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“I guess. It’s not quite what I expected.”

“It never is,” he says with a sage smile. “But I generally find that the trail always serves up exactly what you need.”

“If what I need is a healthy dose of confusion, frustration, and uncertainty, then you’re spot on,” I mumble.

“You’re a skeptical sparrow today, I see.” He regards me out of the corner of his eye. “Give it time.”

“How long does it usually take?”

Barnaby shrugs.

I pull a blade of grass from a tuft of switchgrass and press it flat between my thumbs before blowing across it to make it whistle.

“I haven’t done that in ages.”

I twist around to find Colton standing a few feet behind me, spinning his Stetson in his hands. His hair is matted down with a few stray wisps doing their own thing. His jeans are dusty and the tips of his boots are coated in mud. With his cotton shirt unbuttoned at the collar, he looks like he belongs on the front page of a Ranch & Rustler ad—the perfect combination of rugged cowboy and Prince Charming. I don’t hate it.

My pulse flutters and I look away quickly.

“I have those maps you asked for,” Colton says, handing Barnaby a slim stack of folded yellowed papers.

“Captain Walker never disappoints.” He takes the bundle from Colton and slips them into his back pocket. “Thank your dad for me, will ya?”

“Sure thing.” Colton slides his hat back on. “Got a minute?” he asks me.

Out here, I have nothing but time and a burgeoning crush.

Colton leads me past the covered wagons and the cook fire. Past the adults who are having a typical “kids these days” conversation. Past the kids (including Caleb) who are the root cause of the conversation.

We pause at the supply wagon so Colton can grab a large canvas sack. He tosses it over his shoulder and leads me away from our rest stop.

“Where are we going?” I ask, glancing up at the sky to see if it still looks like rain. Thankfully, the clouds coming in from the west are now white and puffy, surrounded by plenty of blue sky.

“One of my favorite places along the trail,” he says.

We wade through prairie grass and hike up two hills that are deceptively steep before we come to a sloping valley covered with white and orange blossoms. For a moment, it looks like some of the blossoms are floating, but then I realize the field is full of butterflies.

“Are those monarchs?”

Colton nods as he works to unknot the canvas sack. “Practically the whole field is milkweed.” He sets a section of a newspaper down on the ground for both of us to sit on and then passes me a bottle of Felix’s famous lemonade.

“It’s incredible.” I settle onto my square of newspaper and watch a butterfly zigzag past us, darting over the tops of the flowers until it stops for a sip of nectar. “How did you find this place?”

Colton unlatches a mess tin to reveal bacon, biscuits, two small red apples, and the most adorable container of honey I’ve ever seen. “A few years ago, lightning sparked a wildfire here. It wiped out most of the meadow. Chance and I discovered it on a ride one day.” He pauses to gnaw on a strip of bacon. “Some of the local conservation groups have been working to restore native plants to the prairie. I thought this might be a good place to plant some milkweed, so they supplied the seed and I sowed it.”

“You did this?”

He looks almost bashful as he studies the last bit of bacon in his hand. “Mother Nature did most of the work.”

“But still, it had to have taken you hours to spread the seed.”

“A few sowing sessions,” he says, gazing over the field. “Chance and I would ride up here on the weekends and I’d strap a bucket over my shoulder and walk back and forth, tossing handfuls of seed mixed with rice hulls and sand. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was the following spring. Hardly any milkweed germinated.”

“But look at it now.”

His eyes sweep over the meadow. “Some things are worth the wait.”

CHAPTER 20