She returned with the plastic kits and stacked them at the top of the stairs. “Rob says to tell Lindsay he packed everything she might possibly need, including antidote for snakebite. If she has any questions, she’s supposed to call him.”
“Okay,” the boy said curtly, reaching for another cookie.
Gwen sat in her chair again and poured herself a glass of lemonade. “Are you going along on this trail ride, Clint?”
“I have to. They say nobody can stay behind at the ranch.”
Gwen cast a glance at his withdrawn expression. “But you’re not excited about it? I’d think this would be a terrific adventure.”
He scowled and stared at his feet. “It’s a stupid thing,” he muttered bitterly. “The other kids are just babies. Even Danny gets to go.”
She could sense his anger, along with depths of underlying pain that tore at her heart. “So you’d rather just stay at home than camp out for a week in the wilderness?” she asked, wondering what had happened to alienate this boy.
“I’d rather be a thousand miles away from this place,” he said. “I hate everything about it, except for the horses.”
Gwen hesitated, a little reluctant to probe further. All the boys at Lost Springs Ranch had sad stories of pain, loss and abandonment, and she knew it might not be wise to ask questions.
But her concern won out over caution.
“Where were you living before you came here?” she asked.
“I was in Denver. I ran away a couple of years ago, after my mother went to jail.”
“Where did you go?” Gwen asked, listening to distant peals of laughter as the two little boys played behind the house.
He shrugged. “Nowhere. On the streets.”
Gwen tried to picture her beloved grandson just a few years from now, surviving by himself on the streets of a big city, but her imagination couldn’t even encompass the idea.
“Oh, Clint,” she said. “That must have been so hard for you.”
“Yeah, it was hard.” His voice was still brusque, but Gwen could sense that he was getting more involved in the conversation, responding to her sympathy.
The poor boy probably never talked much to anybody around him. Maybe it was easier to open up to a stranger, especially when that person was a harmless gray-haired grandmother who sat on a shady veranda and served him cookies.
“So how did you survive?” she asked.
“I got into a gang. We stole things so we could buy food. When I got busted, they sent me here to this dumb place.”
Impulsively Gwen put a hand on his arm. He flinched a little at her touch, but didn’t get up and stalk away as she’d half expected.
“Have another cookie,” she said. “There are more in the kitchen.”
He obeyed, chewing and swallowing in silence as both of them stared at the vivid flower garden beyond the picket fence.
“Weren’t you scared?” Gwen asked at last. “It seems to me that would be such a terrifying way to live, especially for a young person.”
His dark glance flicked over her. “Sure I was scared. All the time. You don’t even know what it means to be scared, living in a nice place like this.”
“Oh, but you’re wrong,” Gwen said. “I know what it’s like to be scared, Clint. I’m not frightened of the same things you were, maybe, but I live with terror every day of my life.”
For the first time he looked at her directly, and the sullen, brooding expression lifted for a moment. “You do?” he asked. “What are you afraid of?”
“Everything.” Gwen wondered why she was telling him this. “I have panic attacks whenever I try to leave the house.”
“What’s a panic attack?”
“I get so scared, I feel as if I’m going to faint. My throat closes up so I can’t breathe, and my head starts to spin.”
By now Clint was apparently so fascinated that he’d forgotten about being rude and withdrawn. “What makes you scared?”
“I have a medical condition called agoraphobia,” Gwen said. “That means I’m afraid of open spaces.”
“So you get scared like that whenever you go anywhere?” he asked.
“I don’t go anywhere,” Gwen told him simply. “I can’t leave the house.”
She realized it was the first time she’d told this truth to anybody outside the family.
By now she understood she was giving Clint Kraft the explanation she’d wanted so much to tell Sam Duncan. She was telling Clint about herself because Sam hadn’t come to see her, and he never would again.
“You can’t leave your house?” the boy asked in disbelief. “But that’s crazy.”
“I guess it is,” Gwen said with a humorless smile. “But that doesn’t make it any less real if you happen to be the one who’s suffering from it.”
“How do you... What kind of life do you have?”
“Quite a lonely one,” she said. “And it makes me feel even worse when I realize I’m a burden to my family because of these ridiculous fears. But I still can’t seem to get over them.”
Clint munched thoughtfully on another cookie. “What causes something like that?” he asked at last.
“Usually some kind of panic or trauma in a person’s past life,” Gwen said, thinking of her husband’s tragic death. “I’ve had...some pretty awful experiences. I think they hurt me so much that something just snapped inside me, and it seems to be taking a long time to repair, no matter how hard I try.”
He glanced at her again. For a moment the boy’s scornful mask dropped away, and she could see the deep hurt in his eyes.
“I guess everybody reacts to things in a different way,” he said at last, staring at the garden again.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve been hurt,” Clint said, “but now you keep beating up on yourself, right?”
Gwen considered, then nodded. “I suppose that’s what I’m doing.”
“Well, some people are different. They...”
“Yes?” she prompted when he fell silent.
