by Aqua Allsopp
Lizbeth chose the Coates Ranch, and its owner and head cowboy, Steven Wayne Coates because of its rich history and the type of cattle it raises—Hereford, Irish beef.
Lizbeth stared out of the window at the ominous dark clouds rolling across the sky off in the distance. The contrast of roiling, black clouds side-by-side with clear blue sky and summer sunshine mesmerized her to the point that she did not notice that Alice had returned with her salad and tea.
“Here you go sugar”, Alice said as she placed Lizbeth’s meal on the table while reading the upside letters on Lizbeth's notebook. “You a guest at the Coates ranch Shug?” Alice asked.
Lizbeth smiled pleasantly at Alice saying, “no, I’m a journalist writing a story on West Texas cowboys. I hope to interview Mr. Coates for an article.”
“Good luck with that one. That crusty old fart ain’t really a people person if you know what I mean. He does much better with them that’s got four legs than the ones with two. He’s especially bad with women, they don’t hang around too long. Ha, ha, the last time he gave a woman the time of day was probably his mama; ha, ha, ha, good luck with Coates sweetie,” Alice said as she sauntered back into the kitchen.
Lizbeth ate her salad in silence, preoccupied with thoughts of how to get an interview with Steven Coates, and the distant brewing storm.
Lizbeth finished her meal and handed Lady a bone-shaped biscuit under the table for being a good girl. As they exited the diner, she heard a man’s voice saying, “I didn’t know there was a dog in here!” Lady enjoyed the continuing ride with nose lifted skyward as the scent of the storm tickled her nostrils.
*****
The thick, turbulent clouds seemed to grow darker and darker as they rolled closer and closer to Lizbeth’s speeding Jeep. The photographer in Lizbeth couldn’t resist stopping to take a photo, estimating that the storm was still several miles away. Lizbeth opened the back door and allowed Lady to roam the area, only Lady wouldn’t move. Instead, Lady went sniff, sniff, snort at Lizbeth’s mouth and nose. Then instinctively Lady began to nudge Lizbeth’s shoulder, staring at her, waiting for a response. Lizbeth reached into her pocket and pulling out a special treat for Lady, a hunk of deer jerky for alerting Lizbeth to changes in her chemistry that signaled an impending medical crisis.
Lady took the treat and ate it slowly, savoring the flavor. Then she bounds out of the car for a look around. “Stay close, Lady,” Lizbeth warned. Lady looks up in acknowledgment of the command and wanders only a few feet away. After downing a pill, Lizbeth uses her best lens to get close-up photos of the distant darkened skies, juxtaposed against a baby-blue vista.
Lizbeth, clicking away at her digital camera, immersed in the sites she was capturing, suddenly, dropped her camera, her entire body began to spasm and writhe under an invisible assault from within. Lizbeth fell to the ground, her head crashing into a rock.
Lady stopped investigating the interesting pile on the ground and trotted over to Lizbeth, smelling her head and face before racing into action. Lady ran off in search of the nearest human to get help for her handler, in the way that she was trained to do in service dog school.
The only problem is that Lady and Lizbeth were in the middle of nowhere on a West Texas highway and the diner is, at least, 10-miles away.
Lady runs, stops and “sniffs, sniffs, and snorts” at the air. No smell of human in any direction. She turns her head left then right and repeats the process—nothing. Lady bounds off at a racer’s pace, stops and “sniff, sniff, snorts” at the air. She turns her head left then right, then her body completely around, then back one hundred eighty degrees. Lady finally catches the scent of something and decides to chase it down.
“This smell is interesting,” Lady thinks, “I’ve never been up close to one of these before. I’ve smelled it in the distance but never this close. I want to know what it is. It has a powerful odor. I have to see it, inhale it, store it in my memory of creatures I’ve smelled. Where is it? It’s moving away from me, fast, I’m going to lose it. There it is, there it is! Lady thought. Woof-woof! Woof-woof! It has a human on top of it!” Lady thought, with shock and surprise.
*****
Lady stops ten feet in front of a beautiful white stallion with a six-foot six-inch cowboy, wearing a white Resistol cowboy hat reminiscent of President LBJ, but with the modern look of Resistol’s Tarrant line of hats. The cowboy’s Silverbelly Tarrant cowboy hat with its four-inch brim, and on the hat’s crown, a one-inch leather hat band, with a silver three-piece-buckle.
