CHAPTER EIGHT
Billy and I started seeing one another after that. And by seeing one another I mean sneaking off to the stream whenever we could find time to chat, hold hands and kiss. It felt great to share this kind of intimacy with him, and to have it be just for us.
I never felt like Billy's dirty little secret, but it did feel a little odd sometimes when the other guys would tease him about girls and Billy would just shrug them off without looking over at me.
It was a long-held joke at the ranch that Billy was committed to the life of the bachelor. In these parts, it was pretty unusual for men to remain single, or for anyone to remain single for that matter.
The ranch owner had been married before his wife passed on, Mama had also been married in the past which had sadly ended in divorce. All of the ranch hands had partners (barring Billy and Tony). Some of the guys had girlfriends and some even had wives and children who they would send their pay home to support. Everyone was in a relationship and everyone was good to their partner, that is when they saw them. The boys would have been very hard on their friends if they found out they weren't being good to the women in their lives.
A lot can be said about cowboys, but these ones were all gentlemen when it came to their partners.
Keeping that in mind, it was harder than ever to keep things to myself. It was hard for me to not tell anyone anything about the missing money.
I knew I should tell the ranch owner what I had found, even if I couldn't tell him who I knew it was because of guilt, he did deserve to know that money was going missing from his coffers. He did deserve to know what was up.
But then when I thought about it, really thought about it, I knew he would find out who it was and then I would be responsible for what had happened. For these poor boys losing their jobs and potentially being reported to police.
I know if this happened at home in Australia, if an employee was stealing from a company, an Australian company would report the theft to police. Why would things be any different here?
Life went on though and I kept doing my work and meeting Billy by the stream. Now we met every night, which was perfect.
On one of our meetings, I had decided I would talk to Billy about the issue. I was sure now that he wasn't involved, but that he might be able to give me some insights into what I should do, even if I couldn't tell him everything. I would frame my questions carefully to get the answers that I needed, and he would give me the answers that I needed without any big problems for anyone I felt confident.
As I lay in the grass with my head in his lap looking up at the sky I tried to find a way to form the words. I didn't want to ask the question directly as that would mean giving these guys away and I wasn't ready to do that yet. I had to find a way to ask the question without actually asking the question.
Billy was looking down at my face and playing with my hair when he asked, "What?"
"Hmm?" I hummed, raising my eyebrows in question.
"What are you thinking about? You look like you're concentrating on something." He told me.
I cleared my throat, it was now or never. "I have a hypothetical question for you." I began.
"Yes?" Billy asked, "What's that?"
"Well, if you found something while you were at work that was likely to get someone else in trouble but that was quite big, like it was so obvious that you couldn't miss it and it was really bad, would you tell someone?" I asked.
Billy who had been petting my hair stopped. "What do you mean? What have you found?" I guess my question wasn't so easy to disguise as hypothetical after all.
"Nothing." I said as I sat up and looked Billy in the eye, "It's nothing bad, it's just..." I trailed off, unsure how to finish the sentence. There wasn't any way around this.
Billy's eyes were on mine, holding my gaze as I told him, "If I tell you, you must promise not to say anything to anyone."
Billy nodded without saying a word, his face set.
"Okay, well, a while ago I was laying in this tree reading – this was before you and I started coming down here to the stream – and two of the guys came and had a conversation underneath me about me. They were talking about how I could find something in the books to get them into trouble." I stopped to let Billy take in what I had said.
It only took Billy a moment before he was impatiently motioning for me to go on.
"So I heard that, then I knew there was something in the books. When I looked, it was all I could see. Thousands of dollars stolen over a period of time. Money would be made selling cattle then it wouldn't be put into a bank account or spent on anything, it was like the money had vanished." I told him.
"Who was it?" Billy asked.
This was the question I was uncomfortable about, I didn't want to give anyone up. I stared at Billy for a moment before asking, "If I tell you, will you be able to keep it to yourself?"
Billy shook his head, "Not if you tell me people are stealing from the ranch, I won't keep it to myself." He told me, his temper flaring.
"I don't want to get other people into trouble." I told him and as the words left my mouth, even I couldn't deny how pathetic they sounded.
"Are you serious?" He was angry now, "You are protecting thieves? At my ranch?" His voice was raising in pitch.
I had to do something to stop him getting any madder, to talk him down, but I couldn't. I just stared at him. Like a deer caught in headlights.
Billy seemed to catch himself then, and took a few deep breaths before addressing me again. "Look, you can't tell me these things then back away from the important stuff. I need to know when problems arise so I can fix them."
"But, I don't know I want anyone to fix it." I told him earnestly.
"No, you just want it to go away." He told me while petting my hair again. I always felt so much younger when I was with him, and like he was taking care of me.
I wanted to snuggle into him then and hide from the big scariness of adult life, but I stopped myself. I had to have this conversation. So I listened as he coaxed me, "If this was your business, wouldn't you want to know if people were stealing from it?"
"I would, yeah." I confessed, "But it's not your business." I told him. The face of the ranch owner swam before my eyes as I said it.
"Well, no." Billy began, "But I do manage the business and have invested a big part of myself here. I want to see the business succeed and it can't if people are stealing from it."
I nodded. "I guess what I am concerned about is that if I tell someone, I am the one who got them into trouble, and it's me they'll come after." I told Billy the earnest truth and he held me that little bit tighter.
"No-one will come after you while I am here." Billy told me, and I believed him.
"So, if I tell you, what happens then?" I felt like a little girl playing at adult life then. Adults just make decisions and stick to them. Here I was making zero decisions and relying on Billy to support me in that. It didn't work. I was being an idiot, but Billy didn't seem to notice.
He held me a bit tighter then let me go so I could sit up and face him again. We both crossed our legs and faced one another.
Billy's face was kind. There was a certain softness there that I had grown so used to seeing. He was happy to be with me. Before he had always seemed so hard, but now I was sure he had only been hard and distant to keep me from getting too close. I was so happy to be close now, I needed this.
"If you tell me who is stealing, I can deal with it. If you don't tell me, then I can't." Was all Billy said.
I knew the right thing was to tell him, so I did. I told him all about how Tony and one of this friends had been talking under me and then how I had gone looking at the books to find that they had in fact been stealing. As I spoke, Billy nodded. He understood. He understood that it was difficult saying these things and that I felt uncomfortable dobbing someone in, but that I had to talk about it.
There wasn't anyone on the ranch to talk about my own feelings or anything personal or professional with, so when I started talking about this, it was like the flood gates had opened. I couldn't stop talking about how all of this made me feel. I couldn't stop talking about exactly how I felt with everything.
Billy was good about it. He just sat and listened, letting me talk. I think he was surprised at how lonely I had been. Billy was perfectly happy doing his job and going home. I was not. I missed my family and friends back home. I missed having people to be with. I was stuck here on my time off because I didn't want to go into town. There just wasn't anything for me to do in town.
The town had bars and shops, but nothing really fun to do. If I went to the bar, too, I would find it full of old men rather than people my age and gender who I could chat to.
Billy knew my situation because he was in a similar one. He was living this life of isolation on the ranch, but then he knew what he had ben signing up for better than I had. I was stupid, I signed up for an 'experience'. I signed up to experience a travel brochure rather than the reality of living on a ranch.
And that reality was about to come and hit me full force.