Follow A Wild Heart (romance,) Read online

  Follow a Wild Heart

  by

  Bobby Hutchinson

  Copyright © 2012 by Bobby Hutchinson

  Cover by Barbara Karnes

  Original cover photo by Ed Boutilier, Muskokablog.com

  http://muskokablog.com

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Excerpt: A Lantern In The Window

  Book List

  About The Author

  Prologue

  The young female moose lumbered heavily through the underbrush in desperate search of privacy and solitude, and most of all shelter. The time of birth was almost upon her, her first calving, and instinct told her to search for a spot where she wouldn't be disturbed.

  Her big ears flicked this way and that as she listened intently to the familiar sounds of the deep Minnesota forest. The sockets above her eyes were deeply pronounced, and her long, mournful face looked gaunt, although her huge soft eyes were still tranquil, with the vague, dreamy expression of the seriously shortsighted.

  Like all of her kind, she relied primarily on hearing and scent, and her prehensile nostrils quivered as she drew deep draughts of the early May air, anxiously testing the rainy afternoon for familiar scents, for warnings of danger.

  Once, she lay down for over an hour, almost invisible in the thick green foliage, resting between the labor pains that convulsed her. Her shape showed little sign that birth was imminent, but her udder was already full of milk.

  Some distant sound disturbed her finally, and she heaved herself to her feet once more, lumbering now toward what she instinctively considered the security of water, the steady rumble of the nearby river.

  It was an unfortunate decision, because the river muffled the sounds of the loggers working not far away, downwind from where she collapsed finally in a thicket of aspen and willow. It would have to do, because her time was upon her.

  The birth was barely over and she lay panting when the sound of a power saw whined distressingly close by. With it came a shift in wind direction, the unfamiliar smell of gasoline and then the terrifying odor of man.

  She staggered to her feet, panicked, and nosed at the folded bundle of her calf, still lying wet and uncleansed in its birth sack. In another few moments, the cow moose would have had time to clean her baby, to lick him dry and recognize him as her own and she would then have charged, intent on murder, any number of loggers in an effort to protect her calf.

  But the tree they were cutting came crashing to the earth just then, sending reverberations through the forest floor beneath her, and the young mother panicked.

  She made off through the bushes, stopping uncertainly only once to tip her bell-like ears back toward what she'd left in the thicket. But there had been no imprinting, and therefore what she was leaving had little meaning for her. She forgot it as the man sounds increased behind her and fear overcame her.

  She turned and ran, her long legs easily clearing fallen timber, the milk in her udder dripping out uselessly.

  Beside the river, the little bull calf lay shivering and unprotected. Born with his eyes open, he raised his oversize head, looked around at the world and flopped down again. A strange little mewing sound came from his mouth, but it was lost in the rushing noise of water.

  He was the most vulnerable of all earth's creatures.

  He was a wild animal, newborn, and he was alone.

  Chapter One

  "Ladies and gentlemen, the timber show is about to begin. In a minute, we'll have the semifinals of the women's logrolling event, but first, for any out-of-state visitors here this afternoon, welcome to Minnesota, the North Star State, world renowned as the home of that greatest lumberjack of them all, Paul Bunyan, and of course his big blue ox, Babe. Paul and Babe couldn't make it here today, but on their behalf, we welcome you to our beautiful city of Bemidji and the Paul Bunyan Festival."

  Logan Baxter threaded his weary way along the front of the bleachers, tugged along by two small sets of hands decidedly sticky from cotton candy and candy apples. Eleven year old Liz and her twin brother, Alexander, steered Logan toward an empty space on the bleachers only yards away from the burling pool.

  "Why did he say that, Uncle Logan? Everybody knows Paul Bunyan and that stupid ox aren't real, don't they? My teacher says that's what called a myth," Liz pronounced, tossing a long chestnut braid over her shoulder and pursing her lips primly.

