The Cowboy

by Joan Johnston

  “Is it them?” she heard Eli ask.

  “Naw. It’s your mom,” Luke answered.

  Callie got out of the truck and gathered her children in her arms on the back porch, as they spilled out the screen door.

  “What’s happened to Gram and Grampa?” Eli demanded. “You made them go! Where are they?”

  “Where are they?” Hannah parroted.

  “They’ll be home soon. Have you had any supper?”

  “I’m not hungry,” Eli said.

  “I’m not hungry,” Hannah echoed.

  “Well, I am,” Callie said, though she was certain she wouldn’t be able to choke anything down. The children needed to eat, and she needed the normalcy of preparing them a meal.

  Sam had retired to his bedroom to sleep off his Jack Daniels, and she was just setting grilled cheese sandwiches in front of Hannah, Eli, and Luke, when the phone rang.

  She barely managed to beat Luke to the phone. “Dad? Is that you?”

  “Is it them?” Luke asked, hanging over her shoulder

  “Is it them?” Eli and Hannah repeated, jumping up and down around her.

  She covered the mouthpiece and said, “No, it’s Trace Blackthorne.”

  “What does he want?” Luke said with a sneer.

  “If you’ll give me some peace and quiet, I’ll find out,” Callie said, turning her back on Luke and taking her hand from the mouthpiece. “What do you want, Trace?”

  Callie listened, not quite believing what she was hearing, especially in light of the way she’d abandoned him without a word in Houston. “What are you suggesting?”

  “What does he want?” Luke asked, hovering nearby.

  Callie covered the mouthpiece and said, “He wants to know if we need any help looking for Mom and Dad.”

  “How does he know they’re missing?” Luke asked suspiciously.

  “His brother Owen was at the sheriff’s office when my call came in. He called Trace and told him about it. Trace is offering to come over and help with the search.”

  “We don’t need help from any Blackthornes!” Luke growled.

  Callie took her hand off the mouthpiece and said, “How long will it take you to get over here?” She listened to his answer, said, “I’ll expect you then,” and hung up.

  “Why did you do that?” Luke demanded angrily.

  “Yeah, Mom! Why?” Eli asked.

  “Because he’s got a vehicle with a searchlight mounted on the front fender, and I’m not going to sit here on my hands doing nothing if there’s any chance Mom and Dad are in trouble.”

  “One searchlight isn’t going to make much difference,” Luke said belligerently.

  “Maybe not,” Callie replied. But Trace had also promised he’d have every cowhand who worked at Bitter Creek help with the search come dawn. Callie thought it wiser to keep that bit of information to herself for now. With any luck, they would locate her parents tonight.

  “Why is Trace Blackthorne so interested in helping us?” Luke asked. “What’s in it for him?”

  Callie didn’t want to think about that. “He’s just being neighborly, I suppose.”

  Luke scoffed. “Blackthornes being neighborly to Creeds? In a pig’s eye! He wants something. Or he knows something. Maybe he had something to do with Mom and Dad disappearing. Maybe he wants to be there when they’re found, so he can cover up whatever evidence—”

  “That’s enough, Luke,” Callie said, as she saw the growing fear in Eli’s eyes. “I’m accepting Trace’s offer of help. I don’t want to hear any more speculation about why he’s helping.”

  But as she ushered her children back to the table, she found herself wondering why Trace had offered to get involved in something that was really none of his business. Trace Blackthorne no longer had a relationship with anyone in the Creed family. Callie’s gaze strayed to Eli. Or at least, none that he knew about.

  So why had Trace agreed to help? He must want to ingratiate himself with her, Callie decided. He must still have hopes of an affair with her. Perhaps he thought she would change her mind about getting involved with him, if she owed him a favor.

  She wondered what excuse Trace would give Blackjack if it became necessary for him to order the Bitter Creek cowboys away from their work to search for her parents. Callie shuddered. Something had happened to them. She knew it. Something bad.

