by Hondo Jinx
Inside, Pa nodded. Brawley could smell coffee and beans and tortillas.
A short time later, the dogs went back outside, and lights came through the windows, bouncing up and down as Juan’s pickup approached over the rough washboard road.
The Chevy stopped outside. The doors creaked open, and Pa’s two hired hands emerged.
A few years older than Pa, Juan was a top hand, a weathered caballero with sand in his veins. With him rode his grandson, eighteen-year-old Hector, a tough kid who had a way with horses and was learning more about cattle every day.
The men went to the old silver percolator and poured coffee into the chipped ceramic mugs that had hung in this barn for decades. They drank in customary silence, the coffee hot and bitter and good.
At five on the dot, Pa brought out a platter of tortillas and beans and hot sauce.
The men bowed their heads.
Pa’s deep voice spoke, gravelly as the surrounding land. “Heavenly Father, we thank you for your many blessings. Thy will be done. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Standing beside the barrel, the men ate in silence. This was their breakfast, and this was their way, each man left to his own thoughts.
Five minutes later, the meal was finished. Starting earlier meant ending earlier. Come midday, the brutal brass furnace of the sun would scorch the sky, baking the earth and every man and beast brazen enough to leave the shade.
Speaking hardly a word, the men gathered their gear and readied the horses.
Brawley saddled Redbone, soothing the beast with an emanation of goodwill, and slid the Winchester into its scabbard.
They mounted up and rode out, flanked by collies, to push the herd toward new forage—and, more importantly, away from whatever had killed the steer atop Pink Bluff.
The work pleased Brawley. It was good to be back on the ranch, cowboying atop his big, red horse, good to be back among the cattle.
The Texas longhorn is a rugged beast, lean and rangy, well-suited for life in West Texas.
They graze evenly, ranging far from the water holes, and survive where other cattle would die, subsisting on a diet of sage brush, prickly pear, and patchy native grasses poking up out of the sand and gravel.
They are tough, intelligent, and independent, much like the men who run them, and never more than a single generation from going wholly wild again.
You have to work them or live with the consequences. Unsocialized longhorns are crafty enough to know when you’re trying to herd them. They’ll hide, jump fences, even turn and fight if you don’t get behind them and work them right.
As the men reached Pink Bluff and started the slow drive toward a fresh stand of switchgrass, the sun broke blood red over the eastern horizon, pinkening the range and casting the longhorn’s colorful hides in rosy hues.
Thanks to opening his Bestial strand, Brawley felt a strong connection to Redbone and the collies. The horse and dogs were relaxed yet alert. Their contentedness played at the edge of his consciousness like soft music.
He also sensed the spirit of the longhorns as they moved sullenly across the trampled ground. They were a low-stress herd, shot through with the half-feral caginess Pa cultivated in his cattle, and he nudged them softly, speeding the process without overdoing it.
Pa called on experience, not a textbook, to run cattle. He lived close to the bone, relying on the land, the longhorns, and the Lord, all the while holding himself accountable to the work.
Other breeds bulked up quicker than longhorns, and their marbled beef brought more money at the lot. But raising those bulky, grain-finished feedlot steers was a volatile business that depended heavily on the market. One bad drought–and drought was the norm here in West Texas–could devastate those herds.
Those ranchers worried over the price of beef, the price of grain, the price of medicine. They even worried about the sustainability of beef itself in this age of internet crusaders launching what they perceived as ethical wars on things they did not understand.
Small outfits struggled to profit in this modern market. Meanwhile, big corporate-style ranches flourished, quietly spreading across the land, gobbling up smaller farms.
But so long as men like Pa persisted, the old ways, too, would persist. The old traditions, the old gear, the old wisdom, all of it would pass piece and parcel from one generation to the next, and cowboys would continue to drink their morning coffee in silence before setting out on days that could be mistaken, with few anomalies, for scenes out of days gone by.
