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The balloons are really sweet, though. “Thanks, Dad.”
“I’m just sorry there’s nothing I could get you for a present,” he says gruffly.
Oh, Lord. “That doesn’t matter to me, and you know it.”
“You could have your pick of foals if you want.”
I turn. “How many foals?”
“Thunder and Joan are both fit to pop any day.”
I nod. Thunder is the meanest chestnut mare in the world, and I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m more than a little scared of her, but Joan is my sweet angel. She’s perfect. I didn’t know that they were pregnant.
“Any idea of the sires?”
My dad shakes his head. “I thought about letting Thunder pair up with the Weinbaur’s stallion to help them repay us for me helping fix their fence last year, but she was already pregnant. They’re both mysteries, and I don’t like it. Probably someone who got out of that herd over at the Wild Spur next door,” he mutters.
“Wild Spur?” I frown. Next door is a very relative term out here, but I know every farm that’s even remotely close, and Wild Spur is ringing no bells. “I thought Tim and Barbara owned Lazy Blue Acres?”
My dad sighs and gestures to the table. “Come on. This is a conversation best had with some food.”
“You cooked?” I raise my eyebrows, steeling myself for my dad’s admittedly terrible cooking. It would be sweet if he did, but… secretly, I’m hoping he didn’t.
He laughs. “Don’t worry, Bluebird. I picked up some barbeque when I was in town, too, and there’s cake, courtesy of Annie at the café.”
“Love you, Dad, but Annie makes a better cake than either of us.” I grin. I sit, helping myself to the bottle of wine he left out on the table. Glass in hand, I wave it at my father. “Start with the Wild Spur.”
“Right about when you left for college,” my dad says, moving around the kitchen while he speaks to heat up the barbeque in our sad, ancient microwave. “Tim and Barbara moved to Florida. Sold the ranch, the land, all of it, to the tune of a nice fat packet of cash, to three hotshot cowboys.” His voice drops on the word ‘hotshot.’ It’s not a good endorsement.
“Cowboys, huh?” I sip my wine and lean back.
Cowboys are something of an enigma, even among those of us who grow up in the ranching community. It’s not exactly a title that has a lot of respect, especially among fathers who spend a lot of time and effort warning their daughters about them. Cowboys are somewhat transient by nature, since they follow the work that they need to do. They’re hired help, usually never running the show, but a necessary evil when you need someone to move your cows from pasture to pasture or to make sure the herd stays safe. It sounds archaic, but honestly, it’s the best solution to the challenges of ranch life out here. Most people I met in Boulder didn’t understand the sheer scope of the problem; ranches are thousands and thousands of acres. Miles of land, most of it without cell signal or any kind of services. If you’re working, you might be out, isolated in the wilderness, with only a couple of people for weeks, only to rotate out for a couple of days and head back for weeks again.
It takes a particular type of person to handle that lifestyle. Someone who doesn’t put down roots. Someone who can fall into a job just as easily as they fall out of it. No one expects a cowboy to do something like commit to a job for longer than a season.
And cowboys? They like that. Commitment isn’t exactly what they come to the work for, after all.
My dad’s frown deepens. “They never worked a ranch that I’ve heard of,” he grunts.
Which means that, whether they’re actually cowboys, my dad’s assessment of them is that they’re no-good drifters who have the ability to drop in, raise hell, and disappear at a moment’s notice after their check gets paid. It’s not a good look.
I bite into the brisket that my dad sets in front of me, nearly moaning with bliss as the flavorful cut practically melts on my tongue. “I missed this.”
“No good brisket in Boulder?”
“Not unless it’s made of anything but beef,” I laugh. I liked the food in Boulder, the adventure of it was fun, but this tastes so good. It tastes like home.
My dad settles in next to me with a sigh. He looks down at his plate before cutting his meat into neat, even cubes. “Anyway. They’ve taken over the Lazy Blue, renamed it Wild Spur.”
“As any good cowboy would,” I say with a little sarcasm.
My dad rolls his eyes. “It seems to be… working.”
“What do they raise?”
“Don’t raise nothin’. They have horses. Hundreds of head.”
“Horses?”