The boy cleared his throat. “Some people, when they’ve been hurt, they’d rather take it out on other people. They want to see somebody else get hurt the same way.”
All at once Gwen felt a chilly touch of danger, almost a warning in his voice. “Do you feel that way sometimes, Clint?” she asked softly.
But his dark face looked shuttered and cold again, and she knew their strange moment of closeness had passed.
“When people push you around,” he said, getting to his feet, “they shouldn’t be surprised if you push back.” He looked directly at her. “Because they deserve whatever they get.”
Again Gwen thought she detected a note of warning in the boy’s voice. She stared up at him, wondering what to say.
“Come on, Danny,” he shouted toward the back of the house. “We have to go.”
The little boys rushed around the corner of the shed, and Danny set up an immediate protest when he realized they were leaving before he had a chance to be served cookies and lemonade.
“Just put some of those cookies in your pocket,” Clint told the child, striding toward their truck with the first-aid kits tucked under his arm. “I can’t waste any more time.”
Gwen smiled apologetically at Danny as she filled his pockets with cookies. Then she stood by the railing to watch as he climbed into the truck and the two boys drove off, heading back to Lost Springs.
Brian waved, then wandered back around to the rear of the house where his rabbit cages were kept.
After the ranch truck disappeared behind a grove of trees, Gwen sat down and twisted her hands nervously in her lap, wondering what to do.
Gwen McCabe was no stranger to pain. She realized Clint Kraft had suffered terrible things that twisted his soul, alt
hough she also suspected he had a core of decency and might be worth salvaging if somebody was willing to spend enough time with him.
But she was also troubled when she remembered the look on his face.
Clint Kraft had enough pent-up anger to be dangerous, and he was soon going to be isolated in the mountains for a week with five younger boys and a couple of adults. At some level, Gwen had the feeling he’d been trying to remind her of that fact.
Particularly because he’d said these things to a virtual stranger, she thought perhaps he’d been warning her, almost begging for somebody to intercede and stop him before he could do something destructive.
Gwen wondered if she had the responsibility to tell somebody her fears.
If she didn’t, and as a result some kind of harm came to any of the people on that trail ride, she’d feel terrible.
Finally she settled back in her chair and picked up her knitting, wondering if anybody would even pay attention to her. Most likely they’d think she was just a silly old woman whose imagination was working overtime because she never left the safety of her own house.
And probably they’d be right.
Frowning, she tried to concentrate on the complicated pattern. But all she could see was Clint Kraft’s angry young face, and the cynical twist of his mouth as he talked about hurting people.
* * *
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON Rex and Lindsay were outside the rear entry to the Lost Springs Ranch office, making their final arrangements before embarking on the trail ride the next morning.
Loads of supplies had already been leaving throughout the afternoon. Clint and one of the ranch hands were hauling the horses over to the Bighorn Ranch, where they would be kept overnight so the animals would be fed and rested, eager for an early start on the trail the following day.
Along with the horses, Clint was also taking all the equipment, the bedrolls and cooking equipment and supplies of food. On the square of lawn behind Lindsay’s office, each boy was required to display his own pack and have it approved before Clint loaded it on the truck.
Rex had finished itemizing their itinerary and now sat on the office steps, watching as Lindsay checked through duffel bags and backpacks.
The day was hot and windy. She wore a brief cotton sundress printed with big yellow flowers and a pair of leather sandals. This attire was something of a novelty to Rex, who was accustomed to seeing her in jeans or khaki shorts and businesslike plaid shirts.
“Lonnie,” she said, her voice drifting up from the lawn, “you can’t take all these granola bars! Look, there must be three or four dozen of them in here.”
Lonnie Schneider looked anxiously at the bulging zippered pack in her hand. “But I need proper nourishment,” he said. “What if we get stranded out there and run out of food?”
“C’mon, Schneider,” Jason Bernstein said. The Bernstein brothers’ neat packs were both already approved, but the boys still hung around watching. “You could live off your fat.”
“Until Christmas, at least,” Jason’s twin brother chimed in, grinning.
All the boys laughed, but Lonnie still looked deeply alarmed when Lindsay set the pack of rich treats aside on the grass.
“Lindsay,” he pleaded, “come on, I can’t get along without granola bars for a whole week. The doctor says I need the fiber.”
“Fiber! Hey, Lonnie needs fiber.” The other boys hooted in delight.
Rex smiled privately, enjoying the warmth of sunshine on his face and the lively group arguing down on the lawn. He watched with interest to see how Lindsay would handle their conflict.
She was so damned good with all these boys.
“Fiber is good for you, but do you need six bars a day?” she asked Lonnie.
Lonnie shifted uncomfortably and looked down at his dirty sneakers. “I’m just worried about running out. That always scares me a lot.”
When Lindsay turned to exchange a quick glance with Rex, he could tell what she was thinking by the soft, troubled look in her eyes.
