Her Cowboy Soldier

by Cindi Myers

  “I guess not.” When Josh had left, he’d had no steady girl to miss him. But like Chase, he doubted that would have made any difference; he’d been so driven to get away from his father and assert his independence.

  “My dad’s not speaking to me, either,” Chase continued. “He wouldn’t even come here today.”

  “He’ll regret that later,” Josh said.

  “Yeah, well, I regret it now, but there’s nothing I can do about it.” He shoved both hands into his pockets, his forehead creased in a frown that made him look much older. “Mom’s here. She’s trying to smooth things over, the way she always does.”

  “My mom was the same way. It’ll get better with a little distance.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.” He held out his hand again. “I just wanted to say goodbye and thanks for everything.”

  “Good luck.” Josh shook his hand, then pulled the boy close and embraced him. For a moment he felt Chase’s arms tight around him, his grip surprisingly strong. Then the boy released him and stepped back. “See you around,” he said, and turned and quickly walked away.

  “Is he going to be all right?” Amy spoke quietly. Charla and Chloe had walked on ahead, leaving Amy and Josh alone.

  “I hope so.” Josh walked beside her, head down, trying to arrange his scattered thoughts.

  “If you had it to do over, would you still enlist?” she asked.

  She’d asked the question before, and been dissatisfied with his answer. He’d had more time to think about it since then. “That’s one of those questions with no right answer,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “If I say I wouldn’t do it again, does that make me a selfish coward? If I say I would, am I a fool?”

  “You aren’t a coward for not wanting to lose your hand.”

  “But it is lost, and there’s no getting it back. I hope Chase doesn’t suffer the same, or worse, but the army could be good for him. It helped me grow up, learn to think before I spoke.” At least, most of the time. It was harder controlling his emotions when she was around.

  “That’s a lesson we all need to learn. So in spite of everything, you’d say the army was a good move for you?”

  “Are you going to quote me in the paper?”

  She looked exasperated. “No. I’m just interested, that’s all.”

  He fell silent, weighing his words. He could sense impatience radiating from her, but admired her for holding her tongue. “I’m not one for wasting time looking back,” he said. “We can’t change the past, so I don’t see any sense clinging to what might have been.”

  “If only we had some way of seeing how the choices we make now will turn out,” she said. “It might mean fewer regrets.”

  “I think the key is to learn to live with the regrets,” he said. “Don’t let them eat you alive.” What regrets did Amy have about her choices—about her marriage, or her decision to come to Hartland?

  “Why do you two look so glum?” Charla slowed and let them catch up with her. “Chase will be all right. He’ll come home a hero, like Josh here.”

  “I’m no hero,” Josh said. “I was just glad to come home.”

  “Chase will be, too,” Charla said. “Home always looks better when you’ve been away awhile.”

  “Where is home for you, Charla?” Josh asked.

  “Near Houston. And before you ask, I have no intention of ever moving back. Hartland is my home now.”

  “And you know that how?” Amy said.

  “Hartland and I are a good fit.”

  Josh wouldn’t say he always felt he “fit” in Hartland. Sometimes the people and the place rubbed him the wrong way. But he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Home really wasn’t the place where everything was perfect, just the place you loved enough to overlook the imperfections.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  FOLLOWING LONG TRADITION in the county, the school year ended just as work on the area’s farms and ranches reached its peak. Josh labored alongside his dad much as he had every summer since he was old enough to sit on a horse, though it chafed more now to let the older man always take the lead. A few days after graduation found them working with a trio of yearlings, training them to one day cut cows from the herd and assist with roundups. Though ATVs had replaced horses for some ranch work, Mitch and many others preferred the animals for work that required more precision. And even if they never used these horses on the ranch, a good cutting horse would sell for a pretty penny to a rodeo cowboy.

  “She don’t like the reins hanging down alongside her neck,” Mitch said as he watched Josh lead one of the foals around the training ring.

  “She’ll get used to it.” Josh gathered the reins in tighter, forcing the horse to walk closer to him, in a smaller circle. She rolled back her eyes, showing white at the corner, studying him.

  “I didn’t say she wouldn’t get used to it, just that she’s skittish that way.”

  Josh bit the inside of his cheek and kept his eyes on the horse. If he couldn’t agree with his father, better not to say anything at all.

  “I heard Chase Wilson enlisted in the army,” Mitch said.

  “So he told me.” He hadn’t realized his father knew who Chase was.

  “He was one of your students, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.” And where was this conversation leading?

  “Gerry Wilson blames you for encouraging the boy.”

  “And how do you know Gerry Wilson?”

  “I ran into him at the Lions Club meeting last week.”

  “Why would I encourage anyone to join the military?” He led the horse in a lazy figure eight, turning his back to his father.

  “That’s what I told Gerry—that seeing that hook on the end of your arm every day ought to be enough to scare any young man away from following in your footsteps. But I guess he’s looking for somebody to blame.”

  “Maybe he should look in the mirror.”

  Mitch grunted—whether in agreement or denial, Josh couldn’t say. “You could have told the boy running away from home didn’t do you any good,” Mitch said.

