Baby Enchantment

by Pamela Browning

  “Cord doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “Oh.” The boy’s face fell.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know where he went.”

  He picked up his backpack, which was much too big for him. “Someone told me where he might be. It’s far, but I know the way.” He turned to go.

  He’s hungry, said the voice that she now believed belonged to the ghost of Padre Luís. This time she didn’t wonder about it, and she didn’t miss a beat.

  “Um, I don’t suppose you’d like something to eat,” she said.

  “Wow, I sure would. I mean, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

  “I don’t have much food, only what I picked up along the way from L.A. yesterday. I can offer you a bowl of cereal, that’s for sure. By the way, my name’s Brooke Hollister.”

  “Mine’s Brandon. Nice to meet you,” he said. Hesitantly, he followed her inside and slung his backpack on a kitchen chair. Brooke poured orange juice and cereal and he wolfed down one bowlful, then two. He drained the juice in a few gulps.

  “I could make you some toast.” She was sorry she didn’t have more to offer, but she’d only stocked the essentials.

  “Oh, thanks, that would be great.”

  Curious about what had brought him here and wondering why he thought he knew where Cord was, she fixed him two pieces of cinnamon toast and sat down across the table from him.

  “You’re planning to walk to where you can find Cord?” she asked carefully.

  He grinned at her, a flash of white teeth in a freckled face. “Sure, I can do it. Maybe I’ll get lucky and hitch a ride.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she said. “It’s not safe.”

  “Hitchhiking’s the best way for a kid like me to get around,” he said defensively.

  Brooke knew instinctively not to ask about Brandon’s parents. She suspected that he was a runaway, and she had written articles about runaways. She understood all too well how such kids often found themselves in a lot of trouble.

  “How do you know Cord?” she asked, hoping she wasn’t acting like the kind of prying adult Brandon might be trying to avoid.

  “I don’t exactly. Judge—well, I’ve heard about him. I decided I needed to see him real bad.” The boy shifted uncomfortably in his chair, looking as if he thought he’d revealed too much. “I’d better be going,” he added.

  Brooke was on her feet before he was. “Wait, Brandon. I’ll be glad to take you to Cord. You said you know the way, right?”

  “Sure, Judge Petty told me about Bucky’s ranch. I don’t want to cause you any trouble, though.”

  “It’s no trouble,” Brooke said firmly. She went and got her jacket from the closet. “Come on, let’s go.” Cord hadn’t mentioned a ranch to her, but it made sense. What didn’t make sense was why he hadn’t confided in her.

  Brandon seemed delighted at this stroke of luck. “This is great, Brooke. You don’t mind if I call you that?” He kept up a stream of chatter until he saw her sporty car, which made his eyes open wide in appreciation, and then he talked even more.

  Brooke was happy to keep him talking. It kept her from thinking about seeing Cord again and wondering what he would say when he saw her.

  CORD, who was stacking scraps of lumber behind the Jornada Ranch barn, glanced up when he saw the red sports car pulling a plume of dust toward him on the road from the highway. At first, he didn’t believe his eyes. Then he decided that it was someone else’s car, not Brooke’s. But when she drove through the open gate and he saw her bright hair gleaming in the midafternoon sun, he knew who it was, all right. His mind couldn’t compute the scruffy kid who climbed out of the passenger side of the car, and he didn’t want to look at him anyway. He could only stare at Brooke and wonder how on earth she had tracked him down.

  He wiped his hands on a rag and strode forward. She stood quietly by the car, her hair ruffled into a pale-gold tangle by the breeze blowing in from the mountains, and he couldn’t wait to bury his face in it, to run his fingers through it, to smell its fresh sun-washed scent. She was taking in the sprawling ranch house, the new roof on the bunkhouse, and wore jeans that hugged her derriere and showed the slight rounding of her belly.

  Probably no one else would detect that she was pregnant, but he saw because he knew. And in that moment he knew one other thing that made his heart leap with gladness. He knew he wanted her baby, wanted to make it his own. Wanted to make Brooke his own, and Jonathan, too.

