How to Wrangle a Cowboy

by Joanne Kennedy

  “No he’s not.” She gave him a bitter smile. “He’s going to wake up with a combination of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Clint Eastwood, Tom Selleck, and every other actor who ever played a cowboy. That’s one thing I didn’t screw up. His dad is his hero.”

  “What the hell did you tell him?”

  Tara shrugged as if it didn’t matter. He looked down at the little boy and at the ragged toy horse clutched to his chest.

  “What do I tell him when he wakes up?”

  She shrugged again. “Tell him I took a trip with Edward. He’ll understand. He’s a good kid. Easy.”

  “What do you mean, easy?” Shane felt his eyes narrow, his muscles tense.

  “He doesn’t ask for much.”

  “That’s how kids get when you don’t give them much.”

  “Oh, stop.” She fumbled with her keys and popped the trunk. “He’s not little Shane, abandoned by his mommy.” She let out an aggrieved sigh. “I knew it would be like this. That’s why I left.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like this. With you telling me what to do. Treating him like he’s precious or something.”

  “He is precious.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Sadly, he did. Opening the back door of the Beemer, he bent down and scooped the boy into his arms. Tara took a small suitcase out of the trunk, along with a backpack.

  Should a kid be so small at six? Cody felt like a bundle of bones. How big was a normal six-year-old?

  He thought about the foster kids at the group home in Wynott. Those kids were bigger, but they were eleven, some of them twelve.

  Two times six was twelve, so Cody should be at least half as big as the Phoenix House kids, right? Was he that big? Shane hefted him in his arms, giving him a light bounce to feel his weight. He was probably more than half their size. So maybe he was doing okay, like Tara said.

  Setting Cody’s worldly possessions on the grass, Tara climbed back into the car.

  “Is that all he’s got?” Shane nodded toward the luggage, which looked tiny against the wide expanse of the ranch.

  “That’s all.”

  The smooth hum of the engine filled the quiet night, and seconds later gravel crunched under the tires. Shane stood in the drive, his precious burden in his arms, and watched the taillights disappear.

  Once inside the cabin, he looked down at Cody—at the perfect curve of small, spiky lashes fanned over plump cheeks, at the twist of dark hair dangling over his forehead. The boy’s skin was so perfect, so smooth, like he’d never known a day’s worry. Maybe Tara really had done a good job.

  But what would happen when his boy woke up? There was nothing Shane could do to stop the pain. All he could do was try to counter it with his own joy at having his son with him after all these years.

  My son.

  His heart swelled and he felt an unfamiliar light pouring into the dark places and empty spaces Tara had left behind. He was a father, a father, with a chance to right all the wrongs his own father had wrought.

  Cody’s lashes fluttered, and he stirred in Shane’s arms. Shane held his breath as the boy’s eyes opened. The child glanced to one side, then the other, a little confused.

  The eyes meeting Shane’s were as dark as his own, and he could see his own fears and insecurities in the shadows below. He’d chase those shadows away and give his boy courage. Courage and strength, plus love unending, for as long as he lived.

  The boy blinked. “Are you my dad?”

  Shane’s voice came out hoarse, his throat tightened by emotion.

  “Yes. I’m your dad.” He didn’t want to overwhelm Cody, but he couldn’t help squeezing him tighter to his chest while he blinked back tears.

  Cody looked puzzled for a moment, and Shane held his breath. What if he asked where his mother was? What if he wanted to go with her?

  Sighing, Cody rested his head against Shane’s chest.

  “I thought you’d be bigger,” he said and went back to sleep.

  * * *

  The next morning, Shane woke at dawn with a new sense of excitement. He’d been going through the motions for years, putting one foot in front of the other, plodding dutifully through life. He’d known for a long time that his days needed a jump start, but he hadn’t known where to find it, so he’d kept moving forward, praying for change.

  Now his prayers had been answered. Having his son with him wiped clean the window of his world, and everything gleamed with new meaning.

