Chapter Three #2
Ellen went over to Sir Lancelot’s stall to prep him for the morning ride.
She did have a soft spot for her youngest. After three relatively easy births, Bobby’s arrival had been traumatic.
Though only three weeks early and technically full term, labor was difficult—they rushed Ellen in for an emergency C-section when they couldn’t detect a heartbeat.
They got him out, but she was hemorrhaging so bad that they had to remove her uterus.
After that harrowing experience, Bobby had been a complete joy in their lives.
Jake was so much like his father—responsible, steadfast, loyal.
Avery, though Ellen hesitated to admit it, reminded her of herself as a teenager: book smart, boy crazy, and constantly testing limits.
Lyla, like Jake, was dependable and had more common sense than any kid Ellen knew, though she was often too blunt.
As Penny said, Lyla “didn’t suffer fools.
” Ellen disliked the phrase “old soul,” but if it fit anyone, it was her thirteen-year-old daughter.
And then there was Bobby. Kind, sweet, generous—he radiated love. He’d been their ray of sunshine after John’s sudden death. So it certainly didn’t surprise Ellen that he was out looking for a stray cat.
John would have done the same thing.
Ellen mounted Sir Lancelot, a beautiful gelding more than twenty years old, and headed across the field toward the Coulters’ property.
Sir Lancelot had been born to one of John’s horses the day John proposed to her—a memorable event made even more memorable when John had to rush home from their picnic and help his brother, Travis, with the delivery because the mare was struggling.
John had wanted to be a vet, and she’d studied to be a nurse. They shared one class their freshman year and it had been love at first sight.
Unfortunately, John dropped out halfway through his sophomore year because his dad died and John needed to take over the farm.
Travis was only sixteen at the time, and John’s mother wasn’t well.
Neither of John’s uncles wanted to take over the farm—they’d both moved out of the area—so that left John and his grandfather.
Ellen would have dropped out with him, but John told her she should finish school. She graduated a year early, and they married a month later at the small church four generations of McKennas had been married in.
Until Jake was born, she worked as a nurse, and then to keep her license current she worked part-time at the hospital in Gainesville.
But after Bobby’s difficult birth and John’s plans to expand the farm, she realized that she had grown to love Whisper Creek Ranch as much as the McKenna family.
She obtained her Certified Nurse Midwife license and took on two or three clients a year.
She didn’t charge much, but it was a needed service, especially in rural Texas.
Her OB—a doctor she had both worked for and who had delivered all four of her children—asked her to check on some of his patients from time to time.
Last week in the middle of the storm Jake had driven her up to the Sutton house in the hills above Rock Creek.
Margery thought she was having contractions.
She wasn’t, but she was thirty-two weeks pregnant with her first child and worried about every twitch and turn.
Plus, her last appointment revealed slightly elevated blood pressure, so they were monitoring her closely.
Margery was young, her husband was deployed overseas, and her sister who moved in to help was just nineteen.
Anyone in the same situation would be a bit nervous.
Ellen had Sir Lancelot walking at a brisk pace, not quite a full trot. The ground was too wet, and gopher holes were near impossible to see in the mud. The air was thick with humidity, the warm wind pushing at her back.
The Coulters lived directly west. They had four hundred acres and had sold most of their two hundred head of cattle years ago, keeping two championship bulls they leased for breeding, which could be very lucrative.
Before John’s death, he had been talking to the older couple about buying out their land, much as he’d done with the Mendoza property to the northeast, which they’d purchased the year before.
But the Coulters hadn’t been ready, and they assured Ellen they wouldn’t sell to anyone else, which had given her hope.
Grow or die.
When John took over Whisper Creek Ranch, they had just shy of eight hundred acres.
Now, with the Mendoza property, they were sitting on fourteen hundred acres.
John’s plan had been to buy the bulk of the Coulter Ranch and the bulk of the Baldwin property, which would put them to just over three thousand acres.
But now? Baldwin had sold to Verdacorp, and if what Tom Garza said about the Coulters was true, she wouldn’t get that land, either.
There were some smaller farms north of their property that Ellen had approached who hadn’t yet sold to Verdacorp, but the Robinson venture had already bought most of the farms both south and east of her property line.
Ellen suspected that now they would move north and attempt to surround her.
Verdacorp was willing to pay over market value and allow the landowners to retain five acres for themselves.
If they bought up those farms, Ellen would be an island in the middle with no option to expand.
It took Ellen ten minutes to cover the near mile to the Coulters’ house. She could have called, but felt it was better to talk to George and Millie face-to-face. They had been close to John’s parents, and their oldest daughter had graduated high school with John’s brother, Travis.
She dismounted and tied Sir Lancelot’s lead to the rail on the side of the house. The wind suddenly picked up, then settled back down. Ellen knocked on the door.
Millie answered, smiled warmly. “Ellen! Dear, come in. It’s getting windy out there.”
Ellen took off her muddy boots and left them by the front door. “Thank you,” she said and stepped inside.
“Coffee? I just made a fresh pot.”
“That would be nice, thanks.”
She followed Millie into the kitchen. George was sitting at the table, reading the news on a tablet. He smiled at Ellen. “How’s things at your place?”
“Last week’s storm prep helped. Jake and Mateo are out repairing the run-in that was damaged by hail.”
“I fed and secured the bulls this morning. They were agitated, it’s going to be bad.”
Maybe, she thought. Animals had better senses about weather than people. She hoped they’d done enough to prepare, but there wasn’t much more that they could do other than secure the animals, shore up the outbuildings, and stay inside once the rain fell.
She sat across from George. He tapped on his tablet and she saw he was reading his email. The words on his screen were enlarged so it was easy to see Congresswoman Jeanne Clarke Culver’s header across the top.