It Takes a Cowboy

Blair winced. Now she had to worry about Jeffrey being lost and hurt. She swallowed hard and stepped outside with Scott.

Twenty minutes into their hike toward the fishing spot, she was growing even more worried. There was very little path to follow, and what there was showed a disturbing tendency to branch into several directions. Scott moved confidently along the faint trail, but he’d been this way many times-unlike Jeffrey, who’d made this walk for the first time only yesterday.

Why would he have gone off so foolishly on his own this way?

As if sensing her mounting anxiety, Scott glanced over his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yes, I’m just—” She stumbled on a loose rock but quickly steadied herself. “I’m just worried about Jeffrey.”

“We’ll find him.”

He’d spoken with conviction. Blair hoped he wasn’t just putting up a front to reassure her. She glanced to her right where another trail of sorts branched off to lead into densely wooded mountainside. She could see no differences between that path and the one they were taking; had Scott not been with her, she would have had no clue which way to turn.

It seemed like forever before they finally scrambled over a large, mossy boulder to find water, a wide, rushing stretch of the stream they had seen the first day here, though she was certain it wasn’t the same spot. She didn’t even think they’d come in the same direction, though again, she couldn’t have sworn to it.

Scott stopped and studied the area, making a slow turn to look in all directions. “Damn.”

“This is where you fished yesterday?”

He nodded, motioning to a patch of grass near the water. “That’s where we ate lunch.”

“He isn’t here,” she said unnecessarily.

“No.”

She moistened her lips. “Could we have passed him on different paths? Maybe he’s already been here and gone back to the cabin.”

“Blair, it’s more likely that he got lost trying to find this place. You saw how many turns I took. Could you find your way to the cabin alone if you went back now?”

She turned, looking at the path and the thick woods surrounding them. Could she guarantee that she wouldn’t get turned around if she headed back on her own? “No,” she whispered. “I’m not sure I could.”

Where was Jeffrey?

“We have to find him,” she said, reaching out to clutch Scott’s arm. “Scott, we have to find him! He could be frightened. Hurt. He could be—”

“Blair.” He covered her hand with his. “We’ll find him.”

She was already moving toward the path. “Jeffrey!” she called. “Jeffrey, where are you?”

Scott snagged her hand when she would have rushed away. “Stay close,” he reminded her. “It won’t do us any good if you get lost, too.”

She forced herself to hold back and let him take the lead.

An hour later, Blair was winded, her voice raspy from calling her nephew, her legs trembling from climbing up and down inclines, over rocks and fallen limbs. Fear was building inside her until her chest ached with it. They had passed so many places where a child could be easily hurt; was Jeffrey lying even now at the bottom of a steep bluff?

She didn’t realize she was crying until Scott pulled her to a stop and wiped her damp cheeks with his fingertips. “We’ll find him, Blair,” he said again, his voice low and gentle.

She caught her breath. “Where could he be? We’ve looked everywhere. What could have happened to him?”

“We haven’t looked everywhere. There are still several directions he could have taken that we haven’t checked yet. But I’m worried that we’re circling each other. We need more searchers to spread out and cover more territory.”

She moistened her painfully dry lips again, trying to stay calm. “What should we do?”

“We’ll go back to the cabin and call for a search and rescue team. Then I’ll head back out while you wait for word.”

“You expect me to just sit alone in the cabin without knowing what’s going on?”

“Blair, someone has to coordinate this search from a central location, be near my cell phone, ready to take action. I know this countryside, so it’s only logical that I should be the one out looking.”