Wildest Dreams - By Rosanne Bittner Page 0,262

Nathan be the one to go out and rescue the animal now. "That boy's pride is going to kill him someday," Luke muttered. He walked toward the hallway. "I'd better go try to find him."

"Luke, no!" Lettie protested, getting up from her own chair. "You can't go out there in the dark. You can't see anything. How would you know where to begin to look? You don't even know which way he went."

"What the hell else can I do?"

"She's right, Luke. Ain't no man that's going to find his way around out there tonight," Grady told him. "The wind is howlin' somethin' awful, and the snow is pilin' up and it's black as tar out there. I can't imagine how Ty could think he could find that damn horse in weather like this. Far as I'm concerned, the horse ought to be shot. He's been nothin' but a troublemaker ever since the boy first captured him."

Luke rubbed at his eyes. "In more ways than one," he commented. He looked at Lettie, his blue eyes showing the agony that was always there when he feared for one of his children.

"I can find him," Nathan spoke up.

Luke and Lettie both looked at him. Nathan had walked out into the hallway to stand near them. "What makes you so sure?" Luke asked.

"I know the horse, for one thing. A horse nearly always goes back to what he thinks of as home. The stallion will go back to Red Canyon, where he was captured. Tyler knows this. He will go there."

"He'll never make it in this weather," Grady spoke up. "A man loses his way real easy in a snow like this."

Nathan held Luke's eyes. "I will not get lost. The Sioux have ways of surviving this kind of weather. They can find their way in the worst of storms, and can track through almost any kind of snow. At first light I will go. You will stay here. My mother does not need to be worrying about both you and Tyler. I can do it better by myself."

"But both of my sons will be out there," Lettie said. "That's just as bad as Luke and Tyler both being lost."

"But I will not be lost. Do not worry about me, Mother. I can do it."

"You'd be risking your life for someone who professes to hate you," Luke reminded him.

Nathan smiled sadly. "I do not believe that Tyler hates me as much as he says. Perhaps it is best that I am the one who finds him, the one to help him if he is hurt." He looked at his mother. "I need to do this."

She nodded, tears in her eyes. She embraced him then, taking comfort in the fact that he moved his own arms around her. "Nathan, if we lose Tyler—"

"I know." He looked at Luke. "I will find him."

In the parlor Alice had left the piano and stood at a window. She pulled back a curtain and saw nothing but blackness, except for snow that was sticking to the outside of the window. An ugly fear gripped her that Tyler had gone deliberately, maybe hoping to die. Was it something she had said? She closed her eyes and prayed for him.

CHAPTER 37

Ty opened his eyes to see a blurry figure leaning over him. He couldn't remember how long it had been since he'd left to find Ebony. He vaguely remembered leaning into the terrible storm, finding his way toward Red Canyon by sheer instinct, or so he thought. By morning light... was that yesterday? Two days ago? By morning light he could see nothing but a sea of white, the snow so blinding he couldn't even spot the tops of mountains or anything else he normally used for guidance. He remembered his horse stumbling and falling over a rock hidden by the snow. He had had to shoot the animal, one of his favorite riding and cutting horses. He had never spotted Ebony.

"Pa?" Was that who he saw? How long had he lain here next to his dead horse? At first he had used the animal's warmth to help protect himself, but soon the horse was frozen stiff. He supposed maybe he was, too, but strangely, he felt warm instead of cold. He faintly remembered someone telling him once that when a man froze to death, there was no pain, no sensation of truly being cold.

"It is Nathan," came a voice. "You need help, Ty, or you will die."

Tyler blinked, trying to