  The bearded figure of a six foot tall clown in a blue housedress, bosom suitably padded and stockings covering hairy calves, began to scale an upright pole set up beyond the pool. Higher and higher he climbed, and the announcer carried on a slightly risque monologue that brought delighted laughter from the crowd, but Liz ignored it all, waiting for Logan's response.

  "Paul Bunyan and his ox are an important part of Minnesota's heritage, Lizzie, even if they are a myth. They symbolize the important role logging played in Minnesota's development. They provide a sense of romance about the industry."

  Lizzie made a rude noise with her lips. Sometimes Logan wondered whether his niece had even an ounce of romance in her pragmatic young soul.

  "We're lucky to get seats right at the front, Uncle Logan, aren't we?" Logan grinned down at freckle faced Alexander, who always found a silver lining, even when it wasn't there. In this case, Logan felt Alexander's cheerful optimism was definitely misplaced.

  A low wire-net fence ineffectively separated the spectators and the competitors, and Logan suspected that the seats the children had claimed were probably empty because the water from the pool would splash anyone sitting there.

  "We sure are lucky, Alex," he agreed heartily, lowering himself onto a hard wooden seat.

  Who cared if they got wet? It was a hot day, and a little cold water might dampen some of the enthusiasm of these demons for seeing, doing and eating everything at the festival. He leaned back as comfortably as he could and closed his eyes.

  Logging sports had always rated pretty low on his list as far as spectator interest went, but sitting here sure beat the Tilt-a-Whirl by a long shot.

  Logan relaxed in the space the twins provided for him, niece on one side, nephew on the other. Water threat or not, it was a blessed relief to sit down on something that wasn't about to whirl or rise or gyrate. The twins had lured him into riding atrocities in the amusement park that he hadn't tried since he was a boy, and the effect still lingered in the pit of his stomach.

  Tilt-a-Whirls and scream machines weren't designed for thirty eight year old forestry professors, he concluded wryly.

  "Look up there, Uncle Logan."

  Liz sounded half thrilled, half scandalized as the clown, now at the top of the pole, did a death defying headstand, which exposed voluminous pink rayon panties. Logan watched with the twins as the agile performer made the crowd gasp by pretending to fall several times, then hurled himself straight off his precarious perch into what seemed to be thin air.

  The crowd screamed in horror, and the performer slid triumphantly back down to the ground on a sling attached to an almost invisible guy wire. Even Lizzie was reluctantly impressed.

  "It's silly for him to pretend to be a lady, though," she pronounced primly.

  "Look, that's really a lady, balancing on that log. See her, Uncle Logan?" Alex said excitedly.

  "Uh-huh," Logan confir
med, keeping his eyes determinedly closed. Ladies on logs could wait until his stomach settled down. Besides, his eyes ached behind his glasses from staring up into brilliant sky and dazzling sun. He'd left his prescription sunglasses back at the farm, and in the maelstrom of dogs, kittens, guinea pigs and that goat the twins had acquired, his sunglasses were probably pet food by now.

  His sister Betsy deserved a medal, managing these two dynamos plus a business and a new baby. And as an interested observer, Logan concluded sleepily, his sister's menagerie convinced him that there was a great deal to be said for bachelorhood and the staid life of a research forester.

  Twelve yards away, balancing on a slick log in the shallow makeshift pool, Karena Carlson heard the announcer begin the lead in to the burling event, but the words didn't penetrate the intense concentration she brought to bear on the slippery surface of the log moving back and forth in the water beneath her feet.

  The summer sun glinted off the pool's murky surface and she squinted down at her old red cleated runners—her lucky cleats—sensing the way this particular log moved in response to her slightest motion, how buoyant it felt, how rough the surface was.

  "Logs are all alive, all different," old Gabe used to insist to his young, dubious student. Now, Karena told her own son exactly the same thing when she was teaching him the techniques, and Gabe always laughed delightedly when he heard her quoting him. And Danny was every bit as dubious as his mother had been before him.

