What If?

My friend once asked me, “Have you ever wondered what would happen if your favorite fictional character showed up at your house randomly?” Well I gave it some thought but knew nothing exciting like that could ever happen to me, I just don’t have that kind of luck. And then low and behold, my friend ends up finding Murtagh on her ranch and now she’s off in Alagaësia with him having a blast. She sends letters to me every now and then somehow to inform me how she’s doing.

Besides that, my life is as normal and boring as ever. I had graduated from high school with my friend only a month before she left, so I don’t have much to do. I live in this little town call Roosevelt; well it’s so small I don’t even think that it can be called a town. The nearest place to shop is Wal-Mart in Claypool, AZ, about a twenty-five minute drive, but unfortunately, I don’t have a car, not even a driver’s license. So as I said, my life is pretty boring.

But don’t get me wrong, I love my life. Even though Roosevelt is very isolated from other places, I still love it. Not many parties to keep you up all night and a beautiful lake only a couple miles from my house to go swimming and fishing all summer long.

I live with my dad and older brother who is twenty-three. He still lives at home because he is slightly autistic and has the mind of a thirteen year old. He’s really smart with math and English, but when it comes to his emotions, well let’s just say, he throws temper tantrums when things don’t go his way. He’s a great brother and I love him to death.

Well, I guess I should tell you guys about my life for the past eight months, and we’ll going ahead and start at the beginning of those eight months. One night, after watching one of my favorite old TV shows on TVLand, Bonanza, I headed off to bed. As I lay in my bed reading, scenes from the episode flashed through my head; Adam wearing his black pants and dark red shirt, being the sensible older brother watching out for his younger siblings, Hoss and Little Joe.

A smile formed on my face as I reflected on Hopsing chasing Hoss out of the kitchen with a broom. After reading a couple chapters, I found myself drifting off to sleep on my soft bed, not bothering to change from my day clothes, not emptying my pockets, and my new glasses still resting on my face. It felt as if I’d only been asleep for a few minutes when I was woken up by the sound of gunfire.

“What the heck!” I yelled as I jumped to my feet. Looking around, I realized I was in the middle of nowhere and somewhere off to my right, I could hear gunfire. The sun was just coming up over a patch of distant mountains; the rising sun casting little light on the ground around my bare feet. Even though I knew it was probably a very stupid idea, I started walking towards the gunfire, when I heard horse coming my way. I ducked behind a bush as a group of five men came riding my way.

“This way boys, we can hide from those Cartwrights’ just up here,” a man yelled just down the hill from me to the rest of his gang. Had I heard him right? Cartwrights? The men came up the hill I was on and dismounted their horses and started to hide behind rocks as I heard some more horses riding our way. Deciding that this was going to turn into their stakeout for a gunfight, I decided to start sneaking away, but with my luck, I tripped over a log just behind me, causing a loud ruckus.

“What was that?” one of the men said as another came in my direction. Before I could hide or even get up, there was a tall cowboy, with the barrel of his gun pointed at my head, standing over me.

“Ummm, hi,” I said nervously, I had never had a loaded gun pointed at me before and it made me very nervous.

“Well what do you know,” the leader of the group laughed as he came over to see what was going on, “looks like we have ourselves a hostage. Tie her up and we’ll us her to get out of here.” The man standing over me bent over, and as he did he holstered his gun, so I grabbed up a handful of dirt and through it in his face as I got to my feet.

“Awww, you bitch,” he yelled as I started to run off, but was grabbed by a pair of strong hands.

“Let me go,” I yelled at the person, but he only laughed in my ear as he put the blade of a knife to my throat.

“Let her go,” I heard a familiar booming voice yell from behind us.

“No, I don’t think so Cartwright, you see, she’s going to help get us out of here,” the man laughed as he turned us around to face the man he was addressing. And even though I was shocked to no extent from all the weird surprises that had been going on since I’d been woken up, my jaw still dropped when I saw Ben Cartwright sitting on his tan horse and his three sons behind him, along with the sheriff and others.

“Look around you Riley, everyone knows that you robbed that bank. How long do you think that you’re going to be able to run before someone catches you?” the sheriff said.

