Christmas at Blue Moon Ranch

by Lynnette Kent

  Chapter Fifteen

  When Daniel came solidly back to consciousness, it was still dark. He must not have been out very long. Maybe Calypso would have stopped to graze somewhere nearby, and they could still get back to the barn…though he couldn’t seem to remember what he’d planned to do when he got there.

  The first step would be to get back on his feet. His head felt heavy, though, more than his neck muscles could manage. The effort of lifting his hand from the ground left him panting. He let his arm fall back to his side. Something was wrong. He shouldn’t be this weak. What had happened?

  He remembered riding but not why. He didn’t remember falling. Opening his eyes, he tried to figure out his surroundings from what he could see. Rough, sandy dirt…not the grass pasture he recalled. When he turned his head, a black cloud formed in front of his eyes, and he had to wait for it to clear. Another sign of weakness. Blood loss? Why was he bleeding?

  Above him, the starry night and bright moon he seemed to remember had been replaced with heavy cloud cover. Or…no. The sky wouldn’t be so close. Hanging only a foot or so above him were leaves and branches. Some kind of tree. Or bush, to be so low to the ground. He appeared to be lying under a dense bush.

  Okay, he’d fallen into some brush. He’d hit his head, which explained the threatened blackout, and even the bleeding. Head wounds could be messy. Still, he needed to crawl out into the open, locate his horse and get the hell home.

  Pushing his palm against the earth, he grunted and groaned and forced his shoulders a few inches off the ground…until a shaft of pure agony shot through him. Daniel collapsed, which hurt every bit as much, and lay whimpering like a little kid until the pain faded enough to let him think.

  Something wrong with the shoulder. In back, he decided, where he couldn’t reach. Getting to the horse was going to be harder than he’d thought. Getting on the horse might be impossible.

  So maybe he’d just rest awhile, gather his reserves. He’d feel better, be stronger in an hour or two…

  A CONVOY OF TRUCKS RUMBLED UP the road toward the New Moon Ranch. Willa brought up the rear, having taken time to change out of her party clothes into jeans and boots. Robbie had waited for her, riding silently in the passenger seat.

  When they reached Daniel’s house, Hobbs Sutton was just coming out the front door. He walked over to her window. “No sign of trouble inside. Well, except for Trouble, asleep on the bed.” She didn’t smile at the joke.

  The sheriff put a hand over hers on the steering wheel. “We’ll find him, Willa. Everything’s gonna be okay. He told me he’d call if he found the rustlers, and I haven’t heard from dispatch all night.”

  “Maybe they found him first.”

  The sheriff shook his head. “Let’s go on to the barn. Maybe he fell asleep in the office. Then we’ll all look like fools…and be happy about it.”

  At the barn, though, there was no sign of Daniel in the office or anywhere else. While Nate and the men who’d come with them—hands from both ranches and a few deputies—fanned out over the surrounding ground, Willa stood gazing at Daniel’s command center with Hobbs and Robbie.

  “There was a break in the fence tonight.” Hobbs pointed to a computer monitor, where a diagram of Daniel’s perimeter fence showed up as a blue line. Beside Hobbs’s finger, a red X flashed. “Here, on the northeast side.”

  “So he did go after the rustlers.” Willa slapped her hand against the back of the desk chair. “You said he was going to call you.”

  “He told me he would. But he wasn’t going to let them get away with it, either. If the choice was between catching the rustlers and letting them go…”

  “Daniel would have gone in on his own.” Willa shook her head. “I knew it would come to this.”

  Standing in the corner closest to the door, Robbie shifted his feet. “Maybe…maybe he didn’t think it would be the rustlers.”

  Willa looked at him. “Why else would he go out there? He set this whole system up to catch rustlers.”

  “Well, maybe he’d been getting…some, um, false alarms.”

  Hobbs looked at Robbie. “You know something about that?”

  Willa went to stand in front of her son. “Have you been talking to Daniel about this?”

  “No.” He kept his gaze on the floor. “But I—I came up here a few times, cut through his fence.”

  When Willa couldn’t say anything, Hobbs took over. “Did you do this one?”

