by Claire Adams
The idea of breaking in a horse seemed like torture to me when my father first explained things. We had to walk her on a lead rope at all times. I couldn’t spend a lot of time petting her or grooming her until she learned how to behave. It didn’t seem fair. But soon my father explained that the reason she had been sticking around the ranch was likely because the other horses had ostracized her. They didn’t want her with them, so it was our job to give her a home; that made so much sense to me.
“This is Buckjoy,” my father said as he held the rope of a wild horse.
“Dad, you can’t keep bringing home wild things and thinking they are going to like you saddling them up.”
“I think Bambi would disagree with you.”
“She was special. We just have a bond, but I was here to train her and show her she was safe. I don’t think it’s going to work like that for all wild horses.”
After my father struggled with training Bambi, I stepped up and offered to give it a try. I was only a teenager, but I felt like the horse liked me and would listen to me. Sure enough, Bambi ended up liking me very much and wanting to be good so she would get praise. That was what I found as a key to bonding with the horses: I had to find a reason for the animal to like me.
Sometimes animals weren’t all that easy to convince that they liked you. Bambi hadn’t really fallen in love with me until I started sneaking her apples before my father would get up. Then she spent the rest of the morning being nice to me in hopes that she would get another apple. I finally started incorporating feeding the horses apples as a way of building up trust with them and it really started to work well.
“Well, you are home again, so try and tame Buckjoy. I need a new horse for myself and I’d like a nice, strong one like him. I’ve been riding out to the river and it’s exhausting the horses we have. I need a wild one that can handle that kind of range.”
“Why are you going to the river?” I asked.
Although, the river was certainly one of the most beautiful aspects of our land. It was nearly ten miles north of the house and not accessible by car unless we used the off-road vehicle. My father had brought me out to the river area several times over the years and the trek up and over the mountains used to scare me to death. But as I got older, I realized that by just slowing down and keeping in control of the horse, I could make it up and over the mountain with relatively no issues.
“I’m thinking of selling the land north of the river. I’ve been going out there to put some fencing up and take photos for a listing. Although my photos have turned out horrible.”
“What? Dad, no. You can’t sell off part of the ranch. I’m here now. I’m going to help make things work. Why would you even consider this?”
“Honey, it’s not just about taking care of the animals anymore. We really don’t have the money to keep this whole place up and running. I think it’s fine to sell off that piece; we hardly use it, only for some occasional cattle running. It will bring in some good money and help keep the rest of the ranch afloat.”
“How about I take a look at the books and see if there are any other options?” I offered. “That land is worth more and more money every year you hold onto it. Perhaps you’d be best to wait a few more years.”
I did have my MBA from Harvard, the least I could do was look at the financials of the ranch and see if there was anything we could be doing better. Running a ranch was a huge undertaking. I didn’t even have to look at the books to know that my father probably hadn’t been keeping track of things as closely as he needed to be.
In order to run a successful business of any kind, there had to be very close monitoring of the financials. Even the smallest of mistakes could cost a business their profits. I hadn’t gotten my chance to fully run the financials for a business yet, but I had run them for the marketing division of my company. Not only did I cut back in unneeded expenses, but my department made twice as much as we had been predicted to do.
The problem with running a very efficient group of people was that my organization started to think they didn’t need me anymore. They believed the high functioning staff that worked for me could handle all the jobs that I had done. I wasn’t sure they would be as good as me.
But I wasn’t sure I had the energy to train Buckjoy. He was a big horse and full of energy and I was emotionally exhausted from just losing my job. I didn’t have that passion for the horses yet, but I did have a passion for my father. I would do anything for him, and if that meant training a wild horse, I’d give it my best shot and I knew that was exactly what my father wanted me to do.
“Okay,” he said reluctantly. “But you also need to train Buckjoy for me.”
“Deal.”
I was surprised he had agreed to let me look at the books. I had offered once before while I was in college and my father had vehemently denied my offer. My father was a proud man and I’m sure he didn’t want to admit defeat when it came to his ranch. I knew that by agreeing to allow me to look at his books, my father was agreeing that his ranch wasn’t doing well at all. It took a lot of insight for my father to finally be at a place where he truly understood the financial peril the ranch was in.
Operating a ranch had been a very lucrative endeavor as I was growing up, or so it seemed from where I was looking in on things. We always had a bustling group of ranch hands and even two or three men who had stayed on for many years. In his prime, my father had managed the men himself, but in recent years, he had the man with the most seniority in charge of the other men.
Currently we only had one supervisor over the ranch hands, Walter, and one assistant to him, Forest. Walter was getting ready to leave and I didn’t know much about Forest at all. He was relatively new to me. I had heard of him, but he hadn’t been at the ranch when I came home over Christmas. But that was how things were going lately: the good guys ended up leaving and moving on to larger ranches that were operated by big conglomerates. The larger ranches typically had better hours for about the same pay, so I couldn’t blame them for wanting to move on.
I grabbed the reins of Buckjoy and the horse instantly started to buck with irritation. I could see how he had gotten his name. The horse didn’t scare me though; I saw the fear in his eyes and I knew I just had to step a few steps backward and away from him to get him to calm a little. As I moved toward the door of the barn, I saw the horse start to calm.
