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“Not yet.” Cougar settled in the kitchen chair Logan offered with a gesture. “The boss was out.”
“Nobody around?” He said it like such a thing never happened.
“There was a woman. A volunteer, she said. And her kid.” Cougar took a sip of kick-ass and cut-to-the-chase coffee. He closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. “I almost ran over the kid.”
Logan let the quiet take over, leaving Cougar to take his time, sort though the images. They were jumpy, like an old silent movie, until he came to the woman. Her face was clear in his mind, and her voice poured over the images like slow dance music.
“He’s okay,” Cougar said. “Came out of nowhere, but I hit the brakes in time. Scared the hell out of me, and I think I scared the hell out of his mom. The kid…” He shook his head. “Hell, he didn’t seem to notice. Can’t talk, can’t hear and he’s half blind. I didn’t see him.” Another sip of coffee fortified him. “Damn, that was close.”
Logan put a plate of frybread on the table and took a seat across from his guest. “Your pickup sits up pretty high.”
Cougar nodded. “I gotta get rid of those monster tires. My little brother had the truck while I was gone, and he thought he was doing me a favor tricking it out like that. Coming home present, you know?”
“How do they ride?”
“Like saddling up a plow horse. Somehow I gotta tell Eddie the monster truck days are behind me.”
“That’s hard. A gift is a gift.”
“And the monster truck was a kid’s dream.” Cougar lifted his cup. “Good coffee. Tastes like Green Beans. Honor first, coffee second,” he recited, paying tribute to one of the few things he missed about being deployed in the Middle East.
Logan smiled. “You and Mary were in the same outfit?”
“No, but she worked pretty closely with us. She’s a real specialist. I’m the guy nobody invites to the party.”
“But when the party turns ugly, it’s the guy with MP on his sleeve who kicks ass in a good way.”
“That’s what we’re all about. I’ve kicked a lot of ass.” He helped himself to a piece of frybread. “You’ve been over there?”
“Gulf War.” Logan claimed a piece of frybread and tore it in half. “I was a kid when I went over there. Came back desperate to find some kind of normal. I found myself a hot woman and married up. She cooled off real fast. Took off and left me with her two boys. Who became my two boys.” He took a bite out of the chewy deep-fried bread. “Did Mary tell you we’re gonna have a baby?”
“Already?”
“Hell, yeah. You know what else? Normal’s the name of a town somewhere. Who needs Normal when you’ve got Sinte, South Dakota? Or… Wyoming, right? Where in Wyoming? You probably—”
“I probably didn’t say. Right now it’s wherever I park my outfit.” He nodded toward the front door. “Room to haul two horses and sleep two people.”
“What else does a guy need?” Logan asked with a grin.
“Not much.” Cougar gazed out the patio door and past the deck toward Logan’s corrals and pole barn. It wasn’t a fancy setup, but it was trim and orderly. “My brother and I have some land west of Fort Washakie. We own a quarter section, and we leased some grazing land, but he gave up the lease while I was gone.” He lifted a shoulder. “Can’t blame him. I was gone.”
“Were you running cattle?”
“I had horses. Eddie had to sell them.” But that wasn’t what he wanted to think about right now. He turned back to his new friend. “You know the people over at the Double D pretty well?”
“I know Sally. She and Mary have been friends a long time. Hell of a woman, that Sally Night Horse. She has multiple sclerosis, but she doesn’t let it slow her down much.” Logan offered a knowing look. “She has a lot of volunteers coming in to help. What’s the name of the woman you met?”
“Celia Banyon. The boy’s name is Mark.”
“Oh, sure. Celia’s a teacher.” Logan smiled. “Pretty little thing.”
“Pretty enough.” Logan’s smile was slightly irritating, but Cougar caught himself half smiling, too.
“Careful,” Logan said. “You crack your face, you’re gonna feel it.”
Cougar laughed. “Ouch. Damn, that smarts.”
“It looks good on you. Like you said, no harm done. Shake it off, cowboy.” Logan warmed up Cougar’s coffee with a refill. “What kind of horse are you looking for?”
“A war pony. One that can go all day without complaining.”
“You do know it’s a contest.”
“Mary said you can train the horse for anything you want.”
“You have to turn out a useful horse. Not much call for war ponies these days.”