“Oh trust me, long enough for me to spend all that money,” Riley laughed, “now, if you don’t mind, me and my boys are going to mount our horses, along with this pretty little lady here, and go on our way. And if you don’t want any harm coming to this pretty little thing, I’d suggest you through down your fire arms and not follow us.” It annoyed me to no end how Riley kept calling me a pretty little thing, and there was no way in hell I was going to let him get way like that. When he lessened his hold on the blade of his knife, I stomped down as hard as I could on his foot and ducked, as Adam still had a fire arm on him.

After a few rounds of gun fire, Riley lay dead on the ground behind me, along with two other of his men while the other two surrendered. As I got to my feet, all four of the Cartwrights jumped from their steeds and came over to me.

“Are you alright?” Ben asked as he took off his jacket and offered it to me.

Before I could answer him I felt myself suddenly feel light headed, and things went black.

*~~~~~~~~*

Pulling my covers close around my shoulders, I heard someone enter my room, “Daddy is that you?”

“Shhh, it’s alright,” a male voice said to me. I could hear him pulling a chair up to the bed.

“I had the weirdest dream. I’d somehow popped up on the Ponderosa,” I said as I sat up in the bed. As I did, I realized that I wasn’t in my room, “where am I?”

“Well, you are on the Ponderosa,” the man said. Turning my head, I realized that I was talking to Ben Cartwright.

“Wait…… what,” I stammered, “You’re not real. You can’t be!” As he reached out to place a hand on my shoulder I fell backwards off the bed.

“Hey, it’s okay I'm not going to hurt,” Ben said as he got up from his chair. There were footsteps coming our way.

“Pa, is everything okay,” Adam said as he poked his head in the door. What the heck was going on, there was no way this could be real. They were just characters from a TV show I liked to watch.

“I must be dreaming, this can’t be real,” I said pushing myself into a corner, trying to get as far away from Ben and Adam as I could. As I did, I cut my hand on a nail sticking up from the floor, and it hurt as blood started coming from the cut. I must have looked completely terrified in Ben’s and Adam’s points of view, as they looked at me with complete pity. Adam walked around the bed to where I was and crouched down in front of me.

“Hey, it’s alright, we’re not going to harm you. You’re safe here. My name is Adam Cartwright and this is my pa, Ben Cartwright,” Adam said offering his hand to me.

“I know you’re not going to hurt me and I know who you are,” I said, not grabbing Adam’s offered hand, “I know all about you and the Ponderosa. I know all about Hoss and Little Joe as well.”

“So you’ve heard of us?” Ben asked.

“I…… I guess you could say that,” I said, knowing that they probably wouldn’t understand the concept of television seeing as it was only in the 1880’s, “Of course, first Jessi goes to Alagaësia, and now I'm in Virginia, Nevada in the 1800’s.”

“Where’s Alagaësia?” Adam asked bewildered.

“Oh, no where you’ve ever heard of,” I said remembering they were in the room, and I decided to get off the cold wooden floor. Adam once again offered his hand to help me to my feet; I normally wouldn’t have accepted, but decided to hummer him since as I was in their world.

When I was standing, I looked down at myself and realized that I was wearing the clothes I’d been wearing the day before, forgetting that I’d fallen asleep in them (A pair of blue jeans, a dark purple undershirt, and a low cut green over shirt). It was something women didn’t wear back in the 1800’s.

“Those are some strange looking clothes we found you in,” Ben said, “where did you get them?”

“Let’s just say I'm not exactly from around here,” I said sitting down on the bed.

“Where are you from,” Adam asked sitting next to me as Ben sat back down in the chair, “your family must be worried about you.”

“And what did you mean when you said that I couldn’t be real?” Ben added.

“Boy, those are going to be fun questions to answer,” I mumbled.

“What?” Adam asked.

Taking in a deep breath, I decided to answer them as straight as I could, “My name is Tricia Handy, I'm from Roosevelt, Arizona, and last night when I went to sleep I was in Roosevelt, in my room, and it was the year 2011.” From the looks on their face, I could tell that they couldn’t make up their minds if I was crazy, or if I was just pulling their leg.

