For Sentimental Reasons

By Helen A.

"Come on, Grandpa, come on!” The little girl tugged impatiently at the sleeve of the man by her side. "We're almost there!"

The old man lay a gnarled hand upon the girl's chestnut hair, sliding his fingers down to give a tweak to the thick braid hanging over her shoulder. "Hold on there, honey. We'll get there. I don't move quite as fast as I used to, I'm afraid.” His slow pace faltered, then stopped entirely as he took a look around, licking his lips as he waited patiently for the latest series of arthritic cricks to work themselves through his legs and back. "Or quite as easy, either."

"I'm sorry, Grandpa," she said, immediately solicitous as she observed the old man panting a bit and leaning more heavily on his thick pine walking cane. "We can rest for a while first."

"You're a good girl, JJ," he said, groaning a bit as he took a seat on a large curved rock. "Don't you worry about me any. I'll be ready in just a minute. This sure is a pretty spot to take a moment's rest though, isn't it? It's hardly changed a bit from the way it looked the first time I came here."

"This was Papa's favorite place on the Ponderosa when he was little, wasn't it, Grandpa?” The girl's voice took on a hint of eagerness, the way it always did when asking for stories about her father's youth.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, hugging her to him with fragile strength. "It was indeed. Why, the first time I brought him here, he was no older than you are now, and you'd have thought he'd found the end of the rainbow for certain."

"Eric's Acre," she said with a smile. "Papa named it that right off, didn't he? Why do you suppose he and Mama didn't want to come with us today if he knew we were coming up this way?"

"Well, your father's a busy man these days, honey. He and your uncles have been pretty busy taking care of this old ranch. I thought he and your Mama could use a little time to themselves for a few hours. Besides, who says I invited them? Today's my day for a date with my best girl, and I didn't want some other fella taking her attention away from me."

She giggled and hugged him. "I don't need no other fella but you, Grandpa. I love you."

The girl looked up at him with eyes as green and expressive as those through which he looked back, and he smiled. "I love you too, my Josephine."

JJ grinned. Her grandfather was the only person she liked using her full first name, and then only because she had been named for him. Somehow the way he always said it, My Josephine, made her feel special and important. "Grandpa," she said suddenly, her voice very serious. "Are you very old?"

He chuckled a bit, a dry ghost of a sound. "I suppose I am. Seventy-eight is hardly what most folks would call a spring chicken. Why do you ask?"

"Well, I was looking at Mama's album last night, and she has an old picture of some folks sitting in front of our house, two young men and an old man, and she said that one of the young ones was you," she explained.

"She was right," he told her. "That's me and my brother, Hoss, and our Pa. That was the first photograph ever taken on the Ponderosa, after daguerreotypes and tintypes went out of fashion."

"That's why I wondered," she said. "I thought the picture might have been Uncle Ben or Uncle Jake, 'cause it kind of looked them at first, but then I knew it wasn't. They both got blonde hair and besides, you were lots handsomer. Still are."

"Well, thank you, darlin'," he said with amusement. He pulled himself to his feet with a little help from the willing child at his side. "Ready to go?"

They resumed their journey, Joe's granddaughter prattling away with her usual enthusiasm. He smiled as he looked down onto her brown curly head, thinking about his wife Jeanne and their family, and how very lucky he was. He wondered how his two oldest sons would appreciate being unfavorably compared to him by their young niece. They would laugh, more than likely. Benjamin Adam, named for Joe's father and brother, and Timothy Jacob, named for Jeanne's, were three years apart in age. The two of them had inherited their father's personality, all charm and fire as Jeanne put it, but not his looks. Both had his light, finely chiseled bone structure, but were otherwise an amalgam of relatives from their mother's side of the family.  

Joe's twin daughters, Frances and Marie, on the other hand, looked like their father remolded into female form. Frances was flirty and fun-loving, with a quick temper and a quicker smile, while Marie tended to be the calm center in any family storm, with a shy but deeply loving way about her. Both of them had played merry havoc with the hearts of boys for miles around in their youth, and Joe had freely acknowledged that he finally understood just what his father had put up with, raising him through dozens of playful romances and desperate crushes in his youth. It had been something of a relief to him when the girls finally both settled down and got married.

