Buffalo Gal

by Mary Connealy

  “You’d sell us out like that, Shaw?” Wolf said angrily. “I wouldn’t have given you the number if I’d known that!”

  “Wyatt,” Buffy said, “you can’t do this. You can’t profit by this disaster.”

  “Buffy, I know how much you love these buffalo.” Wyatt tried to sound kind, but Buffy heard a domineering, patronizing male running roughshod over her. “I understand you—”

  “You don’t understand anything!” She felt her temper ignite, and she knew she should walk away. She loved Wyatt, but right now, she might say something she’d regret.

  Then he patted her on the shoulder like she was a fussy child.

  Her temper blew. “You can’t take away the thing I love most in the world and expect to have a future with me!”

  Wyatt’s expression hardened. “I thought I was the thing you loved most in the world.”

  “Wyatt, don’t do this,” Wolf said. “We’ve been friends, but—”

  “You, too, Wolf?” Wyatt sounded almost hurt. With cold sarcasm, he said, “And here I thought you might be willing to work with me once the Commons was gone.”

  “As your hired man, Wyatt?” Wolf sneered. “I don’t need a job so bad I’d work with a traitor.”

  Wyatt’s jaw clenched until his mouth was one angry straight line. “I think you should know me a little better than that, Wolf. I think, after all these years, you should trust me.”

  Buffy tried to calm down. “Wyatt, if we can keep anyone from buying the ranch, maybe Leonard will at least wait to sell the buffalo until we can find a buyer. There are a lot of small animal parks who would buy them five or ten at a time. But if you step in with an offer, he’ll grab it and send in the semis.”

  “And you, Buffy”—Wyatt turned on her—“you have told me a dozen times, a hundred times, that you love buffalo. I respect that, but I thought you loved me, too. I would have hoped to at least be in a tie with them. I would have hoped maybe Sally might rank above them, even if I didn’t. I know how independent and strong you are, and those are things I love about you.”

  Buffy could hear Wyatt’s temper building until it reached a flash point. “So now it comes down to this—the buffalo or trusting the man you said you loved. Why am I so surprised you picked the buffalo? How could I have ever fooled myself into believing you’d do it any other way?”

  Wyatt tugged his Stetson down until it nearly covered his eyes and took a long, hard look at the phone number in his hand. “Enjoy Yellowstone. I’ve got a phone call to make.” He turned and moved away with his usual fluid grace.

  Buffy reached her hand out, knowing her only chance for love was walking away. She had seen his hurt, but as usual, he reacted with anger. He was going home to destroy her dreams.

  Wolf fumed beside her, the buffalo snuffled in the darkness, and Wyatt drove out of the yard in his battered black truck without spinning a wheel or throwing up a single piece of gravel. Cold. Controlled. Domineering.

  Everything she didn’t want, wrapped up in the man of her dreams.

  Fourteen

  Leonard called her the next morning and woke Buffy up.

  She was still trying to get the phone centered on her ear when Leonard said, “I can’t get ahold of Wolf, so you pass the word on. I’ve sold the place to Wyatt Shaw.”

  “No!”

  “He bought the buffalo, too,” Leonard announced with his usual high energy.

  Her confused heart mended a bit. “Mr. Leonard, you sold the buffalo to Wyatt? Why did he want—”

  “I gave them to him. The dog food company wasn’t going to pay much. By the time I paid for trucking, it was going to be a wash. As Wyatt pointed out, this way is better PR, and it’s chump change considering my financial situation. Getting out from under the tax burden is worth it. He wants all of you to stay on and work at the Commons, but he’s going to run it his way. He said you’re headed to Yellowstone, so he’ll hire someone new or just leave Wolf in charge. He doesn’t care much about college degrees.”

  Buffy stammered, “Wyatt doesn’t like buffalo. He’d never—”

  “The sale is final. I’ve got a full morning. Take it up with your new boss.” The phone clicked in her ear.

  Buffy stared at the receiver for a few blank seconds as her sleep-fogged brain tried to make sense of the abrupt call. She hung up in a daze. Then it all added up. With a squeal of delight, she threw the covers back, jumped into her clothes, and ran outside.

