Summer Winds (3 page)

“Green as grass most likely, and not very useful.”

It finally dawned on him I was poking fun. “She’ll do.” He snorted and wandered off toward the bunkhouse. I’d never seen Perry so completely charmed.

I went back inside to find Cash in the middle of the living room looking as if she was waiting for instructions. “So what made you decide to come out here for the summer?” I had no idea how to make conversation with her.

“Buck asked me to. Kind of insisted on it.” One hip sagged in a relaxed pose, and as she smiled big again I noted that she referred to her father by his first name.

“What were you doing before?”

“Nothing, really.” She sounded politely nonchalant.

The concept of doing nothing and admitting to it was new to me. I paused, taking in her boyish figure: long legs and narrow hips leading to a strong but nearly flat chest and broad shoulders. “Well, then, we’ll try to see that your summer is filled with
something.
How about dinner, for starters?”

I pointed to a stool across the wooden counter that served as a rustic breakfast bar, and she sat down and hooked her boot heels on the bottom rung. I ran a paper towel over the eating surface in front of her. “Dust is a way of life out here. You can move it around but you can’t get rid of it.”

“It’s fine.” She seemed concerned about me.

I wasn’t very talkative, living alone having turned me mute. I cooked sausage and then eggs in the sausage remnants and heated up a few leftover biscuits and slid the whole thing onto a plate in front of her along with butter and jelly and a glass of milk.

“I haven’t had milk for dinner in years.”

I automatically reached to remove the glass the way women do in a society where male displeasure can be loud and trains them to meet needs quickly. Remove and replace, no harm done. “I think I have some tea.”

She reached out and stopped me. “Milk’s great.” Her hand was soft and much larger than mine. The energy of her touch left my shoulders tingling, and the pleasant sensation drew me to her whether I wanted to be drawn or not. Getting too chummy isn’t the goal here, I reminded myself. I would treat her like a ranch hand, not like a visiting relative. No special favors. Buck would never want that. He’d sent her here to learn something this summer, and I was determined to teach her.

“This is the best food I’ve ever had.” She almost swooned. “I mean it. You can really cook.”

I was suddenly shy and wondered if I’d caught it from Perry, but I let her praise register. The ardor with which she enjoyed her meal, wolfing it down like a big happy pup, made me smile.

“Well, I’ll feed you again in the morning and then you’ll be ready to start. The work’s pretty simple—driven by the weather. Things have to happen quickly before the rains come. Right now, we’re getting ready to spray a couple of the fields for thistles and broadleafs. Have to get those killed out so the good grass can take hold. Our hay’s a mixture of prairie grass and Bermuda.” I could see some of this information was new to Cash, who looked a little dazed as she pushed back from her empty plate.

“Tell you what. You report to Perry in the morning. If the wind’s died down, he can hook up the boom sprayer and you can help him spray. I don’t like chemicals, but there’s no getting around them a couple of times a year.” I explained in detail how we cut, raked, and baled the hay, storing the squares and selling the round bales, putting some up for winter and then rotating our pastures, leasing them out to cattlemen for grazing.

Suddenly realizing her eyelids were at half-mast and she was trying not to drift off, I remembered she’d driven from Denver, which was a good ten hours, so she was probably tired. I slid her plate back and touched her shoulder. She jumped, startled, and reddened with embarrassment, making an excuse about my voice sounding soothing.

“Get to bed. I’ll wake you when it’s time to hit the floor.”

She stumbled off to the guest bedroom, and I cleaned up the kitchen. Afterward I walked out on the front porch and sat in the white slat rocker and looked up at the moon. I hadn’t done this in months—taken a moment to merely sit.

Then for no reason, I began to think about my marriage, wondering why I’d never had any surge of excitement when I first met Johnny Blake. And, if he’d stayed alive, would we be on this porch together, a mid-forties married couple swinging and singing and rocking our first grandbaby? Why did that thought horrify me back then and still did today? He hadn’t wanted much. Nothing he shouldn’t have had. Why did he have to die because of it?

Why am I thinking about that?
I shook my head, unable to deal with the memories. Jumping up, I went back in the house and grabbed a notepad and scribbled a few reminders for in the morning.