Their families would struggle and scrape, subsisting meagerly in the manner of their ancestors, and yet beholden not to the whims of man and market but rather the will of God, Whose wrath and glory they would never forget, and to Whom they would continue to pray for rain and deliverance, grateful always for even the smallest of blessings.
That was it. That was life.
Brawley wouldn’t have it any other way. Not for himself, his women, or his children.
But he knew his own life here would be different, moving ahead. Even without all the troubles hunting him. After all, Pa and Mama had barely eked out a living with only Brawley to feed and clothe.
Brawley, on the other hand, already had four wives, another woman living in his barn, and yet another woman, two kids, and an old lady on their way. Before long, Brawley would have a whole mess of kids to care for, so he would need other sources of income.
They pushed the herd south and west just past the shed where Pa had been keeping the D8 dozer tractor. The slow drive went smoothly, because anytime a cow lagged or veered, Brawley willed her to rejoin the herd, and that was that.
By the time the sun had scaled to its apex, the longhorns were gathered around the water tank, drinking and lowing softly and switching flies with their tails. The old windmill squeaked rhythmically overhead. A short time later, the herd descended into the adjacent arroyo and waded into the wavering sea of switchgrass.
Pa was pleased.
And that pleased Brawley. He and his father had talked very little about the changes in Brawley’s life since their long and detailed conversation beneath the pecan trees. But they would continue that discussion in time, perhaps sooner, perhaps later. Armed as he was with the whole truth, Pa appeared for now to be happy just riding it out.
The men knocked off early, and Brawley went home to his women, where he was greeted with a surprise.
His double-wide had never looked so clean and bright.
The girls had swept and scrubbed and dusted; decluttered his counters and pulled back the curtains; driven out stale air and prettied up the table with some fresh-cut flowers.
“I borrowed the vase from Mama,” Nina explained, turning from the stove where she was cooking something that smelled awful good. The other girls were nowhere in sight.
Brawley tried to get a look at what Nina was fixing, but she fended him off with an invisible wall of telekinetic force.
“Don’t I get a welcome home kiss?” he laughed.
“Not until you shower,” Nina said. “You smell like a cowboy.”
“Correction,” Remi said, swaggering into the room, “he smells like a man.” She threw her arms over his sweaty shoulders and gave him a passionate kiss.
“Where’s everybody else?” he asked.
“Callie’s with the cats,” Nina said. “Sage is with Mama studying the farm ledger, going all nuts and bolts on the ranch.”
“Speaking of nuts and bolts,” Remi said, “Frankie has a screw loose. She’s still out there, working in this heat with no AC or anything.”
Brawley nodded, wondering if Frankie’s impressive work ethic might end up proving problematic. Some folks would work themselves into the ground if someone didn’t stop them now and then. He might could end up having to save Frankie from herself.
He took a quick shower in cold water and put on clean duds.
When he came back out into the kitchen, Nina was finishing up at the stove, and Remi leaned against the fridge, drinking a Shiner.
<
br /> Callie sat stretching upon the floor, nonchalantly spread-eagled in a full lateral split as she leafed through one of Mama’s Better Homes and Gardens magazines. She looked up with a bright smile.
Brawley kissed each of his women in turn.
Then Remi shoved a cold beer into his hand and ushered him to the table. “Hope you’re hungry, handsome.”
Taking a seat, Brawley said, “Darlin, I’m so hungry my stomach thinks my mouth’s lit a shuck. Let’s eat.”
Remi kissed his cheek and stepped back. A second later, Nina set a heaping plate down in front of him.
Nina’s soft lips pressed into his other cheek, and for a second his vision was eclipsed by her purple locks. “Enjoy, babe.”
A tantalizing aroma filled his nostrils. “Hey, y’all got brisket.”
“Correction,” Remi said. “Your favorite wife got brisket. I rode out while you were working on the range.”
“Nice job, errand girl,” Nina said. “Meanwhile, because I love you so much, babe, I slaved over a hot stove, making you cabbage slaw, corn bread, and sweet tea.”
Brawley laughed. “Thanks, ladies. This looks great. But ain’t y’all going to eat?”