  Wolf was just coming out of his trailer. “Did you hear?”

  Buffy ran up to him, smiling. “That Wyatt bought the ranch and wants to run the Commons? Yes, Leonard called me. He called you, too?”

  “No.” Wolf jerked his thumb at his trailer. “I just got off the phone with Wyatt. He hired me to manage the Commons. Although he said the Commons was a stupid name that insulted every rancher in the state and he was renaming it the S Bar B Ranch.”

  “What? He hired you?” Buffy’s stomach sank as she remembered Leonard talking about her going to Yellowstone. Wyatt was already planning his life without her. “To do my job?”

  “Yep, well, sort of. We’re going to run things different. We’re going to raise buffalo for. . .” Wolf stopped. His face took on a look that almost seemed like pity. “For meat.”

  “Meat?” Buffy said, aghast.

  Wolf squared his shoulders and looked her in the eye. “Wyatt and I talked about it awhile back. He thinks. . .well, I think. . .we can make this ranch pay. Make buffalo into a real product that people will pay well for. I know I can get the business into the black, especially since Leonard already made all the big investments—in fence and buildings. That’s what I’ve always wanted, and Wyatt wants to do it my way.”

  “Your way?” Buffy began pulling herself together. The shocks of last night. Being fired by Leonard. Being dumped by Wyatt. The fate of her beautiful buffalo herd. After she’d gotten her temper under control, she’d cried herself to sleep. Then to wake up this morning and have it all fixed. The buffalo would live. Wyatt would hire her back, and if he wanted to hire her, then he wanted her to stay. But now he was going to turn her buffalo into a food crop. Buffy got a stranglehold on her feelings and packed them into a tight little box and shoved that box into the deepest corner of her heart to be dealt with later—or better yet, forgotten altogether.

  “There will be a place for you here, Buffy. If you want it. But you know the only possible way for buffalo to ever really prosper in this world is if they pay. No one can afford to do what Leonard was doing for long. We can’t rely on the whims of a rich landlord to tell us if we can exist. Buffalo can either sustain themselves, or they can’t. Wyatt and I are going to find out.”

  “So capitalism is what it’s all about?” Buffy said bitterly.

  Wolf looked at her coolly as if taking her measure. She didn’t like it that she seemed to be coming up short. “You need to talk to Wyatt about this. I think this is a better idea than anything Leonard ever did. You can get behind this. You can be a part of this. If it works and buffalo meat really catches on, we could create a real buffalo commons. Buffalo are better suited to this land than cattle, and I think ranchers might switch to buffalo if they could see a business in it.”

  “I don’t see where I fit into this scheme. I won’t be part of turning these majestic animals into food. I’d just as soon see them go to the dog food factory. I think I’ll just follow the plan I settled on last night and head for Wyoming. I can vacation in Yellowstone until it’s time for my job to start.”

  “What about your doctoral dissertation? Isn’t it based on research you’re doing here?”

  “It’s not a research project that works if the buffalo get eaten!”

  “We won’t start eating them for another couple of months,” Wolf said sarcastically. “I thought that job in Yellowstone only went to someone with a doctorate. I thought the preliminary work on the dissertation is what got you the job. They might have understood if Leonard pulled the rug out from under you, but are you
sure it will still be there if you walk out?”

  Buffy held his gaze. Then she looked beyond him at her buffalo, and her heart turned over to think of them butchered for the dinner table.

  Wolf must have read her mind. “I’m a full-blooded Sioux. I come from a line of people who survived eating buffalo. My people believed buffalo served a noble purpose by giving their lives for us. We respected and even revered them for that. But we still ate them. It was survival. It was life. And you need to get your head out of the clouds and figure that out.”

  Wolf held her gaze with his black eyes. He waited, but Buffy didn’t know for what, unless it was for her to give up everything she believed.

  “I’m disappointed in you, girl. You’re going to give up on the thing that could really save buffalo in this country. That is your dream. You’re going to give up on a man who loves you. That is your future. I think you’ll figure that all out someday. But by then, it’ll be too late. Instead of being part of something, you’ll be a spectator, a stuffed shirt intellectual sniffing at capitalism from some tenured position on a college campus.”

