One Brave Cowboy (9 page)

Cougar gave a dry chuckle. “Ain't that the truth.”

The rubber had barely met the blacktop before Mark was fast asleep in the backseat of Cougar's pickup. He'd had a good day. Celia was smiling as she turned back around in her seat, catching a glimpse of the man at the wheel. She loved that cowboy hat, which was amazing.
A cowboy hat?
It wasn't a costume. It was Cougar. She tried to imagine him wearing a uniform, and the image wouldn't take form. The hat, the shirt, the jeans, the boots, they were Cougar.

He glanced at her. “Sounds like Sergeant Tutan's all wound up. Did she give you an earful?”

“Not quite. There's room left if you want to add more.”

He nodded, intent on the road ahead. “This is where I'm supposed to say something like, I've done some bad stuff, war's hell and I can't talk about it. But trust me. I'm one of the good guys.”

“If that's what you're saying, I believe you.”

He glanced at her again. “Which part?”

“It all sounds true.” She smiled. “My son has good instincts, and he trusts you.”

“What about you?”

“I like you very much, Cougar. I think you know that. As for my instincts, they're still on probation.”

 

Mark was dying to get down off the fence and get up close and personal with the horse with no name. Cougar was doing his damnedest to concentrate on keeping the horse moving about the pen—he'd lose the horse the minute he lost his focus—while he kept the boy in the periphery of his field of vision. His training served him well. Mark's enthusiasm was palpable, and he felt good about that.

No Name was aware of it, too. He knew Mark was his kind. Speechless and sensitive, the two would connect when the time came, and Cougar looked forward to seeing it happen. What animal didn't have special needs? Especially the young ones. Make a safe place for them, let them stretch their legs and test their senses while you chase the vultures away and pick off the poachers.

He would have welcomed the sound of an approaching vehicle had it been a small car instead of a noisy panel truck.
Bread and Butter Bakery
. Celia hadn't said anything about Greg Banyon possibly stopping in while she was doing her errands, so this must have been somebody's unexpected pleasure. Cougar couldn't imagine whose.

Banyon parked close to the corral, but he didn't get out of the truck. Instead he hung his head out the window and shouted at Mark. “How's my boy?”

Cougar could see him through the fence. The odd salute he affected didn't merit a response. “You gonna teach him to ride?” Banyon shouted as he emerged from the truck.

“This is a mustang,” Cougar said. “We're gentling him.”

“That's a wild horse? Mark, get down off that fence!” Banyon lunged for the fence, shouting the boy's name. He got a piece of Mark's T-shirt, but it slipped though his fingers as Mark fell or jumped— Cougar wasn't sure which—into the pen. The horse's ears flattened, and he started dancing back and forth on the opposite side. Cougar stood between the boy and the nervous animal.

“Jesus,” Cougar muttered. He backed into Mark's corner quickly, picked him up and set him on his feet, keeping his eyes on the mustang. “It's okay, Mark. You're okay.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Banyon yelled. “That's a wild animal.”

“Meaning what?” Cougar shepherded Mark over the fence. “He's liable to do something crazy?”

“You've got a wild horse and a deaf mute child here,” Banyon ranted. “I was trying to grab him down, get him out of harm's way.” He eyed the boy, who wasn't going near him, and then the horse, who was taking the same precaution. “What's going on here, anyway? She's bringing those wild mustangs over
here
now?”

Cougar pulled on his fireproof suit, covered himself with calm. “Celia isn't here right now. Was she expecting you?”

Banyon looked befuddled, thrown off course. “I…I tried calling. Got no answer, so…so I thought I'd stop on my way by. Where is she?”

“She had some business to do.”

Banyon's eyes narrowed. “And she left my son with you?”

He was back on course.

“Mark wanted to stay. I don't know if it's me or the horse, but at least one of us must be pretty interesting.”

Banyon humphed, turning his attention to a car passing on the highway. “When do you expect Cecilia back?”

Cougar's calm was waning. He needed to keep quiet, keep the last of it from draining away.

