The Cowboy's Secret Son

Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of movement on the tabletop flatness below. Hoping for something like the antelope he had startled into motion a few days ago, Mark looked down, carefully scanning the area. And when he found what had attracted his attention, it took a second or two for him to comprehend what he was seeing, because it was so unexpected.

Beneath him was a kid. On foot. And alone.

The impressions bombarded his brain, but it took another minute to adjust his course so that he was flying back over the spot where he’d seen the child. As he did, he realized that he hadn’t been mistaken about any of those things.

The kid looked up, watching the helicopter’s approach. As Mark drew nearer, details became apparent. Boy, he decided, although with today’s unisex clothing and hairstyles, gender could be hard to distinguish.

As soon as the child realized the chopper was coming back, he turned, too, heading off in the opposite direction. Although he was hurrying, he wasn’t really moving very fast. He was limping, Mark realized as he watched the uneven gait. And his limp was slowing down what was obviously supposed to be an escape attempt.

Despite the threat of the predicted storm, Mark’s lips tilted into a smile. He’d be willing to bet the kid was wearing new boots of a kind not designed for hiking in this terrain. He could visualize them in his mind’s eye. The pointy-toed tourist-variety cowboy boot, gaudy with decoration. And if the boy thought he could outrun him in those things…

Mark brought the helicopter alongside and just above the child, jabbing his finger toward the ominous cloud bank that lay above the horizon. He was near enough to see brown eyes widen in a pale face as the child looked up. Near enough that he could tell that the flapping windbreaker would not offer nearly enough protection from the cold that would come sweeping in across the plain.

He increased pitch, pulling up a little and moving in front of the kid, who was still trying to run with that loping awkwardness. Then, very carefully, he set the chopper down maybe thirty feet in front of the boy. As soon as he realized what Mark was doing, the child changed directions again, heading north this time. Right into the heart of the approaching storm.

“Damn it, kid,” Mark said under his breath.

He could lift off and land in front of the boy again. He could keep doing that until he’d worn him into exhaustion. Or he could get out and try to talk some sense into him. Maybe try to figure out what the hell he was doing way out here alone, a good five or six miles from the nearest habitation, which was…

New owners. New boots. The kid must belong to the family who had bought the Salvini place. He had probably set out to explore and gotten turned around. That wasn’t hard to do, given the unchanging sameness of the landscape. There weren’t any landmarks up here, and unless you had a compass…

Mark lifted the chopper off the ground again, closing the distance between them, and landed directly in the boy’s path. The kid’s lips were parted now, as if he were panting from the exertion of trying to outrun his pursuer.

Mark throttled down to flight idle and locked down the controls before he unfastened his seat harness and opened the door of the cockpit. By the time he’d stepped down, ducking under the blades, the kid had twirled again and was heading in the opposite direction.

It took Mark only a few strides to catch up. The boy must have heard him, although he never looked back. When Mark put his hand on his shoulder, the child twisted, pulling out of his grip.

He darted away to the left, and as Mark turned to follow, he felt a twinge of pain ripple through his back. He ignored it and ran after the boy, using the advantage of his longer stride to quickly lessen the distance between them.

When he was close enough, he reached out again, grabbing the boy’s upper arm. His hand closed around it hard enough to withstand the attempts the child made to pull away. The kid must be more panicked than he’d realized, Mark thought, holding on despite the frantic struggle the boy was making to escape.

“Calm down,” Mark said, his tone the same he had once used to gentle spooked horses. “I’m not going to hurt you. There’s a storm coming, and believe me, you aren’t equipped for the kind we get up here. I’m going to take you home.”

The boy’s efforts to free his arm ceased, but Mark didn’t release him. And for the first time, he got a good look at the kid’s face. There was a dusting of freckles across a slender nose. Dark eyes were fringed by equally dark lashes. And compared with the thick brown hair and those eyes, the skin that surrounded them seemed awfully pale.

City kid, Mark guessed. Any boy this age who had spent the summer out in the rural Texas sun would still have a pretty good residual tan. This kid didn’t.

Of course, part of that noticeable paleness might be put down to fright. Odds were the kid had never been chased by a stranger in a helicopter before. That would be enough to scare almost anyone, especially a kid who had gotten lost in unfamiliar territory. Mark was about to offer more reassurances, when the boy spoke for the first time.

“I don’t want to go home,” he said, jerking his arm free.

So much for the scared spitless theory, Mark thought, realizing only now that what he was seeing in those eyes wasn’t fear, but defiance.

“I told you, kid. There’s a storm brewing, and up here, that’s nothing to fool around with. Not in November.”

The eyes changed a little, holding Mark’s a moment before they cut back to consider the line of clouds. When the boy looked back, he seemed less certain—and less antagonistic—than he had only seconds before. “My mom send you?”

“I don’t know your mom. And nobody sent me. I didn’t have any idea you were out here. Not until I saw you.”

The boy stared hard at Mark, obviously trying to decide whether to believe him or not.

“You running away?” Mark asked into the silence.

After a few more seconds of scrutiny, the kid nodded. Apparently Mark had passed the test for trustworthiness that had just been administered.

“I’ve done that a couple of times myself,” he said easily, smiling in memory. “And I can tell you from experience, it never solved anything I wanted it to.”

“I didn’t want to come here,” the boy said. “I told her that. There’s nothing out here.”

His tone was almost plaintive, and Mark laughed, provoking a flash of resentment in the dark eyes.

“Well, you aren’t wrong about that,” he admitted, attempting to regain the ground that unthinking laughter had lost. “Nothing at all, unless you’re partial to sky and dirt. We’ve got plenty of that. And cows, of course. Horses.”

“She said I could have a horse.”

Those words were less defiant, but there was something beneath the surface Mark couldn’t quite read.

“That’s good,” he ventured.

“I don’t like horses.”

“You ever been around any?”

“No,” the boy admitted after a brief hesitation.

His gaze skated again to the line of clouds, a little anxiously this time. Mark realized that the wind had picked up as they’d been talking. It was whipping the boy’s hair into his eyes and billowing inside the back of the light cotton jacket he wore.

“Your mom’s probably worried sick about you,” Mark said, bringing the boy’s eyes back to his face.

“You like horses?” the kid asked.

“Always have. Since long before I was your age.”

As he said the word, he tried to estimate how old the child was. He hadn’t really been around enough kids to make it an accurate evaluation, but…six or seven, he guessed. He wondered why the boy wasn’t in school. Maybe with the move and all—

“I don’t,” the boy said. “They smell.”

Mark laughed again, unable to argue with that assessment.

“You get used to it. After a while, that smell will seem like perfume. Cookies baking. Something good, anyway.”

He resisted the urge to reach out and ruffle the dark hair that was blowing around the pale, freckled face.

“She likes them.”

“Your mom?”

“Yeah. I told her I didn’t want a horse. Then I told her I didn’t want to be here, and she got all upset.”