The youngest of Joe's children, Eric, had somehow managed to pick up every ounce of the resemblance Joe had never borne to his own father. Sometimes it was a bit startling to look over and see him sitting behind that antique desk in the study, frowning down on some bit of paperwork. With his dark hair, already showing a great deal of gray at thirty-five, his charcoal black eyes, and his strong sturdy facial features, Eric's resemblance to his grandfather Ben was uncanny. He was the serious one of the family, the studious bookish young man who had taken to running the Ponderosa's finances like a duck to water as soon as he finished college. In personality, he reminded Joe so much of his older brother Adam at times, that he had been somewhat surprised at the young man's desire to return to the ranch to live. Unlike Adam, Eric had always been content with home, and when he had married, he and his wife had been very happy to live in the main house with Joe and Jeanne.

Joe's grandchildren, eleven at last count, were as varied in looks and personality as his children, but there was no question that the youngest one, this little girl at his side, was the darling of the family. She was the image of her grandfather, and the night she was born Eric had laughingly declared that he now knew why none of his siblings had given their father a namesake yet, as he had settled Josephine into her delighted grandfather's arms.

"There it is, Grandpa!" she declared happily, startling him out of his thoughts. "There's the wishing rock!"

Joe squinted a bit as he followed her pointing hand with his eyes. His wife would have chided him about not wearing his glasses again, but he hated the darned things. Jeanne liked to laugh at his complaint that they made him look like an old man, but it was an affectionate laugh. She was as proud as he of the way he looked, and he knew it. He still had all of his own teeth, something of a miracle given the many fights of his youth, and the abundant curly hair that had been his since birth, though it was now snow white. He had deep laugh lines around his eyes and mouth, and a few wrinkles here and there, but hardly as many as a man expecting his third great-grandchild come Christmas ought to be showing. Even his body was in fair shape for a septuagenarian. Mostly it was only when the weather began to get nippy or rainy that he was forced to acknowledge his years. All the broken bones and bullet wounds he had recovered from so quickly as a young man, tended to come back to haunt him in the form of rheumatism now when the weather was bad. He still rode horses frequently, (though he had fallen in love with Eric's brand new Model-T), but bucking stock and horse races were long in the past. His current mount was a descendant of his father's favorite horse, Buck, chosen because he had the same gentle rocking-horse gait and sure-footed style that had made his grand sire perfect for Ben Cartwright. Somehow, Joe felt that his Pa would have liked knowing that his son had accepted that particular legacy along with so many others.

"Grandpa, did you hear me?"

Joe pulled his thoughts back to his granddaughter with a smile and a muffled sigh. There was another foible of old age; a mind that tended not to want to stay where he'd left it. "Yes, My Josephine, I heard you. We've found your wishing rock."

They moved down a small hill. Joe let go of the little girl's hand and let her scamper on ahead, chuckling to see her scramble up on top of the large heart shaped boulder and stand proudly atop it with hands on hips. All the grandchildren had their own special places on the Ponderosa, just as their parents had had, and just as Joe and his two brothers had as well. It tickled him that this spot, which JJ had proudly claimed for her own, was one of his old favorite haunts.

He caught up after a moment, and took a seat on the low end of the boulder, watching contentedly as the child ran and played. Eventually, she came back and took her place beside him again, just as he had known that she would. "Grandpa, was this rock really your special place when you were little, just like it is mine?"

"Who told you that?” He was surprised. He did not remember ever having told her that, preferring to let her believe that she was the first young Cartwright explorer to have ever discovered it.

"Grand-Uncle Jamie," she said, pulling a rather dilapidated half-melted candy bar out of her pocket and offering him half, while the other went straight into her mouth, muffling her words.

With a small smile, Joe accepted the sweet. "Oh, I see. Well, I suppose he would know. I picked this place out long before he became part of our family, but he came up this way with me many times."

"He said you told him that you and your brother Hoss used to bury treasure around here," she said excitedly. "You think we can find some of it?"

Joe laughed and hugged her to him. "I hardly think so, child. It was only make-believe treasure. I'm afraid it's long gone now."

"Oh," she said, a little disappointed.

Joe frowned as a memory nudged at his brain. "Although…"

JJ grew excited again instantly. "Though, what, Grandpa?"

