The Stranger

She hurried through the kitchen, out the screen door and onto the stoop to call him.

Her heart froze.

The swing dangled empty on its long ropes. Her son was nowhere in sight.

Caleb was gathering up the leftover nails when Laura burst around the corner of the house. Her face was white. “Robbie—my boy!” she gasped. “Where is he?”

“He was on the swing the last time I looked over that way. He can’t be far.” Caleb dropped the nails and the hammer next to the gatepost. It was the nature of little boys to run off and explore. They did it all the time. But the expression of stark fear in Laura’s eyes went beyond motherly concern. Did she suspect him of doing something to her child? Was she afraid he’d snatched the boy to lure her outside?

But why brood about it? After what his family had done to her, Laura had every reason to be fearful and suspicious.

“Come on,” he said. “I’ll help you look for him.”

They sprinted back toward the tree, where the boy had last been seen. Laura called her son’s name while Caleb checked the creek, which flowed high with runoff from the melting snow in the mountains. There was no sign of the boy in the water, nor were there any fresh tracks along the bank.

“Have you looked in the springhouse?” he asked her. Laura shook her head. “I always keep it locked. He wouldn’t be able to get in.”

A glance toward the springhouse confirmed her words. The door hasp wore a forbidding steel padlock. Caleb understood Laura’s need to keep her son away from the horror of that place. But there was nothing he could say about it. Even in his silence, he had already begun to lie to her.

The sooner he rode away from here, the better it would be for them both.

While Laura searched the willows, Caleb studied the bare earth around the huge, gnarled cottonwood that supported the swing. His Comanche mother, who’d died when he was twelve, had taught him all there was to know about tracking. But he could see no small, fresh footprints leading away from the base of the tree. Where could a little boy go without leaving a trail?

And then, suddenly, he knew.

Speaking softly, he beckoned to Laura. “Come and stand right here. Wait till I’m out of sight. Then look up into the tree and call to him.”

With wondering eyes, she stepped onto the spot where he’d stood. Caleb moved back under the eave of the springhouse. He wanted to make sure the boy wasn’t too frightened to show himself.

“Robbie?” Laura looked up into the branches above her head. Relief, shadowed with exasperation, swept across her face. “Robert Mark Shafton, what on earth are you doing up there?”

A joyous giggle rang out from ten feet above her head. “I climbed up here, Mama. All by myself!”

Laura’s voice shook. “You had me scared half to death! I’ve been calling and calling. Why on earth didn’t you answer me?”

“I was playing hide-and-seek! You were supposed to find me!”

“Well, pardon me, Master Shafton, I didn’t know this was supposed to be a game.” Laura stood glaring up at her son, her hands on her hips. Caleb watched her from the corner of the springhouse. Five years ago, Laura Shafton had been a shy, enchanting young bride. Tragedy and motherhood had brought out her inner strength. She was magnificent, he thought.

Too bad he couldn’t risk telling her so.

“You get down from there, Robbie,” she said. “Carefully, now, so you won’t fall.”

“Are you going to spank me?” Robbie straddled a sloping limb, clinging to his perch like a treed cat. He was a beautiful child, with his mother’s eyes and his father’s golden coloring.

“No, I’m not going to spank you,” Laura said firmly. “But you’ll be spending some time in your room, young man. We’ll talk about it when you get down.”

The boy inched backward down the limb, but he couldn’t see where he was going. His small feet groped for purchase. He was clearly in trouble.

Laura gasped. “Wait, Robbie! Don’t try to move!” But the child was already slipping off the limb.

Caleb sprinted out from the shelter of the springhouse and started up the tree. “Hang on, I’ll get you!” he shouted, scrambling up the knotted trunk. But he was already too late.

He heard Laura’s scream as Robbie lost his grip and plummeted downward in a shower of twigs and leaves. She sprang for him, trying to break his fall, but as she reached out, she lost her balance and stumbled. The boy fell through her fingertips, struck the ground with a sickening thud and lay still.

