LOVE OF A RODEO MAN (MODERN DAY COWBOYS)

by Hutchinson, Bobby

  Organized chaos greeted her at Bitterroot.

  Adeline and Jennie weren’t women who allowed grass to grow under their heels once they’d come to a decision, and they’d started immediately turning the large dining room into an area where the public could come for dinner.

  With Dave’s help, they’d unearthed the heavy old dining tables and chairs, and there were now six tables scattered in the heavy-beamed dining room where that morning there’d been only one.

  They’d done inventory on dishes and cooking utensils and had careful lists of everything needed to update the kitchen and outfit the dining room.

  They’d wanted to move an old sideboard of Jennie’s out of a bedroom and into the dining room to use as a serving center, but the piece proved much too heavy for them, even with Dave’s help.

  “How come you haven’t got a billboard out on the highway advertising this place yet?” Sara teased, marveling at how much they’d accomplished in one day.

  “Write that down, Jennie,” Gram instructed, busily running a duster over the tables. “A big sign out on the road would be a derned good idea. Phew, where does the dust come from?”

  “I sure hope you two have some plans for food for tonight in the middle of all this,” Sara went on. “Because I did as you said, Gram, and invited Mitch over. He’ll be here soon. I’m going over to the cabin to have a shower and then I’ll help with supper.”

  “No need to hurry,” Gram said serenely. “There’s a big roasting chicken in the oven, and I’m making biscuits. Jennie, you can whip up that special chocolate cake of yours for dessert. Did you young folks have a nice day, Sara?”

  Nice wasn’t exactly the words she’d have chosen to describe a day two people admitted to each other that they were falling in love and didn’t know what to do about it.

  Nice didn’t even begin to cover it, but she sure wasn’t about to tell Gram that. “We had a wonderful time, we rode horses. I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  “Maybe we can feed your young man and then talk him into helping us move that pesky old sideboard,” Gram was plotting as Sara hurried out the door.

  She made her way past the pool and under the trees to her cabin. Standing under the shower for the third time that day, all Sara could hear was a deep voice saying, “I think I’m falling in love with you, I think I’m falling…….

  Those words and the vivid recollection of Mitch’s arms and kisses made Sara smile.

  Cold showers weren’t a bad idea at all, the way that man made her feel.

  Chapter Seven

  Gram was in fine form during supper, and Sara alternated between laughing at some of the things her outspoken relative came out with and feeling guilty for putting Mitch through what amounted to an offbeat inquisition.

  Gram was simply curious. She wanted to know everything about everybody, and a bit more than everything about anyone who was interested in her granddaughters.

  Bringing a male friend home for a meal had always been the true test of a relationship during Sara’s growing-up years. If the guy got through dinner with Gram and still asked her out again, he was made of the right stuff. The thing was, Gram never asked only the usual sort of questions, like what a person did or what their plans were for the future. She got around to them eventually, by sort of slipping them in between questions not so ordinary.

  “Here, have two more of these biscuits, Mitchell. No need to hold back on the grub, there’s plenty more in the kitchen. You believe in dreams, young man?” she began shortly after they’d sat down at one of the tables.

  Here we go, Sara thought, looking across the table at her mother. Jennie rolled her eyes in helpless sympathy. Mitch was beside Gram, which Sara knew was anything but accidental.

  “Dreams?” Mitch looked startled, as well he might. He paused in the act of buttering the biscuits. “I don’t really think I dream all that much,” he replied, automatically glancing Sara’s way.

  Lately his dreams had centered mostly around her and were x-rated. He certainly wasn’t going to admit that at the dinner table with her relatives around.

  Gram snorted. “Hogwash. Everybody dreams; all night, every night. If you concentrate on remembering and learn to figure ’em out, dreams can be a sort of road map for living. Now, surely you can remember a dream or two for me, and I’ll tell you what I figure they mean. I’m good at it, had a whole lot of years’ practice.” She laid down her fork and waited expectantly.

