by April, Dani
“Connor showed me the main house yesterday. I know it’s in bad need of repair, but…”
“That isn’t what I’m talking about,” he interrupted her, his voice hard and sure. “The entire ranch is in up to its eyeballs in debt to the bank. We’re going to be foreclosed on unless we can send a record herd to market in the fall and get top dollar for each and every head.”
“Connor told me there were a few problems, but he didn’t tell me…”
“Of course he didn’t!” His voice was loud, even angry. “Connor just wants to fuck you. I talked to him this morning out on the range.”
“He told you that?”
“He didn’t have to tell me. Any fool can see how he feels about you.” He pulled away from her. They walked the next several steps in silence, his boots and her sneakers noisily churning up gravel as they walked.
“I didn’t know the ranch had that kind of financial problems,” Raven admitted at last.
“It isn’t your fault, Raven,” he seemed to try and make his voice and manner easier, less hard. “You just got here. You couldn’t have known. Fact of the matter is, it wasn’t any fault of your grandfather’s, either. The private ranching business is just dying out. This is the age of the big corporation. We all need to go and work for them and give up the dream of having our own place.”
“It would be really hard if I lost the ranch. This place has been in my family for over a hundred years. I don’t want to be the weak link in the family chain that loses the place.”
“But, honey, the financial trouble of the ranch is just one problem you’re facing out here. You’ve got other ones, potentially bigger problems.”
“I knew it wouldn’t be easy when I moved out here…” Raven tried to explain, but he wasn’t listening to her.
“You don’t know anything about ranching, not even the simple day-to-day chores of living out here and getting everything to function.”
“No, you’re right I don’t, but…”
“Honey, you’re relying on me and the other ranch bums to run the place for you, and let me tell you, that’s not a good idea.”
“I know that.” Raven knew her voice was starting to become desperate as she spoke with him. “Connor told me that…”
Again he would not let her finish. “I told you, honey, forget about what Connor told you. He’s a good man, but he’s blind when it comes to you. He has some fantasy about the two of you and the other guys making the ranch work together and saving the place.”
“Jesus, Tyler I know that!” Raven wanted to shout at him. “It’s going to be hell trying to get this place back up and working again.”
“You can’t do it by yourself, Raven,” he told her frankly. “You can’t rely on your ranch hands either. So you see, you don’t have anyone to help you.”
“I don’t think that’s true,” she countered. “The others seem like good guys. I think they’ll help me. Connor told me they all know everything there is to know about running a ranch. So I think between them and Connor, and you, I’m pretty well covered.”
“You won’t have them much longer, Raven.” He came to a stop. She looked up into his eyes, scared because she knew he was telling her the truth. “Those cowboys will be gone from here in a couple of days. George Spencer was why they stayed on here.”
“I don’t know why they wouldn’t want to stay on and work for me.” She could feel herself growing defensive the more she spoke with him. “I know I’m not my grandfather, but I’ve been trying to get along with them, and I think…”
“Raven you’re a woman,” Tyler told her. “They don’t know how to get along with you. These wild guys don’t know anything about women except they’re for sleeping with after a hard day’s work. You’ve already been a distraction to them.”
“If you’re talking about the incident in the shower this morning, I didn’t mean that to happen. It was just an accident. I’ll know better next time. I’ll stay out of their way,” she found herself starting to plead with him.
“These guys all want you, Raven. They’ve wanted you even before you came to live here, ever since the first time your grandfather showed them your picture.” He reached out and put his hands on her shoulders. “They can’t have you. When they realize that, they’re going to get frustrated and they’re going to leave.”
“I don’t believe that, Tyler,” she shook her head. “Look, isn’t being a ranch hand a job like any other? I mean the ranch pays those guys to work for me. They’re not working out here because they want to sleep with me. They’re working because that’s what they get paid to do.”
“No Raven,” Tyler told her firmly. “They haven’t been paid a penny in the last six months.”
“What?” Raven felt like someone had just punched her in the gut. “My God, why?”
“There’s no money in the Lazy L bank account, simple as that,” he told her. “Those guys are working for love and nothing more. They loved your grandfather. He kept us all together as a family, and we all loved being a part of that family. They love ranching, and they love this beautiful, wide-open land.”
Raven walked up to her Kawasaki. They had made their way down the driveway to her bike now, but suddenly the reasons for coming down here to look at it were lost in her confused mind. She sat down on the seat of the bike wearily, feeling as if she didn’t sit down she was going to fall down.
“Now George Spencer is dead, and our family is breaking up,” Tyler looked down bitterly. “Hell, I know all about losing a family, and it’s damn painful. It’s the most painful thing in the world.”
“The guys don’t want to work for me then?” Raven asked, but she already knew the answer, and at that moment she had never felt so sad or defeated in her life.
“They got some crazy idea about you in their heads when they heard you were going to come out here and live. I tried to knock some sense into their thick heads but wasn’t very successful. Then when they found out you and Connor were sleeping together they got more crazy ideas.”