  Climbing the ladder to the loft, he tiptoed to the bed. There was a good chance Cody would be disoriented when he woke up. He might not know where he was. He might cry for his mother.

  Shane was ready for any eventuality except the one that faced him.

  The first light of a new day silvered the dormer windows that overlooked the loft’s twin beds. Shane smiled at the tumble of blankets on the far bed and the raggedy horse toy whose head rested on the pillow.

  But the raggedy horse was the only one sleeping. Beside it, a faint depression showed where a small head had rested on the pillow. The quilt had been tossed aside, and the clothes Shane had left neatly folded on the other bed were gone. In their place was a rumpled pair of Spider-Man pajamas.

  His heart dropped into his boots. One night, and already he’d failed as a parent.

  He slid down the ladder, leaping the last two steps. Searching the cabin took five whole minutes. The bedroom where Shane rarely slept was neat as ever, and the front room offered few places for a small boy to hide.

  The kitchen offered the only clue: a cereal bowl by the sink, with two cornflakes floating like tiny boats in a placid pool of milk.

  How had the kid managed to make himself breakfast without waking Shane, who’d slept in the recliner just ten feet away?

  Standing at the cabin door, he surveyed the vast landscape stretching from his front porch. He’d always loved the wide vistas of the Lazy Q Ranch, but today all he could see were a thousand places for a small boy to hide—and a million ways to get hurt.

  The winding path that led to the barn seemed like something that would beckon to a six-year-old, so Shane followed it, pausing at the barn door. Would Cody have gone inside?

  Probably. Just as he had that thought, movement flickered at the edge of his vision. Turning, he scanned the lawn, the ranch house, the now-distant cabin.

  Nothing.

  He opened the barn door. There it was again, that flicker of motion in the corner of his eye. He didn’t see it so much as sense it, the way you sense danger.

  Spinning, he saw his son, the precious boy he’d waited for so long, flying through the air as if shot from a cannon.

  Shane ran as if the devil was burning his heels, but he was still too late. Cody skidded to a landing, the heels of his shoes leaving twin tracks in the lawn Bud so carefully tended.

  “Whoa!” The boy pitched backward and landed on the seat of his jeans, grinning. “That was cool!”

  Behind him, an old swing built of a board and two ropes swayed from one of the trees that divided the cabin from the ranch house. Bud had built it for his granddaughter years ago, and Shane had forgotten all about it—but it hadn’t taken Cody long to find it.

  “Hey, Dad.” The boy stood and brushed off his backside. “Did you see me jump?”

  “I sure did.” Shane ruffled the boy’s dark hair as gratitude, warm and glowing, replaced fear. He’d wanted this for so long. “That was some landing. And I see you made your own breakfast too.”

  Cody shrugged and ran back to the swing. Pumping hard, he rose higher and higher, until Shane worried the seat would fly up and over the branch that supported it.

  “Careful,” he said.

  Cody ignored him, pumping higher, ever higher, his face a mask of concentration. Finally, he glanced back at his dad.

  “Watch this!”

  As his son released the swing and launched himself into the air, Shane decided that watch this was the most terrifying phrase in the English language.
But Cody nailed the landing.

  “Pretty good.” Shane wasn’t about to encourage daredevil deeds that made his heart stop. A tear in Cody’s jeans revealed a scraped and bloody knee—proof a previous landing hadn’t been so successful.

  Six in the morning, and the kid was already wounded. Some dad he was.

  Chapter 6

  “Let’s go in and clean up that knee,” he said. “Then I’ll give you a tour. There are places on the ranch you can go, and places you can’t, okay? And if you’re around the horses, there are important rules to follow.”

  “Okay, Dad.” The boy reached up and took Shane’s work-worn hand as if he did it every day. It felt so natural, walking with his son, and he couldn’t help feeling proud that Cody hadn’t run crying to his dad when he got hurt. He’d gotten up and climbed right back on the swing.

  His son was already a cowboy in spirit. Someday, he’d get himself tossed from a horse, and Shane had no doubt he’d climb right back into the saddle and try again, maybe yelling, “Watch this!” as he spurred the horse into action.

