Hideaway

by Hannah Alexander

  “What about his regular teachers?”

  “I’ve already spoken with the staff there.” He sighed. “No one wants to tackle it. How did you overcome your own problems with dyslexia?”

  “My parents brought a special tutor to our house who worked with me every day for several months. After that she helped me with my regular schoolwork when I needed it.”

  “Do you remember some of the techniques the teacher used?”

  “I remember it all. That was an exciting time in my life.”

  “Do you mind sharing the knowledge? You get along well with Blaze—”

  “I’d be glad to tell you what I know, but I’m not a teacher. Tell me more about your boys. How does the ranch run?”

  Okay, so she wasn’t thrilled about the idea. Time to back off for a minute or two. “They take care of all the work on the ranch, the cattle, hogs, chickens, the hay hauling and gardening, the feeding in the winter.”

  “Sounds like they keep busy.”

  “They learn a lot. Those who don’t work outside get to help out around the house, with the cooking and down at the general store. We also have a shop where we build furniture, and they’ve put up several small outbuildings.”

  “Do you ever have trouble with them?”

  “Of course, especially with the new arrivals. Most of the boys I get are either products of broken homes, or their parents were unable to keep them for some reason. Some came directly from an orphanage. At the ranch we try to find a skill or chore they’re especially good at, and encourage them at it.”

  “How do you keep up with it all?”

  He hesitated for a moment. “I don’t. And I’m glad I’m not responsible for the results,” he said quietly. “I pray with them, I work with them on the ranch and I watch them heal. It doesn’t happen all at once, and sometimes they take a step forward and two steps back, but I see them change. I see a lot of my prayers for them answered.”

  “You sound like a person at peace with who you are,” she said. “I envy you.”

  “I’m the one who gains the most benefit working with the boys.” He shook his head. “You’re good at changing the subject, aren’t you? I was hoping you might be willing to work with Blaze during some of your spare time, in exchange for his helping you around here.”

  “I told you, I’m not a teacher.”

  “You’re a doctor, right? They say the good docs have to be able to teach their patients.”

  “Who says I’m good?”

  “I do. Anyone willing to take an elbow in the eye to help Blaze get away from a bully, and go so far out of her way for one sick elderly man and shell out over a hundred dollars for medicine, is a good doctor.”

  She reached across the fence rails and plucked another blade of tall grass and rolled it between her fingers until it disintegrated.

  “Blaze needs help, Cheyenne,” Dane said. “He’s smart. He can learn.”

  “I don’t doubt that.” She stepped away from him.

  “Won’t you just think about it?” Dane asked.

  “Sure, right. I’ll think about it.”

  He sighed and turned to stare across the lot toward the forest beyond.

  “What made you start taking in the boys when you bought your ranch?” she asked. “Was a boys’ ranch in your plans when you first came here?”

  He shook his head slowly. “I wouldn’t call it a plan, exactly. More like a dream. I loved farm life, and in college I majored in agriculture and studied adolescent psych and education, without a real focus on what I wanted to do with such a hodgepodge of training. Several years after graduating, I moved here with my wife and purchased the general store, and everything just fell into place as I went. Well, most things.”

  “Just like magic,” she commented.

  “No,” he said. “Not magic. The times I tried to take things into my own hands, I made a mess of it. My marriage, for instance. And I blew it big time with one of my kids a few years ago. I don’t suppose Bertie mentioned that I spent some time on a boys’ ranch when I was a teenager.”

  She stopped and looked up at him. “You?”

  “Up near Saint Louis.”

  “What happened?”

  “I put a man in the hospital.” Why was he baring his soul to her this way?

  The silence stretched uncomfortably. Dane felt the warmth of embarrassment flush his face.

  “How?” she asked.

  “I lost my temper and hit him. He was badgering a friend of mine, wouldn’t leave him alone, and I socked him in the face. I hit him wrong, broke his nose, there were complications, and he ended up in the hospital.”

