The Cowboy

by Joan Johnston

She could hear cattle lowing, the cry of a kiskadee, the keening notes of a mourning dove. Every so often the spotlight caught on a pair of reflected eyes, but it always turned out to be a white-tailed deer, or a Nilgai—the African antelope that had first been introduced to Texas by the King Ranch, or a Santa Gertrudis cow.

  “Honk your horn,” Callie said. “Maybe they’ll hear that, even if they can’t see the spotlight.”

  “If it’s noise you want, why not try a couple of shots.” He gestured with a finger toward the front fender. “The gun in the front case is a Remington 700 rifle. I loaded it before I left the house.”

  “I suppose it’s worth a try,” Callie said.

  Trace stopped the car. “You want to do it? Or shall I?”

  “I’ll do it,” Callie said.

  “There are more bullets in the chrome box mounted at the front of the running board,” Trace said.

  The .223 caliber varmint rifle was illegal for large game, like deer and feral hogs, because the bullet was too small to humanely kill with one shot, but it was accurate at long range and perfect for rabbits. And humans.

  Callie shuddered, then mentally shook herself. She had to stop imagining the worst. She was going to feel pretty stupid when her parents showed up with some story of how they’d decided to take a little time for a second honeymoon.

  She removed the rifle from the leather case, checked the load, made sure Trace was still sitting in the driver’s seat, then braced the stock and fired into the air.

  When the explosion of sound diminished, Callie listened for human voices. All she heard was a cacophony of beating wings and the angry cries of a flock of great-tailed grackles that had been flushed into the spotlight. Too soon, it was quiet again, except for the percussive trees and the singing grass.

  “Do you want to head back home?” Trace asked, when they’d covered every road that ran through the hundred square miles of Three Oaks at least twice.

  Callie looked at her watch in the green light from the dash. The time had flown by, yet the night had seemed endless. “It’s not long until dawn. The camp house I mentioned, the one we use during roundup, is just a quarter mile down the road. It’s got a woodstove and a pump and some Coleman lanterns, and we keep it stocked with coffee. Let’s go there.”

  Trace glanced at her, but she was grateful he didn’t point out the obvious, that daylight was a good hour and a half away, and that she could be home in twenty minutes and get a cup of coffee there.

  Callie didn’t want to go home. The fact that she hadn’t gotten a call meant there was no good news waiting for her there. She pointed Trace in the direction of the rustic wood-frame camp house, but when they arrived, she sat without moving.

  “I’m so afraid,” she whispered.

  “I know,” Trace said.

  She turned on him, venting her fear and frustration. “How can you possibly know what I’m feeling? You’ve never known what it was to be scared—of anything! What are we going to do if Momma and Daddy—” She clenched her teeth to bite back a sob.

  “Come here.” Trace reached over, grabbed her by the waist, and settled her sideways in his lap.

  She sat stiffly, unyielding. “Don’t you dare try to comfort me. Not now. It’s too late, Trace. Eleven years too late. You were never there when I needed you. When I cried for you. When I died inside for the want of your arms around me, holding me—”

  One strong arm circled her shoulders, while his large hand cupped her head and urged it against his shoulder. “Go ahead and let it all out,” he crooned.

  She pressed her mouth hard against his muscular shoulder, keeping the sounds of anguish inside. Her hands clutched fistfuls of his shirt as her body sought the warmth and comfort of his.

  “I’m here now. Lean on me, Callie.”

  He was like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, tempting her to trust him. But once she took a bite, once she gave in, all would be lost. She shoved her hands against his shoulders and pushed herself upright, resisting the offer of solace. “No, Trace. No.”

  His hand slipped to her nape, his callused fingertips caressing the tension there. She kept her body rigid, but she was melting inside. Her gaze focused on the day’s growth of black beard on his cheeks and chin. She wanted to feel the harsh brush of it against her flesh. She wanted to feel the softness of his lips against hers. She lifted her eyes to his hooded gaze and saw a need that matched her own. She wanted to lose herself inside him, safe from the frightening, unfathomable future.