The cowboy’s handsomely rugged face resembled a forty-five-year-old version of the actor, Taylor Kitsch, his intense green eyes peering down scrutinizingly from his horse.
“Woof-woof, woof-woof!” Lady said. She was curious about the animal that she has finally gotten close enough to investigate, but her mission was to find a human, and she had.
“Now who do we have here? Where did you come from pretty girl?” The cowboy asked Lady as he slowly climbed down from his horse. He walked over to Lady, baby-talking her into tranquility. Looking at her pink bandana and pink identification tags, the cowboy saw that her name was Lady and that she was not local because she had a 704 telephone area code on her tag. He also found a medical alert tag on Lady’s collar that read Lizbeth Collins - Epilepsy on the back of the tag.
The cowboy’s heart skipped a beat before he asked Lady, “is your mama in trouble girl?” Lady began to back away from him. The cowboy took a few steps towards her and watched as her tail gave him a happy wag. The cowboy eased closer and Lady spun around and took a chase me stance. “Do you want me to follow you, girl?” Lady began to trot off, the cowboy walked back to his horse and mounted the majestic stallion. Hearing the sound of hooves behind her, Lady began to sprint back toward Lizbeth.
The cowboy kept a watchful eye on the storm clouds as he followed Lady back to her owner. He did not know the woman, but he feared for her safety on two accounts. He assumed since Lady was on her own, a long way from home and out on the range, but too clean to have been abandoned, her owner must be in some kind of trouble, most likely of a medical nature.
The other reason the cowboy was concerned for a woman he has never met was because a funnel cloud was forming and heading towards the woman’s general direction. By his estimation he may have less than one hour to get her, Lady and himself to safety.
Lady bounds as fast as she can back to Lizbeth. Arriving at the site, she licks at Lizbeth’s face, attempting to wake her. She sniffs the blood running down Lizbeth’s temple and began to whine as the cowboy kneeled down to give Lizbeth aid.
Feeling the pulse at her carotid artery and the sensation of Lizbeth’s breath on his ear as he pressed it to her mouth to hear if she was breathing, he knew that she was alive, but the way that her eyes were fixed at some point in the sky, staring unblinkingly into space she looked dead to the cowboy.
Sensing that they were all running out of time to beat the approaching tornado back to shelter, he locked Lizbeth’s car, grabbed her camera, slinging it over his shoulder, and lifted Lizbeth onto his horse. Her body lying as limp as a rag doll over his horse, he galloped towards safety as fast as Lady could run, not wanting to leave the dog behind.
As he approached the sight of buildings, Lizbeth began to stir. He slowed to a trot and helped her to sit upright on the horse. Still too disoriented to ask questions, Lizbeth looked up into the cowboy’s face for answers. He said, “There’s no time for introductions. I think you had a seizure, your dog found me and brought me to you. I’m taking you to a cellar on the ranch,” pointing to the sky he said, “because a tornado is heading this way.”
Lizbeth was frightened. “Some strange man is riding me, on horseback, to a cellar on what I think may be the Coates ranch. I see
a funnel cloud in the sky and feel the wind picking up. Lady seems tired but fine, so his story is checking out so far, but what if he keeps me trapped in his cellar for the next ten years? Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-myoho-renge-kyo, Nam-m
yoho-renge-kyo!” Lizbeth said to herself and to the universe, praying for a good outcome for herself and Lady.
Arriving at what looked to be a small barn, the cowboy dismounted his horse then gently helped Lizbeth to dismount. “Good girl Lady,” Lizbeth said as she nuzzled Lady’s neck before they bravely followed the cowboy and his horse down a ramp and into a cement-lined basement beneath the barn.
“I was just about to almost get worried about you Young-Buck,” said a grizzled voice, coming from one of the half-dozen men and women huddled in the basement. “I see you brought company,” he went on to say.
The cowboy turned to Lizbeth and said, “We’re all about to get very friendly here in a minute under this table when the tornado touches down. So I guess this is as good a time as any for introductions. I’m Buck. The loud-mouthed old man over there is P.H. Coates, Jr., this is a family ranch and most of the folks who work here are blood family or guilty by association.
