Chapter 26
Hailey Winters led Lila Mae up the steps and to the deck on the side of the homestead at Three Rivers Ranch.
They’d made the long drive here together, with Lila Mae telling her everything she’d learned at Shiloh Ridge last week.
Hailey had spent a lot of time at Shiloh Ridge, and she knew how charismatic both Smiles and Rock were.
Not only that, but Hailey didn’t think there were smarter cowboys on the planet, and part of her wished she hadn’t been so unhappy to be back at the ranch where she’d grown up.
She loved Shiloh Ridge, to be certain, but she also loved that she didn’t live there anymore. She knew there’d always be a place for her there, but she certainly didn’t have the same drive to live on a cattle ranch, despite the fact that there were a dozen breeds of animals she could take care of.
She knocked on the frame of the screen door and then called through it. “Libby, it’s Hailey and Lila Mae.” She smiled over to her boss, who had become quite a good friend. Lila Mae seemed to drink up everything around her, really absorbing it and learning and growing.
Yes, she had a vision for Feline Friends, but she was willing to make adjustments as she went, claiming not to know everything and constantly asking for help and feedback.
Hailey needed to learn from her, because she naturally assumed she was right about most things, and she was very opinionated on the way things should be done.
“Come in,” Libby called, and the sound of a baby’s cry came through the open screen.
Hailey reached to open the screen door, and she entered first. It was cooler in the house, thanks to the air conditioner, and Hailey lifted her ponytail off the back of her neck where it had started to stick in the humidity.
She was used to heat, having lived in Texas her whole life, and she smiled at the little girl in the living room.
“Hi, Nora,” she said, and she moved in that direction to pick up the little girl.
Nora clapped her hands and babbled, and Hailey grinned at her.
She’d had plenty of practice with babies and toddlers, as she had been almost eleven years old by the time her step-mom had had her and Daddy’s first baby.
Then she’d had twins, and Hailey had loved those babies with her whole heart and soul.
She still loved Joey, Nash, and Nellie, and she got along great with her half-siblings.
Lila Mae smiled at her, and then at Libby when the woman came down the hall with her two-month-old son in her arms. “Can I hold him?” Lila Mae asked.
“I never say no when someone asks to hold my baby.” She passed the little boy to Lila Mae, who grinned at him, bounced him lightly, and cooed at him. “His name’s Gavin, right?”
“This is Lila Mae,” Hailey said. “You’ve probably heard Trap talk about her.
” She smiled at Lila Mae, who seemed to beam sunshine out of her soul.
Hailey thought that would be a whole lot easier if she had a bank account that looked like Lila Mae’s, and she schooled the somewhat catty thoughts as soon as she had them.
She didn’t want to begrudge anyone for anything they had, and she’d seen firsthand how hard Lila Mae worked.
Of course, she’d been born into money, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have a work ethic.
Hailey could admit her step-mom and all the Glovers had plenty of money, and she’d never wanted for anything.
“I swear I’m almost ready,” Libby said. “It takes forever to get out of the house with the kids.” She didn’t seem frazzled by it as she sank onto the couch with a groan, “Come on, Nora, let’s put your shoes on.”
Hailey moved over to hand the little girl to her mother so she could put on shoes and they could get out onto the ranch.
When Lila Mae somehow got Gavin to laugh, Libby looked at her with surprise. “Wow, I don’t think he’s ever laughed before.”
“Really?” Lila Mae asked. “He is just the cutest thing in the world.”
“Thank you,” Libby said, and she finished with Nora’s shoes and swept a kiss along Gavin’s cheek. “I’m going to put him in my sling.” It took a few more minutes for her to get the baby ready to go, and then the five of them left the farmhouse.
Libby led them into the shade created by the ranch buildings on the west side of the road, which led in front of the cowboy cabins. Hailey had a few friends who’d grown up out here at Three Rivers, some of them in these cabins as their daddies worked full-time here at the ranch.