  He came to a stop in front of her. Her eyes searched his face, seeking—reassurance? Love? Oh, there was a plenitude of that in his heart. There was enough to go around, enough for all of them.

  He heard, as if from a long way away, the boy’s voice. “Bucky?”

  Recognizing his long-ago nickname, he pulled his eyes away from Brooke with great effort and focused them on her companion. The kid sported a chopped-off haircut that looked like his own handiwork and wore clothes that were too small. The boy’s eyes were what got him, though. They were eyes old before their time, eyes like the ones he’d seen every time he’d looked in the mirror when he was that age.

  “My name’s Brandon Wittich. Judge Petty called you about me.”

  Cord remembered that phone call and how he’d told Ted Petty that the ranch wasn’t ready to receive boys. Brandon was the kid Ted had mentioned, the one from the bad home who needed a place to stay.

  “I remember,” he said.

  “I need to talk to you.” The boy’s expression was one of desperation, of making a last-ditch attempt.

  He wanted nothing more than to go to Brooke and gather her into his arms, but he said to the kid, “Let’s go inside and have a talk.”

  Brooke made a move as if to climb back into her car. He reached out and rested his hand on her arm. “You, too,” he said.

  He thought for a moment that she was going to object, but when their eyes met, he saw that tears quivered on the tips of her eyelashes. She didn’t say anything, only nodded. He slid one arm around her and rested the other hand on Brandon’s slight shoulder, and they walked like that, together, into the house.

  BROOKE MET MATTIE as soon as the three of them entered the spacious living room. Mattie, who hurried in from the kitchen, was shadowed by an appealing dark-eyed moppet of a boy, who grinned engagingly as Cord made quick introductions.

  “Brandon and I are going into the living room,” Cord said. “We’ll need some privacy, but don’t go too far away.” His eyes caught and held Brooke’s.

  Mattie immediately rose to the occasion. “Come with me,” she said, curving an arm around Brooke’s waist. “Jonathan and I made cookies this morning, and the three of us will sit down and visit for a while.”

  “Maybe she could play Mr. Mouth with me,” Jonathan said hopefully. Brooke smiled at him, charmed by what she saw. He was only about five, but his eyes sparkled with a lively intelligence, and he seemed to warm to her right away. He reached for her hand as if he’d known her all his life.

  “Later, Jonathan. Right now we want to get acquainted,” Mattie told him, but he kept hold of Brooke’s hand anyway.

  The kitchen was equipped with new appliances and a shiny wood floor, where Jonathan immediately busied himself playing toy cars.

  Brooke filled Mattie in about the Fling article that had brought her to Rancho Encantado and told her about the book she planned to write about the women of Cedrella Pass. Mattie had nothing but enthusiasm about the book and wasted no time in mentioning that she was half Shoshone.

  “My mother is the one who removed the curse from the valley,” she said with an air of pride.

  Brooke’s eyes widened. “You know something about the lost legend?”

  Mattie grinned. “The legend isn’t lost. It’s the scroll that’s lost.”

  “That’s not what I heard. Justine didn’t know what the legend was about.”

  “Justine is relatively new to the valley. The legend was supposedly written on an old scroll that Padre Luís gav
e to the Iversons, the homesteaders who couldn’t make a go of ranching. He delivered it at the same time that he delivered an old deed, and no one has seen either one since.”

  Brooke recalled the scrolls in the leather pouch that she’d found in the old humpbacked trunk. To know that perhaps she was the one who had found the deed and the lost legend was exciting.

  “How did you learn so much about the history of Rancho Encantado?” she asked Mattie.

  “The Shoshone tribe was here long before anyone else, dear. My mother heard the legend from her relatives, all tribal members. They kept the legend alive by word of mouth.”

  “Tell me more about the legend,” she said.

  Mattie pushed the plate of cookies across the table to her, and Brooke took one.

  “You know about the ill-fated Forty-niners who tried to cross the mountains at Cedrella Pass in the dead of winter?”

  Brooke, her mouth full of cookie, nodded.