“I’m sorry, Tyler,” Raven said and felt like crying, although bravely kept back the tears. “I didn’t mean to cause trouble for you guys.”
“Don’t get me wrong, Raven. I’m not blaming you. You couldn’t have known how these guys think.” Again she thought he was trying to make his voice more gentle and perhaps could see how far he had pushed her. “But there’s already been trouble. After the little incident in the shower this morning, Roy, Bran, and Chip almost had a fistfight with each other on the west range. I had to break them up. Later I caught Roy and Bran arguing and almost coming to blows over some stupid little comment one of them had made. They’re on edge now, their morale is as low as it can go, and they haven’t gotten paid in months. They’re good guys, but they can’t take much more. Like I said, they’ll be gone in a day or two.”
Raven touched the handlebar of her bike and tried to steady her growing fear. Suddenly she couldn’t even look Tyler in the face. She hated everything he was telling her, but knew he was telling her this for her own good. She wondered why Connor hadn’t filled her in earlier.
Tyler leaned against the bike with her. “You have to sell the Lazy L, Raven,” he told her, and now his voice was quiet and soothing. “Wholesale Foods has made a good offer on the ranch. Take it and get out. Go back to the city.”
“What am I supposed to do back in the city?” she looked up and asked him, and a tear was now running down her face.
“With the money you get on the deal you’ll be able to get yourself a better place to live up there. You won’t have to worry about working for a year or two and can use the time to try and find yourself a nice job somewhere. You can get started on making a future for yourself. Believe me, there is no future for you out here.”
“I’m all alone back there, Tyler,” she told him. “I don’t have anybody.”
“You have a life waiting for you back there, Raven. You don’t have anything out here.”
More tears were rol
ling down her cheeks. She felt herself shaking inside and wondered if it was visible on the outside. Everything he had told her was true. That was why it was so terrible.
“You’re right,” she said, wiping the tears off her face. “I’m going to sell the Lazy L to Wholesale Foods. I’ll have to go back. I guess I was a fool to ever think I could escape my old life and start a new, happy one so easily.”
Raven’s dream of starting her life over out here on this beautiful land had just been crushed.
Chapter Seven
The First National Bank of Masterson, the small town nearest to the Lazy L, was a one-story building on Main Street located just across from the town square and in the heart of the business district. The bank was always a busy place in an otherwise sleepy town, frequented by business people of all stripes, as well as the many private account holders since it was the only bank in a fifty-mile radius.
Raven was dressed in a dark pantsuit and looked and felt professional. She had worn this same suit to all of her job interviews back in the city. Her shoes had been shined. Her perfume had been conservatively applied but was expensive. She also had a professional hint of makeup on her face, and her long hair was tied back behind her in a bun, hairspray keeping its unruly nature in check.
She entered the bank about half an hour after it opened that morning, her stomach doing flip-flops because so much was riding on the outcome of this visit. She felt scared because her life had changed so drastically a week ago, and now it was threatening to change back to the old just as fast, and there was little she could do about it. This trip to the bank was her last chance.
“I’m here to see Linda Harding,” Raven told an old lady who was working as a receptionist in the bank lobby. “She’s the vice president of small business loans. I have an appointment with her this morning.”
“Mrs. Harding is meeting with an account holder in her office now.” The old lady fumbled with an appointment book in front of her. Raven saw she didn’t even have a computer on her desk. Didn’t anyone use modern technology out here in the boonies?
“Please have a seat over there, and Mrs. Harding will be out in a few minutes.”
Raven thanked the old lady and took a seat. She felt like she was on trial for murder here instead of just coming to ask for a loan. So much depended on the outcome of this meeting, and her life would be irrevocably changed one way or another after it was over.
What’s going to happen to me? Raven kept asking herself this question over and over as she waited for the bank vice president, and she came up with no answers, only the great expanse of an unknown future loomed before her.
If she returned to the city she knew exactly what her life would be like, but how would she react to being alone again after her all too brief brush with happiness and having a family out here in the country? Connor wouldn’t return with her. In the city he would be a fish out of water and even more lost than she was out here.
Maybe she would go back to the city and take up with some of her former friends again. Of course none of those friends had been very good friends, and the thought of giving up the ranch to return and take up her friendships with those empty-headed waitresses and bartenders she had known before was not very appealing.
No, this had to work today at the bank. Right here this morning she had to buy herself and her ranch enough time to make a go of things. Her wait would not be long; the receptionist had told her the vice president would see her in a few minutes.
Raven watched the customers of the bank run around the lobby from window to window conducting their daily business at the bank and carrying on with their daily lives. She glanced down the hall in the direction she thought the vice president’s office must be but could see nothing yet.
She realized her palms were sweaty and wiped them along the side of her pantsuit. Bringing out her iPad one more time before her meeting, she brought up the figures for the ranch’s budget on the little touch screen and took another minute to peruse them and commit them to memory.
