The Cowboy's Lesson in Love Read online

  Torn, he fell back on what was, at best, a vaguely worded truth. “I just heard that the boy was missing.”

  Wynona took his answer in stride, thinking he was explaining why he hadn’t been here sooner.

  “Horrible, isn’t it?” she asked as she walked out of the room. “His poor parents must be out of their minds with worry.”

  “People handle crises in different ways,” Clint told her.

  “True,” she agreed, then said, “The way I handle it is I just have to do something about it.”

  He laughed softly. She really was a scrapper. There were worse things, he supposed. “I kind of figured that.”

  She didn’t bother trying to figure out what Ryan’s father meant by that. Instead, she just took charge of the situation. She did it without thinking.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” she suggested. “I’m not too bad when it comes to tracking.” She’d had a friend, Tommy, on the reservation when she lived there and Tommy had taken delight in passing on what seemed to come naturally to him. He had taught her how to track. “And you’re probably better.”

  Clint had no idea why she would think that. He’d never said anything to anyone about his abilities to follow a trail that was practically nonexistent. But it sounded as if there very well might be a life at stake. Making up his mind, he didn’t bother with denials or refusals.

  “Let’s go.” His response was the only testimony to the fact that he was willing to put his skills to work.

  * * *

  Sheriff Rick Santiago was in charge of the search parties. There was no shortage of volunteers. He didn’t think that there would be. The residents of Forever could be counted on to look after their own.

  Because the territory outside the town was vast, the sheriff divided the searchers into parties of twos and threes, and in a few cases, fours. His thinking was to use those who were inexperienced, putting them together with the more experienced trackers.

  Despite the number of volunteers, there was still a great deal of area to cover.

  “We’ll meet back here in town right after sundown. It’ll be too dark to continue the search then and I don’t want to have extra people to look for.” There was no humor attached to his words. “Hopefully by then one of us will have found Tyler.”

  Everyone got started, spreading out and calling Tyler’s name. They also talked to one another in an effort to keep their spirits up as well as remain positive about the search’s ultimate outcome.

  Clint wasn’t interested in uplifting spirits. He was focused on getting information that might help bring this search to a close faster.

  “This kid ever run away before?” he asked Wynona matter-of-factly as they methodically conducted their search.

  She spared him a look. “He didn’t run away,” she answered.

  “How do you know that?” Clint challenged. He wasn’t trying to be argumentative. In his mind, hunters needed to know their quarries.

  “Because he’s in my class,” she informed him, a slight edge entering her voice. It was hard to tamp down her own concern. “He’s a happy kid and his parents love him,” she added as they made their way across terrain that was, for the most part, relatively flat.

  There was a mountain range located in the distance. It was covered with trees and was the area where the town’s annual Christmas tree came from. But the idea of Christmas seemed a million miles away.

  “You never know what’s going on in someone’s home,” Clint answered, looking straight ahead. “Families have secrets.”

  She looked at him again. “I’m well aware of that,” she replied.

  In his own way, he was trying to prepare her for the eventuality that they might never find the boy. “Maybe something happened and this kid—”

  “Tyler,” she interjected, not wanting the boy to be reduced to just a dehumanized, antiseptic term. “His name is Tyler.”

  “Tyler,” Clint obliged as he continued to lead the way. “Tyler decided to run away. Maybe to teach his parents a lesson, maybe to just get away from them, or maybe—”

  “Or maybe he just had a yen, went exploring and got lost. Boys do that,” Wynona insisted with feeling.

  He caught the inflection in her voice. “You believe that.”

  “Yes,” Wynona said with such passion that he could only look at her for a long moment, almost won over by her spirit.

  But his practical side resurfaced almost immediately. “Well, if that’s the case, if he just ‘went exploring,’ why isn’t he back?”

  Wynona lifted her shoulders in a helpless shrug. She didn’t have a definitive answer to give Clint and it frustrated her.

  “He got lost, he tripped and got hurt,” she said, enumerating all the different things that could have happened. “He wasn’t looking where he was going and fell into a hole. Or maybe he somehow got trapped.”

  The last word caught Clint’s attention. “Trapped?” he asked.

  Desperate, Wynona was still fabricating excuses as fast as she could think of them. “A coyote crossed his path. Tyler started to cower, then he looks for someplace to hide.”

  Clint turned the suggestions over in his mind, reviewing them as quickly as Wynona was coming up with them. And then finally, he nodded, agreeing. “That might be a possibility.”

  “Thank you,” Wynona replied in what sounded like a distant, emotionless voice.

  Clint just assumed she was being sarcastic, but when he looked at Wynona’s face, he realized that she wasn’t. She was serious.

  With a sigh, he signaled for her to follow him. They had a lot of territory to cover before sundown.

  “We should be heading back,” he told her, breaking the silence that had gone on for over the last fifteen minutes. Possibly even longer. He gestured at the sky. The sun was setting. “It’s going to be dark soon.”

  She knew that and she was trying not to think about it or to allow panic to slither into her mind and slow her down.