  Dave was seated at the head of the table, and he sent Mitch a look full of sympathy. “Might as well cough up a nightmare or two, Mitch,” he suggested. “She’s gone through all of ours.”

  Mitch glanced again at Sara, and she winked at him, one eye closing slowly and opening in a silent signal to beware.

  A twinkle came into his eyes. “Well,” he began slowly, “I do have this one dream pretty often, about meeting a wise and beautiful woman who interprets my dreams and tells me my future. Trouble is, I never can remember what it is she says,” he teased.

  Gram made a noise in her throat and looked at Mitch over the top of her glasses. “You wouldn’t be putting me on, now would you, Mitchell?” she inquired in a steely tone.

  “Yes, ma’am, I sure would be,” he said, and everyone laughed, Gram included. There was nothing she liked as well as being beaten at her own game. “So you were a rodeo rider. Sara says you know our Frankie. How do you feel about children?” Gram demanded a short while later, passing Mitch a blue bowl heaped with mashed potatoes.

  “Mother, for heaven’s sakes,” Jennie objected. “Mitch is here for dinner, not an interview. And how do you get from Frankie to kids, anyway?”

  “Simple,” Gram declared. “Frankie was married to a rodeo man, and they never had any children. I just wondered how Mitchell feels about a family. Maybe this contraception business is general amongst rodeo people.”

  Sara groaned, but Mitch didn’t seem to mind at all.

  “I don’t know much about kids,” he confessed. “I’ve got three small nieces I never had a chance to get to know. They’ve gone back to Seattle now with my sister-in-law, after my brother died. I never got around to having any kids of my own.”

  “Never been married, then?” Gram inquired, and Sara rolled her eyes. “Mind you, marriage don’t cut much ice these days, lots of people having babies without getting married. How you feel about that, son?”

  “I figure a kid deserves two parents if he can get them,” Mitch said. “And no, ma’am, I’ve never been married. How about you?” he asked, turning the tables on Gram.

  Gram didn’t bat an eye. “Only married once, and it was great while it lasted. But he wasn’t a family man, Jennie’s father. Charming, but he had a bit of the wanderlust in him, always moving on somewhere new. I got fed up with it, so we divorced when Jennie was just a baby. He died out in Australia, years ago. Funny, isn’t it? Neither my daughter nor my granddaughters had the benefit of two parents while they were growing up.”

  There was regret in Gram’s tone, and silence fell around the table for several moments, until Mitch bridged it.

  “I had a friend from Australia, a bronc rider named Tim. I always wanted to take a trip over there someday,” Mitch volunteered, and Dave said that he’d always dreamed of that, as well.

  Mitch entertained them then with some strange tales Tim had told him about Australia and its animals, and for the next half hour, the dining room was filled with stories and laughter.

  By the time Sara’s mother served huge wedges of chocolate cake thick with gooey icing, Sara had relaxed. Mitch was obviously able to handle Gram with one hand tied behind his back.

  Inevitably, just as she was about to start on her cake, her cell rang, and it was Doc Stone. A dog, an expensive purebred shepherd, had been hit by a car on the street in town. The poor animal was badly injured, needing extensive surgery.

  Doc and the owner were waiting at the clinic for Sara to come and assist with the operation because, Doc reported blandly, Floyd O’Malley
was not at home.

  Dead drunk, Sara interpreted silently, cursing the unreliable assistant. The last thing she felt like doing this Sunday night was going to work, but there was no choice.

  She outlined the situation to the others, and Mitch got immediately to his feet.

  “I’ll drive you,” he offered, but Sara shook her head.

  “I have no idea how long this will take, so I’d best have my own vehicle,” she decided. It would have been so nice to spend a little longer with Mitch.

  “Sit down and have another piece of cake, Mitchell,” Gram ordered, adding, “Best keep your strength up, because we were hoping we could get you to help us move some furniture around. Right, Jennie?”

  “Better have two more pieces,” Dave instructed. “That damned thing they want moved must weigh five hundred pounds, and if I know these two, that’s only the beginning.”

