fear, she would say that she couldn't remember who it had been. She truly wished she couldn't.

As spring rolled into summer, there was no longer any talk of Joe and Honor living anywhere else but the sprawling main house at the Ponderosa.  Plans for the new house were put away. The spark that was Honor came back as she grew once again in trust and determination. But this time, there was no recklessness as there had been before. Oh she still loved Joe with all her heart and soul and seemed to think that it was her God -given right to tell him when she thought he was wrong. But the newly reborn Honor was more cautious and would allow her husband and her father-in-law to protect her now. It was, as she phrased it, all right to stand on her own two feet as long as his was beside hers.

Now that she had found the courage to start taking an interest in life, her patients again filtered back. One afternoon found her seeing some of the Negro families from the surrounding area there. She asked one of the children, a little girl, what grade she was in at school, as she looked into the child's ears and felt along her throat.

“I’se don’t go school, Miz Doctor” she was told.

“Why not?” Honor asked in all innocence.

“Cause I’se got no shoes and no school.”

Honor looked down at the little girl’s feet. They weren’t much smaller than her own. “If I got you some shoes, would you go to school?” she asked the child. When the child nodded, Honor promptly sat on the floor and took off her own shoes and stockings, pulled the child onto her lap and helped her put them on. The adults standing around and waiting saw what was happening and, after a moment’s panic, started to laugh and holler. Look what the lady doctor was doing now!

As the child stood up and admired her new footgear for the first time, one of the men spoke up. “Miz Doctor, them shoes is mighty fine but we still ain’t got no school for her’n to wear ‘em to.”

“I’m going to see about that as well. Can we close the clinic early today?  I have something I need to discuss with some people.”

Thus through the need of one little girl for a pair of shoes, education came for all the children in Storey County. It didn't matter what color the child was or where his parents came from or even if the child had parents: there was schooling if they wanted it.

 And from that day on, Honor Cartwright bought more shoes than any three women in the state of Nevada did.

That was also how Anne Spencer came to the Ponderosa.

When Honor approached her father-in-law and husband with the idea for a school for the Negro children, they didn’t know what to make of it. After all, wasn’t this the type of thinking that had gotten her almost killed? Once again, she was taking on the established rule.

“I’ll make a deal with you.” Joe told her at supper that night, Candy and Ben watching with barely concealed glee at the way she was handling her husband, notably a stubborn man himself. “You get someone else to teach it. You have enough to do with the clinic. You do that and I will help you with it. Hell, I’ll even build it for you!”

“You mean hire a teacher?” she exclaimed. “Where would I get the money to do that?  Usually the county would pay for such things but you know this county won’t part with a penny for those children!”

“That would be a problem, wouldn’t it?” Ben teased a bit. “But I think we can work something out. A loan perhaps? What sort of collateral would you be putting up, Mrs. Cartwright?”

With an over-abundance of joy, she turned to her husband, about to speak when he raised his hand and said, “You can put up any collateral you want with the exception of the ranch.  And your jewelry.”

For a moment, she was crestfallen for her jewelry was worth more than enough to get things rolling. Then looking back to Ben she asked rather matter of factly: “How much are scalps going for now? I just happen know where there is one handsome specimen I could probably get easily. Very easily in fact.” She looked back at Joe slyly, fingering her butter knife.

 They all erupted in laughter at her playful manner but it was clear to them that she would have her way.

After scouring the area for possible teachers and finding none that would take on the project, Honor wrote to her alma mater back east. She needed a teacher, a qualified teacher who was up to the challenge that not only the children would present but also the one Society would.  There was no such thing as a school for these black children.  After all, they couldn’t learn. Or could they? When word got out what she was doing, more threats came. She never went without an armed guard now, fearful of the same thing or worse as last winter. Places that had done business with the Cartwright name for decades suddenly would not deal with them. Through it all, Ben knew that she was right and, even though it meant changes for him, he supported her.

Finally there came a letter. The handwriting was concise and tidy.  The words were like an explosion:

“My name is Anne Spencer.  I was a teacher here in Kentucky until the Colored school I taught in was burned to the ground.  All of my students and their families are scared and will not return to my classes. I will come and teach at your school but it will be on my terms. I will have no child turned away from the school because she or he is of a different skin color.”

What the letter didn’t say was that Anne Spencer, a devout Quaker, was on her way to Virginia City and the Ponderosa already.