A grocery list, gloves for Cash, tell Perry to clean up his talk around her, show her how the washer/dryer works, get her a set of keys, let her know she’s welcome to use the phone.
None of this would be
necessary if she was sleeping in the bunkhouse
.
Her being a woman
changes everything.

At first light, I went to wake Cash but she wasn’t in her room. Her bed was made and her clothes were put away.

Good, I thought, she’s tidy. I went back into the kitchen and looked out the wide windows over the scarred white iron sink to the back pasture and flecks of sunlight bouncing off the hayfields, but didn’t see anyone. I picked up the walkie-talkie from the counter and contacted Perry. He answered, saying he and Cash were starting in the back and spraying five hundred acres before lunch.

“She riding with you?”

“Driving ahead in the Gator picking up limbs and trash and opening gates.”

Bouncing over rough ground in the old John Deere Gator wasn’t an activity I relished. Somehow the comfort of the venerable old equipment company’s tractors hadn’t translated to the original Gators. Jumping in and out of a no-frills all-terrain vehicle, lugging tree limbs and logs, would be a good start for her.

“Good, tell her to come on up to the house for lunch after,” I shouted over the handheld and signed off due to the static.

I was in a happier frame of mind than I could remember and looked around the big knotty-pine living room, appreciating its simple beauty. The weathered wood was orange in places and gold in others and just plain dirt-worn in spots. Everything about the place was old-fashioned and homey in its ambiance but modern enough to be comfortable. People would give their eye teeth to have this ranch, I thought, and felt so energetic I began to clean up the place, mopping the wide board floors, scrubbing the big battered wood countertop, and airing out the bedrooms, opening the double-hinged casement windows to let the breeze blow through and air out musty corners of the old room.

Then I slung open the fridge and located the fresh cherries Donnetta had given me, pitting them for a pie until the juice ran down my fingers and made me look like a happy axe murderer. I’d sworn I would never go to the trouble to slice every cherry and dig out the pit, but today just begged for a cherry pie and it only took a couple of hours. In fact, the sheer act of making it delighted me. I hadn’t occupied my time indoors in months, always spending it with Perry and the workers.

I set the table out on the porch and put an extra plate for Perry, thinking he would enjoy a nice noon meal. It wasn’t long before the two of them tromped up the steps chuckling. I hadn’t seen Perry grin in so long I’d nearly forgotten he had teeth. On top of that, he’d cut his beard, trimmed it back shorter and neat again, making him look younger.

“Well, you’re looking real Sunday slick.” I was shocked and amused that he’d obviously shaved for Cash. He cut his eyes at me, daring me to say another word in front of her. I would have, but Cash’s looks distracted me—her hair pressed flat and her clothes sticking to her. At first glance I wondered why she was so sweat-covered, the heat certainly not that intense yet.

“You trying to dehydrate her?” I asked, noting the moisture on her body. They eyed each other and giggled.

“She’s not overworked, just doesn’t move very fast,” Perry said as he reached for a glass of iced tea. “This is a mighty nice spread.”

A slightly unpleasant odor permeated the air, causing me to inspect her more closely. I pinched the edge of her pant leg and rubbed the cloth between my thumb and forefinger. She was covered in some kind of fluid. When I asked what happened to her clothes they chuckled more.

“Sprayer swung around and caught her before she steered clear,” Perry announced.

“This looks delicious!” Cash swooned again, which seemed to be her reaction to anything edible.

“What do you mean, swung around? You mean you sprayed her?” My voice rose.

“Pretty much,” Cash said, straight-faced, then looked at Perry and giggled some more.

“Did you get it in your eyes? Go shower! Scrub from head to toe and wash your hair. I mean it. That chemical’s nothing to fool around with and you need to get it off your skin right now. Go!”

She jumped up as if hot-wired and darted inside the house, heading for the shower as I addressed Perry. “Why didn’t you bring her up here right away?”

“It happened just before we got here, and that last tank was pretty watered down. She was in the lead and I swung around and she hung back instead of going wide.”

“Looks like the two of you haven’t got the sense God gave a goat.” I tried to reason why I was so mad over Cash being sprayed.