  She closed her eyes and succumbed to temptation.

  Chapter 7

  IT WAS LIKE COMING HOME. IT WAS AS THOUGH the years they’d been apart had passed in the blink of an eye, and they were once again exuberant college kids who loved one another with the whole of their beings. She moaned as his hands cupped her breasts, sighed into his mouth as it captured hers. She threaded her fingers into his hair as she lost herself in the familiar taste and smell of the man who was the other half of her.

  “Callie,” he murmured against her mouth. “I’ve wanted you for so long.”

  “Oh, God, Trace.” She turned to him hungrily, greedily, desperately seeking solace from the terror that waited in the darkness, oblivion from the fear of what she might discover in the light of day.

  He pulled off her boots, then stripped her bare, lifted her, shifted her, until she was straddling his waist, facing him body to body on the soft leather seat.

  She had already unbuckled his belt, already unbuttoned his jeans and dragged them down his hips, already reached for him, so that once she was naked there was nothing to stop them from joining. She slid down onto his shaft, felt him filling her, stretching her.

  He caught her groan of satisfaction with his mouth, mimicked with his tongue the intrusion of flesh into flesh. She bucked against him, rode him hard and wild, took what she needed and gave all he asked. And found passion beyond feeling, pleasure beyond bearing. She fought against the final culmination, fought against the end, wanting the moment to last.

  But there was no stopping the inevitable. She felt herself at the edge of a cliff with no choice but to leap with him, to relish the moments of soaring ecstasy before they must once again touch solid ground. Her cry of exultation ended in a sob of despair.

  Callie’s sweaty cheek was burrowed against Trace’s equally sweaty neck. She was panting, trying to suck enough air to keep her alive. The race had been run, the battle fought. The cliff had definitely been leaped.

  And she had come crashing back to earth.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “What have I done?”

  Callie shoved herself off Trace, felt their bodies separate, felt the chill air against her damp flesh. There was enough predawn light to see the wary look in his eyes. To see the downturn of his mouth as she scrambled to find her panties, which seemed to have gotten lost in the shadowed depths of the vast front seat. She finally pulled on her jeans without them and stuffed her feet back in her boots.

  She found her bra on the burled dashboard. As she snapped herself into it, she couldn’t help noticing how calmly Trace shifted his briefs and jeans back up over his hips, how he buttoned them up with one slow, easy hand, while his eyes remained steady on her. The rattle of his belt being buckled unnerved her, and she met his gaze. And wished she hadn’t.

  She wanted out of this confined space with a predator she was certain had not had his fill of her.

  Trace reached for her, and she jerked away. “No! Don’t touch me.” She grabbed her wrinkled Western shirt from the spotted cowhide carpeting under her feet and shoved her arms into the sleeves, then pushed open the door. Before she could step down, a cell phone rang.

  Callie froze. Where was her phone? What had she done with it? It had been in her Levi’s jacket. Where was her jacket? She bent down to search under the seat, then looked in the seat behind her, where she discovered her plain cotton panties hanging from a crystal decanter. She grabbed them and stuffed them into her front jeans pocket.

  “It�
�s mine,” Trace said.

  “What?”

  “It’s not your phone, it’s mine.”

  Callie watched as Trace retrieved his cell phone from the pocket of his jacket and answered it. She listened to the side of the conversation she could hear.

  “No, we haven’t found them, Russ. Organize the men in pairs. Have them meet me—” He turned to her and said, “Where do you want everyone to meet?”

  Callie realized it would be awkward—maybe even dangerous—to have a dozen Bitter Creek cowboys show up at the door to Three Oaks. “How about right here?”

  Trace gave directions to the camp house to the Bitter Creek segundo. the middle-aged cowboy who’d been his father’s right-hand man as long as he could remember, then disconnected the call. “Let’s go make some coffee,” he said. “We’re going to need it.”