The foreman for the Cartwrights went by just the one name: Candy.  He enjoyed his independence at the same time he relished the solidity of the family whom he had come to know. They never questioned him about a past he wanted to stay buried and, for that alone, he was willing to give them his loyalty. He always knew just where he stood with them and he made sure they knew where he stood.  This business of the Colored school bothered him more than just a bit but he had seen Honor and the children and knew that this was, at its very core, a good thing to have happen.  And like the other men in her life, Honor Cartwright had captivated him as well. You could only say “no” to those blue eyes for so long before the guilt made you cave in. If the truth were to be told, long ago one of the many suitors who had come knocking at her door was Candy.  But he also knew that she was too headstrong for him to handle so he had gladly stepped aside for his good friend Joe to have a go at her. He had also promised himself that if something ever happened to her because of Joe, Candy would not hesitate to step in and defend her. He sometimes caught himself watching the two of them when they thought no one was watching. Maybe, he told himself, it was that stage in life he was at that he envied them.

Thus it was that Candy, on his way home from town and mailing a letter for Honor, happened across a woman walking down the dusty road. She was all by herself, lugging a satchel. He pulled the buckboard team to a halt beside her and asked: “Where are you headed, ma’am?”

She squinted up into the sun at him and told him that she was on her way to a place called the Ponderosa to meet with someone named Honor Cartwright. He offered to give her a ride but she said that it was a good day for walking.  There was something quaint about her speech that made Candy smile at its soft sibilance.

“Please, I insist. Besides, Honor would flay me alive if she knew I let a lady walk all that way.”

“Then thou knowst her?”

By that time, Candy was on the ground, hoisting the heavy satchel into the wagon, wondering how this woman who barely came chest high on him had managed to lug the thing around. “Yes ma’am, I know her real well. I work for the family. My name is Candy and yours is….?”

She looked down at the hand he offered to her then without making use of it, climbed up into the wagon.  “Anne Spencer” she said as she settled into the wagon seat, watching as he sat next to her. “Tell me about this woman,” she asked.

Candy clucked to the horses, tipped his hat back to get a better look at his passenger and said brightly, “Well, watch out for your shoes.”

He stopped to deliver his passenger in the valley below the main house. There, Honor, Joe and four black men were raising wall studs on the new school house building. As usual, there were half a dozen children about, some helping the adults, some just there. As she sat looking down from the high wagon seat, what struck Anne most was the woman. She was about the same age, but taller and more willowy, with wild hair that kept sweeping across her pretty face. Her clothes were of a finer cloth than Anne had ever seen. She was non-plussed why this woman was down there with those men working! As she struggled down from the wagon seat, Candy hollered that he had found the teacher. Anne watched as the woman turned to her and came bounding down the slope towards her. It was then that she saw that the taller woman had on no shoes!

Suddenly, the little Quaker woman was engulfed with children. As she looked down she saw their eager upturned faces awash with glee. And they were calling her 'teacher'. Her heart melted.

That afternoon, sitting in the shade of the big tree in what would always stand in the school yard, Anne told Honor about the teaching she had done back in the hills of Kentucky and the terrible things she had witnessed that made her want to come west. Foremost was the burning of her school and the fear on their faces as she desperately pleaded with her students to come back once the school was rebuilt.

"You'll meet with opposition here too," Honor warned, pulling at the grass blades as they sat together. "But here, you'll have support too. Not just from me and my family but from them." She gestured to the adults who, straining on ropes, raised another stud wall. "They want this for their children. They want it bad enough to come on their days off to help build the school. And the children want it. Maybe that makes it all the more worthwhile, knowing the children want an education. Your job, if you want it, is to give them that education."

Anne watched the children. There were some of the older ones helping the adults but there were more of the younger ones. They studied her with the same intensity she did them. "I want the job."

 Honor Cartwright whooped for joy and calling the children over started an impromptu game of hide and seek. As the women and children played, the men toiled and raised the wall, shored it in place and began on the next wall. Finally, with the sun headed for the western horizon, the men stopped, packed away their tools and the Negroes gathered their children and headed towards their homes. With an introduction to Joe, the three of them headed up the hill to the big house Anne had only had a glimpse of.

At the entrance to the grand house stood a barrel chested man, older than Honor’s husband but with strong presence about him to Anne's way of thinking and gauging people. With his booming voice he came out to greet them, taking the little Quaker woman in completely with a massive bear hug. Looking down at her now bare feet, he simply said, “I see you've already met Honor.”

That evening at dinner, Anne was taken aback with the whole family. Here were people like she had never known. They laughed and jested with each other, making light of one thing after another. When something serious arose for them to discuss, they did so, plainly and openly. They were strong, both in manner and speech, even the woman, and it frightened Anne. So used to quiet, the uproar surrounding her made Anne wonder if she had made the right decision. Her frightened silence finally registered.

"Don't take it personal, Miss Spencer," Candy leaned over and sotto voce told her. "They're just real happy to have someone willing to take on the teacher's job. They ain't like this all the time." He smiled at her then gave her a wink.

"Aren't," she corrected and couldn't understand why they laughed. Seeing Candy blush and his face screw itself to one side, she wanted to laugh as well. "I guess you can take the teacher out of the classroom but not the classroom out of the teacher."