“I’m Mavis, P.H.’s sister”, a handsome cowgirl in her 60s or 70s, spoke up and introduced herself, followed by a swirl of names that Lizbeth was still to discombobulated to remember.
“Have you ever been close to a tornado before?” The cowboy asked Lizbeth, who shook her head no, as she clutched her dog, Lady, pulling her arm up to the elbow through the dog’s harness webbing to hold on to her during the storm. As the noise outside picked up and the storm cellar door began to rattle, Lizbeth heard the cowboy whisper in her ear, “you’re okay, I’m right here”, as he held her close with one hand and gripped a support beam with the other.
The wind whipped and roared like a passing train just outside the cellar door. The three naked light-bulbs shook and flickered as a gust of air strong enough to shove the huddled group even closer together swept through the confines of the tiny, dimly lit room that smelled of soil and moisture. The sound of the train lasted for an eternity, Lizbeth thought, then the storm stopped, allowing the people in the room to breathe a collective sigh of relief.
As the storm cellar occupants crawled out from under their table storm shelter, Lizbeth moved with lethargy. “Now that’s a fine how do you do!” Mavis said about the storm. The unfazed cellar occupants laughed, stretched and dusted themselves off. “You never did say your name,” Mavis said to Lizbeth.
Lizbeth took a step toward Mavis out of the brace of Buck’s strong arms in order to introduce herself to Mavis properly, instead, she fell into the woman’s arms as the room began to spin.
“Sugar, you okay?” Mavis asked as Buck held on to Lizbeth’s weak body. Lizbeth was both embarrassed by her weak and dazed state and impressed with the strength of the older woman Mavis.
“I’m sorry,” Lizbeth said as Buck lifted her off her feet. “My name is Lizbeth Collins. I’m a Mayflower descendant. I’m also a freelance writer for Travel + Leisure magazine and a graduate of Harvard’s School of Journalism. I’m here to interview the owner of the Coates Ranch for a series of articles that I’m writing on the North American Cowboy”.
Buck swung around and headed out of the cellar with Lizbeth in his arms, practically yelling in her face, “just your name’ll do, we don’t need to know your pedigree, it ain’t like you’re a heffer we’re fixin’ a buy.”
Buck’s comments got another round of leg slaps and belly laughs from P.H, Mavis, and the rest of the cellar crowd. Even Lizbeth managed to laugh at herself, feeling foolish that she was insecure enough to offer these nice folks a resume instead of a proper greeting. “Well nice to meet you, Elizabeth.” Mavis said.
“Nice to meet you Mavis, but my name is just Liz-Beth, no e,” Lizbeth yelled over Buck’s shoulder.
“Come on, let’s get you looked at by a doctor,” Buck said, as he walked out into the sunlight with Lizbeth in his arms, her head resting on his chest, which looked like two Christmas hats under his shirt.
The cowboy—Buck continued as he walked up the cellar ramp, with the rest of the group following behind, curious about the strange young woman he found. “This here dog came up and found me and brought me back to Ms. Elizabeth. I think she had a seizure when she stopped to take photos, and the she hit her head on a rock when she fell. She was still out cold when we found her.” Lizbeth was nodding in agreement at Buck’s recounting of the day’s events.
“You don’t say sweetie!” As Mavis gently rubbed Lizbeth’s back. “Well, you get her on up to the main house Buck and make sure she stays awake until Doc Smith can get around to look at her head. With this storm, he might be here after a while, but he’ll come. I’ll give him a call directly.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Buck responded, gently helping Lizbeth back onto his horse. “This is Alban, Ms. Elizabeth. I figure y’all should meet since you’re riding him.”
Lizbeth bent forward and stroked Alban’s white main and gave him a kiss saying, “thank you for rescuing me Alban.” Then looking up at the handsome Buck Lizbeth sheepishly said, “thank you too for rescuing me Buck.” As Lizbeth gave him a gentle peck on the cheek.
Buck blushed, tipped his hat to Lizbeth and said, “It wasn’t anything any man wouldn’t do.”
Giving Alban two gentle tugs on the reins and yelling, “come on Lady-girl.” Lizbeth sank into Buck’s strong but gentle grip around her waist as Alban trotted up to the beautiful, sprawling, two-story white house on the hill.
