Summer Winds (4 page)

Right after I was married, Johnny wanted us to get into the cattle business. He saw them as dumb animals who had no idea where they were headed, but I had deeper feelings for animals than for people. Animals by and large were more honest. If they didn’t like you, they kicked you, and their reaction was quick and direct.

Plus, they had bigger hearts. Despite the pain inflicted on them, horses, cattle, and dogs all did their jobs when asked and forgave you the treatment they received. Johnny called me a hypocrite for eating beef but being unwilling to support the food chain. In support of my position, I tried being a vegetarian, but failed.

Nowadays, the most I could muster was to lease my pastureland, openly owning the fact that I was a cattle coward and that’s why I raised hay and horses.

An hour later I was in the living room as Perry and Cash bounced up the back steps, having secured the cattle in the north pasture. I looked diagonally over their shoulders as they entered and noticed something odd about the herd streaming two abreast north beyond the property line. I grabbed my binoculars to make sure I was seeing right.

“Perry,” I shouted, and he jumped, being in closer proximity to me than I realized. “Cattle are going right out the north gate.” Perry bounded back out onto the porch and jumped aboard Peanuts, gave her a quick kick, and headed off in the direction of the cows.

I headed out the front door, cranked up the Gator, and sped after him. He swerved left around the outside of the rambling bovine and I swung right, hanging back. The cattle picked up the pace. I pulled wide so I wouldn’t scare them, but they were already loping at a steady gait. Perry was skilled at this kind of work and deftly made his way up to the front of the herd, waving his lariat and whistling for Duke, the big gray-and-black Australian shepherd named for his hero, John Wayne. Doing the legendary cowboy proud, Duke quickly moved into position and swung the cattle slowly toward the gate opening.

I jumped out and held the gate wide to accommodate the shoulder-to-shoulder throng streaming through. Duke and Perry dashed back in the opposite direction to head off the last remaining two that had slipped past them. Duke did most the work and soon everybody was safely back inside the fence, and I closed the gate.

Perry looked ebullient, obviously missing his cattle-driving youth, and Duke with his tongue hanging out was almost smiling.

Cash approached at a run. “It was me. I left the gate open when we cut through to spray.”

Trying not to show my annoyance, I said nothing.

“That was impressive herding, Perry.” Her praise clearly warmed him like a bonfire and he tipped his hat to her.

“Mama’s ‘closing rule’: fridge, mouth, gates. Keep ’em all shut.” Perry grinned at Cash, who grinned back.

I felt she should be more contrite over the trouble she’d caused, and I couldn’t believe Perry was letting her off so easy. He would normally grouse and gritch about the stupidity of even the slightest error anyone made.

“Cash, come ride with me.” When I called her away from Perry she jogged over and jumped into the Gator, clanging her boots against the metal interior.

“You’re ticked, I know. I’m sorry.” She propped one big boot up on the dashboard and held onto the side of the seat as I swerved intentionally to jolt the cockiness out of her.

“You need some working boots. Pointy toes and slick bottoms are for drugstore cowboys,” I remarked.

“These are my favorites.” She seemed unperturbed by my insult. “I’ve line danced fifty miles in these boots.”

“Well, that’s about what they’re good for, unless you want your ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ to extend to your ankles.” When she didn’t respond I kept probing. “I just assumed, knowing Buck, that you grew up on a ranch.”

“But now you know I didn’t, because of the gate deal?”

“I know because of your soft hands.” I wanted to retract the words. They sounded too personal. I meant that I noticed her hands weren’t callused when I handed her the milk and she pulled the glass back. “What I—”

“I know what you meant.” I must have appeared flustered because she added, “You thought it sounded funny, the way you said it.” She looked at me as if searching my soul for something.

“No harm in wherever you grew up. I simply don’t want to tell you things you already know, but I don’t want to leave out things you
need
to know.” I stopped in front of the house and shut off the engine.

“Tell me anything.” Her tone seemed to ask me to confide in her, and while I was trying to summon an offended response, something completely foreign tingled across my shoulders, like electroshock, launching me out of the Gator.

