Fresh Breeze

By Nancy

Rating: PG

Thank you to Mr. Dortort who created the Cartwrights and the Ponderosa and shared them. And thank you to Ms. Sullivan who gave them new life. This story is purely for entertainment and is not intended to infringe on their rights or the rights of anyone else involved these shows.

Ben was riding down from the Ponderosa when the storm hit Eagle Station.

The clouds had built quickly as they tended to in late summer but there had been no much-needed rain, despite the fact that it had looked like a squall line. As he had traveled, Ben had watched the storm roil from the direction of Eagle Station, over the Carson River Valley, and then churn toward the desert. But he had no idea what had happened in town until he crested the last hill.

The unfamiliar eye would have had trouble discerning that anything untoward had happened to Eagle Station. The cluttered settlement was constructed more of canvas than wood. Despite Ben’s unrelenting campaign, refuse lined all but the main streets. A strong sneeze could blow some of the tremulous wood structures to smithereens. The wind had done that and more.

As Ben walked Buck into town, he measured the damage. Canvases had wrenched loose from wagon hoops as well as from tents that served as everything from a barber’s shop to a temporary boarding house run by a woman who also made the best pies Ben had tasted in years – intending no offense to Hop Sing. The false front above the porch to Shelby’s saloon had blown onto the hitching rail. There was no indication that anyone inside had even noticed yet. The roof on the Orowitz’s house was loose on the west side. The windows of their trading post were broken out; one with the rear of a wagon bed slammed through it. Jack’s hotel seemed to have weathered the storm unscathed. The man’s good luck was next to miraculous. Un-tethered horses wandered aimlessly or ran from barking dogs. Leather straps and harness rigging shared tree limbs with sections of cloth. Several hats were in unlikely places. People scurried around like the occupants of an ant mound a boy had teased with a stick.

The most astounding sight was all the fluttering paper. Newspaper, loose sheets of everything from supply lists to diary pages to music, posters, notices, some ledger pages – Ben hadn’t realized there was that much paper in the territory.

As Ben swung from the saddle, he caught sight of an unusual piece of paper on the ground. If it had been a poster or even a page of a newspaper, he wouldn’t have thought twice about stepping on it. But as Ben bent down to pick it up, his first impression was confirmed – it was a pencil drawing.

His eyes lingered on the unsigned artwork. A young girl with her arms folded over an open book, her head resting on her right arm as she slept. She wore a long sleeved blouse with a wide collar that looked to have embroidery trim. But the greatest detail was in her face – filled with the trusting peace of a sleeping child.

There was no telling who the drawing belonged to. The best thing to do would be to post it so the rightful owner could claim it.

But what if someone else, lured by the beauty of the subject, took it.

The idea formed in one part of Ben’s brain while the other part protested the absurdity. He did not have time to spare – much less to run a fool’s errand. All the same, there was no denying what needed to be done. Ben hitched Buck to the corral alongside Shelby’s saloon and set out for the wagon yard. Maybe the artwork belonged to one of the emigrants. Seemed logical that someone would recognize the girl in the drawing and direct him toward her parents. But while person after person remarked on the tranquility in the sleeping girl’s face, no one recognized her.

Funny how the past could wash over a man, triggered by a sound or a smell or the way the sunlight slanted. As Ben wound his way through the wagons, the shouts and calls, the jingle of harness, the snorting of horses, the soft lowing of oxen, and the smoky smell of campfires evoked memories of his family’s journey from Missouri four years earlier. They’d lived as these people did now, their possessions and hopes stored inside sturdy wagons and pulled by patient oxen, their home hearth a campfire fueled by everything from buffalo chips to pieces of furniture abandoned by others who had preceded them along the route. As vulnerable to Nature as Ben had ever been at sea. There had been times when he’d thought that the grasslands or the desert must be as limitless as the ocean. He had worried about his family’s safety even as he had anticipated finding a place of their own in California and building a new life. How many of these people would decide to settle on this side of the mountains; how many would go on to California; how many would be passing through Eagle Station on their way back east next year

Ben widened his search to the canvas tents and the unsheltered camping grounds of the men bound for the gold fields. Maybe the drawing was of a daughter or a sister. Ben realized after half an hour that the odds that a man had carried the picture were not good. A man on the move would have folded the paper so it could fit inside a pocket or a saddlebag. The only sign of handling of this drawing was the upper left corner that had been bent down slightly, much the way Adam dog-eared a page when he stopped reading.

