Needed Strength

By: Helen Adams

The flames seemed alive and hungry, as soon the room was engulfed in violent heat that seemed to slap at Joe, striking the exposed portion of his skin with pain like the cracking tip of a bullwhip. The sensation was intense, and as the thick black smoke filled him, making his throat burn and his lungs ache, he wished with all his might that he could turn around and run back out into the cool night air. But turning back was not an option. Somewhere in this inferno, hidden from his tearing smoke-blurred eyes, was his brother.

Joe threw up his arms in an attempt to protect his eyes as a section of the roof gave way, falling to the ground in front of him and splintering in a hail of sparks that stung his exposed skin anew. He had removed his shirt and soaked it in the rain barrel outside before facing the flames, using the wet material as a shield for his head and face, but the few bare inches of skin from ribs to hips felt as if they were slowly being broiled right off of his body.

"Hoss!" he shouted frantically, voice hoarse and rough. He was forced to stop a moment and cough as the thick smoke choked him. "Oh, God, brother where are you?" he pleaded, feeling his way forward slowly, afraid he would miss the other man’s body in the wreckage of the burning stable. It was a small building, but right now, trapped in flames and virtually blind, it seemed immense.

Why the hell had Hoss run back inside? Joe felt his eyes streaming tears that were not entirely smoke related as he once again shouted his brother’s name. Why hadn’t he given up, feeling that three-quarters of the trapped animals being freed was enough? But he knew the answer, because he would have done the same thing if Hoss had not gone in first.

The fire had started virtually without warning. Just a small billow of smoke and the agitated whinnying of nervous horses giving clue to what was about to happen before a gout of flame exploded from the loosely latched doors, all but blowing them off the hinges. Joe could not imagine what sort of material must have been inside that barn to cause the frighteningly quick and hot ignition he had witnessed as he came upon the scene, having followed Hoss's earlier retreat from the saloon, intent on heading home.

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Hoss, one of a half dozen brave souls who had ventured past the flames intent on saving the lives of the beasts trapped inside, was the only one who had failed to emerge.

The bucket brigade was frantically working to douse the fire, but no one had dared to go back inside when pieces of the roof had begun to collapse and the heat became still more intense. No one except Joe, whose gut instinct was that he would rather die along with his brother than go home and face the task of informing his father that he had allowed Hoss to die without even trying to save him.

Coughing and choking, Joe pushed further in, doing his best to avoid the burning remains of leather tack and iron tools. He was almost all the way to the last row of stalls, desperation filling him as he realized that he could easily have passed right by Hoss in the impenetrable blackness of the smoke. A sob wrenched from his throat at the knowledge that he had failed.

Suddenly, a shocked yelp burst free from Joe as he tripped, falling headlong into a pile of so-far undamaged straw. He had fallen over a large obstruction, and Joe groped back to find it, hands grasping and squeezing with giddy relief around the familiar leather vest and homespun shirt of his missing brother.

"Hoss!" he croaked, feeling his way up the body to his brother’s chest. It was moving! "Oh, thank God."

Wiping his eyes frantically, desperate to see Hoss’s face, Joe swallowed hard. There was a freely bleeding wound over Hoss’s right eye and his hands and face were covered in black soot. It was impossible to tell through the red and gold glow of flame whether the reddened condition of his skin was due to burns or simple reflection.

"Help!" Joe shouted, realizing that his chances of lifting and carrying an unconscious Hoss Cartwright were next to nothing. "We’re alive in here! Somebody help me!"

Nothing. Either no one had heard or they were unable to get through the flames to answer him. Looking around him, again swiping tears from his stinging eyes, Joe’s gaze fell upon the wall next to him. The barn was old, decently constructed in the beginning but now worn with age and weather. Some of the boards had been starting to rot out. It was a chance.

Lifting the shirt he had dropped in his fall, Joe sent up a prayer for strength and luck and drew the protective material once more over his head, using it this time to shield his arms as well. Stepping back a few paces, he braced himself and ran forward, slamming his shoulder into the wall with all of his might.

He fell back again, stunned by the impact, and cursed. The boards had cracked a bit but they had not come loose. Ignoring his throbbing shoulder, Joe rose unsteadily to his feet. There was no help for it. He would just have to try again.

It took two more collisions with the wall before two of the boards finally broke free. Cool night air gushed in through the opening and for a moment, all Joe could do was kneel in the hot straw with his head stuck through the opening, sucking in the clean air. Finally glancing behind him, his eyes widened in horror. The fresh infusion of oxygen had drawn the fire! Greedy flames were charging toward his unconscious brother.

"Help!" he shouted again desperately.

Thankfully, this time, somebody heard. "Over there!" a voice cried out, and four men came running.

"Hurry!" Joe begged. "The fire is coming this way and my brother Hoss is still in here, unconscious. I can’t move him by myself."

The men wasted no time. Wrenching the remaining boards loose with quick determined pulls, they first hauled Joe out of the way and then headed inside the burning building, dragging Hoss free just before the flames reached his immobile form.