For the remainder of the evening, Anne studied the one question in all of the mix: the man who had given her the ride, Candy.  There he sat at Mr. Cartwright’s side, a sign of power.  Yet he was not a Cartwright but a hired hand, as she understood the term. He was treated the same as though he were a member of the family and Anne didn’t understand. And the little Oriental man called Hop Sing, she couldn't fathom his position within the whole either. Anne had listened to the respect in her voice that Honor spoke with when she had asked him turn down the bed in the guestroom for Anne even though she protested that she couldn’t stay.

“What are you going to do, walk back to town?” Candy asked with a smile, then thinking it over, said sheepishly, “It is a nice night for a walk.”

Anne looked down abashedly as well, clearly embarrassed by the implied intention of the man seated beside her. "Yes," she said softly, "it would be a nice night for a walk but there is no place I want to go." She couldn't understand the laughter that circled the table. Her new found friend Honor saved her further embarrassment by throwing something at Candy and telling him to behave.
 

There was never a formal agreement for Anne to teach at the school. Nor was she ever allowed to consider living any place other than the Ponderosa. As the school building rose up behind them, she held classes under the big tree in the schoolyard.  The children adored her and followed her every instruction. Best of all perhaps, at the end of every day, Candy would magically appear, ready to walk with her back to the main house. He always asked her, teasing her, if it was a good day for a walk. She would blush and look aside as he chuckled.

Anne had never had the attention of a man, much less one like Candy.  For one thing, he carried a gun.  She knew that he occasionally drank in a saloon and that he had been married once. But he was a kind man. Most of all, to his credit, Honor trusted him. As the sisterhood between them developed, she began to trust him as well. After all, if Honor could trust him, she felt she could as well.

“Let me teach you how to ride,” he proposed one afternoon once school was let out. “You can go a lot further and a lot faster that way.”

“I think not. I’m afraid of horses. And I don’t understand why thee would want to go further and faster than thine eyes can see,” she explained with her patient teacher’s voice.

When he laughed aloud, she was startled, angry that he would make light of her fear so. Was she to be the blunt of some joke?  In a huff, she gathered up her skirt and headed up the slope towards the house. Candy, truly not understanding, went after her, and grasped her arm to stop her. She went rigid with fear. He felt the tension shoot through her and let her go. With angry and firm steps, she stalked away, her back ramrod straight. Candy felt something rise up in the back of his throat. He threw both hands into the air and muttered to himself about how fast a woman could change.

After a strained and quiet supper that evening, Joe asked him to help with something in the barn.  Nodding to the ladies, they adjourned there and before Candy could say anything, Joe pounced. “What the Hell has happened between you and Anne?  What did you do ‘cause I know she wouldn’t hurt a fly!  You know if this gets screwed up, Honor is going to scalp me and probably you too.”

Candy told him briefly and succinctly, then stood stunned as Joe laughed so loud that the women in the house surely heard him. Slipping through the barn door behind them, Ben joined the younger men.  Once he had heard Candy out, he sat himself on the feed bin and proceeded to talk to Candy as he had his own sons years before.

“There are more types of women than you can count, Candy. And, like a good horse, you have to know what sort of woman they are before you can get anywhere with them. And you have to know how to deal with that sort of woman.  Now take Honor. She is one Hell of a handful of a woman. She’s like a thorobred that is just itching to get out and run just for the pure fun of it. You could never take her and hitch her to a plow or make her a cutting pony, ready to do what you wanted her to do. No, she would break your neck, and hers, to get free. Anne, on the other hand, is that patient little brown mare that you would feel safe on even if you were so tired you thought you couldn't stay in the saddle.. She may not be as flashy as that thorobred but she will get you where you want to go as long as you don’t try to rush her.”

Candy tried to envision Anne as a little brown mare plodding along the road and it fit precisely with how he had met her. More over, he saw something in her about what Ben was speaking: patient understanding.

 He turned to say something to Joe but saw his friend was turning away. “Hey where you off to? You got help me with this!”

The reply that came back was “ Got to go saddle my thorobred for a ride.”

Ben just shook his head and smiled. Why there weren’t a dozen little ones under foot now, he had no idea. God knows they worked at it enough.

“Little brown mare, huh?”
 

With his newfound knowledge, Candy proceeded with more caution and a good deal more care. Ben watched this romance grow and slowly bloom. By the end of summer, Anne, quiet and shy Anne was seen more than one place with the Ponderosa's foreman.

As she became aware of what was happening in her tranquil life, she sought out her friend for advice. For the first time in her life, Honor was speechless. Finally she simply asked "What do you want from life if you couldn’t teach any more?"

