How to Lasso a Cowboy Read Online Free PDF Page A

his stride. “I had your bunkhouse cook, Duly, check. No horse or wagon is missing. If she rode out of here she did so on a pig. Not that she isn’t dumb enough to try it. I swear, the older she gets, the more absentminded she becomes. I only pray I live long enough to take care of her. It is my cross to bear in this life.”
    Cooper reached the porch, running across the wood without caring that his spurs might be scarring it.
    â€œWinnie’s missing.” Emma stated the obvious as he stepped inside. “Gone. Disappeared. Lost.” She paced like a toy wound too tightly, as she waved both arms, twin windmills blowing in circles accenting each word. “She’s been acting stranger than usual ever since we got here. Everyone knows she walks for her constitution every day, but never far, never long.”
    Cooper tried to calm down his sisters. Johanna saw herself as a martyr and Emma followed suit as second in command. “She couldn’t have just evaporated,” he said. “Has she ever done this before?” The thought occurred to him that he didn’t see them all that often. Maybe this was something she did on a regular basis.
    â€œNo,” Emma answered. “She goes in her room sometimes and reads. And she goes for walks, but never long ones. I’ve told her fifteen minutes is all she needs of exercise each day to be regular as a clock. That’s very important at our age.”
    Emma paced in front of the fireplace, putting pieces of an invisible puzzle together. “She must have been reading late last night because her eyes were red this morning. I’ve told her a hundred times not to read by lamplight or folks will think the color of her eyes is red and not blue.”
    â€œWhat was the last thing either of you said to her?” Cooper could guess. They said the same things to Winnie and somehow she managed never to listen.
    Emma wrinkled up her forehead. “I said she must have had to search long and hard to find a dress as ugly as the one she bought while she was in town with you. I can hardly believe the Debords bought such a pattern.”
    â€œDid that upset her?” Cooper asked.
    Emma shook her head. “I don’t see why it would. Someone had to tell her, after all. Did you see the thing? The lines were out of date and the material looked like it was faded along one side.”
    Johanna stepped in front of Emma like a seasoned tag-teamer ready to take on the cause. “Did Winnie talk to anyone in town yesterday?”
    â€œYou think she’s been kidnapped?” Emma whispered her fear. “Oh, my. She was taken wearing that terrible dress.” Emma’s face paled. “Maybe the Apaches got her. I’ve heard of such things. They come into the house all silent like and snatch the first woman they see. Take her back to their camp and make her one of their wives.”
    Cooper studied Emma carefully, trying to decide if she’dbeen dropped on her head once too often as a child. “First, there are no Apaches in these parts and, second, it would take two or maybe three strong braves to snatch Winnie. Something tells me she wouldn’t go quietly, so we can forget any possibility of her being taken against her will.”
    As the women made other guesses, he thought of Woodburn back in town. Winnie had left the store saying she planned to say farewell to the man, but when Cooper brought the chair out, she was already sitting in the wagon. Woodburn was strange, always silent, always keeping to himself, but Cooper could not connect him with this trouble. He wasn’t even sure his sister had spoken to the man.
    â€œThe rain’s finally stopped,” Emma announced.
    Cooper reached for a dry coat on the rack by the door. “Good, I’ll start searching. I’ll circle the house, then widen the search. Maybe she just went for a walk like you’re always suggesting, Emma, and then decided to hole up