Christmas at Blue Moon Ranch (25 page)

“Quite a party,
Miss Willa.” Nate lifted a cup in salute. “I never seen one like it in all my
years on the Blue Moon.”

Willa smiled as
she watched him clink his glass with Lili’s, who sat next to him on the wall. “I’m
glad you enjoyed yourself.”

“We all did.”
Next to her, Hobbs Sutton stretched his long arms wide. He let his hand come to
rest on the back of her chair, just behind her shoulder. Not touching, quite.
She supposed the dances they’d shared this evening encouraged him to hope for
more—especially since Daniel had been so conspicuously absent from the party.

And she’d missed
him every second. But why should tonight be different from every day of the
past few weeks?

She shook her
head slightly, trying to banish him from her thoughts yet again. Susannah and
Toby had gone to bed more than an hour ago, worn out by the work and excitement
of the day. Across the courtyard, Robbie sat by himself, staring at nothing she
could see. She’d had no trouble with him since…well, since she’d broken off
with Daniel. Of course. And the school reports were all positive. For three
weeks he’d been a model student, the perfect son. Something would have to give
soon, or he’d explode.

The thought made
her smile. Hobbs leaned forward. “What are you thinking about?”

“It’s nothing.”
She could have shared the joke with Daniel but not with a man she’d known all
her life. “I suppose I could start gathering up these dishes—”

As she sat
forward, she saw Robbie jerk his head up. In the next second, she caught the
sound he’d heard first—the furious pounding of a horse’s hooves galloping down
the road. Willa turned and stood up in the same motion, looking
northward…toward Daniel’s place. The New Moon Ranch.

“It’s Calypso!”
Robbie vaulted the courtyard wall and ran toward the road, arms spread wide,
standing directly in the horse’s path. “Whoa, Cal. Whoa, there.”

Eyes wide,
nostrils flaring, the horse planted its front hooves and slid to a stop only
inches from where Robbie stood. He grabbed the reins, which had been trailing
on the ground. It was a miracle Cal hadn’t tripped on them and hurt himself.

“It’s okay,”
Robbie crooned to the animal as Willa came up. “You’re all right.” Calypso’s
chest was heaving with the effort of his breath. The foam on his legs indicated
he’d galloped a fair distance at top speed.

“Did he escape
the corral?” Willa voiced what she knew was a futile hope.

Hobbs looked at
her from the other side of the horse. “I don’t think so.” He took the reins
from Robbie and walked Cal in a circle so she could see his right side.

Daniel’s boot
was stuck in the right stirrup.

Willa gasped,
and pressed her fist against her lips.

“I’m afraid
Daniel was riding,” the sheriff said. “And fell off. He’s out there.” He nodded
north, toward Daniel’s land and the Wild Horse Desert. “Somewhere.”

“Well, what are
we waiting for?” Nate stepped up. “Let’s go find him!”

When Daniel came
solidly back to consciousness, it was still dark. He must not have been out
very long. Maybe Calypso would have stopped to graze somewhere nearby, and they
could still get back to the barn…though he couldn’t seem to remember what he’d
planned to do when he got there.

The first step would
be to get back on his feet. His head felt heavy, though, more than his neck
muscles could manage. The effort of lifting his hand from the ground left him
panting. He let his arm fall back to his side. Something was wrong. He
shouldn’t be this weak. What had happened?

He remembered
riding but not why. He didn’t remember falling. Opening his eyes, he tried to
figure out his surroundings from what he could see. Rough, sandy dirt…not the
grass pasture he recalled. When he turned his head, a black cloud formed in
front of his eyes, and he had to wait for it to clear. Another sign of
weakness. Blood loss? Why was he bleeding?

Above him, the
starry night and bright moon he seemed to remember had been replaced with heavy
cloud cover. Or…no. The sky wouldn’t be so close. Hanging only a foot or so
above him were leaves and branches. Some kind of tree. Or bush, to be so low to
the ground. He appeared to be lying under a dense bush.

Okay, he’d
fallen into some brush. He’d hit his head, which explained the threatened
blackout, and even the bleeding. Head wounds could be messy. Still, he needed
to crawl out into the open, locate his horse and get the hell home.

Pushing his palm
against the earth, he grunted and groaned and forced his shoulders a few inches
off the ground…until a shaft of pure agony shot through him. Daniel collapsed,
which hurt every bit as much, and lay whimpering like a little kid until the
pain faded enough to let him think.

Something wrong
with the shoulder. In back, he decided, where he couldn’t reach. Getting to the
horse was going to be harder than he’d thought. Getting on the horse might be
impossible.

So maybe he’d
just rest awhile, gather his reserves. He’d feel better, be stronger in an hour
or two…

A
CONVOY OF TRUCKS
RUMBLED UP
the road toward
the New Moon Ranch. Willa brought up the rear, having taken time to change out
of her party clothes into jeans and boots. Robbie had waited for her, riding
silently in the passenger seat.

When they
reached Daniel’s house, Hobbs Sutton was just coming out the front door. He
walked over to her window. “No sign of trouble inside. Well, except for
Trouble, asleep on the bed.” She didn’t smile at the joke.

The sheriff put
a hand over hers on the steering wheel. “We’ll find him, Willa. Everything’s
gonna be okay. He told me he’d call if he found the rustlers, and I haven’t
heard from dispatch all night.”

“Maybe they
found him first.”

The sheriff
shook his head. “Let’s go on to the barn. Maybe he fell asleep in the office. Then
we’ll all look like fools…and be happy about it.”

At the barn,
though, there was no sign of Daniel in the office or anywhere else. While Nate
and the men who’d come with them—hands from both ranches and a few
deputies—fanned out over the surrounding ground, Willa stood gazing at Daniel’s
command center with Hobbs and Robbie.

