Mirror Lake Ranch: Once in a Memory

by Kendra Plunkett-Witt

  Ed gave me one of his robust chuckles that I recalled from his visits during my childhood. “Right after breakfast. In the meantime, some of Gloria’s things from when she used to visit should still be around. I’ll see what I can dig up.”

  A half an hour later I was sporting insulated bib overall overtop my jeans, an old pair of boots and a Carhartt coat, work gloves and a stocking cap. I was ready as I was going to get. I waved goodbye to Ed and started across the ranch yard towards the big barn encouraging myself mentally with every step.

  The big sliding doors were closed so I started towards another, smaller one. As I put my hand on the latch a voice behind me made me jump.

  “Wouldn’t open that one if I were you Miss.”

  I turned to see a handsome enough – or from what I could tell under all the work clothes – cowboy. “Goes right into Doc’s stall.”

  “And who might Doc be?”

  “Gentry’s sometimes cranky stud.”

  “Ah, like owner like horse.”

  The cowboy grinned showing a cute pair of dimples.

  “I’m Bradley but everyone calls me Boots. My mamma gave me both names but I prefer the latter,” Boots offered me his hand.

  “Well Boots I’m…”

  “Krystina!” the half bark half growl that barreled towards us was all becoming too familiar of the Gentry that I didn’t know. He sauntered over, looking pissed. Which was basically the same look he had been wearing since he picked me up last night.

  “Gentry,” Boots acknowledged him with a curt nod in which Gentry ignored.

  “Thought you were going to wait at the house until I had time to take you ‘round the yard this afternoon?”

  “I don’t recall agreeing to the waiting part,” I said and crossed my arms. “Besides, wasn’t like you sounded to positive that you would be able to find the time to take me.”

  “I can show her around if you want. Be no problem at all ma’am,” Boots offered.

  “I don’t pay you to give tours. It’s not a tourist dude ranch Boots.” Damn Gentry was in a mood. “Put the hay out that I got loaded up on the tractor. Come on Krystina, I’ll show you around.”

  Boots tossed me a look as if he was uncertain if we could be left together. I waved him along and he tipped his hat to me with yet another “ma’am”.

  I stared at Gentry. “Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed again? Or do you even have a right side anymore?”

  Chapter Four

  Gentry

  I wanted to tell her right then and there that she was the reason I was so pissy, but I didn’t. For one because I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction and secondly because I figured she already knew she was to blame.

  Dressed in Gloria’s hand me down ranch clothes Krys stared me down. Challenging me. Boots disappeared around the side of the barn. He was a good guy and a hard worker but Krys was a fresh divorcee and she didn’t need no re-bound cowboy fling – least of all on my ranch.

  “Come on,” I told her and led her into the barn through an identical door on the other side from the one she had been trying to open.

  Doc, my dark roan Quarter horse stud kicked at his door in annoyed greeting.

  “Hello there boy,” Krys said and reached her hand to his muzzle. Doc jumped back and tossed his head and to her credit Krys didn’t shy away. Doc weaved his head a couple of times before carefully approaching his strange visitor.

  Krys kept her hand steady – allowing Doc to come to her. He placed his velvet nose into her hand and moved his lips in search of a treat. Krys giggled softly in a girlish way that threatened to take me back but I slammed the door in the face of that memory.

  “So, Doc it is?” she asked him after blowing a ‘hello’ breath of air into his nostril so he could become familiar with her scent. “As in Doc Holliday or Buggs Bunny’s Doc?”

  “Holliday,” she replied to herself as if the horse had answered. “Of course, Gentry is too serious for something like Buggs Bunny.”

  I rolled my eyes. Horrid woman, even if she was right. A dark grey gelding poked his head out of the next stall, Jonesing for attention.

  “And who might your friend be?” Krys asked.

  “That’s Thunder Storm. He answers to Thunder or Storm,” I offered knowing she wouldn’t get a reply from Doc. “And he can be your mount but you may have to lose the bibs. It will be a brief ride so you shouldn’t freeze.”