  She used the time it would take Trace to drive to Three Oaks to get Eli and Hannah ready for bed. During her marriage to Nolan, they had lived in the foreman’s house. During the last six months of Nolan’s life. Callie had spent so much time at the hospital, it had been necessary to move into the big house, so her mother could more easily take care of the children. After Nolan’s death, it had been the path of least resistance to stay where they were.

  She ushered the children upstairs and made sure they brushed their teeth before they put on their pajamas. A bath would have to wait for another night. They slept in twin beds in the same room, a situation Callie was aware couldn’t go on much longer. Eli was getting old enough to need and want some privacy. But she knew the children took comfort now from each other’s presence.

  “How come I have to go to bed the same time as Hannah?” Eli grumbled.

  “If you’re not sleepy, you can use the time to read,” Callie said as she pulled the covers up under Hannah’s arms.

  “Tuck me in, Mommy,” Hannah said.

  Callie tucked the covers against Hannah’s body all the way down one side, under her feet at the bottom and up the other side. “Snug as a bug in a rug,” she said when she was done, tweaking Hannah’s nose playfully.

  Hannah giggled. “Sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite,” she recited in return.

  Callie bent over and kissed Hannah’s forehead, smelling her hair, resisting the urge to pick her up and cuddle her. She fought tears and bit back a curse of frustration that she still wept so easily. She turned to Eli and saw he was just finishing the same tucking ritual, having done it for himself. Their eyes met, hers stark, his bleak.

  Nolan had performed the ritual for Eli, as she had performed it tonight for Hannah. But Nolan was gone, and Eli had informed her on the day Nolan went into the hospital for the last time, that he was too old for his mother to be tucking him into bed.

  She crossed and sat beside him, adjusting the pillow behind him, so he could sit up to read. “Don’t stay up too late reading,” she said.

  He shrank away when she leaned over to kiss his cheek. He quickly swiped away the kiss, much too old, his pointed look told her, for such signs of maternal devotion. He opened a Christopher Pike novel and pretended she wasn’t still sitting beside him.

  Callie rose and made it to the doorway before she turned back to check one last time on her children. Hannah was turned on her side away from the small reading light beside Eli’s bed, a faded yellow Pooh bear snuggled under her arm, her eyelashes dark on her plump cheeks, her thumb in her mouth.

  Eli was engrossed in the horror novel, his eyebrows arrowed down in concentration, his knees drawn up to make a rest for the book. She had seen Trace in the same pose. Callie frowned. It was understandable the scene would remind her of Trace, rather than Nolan. Nolan hadn’t liked to read. But Nolan had been Eli’s father. Nolan was the one who had loved him and raised him from a baby. It was Nolan Eli would remember when he was a grown man recalling his father.

  Callie stepped out of the room and drew the door almost closed behind her. She hurried downstairs, wanting to be outside to greet Trace, rather than take the chance of Luke confronting him in the kitchen.

  “Listen closely for Hannah,” she told Luke. “And make sure Eli turns the light out by ten-thirty.”

  “Why don’t you stay, and let me go?” Luke suggested.

  “Trace offered to take me,” Callie replied.

  “All the more reason I should go,” Luke said. “How do we know he won’t make a move on you?”

  Callie felt the blush crawling up her throat and turned away to gra
b her Levi’s jacket from the antler coatrack. “I can take care of myself,” she said as she shoved open the screen door.

  “Callie!” Luke called.

  She turned back to him impatiently. “What is it, Luke?”

  “Call as soon as … I mean if you … that is, when you find them.”

  She crossed back inside and gave Luke a quick, hard hug. He hesitated only an instant before he hugged her back. “Don’t worry,” she said in his ear. “It’s probably something ridiculous that’s making them so late, like that stupid truck wouldn’t start.”