“Already did,” Remi said with a grin. “You really think we could wait with the smell of brisket filling the house?”
The meat was juicy and smoky and glorious. As he chewed, Remi’s words sunk in, and something occurred to him. “How come I didn’t smell the brisket when I came in?”
“We wanted it to be a surprise,” Nina laughed, mischievous delight dancing in her mismatched eyes, “so Sage cloaked the smell before she left to cook the books.”
“I’ve married a passel of miscreants,” Brawley said.
“And you love it,” Remi said.
“I won’t deny it,” Brawley said. He took a sip of beer, then reached out with both hands and patted Remi and Nina’s firm asses. “Thank you, ladies. This here is a little slice of heaven.”
“Happy to oblige,” Nina said.
“Oblige?” Remi laughed, and rolled her eyes. “Do you hear yourself, Nina? You do remember you’re from Florida, right?”
Nina stuck out her tongue at her muscular sister-wife. “I might not have been born in Texas, but I got here as quick as I could.”
“This slaw is good,” Brawley said, “and the tea is just right. But this cornbread steals the show. I’m talking top notch, darlin.”
He took another bite. The cornbread crumbled in his mouth, warm and slightly sweet and slathered to semi-softness with melted butter.
“Thanks, babe,” Nina said, beaming with pride. “It’s your mama’s recipe.”
Brawley washed it down with a slug of cold beer. “Mama’s already sharing recipes, huh? She must really like you.”
“What’s not to like?” Nina chimed. “She says I’m a Texas girl at heart.”
Remi groaned. “So annoying.”
“You might could say ‘downright aggravating’ instead,” Nina said with a grin.
Remi shook her head, chugged the rest of her beer, and belched. “Blow me.”
Outside, a dog set to barking. It wasn’t a people bark, though, so Brawley didn’t bother getting up.
Callie rose and crossed the room, her sweet ass twitching hypnotically back and forth in a pair of skimpy red shorts. The lithe cat girl popped onto her tiptoes and peered out the window. Her slender calves strained, taut and sexy. “One of your dogs is killing a snake,” she reported.
“Which dog?”
Callie shrugged. “One of the collies.”
“Kind of mangy looking?”
Callie nodded. “Lot of gray in his fur.”
“Her fur, you mean,” Brawley said. “That’d be Daisy. Which means the snake might could be a rattler. Most of the dogs have the sense to avoid rattlesnakes, but Daisy seems ordained by God to kill every damn one she crosses.”
Turning back around, Callie crossed her arms over her small breasts, looking suddenly indignant. “You don’t bother to name cats. Why name the dogs?”
Brawley took a sip of beer. “Because dogs, unlike cats, will come when you call them. No offense, darlin.”
“You’re wrong,” Callie said with a bat of her long lashes. “I’m a cat, and I come when you call me.”
“You sure do,” Remi laughed.
“Yeah,” Nina joined in. “You come when he calls you, and you call when you cum for him.”
“Huh?” Callie said, momentarily confused. A second later, her face went pink with girlish embarrassment. “I didn’t mean—”
The girls laughed.
Remi put her wrist to her forehead, fluttered her lashes, and mocked, “Oh BrawleyBrawleyBrawley!”
Callie shifted from pink to deep red and pretended to go back to leafing through the magazine.
But Brawley didn’t miss the small smile on her bright red face. Nor did he miss the way the young beauty pinched her bottom lip between her small, white teeth.
Callie was caught between worlds, he knew. Still bobbing among the flotsam and jetsam of her torpedoed innocence but finding the waters warm and inviting.
Nina, always perceptive of her sister-wives, said, “Don’t you worry, little sister. You’ll be a bona fide cum glutton soon.”
“Wow,” Frankie said, striding into the trailer with her dimples on full display. “Sometimes, walking in on you guys is strolling onto the set of a porno.”
“Which explains why you don’t knock, perv,” Remi said.
