by Kim Smart
Stella woke early the next morning. Unsettling dreams and a poor night’s sleep left her irritated. Gus was happy to see her, his tail wagging as he stood by the door to outside. She knelt and scratched behind his ear, the way he loved.
Her phone had a single message. Her mother wished her a good weekend filled with relaxation and fun. Stella didn’t respond. She made a cup of coffee and carried her laptop to the sofa. On a whim, she looked up the law firm Brandon worked for. Stella scrolled around the site and found Brandon’s profile. They advertised him as a trial attorney representing farmers, ranchers and agricultural businesses against the government. Brandon’s family had lived in Arizona for nearly two centuries; forging a farmer-rancher lifestyle that Brandon still took part in. There were many accolades listed from law school and a list of multiple task forces and special interest groups that he worked with. Stella pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows before closing the browser. It impressed her that at least his employer, if not industry leaders, saw the promise in young Brandon Cage. Stella leaned back against the sofa, put her feet up on the pine coffee table and finished her coffee.
She made another cup and dropped a piece of sourdough bread into the toaster. She pulled her muck boots on and stepped onto the back deck to look out at the horses. They were standing in the pasture, grazing. Molly walked up to the fence, about fifty feet away from Stella, who made a mental note to ride Molly over the weekend. Molly was not working as much as Ranger, and Stella missed spending time with her old friend. She decided it was time to pick up another horse, so no horse was left alone in the pasture. She had plenty of grazing land on this mini ranch. She must message Jesse. He was coming soon and could bring one out from the ranch if they were looking to retire one of their horses. Stella didn’t need another workhorse, just a companion, mostly for Molly.
Stella sat at the new farmhouse table to eat her toast and drink more coffee. She opened the laptop again. Curiosity was getting the best of her this morning. She searched again for Brandon’s law firm, but this time focused the search on Texas lawsuits in the news. It was an imprecise search that yielded pages of results, most of which had nothing to do Brandon. Buried on page seven was an article on a cattle industry website. The suit involved dozens of large cattle ranchers fighting against the meatpackers’ monopoly. The photo heading the article showed the McGraw and Lipson legal team standing outside the courthouse. According to the article, they won a certain hearing, related to their case, which made a new law in Texas favoring the ranchers. Brandon was there and a beautiful, young blond woman stood beside him with her arm locked in his.
Stella closed the cover of the computer and walked back outside with Gus, leaving the coffee and toast untouched. She paced the length of the back porch three or four times, then walked to the garage to clean out the cab of her pickup. She didn’t know what to make of the image. She had no standing to be jealous; but she was. She turned the radio on as she cleaned, attempting to drown out the debate in her head. Stella wanted to be Brandon’s girl more than she knew. But seeing him entangled with the arms of another woman brought up that old default internal message. “All men will abandon you!” yelled from center stage.
An hour later, the cab of the pickup was more than clean. She called Gus into the house, grabbed the laptop and headed for town. Her inner angst needed an audience. Edna was all she had.
Maxine’s was busy with the usual breakfast and coffee crowd. Edna was in the kitchen when Stella walked in. She took a booth in the corner and sat facing the wall, avoiding eye contact with the patrons. Edna came by with coffee in hand about five minutes later.
“Well, what have we here? You look like a stray that’s been dumped by the side of the road.” Edna slid into the seat across from Stella. “You need some Edna love, don’t you? If you can hang around for a half hour, most of these folks will go away and I can sit with you. Until then, I’ll make you a special breakfast. That all right with you?”
“Thanks Edna.” As she rose to go back to work, Edna reached out to pat her friend’s hands, folded on the laptop in front of her.
“Hey Edna…” Stella called after her friend. “You have WiFi here, right?”
Edna reached into her pocket and handed Stella a piece of paper with the WiFi address and password typed out. “Sure do. That’s how I get the younger crowd to come in. They can use the WiFi as much as they want, but they have to order something besides water.”
Edna returned a short time later with a side of bacon and a short stack of pancakes topped with homemade strawberry compote and a whipped cream happy face. Stella couldn’t help but laugh at the gesture. Edna filled Stella’s coffee cup and promised to return to chat as soon as she could.
Stella finished all the breakfast she could eat and set the plates aside. She scooted further into the booth and opened her laptop, connecting to Maxine’s WiFi. She scrolled through her emails and started unsubscribing to the multitude of vendors that were now encouraging her to buy more furniture and home décor. Stella was done with furniture shopping, so she rid herself of this unwanted byproduct of online commerce.
Edna filled a coffee cup for herself and topped off Stella’s. She took the breakfast dishes to the kitchen and returned to talk to Stella.
“So, what’s caused this lost puppy dog look on this fine Saturday morning?” Stella took a sip of her coffee. “No, wait. Let me guess. I bet it has something to do with a certain handsome lawyer friend of yours. Have you heard from him? Did you figure out what that interview you did was all about?”
Stella slouched in her seat and tapped on her computer, pulling up the website she found with Brandon’s picture on it. “No, I haven’t heard from him. I dialed his number last night and then hung up when he didn’t answer.”
