The Forgotten Cowboy

by Kara Lennox

  Suddenly a horse’s panicked whinny grabbed her attention, followed by a child’s cry of panic. She dropped everything and ran for the practice ring, along with everyone else within hearing distance.

  As soon as she got there, she saw the problem. A child lay on his back on the dirt, struggling to breathe. And a riderless horse stood a few feet away, the reins of his bridle dragging in the dirt.

  Wade arrived just as she did. “What happened?”

  Several kids tried to talk at once, but Tara, one of the counselors, shushed them. “Danny threw him,” she said, obviously distressed. “Damon was just about to start a warm-up walk around the ring. I didn’t see anything that would cause the horse to panic like that.”

  “Danny?” Wade repeated, clearly shocked.

  Willow was already on her knees beside Damon. He was conscious but struggling for breath.

  “He may have just gotten the wind knocked out of him,” Willow said, hoping that was the case. “Damon, does anything hurt?”

  “No,” he croaked, trying to get up. Willow held his shoulder down. “Don’t move just yet. Can you wiggle your feet? How about your fingers?”

  Damon did as asked. After a cursory examination, Willow determined that he wasn’t seriously injured. Nothing but his pride, anyway. So she let him sit up slowly.

  “Wade, why’d Danny throw me?” Damon asked, almost in tears. “I been nothing but nice to that horse. I didn’t hit him or yank on the reins or nothing.”

  Wade came down on one knee and put his arm around Damon’s thin shoulders. “There are only two reasons a horse acts like that. Something hurt him, or something scared him. Think you can stand?”

  “Yeah, I’m okay.”

  Wade helped the boy to his feet, then led him back to the now placid horse. “Take his reins. We’ll lead him back to the barn and take off his tack. Could be he has a burr under his saddle.”

  Damon was apprehensive at first, but he soon realized the horse meant him no harm and he led him away.

  By lunch time, Damon had become something of a hero—the only camper to be thrown from a horse this session—and he was making the most of the incident, elaborating more with each telling.

  But as Willow assembled turkey sandwiches at the end of the table under the shaded pavilion, her attention was more on what the adults were saying. Wade was recounting his own version of the story to his wife, Anne, who joined the campers for lunch a couple of days a week, when she could get away from her law office.

  “I checked that horse from nose to tail, didn’t see anything physically wrong with him,” Wade said. “Tara says no one was near him except Damon, and all Damon did was nudge him with his heels. This is the first time Danny’s ever thrown anybody.”

  “What are you going to do?” Anne asked as she fed a morsel of cheese to her one-year-old daughter, Olivia.

  “I can’t let the campers ride him anymore.”

  “Oh, no!” Willow said, almost without thinking. Both Wade and Anne looked at her, surprised.

  “Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing. Danny loves working with the kids. You can’t retire him.”

  “I can’t endanger the kids, either. He’s an old horse—over twenty, I think. Sometimes the minds of old horses start to go. They get senile, just like people.”

  “You should call Cal,” Anne said. “Remember how he worked out that problem with Cimmaron last year?”

  Cimmaron was the horse Wade had claimed a national calf-roping championship with two years ago. “What problem did she have?” Willow asked, realizing as she did that she was hungry for any story that had to do with Cal.

  “She used to shy at just about anything,” Wade answered. “Someone twenty feet away could pull out a handkerchief, and she’d go into orbit. Cal cured her of that.”

  “He does have an uncanny way with horses,” Anne agreed. “He works with all our foals now. He gentles them down in no time, almost like magic.” Then a shadow crossed Anne’s face. “You used to date him, didn’t you?”

  How refreshing. Someone who didn’t know the story. Well, Anne had been away at college and Wade had been following the rodeo circuit when her spectacular breakup with Cal had caused all the town gossips’ tongues to wag.

  “A long time ago,” Willow answered, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “You won’t mind if we bring him out here, will you?”