"It couldn't still be here," he muttered, levering himself to his feet to walk around the rock, face wrinkled in thought as he tried to remember. "Why, it must be nearly fifty years ago now since I last touched it."

The little girl began to jump up and down as she followed his progress around the boulder. "What!"

Joe glanced down at the child, then back at the boulder, stroking his hand over her head absently as his thoughts drifted far into the past. "When I was boy, just a little older than you are, I decided to store a few keepsakes in a box and bury it safe under this rock. Don't know where I got the idea. I suppose it had something to do with my mother dying. I was afraid I was starting to forget her, and I didn't want that, so I put a few things inside of a box and left them here. I used to come out here every year and dig that box up so I could put a few more things inside. It got to be kind of a tradition, one I kept up well into my grown up years, and never told anyone about. At some point though, I stopped coming out here. It just didn't seem important any more, after."

Her eyes grew wide. "After what?"

He had forgotten for a moment to whom he spoke. Her question reclaimed his attention and Joe smiled. "After awhile, I suppose. Why don't you dig around and see if you can find anything?"

Josephine agreed at once and got down to eagerly scrabble through the dirt. Joe watched her, nodding a small acknowledgment to him over what he had not said. There was no need to tell a six year old child about the horrible year when first his beloved older brother, and this his new bride and unborn child had been taken from him, leaving him too bitter and heart sore to care about anything. He had pretended for a while that everything was normal, and that life would go on as it always had, but his heart had not been in it. As the next year went on, he had stopped trying to pretend. In fact, he had stopped doing a lot of things. All the joy seemed to have gone out of life and his favorite places had gone lonely and unvisited, all of them burdened with painful memories. There was no need to tell the child, now happily searching for a bit of her grandfather's past, that his memory box, once a treasured tradition, had suddenly seemed stupid and a waste of time. Joe scolded himself for thinking that. That box should have been a source of comfort. Would have, probably, if he had ever bothered to go get it, but he had not. He had put it out of his mind entirely, until it had been forgotten to this day. He wondered, as he often had, just how long he would have gone on feeling depressed and lost, if Jeanne had not come along.

A tender smile lifted Joe's lips, as it nearly always did when he reflected upon that meeting. It had been a fine warm summer's day. He had not wanted to go when his father had announced that the family would travel to Virginia City for the annual Founder's Day picnic, had tried to get out of it on the claim of having work to do, but Pa and Jamie had both insisted. It had been Jamie's last social at home before leaving for college, and he had used that fact to guilt his reluctant brother into going. There had seemed little point in arguing, just as there had seemed little point in anything then. It had been nearly three years since the loss of his young family, and while the pain had dimmed with time, there seemed to be nothing he or anyone else could do to snap him out of the depression he had fallen into. Bless 'em, though, Joe thought gratefully, they had never given up on him, or stopped trying.

He had gone along on the picnic, drifting through the day just as he seemed to be drifting through life, exhibiting a phony smile and an overly-cheerful greeting for the few old friends who bothered coming over to talk to him. He had been relieved when they had finally stopped approaching, and had gone over to sit beneath a tree and wait for the day to be over, so he could go home and lose himself in work once again.

He had not even been aware of her presence until he felt the jarring of someone tripping over the leg he had extended into the tall grass in front of him, and heard her screech of alarm. Startled, he had scrambled up to help her, an apology on his lips. In his haste to get up, Joe had somehow managed to tramp on the lady's long skirt, losing his own balance and falling back down, pulling her backward right into his lap when he failed to surrender the grip he had automatically taken on her shoulder when he felt himself slipping. She had landed on him with a shocked squeak, and they had sat there staring into each other's startled eyes for several long seconds. He could still remember his first thought, a rather strange one actually, that her wide blue eyes looked just like his brother Hoss' had looked. They had set him at ease somehow, and when the girl began to laugh at their situation, Joe had found himself laughing along with her, the first genuine laugh he could remember in quite some time. They had got up slowly and introduced themselves. Jeanne had reached up to straighten her hat, and the motion had caused her long honey blonde hair to come loose from its swept up style and tumble around her face, and Joe had felt his heart lurch. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

They had spent the rest of the day talking, each feeling that they had known the other for a lifetime, and Joe had been amazed to find himself telling her all about everything. He told her about his work and his family, both living and dead, his hopes and dreams, and even his fears and insecurities. He had laid his soul bare and Jeanne had been equally forthcoming, seeming just as helpless to prevent it as he was. It was the first of many such discussions. By the end of that summer, the day before Jamie had left the Ponderosa, he had stood up as his older brother's best man, watching Joe exchange wedding vows for the second and last time.