  “Just a little longer,” Wynona urged. “Tyler’s already been out here one night and he must really be scared by now. We need to find him,” she emphasized.

  So far, all the signs they thought they had picked up had led nowhere, or had faded away without yielding any results. There’d been no signal from any of the other searchers that they had found the missing boy, either. It felt as if they were no closer to locating Tyler now than when they started out.

  “Aren’t you afraid we’ll get lost in the dark?” Clint asked her.

  He was curious to hear her answer. As far as he was concerned, he could still find his way back, so being out here at this point presented no danger.

  “Honestly, I’m more afraid that he’s lost,” she answered. She scanned the area, but it was getting harder and harder to make things out. “Are there any caves around here?” she asked.

  “No.” And then Clint rethought his answer. “But there’re a couple of large burrows.”

  “Where?” Wynona pressed, her excitement mounting for the first time in hours.

  Something was always in the last place a person looked, she told herself. It was corny, but true. She glanced at Clint, waiting for him to answer her.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve been out around here,” he told her.

  She didn’t want excuses; she wanted results. She could almost feel the boy’s fear.

  “Try,” she stressed.

  He looked at her. There was a full moon out, which helped to illuminate the area—and her. Moonlight became her, he caught himself thinking before he pushed the thought away.

  Knowing that she had to have noticed him looking at her, he diverted her back to their lost boy. “You think he might be there?”

  It made sense to her. “A burrow isn’t very big, but neither is he. And it might be where he’s hiding from the animals—and the cold. The temperature d
ropped when the sun went down,” she reminded him. It worried her to think of the boy out here all night, cold and hungry.

  Clint stood there for a long moment, scrutinizing the already progressively darker terrain. He was trying to remember the location of one of the burrows.

  And then he pointed west. “I think there’s a burrow over that way.”

  They began walking, picking up their pace. Once again Wynona began to call out the boy’s name the way she had earlier. Her throat felt a bit raw but she forced herself to continue. This wasn’t the time to think of her own comfort.

  Nothing but night sounds answered her. There wasn’t anything remotely human in that mix. Tyler wasn’t responding.

  Frustrated, she turned toward Clint. “You said that there were a couple of burrows out here. Where’s the other one?”

  As far as he was concerned, this was a losing battle and they had stayed out a lot longer than they had initially agreed to. The sheriff might even be concerned about them by now.

  “You ever give up, lady?” he asked her.

  “Hasn’t been known to happen yet,” she told him crisply.

  Clint sighed. Gesturing her onward, he muttered, “Let’s go.”

  They searched for the second burrow. Finally finding it, Wynona began calling Tyler’s name yet again. There was no answer.

  “C’mon,” Clint urged, taking her arm. “He’s not here.”

  She pulled her arm away. “We don’t know that yet. You can go back if you want to,” she said, continuing to call Tyler’s name.

  Clint murmured a few choice words under his breath, but he stayed at her side. He joined his voice to hers, calling out to Tyler.

  Several more minutes passed. And then a weak voice, more like a sob, was heard in the distance.

  “Here. I’m here. Here!” The voice grew in strength, like a last-ditch attempt before total despair set in, silencing the boy.

  Instantly alert, Wynona began running toward what appeared to be another side of the burrow. She quickly cut the remaining distance down to nothing.

  Clint was right beside her, his long legs eventually outdistancing her.

  This part of the burrow was more like a hole in the ground that had all but caved in on itself, obscuring the opening from being seen by the casual eye.

  Wynona was on her knees, calling down into the opening. “Tyler, are you in there?”

  “I’m here, I’m here,” the little boy cried. “I was looking for leprechauns. I thought I saw one and tried to follow, but then everything started coming down on me and I couldn’t get out.”

  Clint was already digging, using his bare hands to get to the boy. Luckily, the dirt was soft.

  Without a word to him, Wynona joined in, trying to dig the boy out, hoping their combined effort would enable them to get to Tyler faster.

  “We’re coming, Tyler,” she called, doing her best to keep his spirits up. “Ryan’s father and I are going to get you out of there. I promise.”

  Clint had realized something. “Hold still, Tyler,” he ordered, for once trying to keep his voice gentle instead of stern. “The dirt’s soft, but if you start moving around, you might make it shift on you.”

  He was phrasing it euphemistically not to frighten the boy. What he was really afraid of was that the remaining dirt would cave in on Tyler, burying the boy further. They had no tools to use in order to dig him out any quicker than they were doing.

  “I’m scared,” Tyler cried.

  “Don’t be scared,” Wynona told the boy. She was worried that he might panic and that would just make matters worse. “We’ll have you out in a few minutes, I promise. Just hold very still. Like a statue. Can you do that for me, Tyler? Can you pretend to be a statue?”

  “Like the one you showed us in that picture?” he asked, his voice trembling.

  “Yes, exactly like that,” she encouraged.

  “Okay, I can do that,” he answered, but his voice was quaking.

  Clint picked up his pace even though his arms were beginning to ache and it felt like his fingers were cramping up.