Lonnie Schneider had been sent to the ranch when he was ten years old. He’d been found living in an alley behind one of the trendy restaurants in Jackson Hole and scavenging food from a nearby garbage bin. Lonnie’s mother was dead and his father, they learned, was a migrant farm worker who’d abandoned him, claiming the boy wasn’t his biological child.
In the days soon after the social worker brought Lonnie to Lost Springs Ranch, he wouldn’t talk to anybody but he ate all the time, greedily and voraciously, as if every meal set in front of him was the last he would ever see.
Now, four years later, Lonnie Schneider was plump and amiable, easygoing and lazy, bearing few apparent scars from his childhood ordeal. But they knew he was still terrified by the prospect of running out of food.
Rex watched with interest as Lindsay wavered, holding the pack of granola bars. “Okay, I’ll tell you what,” she said to Lonnie. “You can take your granola bars if you promise to share. There are enough bars in this pack for every single boy, including you, to eat at least one of them a day.”
Lonnie’s round face drained of color. “But if everybody eats one, they’ll be gone in no time!”
Lindsay hugged the boy and patted him soothingly as Rex watched.
“Lonnie,” she said, “listen to me. We have tons of food. Most of the pack horses are carrying nothing but food supplies. There’s not a chance in the world of us running out.”
He drew away and looked up at her, obviously struggling with his own fears.
“So what’ll it be, Lonnie?” she asked. “Are you going to share your snacks, or will you leave them behind altogether?”
The boy kicked sullenly at a clump of grass. “I guess I’ll share.”
Lindsay patted his arm and smiled her approval. “Then your pack is fine. Stack it inside the office with the others and Clint will load it up later when they make their next trip.”
“Okay.” Looking relieved now that he’d made the painful decision to sacrifice his treats, Lonnie marched past Rex and into the office, depositing his pack next to the others by her desk.
Rex watched, still smiling, as the plump boy disappeared around the side of the office with the Bernstein twins.
Lindsay came up to sit on the steps beside him, stretched her legs wearily and rested her head against the door frame.
They were alone in the warm summer afternoon, with nobody else in sight. Rex felt himself tingling with sudden excitement at her nearness. She looked so pretty in that little scrap of a dress, with her shapely tanned legs and graceful shoulders, her windblown curls...
“I guess Lonnie was the last one,” he said. “Or is there another boy waiting?”
“No, that’s it. All six examined and accounted for. Now the poor things just have to fill in the time somehow until we leave tomorrow. I’m letting them go into town after supper and see a movie.”
Rex felt a brief touch of worry. “Is Danny going with them?”
“You really like Danny, don’t you?” Lindsay turned to him, smiling.
For some reason her question made Rex vaguely uncomfortable. “I just wondered,” he said, “because he seems awfully small to be hanging around with that gang of teenage boys.”
Lindsay frowned. “I know he does, but I can hardly exclude him from everything they’re doing. If I don’t let him go to the movie, he’ll have to sit around in the dorm and watch television with Rosemary like he does every other night.”
“Maybe you and I could take him somewhere,” Rex said, remembering their comfortable lunch in Lindsay’s house, and Danny’s heart-rending comment that it felt just like a real family.
And then that storm of tears, and the warm feeling of holding the little boy while he cried, comforting him and stroking his hair...
Lindsay rolled her head agai
nst the door frame and watched him with a quizzical expression.
“What?” Rex asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m just...wondering, that’s all.”
“Wondering what?”
Lindsay frowned and plucked a blade of grass from the lawn. She leaned back, chewing on it thoughtfully.
“What’s going on with you, anyhow?” she asked. “For years and years you’ve been coming out here in a suit and tie to check the books and preside at meetings. Then you’d always go barreling back to the city so fast I couldn’t see you for dust. But now...”
He waited while she stared at the creek winding slowly past them, its surface shimmering with broken bits of light.
“Now all of a sudden you’re hanging around in cowboy clothes, offering to take little kids on outings, teasing me as if I were—”
“As if you were what?” he asked when she stopped abruptly.
She looked down at her hands, obviously unwilling to continue. Rex waited, holding his breath, aware that something of monumental importance was on the verge of happening between them.
Something that could change their lives forever.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LINDSAY’S CHEEKS were pink with exertion, and she looked as pretty as a wild rose. The heat of the day coupled with the hard work of lifting the boys’ packs had made her warm. Rex could see a delicate shimmer of perspiration on her upper lip.
Another drop of moisture glistened like a satiny jewel on her golden skin, rolling down toward the smocked bodice of the yellow sundress and into the shallow cleft between her breasts.
Rex reached out to touch it, letting his hand rest on her bare skin for a moment. He raised his finger and licked the salty moisture, looking directly into her face. She stared back at him, wide-eyed, like a little bird hypnotized by a snake.
“You taste so good, Linnie,” he whispered. “Flowers and sunshine.”
“Rex...”
He put an arm around her and drew her close, holding her gently, loving the feel of her warm silky body in his arms, the fragrance of her hair.
Best Man in Wyoming Page 12