 Anne thought about it as they rode the buckboard home together from town where they had picked up some books sent by Anne's family back east. “I am not sure what thee is asking of me. Is thee not pleased with my teachings of the children? Is there something else I should be instructing them in? Just tell me and I shall see to it…” she said in a panic.

“No, your teaching is fine. The children learn more and more every day. And more of them are coming to the school every week. I may have to threaten to scalp Joe again to get him to build another room onto the school. What I meant was, do you ever see yourself outside of the school? Say married? Raising your own children? Keeping house, cooking and the like?”

Anne looked at her hands and answered in so soft a voice that Honor wasn’t sure she heard her right. “I know nothing of men except what the Bible tells us, that we must submit to them in all things.” It was then that Honor got a lesson in what it was like for this woman to grow up as a Quaker woman. Until the day she married, she was not allowed to look upon a man older than she. Women, although equal in God’s eyes, were for one thing only: the bearing and raising of children. Anne's own mother had died in childbirth, screaming in agony. She had wanted no part of any of it. So she had left her home where she would soon have been married off and went away to teach far from her Pennsylvania home.

“You mean to tell me that no man has ever even kissed you? “ Honor asked incredulous. Anne, her head still down,  shook it from side to side. “Never? Ever?” Still no.

Since, they were nearly back to the main house, Honor pulled the horses to halt just as they crested a slight rise. She needed time and inspiration. There, spread before them in the dying light was the herd of cattle the men had been working on, getting ready to take them to market in Sacramento. From this distance, they could only tell who the men were by the horses they rode and Honor had immediately picked out Joe’s pinto but she soon spied Candy’s flashy bay gelding. She gestured with her hat towards him. Anne’s eyes followed.

“Being with a man, being married is more than just children and cooking and keeping house. It's -" and she floundered for a few moments, looking for the right words. Finally, watching what was happening before them, she found them. "Some times it’s more like riding herd on a bunch of cattle. None of them, cattle or men, want to go the way you want them to.  But with the right tools, like a good horse and knowledge of the herd’s tendencies, it can be done.  Candy is just the “herd” for you to learn on.  He is patient and not in the least bit rambunctious that I've ever seen. And I think he has had his eye on you for quite some time. What you need now the knowledge of the herd’s tendencies.  And that lesson, you aren’t going to get in school.”

By the time Anne had learned the tendencies of the herd, she and Candy were engaged. The morning of her wedding the following spring, Honor came to help her prepare for the biggest day of her life.  She could scarcely believe that she, still shy and quiet, was doing this thing.

Honor brought a small box to the bride that morning. With a good deal of hesitation the new bride opened it. To her surprise, there was nothing in it and she looked up at Honor confused.

“That,” Honor said, “is what men know of us. Remember that about the herd.  They know nothing of us; we have to lead them.” When Anne just continued looking at her with complete bewilderment in those wide and innocent brown eyes, Honor just shook her head and said, “Well, I’ll be around if you need help."

There was a good bit of discussion that winter about who would teach the children when school opened again in the spring. Standard practice would never let a married woman teach and Anne was very much a married woman now.  She and Candy had settled nicely into a newly-built cabin not far from the school that.  They still gathered at the main house on Thursdays and Sundays for dinner with the Cartwrights and Candy still worked as the foreman for them, but they were determined to lead separate lives from their employers, even if the employers didn’t quite see it that way.

  Now had arisen the question about Anne continuing teaching. Ben recalled with amusement that Honor had had just such a desire at one time but for the most part the men stayed out of the discussion. Neither of the younger men wanted to butt heads with their wives since they were the ones doing the arguing, not the men. Anne said that it just wouldn’t do, she was married now and Society just didn’t think that it was proper for a married woman to work outside the home.  Honor scoffed at the idea.  After all, she had been married for several years and still kept her practice going.

“And what dost thou do with the money thee makes by being a doctor?” Anne asked point blank, her head cocking to one side as it often did when she was making a point.

“Most of my patients pay me in chickens and vegetables and the like.  Lucy comes in once a week and cleans the clinic.  Mrs. Taylor has been making my dresses for years.  Everytime she has another child, I am good for at least 3 more dresses.  So whatever I do with ‘money’ is kind of a moot point.”

“So, thou sees, thy situation is different. Thine husband is a tolerant and wealthy man. Thy being a doctor doesn’t threaten his ability to provide for thee.  If I continued to teach school and bring home money for doing it, how would Candy feel? Probably threatened and feeling as though what he was doing wasn’t enough for us.”

Honor thought a long moment. She had to argue Anne out of quitting teaching. She had no idea how hard it had been to find someone in the first place. And now she was looking at having to do it all over again? She half way wanted to kick herself as she had helped to bring all this about by coaching Anne in the ways of love. And pushing Candy is the same direction.

“What can I say or do to make you want to stay on teaching?” she asked and there was a hint of true desperation in her voice that the other had never heard before. But instead of answering her, Anne simply turned and walked away.