  “Well, the legend has it that the Tyson party captured a couple of Mojave braves and held them hostage until they told them where in the desert they could find water. When the braves led them to their village and the spring nearby, the only person in residence was an old Mojave woman. She was so angry about the men’s being held hostage that she cursed the Tyson party and everyone in it. The more superstitious of the travelers blamed the curse for the hardships that followed. And they blamed Tyson, of course.”

  Brooke was excited to hear almost the same version of this episode as Jerusha had reported in her diary. “I’ve uncovered a first-person account that makes me think that the newspaper stories of the time were wrong to place all the blame on Willis Tyson. I think the reporters interviewed survivors of the Hennessy group, who blamed Tyson for their predicament, and no one ever contradicted them. Tyson was a scapegoat.”

  Mattie looked interested. “If that’s the case, Cord will be happy to hear it.”

  It was on the tip of Brooke’s tongue to ask why, but Mattie went on talking.

  “Anyway, back to the legend. Padre Luís, who was a great friend to the Shoshone, never thought that the curse delivered by the old woman at the Mojave camp amounted to anything. He said that good works and love could overcome any obstacle. My mother was not so sure. She said a wisewoman of the Mojaves had delivered the curse and only another wisewoman could remove it, so she called on the Great Spirit to bless the valley and all who entered. My mother had shamanistic powers, you see. She always said that there was strong medicine in the valley.”

  “Did she say it was a vortex?”

  “A vortex? My mother wouldn’t have known the word, but I don’t think it matters what you call it. There are places on this earth where unusual and unexpected things happen.”

  “I wouldn’t have believed that was true until they happened to me.”

  Mattie nailed Brooke with a meaningful look. “You came to Rancho Encantado needing love.”

  “How do you know that?” Brooke stared. She had, after all, just met this woman.

  Mattie smiled indulgently. “I have my ways. You are going to have a baby, and you needed to love the child in order to bear it and raise it. You didn’t realize that at first, did you?”

  Brooke shook her head. “I do now,” she said quietly.

  “When you arrived in the valley, you thought that the only love worth having was that between a man and a woman, I think.”

  “Yes,” Brooke whispered. “The baby’s father didn’t want me.”

  “Ah, Brooke, now you see that he doesn’t matter. You have your child and the love that child brings into your life.”

  “What about Cord? What about the love I feel for him?”

  “All love is bound together, Brooke, don’t you see? It is of one piece—God’s love and our love for one another.”

  “You are a very wise woman yourself, Mattie.”

  “Rancho Encantado is where dreams come true. Your dreams will come true, and that’s all I will say about that.”

  “I wish I could be sure.”

  Mattie patted her hand. “Cord loves you. All you have to do now is let it happen.”

  Let what happen? Whatever it was, Brooke hoped it would be soon.

  LATER, WHILE JONATHAN was showing her his room, Brooke overheard Cord talking on the telephone.

  “Ted, we can’t allow Brandon to go back home. He can stay here in Jonathan’s room overnight but Jornada Ranch could be open for business as soon as we get state agency approval.”

  He listened for a minute or so. “Anything you can do to speed up licensure will be appreciated. Yeah, Brandon is a great kid. I think he’d do well here.”

  Brooke was distracted by Jonathan’s rock collection, so she missed the end of the conversation, but soon Cord poked his head in the door.

  “Jonathan, you’re going to have a guest. Let’s get your top bunk made up for Brandon,” Cord said.

  Jonathan let out an excited whoop. “I’ll go get the sheets from Granny,” he said. He ran out, calling for Mattie.

  Brooke stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, unable to look away from Cord, her exit blocked by him.

  Cord looked sheepish and ran a hand through his hair. “Now you’re onto my secret,” he said. “Jornada Ranch.”

  “Cord, it’s beautiful here. The mountains in the distance, the cottonwoods along the creek—I don’t understand why you kept it from me.”