  The announcer moved near the pool and he held out an arm dramatically, pointing at Karena.

  "Here she is, ladies and gentlemen, one of the semifinalists in the women's division of the logging sports championships. Warming up, wearing red shorts, our own Minnesota-born Karena Carlson."

  Red shorts, huh?

  Logan opened his eyes lazily, blinked them into focus and stared curiously at the pool.

  He assessed the slender tanned figure of the woman in the red shorts, making a mental note of her name.

  Karena.

  Karena Carlson. A fine Scandinavian name for a girl from Minnesota, and this one looked just the way such descendants of the northern fjords ought to look, all gold and cream and silver.

  Logan's eyes narrowed as he studied her. Twenty-five, perhaps. Five seven, one hundred twenty pounds. A thick mop of white-blond curls, cut short and fluffy, with a braided red headband across a tanned forehead. Clearly defined features, delicately tilted nose, full pink lips. Lots and lots of leg, covered in the smoothest golden tan imaginable.

  Logan suddenly became an enthusiastic convert to the sport of logrolling.

  A dozen yards away, Karena endured the clapping and whistling that always followed the announcer's introductions of the women competitors, and from the corner of her eye saw her opponent striding toward the pool. She heard the announcer doing his patter.

  "This is Suzy Evans, also a semifinalist, from Lewiston, Idaho. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give Suzy a warm welcome."

  Then the whistle blew, signaling that Karena's warm-up time was over, and she steadied herself on the pole the assistant held out to her, stepping neatly off the log and back onto firm ground, giving Suzy a nod and a shy smile as the other woman took her turn at warming up on the capricious log.

  Karena could smell coffee, hot dogs and the special oily smell of power saws, the sandalwood tang of cut logs, familiar scents in an unfamiliar setting. An airplane droned overhead, and the shouts and hysterical squeals from the midway riders filled the air.

  She purposefully avoided looking at the makeshift bleacher seats set up far too near the burling pool, the avid, eager faces of the people watching the competition, and kept her eyes firmly glued on Suzy.

  Spectators made her nervous, had made her nervous since the first competition she'd ever been in, when she was only twelve. She'd learned since then to pretend that there were no people sitting there watching, but she never managed to blot them out totally.

  Twelve. The age her own son, Danny, was now. People had never bothered Danny, for sure. He seemed to thrive before an audience.

  How could a kid be so different from his mother? She'd turned twenty-nine years old a week ago, and crowds of people, towns, cities, were all just as unsettling now as they had been to her at twelve.

  "You're either a people person or you're not, right, Mom? I am, you're not, right?" Danny had summarized blithely on the drive down when she was trying to explain to him why she became tense and irritable the closer their old pickup truck got to Bemidji.

  The whistle sounded again. Suzy's warm-up time was over. Karena felt a tensing in her shoulders, a buildup of adrenaline in her body. She wanted to win.

  She would win.

  The announcer was instructing, "At the count of one, two, three, go, the competition will begin. Neither of you must cross the red line in the center of the log, and the winner will be victor of the best of three heats, each lasting three minutes."

  Karena felt a familiar sick dread in her stomach as she deftly took her place on the right end of the log, with Suzy on the left. The balancing poles were withdrawn.

  "One, two, three, go!"

  The wood beneath her feet spun first forward, then back, then steadied momentarily. Suzy was barely twenty, and although the girl looked plump and a little ungainly, Karena had great respect for her agility on a log.

  Now there was no need for Karena to feign isolation from the crowd. The spectators were invisible, lost in the intensity of her concentration. The sick nervousness faded and energy coursed through her. Now there was only the spinning log, the complex dance her feet were performing without conscious instruction, and Suzy, cleverly trying to dump her into the pool. Unless Karena dumped Suzy first...

  "Why are they jumping around on those dumb old logs like that? I think they look silly."