For the next week, the women didn’t speak to one another about the situation. The men felt as though they were all walking on eggs. Finally, after a miserable Thursday dinner, Joe decided to have a long discussion with his stubborn wife.

He waited until she was getting ready for bed that night, sitting at her mirror, getting ready to brush out her hair.

“You know, one of the things I fell in love with you over was your hair,” he said, taking her brush and starting to brush down the long length of it. "Rich, silky to my fingers.  I love the way it falls around your shoulders. Sometimes late at night when you snuggle over next to me, I can smell flowers in it.” He paused waiting for her to say something but saw by her reflection in the mirror that her eyes were closed and her face suffused with a tranquility seldom seen there when she wasn’t sleeping. He kept brushing.

“I also love you for the way you speak your mind. If you have an opinion, you’ll voice it sooner rather than later.” Her eyes flashed open. “But I suppose what I love best about you is the fact that you let people be just exactly what they are.”

She reached back and took the brush from his hand. “Stop beating around the bush. What are you after tonight?”

“Let Anne decide what is best for her.  You are trying to force her into staying on as teacher when she feels that maybe she shouldn’t. That should be her decision. Not yours.  I know you don’t want to go through the hassle of finding a replacement but maybe you should decide what you want most: a teacher for your school or a friend. 'Cause if you keep after Anne like this, you will only have one or the other.” With a short and less then patient huff, he turned from her and crawled between the covers of the big bed they shared.

 She sat there another moment looking at her reflection in the mirror but not really seeing herself, but quiet Anne as she had said her vows of devotion to Candy. Honor knew then what Anne had known: that she was going to quit teaching. It was part of her vows, that “to love, honor, obey and keep thyself only unto him.” With a heavy sigh, Honor, got up and blew out the lamp and slipping from her gown, slid into to bed beside her husband.  The sheets were cool and she curved herself into his side.

“Okay, you all win.  I’ll start tomorrow looking for another teacher,” she groaned and knew Joe was smiling in the dark. “Is there anything else I should do?” she whispered as he rolled over on his side to face her.

 As his arms went around her and just before his lips caught hers she heard him say, “ Make babies.”

So by the eve of the first day of school that spring, Honor still had not found a suitable replacement for Anne and it looked as though the children were either going to have to do without a school or Honor was going to have to teach it herself.  That she knew would anger her husband no end.  Part of the deal with even having the school was that she would not teach in it and still do her “doctoring” as they called it.  She couldn’t not practice medicine.  It was who and what she was but the children pulled at her heartstrings. She had even tried to enlist the aid of Ben.

“After all, Joe pretty much runs the Ponderosa now. And I know of no other man as well educated…” but Ben held up his hand to silence her, a feat Joe, Candy and Jamie looked on with awe at.

“I am not saying 'no' to those children, Honor. I am not saying 'no' to you.  I am saying that I will help you as I have in the past: find another teacher, help pay for the teacher but I will not teach. I am too old for such. I should be dawdling my grandchildren on my lap right now, not taking on another profession!” With those final words blurted out, Ben saw Honor’s face crumble and a glance to the side showed him a shocked look on his son’s face. He had gone where he had told himself he never would: into their private life as husband and wife. Now, angry with himself, he stomped out to stand on the front porch and get control of himself. He had never meant to turn the discussion in the direction it had gone. It had just happened and now he couldn't bring back the words.

He was still chastising himself when he heard the front door open then close behind him. He recognized Joe’s footsteps and felt his son’s hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Pa,” came the hoarse whisper, so full of emotion it was to the breaking point.

Without turning, Ben whispered, “No, I am sorry for what I said in there. I shouldn’t have”.

“No, You're right. You should be a grandfather by now.” Joe walked past his father and out into the night air, alone.

Ben nearly called him back but didn’t.  When he went back into the house, Honor was no where to be seen. Candy simply pointed towards the doors behind the dining room that led to Joe and Honor’s room.

He went to the door and tapped gently, calling her name.  The door was partly open and Ben could see her sitting at the mirror and see the tears streaming down her face.  It was the first time he could remember seeing her cry like that. He pushed the door on open and went to stand with his big hands on her shoulders.

“Honor, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have said...”

“Said what?  What was truly in your heart? That you want grandchildren and that Joe and I are a big disappointment to you because we haven’t produced any?” Her words held such hurt in them that they were hard to hear.

“No, you don’t understand,” he tried again but Honor stood and whirled around in one motion.

“I would give up my practice, the idea of the school, everything…everything….to have a baby.  I feel so empty some times when I have just delivered a baby and seen the light in the mother’s eyes when she sees that child for the first time.  I guess that is why I have taken to those children.  I want to be a mother, Father Ben, don’t misunderstand that one bit, but so far, God hasn’t found me fit to be one yet. Except to someone else's children. Not my own.”