“If you leave another gate open, I’ll simply shoot you.”
She
really doesn’t know her place.
I headed into the house, not wanting or needing any more discussion.

Moments later, Cash walked into the living room and I glanced down at her Saturday-night-shuffle boots. “Next time rake the bottoms on the wire boot brush outside the front door.” I avoided looking at her and grabbed a broom out of the mud room, trying to sweep the dried dirt chunks off the floor before we walked on them and created a powder that would scatter everywhere.

“I thought I knocked them off, sorry,” she said, this time sounding like she meant it. She took the broom from me, looking beautiful: shirt hanging out, pants dirty, her curly short hair half sweat-matted, and still that face and her stature made her look good.

Lucky girl
,
I thought.

“Tell you what. Why don’t we go down to the southeast pasture and bring the horses up. You might like to ride.”
Best thing is to
get her mind on horses. That’s what summers on a ranch should be
about.

She brightened. “I didn’t see horses when we were driving around.”

“They stay under the trees in the grove where it’s cool. Hard to see them. I’ll gas up the XUV while you get the halters and brushes and a few horse cookies out of the tack room, and let’s see if we can coax them into being useful.”

Twenty minutes later we sped across the pasture in my new all-terrain vehicle that looked more like a military jeep than ranch transportation, with its heavy-duty grid work, roof-mount searchlights, and shotgun rack.

“Like your ride.” She tossed the words into the wind as it whipped our faces.

“For my personal use, but you can use the Gator anytime you need to.”

“You realize, if I hit a rut at this speed in the Gator, my stomach will leave my body through my mouth.” She was obviously trying to finagle driving permission.

“Then drive slow and keep your mouth shut.” I gave her a slight smile, letting her know the pecking order. People, like animals, had to establish who was in charge.

“Good advice.” She seemed to mull over my reply.

The horses raised their heads as we approached the grove, but never budged from their spot under the trees, swishing flies away with their tails. Three of them ate grass, and two others scratched their necks against the trunks of the thick oaks. I immediately scanned them for abrasions or cuts or insect bites, quick to end small casualties that could become calamitous.

“Stop right here for a minute. Look at them. I love all the colors—white, black, bay, pinto, and palomino. If you took a picture right now, it would be like some famous painting. It’s magical.” She held her thumbs and forefingers up, framing an imaginary shot.

I remained still, allowing her to study the animal tableaux as they pretended to ignore us. When the bugs began to swarm I suggested we lead the horses up to the barn where she could brush them. “Get their halters.”

A pause ensued. “I forgot them.” She made an exaggerated facial expression that seemed to beg me to find her absent-mindedness funny.

“How did you think we were going to catch them?” I frowned.

“Cookies?” She giggled and pulled one from her jeans pocket.

“It’s okay.” She tried to soothe me. “We can just feed them here. I can ride another day.”

I refrained from saying it wasn’t up to her to decide what was okay. Furthermore, I had planned on getting them up to the barn to give them their ivermectin wormer and check their hooves.
She acts
like she’s on another planet.
One of the horses blew air through its nostrils, seemingly in loud desultory agreement.

“You like things to work out just like you planned, don’t you?”

Her constant good humor annoyed me, as if she thought she was smarter or more worldly or the frontier’s Dr. Phil.

“If you live on a ranch, you have to plan your work and work your plan—”

“Or there’ll be nothing in the frying pan?” She lightly mocked me. “No,” I said, flatly annoyed. “You’ll just be majorly screwed, that’s all.” She blinked. I had clearly one-upped her in the common-vernacular department, and her surprised look gave me pleasure.

For a moment we stared at one another, sizing each other up, and then she giggled. I smirked in response. Y
ou may be young and
good-looking, but you’re no match for me. Maybe Buck was right, I
should work your ass off.

“Hop out,” I said sternly, and she quickly jumped out of the XUV. “Why don’t you catch the mare and take her up to the barn. I’ll meet you there.”

I pulled away in the vehicle as she called plaintively after me.

“What will I catch her with?”

The thought of a stranger ever catching Mariah, my haughty white mare, amused me. Even with a halter and lead rope it would be tough, but without one it might become someone’s life’s work.