  Robbie shook his head. “I stayed at the party all night.”

  “So the rustlers were out there. Daniel, thinking it might be another trick, went out to check.” The sheriff turned on his heel and strode outside, calling for the men who’d come with them.

  “We’ll talk about this,” Willa promised her son. “For now, sit down right there.” She pointed at Daniel’s chair. “And don’t move until I get back.”

  ROBBIE DID AS HE WAS TOLD. He didn’t…couldn’t…fall asleep. He could picture what might have happened if Daniel ran into the rustlers. If Daniel was hurt, it would be his fault.

  The red X flashed from the monitor until he thought he’d go crazy looking at it, so he turned the chair around to face the window. Beside the window was a photograph, hard to see in the dark. Disobeying his mom’s instructions, Robbie crossed the room to get a better look.

  He recognized the scene right away. His family—Toby, Susannah, Lili, Rosa, Mom and himself—in the courtyard on the afternoon after the Zapata rodeo. They’d gathered around the table for a minute, with Mom sitting and laughing up at something Toby said while Rosa and Lili set out food. Susannah was pouring drinks. Robbie saw himself at the edge of the picture with a frown on his face, looking directly at the camera.

  Daniel must have taken the picture without them realizing—maybe he had one of those cell phones with a camera. He’d caught them all at that moment and then printed the picture out and put it on his wall. Even after Mom had told him not to see them anymore, the photograph was still there.

  The man cared. And they all cared about him.

  Maybe I do, too. Would you mind, Dad? Could I like him, at least a little?

  No voice came out of the darkness, letting him know it would be okay. Robbie sat through the night, remembering his father, thinking about Daniel Trent, and wondering if he’d get the chance to make up for his mistakes.

  DANIEL WOKE UP TO DAYLIGHT this time, but feeling worse.

  “Better move,” he mumbled to himself. “Not getting better just lying here.”

  He struggled for what seemed like hours just to roll from his side to his belly. Once he got his hands flat on the ground, underneath his shoulders, he let himself rest, recover his breath. He woke up sneezing sand and dirt out his nose.

  “Okay. One pushup, that’s all.” He pushed, and fire blazed through his chest. Teeth gritted, Daniel ignored the pain. “Push…push…damn it, push…”

  Finally, he got his left knee bent under him. Using hands, knee and his right toe, he crawled through the scrub he’d landed in. Branches and thorns scratched his face. He put his hand down on a patch of low-growing cactus and came away with spines in his palm, which burrowed deeper with every move.

  He found a tree by banging his head into the trunk. Swearing as loudly as his dry throat would allow, Daniel gripped the tree with one hand, then the other, clawing his way over the rough bark until he could get his left foot flat on the ground. And then he wrapped his arms around the trunk to help drag his right leg in and straighten up.

  Another black cloud passed across his vision, and he thought he would pass out again. The blessed tree kept him conscious as well as upright. After a time, he felt strong enough to lift his head and scan the horizon. He had a horse somewhere. Right? That’s what he was looking for?

  No horse. He made a slow, three-hundred-and-sixty degree survey of his surroundings. No animal that he could see.

  For that matter, this didn’t look like anywhere he remembered having been before. He couldn’t recal
l a part of his ranch that resembled this dry, barren, wild place, and he thought he knew his land pretty well by now.

  Where had he ended up on that ride he couldn’t remember? How far had he come from familiar territory? Which direction was home?

  He consulted the compass on his watch and decided to head west, because he’d reach the Mexican border eventually, and probably run into somebody who could help him. Assuming he survived. Some water would probably make that more of a certainty. Maybe he’d stumble into a creek along the way.

  But he stumbled only a few steps beyond his savior tree, over a rock that hadn’t been there seconds before. The sun on his back was warm, the ground under his cheek surprisingly comfortable. Daniel decided he needed more rest before trying again. He’d just lie here and think about Willa for a while. Then he’d be ready to start over….

  “THEY’RE HERE,” TOBY CALLED, after dark on Sunday night. He’d been watching the front of the house all day. “Nate and Mom are here!”

  Rosa gathered with the rest of the family in the entry hall, gazing hopefully as Nate and Willa came through the front door.