Laughing, Frankie shrugged and spread her hands, which were once more covered in grease. Grease also streaked the sweat-drenched, pink tank top shrink-wrapped over her fertility goddess curves. Beneath her backwards blue-and-white trucker hat, a stars and stripes bandana stretched across her upper forehead, keeping sweat out of her lively green eyes.
Brawley remembered the alluring silhouette Frankie had cut, rocking atop the super sybian, and the memory of her moaning gave him an instant erection.
He pulled out the chair next to his and gestured for Frankie to sit. “Eat, girl.”
“Thanks,” Frankie said, waving him off, “but the girls made me a plate. It was really, really good. I’d take a beer, though.”
Remi opened the fridge. “Shiner or Coors Light?”
“Whichever’s colder,” Frankie said, and raised her hands to lift her long, dark locks from the back of her neck. She arched her back slightly, lifting her incredible breasts. “It’s hotter than an exhaust valve out there.”
“We’ll get you some fans today,” Brawley said.
“Sounds good,” she said, holding the silver bullet against her sweaty cheek. “I finished stripping the FPI psi detector. It’s fascinating. Reminds me of an old crystal radio set. Oh, and you guys aren’t going to believe this. The detector relies on a psionic component.”
“So the FPI has been dabbling with psionics for a while,” Brawley said. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised after yesterday. I thought they were just hunting down psi mages and studying us. Seems a little more complicated than that. Can you replicate it?”
“No sweat,” Frankie said, “if you don’t mind me ordering some stuff. I should be able to rig something for about seventy-five bucks a detector. But I’ll need you or Sage to help with the psionic component.”
“That works,” Brawley said. “Go ahead and order parts for three of them. Put them in the RV, the truck, and Remi’s Harley.”
“What about my scooter?” Nina asked.
“This ain’t exactly moped country, darlin.”
“Okay,” Nina sighed. But she brightened quickly. “Would you teach me to ride a horse?”
“Sure,” Brawley said.
“Thanks, babe,” Nina said, and unfastened her apron. “What should I wear?”
Brawley laughed. “Hold on, darlin. I didn’t mean now. I’m heading to town with Frankie first. We’ll go riding later.”
“Let me wash up and change my shirt,” Frankie said.
“Need any help?” Remi
joked. Unlike the other women, Frankie was straight as a drive shaft. “I could wash your back for you. Or your front.”
“Thanks, Rem, but I’ll manage,” Frankie laughed, and trotted off to her room.
My old room, Brawley thought, and some part of him—his inner bison or his Carnal strand or perhaps both entities—demanded he swagger back there, kick in the door, and reclaim his room and Frankie with it.
Then Sage came home, beaming. “I have concluded my analysis, husband.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Sage glanced at everyone in attendance, blinked, and launched into a quick primer about cattle ranching. The costs, the challenges, the changing landscape of agribusiness.
“When your father takes longhorns to market, the buyers disparage the longhorn beef and offer only canner and cutter prices,” Sage said.
Brawley nodded, impressed by her understanding.
“He should avoid the big lots altogether,” Sage said. “I have identified several farm markets where he could package the meat as organic, pasture-finished beef and sell directly to consumers for a much higher profit.”
“That’s a good idea,” Brawley said, “but Pa’s a cowboy not a meat peddler.”
“My sister-wives and I could handle this end of the business,” Sage said. “I have worked out the likely profits and believe that your father will be quite pleased. Also, I believe that we can increase the herd size, perhaps even double it.”
Brawley snorted. “Darlin, you’re bright as a new penny, but you can’t run four hundred head on 2800 acres. Seven acres per cow? Not in these parts. It’s so dry, the catfish carry canteens.”
“That is an amusing image, husband,” Sage said, “but by applying our Seeker senses we will be able to predict droughts along with their seriousness and duration—and sell as necessary… in advance. Additionally, our Seeker senses will allow us to improve forage, eliminate potential toxins, and time rotational grazing with precision.”
Brawley felt a grin coming onto his face. “This is sounding pretty good, darlin.”
“It gets better, husband,” Sage said, and turned to her feline sister-wife. “Callie, would you be able to arouse the bulls?”