  “Really?!” Krys’ face lit up with excitement and I almost smiled. Almost.

  “He and Doc get along just fine anymore. I’ll get your gear.”

  I guessed it had been a few years since Krys had rode. Illinois wasn’t exactly a horse hub and although I recall her riding a handful of times with my sister I doubt she kept up when she went to New York. I was only partially wrong.

  “I rode English style back East when I had the chance. It wasn’t often but I enjoyed all I could get.”

  “The concept is the same,” I muttered as I sat down our saddles.

  Fifteen minutes later we were at the barn door ready to go. Krys had tacked up without issue but I re-checked it all anyhow, taking special time to check her cinch.

  I told myself it was because I was concerned for her safety and the safety of my horse. However, just below the façade I knew that it was all shit. I was doing it to be an ass and undermine her confidence.

  Krys found her seat in the saddle easily and smiled at me. She was stepping back from the battle line. I probably should too.

  “Ride behind me. Doc is a stallion still he doesn’t like to be challenged,” I warned and Krys sighed. This was a warning for her own safety but I let it go.

  I didn’t take the ride lightly. The cold snap and snow had blew in with unexpected harshness. Winters could get bitter here it was true but it should still warm up a bit. And it had, the snow was turning slushy and the temp was pushing forty. A far cry from the last few days.

  The horses needed exercise. Doc got stall crazy from boredom easily but he was an escape artist. Doc could jump too, making him difficult to pasture. With the storm brewing and a few mares in breeding season I had thought it best to not tempt him the last couple days. I hadn’t the time to chase him all over God’s creation.

  Thunder Storm had been my roping horse, although I wasn’t going to offer up his sentimental value to Krys free willingly. I didn’t let anyone ride him aside from ponying kids and I hoped he would accept a different rider.

  Storm was the best trained and I was most comfortable knowing Krys was on a mount I would trust with my life. If something happened to her Gloria would kill me – not counting what I was liable to do to myself.

  I glanced over my shoulder at her. She had removed the stocking cap since we left the ranch yard and gathered her hair up on top her head. She wasn’t nervous or uneasy. Storm would have felt it. Horses are much better judges of character and emotion than people are.

  “So,” Krys called out to me keeping her distance between Doc and Storm. “Are you going to tell me about the ranch or is this a silent tour?”

  I grinned. Part of me wondered if she really wanted to know or if it was always just some fake politeness she had picked up out East causing the inquiry. But I loved talking about the ranch so I started to carefully tell its story as we rode.

  I told her a story she had heard parts of, how the Sutton’s, my mom’s family, came with some of the first Colorado settlers. About the cattle Ed and I raised. We had a few pure bred short horns, but most were descendants of the original herds. A Mixture of whatever my fore fathers could find and afford.

  I told her about the lay of the land, the names of the ridges and valleys. She was quiet occasionally asking a question when she felt the need for clarification.

  “And this Mirror Lake I have heard so much of?” she asked twenty minutes into our ride.

  “Right on the edge of the next ridge,” I said as the glimmer below came into view.

  Although we had few guests who I got the pleasure
of taking to see the six-acer lake for the first time, it was always a beautiful experience. To remember the awe it had as its effects radiated off someone else.

  Krys pulled up on Storm halting him as she took it all in. The snow clung to the banks and the ice was beginning to break up on its surface. For all her beauty this wasn’t even Mirror Lake at her best.

  I nudged Doc on, to follow one of the mountain streams that fed the Lake when Krys pointed to the North. “What’s that?”

  “Come on,” I said with a small smile.

  Chapter Five

  Krystina

  Thunder Storm carried me cautiously behind Doc. A sensible beauty of a horse while he lacked some of the striking gall that Doc’s testosterone fed him, he was left more trusting. Gentry said he answered to Thunder to Storm, Personally, I preferred Storm, for no particular reason.