  His words cut her all the way to her heart. “I—I thought you liked me. I thought you respected me.”

  “I do like you, girl. I like you just fine. But respect? Well, now that’s another thing altogether.”

  “And in order to earn your respect, I have to give up on what I believe is right and wrong? That’s something you would respect?”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything wrong, Buffy. You’re an idealist, and that’s a wonderful thing. But idealism is something you need to save for God. For your faith. When it comes to ranching, being a realist is as simple as life and death. Most people get around to being one after a while. It’s called growing up, and it’s high time you did it. Until you do,” Wolf’s tone softened to kindness, “your life is going to be an empty one.”

  Buffy almost caved. She almost asked him to tell her more about how he wanted to make a true buffalo commons. But stubbornness settled over her heart.

  Wolf must have sensed it, because without another word, he headed for his truck and drove away.

  ❧

  Yellowstone didn’t want her.

  The doctorate was a crucial piece of the puzzle they were putting together to research their herd. They needed her credentials. They didn’t say she couldn’t come. They said, “Finish the research. Write the dissertation.”

  “Aunt Buffy, take me out to look at the buffalo.” Sally ran to the window a hundred times a day, but Buffy wouldn’t let her go out.

  Jeanie had been released from the hospital. The county attorney recommended probation, and both agreed to it. Jarvis, new to the area, had a history of psychological problems, and hostile and friendless, he’d let the local anger at the buffalo goad him into his first act of vandalism, cutting the fence and throwing the firecrackers. He hadn’t meant it as anything more than a vicious prank. Then he’d met Jeanie, and the two of them had found soul mates in their resentment and talked each other into making a bigger strike at the herd.

  His parents promised the court they’d get their troubled son into counseling, and they’d left the area. Jeanie had signed adoption papers for Sally, and she’d left without saying good-bye to anyone. Only after she was gone did Buffy realize that Jeanie had cleaned out her bank account.

  Sally missed her mother, and Buffy would have done almost anything to make Sally happy. But not visiting the buffalo. She couldn’t bear to see her big friends fattened for the grill. She saw Wyatt’s truck come in and out several times a day, and why not? It was his ranch. He came to the door once and knocked, but she didn’t answer.

  She admitted after only a few hours that she had to stay and finish her project, but doing it made her sick. Three days had gone by, and still she couldn’t go crawling to Wyatt, begging him for a job.

  Long after Sally was asleep on the third day since she’d heard about Wyatt buying the Buffalo Commons, Buffy stared out the window and saw in the starlight that the herd had wandered close to the house. She let the peace buffalo always brought to her lure her to the corral. She sat on the top rung of the fence and stared.

  “They’re beautiful, aren’t they?”

  Buffy turned and saw Wyatt. “Where’s your truck?” A stupid question but the first thing that came out of her mouth.

  “Leonard bought me a new one. Yellow. It looks like a five-ton canary. I drove over here on field roads, inspecting the fence line. I left it behind Wolf’s trailer so no one would see me and laugh.”

  “I thought Leonard was broke.” Buffy frowned.

  “I don’t think broke means the same thing to billionaires as it does to us.” Wyatt climbed the fence beside her and swung his legs around so he faced the herd. He didn’t talk, and the silence, at first awkward, grew more companionable as the tranquility of the buffalo soaked into her soul.

  “What do they say to you, Buffalo Gal? What was it that drew you to them to begin with?”

  It was a question she’d been asked before, but she’d never told anyone the truth. “They’re strong.”

  “That’s it? Strong? Lots of animals are strong. Elephants, rhinos, Angus bulls.”

  Buffy smiled. “I was twelve years old, and I was on a field trip with my school. I’d had a fight with my father the night before over nothing and everything. He wanted to tell me every breath I could take. I talked on the phone too much. I chewed gum. Half my skirts were too short, and half were too long. My shirts were all either too baggy or too tight. If I wore makeup, I was loose. If I left it off, I was ugly. It had nothing to do with me, and I know that now.”

  “How could it have nothing to do with you?”