“Did you hear me? I said,
when
…” Banyon stepped back as reality suddenly hit him between the eyes. He lowered his voice, but he couldn't quite bring himself to drop the bluster. “I had some news for her. Now I
really
have news for her. She can't go off and leave him with just anyone.” He shrugged. “No offense, but we don't know you.”

When they say no offense, you know the offense is incoming. Just stay cool. Let it drop on the ground and roll away.

Cougar laughed. Dr. Choi knew the triggers.

“Look, we're not putting on a show here.” Cougar gave Mark's shoulder a soft squeeze to let him know he hadn't forgotten where the boy stood. “If you want to watch, why don't you sit in your truck?”

“I gotta get back to work, and I should be taking Mark with me.” But he moved in the direction Cougar suggested. “I'm gonna trust you this time.” He pointed at Cougar and then toward the corral. “But don't let him near that horse. That's one of the things his mother's been doing without my approval. Being around those wild horses.” He jerked the door open on his truck with one hand, leaving the other free for more pointing. “You tell her I stopped by. Tell her she'd better pick up when I call.”

Cougar could feel the tension melt from Mark's shoulders as they watched the truck speed away, leaving a dust wake in the air and a bitter taste in the mouth. He steered Mark back to the fence and helped him climb up and straddle the top rail. They watched the mustang regain his balance. His ears rotated, testing out the vibes.

“I'd like for you to name him for me,” Cougar said as they watched. He didn't think of it as talking to himself. Just planting seeds. “You don't have to come up with anything right now, but just be thinking about it. Let me know when it comes to you.”

Mark unsnapped the flap on the big pocket of his cargo pants, reached in and pulled out a toy airplane. Cougar looked him in the eye, letting him know he
was all ears and then some. The boy showed him the name on the side of the fuselage.

Flyboy.

Cougar swallowed hard and nodded slowly. There was no doubt.

“That's a good name. We'll try it out on him and see if he likes it.” He smiled.
Not too big. Not too scary. Let him pace himself.
“Your mom says you get to go to summer camp pretty soon. Do they ride horses at this camp?”

Mark rubbed the word
Flyboy
with his forefinger.

“I'm guessing that means no, so we'll have our own camp here. You get your own personal trainer. You and Flyboy.”

Cougar drew a deep breath.
Keep talking. You're giving no offense, and something's getting through.

“I didn't have horses at my camp, either. Plenty of guns, but no horses. I was a soldier. I wanted to be a warrior, you know? Defend the people. Whoever's getting pushed around.” He patted Mark's knobby knee. “Anybody tries to push you around, you've got Cougar to back you. That's my last name, Cougar.

“In the Army you get a nametag with just your last name, so the day I put on that uniform, I stopped using any other name. Why would anyone name her kid Calvin Cougar, huh?” He touched his finger to his lips. “That's just between you and me, okay? Don't tell anybody. I guess Cal ain't such a bad han
dle, but when you have a name like Cougar, why use anything else?

“You know what a cougar is? They live around here, out in the hills. They're wild.” He gave an expansive gesture. The boy was with him. He was sure of it. “Ever been to a zoo? You don't wanna see a cougar in a zoo. It makes you wanna puke.”

And you don't want to be a Cougar in a cage. It makes you wanna kill the guy who put you there.

“Flyboy's checking us out. See his eyes?” Cougar pointed, and Mark followed his finger. “Watch his ears. He's got his own radar, like they have at airfields. He'll learn to trust us. No other horses around, so we're all he's…” The sound of a little four-banger engine drew Cougar's head around. “Hey, your mom's back.”

He'd been engrossed in his therapy session. He wasn't sure who was getting more out of it, but Cougar must've been heavily invested if Celia's car could reach the yard without raising either defenses or anticipation.

He jumped down from the fence and reached for Mark. “Should we tell her? You know, about your dad.” Mark gave him a funny look. “Yeah, you're right. Mind your own business, Cougar.”

They sauntered over to the little blue car like a pair of watchmen checking out a visitor. But when Celia emerged, both faces brightened.

“Hey,” Cougar said.

