Vetted

by K'Anne Meinel

  Stealthily, Allyssa waited until Fiona headed off for her morning calls. She set the answering machine on since forwarding the calls to the cell phone rarely worked out here. She quickly hitched up the horse trailer to the Cherokee, which needed a tune up. ’Add it to the list,’ she thought. She’d get to it after this weekend and promised herself to make a list of parts she would need, from an oil filter to an air filter, and to check the belts and tires.

  Rex got all excited to go with her. She wished she could leave him alone here at home to protect the place. She was getting increasingly paranoid as the weather warmed up and people moved around more. They had found places along the creek where people had camped. Fiona told her that ‘no trespassing’ signs, while they would keep some law-abiding people off the property, for the most part were useless. Still, she had seen a sign online that said, ‘Property protected by Anatolian Shepherd’ with a good picture of an adult Anatolian replicated on the picture. She looked at their overgrown pup who really was an adult and smiled. He had learned so much since Fiona had taken him in line and taught him some manners. He could sit, stay, heel to a degree, shake a paw, and he came quickly when she called him. Still, he only listened to Allyssa when he wanted to.

  “You need to be more forceful with him. Make him listen on the first command,” Fiona explained.

  “Uh huh. I think he considers my commands ‘suggestions,’” she retorted to make it a joke. She knew she should work more with the dog and saw some signs that he wanted to obey but wasn’t sure if she knew what she was doing.

  Driving away from the ranch, she went through a mental list of things they still needed and let it go. It would take years to get things the way they wanted them. She had surprised Fiona by painting the fence on both sides in the near pasture, but that was just aesthetics. It didn’t really accomplish anything.

  “Sure, it does, babe. It helps make the wood last longer, it preserves it,” Fiona tried to convince her when she expressed her opinion.

  Still, it looked bright and clean, and she was proud of the job she had accomplished. She wanted to paint all the buildings except the barn and the cabin—leaving those natural since they looked so old and sturdy—but she just didn’t have the time with all the work she had set herself.

  As she drove towards Sweetwater, she hoped not to run into her wife since this was a clandestine purchase. She wanted to surprise her, and if it didn’t work out, no harm was done. She was using the last of the money she had saved back in Denver to purchase these cabinets and she hoped the guy would be willing to help her load them in the trailer. She had washed it out the night before and brought a few old blankets and some rope to wrap around them. The directions were pretty straight forward, but the drive to their ranch was worse than the one to the Falling Pines Ranch. Fiona had shown Allyssa how to drive the front-end loader and they had filled all the potholes with gravel directly from their own ranch and removed some of the bigger rocks that would stick up and hit tires as they came in. This ranch either didn’t care or didn’t have the means they did, and she had to slow down to a crawl to avoid breaking anything on the Jeep or the trailer behind her.

  “Hey, you Jerry?” she greeted the man who came out of the small house that appeared in the middle of the desert-like area she had driven to. Her heart was already sinking, thinking this was a bust and he had lied. It never occurred to her that this was an isolated area and she was a woman alone.

  “Ya, you Allyssa?” he returned with a smile and a wave. “You’re right on time,” he told her, looking past her to the window that was rolled down on the Jeep and the big Anatolian leaning his head out of it, panting and watching.

  “So, where are these cabinets?” she asked, getting right to business.

  “They’re in here,” he said and opened the door of the house, stepping back to let her go before him.

  She was getting an uneasy feeling as she realized how remote they were and that her wife didn’t know where she was. She shouldn’t have tried to surprise her. Still, all that melted away as she looked past all the children’s toys and saw the cabinets lining the living room walls. They took up two whole walls and would be perfect in the cabin if she could get them home. She tried to contain her excitement as she turned back to Jerry. “Still the same price we agreed on?” she asked as she turned back to them and began opening and closing doors and looking them over.

  “Yep. Yer the first to get here, so if you got the money, it’s a deal,” he answered.

  “You’ll help me load ’em in the trailer?” she asked to be sure. She wasn’t showing her money until she was convinced.

  “Yep,” he answered. “I got a hand that’ll help us,” he added as she watched quietly.

  She looked them all over completely and thoroughly, very excited at how they would look in their small cabin, which was a little bigger than this room. It would look wonderful with the medical supplies all under glass and gleaming. “The locks work?”

  “Yep,” was all he said and she looked up to see a woman watching her with almost a feral look in her eye. It was then she realized these people didn’t get out much and probably spent too much time in the back of beyond, isolated and away from socially interactions with others. The creepy feeling she had begun to notice was probably due to that. She hoped so anyway. She wondered how long it would take to become like this as she counted out the money they had agreed upon, having been careful to only bring that amount in that pocket and handing it to him to recount. He nodded and leaned out the door he had left open to yell, “Seth!” Soon enough, a man was seen shuffling from the dilapidated barn and bringing a dolly that had seen better days.

  One by one they took the cabinets from their place on the wall, evidencing that the room had not been painted since they were placed there as the walls were a different color from those above them. She wrapped each cabinet carefully in the blankets she had brought, hoping she had enough with her as she tied them to the walls of the trailer to keep them in place, even tying them to the separator that normally kept horses from each other in the two-stalled trailer.

