LITMIR.BIZ

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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?”

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