“Well, that’s definitely the first time someone’s said something like that,” Adam laughed.

“Look, I know you think I'm crazy, but I'm telling you the truth, I'm not from this time,” I said in desperation, “how can I prove it to you?” And as I said this, I just happened to run my hand over my right pocket and there was a bump in there. Putting my hand in my pocket, I felt my cell phone and I-pod inside it, along with some money and a hair clip. I pulled out all the contents of my pocket and laid them out on the bed next to me, just out of the view of Ben and Adam.

“What was that,” Adam asked.

“Look, here is something that’s from the future, we use them to communicate with people that are away from us,” I said as I showed Adam my cell phone, “pretty much everyone in the future has one. I can call my grandma, who lives in south Texas, and talk to her. I talk into this part and her voice comes through here.” I placed my phone in Adam’s hand for him to look at.

“So, how does this work?” Adam asked.

“Well, I’d dial her number in and hit the send button,” I said as I dialed in my grandmother’s number then pointed to the send button, “But, since I don’t have a signal, seeing as I'm in the 1880’s, I can’t call anyone.”

“What do you need for a signal?” Ben asked as Adam handed over my phone to him.

“There are things called cell phone towers in the future, and those things won’t be made for a good long time yet,” I said with a slight laugh, now I understood how poor Murtagh felt when he’d woken up on Jessi’s ranch in the middle of nowhere. While Ben was examining my phone, he accidentally hit the voice command button, and a ladies voice emitted from my phone, causing Ben to drop my phone on the wood flooring. Luckily for me my phone wasn’t damaged.

Bending over, I grabbed up my phone and hit the clear button to quiet the phone, “Do you guys think I'm less crazy now?”

“Well, I don’t know any other way to explain where something like that came from,” Adam said pointing to my phone, “what were those other things you had in your hand?”

“My I-pod, some money, and a hair clip for my bangs,” I said as I laid the objects in between myself and Adam.

“What’s an… I-pod?” Ben asked.

“Well, in the future there are tons of musicians and people can buy their music and listen to it, you don’t have to go to a dance or anything like that to listen to their music,” I started, “and this little devise here can hold a little over a thousand songs, last time I checked there were 1,132 songs on there I believe.”

“How can something that small have so many songs in it?” Ben asked creasing his brow.

“I have no idea to tell you the truth, but it does,” I said with a slight laugh. Then an idea popped into my head, reaching into my left pocket, I pulled out my black gummy headphones and plugged them into my I-pod, “Here, hold these to your ears and you can hear music.” Adam held one to one of his ears as Ben held one to his own. Scrolling through my songs, I found Richard Stoltzman’s Maiden with the Flaxen Hair. Even though it wasn’t Beethoven or Bach, it was styled after classical music. Besides, I didn’t think that Adam or Ben would appreciate anything like, Avenged Sevenfold’s Little Piece of Heaven, or Black Eyed Peas’s Imma Be.

After the whole two minutes and forty-nine seconds of the song, Ben and Adam looked at me in astonishment. They didn’t seem to know what to say, and to tell you the truth, neither did I. As I unplugged the headphones from the I-pod and began to wrap them up, I heard someone else headed our way.

“Hey pa, doc’s here,” Hoss said as he entered the room.

“What’s the doctor here for, did Little Joe get hurt?” I asked getting up from the bed.

“Well, no,” Ben laughed, “I had the sheriff send for the doctor when you fainted earlier, just in case something was wrong with you.”

“Oh,” I said, “well, I'm pretty sure I'm fine. Umm, hi there Hoss.”

“Howdy ma’am,” Hoss said with a slight wave to me.

“Guess there’s no need for an introduction,” Adam said with a slight smile.

“Oh, sorry, I'm Tricia Handy,” I said offering my hand to Hoss. With a quizzical expression on his face, Hoss extended his hand and took hold of mine.

Soon, I was properly introduced to Little Joe, who, of course, flirtatiously took my hand and kissed it after introducing himself. I felt my cheeks burn as I blushed at the gesture. Little Joe was definitely a handsome young man, along with Adam.