  Cody perched on the washing machine and took the wound cleaning like a man, though he was disappointed Shane only had skin-colored Band-Aids. Evidently, Carson—whoever Carson was—got fancy Band-Aids, with, like, Spider-Man on them and stuff. Cody chattered about his various crash landings while Shane made a mental note to pick up some kid-friendly Band-Aids when he went to town.

  “Okay, sport.” Shane let Cody slide down from the washer and knelt to his level. “We need to go over those rules, okay?”

  “Okay.” Cody bent down and picked at the edge of the bandage. “I know about rules. Carson’s mom has ’em.”

  Didn’t Cody’s mom? Shane didn’t dare ask. Maybe Carson’s mom was especially strict. In any case, he wasn’t about to bring up Tara before he had to.

  “First one is, you don’t leave the house without telling me where you’re going. If I’m asleep, you can either wake me up or stay home till I get up.”

  “Can I watch cartoons?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Cody pooched out his lower lip.

  “We’ll go to the library next time I go to town and get you some books to look at. Can you read?”

  Cody nodded. “I’m the best reader in my class. ’Cept for Carson.”

  Shane had a feeling Cody was going to miss Carson.

  “Right now, I need to take a shower. You got some toys in that backpack?”

  Cody nodded. “My Mega Man stuff.”

  “Okay, well, you can play with Mega Man too.”

  “You don’t play with Mega Man, Dad.” Cody slumped his shoulders and rolled his eyes, as if teaching his father to be cool was a chore. “You become Mega Man.”

  Shane grinned. “That sounds dangerous. Maybe Mega Man should wait until after the shower. You want to watch cartoons instead?”

  “Okay.” Cody was in the front room and on the sofa in ten seconds flat, with the remote in his hand and Cartoon Network on the screen.

  When Shane emerged from the shower, SpongeBob was on the TV saying something wildly inappropriate for six-year-old boys, but nobody was watching. Keeping track of Cody was evidently going to be Shane’s full-time job if he didn’t lay down the law. He hated to have to be stern with his son so early, but keeping Cody safe was what mattered. When he found the kid, there would be consequences.

  Sort of. Maybe.

  He stepped out the door to see his son sitting on the top step. Without turning, Cody asked, “What time is my mom picking me up?”

  Looking down at the small, hopeful figure staring out at the road, Shane’s heart felt as bloody and torn as Cody’s skinned knee. He sat down beside him.

  “I don’t know, sport. She and Edward went on a trip. She didn’t say when she’d be back.”

  “Oh.” The kid watched a spider that was building a web between two blooms of the geranium Shane kept on the front step. Shane was glad to see Cody seemed interested in the spider, not scared.

  “She probably won’t come back, then.” The kid made the statement in a flat tone, as if he knew the truth about his mother and was completely unaffected by it.

  Shane had used that tone himself, time and again, to shut down helpful foster parents who wanted to know how he felt about everything. Didn’t they know feelings were private? If people knew your feelings, they knew what hurt you and what didn’t. It was like handing them a knife so they could stab you in the heart. He’d never trusted anyone with that knife. Ever.

  It looked like his son already knew about the knife and had learned to hold it close.

  The boy looked up at Shane with a surprisingly critical squint. Maybe he didn’t like Shane’s haircut. Shane kept his hair short, so it was easy to take care of, but Cody’s hair was long, with a little tail in the back. It was kind of cute.

  Cody looked back at the spider. “I thought you were a cowboy.”

  “I am.”

  “There’s no horses.”

  “Yeah, there are,” Shane said. “They’re out to pasture right now.”

  “Oh.” Cody thought about that for a moment. “Are they old?”

  “No, they’re not old.” That wasn’t quite true. Shane had a few good cow horses he and the hands used, but most of the horses at the Lazy Q were broken-down nags Grace had rescued from various animal abusers. Grace might be tiny and frail, and there were days she couldn’t remember her name, but when she turned up towing her battered horse trailer and told some white-trash, beer-drinking, horse-hitting sumnabitch she was taking his horse, the horse-hitting sumnabitch never said no.