  “Temper problem, huh?”

  He cleared his throat and glanced over his shoulder toward the garden. “Looks like Red and Bertie are finished. Want to go join them?”

  She turned to look at them. Then she turned back to Dane. “I wouldn’t have known you had a temper.”

  “I’ve learned to control it. Usually.”

  “At that other boys’ ranch?”

  “It was the best thing that could have happened to me.” He led the way toward the garden.

  “Was the ranch what changed you?”

  “Something happened at the ranch that changed me.”

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “There was a counselor there whom all the boys called ‘the Jesus freak.’ He was a retired science teacher, which surprised me, because I thought anyone who studied science couldn’t still believe all that nonsense about God. But this man did.” Dane stepped carefully across the garden to inspect the work Red had done. “That man was the best counselor there, because he taught me, and actually convinced me, that I was loved, and that I could be forgiven because Jesus Christ had already paid for my sins when He died on the cross. I could tell that his faith was solid, something to build a life around.”

  Cheyenne stopped walking. He could feel her growing resistance.

  Dane sighed and turned back to her. No smile there, that was for sure. He bent down and absently crumbled a clod of dirt in his fingers. “God’s people have a bad reputation, and I can see why.”

  “You’d better believe it.”

  He heard the trace of resentment in her voice. “Some people use the name of Christ the same way they use tickets to a movie theater—to gain acceptance where they wouldn’t ordinarily be accepted.” He stood back up and looked at her. “It’s called taking God’s name in vain, and they won’t always get away with it.”

  “But in the meantime they’ll continue to hurt others.”

  “It takes time and patience to be able to sort out the good from the bad.”

  “That might explain some of the things that have happened to me lately—for instance, the lawsuit from a man who claims to be a Christian,” Cheyenne said. She glanced toward Red and Bertie, who had their heads together at the other end of the garden. “I’d love to be able to blame my ex-brother-in-law for my sister’s death, but I can’t. It was what most people would call an act of God. And the deal with the goats the other morning? Another act of God, according to most. There have been times lately when I’ve actually wondered if He’s out to get me.”

  “He could be.”

  She blinked up at him. Was that apprehension he saw in her eyes?

  “He is a God who pursues, but it isn’t to harm you,” Dane said. “If you believe He’s making Himself known to you, then also believe it’s because He wants a relationship with you.” Lord, please don’t let me frighten her away.

  “Oh, sure,” she said, turning away. “Who wouldn’t want a relationship with a God like that.” Irony laced her voice as she stepped carefully past the new sprouts. “Disaster after disaster, constant emotional attack from all sides. I lose my sister, I’m forced from my job and I’m being sued. Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

  “Why don’t you let me try to put it into perspective?” Dane said, following her. “When you’re treating a patient, you’re often forced to perform painful procedures, right?
”

  “I try to be as humane as possible.” She kept walking.

  “But you can’t always be as gentle as you would like.”

  “No.”

  “So you can see the necessity of sometimes causing pain to ultimately cause the greater good for the patient.”

  She stopped at the edge of the garden and turned to him. “How can this kind of pain bring about my greater good?”

  “You’ll never be able to imagine it until you take that step of faith.”

  “You mean that step my sister took that forever placed her in subjection to a bully who calls himself a Christian? As I said, I’ll pass.”

  “It doesn’t have to be—”

  “Dane, forget the song and dance, okay? I’ve seen the ugly side of this Christianity you swear is so wonderful. All I see is corruption and injustice.”

  “That’s all you see?”

  She hesitated. “Okay, I’m sorry,” she said softly, looking into his eyes. “That isn’t all I see. There are exceptions. A few.”

  “For now, that’s all I ask,” he said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next Friday morning, a week after Cheyenne’s meeting in Columbia, she pushed up her bedroom window, took a deep breath of sweet country air scented with honeysuckle, and realized she was falling in love with Hideaway. She was helpless against her feelings. Only time would tell if it was a temporary infatuation or the real thing, but she already dreaded the thought of having to return to Columbia when her leave was over.