“That’s what I’m calling for. A war pony prospect.” Cougar leaned back in his chair and stretched his legs under the table. “I did some endurance racing before I enlisted. Mustangs and Arabs are the best mounts for endurance, far as I’m concerned.”
“That’s how you’d prove your horse?”
“If they’re pretty open on what you can train the horse for, I don’t see why not. Endurance is a good sport. Good for the horse, great for the rider. From what I’ve read, it’s even more popular than it was back when I tried it out. You think I can get approved to train a war pony?”
“I think you’d round out Sally’s contestant collection pretty nicely.” Logan grinned. “Especially now that I’m out of it.”
“She needs an Indian replacement?”
“Indian cowboy.” Logan chuckled. “Talk about your dying breeds, huh? Cowboys are scarce enough, but us Indian cowboys…”
“Why’d you take yourself out?”
“The horses will be auctioned off after the thing is over, and my wife and I…” He smiled, clearly pleased with the words. “We decided Adobe was worth more to us than winning the competition, so we adopted him and took him out of the running.”
“Sweet. The horse is out of the running. The owner’s off the market.”
“Both owners.”
“Sergeant Tutan deserves the best.” Cougar glanced out the patio door again, taking in Logan’s setup. “You’ve got a round pen out there. How do you like it?”
“When you get your horse, you come try it out. I wouldn’t be without one.”
“They weren’t expecting me at the Double D,” Cougar admitted. “I told them I was coming, but I didn’t exactly say when. Sunrise this morning, I didn’t think about it too much. Felt like a good time to take a drive.”
“And now you’re here,” Logan said. “So take your time. Stay here tonight, and I’ll head over there with you tomorrow. I never miss a chance to go looking at horses.”
“I just need a place to park.”
“Plenty of parking space, but there’s also a spare room.” Logan indicated the hallway with a jerk of his chin. “It’s yours if you want it.”
Cougar wanted peace and privacy. He needed to build a new life, and he would start with what he loved most.
Horses.
Chapter Two
Cougar spent the night in his trailer. The bed was comfortable—great memory foam mattress one of his fellow patients at the VA had raved about until Cougar had promised to get himself one if the guy would shut up about it—and all the basic necessities were covered. The best part was the solitude. Privacy had been hard enough to come by in the army, but hospitals were worse yet. Not only did you have people around every minute of every endless day and night, but you had them poking at your body and digging into your mind.
The trailer had been another of Eddie’s homecoming surprises. Got a great deal on it for you. Eddie had used the money he’d gotten for their horses to buy his brother a horse trailer. It sounded like a story Cougar had read in English class back in the good ol’ days, only in the story it wasn’t the same person selling the two things that went together. Cougar would have taken his kid brother’s head off if he hadn’t actually been a little touched by the whole thing. They’d been partners, but the trailer was in Cougar’s name. And in the end it was a relief to know that he could still be touched in the heart, what with it being general knowledge that he was touched in the head. So who was he to accuse “Eddie Machete” of being a madman?
Logan had offered Cougar the use of his man-size shower, and he planned to take him up on it, but not without knocking on the door with a few groceries in hand for breakfast. After honoring sunrise with a song, he unhitched the trailer, drove into the little town of Sinte, parked in front of the Jack and Jill and waited for the doors to open.
The cashier gave him the once-over when he unloaded bacon, eggs and orange juice next to her register. He read the whole two-second small-town ritual in her eyes. Nope, she didn’t know him.
“Anything else?” she asked tonelessly. Half a dozen smartass answers came to mind, but he opted for a simple negative.
With one arm he swept the grocery bag off the counter, thrusting his free hand into his key-carrying pocket as he turned to the door. Two big brown eyes stared up at him—one friendly, the other fake.
Cougar smiled. “Hey, Mark, how’s it going this morning? Better than yesterday?”
“Yesterday?” A man about Cougar’s size stepped in close behind the boy. His dark red goatee and mustache somehow humanized his pale, nearly colorless eyes. He laid a hand on Mark’s shoulder, but his question was for Cougar. “What happened yesterday?”
So this is the ex-husband.
“We had a little run-in.” Cougar winked at the boy as he scratched his own smooth jaw. “Near run-in. Mark was lookin’ out for his cat, and I was looking at horses.”