“He’s not used to having a woman around,” said a man from the other side of the barn.
“Ah, Garrett, this is my daughter, Sarah,” my Dad said as he motioned for Garrett to come join us.
Suddenly I remembered that I was supposed to have saved some food from breakfast for Garrett. But then again, he hadn’t shown up by the time I cleaned up, so he was out of luck. Any man who couldn’t be bothered to get up at breakfast time wasn’t going to last long around the ranch anyways.
The men that my father kept around on the ranch were hard workers. They weren’t the kind of men who let others do work for them while they sat and watched. Usually when a guy arrived on the ranch, he had already worked at several other places and knew what it was going to be like. They knew how to wake themselves up in the morning, and most of all, they knew that if you didn’t eat breakfast, it was going to make for a really exhausting day. Obviously, this Garrett guy had a few lessons he needed to learn still.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Garrett said as he reached his hand out to shake mine. “Do you mind?” He asked and then grabbed the reins from me, without waiting for me to answer.
“I guess not,” I muttered.
“Garrett has been working with the horses for the last couple of weeks. He’s new at it though, so he’ll need your guidance. But Buckjoy seems to like him. It’s a good sign, I think.”
It was true; I watched as Garrett gently moved his hand down the main of Buckjoy and the horse instantly calmed. I tried not to take it personally, but a little piece of me was pissed off that the horse favored this stranger. Well, he was a stranger to
me at least and as I stood there watching Garrett and my father interact, I realized my father really did like the guy.
My father always tended to like the strangest ranch hands. Sometimes he would even favor guys who looked like they had just gotten off a bus directly from New York City without a single shred of experience on a ranch.
Once, I had confronted my father on his favoritism. There had been a man who came to us in the middle of the night and literally didn’t even know what a pair of cowboy boots were. He was an arrogant asshole and refused to work at all. My father let him stay with us in the house for a whole week before the man finally moved on. When I confronted him about it, my father had told me that everyone needed a helping hand at some point in their life. It baffled me and angered me, but mostly because I felt like there was much more to the story than he was letting on.
“You’re not experienced with horses?” I questioned. He certainly seemed to know what he was doing as he had Buckjoy practically purring like a kitten in front of him.
“Never even seen a horse until I got here a couple of weeks ago.”
“Beginner’s luck,” I said softly under my breath.
“Sarah, he’s a hard worker. Be nice to him and teach him what he needs to know about the horses, please.”
My father didn’t look impressed with my snarky attitude toward the stranger and I instantly changed it. I knew better than to make my father angry. There was one thing in the world that I always knew for a fact: my father knew a good man from a bad one. Over the years, my father had worked with thousands of men, and even a few women, at the ranch; he had always been able to tell the hard workers from the wannabes. Even when he said a man was a good man and let him stay for a week without working, I knew deep down that my father had to have some sort of reasoning for this.
“What have you learned so far?” I asked Garrett.
“Oh, pretty much just how to shovel shit,” he laughed.
Both my father and I laughed with him. It was true, the first few weeks a ranch hand was at our place, my father typically had them shoveling poop. It was a great way to test the character of a man. Some of the men would refuse out of pride or whatever else was going on and that just baffled me. Cleaning up after the animals was just as important as any other job on the ranch. The men who understood this did much better and lasted much longer on the ranch.
I get it, shoveling shit isn’t the most glamorous of jobs. But if horses walked around in their own shit all the time, they were more likely to get infections and become ill. That cost the ranch money, not to mention it was gross. Being a rancher wasn’t just about playing with piglets and selling cattle. It was about caring for the animals in every aspect.
“And sleeping in?” I joked.
“God, I don’t know how they do it. Everyone insists I’ll be able to adjust and get up when everyone else does, but apparently, I just haven’t learned yet. I think there’s some sort of trick to it that no one is telling me. But I’m up for a little hazing if that’s what’s going on.”
Garrett smiled and seemed very easy going. I couldn’t help but like him a little bit more than I had when he had taken Buckjoy from me. His bright, blue eyes were mesmerizing as he looked at me and I felt like a bit of a schoolgirl with a crush. Of course, I wasn’t about to admit that to anyone. I didn’t have time for men in my life. I needed to make some big career and life decisions and having a man around was just going to fuzzy up the process.
“I’m sorry, I forgot to save some breakfast for you this morning; I’ll remember for tomorrow.”
“You’re making breakfast tomorrow? Maybe that’s the motivation I need to get my ass up in the morning,” Garrett said as he winked at me.
“I’ll leave you two to work. See you at dinner, dear,” my father said with a quick peck to my cheek. “Garrett, remember that fox I killed last week that was running around the hen house?”
“Yes, sir,” Garrett laughed.
“I bet you can imagine what I’d do if there was a fox around my daughter,” my father laughed as he slapped Garrett on the back and walked away.
“Oh, Dad, don’t be so dramatic.”