“Hey.” She looked at him curiously, as though she thought he might be up to something. And she expected to be pleasantly surprised.

“We have something to show you.” It wasn't much, but it would do. He took her by the hand and signaled Mark to lead the way to the corral, where they showed her the plywood hay feeder they'd built. He nodded toward the far side of the pen. “It's going in that corner. Got the water hooked up so we don't have to haul it by the bucket.”

“So you got the pump…Mark?”

He'd crawled through the newly repaired fence.

Cougar scaled the fence and started to intervene, but Mark took two steps and stood quietly. The horse stood just as quietly.

“Cou—”

Cougar signaled Celia to be still.

The horse lowered his head and took one step. Mark made a quarter turn and started walking away from the Paint the way he'd seen Cougar do earlier with little success. Muzzle near the ground, the horse followed.

“I'll be damned,” Cougar whispered.

Mark glanced at Cougar first, and then his mom. He was all smiles.

 

“Mark named him Flyboy,” Cougar said as he unloaded a couple of cloth grocery bags and a cooler on
Celia's kitchen counter. Mark grabbed a small box out of the way and took it to the kitchen table.

Celia looked up from ditching her shoes just inside the back door. “Mark did?”

“The name's written on the side of one of his planes. He showed it to me.” Mark was pulling more planes out of the box, seemingly oblivious to what was being said about him. The excitement of his moment with the horse had apparently passed. Cougar felt a little deflated.

“And you decided to use it. He'd like that.”

Cougar nodded. He was damn sure the kid tipped his hand over the name. Whether Mark knew what he was doing was another question. Whether he was even
doing
what he was doing. He glanced at Mark, lining several plastic planes up for takeoff. If he heard what was being said, he wasn't responding.

If he heard what was being said, he had amazing control.

Cougar would tell her and let her judge for herself. But not yet. He wasn't sure whether Mark had in his own way confided in Cougar, and if he had, he wasn't sure what the boy really wanted him to do with the information. Or maybe Mark didn't know, either, and they were both feeling their way along.

“How about I take you guys out to supper?” Cougar suggested impulsively.

“How about I make us some supper?” Celia laid her hand on his arm. “I want to.”

“After I earn it,” he insisted. “I haven't started on the deck yet.”

“You fixed the corral.”

“I needed to use it. That's not something you… Hey, you never told me about that old car in the back of the barn.”

“Like the rest of that stuff, it came with the barn,” she said. “Do you fix cars, too? If you do, you're welcome to it. I have no use—”

“Not so fast, woman. You don't just give away a sixty-six Ford Fairlane.”

“I don't even know if it has an engine. It's probably home to colonies of—”

“It's clean.” He shrugged, a little embarrassed about nosing around. “I checked. It's a car covered with tarp, what can I say?”

She laughed. “Say you'll stay out of my closet.”

“Hell, I'm a man. I don't care what's in your closet.” He grinned. “But you've got potential muscle in your barn.”

“So you're a car man.”

“I'm a horse man,” he averred. “But my brother, Eddie, he's crazy about cars.”

“So there's a brother,” she said as though she'd just bought herself a clue.

“Now who's diggin' around in the closet?”

“We'll talk about the car and the deck over supper. It's been ages since I made my special lasagna.”
She gave him a teasing glance. “Unless you're worried we might be buttering you up.”

“I like butter. How much butter do you serve with your lasagna?”

“As much as you want. I didn't get any bread at the store because I'm not a fan of their bakery, but…” She waggled her delicate eyebrows. “I prefer to bake my own. And I don't have to ask how homemade bread sounds. You're a man.”

“You got that right. I'm definitely a man.” He smiled wistfully. “And I'd be lying if I said I don't know what I'm doing here. I like it here, and I don't want to wear out my welcome. I keep wanting to see you again, and this way…by helping out…”

“I know what you mean.”

“No, you don't,” he said quietly. It felt as though they'd known each other a while because they'd hit it off right away, but he had stuff in his closet he didn't want dragged out. He'd barely managed to get the door closed on it. He'd figured on traveling around with it for a while, letting it settle after all the wrestling around he'd done with it.