  “Oh, of course not,” Willow replied a bit too quickly. “You just go right ahead. Do whatever you have to do to help Danny.” And she would hide in the kitchen.

  OF COURSE, SHE didn’t hide in the kitchen. Like everyone else at the camp, she went to watch Cal with Danny. She was starving for the sight of him—even if she wouldn’t really recognize him when she saw him.

  She stepped up on the bottom rail of the corral fence and pulled herself up so she could see. Flanked on either side by a line of campers who were as curious as she was, she hoped she could blend into the crowd so that Cal wouldn’t even notice her.

  And for a while, he didn’t. His attention was focused so totally on Danny, the fat old plug, that someone could have set a bomb off in the ring and he wouldn’t have noticed.

  She wasn’t sure what she expected him to do, but his behavior certainly surprised her. He spent at least ten minutes standing in front of the horse, his face close to Danny’s long nose, staring into the beast’s eyes and rhythmically stroking its jaw.

  She thought his lips were moving, too, though if he was actually saying something, she couldn’t hear the words.

  But she could imagine them. He would speak in soft, soothing tones until the horse relaxed. The words wouldn’t matter. Just the attitude his voice communicated would relax the animal, make it receptive to—

  Willow shook herself. She was the one Cal talked into being receptive. But he wasn’t talking to her—he was talking to the horse. Who cared what he said to a horse?

  Cal pursed his lips. Was he blowing into the horse’s nose? The horse dipped his head down to the ground, almost as if he were bowing to Cal. Cal grinned and scratched behind both ears.

  He looked up then, as if only now aware of the crowd of people watching him. He smiled, almost as if he were embarrassed to be caught having this intimate conversation with an animal.

  Then his gaze caught hers. He froze for about half a second, then abruptly turned his attention back to the horse.

  Well, she couldn’t blame him. They hadn’t parted on very good terms. He probably thought she was a complete lunatic, now that he’d had time to ponder her behavior that night, and wanted nothing to do with her.

  SPOTTING WILLOW’S face in the crowd had momentarily thrown Cal off his rhythm. What the hell was she doing here? Had he hallucinated her, just because he’d been thinking about her night and day for the last two weeks?

  He would deal with Willow later. He couldn’t afford to let his concentration waver. Danny was depending on him. He would never admit this aloud, but he would almost swear the horse knew what was going on. He knew he was in some kind of trouble, and he sensed Cal was there to help him.

  Cal took the horse’s ears and squeezed the tips, then worked his fingers back toward the head, then along the back of the neck where the mane grew out. The horse nickered softly, obviously liking the gentle massage.

  Cal took his time, moved on past the withers and along the back, the rump, to the tail. Danny stood stock-still, head down, nose almost touching the ground.

  “Atta boy, Danny,” Cal murmured.

  He knew this horse. He remembered when Jonathan’s son used to ride Danny before he’d graduated to a more spirited mount. A gentler, sweeter-tempered animal didn’t exist. If Danny had bucked someone off, there was a serious problem.

  With the horse in a receptive, almost trance-like state, Cal examined him from head to toe, starting with the teeth and gums and working backward, feeling along every square inch of his sleek brown hair. He’d watched his father and grandfather do this enough times to know the routine, bu
t he wasn’t looking for precisely the same things as a vet would. Cal’s examination was a bit more…esoteric.

  He kept an eye on Danny’s head, and particularly his ears, as he moved his hands to different parts of the horse’s body. He listened for the swish of his tail or the scuff of a hoof in the sand. Any small movement might indicate he’d found a sensitive area. He felt for a tell-tale quiver of muscles, a change in tension that might indicate an elevation in stress.

  He was beginning to think he would find nothing. Who was he kidding? He wasn’t some magician who could magically cure—

  And then he felt something at a spot just inside Danny’s left rear leg. There was nothing on the skin, no lumps under the flesh to indicate disease or injury. But when Cal rubbed that area, the horse shifted his weight, just slightly. Probably no one watching could see it, but Cal felt it.