More volunteers had run up in answer to the commotion, buckets of water in hand which they used to hold off the flames until the Cartwright brothers could be carried to a safe distance.

As he was set down on the boardwalk, Joe tried to rise, desperate to ascertain Hoss’s condition, but he found that he had no strength left. His coughed harshly, lungs feeling as if the flames from the barn had been breathed inside to continue rampaging inside of him. The wrenching coughs also sent spears of agony through his left shoulder.

"Take it easy there, son," a familiar voice said, holding him in place as he tried once again to rise in spite of his pain.

"Doctor Martin," he choked out. "Hoss . . ."

The older man smiled. "He’s all right, Joe. He got some superficial burns and a good knot on his forehead where a piece of falling wood apparently hit him, and he’s breathed in a good bit of smoke, but he’s all right."

With that news, Joe stopped struggling, fresh tears that had nothing to do with the stinging debris in his eyes washing down his soot blackened face.

"You, on the other hand," the doctor continued, "need to keep still for a bit. You’ve almost certainly done some smoke damage to your lungs and this shoulder has been dislocated. How did you manage that?"

"Wall," he croaked. "Had to get us out."

Correctly guessing his meaning, Martin shook his head fondly. "You Cartwrights will never cease to amaze me. I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t try to break it down with your head, though it certainly is hard enough to have done the job."

All the while he was speaking, the doctor was expertly manipulating the misaligned joint. Joe gave out with a strangled gasp when he put the shoulder back into place with a quick harsh snap.

"There you are," Martin said with satisfaction. "Much better. You just hold that steady until we can get you over to my office where I can strap it down tightly."

Joe swallowed, feeling dizzy and light headed. "Hoss?" he said faintly.

Doctor Martin patted him gently on his uninjured shoulder. "He’ll be fine," he said again. "Both of you are going to be just fine."

Completely out of energy, Joe nodded weakly. Then his eyes rolled back in his head and he was lost to the world.

Ten hours later, Joe blinked; squinting confusedly at the ceiling of Paul Martin’s bright sunlit office as he slowly came awake.

"Hey there, little brother. I thought you was gonna sleep the whole day away."

Turning his head to the right, Joe found himself looking at his brother Hoss’s familiar gap-toothed grin. He was sitting up against a stack of pillows on a second cot across the room from Joe’s own.

"You okay?" Joe whispered, unable to make his voice more audible than a soft rasp, the words seeming to scratch their way out of his throat with sharp claws.

"Reckon I’m fine, thanks to you. Everybody in town’s been coming ‘round this morning, seems like, telling me what happened and how glad they are that we’re doing okay."

Joe noted that Hoss’s voice, too, sounded raspy and rough, though he did not appear to be having much trouble talking. "Scared me," he grated out.

An expression of regret washed over Hoss’s expressive face as he absently rubbed his thick fingers over the white bandage glaring out in stark contrast against the slightly reddened skin of his face. He looked as though he’d been out in the sun too long. "I’m sorry," he said simply. "I thought I could get all the horses out and still have time to get m’self out too. Almost did until I got so dizzy from the smoke. Then some chunk of roof fell down and clobbered me and I didn’t know nothin’ until I woke up here."

"Sorry I didn’t leave the saloon with you," Joe forced out, coughing a bit as his lungs protested the speech. "Could’ve helped. Got you out sooner."

Anger flashed through Hoss’s light blue eyes. "Don’t you go apologizin’, Joseph. You done just fine by me. You saved my life and I ain’t gonna forget that. I owe you more thanks than I got words to give."

"Glad you’re okay," he said simply, acknowledging the thanks and feeling some of the tightness leave his chest at the firm declaration. "Damn glad."

Hoss smiled warmly. "I’m glad you’re okay too, little brother. Don’t know what I’d have done without you."

Feeling tears prick at his eyes once again, Joe cleared his aching throat and changed the subject. "Pa been here?"

At this question, Hoss laughed. "Oh, yeah. He’s been in and out, harassing the doc, fussin’ over both of us, givin’ Roy a bad time about finding out what caused the fire, fussin’ over us again."

Joe nodded, able to imagine that scene easily.

"He’ll be back in a few minutes, I expect," Hoss continued. "Went over to get me some breakfast but he’ll be happy enough to bust when he sees you’re awake. Doc told him you were just tuckered out but he’s been fretting and worrying himself into a fit just the same."

A spark of mischief lit Joe’s still smoke-reddened eyes. "Think we can milk this and get out of doing any chores today?"

In truth, he knew that Ben Cartwright would not expect either of them to do any ranch work for several days. He doubted that he really could manage to lift his body out of bed at the moment, much less heft heavy equipment, and Hoss looked equally tired, but he was rewarded when his brother’s grin widened at the joke.

"Reckon Adam can handle it for awhile," he replied.

They rested together in comfortable silence for a few minutes. Joe was on the verge of going back to sleep when he heard Hoss say again, "Thanks, Joe."

Green eyes filled with more emotion than he could express in words, Joe simply smiled. His head was pounding, his shoulder throbbed and his lungs ached with every breath, but he had never felt better in his entire life.

The End

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