One Brave Cowboy by Kathleen Eagle Page A

Modern medicine, you know, new miracles every day.” She opened her eyes suddenly. “How’s your sandwich?”
    He took a bite, but he couldn’t taste anything with the boy gliding silently through his head and the woman tugging on his heartstrings. He nodded and gave her a thumbs-up.
    â€œHow did you get involved with the sanctuary?” he asked after some quiet time had passed. He’d finished his sandwich and stretched out in the grass. “Through the Drexlers or the horses?”
    â€œThrough my son.”
    She was ready to tell him. Where he came from, people listened without staring the speaker in the eye, but he could feel her need to exchange signals the way her people did, through the eyes. Hers were frank and fragile. All he knew about his was that, like his ears, they were open.
    â€œThe accident happened three years ago. He went through surgery three times and therapy…all kinds of therapy. We were running out of options. Sally’s sister, Ann— Did I mention we both teach at the school in Sinte? Anyway, Ann suggested I bring him out there to see the horses. He took to them immediately.”
    â€œMaybe the horses took to him.”
    Celia smiled. “You sound like Logan. He says things like that in his book. You know, that horses relate to people the way they relate to each other and that they’re very sensitive to people who are open to…equine vibes.” She shrugged, laughed self-consciously. “Something like that.”
    â€œBut you’re not a believer.”
    â€œI want to be. I desperately want to be. So far, no one can tell me why Mark doesn’t hear or speak or what can be done about it. They tell me it’s probably psychosomatic, which usually puts him in some kind of a program, some new and different kind of treatment, some complicated insurance category. I don’t care what they say, Mark doesn’t hear, and he is unable to speak. I haven’t found anyone who relates to him any better than the horses here do.” She glanced at the two that grazed nearby. “But they don’t speak to me, either, so I can’t tell what’s going on.”
    â€œGive him time.”
    â€œI have. I bring him here as often as I can. It’s good for both of us. But I have to find a better doctor, a better…something.”
    â€œYou…wanna tell me what happened?”
    â€œWe were with a friend who was having a house built. She was showing me around—this goes here, that goes there—and I was really into it, sort of building my dream house vicariously. Mark was almost six. Curious about everything, you know? He was, um…he put his eye over a hole…in a floor…andsomeone who was working down below…” She held an imaginary dagger in her fisted hand and thrust upward.
    Cougar braced for the blow he’d lived and relived, the white heat of stabbing steel, the breathtaking terror, the staggering pain. As long as he was awake and in control of his faculties he could hold himself together and let it pass through him. The physical pain in his own body always turned out to be bearable, but it was everything that went with it—all the jacks in the boxes, ghosts in the closet—the doubts were what kept him up at night.
    â€œIt was a metal rod.” She spoke softly, for which he was grateful. “It took the eye, every bit of it, but nothing more. It could have been so much worse.”
    Questions sprang to mind, but he ignored them. She would have been asked more times than she could count, and she would have answered and answered and answered. But she would never be sure of anything except that she could have done something differently. And every time she replayed the incident, she would try something else, and it would always change the outcome for the better.
    He reached for the hand she held fisted on her knee, uncurled her fingers with a gently probing thumb as he drew it