Lila Mae asked her general questions as they walked, and Hailey simply listened. Lila Mae wanted to know how many full-time cowboys they had here, and Libby said, “Fourteen right now, and we have a full-time veterinarian and two vet techs.”
Hailey clued in then, because she happened to know that one of those vet techs was doing an internship here, and while it took a substantial amount of time to drive to Three Rivers Ranch, if she could live on-site and finish her certification here, Hailey thought that would be pretty amazing.
At the same time, she knew she was putting the horse before the cart, as she’d just started her vet tech certification classes and wouldn’t need an internship for another year and a half.
She liked working for Lila Mae, and it gave her enough of an income to live on her own again.
Of course, she had a roommate, so she couldn’t really afford to live all on her own quite yet, but Hailey felt better about herself and her future than she had in a great long while.
Libby pointed out the buildings as they moved by them, including the chicken house, the stables, the barns, and the big arena that actually belonged to Courage Reins.
“Have you ever been horseback riding?” Libby asked, and Lila Mae looked at her as if Libby had asked if she’d ever consider cutting off her own arm.
“No,” Lila Mae said. “I suppose I need to learn now that I’m a resident of Texas and all.”
“This is the best place to do it,” Hailey said, looking past Libby to Lila Mae. “Courage Reins has the gentlest horses.”
Lila Mae nodded, pressed her lips together, and looked back at her notebook. “So you offer on-site housing?” she asked.
“Yes,” Libby said. “To some of the cowboys, and it’s reflected in our salaries.”
“Sure,” Lila Mae said. “So others might not live here, but make the drive out.”
“Yep.” Libby pointed to the cabin they walked in front of, the third one from the end of the row. “Our veterinarian lives right here, in fact, and right next to him is one of our long-time cowboys, and on the end is the foreman’s cabin. You can see it’s bigger than the others.”
Hailey looked at the cowboy cabins here, and they sure did seem nicer than the ones at Shiloh Ridge. Lila Mae seemed to be drinking it all in, and she scribbled something else into her notebook.
They came to a road which crossed in front of them, and Libby continued over it. “This is our Administration Building here,” she said, indicating the big trailer in front of them. “And yes, we have people who drive out to the ranch every day, including our controller and a couple of secretaries.”
“I think I need to hire another secretary,” Lila Mae said, and Hailey nodded in an exaggerated way. Her boss and friend caught her eye, and Lila Mae grinned at her. “I do, right?”
“I think so,” Hailey said. “And as the general manager of Feline Friends, I would know.”
Lila Mae nodded and scratched a note onto her paper. “I’ll see what I can find.”
“We have a lot more people coming in now,” Hailey said. “Both to drop off cats and to adopt them. Which is good, that’s what you want, but that just means you need people to be able to manage the intake of cats and outflow of adoptions.”
“Yeah.” Lila Mae sighed and gazed at the horizon in front of them. “Do you have any type of organizational system you can show me?” She looked hopefully at Libby.
“Sure,” Libby said. “I can put you in touch with a couple of our secretaries. They do all of our filing, management of our sales of cattle, scheduling, lots of stuff like that.”
“I’d love to talk to one of them,” Lila Mae said. “Even if I just got their number, and they were willing to let me call them.”
“Sure,” Libby said. The baby squawked from the sling on her chest, and Libby put her hand on his bottom and bounced him.
When that didn’t calm him, she tried a more vigorous approach and then apologized. “I fed him early, so I’d be able to do this meeting, and he usually goes right to sleep after that. I do most of my work with him asleep in this sling.”
“Are you still working the ranch a lot?” Lila Mae asked over Gavin’s whines.
“Yeah,” Libby said. “My husband has picked up a lot of what I normally do, and I kind of like it.” She grinned at Hailey and linked her arm through hers. “I might not come back to full-time management if I don’t have to.”
“Why would you?” Hailey grinned at her. “Rusty’s great.” She looked over to Lila Mae. “That’s her husband.”
“He is great,” Libby said. “He came from a corn farm in Oklahoma, which is quite a bit different than a cattle ranch in Texas, but he stepped right into the role and has learned everything he needed to.”