  “I’m not used to confiding in anyone. The old issue of trust, I guess. When I was growing up I learned not to talk to people because anything I said could be used against me and often was.” He shrugged. “Brooke, this place is important to me. I’m going to take in boys who have difficult home lives. They’ll live here, have three square meals a day, and learn to work with horses.”

  “I admire you,” Brooke said. “I can’t tell you how much.”

  He took her hand and pulled her down beside him on the lower bunk. “There’s a reason I’m doing this. I landed on a ranch during the worst time of my life. I lived there with a family named McCall. Working with horses became a kind of therapy. I liked taking care of them, and I liked riding them. I want to give other kids the same kind of chance.”

  “You were adopted by these people? Your name’s the same.”

  Cord shook his head. “They pulled up stakes and moved to Montana when I was fifteen. I couldn’t go with them because I wasn’t old enough to be released from the state foster-care system. I was sent to another family, who were really awful. They were in it for the money, and kids like me were their meal ticket. Anyway, when I struck out on my own, I took the name McCall and wouldn’t answer to Bucky anymore. My middle name was Cord, and as for my former last name, well, I was glad to get rid of that, too. I was born a Tyson, Brooke.”

  She stared at him. “Any relation to Willis Tyson, the wagon master?”

  “I’m a direct descendant. Around here, Tysons were considered no damn good. Me included. My father was a drunk, and my uncle was in jail for burglary. My grandfather shot a man in cold blood. He was a descendant of Willis Tyson, the guy everyone around here blamed for the Cedrella Pass deaths. I never knew a Tyson who was decent and good.” His tone was bitter.

  “You are,” Brooke said softly.

  “I haven’t always behaved myself,” he reminded her.

  “Cord, what if I told you that Willis Tyson wasn’t as bad as they say?”

  He turned her hand over and traced the lines. “I’d listen. I’m not sure I’d believe.”

  “Jerusha wrote admiringly of him in her diary. She says he tried to help the Hennessy group.” She told him a few more details, and his eyes began to take on an expression of amazement.

  “If that’s true, it’s great news.”

  “I’m going to corroborate it. There may be other records where no one’s thought to look. All the published accounts of the incident seem to derive from one or two articles written after the people were rescued from the pass. If the reporter only talked to members of the Hennessy group
, those were hardly unbiased accounts.”

  Jonathan returned bearing an armload of clean, folded sheets. “Here you are, Cord,” he said.

  “Jonny, go ask Brandon if he wants to watch TV with you while Brooke and I make up the bed.”

  Jonathan raced away, and they heard the TV switch on. Brooke unfolded the sheets, and they spread them out on the top bunk.

  “I’ve missed you, Brooke,” Cord said.

  She was glad that she was occupied with making the bed. It made it easier to keep her emotions in check. “I had to leave. The Jeffords interview—”

  “I know,” Cord said. “Justine told me. I tried to call you in L.A., but you didn’t answer the phone.”

  “Sometimes I don’t when I’m working. I wasn’t expecting a call from you.” She concentrated on making a hospital tuck on the bottom corner of the sheet.

  “You didn’t think I’d call? After what happened that night in the cave?”

  “After you said you needed more space,” she corrected firmly.

  Cord stopped spreading the blanket and stared at her. “I said I needed time out because I freaked after seeing the place where all those people died because of Willis Tyson.”

  “But—”

  “Before today, I’ve never heard anything positive about Tyson. About any Tyson, Brooke. Being there brought forth all the old anger and guilt that I felt when I was a Tyson.”

  “I didn’t know,” Brooke said, stricken. She would never have insisted that he take her to Cedrella Pass if she’d realized why he didn’t want to go.

  “I should have told you. I should have told you a lot of things. For instance, that I love you.” He gazed at her, and her heart started skipping beats. His hands came up to her shoulders, and turned her gently toward him. “I love you, Brooke,” he repeated, and then he kissed her.

  It was a sweet and tender kiss, and she leaned into it as his arms went around her to hold her close. In the background they heard music from the TV, the clatter of dishes as Mattie set the kitchen table for supper, Jonathan’s chortle over something Brandon said. At the moment, these seemed like the most romantic sounds in the world.