  Josh froze, pulling the horse up short. Behind him, Mitch continued. “I know you joined the military to get back at me. Because I wouldn’t let you come in here with your fancy agricultural degree and change everything I’d been doing my whole life.”

  “I didn’t want to change everything,” Josh said. It was an old argument, one they’d had in the days before Josh went to Iraq—but one they hadn’t repeated since. Maybe he’d come on a little strong in those days, full of enthusiasm for the new methods he’d learned in school. But his father had pushed just as hard in the other direction, refusing to consider anything different or innovative.

  “You acted like I didn’t know anything,” Mitch said.

  “You treated me the same way.” You still do, he might have added, but didn’t dare. Now that he was older, he knew the lines with his father that he couldn’t cross.

  “I hope things work out better for Chase than they did for you.”

  Josh completed the circle of the arena and came back to face his father across the metal rails of the fence that enclosed the pen. “Did you tell Chase’s dad that?”

  “Wouldn’t do any good.”

  “If Gerry doesn’t stop drinking, Chase will come home to the same problems he’s trying to leave,” Josh said. The way I came home to the same problems with you.

  “Or he might not come home at all,” Mitch said.

  Is that what you wish? Josh wondered. That I hadn’t come home? He remembered the pain in his father’s eyes when he’d picked Josh up from the airport after he’d been discharged from the hospital. He’d handled Josh’s disability the same way Josh had—by putting it front and center of the conversation. “You trying to be som
e kind of pirate with that hook?” he’d asked.

  “That’s right,” Josh had replied. “Just call me Captain Hook.” But the joke hadn’t teased even a hint of a smile from his dad. Mitch seldom smiled around his son, as if Josh gave him nothing to be happy about.

  Suddenly the horse whinnied, and rose up on her hind legs. Josh tugged on the lead rope to bring her back to all fours, but she danced sideways, looking back over her shoulder.

  “What the—?” Mitch vaulted into the arena and pointed in the direction the horse had been staring. One of the older geldings thundered past, a blur of brown-and-white fur yapping at its heels.

  “I’ll put a stop to this.” With the agility of a man half his age, Mitch climbed the fence again and headed for his truck.

  Josh struggled to control the filly. “Hey!” he shouted, and the dog pulled up short. It stood, feet splayed, tongue lolling, panting at him with an expression almost like a smile. It was little more than a puppy, all long legs and floppy ears, with a bright red collar and a silver tag.

  “I’ll teach the cur to chase horses.” Mitch returned, cocking the shotgun as he walked.

  “Dad, no!” Josh raised his hook, as if that could ward off the shotgun blast. “That’s not a stray. I think I know who it belongs to.” Hadn’t Amy mentioned that Bobbie had a new dog—a puppy?

  “I don’t care if it belongs to the king of England,” Mitch bellowed. “It’s trespassing on my land. I’ve seen more than one horse ruined by marauding dogs.”

  Josh knew his dad was right—dogs who developed a taste for chasing livestock could ruin good animals. Even if the dogs never attacked—which they sometimes did—a fleeing horse or cow was likely to break a leg or come up lame. Ranchers like his father had a policy to shoot first and ask questions later, and everyone saw it as the only recourse to protect valuable property.

  Mitch raised the shotgun to his shoulder and took aim. The dog flopped to the ground and rolled onto its back. “Dad, I think that’s Bobbie Anderson’s dog. A puppy she got for her great-granddaughter, Chloe.”

  “She ought to know better than to let it run wild like that.” But he lowered the shotgun.

  “She probably has no idea it’s out. Let me take it back to her.”

  “All right.” He leaned the gun against the corral and stepped over to the side. “Give me those leading strings and get the varmint out of here before I change my mind.”

  The puppy offered no resistance when Josh scooped it up. It wiggled enthusiastically as he dumped it in the front seat of the truck, and tried to climb into his lap when he slid into the driver’s seat. “You don’t know how lucky you are, dog,” Josh said as he started the truck.

  He took a bumpy back track to his neighbor’s property to the south, stopping at a rarely used gate that protested on rusty hinges as he swung it open. The pup stuck his head out the passenger-side window and whined in unison with the complaining metal. Josh shook his head at the comical sight and climbed back into the truck to drive through the opening, then repeated the process to close the gate.

  The narrow dirt track brought him around to the back side of the greenhouses—three long structures covered in thick plastic that reminded Josh of giant beetle larvae set down on the prairie. Beyond that stretched the orchards—ten acres of trees now heavy with green apples.

  Movement by one of the greenhouses caught his eye, and he steered his truck in that direction. Amy approached him as he shifted into Park and shut off the engine. “Where’s Chloe?” he asked.

  “She and Grandma are taking a nap.” She moved closer and spotted the dog on the front seat. “What are you doing with General?”

  “You need to keep this dog penned.” Josh exited the truck with the dog and shoved it into her arms. “Dad and I caught it chasing horses over on our place.”

  Her face paled, and she clutched the pup more tightly to her. “When I left the house General was asleep on the back porch.”

  “Well, he woke up and headed to our place.”

  “Thank you for bringing him back.” She stroked the dog’s head, avoiding Josh’s gaze. “I’ll remind Chloe that she needs to keep an eye on him.”