  “Nothin’,” Nate told them. “We didn’t find him anywhere on the ranch.” At a gesture from Willa, he followed her down the hallway toward the kitchen.

  “Did you look outside the fence?” Rosa went after them, with Lili and the children behind her. “Could he have gone into the desert and…and been left there?”

  Willa sank into a chair at the kitchen table and buried her head in her arms.

  “We rode the perimeter,” Nate said. Lili put a plate down in front of him. “We saw where the cattle had been driven through the fence and onto the truck, with the tracks of ATVs. We searched for a mile outward in all directions. We couldn’t find him.”

  “Do you suppose they took him with them?” Rosa asked.

  “Maybe.” Nate swallowed down several bites, then looked over at Willa. “Miss Willa, you need to sit up and eat. We got more to do and you’re gonna need your strength.”

  She didn’t say anything, didn’t move. After a few minutes, though, she made a sound…a sob. As they all stared, frozen with shock, Willa’s shoulders began to shake. Her hands clenched. Without apology or inhibition, she sat there in the kitchen and cried all the tears she’d dammed up for two years, plus all the new tears from recent days.

  Rosa nodded to herself. It was about time.

  The storm abated eventually, when the old sorrows, at least, were spent. Toby and Susannah went to stand behind their mother, patting her shoulder, stroking her hair. Rosa sat down in the next chair and took one of her niece’s fists between her hands, stroking and murmuring until the fingers relaxed. Lili made a pot of tea and set a cup within reach.

  When she was ready, Willa sat up, wiped her eyes with her free hand and reached for the tea.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a husky voice. “I didn’t mean to inflict that on anybody.” She gave her aunts a tiny smile, a larger one to Toby and Susannah. “We’ll find him. I know we will. He’s a strong man and he’ll be waiting for us to get there.” She took a deep breath and looked around the kitchen, as if waking from a long sleep. Her eyes widened. “Where’s Roberto?”

  Like children playing a game, they all imitated her, looking around the kitchen as if Robbie had simply hidden himself for a joke. “He was here when you came home,” Susannah said. “I didn’t see him leave.”

  “I’ll check his room.” Toby left the kitchen at a run, and came back quickly. “He’s not there. I don’t think he’s in the house.”

  “Maybe he went to the barn to be alone.” Lili refilled Willa’s cup. “He’s spent some time out there today.”

  Willa nodded. “That’s probably it. He bears some responsibility for what’s happened. He’s got a lot to think about.”

  But when she called the barn, where some of their hands were resting up after the day of searching, the news wasn’t good.

  “He’s not in the barn.” Willa hung up the phone but didn’t face them right away. “And Tar is missing.” Turning around at last, she showed her worried frown to Rosa, Lili and Nate. “He’s taken his horse and gone out by himself at night to look for Daniel.”

  ROBBIE HAD SPENT A LOT OF TIME—more than his mother ever knew about—in the desert outside the boundaries of the Blue Moon Ranch. He’d camped there with his dad, learning to identify the plants and trees and animals that thrived on the hot, dry plains of south Texas. His dad had taught him tracking skills, too, and ways to avoid being tracked. On winter days, when he could escape school and work—and Toby—he and Tar would pretend they were explorers, scouting new territory on a distant planet.

  If anybody could find Daniel Trent in the Wild Horse Desert, it would be him.

  He started at the break in the fence the rustlers had made and moved in expanding circles from there. He saw all the tracks Nate had mentioned. The cattle truck and the ATVs veered to the left, eventually, in the direction of the road west to Mexico.

  But there were other tracks, Robbie thought, tracks that had been erased by someone who didn’t want to be followed. He started his circles again from that point, noticing how smooth the sandy ground appeared, as if swept by a broom or a large brush. Or maybe by someone with a tree branch, obscuring his tracks.

  The moon passed overhead as he worked, checking out clumps of bushes and groups of trees, making sure the shadows of boulders hid only rocks and dirt. He didn’t get tired, and he didn’t stop. This was his problem, and he would make it right.