  She backed away from the desolate look in his eyes and hurried outside. The air was cool and damp, almost chilly. She thought of the spaghetti-strapped yellow sundress she’d talked her mother into wearing with a pair of white sandals. Her father would probably offer her mother his Western shirt to cover her bare shoulders, but he never wore an undershirt, so even if Callie imagined her mother warm, her father’s skin would have to be prickling in the cool night air.

  Sandals. Her mother would have a hard time walking in the brush in sandals. No worse than her father would have walking in boots intended to be worn by a man who spent his day in a saddle. Damn. What had she been thinking?

  Callie hurried toward the bright stream of headlights, forcing Trace to skid to a stop in order to avoid running her down. Once her eyes adjusted to the glare, she stopped cold and stared at the wide-bodied, definitely-not-standard, white-on-white Buick 88 convertible Trace had described merely as “a vehicle with a spotlight mounted on the fender.”

  The first thing she noticed was the flashy chrome hood ornament bearing the Blackthorne brand, the Circle B. A heavy-duty chrome bumper had been mounted to protect the front end of the car from bump gates and brush. There were movable chrome spotlights on both front fenders.

  She ran her hand along the oversize front fender as she headed for the passenger door, noting the three shotgun holders molded into the metal frame. A quick look confirmed there were three more on the other side of the car. Two of the slots on her side held guns in rawhide cases.

  “This is quite a car,” Callie said as she stared at the open convertible.

  “Think of it as an upgraded jeep.”

  “I’ve never seen a jeep that looked remotely like this.”

  “It’s a hunting vehicle,” Trace said. “Come on, get in.”

  “It sure beats my pickup,” Callie muttered. The Circle B brand appeared again beside the inset chrome door handle. She couldn’t help noticing the complete refreshment center along the backseat as she stepped up onto the chrome running board.

  An antique-looking car phone was attached beneath the burled wood dash, and the glove box also bore the Circle B brand, but this time engraved in silver. Callie found the brand on the circular chrome radio knobs as well. The leather seat was wide enough for three men to sit comfortably, with lots of leg room, but she hugged the seat near the window, leaving a chasm of leather between them.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Trace’s presence filled the car. The night shadows emphasized the crow’s feet around his eyes and the deep brackets around his mouth. He looked tired, and she could easily imagine he’d spent a long day working at some physically demanding job. She could tell he’d showered, because his hair was still damp, but he hadn’t shaved, and beard darkened his cheeks and chin. He obviously hadn’t planned to go out again.

  “Thank you for coming,” she said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  She felt a need to fill the silence, so he wouldn’t bring up her behavior the weekend she’d run away from him in Houston. “Why haven’t I ever seen this car before?” she asked.

  “It’s been in a garage, along with a few horse-drawn carriages used by the first Blackthornes at Bitter Creek.”

  “Who customized it for you?”

  “It was a gift to my grandfather.”

  When Trace didn’t mention the donor, Callie asked, “Who gave it to him?”

  Trace shot her a deprecating smile. “President Eisenhower. He used to come for hunting parties at Bitter Creek.”

  “I see.” The car, which apparently dated from the 1950s, looked brand new. It was one more sign of the difference between their two families. Any carriages her forebears had used had long since worn out. And there were no presents from presidents who’d been hunting buddies.

  “No word from your parents?” Trace asked as he backed the oversize car and headed for the main road.

  “Nothing,” she said, staring straight ahead to avoid his gaze.

  “Where do you want to start looking?”

  “I sent them to the south pasture. We might as well start there,” Callie said.

  “Sent them?”

  Callie folded her hands on her lap to keep from fidgeting. “Ever since the Rafter S auction—” She stopped herself. It was none of Trace’s business that her parents had been having marital difficulties. “They went on a picnic this afternoon,” she said instead. “And they haven’t come back.”

  “Did they have a cell phone? A CB?” Trace asked.

  Callie shook her head. “I wanted them to have some time alone to—” She cut herself off again. “The truck might have broken down.”

  “How many miles could they be from the nearest road if they’re in the south pasture?” Trace asked.