“Yeah?” With one hand the man adjusted his white baseball cap by the brim—the Bread and Butter Bakery emblem identified him apart from the woman and her boy—while he tightened the other around Mark’s small shoulder and moved him two more steps into the store. “Where did all this happen?”
“The wild horse sanctuary. Are you…?”
“Mark’s father.”
Cougar drew a deep breath and offered a handshake. “The name’s Cougar.”
“What do you mean by run-in?” Handshake accepted, nothing offered in return. “Were you walking? Riding?”
“I was driving. I didn’t see him. I drive a—”
“Where was his mother?”
“She was close by.” Cougar eyed the hand on the boy’s shoulder. He could feel the fingertips digging in. Ease up, Mark’s father. “It was one of those things that happens so fast, nobody can really be—”
“In Mark’s case, everyone has to be.”
Man, those eyes are cold.
“I know. She told me. Guess that’s why it scared me more than it scared him.” He smiled at Mark, sending out you and me, we’re good vibes. “But nobody got hurt, and we found the cat, and it was all good training.”
“Training? She calls that training?”
“I call it good training.” Cougar’s keys chinked in his restive right hand. “Ever been in the army? If nobody gets killed, it’s called good training.”
“No, I haven’t served in the military.” Again he touched the brim of his cap. “But, you know… thanks for your service. Cougar, you said?”
“That’s right.”
“Could I get some contact information from you? I might want to get a few more details.”
“About what?”
Not that it mattered. Cougar was all done with the pleasantries. He would have walked right through the guy and out the door if the boy hadn’t been looking up at him the whole time, asking him for something. He didn’t want to know what it was. He didn’t have it to give.
“Mark is what they call special needs,” Red Beard said slowly, as though he was using a technical term. “I’m his father, and I have rights. Not to mention a responsibility to make sure he’s getting all the services and care he’s got coming. You never know what you’ll be able to use to back up your case.”
“Case against who?”
“Not against anybody. For Mark. Proof that his needs are special.”
“His mother knows how to reach me,” Cougar said. He only had eyes for the boy as he stepped around the two. “Look both ways, Mark. I’ll see you around.”
Cougar smelled bacon. Damn, he loved that smell. He didn’t miss much about being deployed in the Middle East, but food in camp was surprisingly good, and breakfast in “the sandbox” had been the best meal of the day. Unless you were manning an outpost, in which case every meal came with a side of sand.
Logan had gotten the jump on Cougar’s plan to prepare breakfast. He stowed most of his purchases in the fridge, set the bread on the table—gave the plastic Bread and Butter Bakery bag a second look and decided he wasn’t in the mood for toast—and helped himself to coffee.
“I ran into that kid I told you about over at the Jack and Jill. He was with his dad.”
Logan turned from the stove and the bacon he was lifting from the pan and raised an eyebrow. “When you say ran into…”
“I was on foot.” Cougar watched the grease drip from bacon to pan. “His mother said he lost his eye in an accident. You know anything about that?”
“Not much. Happened on some kind of construction site, the way I heard it. Before she came here to teach. Her ex-husband started showing up a few months ago.” Logan turned the stove off. “About all I know for sure is she’s a good teacher.”
“He wanted to know how to get in touch with me in case he needed some kind of witness or something. I don’t know what he was talking about. It was a close call, but the boy wasn’t hurt.” Cougar drew a deep breath and glanced out the patio door toward the buttes that buttressed the blue horizon. “I’m sure he wasn’t hurt.”
“His mom checked him over?”
“Skinned his knee, but that’s…” The image of the boy pushing himself up to his hands and knees brought back the wrecking ball swing—boom! panic, boom! relief. Even now his heart was racing again. “He doesn’t talk. He can’t really say what’s…”
“At that age, they get hurt, most kids let you know with everything they’ve got except the kind of words that make sense. You get blood, bellowing, slobber, maybe the silent treatment, but you don’t get the story until you’ve already assessed the damage.”
“They break easy,” Cougar said quietly.
“After they’re grown, you look back at all the close calls and you figure somebody besides you had to be lookin’ out for them.” Logan handed Cougar a plate. “Go to the head of the line.”
Cougar followed orders. Logan added finishing touches to Cougar’s meal—the toast he didn’t want and the coffee he couldn’t get enough of—playing host or dad, Cougar wasn’t sure which.