Ben just looked at his empty hands as she whirled away from him to stand and look out the windows. Through those same windows, she could see her husband down by the corrals, head down. She touched the windowpane. As hurt as she, Ben saw him too. He turned to leave the room but at the doorway, stopped and without looking back at her said “You and Joseph have never been a disappointment to me,” and he closed the door softly behind him.

The next morning, the first day of school that spring, dawned bright with the air brisk and clean. It was with a start that Honor awoke to hear the school bell ringing out loud and clear. She hastily dressed and tore out of the room, nearly colliding with Joe as she headed for the door. She ran down the slope all the way, not stopping until she could see the front door of the schoolhouse. The last of the children were just going in as she reached the steps and took them two at a time.

There, to her amazement, at the blackboard stood Anne. As though it had happened everyday of her life, Anne took in the spectacle of her friend, chest heaving from exertion, hair completely awry, holding onto the sides of the doorway to remain standing, eyes wide with amazement.

“Is there something we can do for you, Mrs. Cartwright? We were about to say the Lord’s Prayer.” Her eyes, those same doe-like innocent eyes, blinked rapidly as she spoke.

Later that same day, Honor made it a point to go down at recess and speak with the teacher. “I thought that you weren’t going to teach now that you were an old married lady, Anne,” Honor said, biting into one of the many apples from the teacher’s desk. “What made you change your mind? I certainly hope that last night…”

“No,” Anne answered quickly to save her friend what she believed would have been embarrassment. “ When I woke up this morning, it was as if God had spoken to me, telling me that here I had this wonderful gift of being a teacher and that if I didn’t use it, it was denying Him. I thought that by doing what Society said was right I was doing what He thought was right. He told me that I was wrong to think the two, God and society, were the same. So I came back to teach.”

The blossoms on the trees turned into leaves as spring turned into summer and the days lengthened. The new calves and foals frolicked in the greening grass. That early summer found the Cartwrights and their hands the busiest they had been in years, mending fences, chasing stock, cutting hay and an abundance of time honored chores that never seemed to get all done.  It wasn’t the hard work that tired the men out but the constancy of it.  To Candy and Jamie, it seemed that one thing after another cropped up that had to be finished. And when things really got behind, Ben found himself unhappily drafted as well to mend fences.  From sun up to after sundown, the work never seemed to let up and tempers began to wear a little more than thin.

The cattle had busted through a section of fencing that Candy and Jamie had repaired just the week before.  That put sixty head of prime breeding stock loose just when they shouldn’t have been.  It had taken five men three days to round them all up and get them back into a corral until their holding pasture fence could be repaired. Again.

“Why didn’t the fence hold?” Ben was roaring mad that morning and everyone knew it, especially Candy and Jamie who were sitting there at the breakfast table, studying their plates carefully. Candy's cup of coffee, shared every morning with his bosses, held his attention for some odd reason. Jamie, newly graduated from the University of the Pacific with a degree in agriculture, much to his father's delight, wondered when he would get to use some of  his hard earned education for something other than mending fences.

It was then that Joe came out of their bedroom. He crossed behind his father’s chair and took the plate Hop Sing was handing him. Setting it down on the table, he sat there at his father’s right hand, which had just pounded the table, making the silverware jump.

“Can you holler any louder?  I don’t think they heard you in town, Pa” was all he said. Ben just glared at his son, still red in the face.

Still mad, Ben raised his voice again, this time directed at his son. “Oh, did I wake you from your beauty sleep?”

Joe picked up his coffee cup and took a long drink, studying his father over the rim as he did so, gauging just how far he should go.  “No, but Honor said something about hers. She also said something I couldn’t quite understand.  She was kind of mumbling in her sleep. Something about if she couldn’t get a good nights sleep she was going to move to town.”

Eyes locked now on his handsome son, Ben pulled in his horns a bit. He wasn’t sure whether his leg was being pulled or not but the last thing he wanted was for Honor to leave this house and not come back.  Joe just continued to eat his breakfast, as if nothing was in the least bit upsetting by what he had said. Finally, Joe couldn’t not look at his father for the silence in the room was almost overpowering. It was then that Ben saw that unmistakable twinkle in those green eyes and knew Joe had gotten around him- again.

“All right,” Ben said softly but with enough force behind his words to get Candy and Jamie’s complete attention. “I will calm down and stop shouting but I want that fence fixed today.”

And just as he said “today”, Honor stepped into the room, leaned down and kissed her father-in-law’s cheek with a bright “Good morning. Did you sleep well, Father Ben?” as she took her place next to Joe.

“I’m sorry if my shouting disturbed you, Honor,” was Ben’s contrite answer to her.