  “That’s not enough,” he said. “You need to build a fenced yard for him.”

  “A fence?” She looked around, as if searching for some compromise. “I don’t know if Grandma would agree to that. She said she’s had dogs before and never mentioned any trouble.”

  “Some dogs are runners. Once they get a taste for it, a fenced yard or pen is the only way to keep them in.”

  “We’ll do our best to keep him in, but if he gets out, call and one of us will come get him.” She started to put the dog down, but Josh stopped her.

  “There won’t be a next time,” he said. “There can’t be. My father almost shot this dog this afternoon. It was only because I suspected it was Bobbie’s that he gave it a pass. But next time he won’t hesitate.”

  “He was going to shoot it?” Her voice rose in horror. “But it’s just a puppy. A family pet.”

  “That’s what ranchers do to dogs who chase stock.”

  “That’s horrible.” You’re horrible, the look in her eyes said.

  He let go of her arm and took a step back. “Ask Bobbie. And don’t let the animal out of your sight until you’ve built a proper pen.” He didn’t wait around to listen to her tirade about barbaric cowboys or cruelty to animals or anything else she’d like to accuse him of. Whatever progress he’d made in improving her opinion of him the past few weeks was destroyed now. Never mind that he’d saved her dog’s life. He’d be lucky not to read an editorial in the paper about his supposed ill treatment of the family pet.

  * * *

  TO AMY’S ANNOYANCE, Bobbie sided with Josh. “You’ll have to keep him either inside, or tied up until we can build a pen,” Bobbie told Chloe, who hugged General close, eyes brimming and lower lip trembling.

  “You’re upsetting her,” Amy said, pulling the child close.

  “She needs to take this seriously,” Bobbie said. “You, too.”

  “I can’t believe they’d shoot a puppy,” Amy said.

  “They have to protect their stock. We’ll all need to be vigilant in keeping the dog locked up until I figure out what to do about a pen.”

  Amy was still fuming when she left the house to meet Charla at the coffee shop. “I know you’re not thrilled about this tourism committee, but it’s not as bad as all that, is it?” Charla asked when Amy stormed into Cookies and Cups and dropped into a chair.

  “You’re not going to believe what happened today. Josh Scofield—well, Josh Scofield’s dad—tried to kill our dog.”

  “What?” Charla slid into the chair across from Amy. “That doesn’t sound like Josh at all.”

  Amy explained about General getting out and chasing the Scofield’s horses.

  “Josh did you a favor by saving the dog,” Charla said. “Chasing livestock is a serious offense around here. Those are valuable animals, and they could have been injured. A fence seems like cheap insurance to me.”

  “Of course the dog was wrong to chase the horses,” Amy said. “But I don’t understand the attitude of shooting the animal without even trying to find out who it belonged to.”

  “But that’s what Josh did—he came to you and explained what happened and what you needed to do so it wouldn’t happen again.”

  Charla made it seem so reasonable—generous, even. “He didn’t explain anything,” Amy said. “He ordered me to keep the dog locked up, and he talked to me as if I was some idiot who didn’t understand.”

  “He was probably trying to scare you a little, make you see the seriousness of the situation. This isn’t like a dog in the city getting picked up by animal control so you have to pay a fine. Think how heartbroken Chloe would be if anything happened to General
.”

  “He didn’t scare me—he made me angry.”

  “Give yourself time to cool off.” Charla reached behind her, took a folder from the counter and opened it on the table in front of her. “Let’s talk about the tourism committee instead.”

  “Don’t we need to wait for the other committee members to get here?” Amy scanned the empty coffee shop, an uneasy feeling replacing some of her outrage. “Charla, you said you were going to recruit other people to help you.”

  “I did. Teresa Fischer said she’d help, and Stephanie Oleski offered to pitch in when she could. But Teresa has to work this afternoon and Stephanie’s in-laws are in town, so...”

  “So it’s just you and me.” Amy sighed. “Maybe you should give up on this committee—at least for now. I don’t see how we’re going to convince people that Hartland is the next hot vacation spot.”

  “We don’t need half the world lining up to come here—just a few more people, to add to our economic base and bring some new faces into town.”

  “I don’t see how I can do anything.”

  “I have the perfect job for you. You’re going to write an article promoting all the wonderful things to see and do in Hartland and send it around to big city newspapers and magazines. It’s a chance for you to get more exposure and to promote Hartland at the same time.”

  “But I don’t know any wonderful things to see and do in Hartland,” Amy protested.

  “Which is why you’re perfect for the job. Your status as a newcomer will give you the visitor’s perspective the article needs. And I’ve made a list of potential places to include in your article. You’ll learn about Hartland while you work—it’ll be fun.”

  “You came up with a list? How long is this list?”

  Charla slid a sheet of paper in front of her friend. “You’ll start with a visit to the local history museum, to see the exhibits and learn about the town’s heritage. Then you can have a picnic in the town park. Sandy Ogleby has agreed to take you birding—did you know that there’s a huge tourist industry built around people traveling to see birds? You can tour the B and B over on Oak Street, go fishing at the lake and in the fall we have apple picking—you can ask your grandmother for information on that.”