  She’d never before realized it was possible to love a place. Birds serenaded her from every direction, and the sound of their songs seemed to echo from the early morning fog that hovered over the lake. Soon the sun would roll that blanket away, leaving only puffy remnants of moisture across the deep blue sky.

  Two days had passed without intrusion except for the occasional motorboat down on the lake, or a jet flying overhead. She still felt an uneasy sense of waiting, as if, any day, she would hear back from Columbia, and the real world would come crashing in on her once again.

  As she stepped out onto the front porch, barefoot, wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, she heard the sound of a motor down on the road, past the rise that gave this place its privacy. A few moments later, to her total surprise, Austin Barlow’s shiny red truck topped that rise and bounced over the other side, pulling a horse trailer.

  What on earth was Austin Barlow doing here with that thing? Especially this early in the morning.

  She went inside to put on some tennis shoes, then walked out to meet the truck as it reached the gate. Ramsay sat in the passenger seat.

  Father and son both called a cheery greeting as they climbed out of the truck and walked up to meet her.

  “Hello, there,” Austin said as he extended a hand and took Cheyenne’s in a firm shake. Ramsay followed suit, a younger image of his father.

  “We’ve got us a little problem here, and I was wondering if you could help us for a few weeks,” Austin said, gesturing for her to follow him. “I found a poor, half-starved, abandoned horse on one of the properties I’m representing in my real estate business.”

  She wasn’t crazy about the little-boy-up-to-something look in his eyes. “How can I help you, and what do you mean by a few weeks?”

  “Depends on how long you’re planning to stay around. Come on back and look at the critter, Cheyenne.”

  She hesitated. He couldn’t be implying what she thought he was.

  Austin went to the back of the trailer, turned and looked at her. “Come on, he won’t bite, unless you’re a bucket of grain or a piece of grass.” He removed his cowboy hat, dusted it off on the side of his well-worn jeans and placed it back on his head.

  Reluctantly, Cheyenne joined the mayor and his son.

  “He’s apparently used to traveling in trailers,” Ramsay said, “because he didn’t put up any kind of a fuss when we loaded him in here.”

  “Could be because he’s ravenous,” Austin said. “We bought some grain, and this big boy ate a full bucket of the stuff, then tried to eat the bucket. It’s a sin, I tell you, what people do to animals.”

  Cheyenne peered into his truck, where she saw two hunting rifles on a rack in the back window.

  “Hunting’s one thing,” he said, following the direction of her gaze. “Kill them quickly and eat the meat. But don’t starve them to death.”

  She glanced through the bars of the trailer and saw a caricature of a horse. A stick figure with enormous eyes. “You’re asking me to keep a horse?”

  He turned and gestured toward the field in front of the house. “You’ve got at least thirty acres of good grass growing out here, and no animals to keep it down. Ramsay and I figure you could feed this boy all summer with just a little extra effort.”

  “But I’m not going to be here all summer.”

  “We’d provide the grain, of course, if you wouldn’t mind feeding some to him every day, give him some fresh water, maybe a kind word or two. That’s all he’d need.”

  “But I won’t be here—”

  “At least try it for a few days.” Ramsay took a rope from the bed of the truck. He pulled open the back gate and slid the iron bars up. “Come here, fella. You’re okay now.” He climbed into the trailer with the horse.

  The dull thud of unshod hooves gave Cheyenne the impression that this was, indeed, a horse stepping out of the trailer. However, that impression was dispelled as the piteous animal stepped to the ground. The droop-eared, hollow-hipped chestnut ignored everyone in favor of the grass he saw a few feet away. He tugged on the rope, nearly jerking Ramsay from his feet in a rush to the food.

  Cheyenne blinked at Austin, then at the horse cropping his food with urgent efficiency. No need to buy a new lawn mower.