  “What makes you think they’re old?” he asked Cody.

  “’Cause that’s what Mom says. That it’s time to put her out to pasture, ’cause she’s getting old.”

  “Your mom’s not even thirty.”

  “She says guys like Edward like younger girls.”

  Shane’s stomach flopped over, sloshing like a fat man in a bathtub. He’d never met Edward, but he didn’t like him.

  “So where’s this pasture?” The boy pointedly looked right, then left. “I don’t see any horses.”

  “This ranch is forty thousand acres,” Shane said. “The horses can wander pretty far.”

  “Oh.”

  The boy watched the spider for a while. Shane tried to think of something to say, something they could bond over, but his mind was completely blank. So he watched the spider too.

  He ought to talk about the spider. Teach his son something. But he didn’t know what kind it was or why it was weaving that web or anything else about it.

  “That’s quite a web,” he said.

  Lame. The kid didn’t even respond, except to stop watching the spider and stare off into the distance, as if measuring the distance to the horizon.

  “How big is forty thousand acres?” he asked.

  “Big,” Shane said.

  “So are you rich?” Cody looked up with a hopeful light in his dark eyes.

  For the first time since he was a kid, Shane actually wished he was rich. He’d always felt like he had more than enough for himself—a place to live, a job to do—but he wanted more for Cody. “No,” he admitted. “This isn’t my ranch. It’s Mr. Ward’s. But I have a lot of money saved up.”

  Cody looked disappointed, and Shane felt a mix of anger, helplessness, and sorrow swirling in his gut. Kids didn’t care about money in the bank. He ought to have more stuff, like other people. Knowing Cody was out there should have made him more ambitious, maybe, so he’d have something to offer his son besides a little cabin that wasn’t even his and a couple of good stock horses that were.

  Cody stared out at the tree line that marked the edge of the hay field, lost in thought. Maybe he was comparing Shane to his mother’s rich boyfriend. Shane probably didn’t measure up in Cody’s eyes. Like his mother, Cody thought he was just an ordinary cowboy. And kids didn’t care about levels of responsibility or acreage or barons. When it came right down to it, Shane didn’t have much
to offer a six-year-old boy.

  The kid was studying Shane’s face now, as if he was grading his parenting potential. Shane the cowboy versus Edward the rich guy. Cody would probably pick the rich guy, and then what would Shane do? He’d have to tell Cody he didn’t have a choice. That he was stuck with his old dad, a workingman with calluses on his hands and dirt under his nails.

  Finally, Cody spoke. “Can I ask you a question?”

  Shane braced himself for the worst. The question was obviously an important one, since it was prefaced by the pooched out lower lip and the biggest, saddest eyes Shane had ever seen. “Sure, Son. You can ask me anything, anytime.”

  Anything? Was he really ready for anything the boy asked? Cody might ask why Shane didn’t marry his mommy or why he wasn’t around when he was a baby. Worse yet, he might ask why his mom didn’t take him with her.

  The kid leaned into him and looked earnestly into his face. “Okay,” he said. “So what I want to ask is…”

  Cody took a deep breath, and Shane felt his throat constrict. How would he explain the situation to his son? What could he say? He looked down at this little miracle he’d resolved to protect and felt woefully unprepared. “Go on, Son,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

  The big brown eyes grew even more mournful as the boy sucked in a deep breath. “Can I have a puppy?”

  Chapter 7

  Lindsey checked the ground around her feet as she walked away from her grandfather’s grave, hoping the pointy footprints would lead her to the mysterious stranger. But the ground was covered with a thick growth of prairie grass, and the dirt pathway was cluttered with the prints of so many mourners, she couldn’t make out any individual tracks.

  The crowd was starting to break up as friends and relatives headed toward the ranch house for food. The usual potluck fare was spread out in the front room; hopefully the stranger would stick around for Swedish meatballs and seven-layer dip.