  The break at the ridge proved everything Gloria and Gentry had told me growing up. That there was simply no words to completely capture the feeling you had upon seeing the lake come in view.

  I had questioned Gentry about the small cabin like shack in the distance along the waters edge. He had just told me to follow. It had been hard to swallow down feelings of seeing Gentry in his element. In his dream. If there was a cookie cutter look of a cowboy Gentry was it. But with a whole lot of extra icing and sprinkles on top.

  More than once I got a small hot flash – that was nothing to do with him – as he talked about his family land. It was nice. He said more to me in five minutes than he had in the eighteen hours we had been in the same space.

  We rode through the melting snow and clopped to the cabin. Gentry dismounted and I followed. He tied the horses to an old hitching post and I itched to stretch my back but I wouldn’t give him the pleasure of seeing that. Giving him more ammunition to prove me unfit.

  The cabin was small. About the size of my bedroom in New York. He opened the door to show off the one room space. Yesterday I would have been cautious and concerned about what my high heels were stepping in. Before the divorce, I would have been obligated to turn up my nose.

  But today that wasn’t the case. Today I saw the beautiful rustic sanctuary away from the ranch. A sanctuary inside a sanctuary.

  “I don’t think anyone’s been out here in a month or more. Lately it’s just been a fishing cabin,” Gentry said as he struck a match to an old kerosene lantern and opened up the boarded shutters on one of the windows. An old black woodstove served double duty in one corner as heat and cook stove. Cast iron and tin dishware stored neatly on the walls. A small bed heavy with an old quilt and old furs were on another side. A small wooden table with two chairs and a few other supplies sat around the room.

  No bathroom I assumed, disappointedly. That would be the extra small wooden building behind the woodpile. Outhouse.

  “Before,” I asked. “What was it before lately?”

  I turned to face Gentry. A small crease under his two-day bearded smile threatened to turn into a full mischievous grin. “Well, the original Mrs. Sutton didn’t want to build here. She didn’t want to pervert the beauty of the Lake. Four kids in the house before all the additions made it crowded so her husband built this place as an escape for them. Had two more babies after that.”

  I smiled. “So, this is your great, great, great, grandfolks love shack?”

  “And every couple after,” Gentry’s grin finally broke loose. “Don’t worry, the blankets have been changed.”

  I laughed.

  “Don’t laugh at it. Half the Sutton kids were probably conceived here, except for Gloria and myself.”

  “I laugh because it’s you and me here.”

  Gentry stepped forward, closing the space between us, his already deep voice lowering an octave. “What so funny about that?” He sprawled his left hand over my right hip, gripping tightly and pulling me to him. My heart stopped beating for a moment before going full force.

  I cautiously looked up at him as he looked down at me, being Gentry stood a full head taller than I. He lowered even further, by passing my mouth to let his lips graze my ear.

  “Don’t worry Krys, it’s a honeymoon cabin not a fuck shack.”

  He released me instantly stepping back. “Just giving you shit Krys,” he went to the stove. “Figured your back and rear was starting to tense and you could use a break and a stretch. I can build a fire if your cold.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll just walk out some of the tenseness and we can head back. I’m sure you have things to do”

  I went outside leaving him in the ‘love shack’ and strolled a short length of the lake, stretching my lower back as I walked suddenly it wasn’t so beautiful anymore.

  The ride back was silent. The almost – whatever in the hell happened back there was the wettest blanket on what had been a very happy and carefree mood.

  I searched my mind for words, for something – anything to say. But there was nothing. Instead I accidently fell into memories.

  ***

  “Come on DeLuch!”

  “No! Leave me the hell alone Hollis!” I screamed at him, grabbing my bike and heading down from the city pool.

  “It was a joke Krys,” he jumped in front of me.

  “You have a disgusting sense of humor! I don’t know why you have to be such a, a, a jerk! Just because you’re a whole year older? Just because you’re the popular freshman and varsity football player?”

  “It rhymed and you laughed.”