Garrett was laughing, but I could tell he was leery about even being near me after what my father had said. He and my father seemed to get along well though and that was a huge plus for Garrett. My father didn’t take many people under his wing like he was doing with Garrett, so if he already liked the man, I knew he was just being a jokester about Garrett hanging around me.
“I better get back to shoveling,” Garrett said and handed me the reins.
“You know he was kidding, right?”
“Oh, yeah, but I do have lots to do still.”
Garrett made his way back to the first stall in the barn and I watched him every step of the way. He was much more handsome than the ranch hands we normally had. His tall, muscular frame should make the work easier on him, but even a man who thought he was in great shape was typically surprised by the amount of work that ranch hands actually put in each day.
Garrett looked more like a preppy businessman who was pretending to be a ranch hand, but sometimes that happened around our ranch, too. Young men would get sick and tired of the life they were leading and up and decide they wanted to be free as they took off on a trip around the country. Sooner or later, they would run out of their money and have to find work in order to sustain their new roadie lifestyle, and that’s when they would come to us.
I wasn’t sure that was what was going on with Garrett though. He really seemed to be new to everything farm-related and didn’t even look like he was comfortable wearing his cowboy boots and jeans. I would have to make an effort to get to know him a little and see what had brought him to our ranch.
I watched as his blond hair bobbed up and down in the horse stall while he shoveled it clean. His hair was shaggy and looked like it had been professionally cut recently, which surprised me because most the men who showed up to work on the ranch had been drifting around for a while before they landed with us. They certainly weren’t paying money to get their hair cut.
“Do you have gloves?” I asked, as I put Buckjoy in his spot and walked over to Garrett.
“Who needs gloves?” Garrett joked as he held up his hands that were full of blisters. “These are the hands of a highly skilled shit shoveler.”
“Oh, God. Have you never worked at all? Those are horrible,” I laughed, but then felt bad. His hands were indeed in very bad shape.
“I’m more of a supervisor than a worker bee normally, but I’ll manage.”
“Here, let me get you some gloves. Those need to be drained and cleaned, too. Come see me at lunchtime and I’ll fix you up,” I said.
Garrett flashed a smile at me and my knees went weak; it caught me off guard and I grabbed onto the side of the barn to stabilize myself. I certainly wasn’t used to a good-looking ranch hand being around me and was even less comfortable with him flirting with me. If that was what he was doing? I hadn’t been flirted with in a long time, so I wasn’t even sure I knew it when a man was doing it.
Quickly I turned toward the cabinets on the other end of the building and grabbed him a pair of leather gloves. They were my father’s, but it was clear that Garrett needed them more than anyone.
“Put these on,” I ordered.
“Yes, ma’am,” Garrett said as he snatched them from the air when I threw them. “Do you always give the order around here?”
His voice was light-hearted and his smile brilliantly white. I knew he was teasing me, but I wasn’t sure I was able to handle it. My life was in ruins and I had only come home to gather the pieces; I really didn’t have time for flirting; even if he was one of the most delicious men I had ever laid eyes on.
“I do have to give orders from time to time,” I said as I grinned back at him. “I’ll see you at lunch.”
I didn’t wait for his response and quickly left the building. My heart pounded with excitement at the interaction I had just had. T
here was something about Garrett that drew me to him. Maybe it was his smile, or his handsome good looks; or maybe it was just that my father seemed to like him. I wasn’t exactly sure, but I knew I was going to enjoy having him around this summer.
Chapter 3
Garrett
My isolation at the Miller ranch was suddenly looking up quite a bit. I hadn’t actually seen a woman in weeks, besides Mrs. Miller, and Sarah Miller was just the woman I needed to take my mind off the torturous work I was doing.
My mind was filled with all sorts of ideas about what I could do while I was at the ranch. How I could continue to build my company, better myself, plan out my testimony. But instead of being able to concentrate on any of the things I had wanted to, I was physically exhausted. My body hurt more in the few weeks I had been on the ranch than it had hurt after I ran a marathon just out of college.
Before coming to the ranch, I had imagined what it would be like to work all day and thought I could handle it. I was used to working hard at my company, but my work allowed me the opportunity to do much of it from behind a desk. Physical labor wasn’t something I had ever been afraid of and hard work was comfortable to me, but the past few weeks had felt more like a concentration camp than a place of work. I couldn’t imagine how anyone would willingly choose this as their job. The physical exhaustion was taking its toll on me.
Not only were my hands torn up and bloodied, but my whole body felt like I was only moments away from collapsing. Every night when I crawled into bed, I couldn’t imagine being able to wake up and actually move my body. I couldn’t read a book and I could barely write my ideas down in my journal before the sleep took over. Yet, day after day, I was up and working again in the horse stables. I was proud of myself for not complaining and trying to fit in with everyone.
My job there was temporary and I knew that. I had a court hearing coming up and if I could just get through a few weeks of working, then I’d be able to get back to my normal life. Although, I was a little concerned that I wouldn’t ever be able to get back to any sort of normal life. Frank Gordano wanted me dead, even if I testified against him and he got sent away to jail, I wasn’t sure I would ever really be safe. It was one of many thoughts that rolled through my mind as I fell asleep at night.