Chapter Two

“Robbie! No!” Laura crumpled to her knees beside her son’s body. He was lying facedown on the grassy earth, one arm bent outward at a nightmarish angle. She could see no sign that he was breathing.

“No—” She reached for him, frantic to snatch him up and cradle him in her arms, but a steely hand gripped her shoulder, pulling her back.

“Don’t try to move him,” Caleb McCurdy said. “That could hurt him worse. Give me some room. I’m no doctor, but I’ll do what I can.”

Struck by the urgency in his voice, Laura shifted to one side. She felt a cold numbness sinking into her bones, as if she were being frozen in a block of ice. The birds had fallen silent and she could no longer hear the gurgling creek. The only sound to reach her brain was the pounding of her own heart.

McCurdy knelt beside her. She held her breath as his long, brown fingers probed the length of Robbie’s spine, pressing gently against his ribs. Seconds crawled past. This was all her fault. If she hadn’t scolded the boy, insisting that he come down at once, he would have waited for help. He would have been safe. Now he could be dying or so badly hurt that he would never run, swing or climb a tree again.

Laura prayed harder than she’d ever prayed in her life. Five years ago she’d almost given up on prayer, but the words came now in a rush of silent pleading. Please…please let him be all right, I’ll do anything, give anything…

More seconds passed in frozen agony. Then Robbie coughed, gulped air and began to struggle. His legs kicked freely, but when he tried to move his arm, he flinched and broke into a wail of pain.

“There now, your mother’s right here.” McCurdy eased the sobbing boy onto his back and lifted him off the ground. Supporting the broken arm, he laid him tenderly across Laura’s lap.

Laura pressed her face against Robbie’s dusty hair, kissing his ears and his dirt-streaked face, murmuring incoherent little phrases of love and relief.

McCurdy exhaled and sank back onto his heels. The bright sunlight cast his eyes into shadowed pits. “My guess is he just got the wind knocked out of him. But you’ll need to watch him for a few days. Get him to a doctor if there’s any sign that something’s wrong. And that arm’s got to be set and splinted.”

“There’s no doctor within twenty miles of here,” she said. “Can you help me with the arm?”

He hesitated, then slowly nodded. “I’ve seen it done—had it done when I broke my own arm as a boy. There’s not much to it, but it’ll hurt.” He looked down at Robbie. “How brave are you, boy?”

Robbie’s eyes opened wide in his tear-stained face. “I’m not scared of anything. Not bugs or snakes or even our big red rooster. Not even trees,” he added with a wan little grin.

The ghost of a smile tugged at the corner of Caleb McCurdy’s mouth. He looked younger when he smiled, Laura thought. She had judged him to be in his thirties. Now she realized he might be closer to her own age. But he had clearly seen some hard living. Like her he was scarred. Inside, she suspected, as well as outside.

Reason told her he was the last man she should trust. But right now her son needed help, and Caleb McCurdy was all the help she had.

“Are you brave enough to let me straighten your arm?” he asked Robbie. “It’s going to hurt.”

“It hurts now,” Robbie said, grimacing. “I’ll be brave.”

“Good boy.” McCurdy brushed a knuckle against the boy’s flushed cheek. For Laura, the awkward caress was one more reminder of what Robbie had missed growing up without a father. She was doing her best with the boy. But there was only so much a lonely, frightened widow could do to raise a son to manhood. Every day the task became more daunting. The killer who’d gunned down Mark Shafton had shattered three lives—Mark’s, hers and Robbie’s.

Caleb McCurdy rose to his feet. “The sooner we get this over with the better,” he said. “I’ll need some thin, straight wood for the splint and something to wrap around it.”

“Try the woodpile,” Laura told him. “I’ve got an old nightgown I can tear into strips. That should do for wrapping.”

“Fine. Take your boy inside. Lay him down and get him as calm as you can. I’ll be in as soon as I get the wood ready.”