After talking things through, Ben decided that if I was going to be stuck there that he would allow me to stay with them, as he thought that I would be able to place a feminine touch to the house. Ha, obviously his mind was going to change after spending time with me, as I look like a girly-girl most of the time, but I’m very much a tomboy. Well, by that afternoon, Ben had a measuring tape out, something I wasn’t too thrilled about as I’m very self-conscious of my weight, but I needed to be measured so that Ben could have a few dresses made for me. Hehe, apparently a small purple undershirt, green over shirt, and blue jeans wouldn’t be appropriate for this time.

A couple weeks went by as I slowly became accustom to wearing dresses every day, ugh, even though I’m not a big fan of skirts. Anyways, but a couple weeks went by, and after talking things through with the Cartwright family at breakfast that morning, which was the crack of dawn, Ben decided that it would be a good idea for Adam to stay home and give me riding lessons. After running upstairs to my room and slipping into my clothes from my time, I met Adam out by the horse barn. He was standing there with a beautiful deep brown horse that had a black mane, all saddled up and ready for riding. An amused smile played across Adam’s face.

“What are you smiling about?” I asked as I got up to him.

“Just that I always thought that people from the future were supposed to be smarter than us old timers,” Adam laughed. I pretended to be annoyed, and crossed my arms over my chest with an indignant huff. Adam seemed confused by this gesture at first, worry wanting to spread his face, until I playfully stuck my tongue out at him and laughed.

“So, what’s his or her name?” I asked Adam as I approached the horse, my hand raised so it could smell me. The horse placed its nose in my hand and I rubbed its soft furred head.

“Her name is Katarina,” Adam said as he watched me pet her. Katarina was a large horse, strong built and tall. She lowered her head and began rubbing her head up and down my chest, wanting m to take the bridal off of her, the same way Kiddo always did after I rode him back on Jessica’s ranch.

“Katarina, that’s kinda funny,” I said more to myself than Adam.

“What’s so funny about it?” Adam asked confused.

“When my dad was younger, his grandfather always took him to our ranch in Texas, and during that time, my dad had his own horse,” I said while still loving on my horse, “and her name was Katarina. I think she might have been the same color as this horse but I’m not sure. The only picture of my great-grandpa’s horses was one of a horse named Blondie, and her name tells you what color she was.”

“Okay, well I guess it’s time that we get your riding lessons started,” Adam said after a bit. For the next couple hours, Adam had me ride around and get used to moving with the horse when it was going at a quick trot. By the end of my lessons for that day, my legs were ridiculously sore, and the sun was blazing in the sky.

My legs almost fell out from under me as I dismounted the horse, Adam being right there holding onto my arm help me keep from falling as well. I leaned up against Katarina was I walked her towards the horse stables, Adam staying close behind me, trying his best to keep from smiling, but I noticed the smile in his eyes. After putting Katarina in a stall, my legs were still sore, but I no longer felt I needed any support.

“Good job, you knew a bit more about horses than you had us all believing earlier,” Adam laughed as he placed Katarina’s saddle on a saddle stand just in front of me, “Little Joe was betting that you wouldn’t even be able to mount the horses without some support.” I laughed as we walked out of the stables and back to the house. For the next couple weeks, Adam kept at my training til, in no time, I was a master at riding the horse. After my lessons were over and complete, Ben gave me Katarina as a gift. After Katarina was officially my horse, the Cartwrights’ had the hardest time keeping me from riding her around the Ponderosa every day. Months went by as I became accustomed to the life styles of the old west, falling more and more in love with it every day.

It had been at least seven months since the Cartwrights had found me on their property, and by now I had been adopted into the family, but I was also beginning to fall in love with all of the Cartwright sons, even though I was trying my hardest not to. I had learned how to make my own dresses, cook with a wood burning stove, and other things women in the old west were expected to do. But I also learned how to properly rope calves, shoot with uncanny aim, and other boyish things, something Ben just shook his head at and laughed. I had warned him a long time ago that I was a tomboy at heart and now he knew that I hadn’t been joking.