There was a digital clock mounted on the wall over the teller’s windows. The background of the clock was black and the digits were red. She watched the clock and waited for the minute to advance. That one minute seemed like it would never end. She finally gave up and concentrated on the old couple at the teller window directly beneath the clock who had come to deposit their pension checks, and the teller behind the window was explaining the interest rates the new CDs offered.
“Miss White?” A woman’s voice approached Raven. “I’m Linda Harding. We have an appointment.”
Raven got up from her little chair in the lobby. Linda Harding led her down the hall and into her office which had a nice view of Main Street and the town square across the street.
Linda Harding took her seat behind her desk. A plaque on the desk proudly proclaimed her title, and customer service awards she had gotten over the years were on display on a wall. On a counter behind her desk sat a trophy she had won in a women’s softball tournament. The other wall of the office had a nice painting of a coyote howling at the moon out on the prairie.
Raven set down in front of Linda Harding’s desk feeling her nerves return to her and they were worse than ever. A strand of her long, black hair had come undone and fallen along her cheek. She angrily tossed it back behind her ear and hoped the vice president hadn’t noticed.
There were three file folders laying on the desk, one on top of the other. She noticed the bank’s logo in the top right corner, and the title of each folder read “Lazy L.” Apparently the ranch owed so much money to the bank that they even kept files on them.
Linda Harding arranged the folders across her desk and opened the first one, taking a look inside and frowning at what she saw.
“Have you decided to sell the ranch, Miss White?” Linda Harding asked her.
“I’ve been under a lot of pressure to do so, and I’ve been seriously thinking about it, but no, I’m not ready to sell just yet. I want to give the ranch one more try.”
“When your grandfather died and I heard you were coming out here to live, I assumed you would want to sell as soon as possible.”
If I’d had any kind of life or relationship back in the city that’s exactly what I would have done, Raven thought, but to the bank vice president she said, “I think the Lazy L can make a profit again. We just need a little more time.”
“How do you propose to go about that?” Linda Harding wasn’t even looking at her but was going through the files on her desk.
“I need a loan.”
“Miss White, your ranch already has numerous loans with the bank and three mortgages.”
“I’m aware of that, but I need one more to tide us over for the summer until we can sell the herd in the fall.”
“Miss White, this bank just gave the ranch a loan last month to install a new drainage system on one of its ranges that’s prone to flooding. What would this new loan be used for?”
“To pay the ranch hands.” Raven cleared her throat and boldly charged forward. This is what she had come here for. It was now or never. “My ranch hands haven’t been paid in over six months. I’m sure you’ll agree that’s way too long.”
“Your grandfather never seemed to have that problem with the ranch hands,” Linda Harding acted as if she didn’t believe her.
“Actually he did,” Raven countered. “My grandfather had no funds to pay them with either.”
“Yet he always seemed to work something out with them. I never heard of him losing an employee in all the years I’ve been handling this account. They were loyal to him. Why aren’t they loyal to you?”
“Well I’m not my grandfather.” Raven found herself fumbling for words. She hated the directness of the vice president. “I’m a…”
“You’re a woman,” Linda Harding finished for her. “The ranch hands don’t want to work for a woman.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Raven said, feeling herself blushing. “But it doesn’t make
any difference whether the boss is a man or woman, I don’t think anyone should work without getting paid.”
“If the ranch hands quit, what will you do?” Linda Harding asked. “Will you stay on and run the ranch alone?”
“I can’t do that,” Raven answered honestly. “Of course I don’t know how.”
“Miss White.” Linda Harding seemed to be losing patience with her. “You’re about to lose the ranch no matter what you do. When the ranch hands quit you’ll be out of business for good. Why don’t you just sell to Wholesale Foods? They have made you a really good offer.”
“No, but you don’t understand.” Raven sat up in her chair. “That’s why I’ve come here to the bank this morning. If you will give me that loan, then I can pay the ranch hands and they’ll stay on for the rest of the summer until the herd is ready to be sold.”
“Miss White, that’s not the way it works.” Linda Harding closed up the file folder she had been reading, now losing all patience with her. “You can’t run that ranch. The only reason your grandfather could is because he had the backing of his men. You don’t have that. You are just a young woman. Those are tough cowboys who work out there. They don’t respect you because you’re not one of them and can never be one of them.”
“Those are good men,” Raven said, anger in her voice. “They do respect me, and I respect them. They’re the best ranch hands in this state. It’s because of them that the Lazy L can be brought back to profitability again. They had a family with my grandfather, and they loved him. Now he’s dead and they’ve got nothing, and I can’t offer them anything because, as you reminded me, I am a woman. I can’t even pay them.”
“Miss White.” Linda Harding got up from behind her desk and checked her watch. “This bank won’t give you another loan. You need to start concentrating on finding a way to pay the loans you’ve already got.”