Joe’s shoulders dropped, his head went back and his eyes closed. He slowly shook his head with a grimace on his face when her reply was “ Shouting? I didn’t hear any shouting.  Are you all right, Joe?”

“For a dead man, I am remarkably well, sweetheart,” was all he said before everyone at the table but her was laughing. Poor Honor had no idea what was going on but decided it was a “man thing”.

The men quickly finished their meal and coffee in better humor now.  Without even being prompted, Joe volunteered to fix the fence himself so Candy and Jamie could go chase any strays that may have eluded the other men.  That amounted to “ take the day off but make it look like you are working. Ride around, relax.  If you can get a hold of a fishing line without it being seen, go fishing but don’t catch anything. Maybe sneak into town if you dare but be back at nightfall.”  It was a time-honored tradition that Ben knew about but would turn a blind eye to if it were done right.  And over the years his younger sons had perfected it to an art form.

Just as they were prepared to leave the yard, a man on a sorry mule rode in.  Behind him on a long lead was one of their cows, not the breeding stock but an old cow beyond her prime.  And behind the cow was another mule bearing a young boy, barely old enough to ride.  Their clothes were little better than rags and the man’s slouch hat was far from new.

Ben stepped up to greet the man with an outstretched hand and a friendly “Howdy.”

The man slid from the mule and handed Ben the lead rope.  With his hat in his hand, the man introduced himself as Leroy Singer and that was one of his children,   Jesse.

“We found this cow over on our place and thought that she needed to come home.  We don’t want no trouble with our neighbors. You know thinkin' that we stole her, ner nuthin' like that.”

Ben was taken aback by the man’s honesty for in truth if he had found the cow at the man’s sad little farmhouse, he would have given it to the man. “Singer, you said your name was, right? You bought the Kelly place last fall, didn’t you?  As I recall, you have a whole passel of young'uns, don’t you?”

“Yes sir,” came his soft-spoken reply, “Jesse here is number six.  There is one after him and the missus is gonna have another one real soon.”

“Well, congratulations then Mr. Singer!  I tell you what, why don’t you keep that cow there? As I recall, she didn’t have a calf last spring so I think her breeding days are over but she may make a good meal or two for you and your family.” Ben tried to hand the lead back.

“No sir, I don’t take no charity from no one.  It's your cow; I just brought her back is all.  I don’t expect nuthin’” and threw a leg over his mule then turned the balky beast back the way they had come.

Ben and Candy just stood there watching, incredulous.

“Did you see how the eyes on that kid lit up when you said for them to take the cow home?  I bet they haven’t eaten anything like that in weeks, that kid looked so hungry,” Candy said, shaking his head.

“Sometimes a man can get too proud for his own good…or for the good of his children.  And he has seven children and another one on the way.  I tell you what, Candy, if you and Jamie don’t mind today, how about taking this sorry excuse back over that direction and when you are close enough, put the poor thing out of its misery.  Do some rough butchering on it and take some of it over to them.  Tell them that you can’t possibly get it all back here without it going to waste so if they want to help you haul it over to their place, they can have it all.  Don’t want it to lay out and attract wolves or the like, you know.”

“Good plan Mr. Cartwright.  I’ll snag Jamie before he gets his fishing …....”

“And then you two can finish rounding up any strays,” Ben finished for Candy as Candy realized the mistake he had just made.

Later that evening at supper, Jamie talked about the sorry plight of the Singer family that he and Candy had witnessed that afternoon.  But mostly, he spoke of the oldest of the offspring there, a daughter.

“I think Mrs. Singer said her name was Cathy.  She was trying to keep the other kids in line and not go hog wild over that meat. She can’t be but maybe seventeen or eighteen, Pa, but she looks as though the whole world is on her right now.  I mean, Mr. Singer is so ramrod straight and Mrs. Singer is just kind of overwhelmed by it all. She don’t look good at all.”

Ben listened to what Jamie had said, wondering if there was a way a man as proud as Leroy Singer would let someone help him. Probably not, but he thought he would think on it for a while.  Jamie said his good nights and went up the steps to bed.  Honor and Joe still sat on the sofa, but soon said good night as well as off in the distance there was heard a faint thundering.

“Good,” Joe said once the door to their room closed and Honor lit one of the lamps, turning it low. “The heat should break now.  Maybe we can get some sleep” he moaned as he pulled his shirttail from his waistband.

“Do you really want to sleep right now?” Honor came to stand in front of him and reached up and started undoing the buttons on the front of his shirt.