  Callie thought for a moment. Three Oaks consisted of sixty-five thousand acres of grassland, which was just over one hundred square miles of property. It had a rectangular shape that ran five miles from east to west, and a little more than twenty miles from north to south. The ranch house was situated in the middle pasture, along the widest part of Bitter Creek.

  Callie did the math and didn’t like the answer she came up with. “They would never have to walk more than five miles from any place in the south pasture to reach a road.”

  “They could have walked that in a little more than an hour. You’ve driven all the roads, I presume.”

  Callie nodded soberly. “I spent three hours driving up and down every gravel track they might have crossed getting home from the south pasture, and I checked out the camp house, where we feed the crew during roundup. I didn’t find them.”

  “One of them must be hurt.”

  Callie’s heart skipped a beat. “Why do you say that?”

  Trace met her gaze, then turned his attention back to the road. “Nothing else makes sense. Unless you think they might have run away from home.”

  Callie snorted in disgust. “They went on a picnic.” But Trace’s words made her think of something else that hadn’t previously occurred to her. Another scenario that was so unpalatable, so unbelievable, that she hadn’t let herself consider it.

  Her father was notoriously jealous. What if, instead of making up, her parents had argued about Blackjack? What if her father had struck her mother and accidentally—What if he’d taken her body and—

  Callie shivered.

  “Cold?” Trace asked. “I can turn up the heater.”

  “No,” Callie said. “I was just thinking.”

  “Why did they go off without a cell phone or a CB?” Trace asked.

  “I wanted them to have some time alone. I never dreamed anything like this would happen.”

  “Life is full of unexpected turns,” Trace said.

  And too many of the turns in her life had been unexpectedly tragic, Callie thought. Losing Trace. Losing Nolan. And maybe losing—Callie refused to let her mind dwell on what they might find. “I was surprised you offered to help, after what I … Why did you?”

  “Can’t a neighbor help out a neighbor?”

  “Not when one is a Blackthorne and the other is a Creed,” Callie said.

  “Let’s just say I did it for old time’s sake, and leave it at that.”

  Callie eyed Trace warily. “This isn’t going to change my mind. I’m not going to get involved with you again, Trace.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  He didn’t argue, simply
aimed both fender-mounted spotlights into the thick brush on either side of the road and drove slowly along the perimeter of alternating steel and mesquite fence posts that framed the south pasture. The shiny steel posts were there to keep the fence standing if a range fire burned out the wooden ones, while the mesquite would keep the fence standing if cattle leaned against the less sturdy metal posts to scratch and knocked them down.

  “Lot of rotten posts down,” Trace noted. “You ought to replace that mesquite with cedar.”

  Callie pressed her lips flat to keep from replying. Mesquite rotted from the inside out, so it was hard to tell when a post needed to be replaced unless it actually fell down. On the other hand, cedar rotted from the outside in, so the signs of wear were more visible and repairs could be made in a timely fashion. But mesquite was available for free, since it grew all over Three Oaks. Cedar posts had to be bought, with money they didn’t have.

  She caught Trace staring at her and said, “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “That we Creeds might as well give up and sell Three Oaks to you Blackthornes right now, because you’ll get it from us sooner or later,” Callie said bitterly.

  “That’s probably true,” Trace said with a half smile. “But I was wishing it was eleven years ago, and that I knew then what I know now.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning that I didn’t know then what I was giving up when I left you behind.”

  Callie felt the hairs stand up on her neck and turned, expecting Trace to tell her he had discovered Eli was his son. When he didn’t speak, she said, “We can’t turn back the clock, Trace. What’s done is done.”

  “What’s done can be undone,” he contradicted. “Wounds can be healed.”

  “Scars don’t go away. Scars are there for a lifetime.”

  Callie leaned out into the brisk wind to listen. The salt cedar and mesquite and huisache trees stood so thick, their leaves made an amazing amount of noise brushing against each other in the breeze, while the grass whispered a song all its own.