LITMIR.BIZ

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I’d watch two men wrestle in mud, too. I like mud.”

      She remembered being covered in that, and pesticide, on the ranch and winced. “You wouldn’t if you had to dip cattle around it,” she promised him.

      “Good thing I don’t know anything about the cattle business, then,” he said lightly. “So ask your boss if you can have three hours off next Friday and we’ll see the werewolf movie.”

      She hesitated. “Won’t it be kind of gory?”

      He sighed. “There’s always that cartoon movie that Johnny Depp does the voice-over for, the chameleon Western.”

      She laughed. He was pleasant, nice to look at and had a sense of humor. And she hadn’t been on a date in months. It just might be fun.

      “Okay, then,” she told him. “I like Johnny Depp in anything, even if it’s only his voice. That’s a date.”

      He smiled back. “That’s a date,” he agreed.

      THERE WAS A LOT TO DO around a ranch during calving season, and most of the cowboys—and cowgirl—didn’t plan on getting much sleep.

      Heifers who were calving for the first time were watched carefully. There was also an old mama cow who was known for wandering off and hiding in thickets to calve. Nobody knew why; she just did it. Morie named her Bessy and devoted herself to keeping a careful eye on the old girl.

      “Now don’t go following that old cow around and forget to watch the others,” Darby cautioned. “She can’t hide where we won’t be able to find her.”

      “I know that, but she’s getting some age on her and there’s snow being forecast again,” she said worriedly. “What if she got stuck in a drift? If we had a repeat of the last storm, we might not even be able to hunt for her. Hard to ride a horse through snow that’s over his head,” she added, with a straight face.

      He laughed. “I see your point. But you have to consider that this is a big spread, and we’ve got dozens of mama cows around here. Not to mention, we’ve got a lot of replacement heifers who are dropping calves for the first time. That’s a lot of profit in a recession. Can’t afford to lose many.”

      “I know.” Her father had cut his cattle herd because of the rising prices of grain, she recalled, and he was concentrating on a higher-quality bull herd rather than expanding into a cow-calf operation like the one his father, the late Jim Brannt, had built up.

      “Dang, it’s cold today,” Darby said as he finished doctoring one of the seed bulls.

      “I noticed.” Morie chuckled, pulling her denim coat tighter and buttoning it. She had really good clothes back home, but she’d brought the oldest ones with her, so that she didn’t raise any suspicions about her status.

      “Better get back to riding that fence line,” he added.

      “I’m on my way. Just had to pick up my iPod,” she said, displaying it in its case. “I can’t live without my tunes.”

      He pursed his lips. “What sort of music do you like?”

      “Let’s see, country and western, classical, soundtracks, blues…”

      “All of it, in other words.”

      She nodded. “I like world music, too. It’s fun to listen to foreign artists, even if I mostly can’t understand anything they sing.”

      He shook his head. “I’m just a straight John Denver man.”

      She lifted both eyebrows.

      “He was a folk singer in the sixties,” he told her. “Did this one song, ‘Calypso,’ about that ship that Jacques Cousteau used to drive around the world when he was diving.” He smiled with nostalgia. “Dang, I must have spent a small fortune playing that one on jukeboxes.” He looked at her. “Don’t know what a jukebox is, I’ll bet.”

      “I do so. My mom told me all about them.”

      He shook his head. “How the world has changed since I was a boy.” He sighed. “Some changes are good. Most—” he glowered “—are not.”

      She laughed. “Well, I like my iPod, because it’s portable music.” She attached her earphones to the device, with which she could surf the internet, listen to music, even watch movies as long as she was within reach of the Wi-Fi system on the ranch. “I’ll see you later.”

      “Got a gun?” he asked suddenly.

      She gaped at him. “What am I going to do, shoot wolves? That’s against the law.”

      “Everything’s against the law where ranchers are concerned. No, I wasn’t thinking about four-legged varmints. There’s an escaped convict, a murderer. They think he’s in the area.”

      She caught her breath. “Could he get onto the ranch?”

      “No fence can keep out a determined man. He’ll just go right over it,” he told her. He went back into the bunkhouse and returned with a small handgun in a leather holster. “It’s a .32 Smith & Wesson,” he said, handing it up. He made a face when she hesitated. “You don’t have to kill a man to scare him. Just shoot near him and run.” He frowned. “Can you shoot a gun?”

      “Oh, yes, my dad made sure of it,” she told him. “He taught me and my brother to use anything from a peashooter to all four gauges of shotguns.”

      He nodded. “Then take it. Put it in your saddlebag. I’ll feel better.”

      She smiled at him. “You’re nice, Darby.”

      “You bet I am,” he replied. “Can’t afford to lose someone who works as hard as you do.”

      She made a face at him. She mounted her horse, a chestnut gelding, and rode off.

      The open country was so beautiful. In the distance she could see the Teton Mountains, rising like white spires against the gray, overcast sky. The fir trees were still a deep green, even in the last frantic clutches of fading winter. It was too soon for much tender vegetation to start pushing up out of the ground, but spring was close at hand.

      Most ranchers bred their cattle to drop calves in early spring, just as the grass came out of hibernation and grain crops began growing. Lush, fresh grass would be nutritious to feed the cows while they nursed their offspring. By the time the calves were weaned, the grass would still be lush and green and tasty for them, if the rain cooperated.

      She liked the way the Kirk boys worked at ecology, at natural systems. They had windmills everywhere to pump water into containers for the cattle. They grew natural grasses and were careful not to strain the delicate topsoil by overplanting. They used crop rotation to keep the soil fresh and productive, and they used natural fertilizer. They maintained ponds of cattle waste, which was used to produce methane that powered electricity for the calving barn and the other outbuildings. It was a high-tech, fascinating sort of place. Especially for a bunch of cattlemen who’d taken a dying ranch and made it grow and thrive. They weren’t rich yet, but they were well-to-do and canny about the markets. Besides that, Mallory was something of a financial genius. The ranch was starting to make money. Big money.

      Cane went to the cattle shows with their prize bulls, Darby had told her, when Cane stayed sober for a long-enough stretch. He was sort of intimidating to Morie, but he had a live-wire personality and he could charm buyers.

      Dalton, whom they called, for some reason, Tank, was the marketing specialist. He drew up brochures for the production sales, traveled to conferences and conventions, attended political-action committee meetings for the county and state and even national cattlemen’s associations, and devoted himself to publicizing the ranch’s prize cattle. He worked tirelessly. But he was a haunted man, and it showed.

      Mallory was the boss. He made all the big decisions, although he was democratic enough to give his brothers a voice. They were all opinionated. Darby said it was genetic; their parents

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