“Maybe not….” Sliding her hands up under the shirt and over his shoulders, he shrugged out of it and just let it fall to the floor. “But then it has been a long day-” yet with a gentle shove and a smile, she pushed him so he would fall across the bed, but he was too close and his feet stayed on the floor. Looking up at her standing over him now, he knew just how much he loved her and would show her but first…

Before he could complete the thought, she was leaning down towards him, running her hands up his thighs, across his stomach and on up across his chest, leaving a trail of sudden fire behind them. He could see the tops of her breasts now and her hair was spreading like a silken curtain around her shoulders. A low moan of pure animal pleasure escaped him, watching her.  With catlike grace she crawled up to straddle his hips, her long skirt pulled up high on her legs as she leaned down to kiss him, her hands still running over his chest and shoulders. He pulled her down hard to him and slid one arm around her to hold her while the other hand found the buttons at the front of her dress. Long years of practice came into play as he undid the buttons without her feeling a thing but his lips on hers that he raced down her neck.

As she pulled back, her dress top fell away. Looking down at her full breasts now exposed, all she said was “But you said you were tired…...” His hands went to those lovely golden globes as if they had minds of their own. Gently he massaged them until her nipples were standing hard to his touch. She leaned back to let him, an arch to her back that let her hair fall behind her now.  She could feel his solid thighs up behind her, cradling her, holding her and she leaned against them. Her hands continued to stroke his chest and stomach, loving the very feel of him.

 Finally, nudging her with his legs, Joe brought her down on top of him and he rolled her onto her back and began to kiss every part of her he could reach.

Just as he was about to take one of those nipples to his lips, there was a brief knock at the door. Without thinking, he shouted “What?” and heard the door open.

To say that Ben was embarrassed was an understatement.  Of course he had been a married man and knew that his son and Honor did the same things that married couples did but here it was staring him in the face.

Joe started to roll to his wife’s side, keeping his eyes glued to his red-faced father as Ben stood there mouth moving but no sound coming out, one hand on the door knob.  Then Joe decided that moving wouldn't be a good idea either, exposing Honor like that.

“Mr., uh, Singer, is, uh, here, uh. Honor. Says his, uh wife, uh, needs help,” Ben stammered out, finally

Honor reached down between them and grabbed the top of her dress and with a little nod, Joe rolled to his side, allowing her to sit up and pull herself together, quickly

Voicing a control she was actually long from feeling, Honor, buttoning like a mad woman called back over her shoulder, “Tell him I’m coming.” But Ben still stood there as if having taken root in his embarrassment. Honor, buttoned up now, brushed beyond him as he still stood with one hand on the doorknob.

Joe was still laying across the bed, one arm thrown over his face and breathing heavily, searching for control.  He wasn’t angry with his father, but annoyed, and truth be told, a bit embarrassed as well. Ben began to stammer an apology but wasn’t doing very well when Joe raised his hand to stop him. He just got up from the bed and, scooping up his shirt from where it had fallen, he shook it out in front of himself as he walked past his father, shrugged it back on.

“And you wonder why you have no grandchildren yet.”

Jamie had been awakened by the pounding on the front door and had gone to saddle Honor’s horse while Ben went to get her. Mr. Singer just stood there, hat in his hand until she came out into the main living area.

“You the doctor they talk about?” he asked.

Honor was pulling on her riding boots and looking for her bag so she didn’t see the sneer on his face as he asked. Standing straight, she smoothed her skirt down and pushed a stray lock of hair back from her cheek. There was her bag on the sideboard by the front door!

“Yes I am, Mr. Singer, so let’s go see about that wife of yours, shall we?” Without looking at him, she breezed by and out into the dark yard. Jamie had her horse ready for her and she mounted quickly, turning the gelding’s nose towards the road.

“Maybe I should come with you, Honor,” Jamie offered, more than a little anxiously.

“You and your brother can be so protective it gets in the way sometimes. Now go back in the house and go to bed. Doctor’s orders. Mr. Singer?” Why Honor was in a huff, Jamie didn’t know, but she and Mr. Singer were riding out of the yard by then.

Jamie, sorry to be left out of it, turned and headed back into the house scratching his head. Back in the living room, Joe was still trying to get his shirt tucked in.

“Where’s Honor?” he asked, more than a little perturbed by the turn of events this evening.

“She and Mr. Singer just rode out. I offered to ride with them but Honor said no.”

“God, I wish she wouldn’t do that!” Joe hissed, letting go with a long low groan as well. Then he rubbed both hands across his temples and down his jawline.

Jamie laughed as he slipped by his older brother. “You know, you look just like Pa when you do that,” he teased, skipping up the steps to bed.

Joe looked at the floor a long moment, trying to decide if he should saddle his horse and go after her or go back to bed.  He knew if he followed her, she may very well and good take his head off and hand it to him.  Still and all, he had a streak of protectiveness about his wife that was easily as wide as the Ponderosa, if not wider. His mind was all but made up when he felt his father’s hand on his shoulder.

“She’ll be fine,” Ben said softly. He had that same streak, the same inclination. “Come on, let's go to bed, son.