  Callie bristled at the idea of taking orders from Trace, but realized he was only asking her to do what she knew she ought to be doing anyway. Fortunately, the camp house was set up to provide meals for working cowboys. She paused before entering the house and stared at the sunrise. The sky was bigger in Texas, every Texas sunrise more extravagant than the last. Pinks and oranges and yellows lit the immense sky.

  “I love the dawn, the hope of a new day. It’s always so beautiful,” Callie said wistfully.

  “Yeah,” Trace agreed as he came up behind her. “It was never quite like this in—” He cut himself off.

  She angled her head and eyed him over her shoulder. “Where?” She turned and confronted him. “Where have you been all these years, Trace?”

  “Here and there,” he said with a teasing wink. “We’d better get that coffee started.” He took her hand and walked with her into the camp house.

  What was the big mystery? Callie wondered. Why was Trace being so secretive about his past? What had he been doing that was so great—or so awful—that he didn’t want her to know about it?

  Callie had no time to ponder the question. Or to consider what the results of her lapse with Trace might be. They had left things unfinished in Houston. This morning she’d acted without caution, recklessly seeking the escape she’d found in his embrace.

  But whatever solace she’d found had long since disappeared. Callie was edgy and anxious, frightened and fretful. She called home and told a worried Sam—he’d sobered up overnight and insisted on speaking to her—that some neighbors had volunteered to help her continue the search.

  “No. Don’t call Bay yet,” she told him. “There’s no need to worry her at school until we know … until we have more information about … Just don’t call her,” she finished in frustration.

  She asked to speak to Luke and ended up having to both beg and threaten to convince him he could help most by taking care of Eli and Hannah. “I’ll explain to the school later why you and Eli took off today.” Though she didn’t say it, it was understood that Luke was also to keep an eye on Sam.

  Callie barely had time to get a fire started in the stove and get coffee made before the first of the cowhands arrived.

  Russell Handy, the Bitter Creek segundo, was the perfect mix of deferential cowboy and authoritative leader. That is to say, he deferred to Trace and made sure every cowboy in the bunch that showed up obeyed him without question. He looked like most working cowboys Callie had known, lean and wiry, with skin tanned to leather by the sun.

  He could have been any age from thirty to fifty, but Callie figured he was somewhere in between. He had a thick mustache trimmed to the edge of his lips, a straight, thin nose, and eyes so dark brown they looked black in the shadow of the straw Stetson he’d pulled low on his forehead.

  “Sorry to hear about your parents bein’ lost, Mizz Monroe,” Handy said, touching a finger to his hat brim. “Don’t you worry none. If they’re out there, we’ll find ’em.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Handy,” Callie replied.

  Callie had feared she’d get stuck making coffee all day at the camp house, but the segundo had brought along a cook with rations of frijoles and tortillas to feed the men if their search should go beyond noon. Callie was grateful for his foresight and terrified at the thought her parents could remain unfound for so long.

  “You might want to give the sheriff’s office another call,” Trace said.

  “They said I had to wait a full twenty-four hours,” Callie said, her voice catching. “I’ll bet if your parents were missing, every lawman in the county would be out looking for them right now.”

  “You’d never catch my parents on a picnic together,” Trace said with a wry smile.

  Callie looked up when she heard the distinctive WHUP-WHUP-WHUP of a helicopter, shading her eyes to locate it against the sun. “Yours?” she asked Trace.

  “I decided it might save us some time if we can locate your father’s truck from the air.”

  Callie felt her throat swell with gratitude. Three Oaks also used a chopper for rounding up cattle, but they hadn’t been able to keep up the payments on the one they’d briefly owned, so now they rented one when they needed it. “What is Blackjack going to say when he finds out you appropriated a Bitter Creek helicopter to search for my parents?”

  “He’ll be glad the search was shortened,” Trace said with a grin. “Especially since work at Bitter Creek is going to be at a standstill until we find your parents.”

  “Oh,” Callie said. “Oh, God.”

  “What is it?”

  “I think I know where they might have gone.”

  “Somewhere in the south pasture?”

