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“Sure. They’d hire from away for wranglers and servers and such. Those college kids flow through like water. Ulla said that was fine for cleanup. But she didn’t want to retrain a new crew every summer. She liked to hire local help for prep, cooking. When she found someone good, she took them under her wing.”
Mrs. P spoke up smoothly, “She took only you and Scott Hoole under her wing in all her years of cooking at the Elk Rock Ranch, Gisella, because you are and always have been extremely talented in the kitchen.”
“Amen,” I agreed with a wave of the plastic wrap box to the bounty before us.
Gee turned rosy with pleasure. “Ulla was the true talent. Gave me some of her recipes, too. You’ve had some of them, Elizabeth. Though I had to cut the ingredients way down from what she wrote down for me.”
Maybe she’d cut them some, but nobody who’d eaten at Gee’s house would say the portions had been cut way down.
“What was Ulla like?”
“Oh, she kept them all in line. Chester, Wendy, Brenda. Wasn’t until after she was gone and with Chester not as strong as he’d been that Wendy and Brenda’s sparring graduated to a power struggle — not one Brenda can ever win, considering Wendy owns Elk Rock. Doesn’t stop her from trying.”
“What started it?”
“Wendy coming here. You did know she wasn’t from here to start?”
I nodded.
“Well, when her family back east decided she was the black sheep of that lot of them, they sent her out here to be with her black sheep uncle.”
I nodded again.
“Two of them were a pair all right, those Black Sheep Barlows. A lot alike and it drove them both crazy. But, for all Chester talked about his family being as worthless as people as they were worth a lot in money, his blood tie to her held him tight from the minute she arrived.
“Thing was, before Wendy came, Brenda was his favorite. And in a way she stayed that. If Wendy hadn’t been a relation... but she was. So that set them sparking against each other from the start. Add in that Wendy came in here from the east, ignorant of ranch ways, which gave Brenda a leg up, but glamorous, and that gave Wendy a leg up.
“One summer, in particular, there was a staffer who came in and they both set their caps for him. You’d never get either of them to admit she wasn’t the first to like him and the other went after him just to spite her, but from what I heard, it was a dead heat. And the thing was, he wasn’t interested in either one of them.”
“A third girl?”
“Nope. Keefe. That’s who’d caught his eye. Though nothing came of that. Don’t think Keefe was even aware of it, but I heard his mother telling other people — forgetting I was there visiting, because I didn’t work there anymore — that she worried at first when she saw which way the wind was blowing with Simon. The girls, though — Wendy and Brenda — were so locked in their battle, they never even noticed. Some of the other summer guys were miffed at the two best-looking girls both going for Simon and, because he wasn’t interested, it never cut either one of them loose that summer. Feel kinda sorry for Simon in retrospect. He never came back, even though Chester said he was a top-notch wrangler. My, we were all so young then.”
“Where was Keefe in all this?”
“Oblivious,” Gee said. “Not interested.”
“I concur with the latter, but not the former.” Further proof Mrs. P had known Keefer Dobey earlier in his life. “As for that sibling rivalry between Wendy and Brenda, it did attract a good deal of attention from Ulla and Chester, particularly with Ulla enforcing the peace. But do not misread that into believing Keefer was excluded. He not only had his relationship with nature, indeed, his relationships with each element of nature, he also had human relationships. He was Ulla and Chester’s much-loved boy.”
Gee cast a sharp look at her neighbor. For only half agreeing with her on Keefe’s reaction? For putting in her opinion at all?...
“Okay, get those last three wrapped, Elizabeth, and we can finish this up,” Gee said.
...Or for holding up her production line.
I wrapped and we finished, and then I began to load the boxes into Gee’s vehicle while they cleaned up what only could have been microscopic crumbs.
After my last trip, they came out. Gee pointed a finger at me. “You know who you should talk to is Scott Hoole.”
“Scott Hoole?” Why did that name sound familiar?
“Yeah. They’ve been friends since Keefe first moved here.”
Friends here? In Cottonwood County? That didn’t seem right. Because the familiarity of the name didn’t strike me as associated with here or wider Wyoming. Something from longer ago. From—. “Wait. Scott Hoole, the chef?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Scott Hoole, the celebrity chef?”
