Chapter 2
Chapter Two
F reddy Singleton hung up the phone and glared at her younger sister, Leigh, who was perched on the edge of the old pine desk. “Damn. That was Janine at Cooper Realty and she wants us to send the van for that TR McGuinness from New York.”
“Do we have to?”
Freddy shrugged. “I’ll catch hell from the Westridge corporate types if I don’t. They want us to roll out the red carpet for him. They think he’s got money. Shoot. I was hoping he wasn’t serious. Then maybe Eb’s offer would stand.”
“Fat chance,” Leigh said. “Westridge wants at least their original investment back.” She pushed away from the desk and walked over to study the gallery of framed photographs displayed on the office walls. “Maybe they’re hoping for a bidding war between Eb and this Easterner.”
“Eb can’t go any higher.” Freddy tapped a pencil against the desk in frustration. “Just what we need, a greenhorn trying to run the place. Eb Whitlock would just leave me alone to do my thing.”
Leigh turned back to her. “Maybe the guy won’t be interested once he sees the ranch. We are looking a little shabby in spots. And we’re low on guests this week. What have we got, eleven? That won’t seem like a money-making operation.”
“Here’s a clue for you, Leigh. It isn’t. I’ve never seen it so slow in May.”
“So we’ll convert our weaknesses to strengths. Maybe we can scare him off. Don’t forget to tell him about the legendary curse that’s supposed to hang over this property.”
“Yeah, Westridge has been on my case about all the little mishaps we’ve had lately.
Sometimes I wonder if there really is a curse.
” Freddy dialed the bunkhouse and asked Dwayne to make an airport run, then hung up and glanced up at Leigh.
“We might as well go down to the corrals and get this morning’s chore over with.
Are you ready to convince Red Devil that sex isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? ”
Leigh chuckled. “I don’t think there’s a male animal alive who would accept castration with grace, but I’ll do what I can. After all, that’s what a head wrangler gets paid for.”
Freddy stood and reached for her hat hanging from a peg on the wall. “You know, I wonder if we really could discourage this T.R. person from buying the ranch.”
“He’s a dude, right?” Leigh said. “We have ways of handling dudes.”
“That we do.” Freddy adjusted her hat so the brim settled low over her eyes. “And I’d do just about anything to get rid of this particular tenderfoot.”
T.R. wasn’t surprised when the guest ranch van that met him at the airport had steer horns on the hood instead of a standard hood ornament. With a ranch named the True Love, he was lucky the ornament wasn’t a valentine heart.
Despite the air-conditioning, it was hot inside the van.
He took off his sport coat, making sure Joe Gilardini’s home phone number was still tucked in the pocket.
He and Joe had been released from the hospital emergency room the same day as the accident, Joe with a broken arm as well as the nasty cut on his chin, and T.R.
with a mild concussion. Lavette was still in the hospital with lower back pain and no clear predictions from the doctors on whether he could resume his trucking career, but he was more eager to get in on the ranch deal than Gilardini.
The driver of the van was a certified cowboy named Duane, grizzled and taciturn.
His sun-weathered skin made judging his age difficult, but he was probably about forty-five.
T.R. gave up on conversation after a few monosyllabic responses from the man and watched Duane navigate the heavy city traffic of Tucson.
It wasn’t hard to picture him guiding a cutting horse through a restless herd of cattle with the same dedication.
T.R. glanced out the window and grinned. He might be on a freeway, but there was no doubt he was in the West. Mountains surrounded the city, but the Santa Catalinas dominated it. It wasn’t a gentle range.
As they drove, civilization loosened its grip on the landscape and T.R. gazed at hillsides covered with giant saguaros standing fifty to sixty feet high, their massive arms lifted toward a sky so blue T.R. took off his sunglasses to make sure the color wasn’t an optical trick. It wasn’t.
The van turned off the main road where two battered rural mailboxes crouched, one marked Singleton in faded letters, and the other Whitlock.
Near the boxes was a small white sign that read True Love Guest Ranch — 2 miles.