  He didn’t know what time it was when he heard the first groan. Tar halted and they both stayed still, listening to the desert sounds. A breeze ruffled stalks of grass and the leaves of trees. Here and there, a lizard scrabbled across a rock, or some sand. An owl hooted in the distance.

  Not too far away, someone moaned.

  Robbie stood up in his stirrups, peering into the night. “Daniel? It’s Rob. Make some more noise. Throw a rock. Help me find you.”

  He’d almost given up when a noise came to him, a strange, whining, singing sound. Robbie choked back a laugh when he realized it was singing.

  “Over hill…dale…hit the…trail…as the caissons…go rolling…Oh, it’s hi-hi hee…field artillery…” The U.S. Army’s theme song. He remembered his dad singing it.

  Walking Tar slowly, carefully, Robbie followed the sound. In the distance, he saw an old mesquite tree twisted by the wind, with a sharp-edged shadow underneath it—a shadow slanted in a different direction than every other shadow on the ground.

  “Yes!” He urged Tar to a jog and reached the mesquite in a matter of minutes. Throwing himself out of the saddle, he dropped to his knees beside the man on the ground. “I’ve got you, Daniel. You’re gonna be okay.”

  “Good to know.” The man tried to roll over to look at him but clearly didn’t have the strength.

  Robbie used both hands to ease him backward and caught a sharp breath. “You’ve been shot!”

  Daniel nodded. “That would explain the way I feel.” He shivered, his teeth chattering. “Cold,” he said weakly. “Need to sleep.”

  “Don’t sleep. You have to help me get you back to the house.” On his feet again, Robbie tied Tar’s reins to a branch of the tree. “Come on, Daniel.” He leaned over and hooked his hands under the injured man’s armpits. “You gotta get up.”

  “N-n-not th-that way.” Trent opened his eyes halfway. “Roll me over to the f-f-front.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “D-don’t argue.”

  Robbie did as he was told, and rolled Daniel face-down in the dirt. Then he added his strength to the effort it took to get the man’s knee bent beneath him and his shoulders off the ground.

  “Good,” Daniel panted. “Now I get up.”

  He was heavier than he looked, and Robbie bore almost all of his weight before Daniel finally stood upright. With the injured man’s arm over his shoulders, they walked the ten feet to Tar’s left side.

  Daniel lo
oked up at the saddle. “C-c-can’t d-do it. L-leave me here, b-bring b-b-back help.” He started to sag in the middle.

  “No!” Robbie held him up. “I’m taking you with me. You’re getting in that saddle.”

  The major looked down at him sideways. “Yeah?”

  Robbie set his jaw. “Yeah.”

  Afterward, he could never say just how they did it. But somehow, Daniel ended up astride the horse, tied there with the rope Robbie always carried on the saddle.

  Then he and Tar walked Major Trent out of the Wild Horse Desert.

  “WILL YOU LOOK THERE?” Standing at the fence line of the New Moon Ranch, Nate gestured out into the desert.

  Willa followed the direction of the foreman’s pointing finger. In the predawn darkness, she couldn’t see anything. “I don’t…”

  Then she distinguished movement, like one shadow separating from another. A white oval became a face. Robbie’s face.

  “It’s them!” She tightened her legs, and Monty jumped forward into a lope, lengthening quickly to a gallop. Cheers and hoofbeats followed her, and truck engines roared, but they couldn’t catch up. Willa beat them all by a quarter of a mile.

  Once they were seen, Robbie and Tar stayed where they were. Monty made a sliding stop just ten feet away. Leaving the horse’s reins on his neck, Willa hit the ground running.

  And then she was hugging Robbie, rubbing his head, scolding and kissing and crying all at the same time. “You should never take off like that by yourself. Never, do you hear me?”

  He grinned and gave her a one-armed hug in return. “I hear you.”

  Letting him go, she turned to touch the man on the horse. “Daniel? Daniel, are you awake?”

  He didn’t stir, and she looked over at Robbie. “Are you sure he’s…”

  At that moment, Nate arrived on horseback. Lili and Rosa had brought the truck, with Toby and Susannah. Hobbs and two deputies pulled up in a sheriff’s department van. An ambulance had just reached the top of the last ridge and was starting down the hill.