Improbable as it seemed, the drawing might belong to one of the established residents of Eagle Station.

Well, that narrowed the search considerably.

A call for men to help pull the wagon out of the Trading Post window caught Ben’s attention a moment before he saw Ruth standing on the far steps of the porch. Could this be Ruth and Eli’s daughter, Hannah? She would have been about the age of the girl in the drawing before the Orowitz family had headed west. Before Ruth and Eli had lost their daughter and son to fever on the trail. Before Ruth and Eli had left their children behind in unmarked graves they had no hope of ever gracing with flowers

In spite of the condition of the trading post and the house, Ruth smiled at Ben when he stopped beside her. "Ben, how good it is to see you." Her eyes narrowed in concern. "Has this storm also been at the Ponderosa?"

Ben assured her that it had not and, looking around at the damage, told her that the boys and he would be in tomorrow to help repair the Orowitz’s home. Before she could protest, Ben took a deep breath. There was no gentle way to approach the subject.

"I found this in the street." Ben held out the drawing. "I thought it might be Hannah."

Ruth’s eyes gentled while she studied the drawing. "No, this is not our Hannah." Her forehead wrinkled. She gently rested her hand over the left side of the drawing, hiding the book, the girl’s right arm, and the right side of her face. "There is something familiar here," she said and looked up at Ben hopefully.

She was right. With only the right side of the drawing to study, there was a vague sense of recognition. Not so much the child, but someone she resembled.

Ben checked with Herbert at the wood shop, with Daniel and Eb while they helped herd horses back to the corral, and with Mrs. Ball who owned the boarding house where the Cartwrights had first lived in Eagle Station. He checked with Mrs. Wiedner at her canvas walled restaurant. Yves wasn’t at the bank; Ben located him and his wife, Lisle, outside their home. Frank Drayton had opened a smithy the month before. Ben asked Frank’s wife, Sarah, about the drawing. Those who had been in town a while remarked on a vague resemblance to someone but they couldn’t say who.

Because Ben kept stopping to help right a wagon or roll a barrel or pick up shattered glass or heave a wall back into place, mid-afternoon was on him before he finally decided he would leave the drawing with Ruth. Surely the owner would come forward.

"Ben." Jack tipped his hat as they met on the sidewalk in front of the livery. He raised his eyebrows at the paper in Ben’s hand. "Well, now," Jack exclaimed. "Who would have thought that our lovely Shelby ever wore a dress, much less one with a fine collar like that?"

The man was right; the resemblance was uncanny.

Ben excused himself and walked toward the saloon, noticing that one wall of the second floor had blown in. Shelby’s bedroom was on public display.

"Reckon I’ll have to get me some new wallpaper."

Ben turned his eyes toward Shelby. She stood on the porch smiling around her cigar. After an enormous puff of smoke enveloped her head, she removed the cigar and motioned upwards with it. "I was kinda tired of the old stuff anyhow," she said and then laughed.

"The old stuff?"

"Dern newspaper I’ve been usin’ on them walls just ‘bout covered the town from the looks of it." She lifted her chin. "Virgil said it’s all the way up the road to that restaurant tent."

Ben studied the drawing. Jack was right. The girl definitely resembled Shelby. Had Shelby lost a daughter somewhere along the way? With heaviness in his stomach, Ben wordlessly held the drawing toward her.

Shelby’s eyes went from his face to the paper, and the wrinkles on her forehead eased. "Where’d you find this?" she asked softly.

Ben motioned behind him, to where Buck stood. "By the corral fence. Do you know who it belongs to?"

Shelby nodded. "Me."

A dozen questions came to mind. But a person did well not to inquire too much about someone’s past out here. Ben said he was glad the drawing was back in her hands and turned to leave.

"Whaddya think?"

Shelby’s brightly voiced question stopped him.

"What do I think?"

"Yeah." She waved the drawing in the air.

"It’s a lovely drawing . . . and a pretty young lady."

"You didn’t tell nobody about it, did ya? Last thing I need is folks asking me to draw this and that."

"Draw–" Ben pointed at the paper in her hands. "You mean you–"

"All it takes is a mirror and some memory." Shelby leaned toward Ben, suddenly worried. "You ain’t gonna tell anyone."

Who would believe him if he did? Ben felt his eyes widen. He shook his head.

Shelby nodded a thank you. "Way I figure it, we all come here to get a fresh start." She walked toward the saloon doors and then paused to look back over her shoulder at Ben. "Maybe someday I’ll tell ya my real name."

The End