  “Well, that looks tightly packed,” she said to Jerry when they were done and she was tying the gate up with its steel latch.

  “Yep,” Jerry answered, favoring her with a little smile, which was eerily creepy on the taciturn face. He hadn’t said much as they moved the cabinets out.

  “See ya,” she said with a little wave as she headed for the driver’s seat of the Jeep, relieved to be going, and pushing an excited Anatolian back beyond the window to his own side of the car. She watched in her rearview mirror as the two men watched her slowly drive away, being even more careful with her valuable cargo. The driveway was a nightmare as she tried to drive around the deep potholes and jutting stones, cringing as she heard the telltale scrape of rock against the bottom of the trailer. She already imagined a broken axle or popped tire. Out here that would be very frightening. Still, she slowly made her way to better backroads graded by the county, then to paved roads, and arrived home in the early afternoon. She wondered if the guy had just needed money as they too were always needing something on the ranch, which seemed to be a never-ending drain on any profit they saw.

  “Mrs. Herriot?” a voice greeted her as she parked the Jeep with the back end of the trailer backed up to the steps leading to the porch of the cabin. Rex let out a mighty, “Woof,” in her ear, which also startled her.

  Getting rapidly out of the car, she let Rex out in case this was someone who shouldn’t be here. And he shouldn’t have been; they hadn’t been home. “I’m Mrs. Herriot,” she answered, surprised at the name as no one called her that. Even in Sweetwater she was either Allyssa or the ‘doctor’s missus,’ which she took pride in.

  Rex sniffed the man fully, his tail wagging. He thoroughly intimidated their unexpected visitor who froze where he stood while the dog inspected him. “Do I pass?” he asked when the dog sat and looked at him. He held out his hand for the dog to sniff and immediately made All
yssa relax when Rex allowed himself to be petted. “Wow, he’s a beauty. Some kind of German Shepherd?”

  “He’s an Anatolian,” she informed him, wondering why he was there. They hadn’t gotten any salesmen on the ranch, and she’d been relieved.

  “Anatolian. Never heard of it,” he admitted with a smile. “I’m Toby Colbert. I run sheep and cattle up there,” his chin took in the mountains well beyond their ranch, which they could both see in the distance. Today, the sun had burned off the haze that frequently formed from the drastic temperature drops. The moisture was gone and shimmering heat had replaced it.

  “How do you do?” Allyssa answered, remembering her manners.

  “I’m doing pretty well, thank you. I wanted to talk to you and the doc about running some stock on your acreage. I’m given to understand there hasn’t been any on this land in a while.”

  Allyssa was surprised, but she supposed people would talk. “Yes, I don’t think my wife’s grandparents could handle any of the big stuff anymore and slowly sold it off.”

  He nodded, showing it confirmed what he had heard.

  “My wife said there is still a rogue bull around somewhere. He probably has a small harem of his own out there,” she informed him, using her chin to point out to the rolling hills as he had.

  “There’s stories like that all over,” he chuckled. “Do you know if you’d be willing to let me use your acreage to run a few head?”

  “Well, I’d have to talk to my wife of course, but I’m in agreement. No point in it going to waste, and we haven’t stocked any of it ourselves. We only got in here this spring,” she admitted.

  “Yeah, I heard about her grandparents. Sad thing that,” he told her, confirming again that they were the subject of conversations, not necessarily gossip, but their names were probably coming up more than they would be comfortable with if they knew.

  “Yes, it is,” she agreed.

  “I see you all cleaned up the house site. Building?” he asked to make conversation.

  “Yes, we plan to, but I have no idea when.”

  “I know someone looking for work who could do a bang-up job for you all,” he put in, grinning at his pun.

  She smiled to show she appreciated the joke. “If you’ll leave a number where we can reach you...” she began, but he was shaking his head.

  “I’m usually out with my stock. I can stop by here in a few days and maybe your wife will be here?”

  “She’s in and out, but I will discuss it with her.”

  “Thank you kindly,” he frowned, peering into the stock trailer she was standing next to. “You got some heavy liftin’ there, eh?”

  Thinking he was still making conversation to prolong the visit and the possibility that the ‘doc’ would drive over the hill soon, she answered, “Yep, got a deal on some cases that I want to put in for the clinic.”

  “Looks like a bit a heavy liftin’,” he commented. “Could you use a hand?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t impose,” she immediately protested.

  “Nope, just being neighborly and as a gesture of pure goodwill. If you and your wife let me run stock and we can come to an agreement, I’d shorely appreciate it.”

  Debating only a moment, she agreed to his unanticipated help. Between the two of them they lowered the gate, which conveniently gave them a small ramp into the cabin. They began to lift the shelves one by one into the small place, along the walls, leaving space between those that would have covered an outlet. Both sides of the fireplace and along the back wall were filled. When they finished, the appearance in the small space was quite attractive.

  “Now, ain’t that pretty,” he said when they were done pulling off the last blanket to admire the shelves with their glass doors. The glass shelves were inside, taped to the bottom of each unit. “Ya want some help puttin’ up the shelves?”