  He pressed a bit harder, and Danny’s left rear hoof lifted just slightly, as if he wanted to kick Cal’s hand away but was too well-mannered.

  That was it, then. Danny was in pain. Probably when the little boy had kicked him to urge him forward, he’d somehow aggravated the condition, whatever it was, and panicked the horse.

  He wasn’t sure what his audience expected, but they were probably going to be disappointed. He motioned for Wade to come over, then showed him the area in question.

  Wade bent down to have a look. “I don’t see anything.”

  “You can’t see it. You can’t feel it, either. But he can.”

  “How do you know?”

  Cal shrugged. “I just do.”

  “Does he have a tumor or something?”

  “You’ll have to ask my grandfather to figure out the pathology. I’m not a vet. I just know that’s where he’s hurting. If you take him to Granddad’s office, he’s got all kinds of fancy diagnostic tools.”

  Wade straightened, smiled, and shook his head. “We’ll see.”

  Then Cal realized he had a shadow, a little African-American boy who was standing silently at his elbow. “Hey,” Cal greeted the boy. “Are you the one Danny tossed?”

  The boy nodded. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s got a sore spot. You probably kicked it by accident. There’s no way you could have known, so don’t feel bad.”

  The boy stood up straighter. “He’s the one should feel bad. He broke the rules, not me.” But then he grinned. “Miss Willow gave me a carrot. Can I give it to him?”

  Miss Willow, huh? “Sure.”

  Cal watched for a few moments as the boy and the horse cemented their friendship. Then he went to find “Miss Willow.” Apparently he hadn’t been hallucinating. Was she here in some official capacity?

  She’d disappeared from the fence where he’d last seen her, and as the campers and counselors returned to their normal activities, he didn’t spot her.

  “Looking for someone?” Wade asked.

  “Willow Marsden. Is she working here or something?”

  “She’s filling in for Sally, our cook. She probably went back up to the house.” Wade gave him a knowing smile before returning to his own duties.

  Aw, hell. Cal wondered what Willow had told her employers about him. Over the past few years she hadn’t had many kind words to say about him. But if she’d bad-mouthed him to the Hardisons—

  He nixed that thought. Willow harbored a lot of pain and anger, but she wasn’t publicly vindictive.

  It might be crazy for him to go in search of her after their disastrous date, but he wasn’t going to get this close to her and not try to talk to her. He at least wanted to know why she was working here.

  And he wanted to find out how her recovery was coming along. Nana had told him, confidentially, that Willow’s doctors were hopeful her cognitive impairment was only temporary. Hopeful, but not optimistic. If she’d been a child whose brain was still developing, the damage might repair itself. But she was an adult, albeit a young one, so the outcome wasn’t certain.

  He’d been wondering what that meant in terms of medical school. Now he would ask her himself—if she would talk to him.

  He found her in the kitchen of the huge old farmhouse, kneading a slab of dough. The way she was digging her fingers into the dough, then balling it up and whamming it against the floured butcher-block counter, made him glad he wasn’t the dough.

  “Willow?”

  She jumped. “Oh, I didn’t see you there,” she said politely, flashing an embarrassed smile.

  “Obviously. You were busy giving that dough a piece of your mind.” He took off his hat and stepped closer.

  “It’s very therapeutic, kneading dough. And those campers have a never-ending appetite for breads of all kinds, so I have plenty of opportunity.”

  He came closer. “What exactly do you need therapy for?”

  She froze and looked up, studying him intently. Then she looked at his dog, sitting obediently by the door. “Oh, hell, it’s you.”

  “You mean you still don’t recognize—”

  “Shh. Keep it down. Not everyone around here realizes my little problem. No, I didn’t recognize you. I thought you were Wade—cowboy hat, tight jeans, boots. If I’d been paying closer attention, I probably could have figured it out by your voice. But I wasn’t expecting you in here.”