  Mitch caught Sara’s eye as she hurried away, returning the wink she’d given him earlier.

  “If there’s enough furniture to move, I may still be around when you get back,” he said.

  But the operation took much longer than Sara expected, mostly because Doc turned every bit of the procedure into a major production, checking and rechecking the wounds, the dog’s condition, the transfusion devices, and generally hindering Sara.

  She’d realized shortly after she arrived that the old veterinarian was unsure of the operation, and she ended up doing the major part of it without making it obvious.

  Doc breathed down her neck during the entire procedure, his hands trembling badly, muttering under his breath in a manner she found irritating and distracting. Sara wished that he’d just go home and let her do the work by herself. It surely wouldn’t be as difficult to manage alone as it was putting up with the older veterinarian’s fussing and bungling.

  But the dog’s owner, a retired army captain named Major Whitmore who lived in solitary splendor in one of the largest old houses in Plains, had been adamant that Doc Stone perform the operation on his beloved Angus, obviously not wanting to trust his precious pet to Sara’s less experienced ministrations.

  They finally finished the procedure just past midnight, and Doc left, muttering that he would phone the major and give him a report on Angus. The dog had come through the operation well, and the prognosis was excellent.

  Still, Sara was afraid to leave the clinic until she was certain the beautiful shepherd was coming out of the anesthesia and resting comfortably, and it was long past 2:00 a.m. before the dog was stable enough to satisfy her.

  Finally she drove home and collapsed into bed, making sure the alarm was set for six-thirty in the morning. Clinic hours started at eight on Mondays. Sara was supposed to open and Floyd was due at nine, with Doc taking over at noon.

  Well, she concluded as she checked her alarm, there wasn’t much hope that either Doc or Floyd would appear anywhere near on time, so she’d better make sure for Angus’s sake that she was there.

  Her final thought before she tumbled into sleep was of Mitch, laughing uncontrollably as she thundered past him on Steamboat earlier that day, of the way his green eyes danced and his white teeth contrasted with his tanned skin, and of how his rough chin felt scraping across her cheek.

  By two the following afternoon, Sara was ready to fall asleep standing up. She also was having trouble walking; riding Steamboat had made various parts of her anatomy so sore she felt like moaning each time she sat down.

  Not that there’d been much chance to sit that morning. The clinic had been busier than usual, and just as she’d thought, neither Doc nor Floyd appeared when they were supposed to.

  Floyd had wandered in at ten-thirty full of the usual set of excuses about stomach problems, and Doc Stone had made a brief appearance an hour ago, fussing around the infirmary over Angus and then disappearing again, supposedly for only a few moments in order to pick something up at the post office. There’d been no sign of him since. There were a number of farm visits to be made that afternoon, and Sara would be late before she even began.

  All at once, she’d had enough. She was darned well going to track Doc down and give him an ultimatum, she decided. Stomping down the hallway on her way to the door, she heard a strange choking sound from the infirmary.

  “Angus?” she called, hurrying over to the cage where the big dog was lying. The sound came again, accompanied by a whimper, and then there was ominous silence. Sara ran over to the cage, her heart thumping fearfully.

  Angus was lying as she’d left him, all his intravenous tubes intact, but she could tell at a glance that he was dead.

  Sara stared down at the dog in disbelief. She’d checked him at half-hour intervals all morning, and he’d seemed to be recovering slowly but steadily.

  “Floyd,” she screamed, and the rusty-haired assistant hurried into the room behind her. Sara did her best to make her voice sound as normal as possible. “Floyd, did you administer anything to this animal in the last little while?” she demanded.

  “Not me. Doc gave him a shot when he was here awhile before. Doc said Angus was restless and in pain. He said he gave him a tranquilizer,” Floyd said. He took a step closer to Angus. “Ahh, the puir thing’s gone,” he announced sadly. “The major’s going to be beside himself,” he added. “He spent a bundle on that dog, 'twas his pride and joy.”