Buck showed Lizbeth to a guest room saying, “Now, you lay still but don’t fall asleep or Mavis will tan my hide, Ms. Elizabeth.”
“You don’t have to call me Miss, just Lizbeth.”
“Okay, Elizabeth it is then. So you’re here to interview Steve Coates? Well, Steve and P.H. are two different animals but he’s a real cowboy alright.” Buck continued, “Do you think people really care about the life of a cowboy?” Obviously, a rhetorical question because he went on to say, “They don’t want to know where their food comes from, how it got to their local store or restaurant. They’re not even interested in the people who work hard in all types of weather conditions to get it there. They just want their steak or hamburger hot and fast. So why write about cowboys, they’re simple folk, not celebrities,” Buck said.
“Well, that’s the point—ouch!” Lizbeth said, becoming animated and excited by Buck’s words and sitting up suddenly in the bed, causing a sharp pain in her head.
“Simmer down Elizabeth, we’re just talking to pass away the time. You’ve got a little fight in you for such a tiny woman.” Buck said with a half grin, and looking almost admiringly at Lizbeth, causing her to blush a bit.
“Sorry, I’m just passionate about this project Buck. What you said about people not caring about the process or the people that get their food to the stores and onto their tables is the point. We spend more time as a society obsessing about Quarterback Cam Newton’s zebra striped and yellow swirled skinny, rocker pants than we do the hard work and dedication of the cowboys and other ranch staff that raise the cows that we eat for dinner. They don’t respect the history and traditions and all of the skills that go into being a cowboy, and frankly most Americans think cowboys in the 21st Century are just rodeo entertainers and movie characters. I want to show the real modern cowboy and ranch life to our national and international readers. If I do my job right cowboys like you and P.H. will earn the respect that you deserve and ranches will get more of the tourists that they are coming to depend on for survival, beyond making a living on just farming and cattle raising.” Lizbeth said with passion and conviction.
“Well, there is a little substance to you after all Harvard,” Buck said with a wide grin. “Well, I don’t know if it will help but I’ll put in a good word for you with P.H. With any luck, he’ll agree to let you interview him.”
“Oh, I hope to do more than that. I would love to follow him around and watch P.H. and the rest of the ranch do its work. I would love to spend a week or two getting inside the head of an authentic West Texas cowboy,” Lizbeth said excitedly.
“Inside of P.H.’s head might not be as interesting as you think, and a sight scarier
than you care to know.” Buck said with a hearty laugh, causing Lizbeth to laugh too, which only made her head throb more.
“Be straight with me. You seem like a pretty strong woman and I’m sure you’ve had seizures before, but you took a pretty hard whack on the head when you fell and Lady had to run at least 10-minutes even if she caught my scent and ran directly to me. That means you were unconscious around 25-minutes or so, give or take, either from the knock on the head or the seizure, or both.” Laying a gentle hand on her shoulder, and lightly moving her hair away from her face to uncover her wound, Buck said, “I’d feel a lot better if we took you to the hospital to get looked at. Would you do that for me?”
Staring into her eyes with all of the care and sincerity that Buck displayed, Lizbeth thought to herself, “I’d do just about anything you asked right now,” but thought better of it and responded by saying, “Sure I’ll go to the hospital to get examined Buck.”
“Good, wait right her,” Buck said as he stood up and left the room. Lizbeth’s head was reeling. She was totally falling for this cowboy—ranch hand. “Don’t do it, Lizbeth,” she told herself. “You’re only here for a story then you’re going back to your home on the East coast, never to see any of these people again. So don’t go falling for this Buck person. What kind of a name is Buck anyway?” Lizbeth thought to herself as Buck’s tall frame darkened the guestroom door.
Buck was carrying bowls of food and water for Lady, and a bottle of water tucked under his arm for Lizbeth. Lady’s head perked up when she smelled the food, but following her training, she did not approach the bowl until given the command to eat. “What’s wrong girl, are you worried about your mama? This is for you, Buck said rubbing the top of Lady’s head as laid there looking at the delicious meal.
“She’s waiting for the command,” Lizbeth said. “Lady, eat!” Lizbeth instructed softly. At the command, Lady jumped up and quickly devoured the food and the entire bowl of water, then ambled over to Buck and licked the hand dangling freely at his left side.