The newlyweds had decided to stay in the big house rather than build their own. It seemed so big and lonely for just Ben and old Hop Sing, the cook, to live in all alone. Ben had been delighted to share the house with Joe and Jeanne, and the five children who came over the next ten years to fill it with laughter and life again.

Those had been very happy years for everyone. Ben Cartwright had adored having an almost constant lap full of grandchildren to tell stories to, and to spoil as much as their parents would allow. He had died a happy man, quietly at home after a long winter illness, surrounded by the love of his family. Joe had been with him to the very last. His father had reached up to brush away the tears on his cheek, and had given him one final loving look, then had passed away with a faint smile, secure in the knowledge that the legacy of his name and his beloved Ponderosa would live for generations to come.

Joe sighed softly, feeling the familiar soft ache in his heart that always came when he thought of his father's final days. Adam and Jamie had both made it home in time to say goodbye, but now Adam was gone as well. A heart attack just a few short years ago. All that was left of the family of Joe's childhood were memories, but those were a very precious keepsake indeed. A smile came to him again as he watched his granddaughter dig. He hoped she would find something, and that the things he had hidden so long ago might still be intact, so that he might share them with her.

A delighted squeal rose up from the base of the boulder, and Joe immediately went to look, feeling a pulse of excitement ripple through his blood. "What do you have there, honey?"

"Grandpa, I found something! I think it's your treasure-box!” She scraped and scrabbled in the dirt, trying to unearth more of her prize, and Joe painfully lowered himself to his knees to kneel beside her for a look. He could see the corner of a metal-studded wooden box poking out of the dirt and a surge of adrenaline coursed through him. Together, man and child enlarged the hole until the box was fully visible. Joe took hold of either side and pulled with all his strength. Finally, with a dull pop, the box left its home of a half century.

The two sat back in the grass looking at their find, then at each other. It was a small wooden storage locker with metal bands around the wood, meeting in a padlocked hinge at the front. The box had started its life as the property of Ben Cartwright in his sea-faring days, and was as airtight and waterproof as the manufacturer had been able to manage, designed to survive rough seas and salt air. It had been stored up in the attic until the day Joe had liberated it to bring out here, believing then, as now, that it looked like the perfect container for a small boy's buried treasures. He wondered suddenly whether his Pa had ever noticed its absence. He had never said anything if he had, but Pa had always had a way of knowing what sort of things his boys were up to without having to be told. It would not have surprised Joe at all to find out that his father had been fully aware of the use his old locker had been put to. He brushed some of the dirt away from the top with a fond smile. "It seems to have weathered the years pretty well," he commented. "Better than I have, actually."

"It's got a lock," JJ observed. "Do you know where the key is, Grandpa?"

  "I don't think I have it anymore," he admitted. Disappointed tears instantly welled up and spilled from his granddaughter's eyes, and Joe gently brushed them away. "Don't cry, My Josephine, we'll get it open. We'll just have to get it back to the house first is all?"

Her mood changed in an instant. A smile blazed out at him as she jumped up and hugged him. She reached down and tried to lift the box but it did not budge. "It's heavy," she said in surprise.

"I doubt you could manage it alone if it were empty," he told her with a chuckle. "I remember having quite a struggle to get it up on my horse and all the way out here, and it's had quite a lot of things put inside since that day. I think we'd better set it back in its place for now and come back for it."

"Do we have to?" JJ whined.

"Yes, we do," he told her firmly. "I can't carry it all the way back to the house and neither can you."

Her face clouded rebelliously for an instant, then cleared. "Maybe Papa will help us bring it back if we ask him," she suggested. "Can we tell him about it?"

Joe smiled. "It's not really a secret any more, I guess. Help me up and we'll go ask him."

Josephine obligingly helped and they started back the way they had come, her chattering voice carrying on the breeze as they slowly increased the distance between the wishing rock and themselves.

*****END*****

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