  “Yeah. Two days ago when it was just me, you and Gloria. Not the whole damn football team.” I pulled my cover-up even tighter around my body. Gentry was shirtless, dripping water in grey swimming trunks.

  “Krystina DeLuchie Choochie coo is funny,” Gentry smiled at me and I punched him dropping my bike in the process.

  “Not the way the whole football team says it. It was… dirty the way they said it. Really, dirty.”

  “They’re just assholes.”

  “Assholes I have to go to school with this fall. All of them!” I shouted back fighting the tears.

  “Not all of them. Some of them are going to college. They just think you’re pretty and don’t know how to approach you.”

  “They’re just excited I got my mom’s tits,” I had just developed boobs and plenty of them in the last few months. Skipping more than one bra size completely.

  “Hell, everyone’s excited about that,” Gentry had tried to pull my hands away from my chest to get a private glimpse of the twins in my bathing top.

  I pushed his hands away and while I was distracted by that, he grabbed me around the waist, hauled me to him and kissed me. One second he was playful and the next he was serious and demanding as he moved his lips over mine for a brief moment with skill I didn’t possess.

  That was my first lesson that Gentry Hollis was demanding at only fifteen even, and took what he wanted more than most men I’d ever meet. He would make you want it too. Make you want to give more than he asked.

  The kiss ended quick as it started. Gentry had given me a half smile and strode back inside the gated pool, leaving me to wonder if it had really happened.

  ***

  “My tit’s are better than my moms anyhow,” I muttered back in present day.

  “What’s that?” Gentry asked from ahead of me. It was the first thing he had said since the cabin.

  “Not a damn thing,” I answered.

  Riding into the ranch yard I saw two men I hadn’t met before loading a truck of fencing supplies. Based on Gentry’s current mood I probably wouldn’t be meeting them now either.

  I followed Gentry to the barn where he dismounted and began un-saddling Doc and pulled off his bridal. I did the same for Storm.

  “We should try to be friends Gentry,” I finally said when I could take no more silence. “I’m going to be here for awhile at least. Make the most of it. It wasn’t so long ago we were friends…”

  He dumped his saddle on a stand in the tack room. “Maybe you should just stay the hell out of my
way and you’re visit short.”

  In true Gentry fashion he stormed off leaving me in tears.

  Chapter Six

  Gentry

  I think being a dick is a sickness at times. I never plan on it and then it just flares up uncontrollably. I had never taken a woman to the cabin before. Never stood there with a female who was not of blood relation. It just felt like sacrilege, until today that is.

  I felt magnetic to her the minute we walked through the door. I shouldn’t of used those harsh words. Should never have touched her.

  Should never have said what I just did. I thought about turning around, almost did before I stopped myself. ‘It would be better if she hates you. Better if she thinks you’re not wanting her here. It will be easier once she’s gone,’ I told myself.

  No matter the front I had put on near ten years ago, her leaving had hurt like hell then. Least now I know that’s where it’s headed.

  I turned Doc into the closest and most secure lot to run off some more steam. I slammed the gate and marched to the house. Bad idea.

  I opened the side door to a scent assault of what I could only assume was Ed’s cooking. We were barely passable cooks but Uncle Ed had been practicing more the last few years. He had only one truly decent dish and that was his taco chili. But it was spicy as all hell only meant to be cut with about ten gallons of sour cream.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked looking at the mess.

  “Carla was busy so I though an introductory dinner was in order. Make a meal for everyone on the ranch and introduce them to Krystina.”

  “Pass,” I said washing my hands in the sink and pouring me another cup of coffee.

  “You can’t pass. She’s our guest I’ll not allow it.”

  “Krys and I don’t exactly see eye to eye. It’s best if we avoid each other.”

  “Better for who?” Ed asked staring me down. “What the hell happened between you two?”

  I shrugged. “We grew up together. She was Gloria’s best friend. She left for Boston and never looked back. She ain’t meant for ranch life,” she didn’t want it then she doesn’t deserve it now – I added silently.