Free Wish Upon a Cowboy by Maureen Child, Kathleen Kane Page B

wouldn't be silenced so easily. As if conjured by his reluctance, the first glimpses of blurred faces flickered across his brain. A man, black-haired, blue-eyed. A woman, with a sweet smile and a dimple he knew he carried in his own cheek. His parents, he guessed, though he couldn't be sure.
    He rubbed his eyes with his fingertips, trying to stem the tide flooding past hastily constructed mental barriers. But they kept coming. Images, pictures. A town he didn't know. Lightning. Someone laughing. A scream.
    A muffled groan lodged in his throat. Always the same. Bits and pieces. Snatches of a past long gone. Gritting his teeth, Jonas turned his back on the child he'd been and braced himself for the other, more recent images that, even after ten long years, still had the power to tighten his chest and close his throat.
    Wide brown eyes, soft laughter, whispers in the night—then one day, a silent house. And red. So much red.
    "Mac? Mac, boy." Elias's voice dragged him from the drowning pool of mind shadows and back to the sunlit range.
    Opening his eyes, Jonas took a long look around him.
    The familiar landscape soothed him. Cattle. Cowboys in the distance. The mountains, caps covered in snow that glistened like quartz crystal in the midday sun. He pulled in a deep breath, letting the cold, crisp air clear his mind and settle his spirit.
    This was what mattered, he told himself firmly. The past couldn't be changed. The future couldn't be known. It was this moment, this time he had to concentrate on. Work at. All the rest was no more substantial than the morning mist that clung by wispy fingers to the mountainside and was gone again by noon.
    "You all right, boy?"
    He slanted a look at the man beside him. Concern etched itself into Elias's lined, weathered face, reminding Jonas that the older man knew what memories drove him, haunted him. And he wondered if Elias, too, was visited by ghosts.
    They'd never spoken of it—as if silently agreeing that talking about the past would only serve to keep it alive, fresh in their minds. But Jonas had discovered that silence didn't protect him from the remembering. The pain of knowing he'd failed the one person who'd needed him the most.
    "'Course I'm all right," he muttered thickly, turning his head away from the too-knowing gray eyes watching him. "Why wouldn't I be? The herd looks good. Roundup's just a few weeks away, and there's only a few days until Saturday."
    Elias grumbled something under his breath.
    "What was that?" he asked, though he knew damn well what the man had said. Same thing he said every damn week.
    The older man's jaw worked like he was trying to spit out something that tasted foul as sin. "I said," he repeated, "you don't need to be goin' into town every Saturday night."
    Yes, just what he'd thought. A flash of irritation shot through him and was gone again. Pointless to get mad at such an old argument. "That's my business, isn't it?"
    "With roundup coming, I figured you'd have better things to do."
    Jonas tightened his grip on the reins. The rawhide strips bit into his fingers. You figured wrong."
    "I can see that."
    Sighing, Jonas turned on his oldest friend. The man who'd been a father to him. "Don't start on me."
    "Start?" Elias snorted. "I been saying this for near ten years."
    "Then you ought to be about ready to quit."
    "Not hardly."
    "Damn it," Jonas said, straining to keep his voice even. "I don't need a gray-bearded mama clucking over me."
    "No," Elias grumbled. "What you need is a mule kick to the head."
    Despite his frustration, Jonas chuckled shortly. "Well, until you find the mule to do the job… leave me be."
    The dinner bell rang out loudly, pealing across the range. Heads turned toward the house and, as one, the cowboys started their horses in. After a long morning's work, they were eager for food and the chance to sit on something that wasn't moving.
    Jonas and Elias, the tension still thick between them, also headed for the house. "You reckon,"