“And this is a generational ranch too, right?” Lila Mae asked.
“Yes,” Libby said, and she frowned down toward her baby as he let loose another wail. “I think I know what the problem is.” She leaned closer and took a deep breath, then grimaced, groaned, and pulled back. “Yep, he needs his diaper changed.”
The smell hit Hailey then, even from several feet away, and as much as she loved babies, she didn’t love that smell.
“Okay,” Lila Mae said. “We can go back.”
“No, no,” Libby said. “You guys go on and head into the admin building. Be sure to check out our vaccination chutes too. They’re just behind the building to the south. Our vets are out there today, and you can ask them anything you want.”
With that, she turned around and headed back toward the house, her long strides crunching over the gravel. Hailey looked at Lila Mae, and Lila Mae looked at her. They had come all this way, so Hailey continued on toward the admin building.
Hailey acknowledged a couple of cowboys coming out as she climbed the metal steps to the entrance. They tipped their hats, said, “Howdy, ladies,” and continued on their way. Since they’d come in the afternoon, surely everyone had their daily assignments and knew what needed to be done that day.
“Hey, there,” a woman said, and she sat at a desk positioned only a few paces inside the door.
“Hi,” Hailey said. “Libby was showing us around. I’m Hailey Winters, and this is Lila Mae Dixon.”
“Yes, of course,” the woman said. “Libby said you were coming today.”
“Lila Mae’s opening a cat sanctuary in town,” Hailey said. “She just wants to see how things are run.”
“Sure. My name is Clancy,” she said. “I run all the operations here.”
That caused another round of questions from Lila Mae, and Hailey gestured that she’d wait outside, and then headed that way.
Hailey could’ve told her how things worked at Shiloh Ridge, but Lila Mae’s key takeaways had been visual examples and tons of photos.
There was something about being able to see something instead of just being told about it, and Lila Mae was a very visual person.
She made drawings and maps of her cat houses, and she wanted to see Trap’s architectural drawings before a single thing got started.
Hailey didn’t blame her, as surely it wasn’t free to build cat houses and renovate a dilapidated ranch.
She wandered south to the chutes, where, yes, she found a multitude of activity happening.
Several cowboys rode horses as they cut out cattle and pushed them toward the chutes.
Once inside, three more cowboys took blood, loaded it into trays, and made notes before releasing the cattle into a large paddock.
She stepped up onto the rung and watched, then pulled out her phone to take a video. After all, the cowboys looked almost done for the day, and Hailey didn’t want Lila Mae to miss it.
No, they certainly wouldn’t be herding cats through fences, nor administering vaccines in chutes, but there was something about a well-run operation that made Hailey smile.
She knew Lila Mae would want to see how these cowboys worked together, and how Three Rivers had a system for examining their cattle as they came in from the range in preparation for Market Day.
“Hey, you’re not allowed to film here,” one of the cowboys called.
Hailey lowered her phone and frowned. “I’m just taking some pictures for my friend.”
She could practically hear him growl through the maze of fencing, because he didn’t actually stand that far from her.
“Yeah, and I’m telling you, you can’t take those pictures.” He handed the clipboard he held to another cowboy, both of them looking at her now, and then came her way. He climbed the fence closest to him and started bridging gaps with his long legs, taking the most direct route toward her.
Hailey glanced over her shoulder, wishing Lila Mae or Libby would show up, because both of them were more personable than her, especially when faced with a handsome cowboy who felt like he owned this corner of Texas.
Well, Hailey happened to know he didn’t, and that Libby wouldn’t mind if she took pictures of how they were rustling up the cattle and performing what she assumed was their vaccination treatment for the cattle, visual exam, and round-up count all in one.
After all, she’d seen setups like this before at Shiloh Ridge.
She took one more picture of the growly bear cowboy as he approached, partly because he was extremely good looking, but mostly to annoy him.
“Yeah, I’m gonna need you to erase that,” he said, and Hailey quickly tucked her phone into her back pocket—where she knew no cowboy in his right mind would dare to try and get it from her.