“You didn’t leave a message? What’s a guy supposed to think of that?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
“Okay. Something has set you off. Did Martin tell you something?”
“No. I saw Martin this week, and he hasn’t heard a thing either. He’s still stumped about that interview too. Brandon hasn’t followed up with either of us.”
“Well then, what is it that’s got your pretty peacock feathers so ruffled?”
“Look at this, would ya?” Stella turned the computer around for Edna to see. She patiently waited for a reaction while Edna looked at the page. There was none. “Come on. How can you be so cool?’
“It looks like they had a win in their case. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“Look closer. See that beautiful blonde in the dress? See how she’s hanging all over Brandon?”
“Nope. All I see is a big group getting close for their picture with big smiles on their faces.” Edna pushed the laptop back to Stella. “Stella, I don’t think you’ve been honest with yourself about how you feel about this guy.”
“That’s what half my brain said after I saw this picture and felt so jealous.”
“Yeah? And what did the other half of your brain say?”
“Every man will abandon you. That’s the tape that plays in my head repeatedly.”
“I can understand that after your experience with Hank, but you haven’t even talked to Brandon to see what the story is. Also, you’re the one who said, but didn’t exactly say, that you’re too busy for a relationship. Don’t you think you’re being a little unfair here?”
“It’s possible. Sounds mostly like I need a therapist.”
“Naw. You’ve got Edna to talk to.” She smiled. “What do you want to do now?”
“I don’t want to do anything except return to the bliss that was my life here in Watson before I saw that photo.”
“You are making much more out of this than what it is. That’s what I think. And another thing, you have way too much time on your hands when you’re not working and it’s making you irritable. Tell you what. I have someone covering for me tomorrow here at the diner. Jeff and I are heading out for a hike. He’s promised a great lunch if I do
the hike with him. You need to come along. I’m not taking ‘no’ for an answer.”
“Thanks for the offer. Don’t you need to check with Jeff first? It would be good for me to get out and work off some of this irritability I’m feeling. This is so odd for me. I never let guys get me wound up like this.”
“Honestly, you don’t let guys in your life so how would you know?”
“So true.” Stella looked into the eyes of her friend. “I’m so glad I met you.”
“That’s right. Best darn therapist you’ll never have to pay for!”
They laughed. Edna pulled out her phone. “I’ll let Jeff know you’re coming. What he doesn’t know is that I’m not much of a hiker. I can walk all day on this flat concrete floor here in the diner, but put me in the outdoors and I suddenly grow two left feet. It will be good to have you there to distract him from my incompetence.”
16
Jesse’s timing was perfect. A huge fire was raging in the national forest abutting the Rabbit Creek Ranch pasturelands. Stella needed the extra hand to push the cattle away from the forestland, across the river, and to new grazing pasture. It was about two weeks before ideal conditions for grazing in the new pasture, but under the circumstances the move was necessary.
This was Jesse’s first visit to Rabbit Creek Ranch and his first exposure to high desert ranching. His brow furrowed as he studied the landscape passing by as they drove closer and closer to the canyons. “How on earth do you raise cattle out here? There’s not enough grass to feed a momma and calf!”
Stella laughed. “I don’t raise them. They raise themselves out there.” She motioned across the pickup windshield toward the boulders, shrubs and dry grass. “They eat cactus and shrubs and survive on little water. I move them around so they can graze what grass there is and new plants and I drop off some supplements. They do all the rest on their own. Best calvers I’ve ever seen.”
Stella’s knowledge and confidence impressed her brother.
“That fool!” Stella slowed down to a crawl when she saw a red vehicle on the road near the entrance to the ranch land. As she moved closer, she recognized Brandon in the driver’s seat of a new Cadillac Escalade. Already feeling the pressure of the fire and the intense work before her, unresolved feelings of jealousy and mistrust bubbled up.
Stella shouted an unwelcoming line at him. “Brandon Cage, as I live and breathe, out here getting dusty with the hired hands.”
“Nice to see you, Stella. Looks like the fire’s going to cause some damage up there. Hope you got all your cattle in.” His piercing blue eyes held her fiery dark eyes steady.
Silently, she fumed. “How dare he show up, unannounced, in a shiny new vehicle without even letting me know he was back in Arizona!”
Stella assured him they had the situation under control and she shooed him off to the city to rub elbows with pretty women and the rest of the suits that think they know what ranchers need. She was unkind to him, but she couldn’t worry about that now. She needed to save the cattle. The possibility of the cattle panicking as the fire smoke moved into their territory worried Stella.
She felt Jesse looking at her, trying to figure out what just happened with Brandon. That was a story for another day or no day at all. “Let it rest, Jesse. We’ve got work to do.”
Jesse obliged as they unloaded their supplies, packed and saddled the horses and headed out to rescue cattle.
They spent two nights with the cattle. Stella and Jesse were both restless and eager to get the cattle as far away from the raging fire as possible. The second night, as they sat around the campfire, Stella noticed Jesse studying the ridgelines on the horizon. As his attention turned to the fire, she told him stories of her days at Winding Slough Ranch. Many colorful characters came and went at Winding Slough. Clara and Martin were magnets for the unique, and they saw value in the unconventional. Not all the hands they attracted were well suited to the work of the ranch.
