“Hopefully. If not, we’ll get dogs and lights. We’ll find him one way or the other, Maggie. Trust me.”
Yes, she had to trust him. Right now he was the best hope she had of finding her runaway son.
Daniel quickly whistled up the horses, and in a matter of minutes they had saddled two mounts and were headed north into the mountains. Maggie was careful to ride a few steps behind the deputy as he leaned over in the saddle and scoured the ground for any signs of Rusty’s tracks.
Most of the time the imprints were faint, and a few times they disappeared altogether, but somehow Daniel seemed to anticipate the route her son had taken and would manage to pick up the signs again.
As they climbed higher into the rough mountains, Maggie grew even more frightened for her son’s safety. Especially with the sun dipping lower and lower in the western sky.
They continued to push the horses up the steep grade, and Maggie voiced her fears to Daniel. “There’re bears up here, Daniel. If Aaron runs onto a cub and the mother is around, he’ll—” She couldn’t finish. The image was too gruesome to speak aloud.
“Bears are usually frightened by horses. I wouldn’t worry about them too much.”
She knew his words were meant to comfort, but they did little to relieve her fears. Deputy Redwing didn’t have a wife or children. He didn’t know what it was like to lose a spouse. Aaron was all she had. Now that Hugh was gone, he was the only thing she lived for. If something happened to him, she didn’t think she would want to go on, or even could go on.
Up ahead of her, Daniel suddenly pulled his horse to a stop and held up his hand in a gesture for her to stop.
Maggie pulled on the mare’s reins. “What’s wrong? Have the tracks disappeared?”
“No. Something happened here. I need to get down and take a look.”
Fear rose like bile in Maggie’s throat, but she tried her best to swallow it down. “What do you mean something happened?”
Daniel climbed out of the saddle and Maggie quickly did the same. Keeping a tight hold on the mare’s reins, she stood, waiting for him to explain. Instead he ignored her question as he stepped away from her and the horses and began to examine a nearby spot on the ground.
As she watched him squat on one knee and brush at the fallen leaves, she gritted her teeth and tried to be patient. But after a few more moments of silence, she said, “I hate to sound critical, but this isn’t the Wild West anymore. Indian scouts and trackers have been replaced with technology.”
Rising to his feet, he gave her a brief glance before he walked to another spot and carefully studied the ground. “Is that so?”
Her throat was unbearably dry, and she swallowed uselessly as she swiped a hand against her sweaty brow. “You know that it’s so.”
He came back to stand a few steps from her. Maggie breathed deeply through her nostrils as she studied his striking bronze features: the high cheekbones, the hawkish nose, the wide forehead and the strong squared jaws. He had to be somewhere near thirty, but when she looked into his eyes she saw a much older man, a man with all sorts of thoughts and secrets and dreams.
“Maggie, this land—these mountains have not changed in a hundred, even two hundred years. The horse your son is riding is still the same as the ones that outlaws and cowboys rode when New Mexico was still just a territory. Tell me, please, how technology is going to help out here, right now?”
Pink color tinged her cheeks. “Well, there are all sorts of things…like a helicopter.”
Daniel shook his head. “I’ve already thought of a chopper. The forest is too thick, they’d never get a look through the canopy of trees.”
“He might come out in the open,” she suggested hopefully.
“He might. But I doubt it. Your son is on foot now. His horse has bolted.”
She stared at him, not wanting to believe him, but very afraid he was right.
“Look, Daniel, I know that some Native Americans believe in visions. My sister-in-law, Bella, has a godmother who often ‘sees’ things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re capable of it.”
The curve of his hard lips pressed into a thin line, and Maggie knew that she had offended him, but she couldn’t help it. Now was not the time to use Indian folklore. Her son’s life was at stake!
“I am a Ute. I’m personally not gifted enough to see things beyond my sight. But I can track most anything. There are signs on the ground here that tell me many things. They can’t be ignored.”
His firm, clipped words struck her like stones, and tears pooled in her eyes. She was ashamed that she had offended this man, and she was also very, very frightened. The combination was more than enough to make her break into sobs.
Drawing in a deep, shaky breath, she wiped her eyes with the back of her arm and fought off the urge to simply collapse. “I…I’m sorry, Daniel. Please…tell me. Tell me what you believe is going on with my son.”
His brown hand wrapped around her upper arm, and without a word he led her over to the two areas he’d inspected a few moments earlier. “See, your son was standing here. There’re the imprints of his boot heels. His horse was here beside him. You can see the tracks of the gelding’s shoes where he stood. But then, here the ground is scraped where the hooves dug deep. The horse was spooked or agitated and took off at a gallop up the mountain.”
Yes. Now that he’d shown her, she could see the story, too. “You’re right,” she replied as her mind whirled with possibilities, none of which was pleasant. “But couldn’t Aaron have mounted up before the horse ran away? How do you know he’s on foot?”
“Because the boot heels follow the horses tracks. See there?”
He pointed to a dim trail winding through the trees. The horse’s hoof prints were visible to her, but not her son’s. Yet she didn’t argue with the deputy. She’d already learned her lesson about that.
“No. But I’ll take your word for it.” She turned her gaze on his face and suddenly she was acutely aware of his fingers pressed around her arm. He was standing only inches away and she could feel heat radiating from his body and the callused skin of his hand against her flesh. His dark face gleamed with sweat, which had also soaked a V shape on the chest of his khaki shirt. His arms and shoulders and thighs were all heavily muscled, and she instinctively knew that he was a strong man. Both physically and mentally. The fact helped to reassure her confidence in his ability as a lawman.
Concern darkened Daniel’s brown eyes as they flicked over her face, and then slowly he reached a hand up to her cheek and pushed back a loose strand of red hair.
“You look very tired, Maggie. Why don’t you stay here and let me ride on?”
She somehow managed to find the strength to straighten her shoulders. “No. You might need me.”
He didn’t say anything, but his fingers continued to rest against her cheek. His eyes probed deeply into hers.
Maggie couldn’t speak. She felt herself being drawn to him. And though she tried to stop the forward motion of her body, she stepped into his arms, anyway.
He seemed to understand that she needed human contact and that she was longing for a pair of strong arms to hold her. He drew her deeper into the circle of his arms and, with one hand against the back of her hair, pressed her head against his shoulder.
“Oh, Daniel,” she said with a broken sob, “I’m so scared.”
“Don’t. Don’t cry, Maggie,” he murmured. “Everything is going to be fine. Aaron is a strong boy, and he’s comfortable with the outdoors.”
The