  “And you were distracted,” Cal added, still amazed that he could stand a few feet from her and she wouldn’t know him. At least she was talking to him.

  She resumed her kneading, more gently now. “Why are you here?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Because you just can’t get enough of me saying no?” But she softened the comment by adding, “You were pretty amazing out there. I think that horse would have crawled into your lap if you’d have let him. Did you solve the problem?”

  Cal shrugged. “Possibly.”

  “Danny’s not going senile, is he?”

  “No. He’s got a tumor or an infection or something that gave him a sore spot. Granddad will have to diagnose it and treat it.”

  “How could you figure that out by what you did?”

  Again, he shrugged. People had been asking him all his life how he got animals to do what he wanted them to do. It seemed simple to him, though not so simple to explain. “I read his body language.”

  “And what was that business with breathing into his nose?”

  “Horses like that. They learn a lot more through their sense of smell than we do. It’s a way to bond with them.”

  Willow reached for a rolling pin hanging from an overhead rack and began rolling out the dough. “Why did you drop out of vet school?” she asked abruptly.

  The question took him by surprise. A lot of people had wanted to know the answer three years ago when he’d withdrawn from Texas A&M’s veterinary medicine program, and he hadn’t provided a good answer then.

  He still wasn’t completely sure. “I’m not cut out to be a vet.”

  “In what way?”

  “Is it important that you know?” he countered.

  Willow pulled a biscuit cutter from a drawer and began cutting precise discs out of the dough, pressing and twisting on the utensil with more force than he thought necessary. “I guess you’re right. Your reasons for trashing your life aren’t any of my concern.”

  “Trashing my—Is that what you think I did?”

  “You had every advantage in the world,” she said through gritted teeth, “starting with a brilliant mind and the ability to apply it. You had parents and an extended family who supported you every step of the way, who never questioned anything, even when you took chances or made choices they didn’t approve of. You had plenty of money—your parents paid for everything. You never had to work and go to school at the same time. You got accepted to every vet school you applied to, first try—almost unheard of. And then you just threw it all away and became a ranch hand.”

  “When we were on the Party Barge, you thought being a ranch hand was fine.”

  “That was before I knew you were you. It’s good, honest
work for someone whose choices are limited, or for people who are born into the lifestyle and have it in their blood. You don’t fit into either of those categories.”

  She had him there.

  “It’s so clear to anyone who watched you out there today that you have a gift with animals. Why on earth wouldn’t you put it to use by doing what you were meant to do?”

  “Who says I was meant to do it? It was always assumed I would go to vet school because my father and grandfather were vets. But, unlike you, I didn’t know from the time I could crawl what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

  “And I guess you still don’t know?”

  “I guess.” He was on shakier ground now. Yeah, a twenty-six-year-old man should be doing something with his life. “Why the interrogation, Willow? I can think of lots more important things we should talk about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why we aren’t together.”

  “I can explain that. You ruined my life.” She said it as if by rote.

  “I ruined your life. In case you’ve forgotten, there were two of us under that blanket when your parents walked in on us.”

  “And only one of us wanted to be there.”

  “If you didn’t want to make love with me, you should have said no.”

  “I said no. Not that night, maybe, but plenty of other nights. And you kept trying.”

  “That’s what twenty-one-year-old males do.”

  She picked up what was left of the dough after she’d cut out two dozen biscuits and wadded it into a ball. She was ignoring Cal as much as she could.

  “I’m sorry if I pressured you,” he tried again. “But I’d waited three years, and you were eighteen. In another month, you were going off to college. I thought, if we didn’t make love, I’d lose you. You’d fall in love with some blond beach bum, and he’d be your first, and I’d never see you again.”

  “And I thought if we didn’t make love, you’d get tired of waiting and move on.” Her voice was soft, sad. She still wouldn’t look at him, just kept kneading the dough.

  “I wouldn’t have, though.”

  “I was too scared to test you any further.”