Stella told of a young cowboy who was sweet on her. Suddenly she was reciting a poem that had been dancing in her head for weeks. Rhyming stanzas rolled off her tongue as she told a partially true story of a drinking, snuff-chewing cowboy who worked briefly at the ranch. He was sweet on Stella, but she didn’t give him the time of day. She focused on building her cowboy skills, so she had equal footing with any competent cowboy that came along.
Jesse was in awe of the fact that his sister wrote poetry. He wasn’t as awed by the prose she told, but he had found a special kinship with her. “I write a little, too. I don’t put a, what do you say, cadence, I guess, to it but I like to write.”
“Awesome! I had no idea. Tell you what. There’s a cowboy poet’s gathering coming up.” She got him to agree to go to the first night of the gathering, just to see what it was all about. Over the next week, they swapped stories and read some of each other’s writings.
The cowboy poet’s gathering was entertaining. Jesse not only enjoyed the song-like style of some cowboys’ recitations, but the lyrics themselves were entertaining. Some were serious and told stories of family history. Others were hysterical, and the poets had the crowd in tears. Halfway through the evening, Jesse leaned into Stella. “I think I’ve found my calling.”
She gave him a thumbs-up and his grin lasted the entire next week.
Jesse met a cowgirl artist at the event. Stella wrangled the two of them into a date the following weekend while she went to the ranch for a business meeting. Clara and Martin invited her to dinner with their accountant. They wanted to revisit their contingency plan. The recent fire prompted them to consider what would happen if the grazing land wasn’t available or there were other threats to the herd. The invitation to participate in this high-level meeting boosted Stella’s ego.
After dinner, the accountant excused herself. Martin asked Stella to stay. He had something to discuss with her. When he returned from walking the accountant to her car, Martin pulled a letter from his vest pocket. “You remember that meeting we had a few months ago with Brandon? We were right to question his motives.”
Stella’s eyes grew wide as she took the letter from Martin.
“Go ahead, read it. You’ll be as shocked as I am.”
The letter was written on stationery from an agricultural law association Stella had never heard of. “What is this association? Have you ever heard of them before?”
Clara responded. “I did some research on them. It looks like it’s a group for lobbyists, attorneys and the high mucky-mucks in the agriculture industry associations. I had never heard of them before. Martin, you didn’t know them either, right?”
“That’s right. After I got this letter, I called Brandon. He told me about the association and gave me more information on this award. It’s an annual thing they do, and it’s the granddaddy of the awards for that show. Finish reading Stella.” Martin nodded to Stella to continue reading.
Stella read the punch line out loud. “The Agriculture Law Association of America will recognize Winding Slough Ranch and the affiliated ranches operated by Martin and Clara Drake at the annual convention with the Excellence in Agriculture Award. Specifically, the innovation, animal health, and consumer voice aspects of your operation, based on the submission by Brandon Cage of the McGraw and Lipson law firm, will be highlighted during the presentation.”
Stella’s hands dropped to the table. She looked at Martin and Clara. “Congratulations! This says you will get the award next month at the big stock show in Colorado. That’s amazing!”
She re-read parts of the letter. Her stomach churned.
“I called Brandon up right when I got this. It had me scratching my head. He apologized for being less than forthright when he met with us. Apparently their firm worked up six applications for consideration, and ours was the one they submitted to this organization. He couldn’t tell us what he was doing in case they didn’t choose us. I let Brandon know that we both felt a little uneasy after our meeting.”
Stella turned pale. Clara reached out and rubb
ed her palm across Stella’s shoulder. “Honey, are you all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“I’m fine. It’s just that I wasn’t very nice to Brandon. He showed up at Rabbit Creek last week, out of the blue, when Jesse and I were heading out to move the cattle away from the fire. This clandestine effort to get information for this big award, and some other stuff with Brandon has me unsettled. He must think I’m ungrateful.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Martin returned to the table and poured them each more decaf. “I told him we can’t go to the stock show to accept the award. We will help with the presentation materials he asked for and all that, but Clara’s getting a new knee and we won’t be able to travel.”
“Oh, Clara! I didn’t know.”
“It’s fine, dear. I should have done it two years ago, but I hate being laid up. We didn’t know about this award when we scheduled surgery. And now that I have my nerve up, I will not cancel.”
“That’s right. I’ve seen people wait too long and suffer unnecessarily. My grandpa was like that and after the surgery and recovery he said he regretted waiting so long.” Stella remembered her mom’s dad living with them for the recovery period when she was in junior high. He was a sweet man who had since passed on.
“I asked Brandon if we could send a representative since there was no way we could go. He assured me that we can send whoever we want. When I suggested I would ask you, he lit up like a Christmas tree. He didn’t seem to harbor any ill-will at all.”
“That’s a relief, but I will reach out to him and apologize. My stress got the best of me.”
“Let it rest. It’ll all work out.” Clara never missed an opportunity to share her optimism. It had carried her through many a hardship in life.
“There’s more.” Martin and Clara had their heads together earlier, wanting to make this a big affair for their surrogate child.