  But what was she thinking? She had no business keeping a horse. “Austin, don’t you have a place you can keep him?”

  “Not unless you count my backyard.”

  “We live in town, Cheyenne,” Ramsay elaborated.

  She glanced at Austin’s hat and cowboy boots. “Sorry. What could I have been thinking? Shouldn’t you have a vet look at him?”

  “I just took him by. Carol checked him out, gave us some supplements and she’ll take a look at him in a week and see how he’s doing. You’re set to go, Cheyenne, if you’ll do it.”

  She strolled over to the pitiful-looking animal and ran a hand over his side. Why hadn’t anyone ever warned her Austin Barlow was crazy? There was no way she could keep a horse.

  “What’s his name?” She knew nothing about horses.

  “We haven’t named him,” Ramsay said. “We just called him fella.”

  Not exactly the most imaginative people, these Barlows. “You say you’ll keep an eye on him?” So maybe Austin wasn’t the only crazy person in this pasture. What could she be thinking?

  “Of course we will.” Austin took the lead rope from his son. “Come on, fella.”

  It took some effort to convince the horse that he would indeed see food again, but he finally relented to Austin’s heroic tug on the rope, perked his ears up slightly and lifted his head.

  In that moment, Cheyenne silently gave him his name. Courage. It took courage to leave a sure thing and strike out for better pastures. Courage, or foolishness, and she wanted to be optimistic.

  Austin fell into step beside Cheyenne. “Looks like you’ve done this place some good.” His deep-blue gaze scanned the fresh coat of buttery yellow paint on the shutters of the house. “Who’d you hire for the work?”

  “I did it myself.”

  Courage entered the corral eagerly, and his eyes lost some of their dullness when he saw the abundance of grass that had sprouted all along the fence. Austin had difficulty holding on to the rope, and finally he unfastened it from the halter and handed it to Cheyenne.

  “He’s all yours,” Austin said. “I sure appreciate this, and I don’t think you’ll be sorry. When I was growing up on the farm, I always loved to look out at the
horses in our neighbor’s pasture. Ramsay or I’ll be over every so often to check on him, but you can do the basics yourself, if you want. Remember, plenty of water, plenty of loving care, and he’ll be fine. You’ve got my telephone number, so you can call me on that car phone any time you need me.”

  She turned and leaned against the rough, gray-brown wooden fence that encircled the corral, watching Courage crop the grass.

  As Ramsay wandered over to check the hen and chicks in the wired enclosure beside the coop, Austin joined Cheyenne at the fence. “You do like to keep to yourself, don’t you?”

  She smiled. “It’s what I came here for.”

  “Usually when someone’s been at Hideaway for just a few days, everyone in town knows all about them. You’ve been here more than a month, and no one knows any more about you than they did at first. You never did take me up on that offer to see a Branson show.”

  “I’ve heard there’s a lot of traffic there. I haven’t been in the mood for traffic lately.”

  “No need for that, then. We have our own restaurants right here in Hideaway.”

  She smiled but didn’t reply, and he apparently took the hint.

  “What brought you out here all alone, anyway, Cheyenne?”

  Here we go again. “I wanted a change of pace, some peace and quiet.” She hesitated. “Some solitude.”

  “Change of pace, huh? We’ve got that, all right. We’re about as different here as people can get.” He rested his foot on the lowest rail of the fence. “You don’t find places like Hideaway very often, with the convenience of a nice general store downtown, a boat dock on the main street and practically all the solitude you want.”

  “I’ve noticed people are very caring about their neighbors,” she said. “At least I’ve found it to be true with Red and Bertie Meyer, and Dane Gideon.”

  Austin’s boot shifted on the fence. “You don’t go to church anywhere do you?”

  “No.”

  “Come to ours, why don’t you? We have a lot of things going on for a small congregation. The church cosponsors the festival and pig races every fall. We raise a lot of money that way, which goes to help several worthy causes.”