“There was a
break in the fence tonight.” Hobbs pointed to a computer monitor, where a
diagram of Daniel’s perimeter fence showed up as a blue line. Beside Hobbs’s
finger, a red
X
flashed. “Here, on the northeast side.”

“So he did go
after the rustlers.” Willa slapped her hand against the back of the desk chair.
“You said he was going to call you.”

“He told me he
would. But he wasn’t going to let them get away with it, either. If the choice
was between catching the rustlers and letting them go…”

“Daniel would
have gone in on his own.” Willa shook her head. “I knew it would come to this.”

Standing in the
corner closest to the door, Robbie shifted his feet. “Maybe…maybe he didn’t
think it would be the rustlers.”

Willa looked at
him. “Why else would he go out there? He set this whole system up to catch
rustlers.”

“Well, maybe
he’d been getting…some, um, false alarms.”

Hobbs looked at
Robbie. “You know something about that?”

Willa went to
stand in front of her son. “Have you been talking to Daniel about this?”

“No.” He kept
his gaze on the floor. “But I—I came up here a few times, cut through his
fence.”

When Willa
couldn’t say anything, Hobbs took over. “Did you do this one?”

Robbie shook his
head. “I stayed at the party all night.”

“So the rustlers
were out there. Daniel, thinking it might be another trick, went out to check.”
The sheriff turned on his heel and strode outside, calling for the men who’d
come with them.

“We’ll talk
about this,” Willa promised her son. “For now, sit down right there.” She
pointed at Daniel’s chair. “And don’t move until I get back.”

R
OBBIE DID AS HE WAS
TOLD
. He
didn’t…couldn’t…fall asleep. He could picture what might have happened if
Daniel ran into the rustlers. If Daniel was hurt, it would be his fault.

The red
X
flashed from the monitor until he thought he’d go crazy looking at it, so he
turned the chair around to face the window. Beside the window was a photograph,
hard to see in the dark. Disobeying his mom’s instructions, Robbie crossed the
room to get a better look.

He recognized
the scene right away. His family—Toby, Susannah, Lili, Rosa, Mom and himself—in
the courtyard on the afternoon after the Zapata rodeo. They’d gathered around
the table for a minute, with Mom sitting and laughing up at something Toby said
while Rosa and Lili set out food. Susannah was pouring drinks. Robbie saw
himself at the edge of the picture with a frown on his face, looking directly
at the camera.

Daniel must have
taken the picture without them realizing—maybe he had one of those cell phones
with a camera. He’d caught them all at that moment and then printed the picture
out and put it on his wall. Even after Mom had told him not to see them
anymore, the photograph was still there.

The man cared.
And they all cared about him.

Maybe I do,
too. Would you mind, Dad? Could I like him, at least a little?

No voice came
out of the darkness, letting him know it would be okay. Robbie sat through the
night, remembering his father, thinking about Daniel Trent, and wondering if
he’d get the chance to make up for his mistakes.

D
ANIEL WOKE UP TO
DAYLIGHT
this time, but
feeling worse.

“Better move,”
he mumbled to himself. “Not getting better just lying here.”

He struggled for
what seemed like hours just to roll from his side to his belly. Once he got his
hands flat on the ground, underneath his shoulders, he let himself rest,
recover his breath. He woke up sneezing sand and dirt out his nose.

“Okay. One
pushup, that’s all.” He pushed, and fire blazed through his chest. Teeth
gritted, Daniel ignored the pain. “Push…push…damn it, push…”

Finally, he got
his left knee bent under him. Using hands, knee and his right toe, he crawled
through the scrub he’d landed in. Branches and thorns scratched his face. He
put his hand down on a patch of low-growing cactus and came away with spines in
his palm, which burrowed deeper with every move.

He found a tree
by banging his head into the trunk. Swearing as loudly as his dry throat would
allow, Daniel gripped the tree with one hand, then the other, clawing his way
over the rough bark until he could get his left foot flat on the ground. And
then he wrapped his arms around the trunk to help drag his right leg in and
straighten up.

Another black
cloud passed across his vision, and he thought he would pass out again. The
blessed tree kept him conscious as well as upright. After a time, he felt
strong enough to lift his head and scan the horizon. He had a horse somewhere.
Right? That’s what he was looking for?

No horse. He
made a slow, three-hundred-and-sixty degree survey of his surroundings. No
animal that he could see.

For that matter,
this didn’t look like anywhere he remembered having been before. He couldn’t
recall a part of his ranch that resembled this dry, barren, wild place, and he
thought he knew his land pretty well by now.

Where had he
ended up on that ride he couldn’t remember? How far had he come from familiar
territory? Which direction was home?

He consulted the
compass on his watch and decided to head west, because he’d reach the Mexican
border eventually, and probably run into somebody who could help him. Assuming
he survived. Some water would probably make that more of a certainty. Maybe
he’d stumble into a creek along the way.

But he stumbled
only a few steps beyond his savior tree, over a rock that hadn’t been there
seconds before. The sun on his back was warm, the ground under his cheek
surprisingly comfortable. Daniel decided he needed more rest before trying
again. He’d just lie here and think about Willa for a while. Then he’d be ready
to start over….

“T
HEY’RE HERE,”
T
OBY C
ALLE
D
, after dark on Sunday night. He’d
been watching the front of the house all day. “Nate and Mom are here!”

Rosa gathered
with the rest of the family in the entry hall, gazing hopefully as Nate and
Willa came through the front door.

“Nothin’,” Nate
told them. “We didn’t find him anywhere on the ranch.” At a gesture from Willa,
he followed her down the hallway toward the kitchen.

“Did you look
outside the fence?” Rosa went after them, with Lili and the children behind
her. “Could he have gone into the desert and…and been left there?”