Page 8 of The Fugitive Cowboy's Baby
“White Lightning is out in the pasture right now,” Tony said. “Would you like to meet him?”
Kat nodded. White Lightning. What a name! She imagined a powerful stallion of a horse, bright white, running like the wind. Part of her knew her imagination was probably supplying an exaggerated, romanticized version of the horse, and she tried to lower her expectations. However, there was no chance she could possibly have lowered them enough.
White Lightning was more of a dirty cream color, and he didn’t come close to moving fast enough to warrant the wordlightningbeing part of his name. He was clearly old, lacking a bit in muscle tone and energy. “Is he a geriatric horse?” Kat asked.
“Something we have in common,” Tony answered with a chuckle. He reached out to White Lightning and called him closer. “C’mere, old boy. You want a carrot?” He pulled a carrotfrom the pocket on the front of his overalls. How long he’d been keeping it there, Kat didn’t even want to guess.
The old horse slowly meandered toward them, looking like every step was exhausting. “I guess it’s a good thing he has a nice place to retire,” Kat said, trying to put a positive spin on things. “We should all be so lucky.”
“If anyone wants to pay for my room and board and feed me carrots when I’m retired, I’ll take it,” Tony said. “We all deserve good golden years, White Lightning included. Would you like to meet the goats and emu?”
Kat smiled to herself. This guy was exactly the sort of person she could see her uncle hiring. He was sincere and kind of pure in an oddly lovable way. Then, his most recent comment finally sank in. “Wait… Emu?”
“Yeah,” Tony said. “Our emu. His name’s Edison. Found him running along the highway one day. It was a trick to wrangle him, but I managed it well enough. I’m assuming he escaped from an emu ranch in the area, but I couldn’t find an owner, so I decided we could keep him. I mean, why not?”
“There are emu ranches in North Texas?” Kat said in disbelief.
“Oh, sure!” Tony answered, gesturing for her to follow him. “There’s lots of them. Guess Edison got lucky because he escaped and wound up at a ranch that doesn’t sell emu meat. So now he’s family.”
Tony led Kat to a pen not far from the barn where a large, Jurassic-looking, flightless bird was lounging. It stood and came trotting over as soon as it saw Tony. “Oh no! I forgot treats for you,” Tony said, and Kat had a hard time believing that was really true. Tony seemed to be the type of guy who was alwaysready for anything. “I’ll show you how to give him a nice shower with the hose when the temps go up. It’s his favorite thing,” he said.
“You seem to be pretty fond of these animals.”
“I am, of course,” Tony answered with a sad smile. “They’ve been my only company since we lost Roy. Anyway, none of the current livestock will be sold for meat, so I think it’s fine to get attached. The goats are good for milk and cheese.” As he spoke, he gestured toward another pen with a couple of older goats in it. The fence around them was missing some boards in a few sections. “Sandra and Stacy,” Tony informed her.
Kat addedrepair goat pento her to-do list. Then she paused and added their names to the note, just to help remember them. “So, none of these animals are for sale?” she asked.
Tony shook his head. “They’re all too old. Mostly, they just hang around and entertain me, which they’re experts at, obviously. I’m not that easy to entertain.” That last sentence was clearly sarcastic, but it put an idea into Kat’s head. The idea wasn’t fully formed yet, but she felt the spark of it and spent the rest of the tour thinking about it.
After getting the lay of the land on the ranch, Kat finally asked the question she’d been dreading. But it had to be asked. “Can I take a look at the books?”
“Ah…” Tony cleared his throat and scratched his chin awkwardly. “Well, Roy wasn’t a very organized person. I do know he wrote some things down, but toward the end there, he wasn’t feeling one hundred percent and he let some things go.”
“That’s OK,” Kat said, doing her best to ignore the creeping dread she was feeling. “I enjoy a good challenge.”
The office was a trailer sitting beside the cabin, which brought back so many memories as soon as Kat saw it. She knew her uncle’s cabin, spent the night there once or twice. The trailer, though, she’d never really gone into before. It was her uncle’s office, and she’d never had any interest in seeing it, being a child who was far more interested in petting as many animals as she could get her grubby little hands on.
Cautiously, she pushed open the door to the trailer and stepped in. And she was immediately hit by a musty smell and the sight of stacked paperwork on almost every surface. This would take hours to go through, but at least there were records. She closed her eyes and stepped back out of the trailer.
“Sorry about the mess,” Tony said with a half-hearted shrug.
She waved his concerns away. “It’s not your mess, so don’t you worry about it. I’ll handle it. Now, can you let me into the cabin so I can get settled in?”
“Sure thing,” Tony said. “It’s unlocked anyway. I don’t even know where the key is, to be honest. Roy never had the need for that kind of security here, it being so far out of the way. We don’t get a lot of visitors.”
That spark of an idea flashed in Kat’s head again. She was in advertising, and getting eyes on a product or place was what she was good at. She had no experience in ranching for food products, but she knew how to create an experience that people would pay to have. Was that what her uncle meant for her to do when he left the ranch to her?
The interior of the cabin wasn’t much more luxurious than the trailer was. On the plus side, it lacked that musty smell, but it was about as minimalist as they come. “That’s OK,” Kat toldherself. “I’m used to a studio. It’s a good thing I don’t have too much furniture.”
“That’s the spirit,” Tony said from the doorway. “It’s plumbed, so you’ve got running water at least. And the woodstove there will keep you warm in the wintertime.”
Kat paused, realizing he meant there was no central heating. She’d be chopping wood all winter if she didn’t want to freeze. “This is… great,” she said, still trying to make herself believe it. “No, really. It has so much potential. I can work with this.”
She had a cozy cabin to live in, a large property with one working barn and two more abandoned buildings that could be renovated into… something. A gift shop? A farmer’s market? Her mind was spinning in the best possible way. Ideas were forming in her subconscious. She could make this work. She had to believe it. If she didn’t believe it, she’d break down, and breaking down, giving up, was unacceptable.
CHAPTER 5
KAT