  “He was a man who liked to hurt people. Jeanie did everything he wanted as quickly as she could. I defied him every chance I got. Nothing either of us or our mother did made him stop yelling.”

  “I’m sorry he was unkind to you.”

  Buffy smiled. “Another apology.”

  “Just as useless as all the rest.”

  “Anyway, I was grounded for the thousandth time. He’d taken my lunch money away from me and made Mom send me a peanut butter sandwich for lunch, which to a twelve-year-old girl, at least to me, was humiliating. All the other kids had money, and the field trip included a stop at McDonald’s. He’d banned me from talking on the phone for a month—no big deal as I didn’t have any friends. But the man had a knack for cutting me to my heart. He made me feel ugly, but, well, he couldn’t say I was stupid, not with my grades. He used that on Jeanie and Mom. He made me feel like a freak who was completely alone in the world.”

  Buffy heard Wyatt grinding his teeth and looked at his protective anger. “Stop that. You don’t have to come charging to my rescue all the time.”

  Wyatt forced his shoulders to relax. Tears stung her eyes as she watched him try and respect her independence.

  “Didn’t you have any friends?” he asked.

  Buffy turned from Wyatt to watch the buffalo. “Not really. I was two years younger than my classmates, in the same grade as Jeanie, which made her feel stupid, which she isn’t. But because she was really popular, her hostility rubbed off on the other kids.”

  “So where does the buffalo come in?”

  “We went to a natural history museum, and I wandered away from the group to bask in self-pity. I found an ‘Animals of the Prairie Exhibit.’ ”

  “And there was the buffalo,” Wyatt said, nodding.

  “A lot of the animals had little groups. You know. A doe, a buck, and a fawn. A wolf and his mate and their pups. There was even an opossum with its babies hanging from its tail. It was all so perfect, all these families. And there stood that buffalo. I guess the museum didn’t have space or money for a family of them. There was just one. Alone, like me. I stared at that buffalo, into its black glass eyes, for what seemed like hours. It was an experience I really can’t describe, Wyatt.”

  She looked at him. He was completely open to her, letting her t
alk, absorbing her words. Something her father was incapable of. She wished so much that he could understand.

  “God was with me there in that museum. I looked at that strong animal standing alone.” Tears burned her eyes, and her voice broke. “God told me I was going to have stand alone for a while.”

  Wyatt slid a little closer to her on that sturdy railing and took her hand.

  “But He said it, so I could do it. He’d be with me, loving me. I will always believe in God without reservation because of that moment. It was absolute and true and undeniable. God has helped me through hard times, when my father seemed determined to break me. God has led me to the right people to encourage me. Did you know I graduated from high school when I was sixteen?”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, and I already had two years of college behind me because of dual-credit courses the high school helped me find. I graduated from vet school when I was twenty.”

  “Man, our kids are gonna be smart, unless I drag down the average.” Wyatt must not have been very worried about their kids, because he rested his arm around her shoulders. “And now you’re free of your family, but you don’t know how to quit being alone.”

  “And the buffalo I love is going to be reduced to a commodity.”

  Wyatt pulled her closer. “Tell me what to do. I can’t afford to keep these buffalo for you as a toy. If I could, I would. I know how horrified you were at the thought of them being turned into dog food. I thought I came up with a good plan that night. When I said I was going to buy the land, I meant for us and the buffalo. But you didn’t even give me a chance to explain. And then I got so mad I didn’t want to explain. You were so ready to believe I’d stab you in the back. What kind of love is that? What kind of marriage could we have if you did that all the time?”

  “I guess I was ready to be betrayed. I think I was expecting it.”

  “Well, quit expecting it from me.” He looked down at her and blocked out the whole world. “I’ll never betray you. I love you. Tell me. I’m listening. Give me a way to save these guys. Tourism? I’ve thought of that. I don’t know how many people will come all the way out here, but we can try. Mt. Rushmore’s not that far away. We could draw a few people in. Supplying wild animal parks? We can do that for as many of them as we can sell. I’ll let you take charge of all that. We’ll save as many as we can, and maybe, once the herd is smaller, we can save them all. But for right now, we both know it’s not going to be enough.”