Chapter Twelve
Modern-day ranches have much in common with the ranches of western lore. Oh, the conveniences are new: running water and electricity; motor vehicles; access to computers, cell phones, and the like; strains of cattle vastly improved by breeding and immunization.
On the whole, however, outbuildings remain the same. There are the cow sheds and the machinery sheds, the stable, various corrals for various purposes, pastures spreading out to the horizon of God’s green earth, a combination bunkhouse, kitchen, and dining hall for employees (complete now with television, air-conditioning, extra-large bathroom, stereo equipment, and laptops plugged into Wi-Fi). Most places even boast an in-ground pool of magnificent proportions.
“Are you up for a walk?” Ben wanted to know of Caroline, as they emerged from the family room’s back door onto the terrace.
“I don’t know. How many miles are you talking about?”
“Maybe a quarter or so. You can see the barn from here.”
Sophie had already skipped happily ahead, with Tom following along in that deceptive cowboy stroll that simply ate up the distance. Pausing, Caroline plopped her ball cap down over her hair and pulled it firmly into place.
“Huh. Nice hat,” Ben, surveying it, said with disparagement.
“What’s wrong with my hat?”
Another challenge. Damn. Was there no end to the challenges she issued?
“You’re living on a ranch now, lady. You need yourself a gen-u-wine Stetson.”
“Indeed. Will you have Marilou pick one up at the nearest Cavender’s?” she blurted out, before giving the thought a chance to percolate through her brain and halt short its being uttered.
Astonished, he stopped dead to stare at her. “Well, maybe I will. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry, my remark was entirely uncalled for.” And made her appear a jaundiced, distrustful, snaggle-toothed harpy. “All right, tell me about what we’ll be seeing on today’s tour.”
Lips thinned by annoyance, he lifted one disdainful shoulder. “I thought it would be good for you to know your way around, to have an idea what’s where, to meet whoever happens to be around at the moment.”
“Sophie and I have been taking walks,” she told him, anxious to make amends, “back that way, into your beautiful timber.” The sweep of her arm pointed the direction. “I hope that’s all right.”
“Whatever’s good for Sophie is all right with me. You don’t have to ask permission, Carrie. You have a right to be here, to do what you want. You’re my wife.”
What exactly does that word entail? she wanted to snap at him, irritated anew by his cavalier attitude. And was then just as irritated by her own reaction. Perhaps she needed some anger management classes, before she turned into a complete shrew.
Head lowered, gaze fixed on her sneakers scuffing through the graveled drive, she was wondering how badly she would have to screw up before he called this experiment a failure and tossed her out on her keister.
“It’s shady,” she finally volunteered into the silence.
“Yeah, it is. Grandpop chose a good site.”
Animal sounds from the distance reached them: an occasional lowing from cattle in their fields, a whicker or whinny from moving horses, the startling caw of a crow flying overhead. A mixture of mammoth oaks and sycamore kept the heat at bay, shutting out the sun’s strongest rays, answering back with a ripple of leaves to any wandering breeze, providing shelter for birds, squirrels, opossums.
Were some of the branches lower, Caroline could imagine children grabbing hold to climb. Had Sophie ever begged to have a tree house constructed?
A gigantic natural pond lay to the left, bisecting neat emerald sod at the rear of the house. Caroline turned covetous eyes toward it. A bleached-oak deck had been built on one curved edge of the reflective water, with a large open shelter and barbeque facilities nearby. A two-person rowboat even lay roped to a convenient dock. Lovely. Simply lovely. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful spot for her and Sophie to explore soon!
“Here’s the bunkhouse. Go ahead and glance in, if you like. We’ve got six extra hands working for us here at Ten Buck, but by this time of the day most of ’em are out with the cows.”
Upon his invitation, she did. Glance in, that was. A long, low white building, with an amazing blue roof and lots of windows. But she wasn’t about to invade any employee’s privacy, so she quickly backed out again.
“Very comfy quarters.”
“I try to make it so. A happy employee does a better job, all round.” Neither smugness nor complacency in the tone, just simple fact.
She considered him, this tall Texas man, as they strolled along. “Do you have any that aren’t happy?”
Silence for a minute. He paused, picked up a rough-cut pebble, and gave it a toss off to the side. “Had a few, over the years. Got one now that ain’t—well, I’m thinking he might be happier elsewhere. We’re working on that.”
“It isn’t easy having to let someone go. Especially in this economy.”
“It ain’t hard at all,” Ben disagreed sharply, “if that man seems inclined to do his worst. Riley, now… Ah, here’s the stable. Inside is where Tom disappeared with Sophie. Got us two colts born the other day, and he couldn’t wait to get her out here to see ’em.”
“Your—Tom seems an awfully nice man.”
Ben peered down at her from beneath the brim of his own gen-u-wine Stetson. “He’s my second-in-command, if that’s what you’re wondering. And runs this place better’n I can. Don’t know what I’d do without him. Steady, reliable, always there for me.”
“I got that impression, right away.”
“Yup. You ever run into a problem, you go to Tom. He sure was mighty taken with Sophie right from the get-go. Dotes on that child, in fact.”
It’s a good thing some father figure does, Carrie wanted to snipe, but didn’t. She hadn’t been on this ranch long enough to be able to sort through all the convoluted relationships involved. Or, still not knowing all the background facts, to judge.
“So we’ll just leave ’em to moon over the new arrivals and head on to the barn, instead.”
“Uh—pigs and milk cows?”