  “Oh, no. I couldn’t impose any further on your time,” she objected. She was really exhausted and hoped to take a bath in the stock tub even if the water was ice cold. It was the only way to get wet all over, and while freezing cold, it was invigorating. She’d only had the nerve to do it one other time with Fiona and the scum on the bottom had kept her away more than the cold of the water from their spring house. She was also hoping to make up some lemonade.

  “To tell ya the truth, I’m hoping the doc comes over that last rise there so I can talk to her too,” he confessed.

  “Why don’t you take a breather and I’ll go fetch us some fresh lemonade,” she offered. She might as well be hospitable to him since he had helped her so.

  “That sounds mighty fine,” he admitted, taking his handkerchief and wiping down his forehead and neck.

  Locking up the trailer and driving it away, she saw him looking about the place. She knew the view from the front of that cabin was awe-inspiring; she woke up to it every day and still couldn’t get enough of it.

  Parking the trailer where they normally left it just beyond the last stock pen, she quickly unhitched it. Putting her hitch in the back of the Jeep so it wouldn’t rust, she hurried into the mobile home to wash her hands. She rushed to make the lemonade with the pitcher of cold water they kept in the small fridge now that the weather had turned so warm. They had plans to get a small refrigerator for the cabin to keep some of the meds cold, but it was on ‘the list’ along with a million other things.

  She swirled the water around the lemonade mix and sugar repeatedly, then let it sit for a moment as she washed her face and hands again, being sure to get the back of her neck. Fiona had explained that keeping her neck cool would cool her more than any artificial air conditioning, but they still planned to have air conditioning in their house they would eventually build.

  Swirling the mix once more, she grabbed two cups in one hand and carried the pitcher in the other. She nearly tripped on an almost full-grown kitten on her way out of the mobile home. Gently, she pushed the lazy boy out of her way with her boot as she closed the door with her rear and headed up to the cabin. She found Toby with half the glass shelves unwrapped and a few already up on the metal and plastic knobs that held them at various levels in the corners of each unit. It looked so beautiful she couldn’t wait to start unpacking the last of the supplies that still stood in one corner of the cabin. The supplies were blocking the area where she wanted to put the couch that now stood in front of the fireplace they no longer needed. It would give them a little waiting room or living area while they lived here in the cabin.

  “Hey, I said you didn’t have to do that,” she protested, but she was pleased with how quickly it had gone and realized it would take no time at all to set up the rest of them.

  “Welll,” he drawled out, “I couldn’t just set here and do nuthin’.”

  She smiled and held up the mixture she had brought with her, setting the cups on the edge of the desk she had finished. The polyurethane looked bright in the afternoon sunshine and the several coats made it look thick and sturdy. Held up by the wooden file drawers, it looked professional and planned instead of homemade and accidental. She poured them each a cup and handed one to Toby who must have swallowed it in two gulps.

  “My, ain’t that grand,” he commented as he rubbed the back of his hand across his moustache.

  “More?” she asked him politely and at his nod began pouring again. It took over half the pitcher before they both had enough, and by then they were finishing up the unwrapping of the last of the glass shelves. She was amazed that none of them had chips or cracks after their long journey.

  “That’s fine,” he commented as the sunlight came through the front windows and shone on the glass shelves. “Want some help with those,” he indicated the many boxes, some open, many of them half-filled or haphazardly placed around not only the one corner but wherever Fiona could find room in her desire to refill her truck. They’d already converted another of the sheds to take some of the things she didn’t use too often, and of course, they were still finishing up the operating room.

  “No, that�
�s something I have to do myself,” she insisted. There was no way she was going to allow a stranger to help with the drugs that were her wife’s livelihood.

  “Welll,” he said, drawing it out. “I guess the doc ain’t gonna make an appearance and I got work to be dun,” he told her.

  “I’m sorry she didn’t show up while you were here, but I assure you I will talk to her about your proposal. When you stop by again I’ll let you know.”

  “Thank ye kindly,” he told her and left with a slight salute to get in the truck he had parked down by the barn. He waved again as he passed by the cabin and she turned back to immediately start stocking the shelves, remembering how the doctors in Denver had wanted their medicines and tools stored.

  One by one, box by box, she joyously set them on the shelves. Even the boxes of medical books filled one of the cabinets, but those she had to bring down from the loft where they had stored Fiona’s household things, and they were heavy. She was thrilled with how homey and professional it looked and hoped that Fiona would be thrilled. As she flattened the leftover boxes, she was excited at the amount of room it freed up in the small cabin. She took the cardboard out to the burning pit, placing a couple of logs on top of it before she started the fire and then placed a large screen Fiona had found over the top to keep the sparks and ashes from floating away and starting a fire. It was close enough to the spring house that there was plenty of water. She returned to the cabin to shove the couch into place and then used the vacuum cleaner to help her clean around the cabin and straighten up. She hid the vacuum behind her desk, which was behind the stairs to their loft and then looked around the neat and orderly little cabin, proud of her accomplishments.