  “No. There’s a stock pond in the middle pasture. Daddy forbade us to go there, because there’s a sinkhole nearby. It’s fenced, but he was always afraid one of us—But he would have been sure of being alone there. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it yesterday. I checked every pond, every shady spot I could think of in the south pasture. I just never thought—”

  “Give me directions, and I’ll have the helicopter take a look,” Trace said.

  Callie wanted to jump in Trace’s hunting car and drive there, but Trace insisted she wait until the helicopter could fly over the area.

  Minutes later Trace got a radio response. “My pilot found the truck. It looks abandoned. He didn’t see any sign of your parents.”

  Callie’s heart was in her throat. “They must be there. We have to go there.”

  The drive to the middle pasture seemed interminable. By cell phone, Trace had directed Russell Handy to have his men head there to continue the search. As they drove up to the pond, her stomach tightened at the sight of buzzards circling overhead.

  Handy was waiting for them. “We found them,” he said.

  “Where are they? How are they?” Callie asked as she tumbled out of the luxurious convertible.

  Handy didn’t answer her, merely looked at Trace and shook his head. She felt Trace slide a supporting arm around her waist. She wanted to shrug it off, but her knees threatened to buckle, and she was afraid that without his support she would fall. Her chest felt as though she’d been kicked by a mule, and she couldn’t seem to catch her breath.

  “Where are they?” Callie managed to say. “I want to see them.”

  “Your mom’s alive,” Handy said.

  Which meant her father was not. Callie felt her insides go flying and mentally coiled a rope around herself to pull things in tight. She couldn’t fall apart. Everyone was depending on her. She’d been needed by her family all her life, but never so much as now.

  “They’ve been shot,” Handy said.

  For half an instant Callie thought her father might have shot her mother in a jealous rage.

  “Looks like the bullet hit your father in the back, went through him, and struck your mother.”

  That couldn’t have been a self-inflicted wound, Callie realized. So someone else had shot them. But who? And why?

  “We haven’t moved her yet,” she heard Handy say. “I think the bullet might have broken her shoulder. She doesn’t seem to be hurt anywhere else. She won’t
let go of your dad, and we didn’t want to force her. Maybe you can talk to her.”

  That meant her mother was conscious. That meant her mother was talking. That was good news.

  Callie wished she hadn’t gotten her hopes up, because they fell like hail, hard and painful, when she caught sight of her parents lying half on, half off the gray wool blanket she’d packed for them to use as a ground cover the previous day. The woven straw picnic basket lay open, the contents scattered. Two paper plates that bore the remnants of fried chicken and potato salad were covered with black ants.

  Nature was consuming the dead. She glanced up at the circling buzzards. And waiting for the dying.

  Callie forced her gaze back to the grizzly tableau. Her father had fallen on top of her mother and lay almost on his side, half covering her. There was a small brown stain on the back of his plaid Western shirt, but otherwise she could see nothing wrong with him. The entire bodice of her mother’s beautiful yellow sundress was stained an ugly brown with dried blood.

  Her mother had one arm wrapped around her father’s neck. The other arm lay still at her side. Her shoulder had a ragged wound filled with a black pool of seeping blood, where the bullet had torn the thin strap in half. The copper smell of blood was cloying, and the incessant buzzing of the circling flies made Callie feel nauseated.

  The wail escaped without warning. Callie put her hands over her mouth to stifle the sound, but there was no shutting off her grief. It spilled from her eyes in huge tears that blinded her. She reached for Trace with a groping hand as her body sagged, but a moment later she pulled free and was on her knees beside her parents.

  She swiped at her eyes with her fingertips, wanting to see. And was devastated by what she found. Another wail of anguish escaped as she focused on her father’s still, gray face. She brushed futilely at the flies, which buzzed angrily, then returned. Her skin crawled, as though the irksome insects were walking on her own sensitive flesh.

  “Callie … your father is dead,” her mother said in a whispery voice.

  “I know, Momma,” Callie croaked. “We have to get you to the hospital. You have to let him go now.”