  Sara waited until Floyd left the room. Then she closed the door and walked over to the waste bin. The empty drug vial was right on top, and the moment Sara saw it, she knew what had happened.

  Doc had confused two medications with similar sounding names.

  One would have simply tranquilized Angus and helped him rest easier. The other, the vial she held in her hand, was for totally different circumstances and undoubtedly had been the cause of Angus's death.

  Sara sank into the wooden chair in the corner, and tears began to trickle down her cheeks, sad tears for the unnecessary death of a helpless animal, tears of utter frustration and rage against the circumstances of the death.

  Well, tears wouldn’t solve a thing. She blew her nose hard and tried to take rational stock of the situation. Major Whitmore would have to be told his dog was dead. It was no good waiting an indeterminate time for her superior to appear and take on the responsibility; she had to make the call as soon as possible.

  Professional discretion forbade telling the major the whole truth about what had happened. Sara delayed the phone call another fifteen minutes while she sent Floyd out to find Doc, which she realized was an absolute waste of time when Floyd came puffing in shortly afterward.

  “Doc’s gone out to the Mason farm. Jerry in the post office said Larry Mason was in there when Doc came in and asked him to come out with him and have a look at a colt Larry’s thinking of buying. Guess he won’t be back for a couple of hours.”

  Resigned, Sara dialed Major Whitmore. Instead of being heartbroken, the major reacted with anger, which quickly turned to barely controlled rage.

  “Angus is dead? Dead, you say? I find that absolutely intolerable, do you hear me? Intolerable. Bad show. How can my dog be dead, tell me that, when Dr. Stone himself assured me last night and again this morning that my dog was coming along fine, and now you tell me he’s dead. Was Dr. Stone there when he died?”

  The major’s loud tones grew even louder, echoing through the receiver. Sara moved the cell farther away from her ear. “No, he wasn’t,” she said as evenly as she could. “I came in right afterward, though, and if anything could have been done, I would...”

  “I find this hard to understand, how my dog could be doing well just hours ago and suddenly die like this. With a so-called veterinary doctor in the room with him?”

  The major snorted, and Sara held on to her temper with difficulty. “Angus was badly injured. With extensive surgery such as he had...”

  “But the surgery was successful, Dr. Stone assured me of that.”

  Sara screwed her eyes tight shut. This was always terrible, telling an owner that a pet had died. But in thi
s particular case, she felt even worse than usual, because she knew in her heart that Angus needn’t have died. Her stomach felt nauseous, making her swallow hard and wish fervently that the conversation would end soon.

  “All I can say is how sorry I am.” Her voice stuck in her throat. The phone went dead as the major hung up in Sara’s ear.

  She was shaking. Hastily making for the bathroom, she sloshed cold water over her face and tidied her hair, all the while going over the choices she had to make about her job. She’d been going along, avoiding a showdown, but the dog’s death proved to her that she couldn’t tolerate the situation any longer.

  When her boss appeared much later, Sara was prepared.

  “Well, Sara, beautiful day, isn’t it?” Doc’s rather sallow face wore a bright smile and he seemed in high spirits for once. “Sorry to be a trifle late, I had to make a call...”

  “Could I see you in the office, Doctor?”

  Sara turned her back and hurried into the small room, waiting for him to follow her and then shutting the door firmly behind them as Floyd suddenly appeared in the outer office, curiosity evident in every line of his body.

  “What is it, Sara? There are patients waiting, my dear. We really don’t have time...”

  Reminding her of the patients he ought to have been tending to for over the past two hours was the final straw. Outraged, Sara glared at the plump little man in front of her.

  “The dog we operated on last night died,” she reported icily. “I’m quite certain his death was a result of that injection you gave him when you raced in here just past noon today, Doctor.”

  She drew the broken vial out of her trouser pocket and held it out, her fingers trembling slightly as she underlined the drug’s name with a fingernail.

  “As you can see, this isn’t the thing to give an animal just recovering from anesthesia.”