  “You’re doing great, Tyler,” he encouraged. “Just hang in a little longer, cowboy. Just a few more minutes. And then you’re going to have some story to tell your friends.”

  “I will?” he cried, desperately trying to remain brave.

  “You bet,” Clint told him. “All the other kids are going to be real jealous of you.” More dirt flew to the side. His shoulders were aching. “Almost there, Tyler. Almost there.”

  The sound of his voice seemed to calm the boy down.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Painfully aware that this piece of nondescript clump of earth could have easily become Tyler’s final resting place if they hadn’t found him, after they carefully eased the boy out of the mound of crumbling dirt, Clint rose to his feet holding Tyler in his arms.

  His first thought was to head back the way they had come. But he didn’t know if Wynona was up to it after what they had just gone through to rescue the boy. By all rights she should have been exhausted by now, but he couldn’t very well leave her behind.

  “Can you make it back to town?” Clint asked, looking at the woman next to him. She had dirt in her hair as well as smudges on her face and clothes. He knew he didn’t have any other options open to him. If she was too exhausted to undertake the journey, they’d have to wait here until morning.

  Though he didn’t want to, he made the proposal to her. “We can stay here and rest until morning if you feel that—”

  But Wynona waved away his concern. “Don’t worry about me,” she told him. There was no way she wasn’t going to make it back tonight, even if she had to crawl. “There’s no signal out here,” she said, reminding him that they couldn’t call anyone. “Tyler’s mom and dad need to know that he’s safe.” She smiled at the boy. “And I think that Tyler needs to get some dry clothes on him and some warm food into him, don’t you, Tyler?” she asked the boy.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Tyler answered solemnly.

  Polite even in dire circumstances, someone had raised this boy right, Wynona thought.

  Clint nodded. “Then if you think you’re up to walking,” he told Wynona, “we’d better get started getting back.”

  Even as he said the words, he could feel Tyler clinging to him as if he was never going to let go. The boy had really been scared, he thought. “Hang in there, Tyler,” he told the boy in his arms, “we’re going to get you home.”

  They started walking back.

  * * *

  Both Clint and Wynona were prepared to walk all the way back to where they had first left their car, fairly certain that by now, given the hour, the other searchers had returned to town. So when a beam of light slashed through the darkness when they were a little more than halfway back, Clint stiffened. His mind immediately braced for the worst.

  “Get behind me,” he ordered Wynona.

  She stubbornly disregarded the instruction and instead, picked up her pace so that she was in front of Clint and the boy he was carrying.

  “Damn it, woman, listen to me!” Clint ordered.

  The next moment the identity of the person wielding the flashlight and shining it at them was no longer a mystery.

  Sheriff Santiago lowered the small, intense flashlight he was using. The grin on his face was almost as bright.

  “Boy, am I damn happy to see you!” the sheriff declared. “All three of you,” he added, smiling at Tyler. He ruffled the boy’s hair. Tyler continued clinging to Clint. “You gave us quite a scare, Ty,” the sheriff told the boy.

  “I kinda scared me, too,” Tyler admitted, his voice partially muffled against Clint’s shoulder.

  Nodding, the sheriff pulled out the walkie-talkie attached to his belt, pressing the button on the side. “We found them,” he told the deputy on the other end. “The
boy as well as Washburn and the teacher.”

  “We weren’t lost,” Wynona protested.

  Santiago’s eyes swept over the trio. “My mistake. We thought you were,” he explained. He regarded them again. “You up to walking?” he asked.

  “Just don’t get in our way,” Wynona told him.

  The sheriff laughed, then gestured them on. “Then let’s go.”

  They resumed walking back to the initial starting point, but this time, the journey was far from silent.

  “A lot of people are going to be really glad to see you,” the sheriff told Tyler.

  Rather than look happy, the boy hung his head. “I’m sorry I caused so much trouble.”

  “Never mind that now. We found you and that’s what matters,” Clint told him.

  Tyler hung on to him even harder.

  Wynona saw Clint tighten his arms around the boy. She smiled to herself despite everything that they had gone through.

  The man had a heart after all.

  * * *

  Alerted by the deputy, Tyler’s parents were waiting for him before they had a chance to broach the perimeter of the town.

  Donna Hale was sobbing as she embraced her son even while he was still in Clint’s arms.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” Ed Hale told Clint and Wynona, his voice almost breaking as he choked back his own tears.

  “No thanks necessary,” Clint answered. Gratitude made him uncomfortable. He turned his small burden over to Tyler’s father.

  It took a moment for Tyler to release his hold on Clint. Before going to his father, the boy looked at the man who had helped to dig him out, his wide brown eyes saying everything that he was unable to convey to him in words.

  Clint nodded in response, then took a step back as everyone who had come out to search for Tyler closed ranks, surrounding Donna and Ed Hale and their son.

  “You did good.”

  The simple, three-word sentence of praise came from Miss Joan, who along with some of her waitresses, had set up a station with hot coffee and pastries in the town square for those searchers who had temporarily come back to town to refuel before setting out again. It was clear that no one felt right about calling it a day and going home until the boy was found.