LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Four

      Jake finally returned home with supper, and Tina set out everything and got the boys situated at the table. Tall for his age, Tyler required no help reaching his food. Frankie, however, needed a lift. She found a small plastic tub sturdy enough to serve as a booster seat.

      According to his brothers, Jake was famous for his hot showers, so no one was surprised that he came out shivering in his jeans and white T-shirt. Wyatt and Ryder laughed at him, bantering about bathing conditions in Afghanistan and the average military barracks. Tina was not surprised to learn that Jake was former military. Something in his manner marked him as a soldier; yet, Wyatt remained the undisputed head of this family.

      Once they were all seated, Wyatt bowed his head. Tina froze in the act of unfolding the paper wrappings on her burger. She caught Tyler’s glance and put her hands together to show him that they were going to pray, something she’d let slide recently. Frankie obviously had been through this routine many times. Folding his chubby hands, he bowed his little head along with his father and uncles.

      Wyatt glanced up at her. “Uh, would you like to say grace?”

      Tina took the opportunity to prompt her son. “Tyler, maybe you’d like to pray over our meal tonight.”

      Grimacing, Tyler bowed his head and intoned the familiar words. “God is great. God is good. Thank You, Lord, for this food. And maybe we can go back home soon. Amen.”

      “We are home, son,” Tina corrected softly.

      That unenthusiastic prayer stuck in Tina’s head as she ate her meal and the Smith brothers talked over the next day’s plans. With the house a wreck and the cattle gone, she couldn’t help wondering why they were even here. She thought about explaining her own situation and appealing to the brothers’ compassion in the hope that they would simply return to Texas. In truth, however, she needed their help. Actually, if not for Wyatt, she’d be quite happy with the situation.

      What was it about him, she wondered, that disturbed her so?

      It didn’t matter. She couldn’t see any option other than to follow through with her plan. Maybe Wyatt would be too busy with the ranch to waste time making her life difficult.

      Vain hope, that. He was a man, wasn’t he?

      On the other hand, despite the fiasco of the wills, Daddy Dodd had been a caring, stalwart friend when she’d most needed one. Maybe his nephews were more like him than first impressions had indicated.

      Strange, but that thought brought neither hope nor relief. She could only pray that Wyatt would be so diligent about getting the ranch into shape that he stayed out of her business. Too weary to worry about it, she and Tyler retreated to their room as soon as it was dark. She slept surprisingly well, waking far later than usual to find Ryder frying eggs and bacon that Jake had journeyed back into town to purchase. Thankfully, Wyatt had already departed on ranch business, according to Ryder, who had no idea when Wyatt would return. Tina silently thanked God for that small blessing, and sat down with pencil and paper to discuss with Ryder what repairs were most urgently needed.

      * * *

      Wyatt shook the dusky hand of the man he had ever only known as Delgado. Relief bolstered his hope. They’d agreed to meet at the diner in War Bonnet, where both had enjoyed a decent breakfast and excellent coffee, while ignoring the obvious interest of the locals. They’d quickly come to terms about Delgado’s continued employment.

      “I’m very glad to get you back at Loco Man,” Wyatt said as he pushed through the glass door to the sidewalk.

      “I am glad again to work for a Smith,” Delgado replied.

      The smiling vaquero’s once dark hair had turned to a dull salt-and-pepper shade that would soon be more salt than pepper, but he’d maintained his lean, ropy strength.

      “Do you have time to drive around the ranch with me?” Wyatt asked. “Rex Billings has offered to take me to a sale barn in Tulsa to purchase horses in a few weeks, so we can’t ride.”

      “Yeah, sí,” Delgado said with a grin. “We take my old truck. No reason to batter yours. No one better with horseflesh than a Billings, but we had ATVs in the barn, unless Dodd sold those, too.”

      “There are two,” Wyatt confirmed, falling into step beside the ranch foreman, “but they don’t seem to run.”

      “They pro’ly just need gas and spark plugs,” Delgado surmised.

      “I’ll have Jake look at them. He’s our mechanic. Meanwhile, your truck will do fine.”

      This wouldn’t be his first time riding with Delgado behind the wheel. Crazy as it seemed, he’d once taken the passenger seat as Delgado had raced his battered old truck across a bumpy pasture while Uncle Dodd had roped a particularly troublesome stud from the truck bed. That was not a feat Wyatt intended to repeat, but because of it he had no qualms about letting Delgado take the wheel.

      “Meet me at the house,” Wyatt instructed, “and we’ll go from there.”

      “Yeah, sí.”

      Wyatt chuckled at the familiar double assent. As a young boy, he’d assumed that ya-sí was the Spanish word for yes. Only later had he realized that Delgado frequently spoke in a combination of English and Spanish.

      A few hours later, neither of them could manage a smile. As he brought the dusty old pickup truck to a stop beside the house, Delgado’s expression registered as much confusion as Wyatt’s. Dimly, Wyatt noted that in the intervening hours Ryder had repaired the floor of the porch, rehung the front door and replaced the broken glass pane. Wyatt’s immediate concern, however, was the puzzling condition of the ranch.

      They’d driven past fenced acreages sown in what appeared to be a variety of grasses. Those large plots, some of them thirty and forty acres, didn’t even have gates to let cattle in to graze. Some were irrigated with portable, aboveground systems powered by rackety old windmills. Some were not.

      “Was Dodd experimenting?” Wyatt mused. “Could he have been trying to figure out which grass was most hardy and would best support cattle?”

      Delgado shrugged and shook his head. “He never say. When the worms got the cattle, some had to be put down. The rest we treat and sell. Then he start dragging in old windmills and drilling wells. ‘Times change,’ he say. And he start the grass, many kinds. He hire that Pryor kid to do it, the one with the farming equipment. And we build fence roun’ the grass.”

      “Fences without gates,” Wyatt murmured. “It doesn’t make sense.”

      “Some say he lost his mind,” Delgado reported bluntly, “that he was loco like his great-grandfather, but I think no.”

      The legend was that Wyatt’s great-great-grandfather had illegally paid others during the land rush to stake claims to the vast acreage that eventually became the Smith ranch. Then, when authorities called him on the scheme, he’d pretended not to understand the problem, no matter how it was explained to him, leading others to label him loco or insane. Wyatt somehow doubted that a reputation for insanity would have swayed the authorities, even back then, to simply allow Great-Great-Grandpa Smith to keep his ill-gotten gains. Nevertheless, he’d named the ranch Loco Man, with an apparent tongue-in-cheek reference to the rumors.

      “I just wish I knew what Dodd was thinking,” Wyatt admitted on a sigh.

      “So, we run cattle at Loco Man again, yeah, sí?” Delgado asked.

      “We are most definitely going to run cattle at Loco Man again,” Wyatt confirmed, “but there’s a lot to be done before we can stock up. I think I’ll talk to this Pryor fellow to

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