“My older son, Trace, he’s a rodeo cowboy.” Logan’s plate joined Cougar’s on the table. “He’s broken a lot of bones riding rough stock. You gotta learn to bend, I tell him. Look at the trees that survive in the wind around here. We’re survivors.”
“Learn to bend,” Cougar echoed.
He hadn’t known Logan long, but he knew him pretty well. They’d worn some of the same boots—cowboy boots with riding heels, round-toed G.I. boots, worn-out high tops stashed under an Indian boarding school bed at night, beaded baby shoes. He knew the lessons, figured they’d both felt the same kind of pinching, done their share of resisting.
Considering all that, Cougar sipped his coffee and gave Logan a look over the rim of the cup.
“Pretty deep, huh?” Logan chuckled. “Spend a few years in tribal politics, you learn how to command respect with a few well-placed words of wisdom.
Everybody around the table says Ohan, so you know when it comes time to vote, you’ve gotten the ones who were on the fence to jump down on your side.”
“So that’s the way it works.” Cougar set the cup down with exaggerated care. “Whatever passes for wisdom.”
“It helps if it’s true.”
“I’m having a hard time with that lately. I thought it would all come clear to me as soon as I got back to the States, back home. It hasn’t happened yet. Truth, justice and the American Way.” Cougar’s turn to chuckle. “What the hell is that?”
“Superman,” Logan said with a smile. “I heard he died. Never learned to bend, they said.”
“Superheroes ain’t what they used to be.”
“No, but that cottonwood tree keeps right on spittin’ seed into the wind.” Logan nodded toward the glass door that opened onto a deck dappled by the scant shade of a young tree. “I don’t know about you Shoshone, but the Lakota hold the cottonwood in high esteem. Adaptable as hell, that tree.”
“Where I come from, we don’t have many trees.” Cougar finished off his eggs and stacked his utensils. “I could listen to you throw the bull all day long, Logan, but that won’t get me into the wild horse training competition. Are we heading over to meet this Mustang Sally I’ve heard so much about, or not?”
Logan slid his chair back from the table. “My friend, let’s go get you a horse.”
Through the big barn doors Celia recognized the white panel truck when it was still the size of a Matchbox toy. It carried her heart’s greatest delight and her mind’s worst trouble. Part of her wanted it to slow down and take the Double D approach, and part of her wanted it to sail on past.
It turned.
It was too soon. She’d just seen her former husband last night when he’d come to get Mark for the weekend. He’d been civil enough, but that didn’t make it any easier for her to be around him. Round two was bound to be uncivil. Either he’d invented some new bone of contention or devised another way to throw her off balance.
Or maybe something had come up and he was about to forego the rest of his time with Mark. No problem. No need to explain. Just give my son back to me and say no more.
Oh, if he would only say no more.
She finished dumping the contents of the wheelbarrow onto the manure pile, grabbed the handles and pointed the front wheel toward the barn. She didn’t want to deal with Greg out in the open. Whenever there was a chance of an audience, he was on. His normal tone of voice was several notches higher than anyone else in the scene. And Greg loved a scene.
She wished she had time for a shower. Sure it was silly, but scent confidence always felt like a huge advantage. Stinker that he was, Greg rarely got his hands dirty.
Mark ran to his mother the moment he entered the barn. Celia got the message from his quick, strong hug—I’d rather be with you—and then he bolted for the cats’ nest.
“We’re on our way to Reptile Gardens,” Greg announced. “We figured you’d be here, so we thought we’d stop in.”
“This stop isn’t on the way to Reptile Gardens.” She pulled her rawhide work gloves off as she watched Mark claim a gray tiger in each hand and tuck them against his neck. She wanted to thank the mewling kittens and their patient mama for the bright laughter in her boy’s eyes. “But Mark obviously needed to check on the kittens.”
“The bakery changed my route. I’ve got the Jack and Jill in Sinte now, and I made a special delivery there this morning. Ran into your new friend.” Greg greeted her glance with a cold smile. “Calls himself Cougar?”
Celia tucked her work gloves into the back pockets of her jeans. She’d learned to ignore the inevitable preamble and go on about her business until Greg got to his point. He took fewer time-consuming detours that way.
“He said he almost ran into Mark yesterday. Could have killed him.”