He gave her the slightly crooked smile that seemed to be his trademark. “Not much like the barns you’re used to, up north. Prob’ly a lot smaller, by comparison.”
Amazing, how suddenly, out here journeying amongst his roots, much of the billionaire businessman air was being dissipated, replaced by an easier, more casual attitude that even invoked the Texas drawl. It was an attractive quality. In her rather colored opinion, he should recall these basics of his upbringing more often.
As they approached the barn, more of a large shed than a similar farm building in the Vermont countryside, odd little noises began to reach them. A scuffle, heavy panting, low muttered curses, the smack of something hard meeting flesh, and then a few frightened whines. It was the yip of pain, and then another, and then a piteous yowl, that tore Caroline away from her companion to make a frantic dash inside.
Dim, and dust-moted this summer day, the interior shut off her sight for just a split second. Then, as she comprehended what shocking sight had just come into her vision, Caroline let out a shriek to wake the dead, and leaped, still shrieking.
Ben, following only a few seconds in her wake, flew toward her with a roar. “Carrie! Carrie, stop it!”
She had flung herself onto the very large and very formidable back of a rather disheveled man and was pummeling him, fists and sneakers, with all the power at her command. “You—monster!” she was screaming, even while she continued to pummel. “How do you—like it, you—you damned—viper—!”
The man under her attack, shouting in tandem with her cries of rage, was circling, trying to pull her down and away,
“Carrie!” Ben shouted again. He was trying to catch her wicked blows in mid-strike, out of the very real fear that her huge, hulking victim might turn on her and do some serious damage. “Carrie, get off! What do you think you’re trying to pull?”
So furious, so upset over what was going on that unaccountable tears had begun to fall and smear on her cheeks, Caroline slid to the ground. “Look!” she pointed out, trembling all over. “Look at that!”
A bundle of spotted brown-and-white fur lay shaking with fear and whimpering in distress against the wall, where he had been kicked. Flinging off Ben’s restraining grasp, she whisked over and, crooning softly in an attempt to allay still more terror, knelt down beside the pathetic little animal.
Meanwhile, a veritable volcano of rage had started to build in the middle of Ben’s iron stomach. Wrath overlaid his every feature as he confronted the man before him. “Riley Lundigan. You got anything to say about all this?”
“Of course he has nothing to say!” Caroline, still trying to comfort her charge, but not sure how, snapped from her position on the floor. “We caught him in the act. For God’s sake, Ben, call the cops—or whatever passes for law enforcement around here—and press charges. If you don’t, I will!”
“Not necessary,” Ben, tight-lipped, snapped back.
“Hey, Boss,” Lundigan now tried to intercept, “it’s just some mangy mutt I picked up on the road. Figgered t’ make him a pet, but he’s too damn stupid t’ learn. I’s just teachin’ him a lesson when this dumb broad jumped in and attacked me.”
“This little stray is skin and bones!” yelled Caroline, too incensed by the abuse to even pay attention to Lundigan’s “dumb broad” comment. “And now you’ve badly hurt him, besides. If you’d but given him some food—”
“Caroline! Shut up!”
Such a blackness of spirit, of fury and impotence and sickening fear, had so filled the barn’s interior that even a violent electrical storm could not have done more damage. Ben, as caught up in the mood as both other antagonists, took several long savage steps to the open doorway and shouted, “Tom! Tom, c’mere!”
“Oh, he’s going to add the voice of reason?” Caroline couldn’t help jeering. “You have to call on your consigliere for—”
“Caroline, damn you, just shut the hell up for a minute!”
Ben had stomped back to glare at her.
Then suddenly, catching everyone by surprise, he swung around to pull free one muscular arm and one loaded right fist and fired off a hard jab. Straight into Lundigan’s outthrust, belligerent jaw. Kerflummoxed, he went reeling sideways. A left-handed punch to the man’s flabby gut knocked all the breath from his lungs, and another immediate right-handed uppercut rendered the knockout blow.
Tom came skidding through the door just in time to witness Lundigan emit a loud groan as he crumpled slowly, helplessly, to the floor.
“Wee-ooo,” the cowboy let out a whistle of astonishment. “Ain’t seen somethin’ like that in a long time. What’s goin’ on here, Benny boy?”
“Where’s Sophie?” was Ben’s first concern, as he pulled a saddle blanket off its wall hook.
“Left her with the colts and Jimmy. Y’ know—Marilou’s fella. They’re gettin’ along just fine.”
“All right. C’mere, hold this.”
Accepting without question, he stood silently with arms outspread as Ben draped the woven fabric across them. Then, shoving Caroline aside none too gently, he carefully picked up the injured puppy to lay in Tom’s open embrace.
“Let’s go,” he snapped at his wife, and set off.
Confused, unprepared, she stumbled upright and followed clumsily in his footsteps. “Why—what—where are we going?”
“To the vet’s, of course. Here’s the truck. Get in, and hold the pup. Tom, I’d like you to call Sheriff Palmer in Marigold. Have him get out here and arrest this piece of garbage. I’ll press charges when we get back.”
“Sure, I’ll do that,” Tom agreed. “Mind my askin’ what happened?”
“He worked over that dog pretty bad, just outa temper, or somethin’.” Once Ben had gotten Caroline settled on her seat, with the unconscious animal sprawled upon her lap, he swung back toward his own door. His blue eyes could have been no colder than the frozen steppes of Siberia. “Ain’t nobody on this ranch ever gonna mistreat an animal while I’m here to stop it.”