Beneath the lettering was a heart with an arrow through it.
T.R. could imagine what Joe would say about that.
He had to convince the cop that none of that mattered.
The name and the corny heart would disappear in a couple of years, anyway.
They could even change the name immediately if Joe insisted on something more. .. manly.
The van jolted along a dirt road that needed grading, sending a plume of dust behind it.
A lane branched off to the right, and a wooden sign announced a turnoff to the Rocking W Ranch —Whitlock’s property, T.R.
concluded. Several yards down the lane, a gaunt figure in a battered straw cowboy hat supported himself with an aluminum walker as he inched along in the direction of the ranch house.
A plastic shopping bag filled with mail hung on one side of the walker.
“Who’s that?” T.R. asked Duane.
“Dexter.”
As the van drew alongside, Dexter turned slowly and lifted one hand in a salute. Duane raised two fingers from the steering wheel and drove past.
“Aren’t you going to give him a ride?”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t aim to insult Dex.”
T.R. glanced back at the old cowboy shuffling along the dirt road. “He picks up the mail every day?”
Duane shifted his tobacco to the other side of his lip. “Yeр.”
“How long does it take him?”
“Good days, an hour.”
T.R. settled in the seat and tried not to think about Dexter’s daily trek to the mailbox. It was too personal, too human — the sort of information he’d rather not know, considering his plans for the True Love.
The road forked again, and another sign appeared which read Main House — Registration, and pointed to the right.
Beneath that was the word corrals and another arrow, this one pointing to the left.
And below all that, the darned heart with an arrow through it.
These people weren’t shy about their sentimentality.
Duane slowed the van at the fork. “Freddy’s down at the corrals. I should probably take you there first.”
T.R. was impressed that Duane was capable of making such a long speech. “Fine,” he agreed. He had to see all of it, so it didn’t much matter which end he started with. “What’s going on at the corrals?” he asked, not really expecting an explanation.
“Last I heard, Freddy was fixin’ to use the emasculator on Red Devil.”
T.R. swallowed. From the corner of his eye, he could see Duane watching him for a reaction.
He’d never heard of an emasculator, but it didn’t take much imagination to figure out what was in store for Red Devil.
He adopted the poker face that had served him so well as a deal maker.
“Sounds interesting,” he said evenly. “Maybe I’ll be in time to watch. ”
“Maybe you will,” Duane said, a slow grin spreading across his leathered face as he took the left fork in the road.
T.R. prayed the corrals were a long, long way down this winding road, and that Freddy had already finished the task.
Shortly, however, the corrals appeared. They didn’t look very much like the ones T.R.
had seen in the movies. The fences were at least a foot thick and made with tree branches laid lengthwise inside upright braces to form a solid wall.
The weathered nature of the branches indicated the corrals had been there a long time.
One large enclosure containing at least thirty horses was surrounded by several smaller corrals, which were empty.
Not far from the corrals stood a large tin barn with two wings, one of tin, and one of stone, looking much older than its counterpart. Across a small clearing was a long one-story building, also of stone, that looked as though it might be a bunkhouse.
A group of cowboys clustered around one of the small corrals. Laughter wafted across the clearing, as if the men were at a party.
“I’ll park here, so we don’t get no dust over there,” Duane said. “Come on,” he urged, climbing down from the driver’s seat. “We’ll get a little closer so you can see.”
T.R. took a deep breath and loosened his tie. “Okay.”
He left his sport coat in the van, deciding a jacket wasn’t required at this particular event. Following Duane, he trudged through dust that coated his oxblood wing tips.
It sure didn’t smell like the city . But he sort of liked the combined odor of horse manure and animal sweat that hung over the area.
Duane paused next to the fence and found a foothold in the meshed branches. “Just climb up here. You can see, then.”
T.R. put his hands on the rough bark, wedged his wingtips in a notch in the branches and hoisted himself up next to Duane. Inside the small corral where the cowboys had gathered, a cinnamon-colored horse lay on the ground, his back leg stretched away from his body with a rope.