Not a direct quote, Celia decided. She hardly knew Cougar, but she was pretty sure he hadn’t said that. Greg was baiting her. If she kept her mouth firmly closed, he would eventually go away. Maybe even without Mark if he could come up a glitch in his plan. News that the rattlesnakes had escaped from Reptile Gardens, maybe, or a tortoise quarantine.
“Why weren’t you watching him?”
She hadn’t braced herself for that one. It was a fair question, and it had been haunting her since the incident happened. Sarcasm evaporated. Who was she to criticize—even silently—when she’d failed so miserably?
“We were doing chores,” she said quietly. “I thought he was—”
“You thought. See, that’s your problem, Cecilia. You’re always thinking. Meanwhile, he’s on the move, many steps ahead of you. And who the hell knows what he’s thinking?”
“He was playing with the cats.”
“And what were you playing with? Huh? What were you playing with, Cecilia?” He grabbed her shoulder. “Or should I ask, who?”
Celia jerked away, but she took only one step back, fighting him off with a defiant stare. “You can ask about Mark. Obviously I wasn’t playing with Mark. I was busy doing chores, and, yes, that’s my—”
“It’s not your job. Your job is that boy right—”
“Hey, Mark.” Cougar strolled into the barn, flashing Celia a reassuring glance on his way to the cat’s nursery. He squatted, touched Mark’s shoulder and then a couple of kittens. “Are they all there? Did you take a head count?”
Mark pressed a kitten under Cougar’s chin.
“Have you figured out how many boys and how many girls? I think the calico’s a girl.” He stood easily, confident in the silence his appearance had created. Without moving from the position he’d taken, he looked directly at Celia and offered a soft, intimate, “Hi.”
“Hello.” Silken calm slid over her. “I understand you two have met.”
“Yeah, Mark introduced us.” Cougar reached down to ruffle Mark’s hair. The boy looked up and smiled. “I’m glad you’re here. You can help me pick out a horse.”
“My son and I have plans,” Greg said. “I just stopped in to see what she had to say about what happened yesterday. So far—”
“I came over with Logan,” Cougar told Celia. “Called first this time.”
“That must be why the boys brought some of the horses in,” she said.
He glanced at Greg as though he were an image on a TV show that nobody was watching. “Mark and I can go take a look if you two need to talk.”
“Mark’s with me.” Greg moved to block Celia’s view of everyone but him. “It’s my weekend. Long as you’re both here, maybe you can explain exactly how my son came to be out in the road and why nobody saw him until he was nose to nose with—”
“Because he’s quick, and he’s small,” Cougar said. “Fate cut us a break. Be grateful.”
“Don’t tell me to be grateful.” Greg pivoted and postured, hands on hips. “You don’t know what we’re dealing with here. But you will if I see any more evidence of emotional or psychological trauma.”
Cougar chuckled. “You wanna sue me for something that didn’t happen? What are you, a lawyer?”
“No, but I have one.”
“Have at it, then. If I harmed this kid, I’ll make sure—”
“He wasn’t hurt,” Celia insisted quietly. “He’s fine, and he doesn’t need to hear this.”
“He can’t hear, remember?” Greg’s challenge swung from Celia to Cougar. “Doctors don’t know why, but I do. It’s because his mother left him to—”
“Greg, please. Let’s not do this now. You know what’s going to happen.” She continued to speak in hushed tones while Mark went right on attending to the kittens. He was protecting himself in ways that she could not, but still she would do what she could. Maybe he didn’t hear, but she believed he could, and when he was ready, he would. Meanwhile, he had keen senses, and she would not have him treated otherwise.
She moved past Greg and caught Mark’s attention. “Let’s go have a look at the mustangs.”
“Hell with the mustangs,” Greg bellowed. “Next thing I know, you’ll have him wandering into the path of a pack of wild horses.”
“They run in herds,” Cougar said.
“Put the cats down, Mark.” Greg grabbed Mark by the elbow and urged him to his feet. “We’re going to Rapid City. We’ll catch the snake show.” His big hand swallowed the child’s small one. “Like I said, I’ve got a lawyer. We’re not done yet, Cecilia. Not by a long shot.”
Cougar stood in the doorway and watched the boy tag along with his father, stretching his leash arm to its limit, dragging his toes in the dirt. He tamped down the urge to go after them, spring the ham-fisted trap and release the kid. Why wasn’t there some kind of law against adults using kids to even a score? Maybe Cougar should make one. He’d gladly enforce it.