  Liz's voice barely penetrated his concentration as Logan leaned forward. The action in the burling pool held his fascinated attention. The woman in the red shorts, this Karena Carlson, was enough to hold any man's attention.

  "Why, Uncle Logan?"

  Without taking his eyes off the action, Logan said irritably, "The ability to balance and move from log to log used to be important when the loggers had to move the logs in lakes and rivers without the help of the type of machinery we have today. It's an art form, Lizzie."

  That probably wasn't the absolute and exact truth, but certainly those red shorts and the woman wearing them would have to be considered an art form, he concluded judiciously.

  Logan let out a warning shout as Karena narrowly avoided a spill, and then he gave a rousing cheer as she caught Suzy with an unexpected sudden roll, sending her slipping into the water.

  One of three.

  "Good going, Minnesota," Logan roared, but Karena didn't even hear him.

  So far, so good, she assured herself as she stepped neatly off the log for a moment while Suzy shook the water out of her hair and dramatically wrung out the absurd green skirt she was wearing. Suzy always played to the crowd, but once they were back on the log she was all business.

  Forward, back, balance. Fast... faster. Karena's arms moved in a graceful ballet, her slender body tilted forward and back, her legs flexed this way, then that; she stumbled slightly, recovered, took control.

  Logan groaned, elbows forward on his knees, a few drops of water cooling on his forehead, eyes riveted on the action.

  Karena tried for a tricky, difficult reversal, a powerful forward motion with reckless abandon, and suddenly Suzy slipped backward off the log and splashed, arms flailing, into the shallow water. Disgust with herself was evident in the girl's body language as she waded to the edge and climbed out, holding out a dripping hand to congratulate Karena on her win.

  Karena grasped the extended hand, half suspecting what would come next, and the crowd roared and clapped with appreciation as the mischievous Suzy yanked Karena toward her, enveloped her in a sopping bear hug, and spattered drops of water over them both by shaking her hair like a playful puppy.


  Suzy's antics were irresistible to the crowd, and Karena felt the shrinking inside her stomach as all eyes centered on the tableau. She forced a grin and wink at Suzy, now bowing in every direction as if she were the victor instead of the vanquished, and then Karena jogged toward the tents at the back of the open-air arena set aside for the competitors. She slipped inside, feeling like a rabbit who'd found his burrow while being pursued by a pack of hounds.

  Empty, thank God. Letting her pent-up breath out in a huge sigh, she tipped her head back and shut her eyes in relief. Her next heat wouldn't begin for a few minutes. Here, despite the steamy airlessness of the tent, she could relax for a moment and blot out the frenzied activity of the festival.

  Her brief shorts and singlet were sopping wet from Suzy's bear hug and she felt damply muggy and suddenly exhausted.

  Slumping down on a bench, she closed her eyes, envying Suzy her poise, wishing she were back by the lake at home.

  Alexander asked solicitously, "Want me to get you a coffee, Uncle Logan?"

  Logan dragged his gaze away from the closed tent flap where Karena had disappeared and said, "Yeah, that would be great." He dug change out of his jeans pocket, automatically adding enough for two large cherry Cokes. He understood Alexander's tactful methods very well.

  "I'll come and help you carry," Liz decided. "I have to dry my hair off. That stupid water splashed all over me and it smells bad."

  Logan was left to stretch out his long legs until they nearly touched the fence, luxuriating in the sun beating down on the back of his neck like a soothing massage, the humming of the crowd around him and the vivid mental picture of Karena Carlson.

  Now all he had to do was figure out a way to meet her.

  Karena was fantasizing escape as she rested inside the tent. She imagined checking out of the shabby motel, driving northwest on Route 71 past the village of Northome to her turnoff and taking the bumpy gravel road three miles through the forest to the clearing on the shore of the small lake where her cabin waited. But the fantasy was interrupted by music from the midway, laughter just behind the tent, a girl's voice raised in delighted excitement.