A blond woman crouched near the horse’s head, and a brunette was kneeling by his groin area. T.R. had a sudden uneasy suspicion. “Where’s Freddy?” he asked.
“Right there by the business end of the horse. The blonde is Leigh, her sister. She’s the head wrangler.”
“Oh.” He hated surprises. They threw him off his stride.
Duane looked at him. “Freddy’s the best boss I ever slung a rope for, mister. And a damned good vet. She took it in school, just so’s she could help out with animals around here.”
“I’m sure she’s very capable.” T.R.’s mind raced to assimilate this unexpected information. Freddy had her back to him, her snug-fitting jeans cupping a firm backside, her leather belt cinching in a small waist. Her rich brunette hair was caught with a silver-and-turquoise clip at her nape.
“Leigh calls herself a horse psychic,” Duane said. “Some folks laugh about it, but I’ve known people who could tell what horses are thinkin’. Seems like Leigh can. She’s gonna work on Red Devil’s self-esteem, I think is what she said.”
After that speech, T.R. realized that Duane wasn’t quiet at all. Probably, he just got that way in the unfriendly confines of the city. Out here on the ranch, conversation spewed from him like water from a broken fire hydrant.
But most of T.R.’s attention remained focused on Freddy.
Her cooperation would be critical once the purchase went through, because he wanted to continue the guest ranch operation without sinking any more money into improvements.
It would be a waste of resources, considering the ultimate fate of the property.
Freddy turned and asked for something and T.R.
got a glimpse of her profile. Classic. So she had a face to match her figure, apparently.
Now that he’d adjusted to the idea that the ranch foreman was a woman, he liked it.
Women were just as good working companions as men.
Who knew if Freddy might turn out to be more reasonable about his plans for the ranch than some macho guy protecting his turf.
Sometimes women were better at the art of compromise.
“They’ve sedated him, but they ain’t done the cuttin’ yet,” Duane said, as if he felt obliged to provide color commentary on the event. “Ever seen anythin’ like this before?”
“No.” T.R. wondered if this was the way Elizabethans used to react to beheadings in the public square — too horrified to watch and too curious to look away. He winced as Freddy began the procedure and fought the urge to put his hands over his own crotch.
“That there’s the emasculator,” Duane explained, pointing to an instrument in Freddy’s hands. “Looks sorta like a nutcracker, don’t it? No pun intended.”
T.R. wanted to turn his back on the whole thing, but he figured this might be a test, and for some stupid reason, he didn’t want Duane to think less of him.
As the operation continued, Duane shifted his weight uneasily. So, he wasn’t as unperturbed about this as he let on. “Kinda gets you in the— well, you know,” the cowboy said.
“Yeah, I know,” T.R. said. He found it interesting that Duane seemed reluctant to mention body parts.
He’d heard that cowboys had a chivalrous side and avoided many of the four-letter words tossed out so often by city dwellers.
Some of T.R.’s Wall Street friends might laugh at the idea that a tobacco-spitting old cowpoke was a gentleman, but that’s exactly how T.R. would describe Duane.
At last, Freddy stood, signaling that the operation was over. T.R. realized his jaw hurt, and he relaxed his clenched teeth.
Duane climbed down. “That does it. Might as well take you over to meet the boss. Walk careful and don’t stir up no dust. We don’t want any on Red Devil’s... equipment.”
T.R. eased himself off the fence, wiped his sweaty palms on his slacks and started after Duane. As they approached, the blond sister named Leigh noticed them and spoke to Freddy.
The ranch foreman turned and stripped off her gloves. Striding toward them, she held out her hand to T.R. “Welcome to the True Love, Mr. McGuinnes. I’m Frederica Singleton. Please call me Freddy.”
T.R. looked into hazel eyes that assessed him with calm intelligence. Her grip was firm, although her skin was temptingly soft. He reminded himself these were the same hands that had just turned a stallion into a gelding. He’d be wise not to underestimate Freddy Singleton.