“I think you’re relying on cookies,” I called back over my shoulder and drove away, leaving her standing in the field.

Two hours later, I picked up the binoculars resting on the window sill to check on Cash. She’d gone back to the barn, which was about a hundred yards from the house down a dirt path lined with big oaks and the occasional willow that had taken hold in response to the presence of a once-meandering creek.

Cash had gotten a halter and lead rope but the mare was still having none of it, circling her, swishing her tail, staying out of reach.

At one point, the magnificent white horse even stole the cookie from Cash’s outstretched fingertips and escaped the lead line that flopped over her neck. Cash threw all her gear to the ground and slumped against a tree.

At dusk, Cash was still down in the pasture with the contrary Mariah, trying to talk her into coming up to the barn, I assumed, in order to help Cash save face. She missed dinner and I decided to leave her alone. Apparently, something about Cash’s inability to get the mare to come to her fueled her need to stick with the pursuit until she won.

I checked one more time when it was nearly dark, able to make out the white mare who no longer ran but, having assessed all Cash’s moves, simply and gracefully sidestepped any capture attempts. I started to head off to bed, then decided to throw on some jeans and tell her to call it a night and give them both a break.

Wandering down the footpath toward the barn was always my favorite journey. Soft dirt covered the ground’s barrenness, and the occasional exposed tree root crossed over the rugged dirt lane, sometimes tripping me despite the number of times I’d traversed this trail. Curving slightly around three big shade trees and tilting downhill, it led me toward the small red barn with the lantern lights illuminating it. At the end, I spotted Perry standing about fifteen feet from Cash. Apparently, he too could no longer take the aggravation or feared the mare wouldn’t.

“Why don’t you try for another horse and give this one a rest?” he groused. “Unless, of course, you just like rejection.”

“I’m familiar with it, but can’t say that I like it,” she said, good-natured despite the circumstance. Somehow I didn’t think she was joking, but I couldn’t imagine what personal rejection someone as young and attractive as Cash could have experienced.

“You the most stubborn one in your family?” Perry’s voice was strained.

“Close.” She kicked at the ground with her toe.

“You gotta think like a horse,” he said, turning his head to spit chaw onto the ground. “She don’t want to get herself into any situation she can’t run from. She’s got a pretty good idea what you’re up to with that rope, and once you got her, she knows she won’t be able to run. So you gotta let her know you’re a horse like she is. Turn away from her and duck your head and back up a little bit toward her.”

Cash did as Perry asked and the mare moved farther away.

“Doesn’t seem to be working,” she said.

“Nothing works right off. But act like a horse and you’ll attract a horse.”

I backed away, not wanting to disturb the conversation. Perry was a better teacher than I, and it was obvious he liked Cash.

“Don’t stare at her. Horses don’t like you to stare at ’em. Check out the grass like you’re interested in something down there and then kind of sidle up to her like you’re just looking for a better spot for both of you to stare at the grass together.”

Perry’s instructions faded off into the night as I walked slowly back up to the house, checking my watch along the way. Cash had been at it with that horse for a solid six hours. She had tenacity, which was a good thing out here on the prairie. People who gave up were done in.
Now if she just had common sense to go with it, we
might
actually
be able to have a conversation.

❖

The following morning, I found a scribbled note on the counter that said, “I’m down with the horses.” The handwriting was less like writing and more like elegant printing—straight short strokes penned with an occasional flourish. I studied the artistic writing for a moment before I picked up a pen and wrote across the bottom of the page that I’d gone to town and would be back in a few hours.

I grabbed the keys to the truck and backed out of the driveway, anxious to get away from my new responsibility.

The drive gave me a minute alone to think. Cash had only been here forty-eight hours and already life was crazy, routine upended, my days filled with what she was doing or not doing.

Well, you knew what you were getting when you agreed to let her stay on
,
the voice in my head admonished. What I didn’t know is that she wasn’t raised on a ranch, I defended myself to myself
.
She can be taught like anyone else, the voice in my head insisted. Sure, if I had the time, or the desire, to be a camp counselor or women’s dean or God knows what. We have nothing in common so I have no idea what to talk to her about. We could discuss ranching if she knew a damned thing about anything.