Little Joe and Hoss had ridden off before sunrise one morning, while Hopsing and I stood around the wood burning oven trying to keep warm from the cold October morning. Hopsing and I we’re usually up early making breakfast for the Cartwrights, even though Ben and the others didn’t think that I should be slaving around in the kitchen. Hopsing hadn’t liked me helping in the kitchen at first, but after a while, Hopsing had taken me under his wing and now we were best friends. When light rays of the sun were streaking the distant horizon, Hopsing and I had breakfast placed on the table, while Ben and Adam were just descending the stair case to the living room.

Ben and Adam stood by the table, waiting for me to sit, the way many gentlemen did back during this time to show respect towards women. When breakfast was through, Adam left to town for a reason I didn’t catch and Ben went to work looking over some lists of things he needed or things he wanted to sell. As usual I was left to do as I pleased during the day, and decided to some house hold chores to make the house nicer.

When the sun had risen high enough in the sky to take the chill out of the air, I ventured out to the stables to visit Katarina. During the months of Katarina being my horse, she had become the most spoiled and loved horse on the whole Ponderosa. She stood over in her stall, opposite Ben’s horse, and greeted me with a nicker when I walked up to her. Stepping forward, she nuzzled my face affectionately while I rubbed her neck. When I pulled my hand back, it was covered in dust and dirt.

“Hey girl, guess it’s been a while since I last brushed you,” I laughed, then stepped into the stall with her and grabbed out her brush. It took a while, but I loved every second of as Katarina was a perfectly behaved girl when it came to brushing her, in fact she loved it. By the time I was completely done, the sun was in the middle of the sky, feeling really nice and warm. Little Joe and Hoss still hadn’t returned from where ever it was they had gone, and Adam was still in town.

“Hey girl, you wanna go for a ride?” I said as I grabbed her bridal. Now, Katarina is an angel when it comes to brushing her, loving on her, and even saddling her, but when it comes to taking the bit, she is very stubborn. When she saw pick up the bridal she nickered, pawed the ground, and pawed the earth beneath her. I just laughed to myself as I approached her. After a few minutes I was finally able to get the bit in her mouth and then walked her from the stall. With some support, I mounted her, for I felt like riding her bare back, something I’d done a few times before but never faster than a mild trot.

I rode around the Ponderosa, taking in the ridiculously beautiful surrounds, feeling completely at home in this world. I started to think of my friends back in my old world, and Jessica off in Alagaësia. When Jessica had first left I hadn’t understood how she could leave all her friends and family like that, but now I understood, the two of us just weren’t meant for the world we were born into, for as I sat on Katarina, I realized that this was my world, and this was where I belonged. I loved it here, and even if I found the way back to the year 2011, I wasn’t going to go back, this was my home and I was going to stay.

Turning around, I was happy to see Hoss, Little Joe, and Adam riding up to me as they all came back from their different destinations. When they got up to me I waved to them.

"What are you doing up here by yourself Tricia?" Hoss called to me when he was near enough.

Instead of calling back, I nudged Katarina towards the Cartwright brothers, then answered, "I was just thinking, I love it here, and I never want to leave. Well, that is if none of you have any objections to that." The boys just looked at me, acting as if they were thinking something through, but when Little Joe looked over at Hoss the two broke out laughing.

"Of course," Adam said looking me in the eye with a smile plastered over his face, "In my opinion we've already adopted you into the family." With that we all turned and rode back home, the sun setting behind us, giving it that perfect old western movie touch.

~*Epilogue*~

It has been at least two years since I popped up on the Ponderosa and I am completely at home here now. I am now married to Adam Cartwright, and we’re expecting our first child in the next three months. And yes I know what some of you are thinking, “Oww, he’s like way older than you and not that good looking” but hey, I love him and it’s the old west, our age difference is normal for most marriages here. I am leaving this little journal in the spot that I popped up on and if I does go back to the time I was from, please post this so others can read this and know that there is hope for new forms of adventure out there, you just have to be patient and wait for it to come to you.