My mind flashed on Johnny and I shook my head to blow that image away, realizing that must be the cause. I didn’t want another terrible accident to happen due to my inattention.

“Not gonna kill her,” Perry continued, as if picking up on my thoughts.

“You gonna teach her to ranch or become a kid yourself?”

“Never was one so I might like to try it. You make a great lunch, Maggie Tanner.” He spoke my name with his usual supercilious formality and nodded at me appreciatively as he chewed, oblivious to the chewing he was getting.

Minutes later she was out of the shower and back at the table, barefoot in a pair of fresh jeans and a dark tank top, her arms muscled as if she worked out and her hair wet and matted to her head.

“Everything okay?” She looked up with sparkling eyes.

Her presence seemed to drain the angry energy out of me and I settled down, then started to say that few women looked as good as she did with their hair wet but suddenly, self-conscious, changed my phrasing. “You’ve got good bone structure.” I concentrated on my food as I mumbled, “I’m so used to looking for it in livestock that I notice it in people.”

“Thank you.” She smiled. “I like the way your hair falls down around your face, kind of like you pulled it up but then it decided it had a different plan. And you have really flashy eyes, like you get fired up over things.”

“She gets fired up all right.” Perry grinned between bites.

The casual way she commented on my appearance, unabashedly examining my face, embarrassed me. Frankly, I didn’t know if I was attractive or not, since no one around here mentioned how I looked one way or the other, and I wasn’t a good judge of myself. “Nobody got anything to say about
my
looks?” Perry paused mid-chew.

“You’re rustic,” Cash said.

“Rusty?” He seemed indignant.

“Rustic,” she repeated, “like this terrific old ranch house.”

He thought about that, then started eating again, obviously content to be a ramshackle building.

Dropping the subject of good looks, Cash bubbled over with descriptions of the back pasture as if I’d never seen it. She waved her arms, describing how the scissortails swooped overhead, and she bounced on the bench as she talked about the white-tailed deer that leapt into the woods as she approached. For a moment, I just watched her, thinking how energized she was.

When I brought the cherry pie out, she half rose off the bench waving her arms and nearly caused me to drop the glass pie pan, exclaiming that cherry was her favorite. She apologized as Perry chuckled and said if she kept it up we’d have to eat it off the floor. I cut them both a large slice and eased it onto the plates. She dove in and ate it slowly, rolling her eyes to the heavens.

“You makin’ love to that pie or eating it?” Perry asked, and Cash raised an eyebrow but never stopped devouring it.

She looks sexy. Bet Buck had a hell of a time when she was
growing up.

She suddenly glanced in my direction. “I hear your mind ticking away. What are you thinking?”

Caught off guard, I stammered. “I’ve never seen cherry pie so well received.”

“I don’t think that’s what you were thinking,” she said.

I felt myself blush and Perry grinned. “She’s a pretty smart little gal, Maggie. Better be careful around her.” Cash looked right into my eyes and her penetrating gaze gave me chills. Where did someone her age get the confidence to look right through you, and why on God’s green earth did she do it?
Too familiar. I’ll have to
make it a point to teach her some manners. You don’t stare at people
around here. This is Kansas.

❖

The following afternoon the big cattle trucks backed into the pasture and dropped their load gates, and dozens of Black Angus cows jogged out of their crowded transport and onto the green grass, pushing and shoving to find their spot in the field. The freckle-faced, dirt-covered driver hopped down out of the cab to greet me, leaving the motor running.

“A hundred head.” He nodded toward his wards. “Said he’d send you a check for the lease.”

“Tell him he owes me for last season,” I said, making eye contact with the young man, who ducked his head.

“He said to tell you he intends to pay you.”

“Tell him I intend to
get
paid.” I grinned back at him, then signed the paper he held out. He was gone in only minutes and Perry, on his small chestnut mare, Peanuts, signaled that he had them under control. Peanuts knew the drill and almost single-handedly herded the cattle north and into an unsprayed pasture, where I hoped they’d leave my Bermuda alone and eat the rugged Johnson grass.

I stayed away from the cattle herd, not wanting to get attached to them, because they were destined to be bred, calved, and culled—the young males headed for fattening up before slaughter.