The Road to Garrett

Chapter 2-1

Chapter 2

“Thanks again, Gabe. Sorry you had to clean up Halverson’s mess, but I got tired of waiting. This’ll be great for the guests.”

“This isn’t the first time I’ve had to come along behind him and pick up the slack.” Gabe shrugged. “More money for me.”

“Speaking of money, I’ll drop a check by your office tomorrow morning, if that’s all right.”

“That’s fine. Just drop it in the mail slot if I’m not there.”

Gabe glanced at his watch. Four-thirty. Running the wires for the new theater system in the attic of the Masons’ bed and breakfast and cleaning up Halverson’s mess of an installation had taken longer than he’d expected. He should probably call Ms. Garrett and reschedule for tomorrow.

Instead, he bid farewell to Matthew Mason and drove north out of Cody toward the Garrett Ranch. The drive to and from her place alone would add at least an hour to his day and who knew how long it would take him to locate the problem if the woman’s wiring was in the kind of shape her description led him to suspect, but he ignored his weary body’s complaints and turned up the radio.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious about the young woman the Grants had mysteriously given five hundred acres to. She kept to herself, so no one knew much about her other than she was relatively new to town—she’d hired on as an accountant in Stan and Delanney McCoy’s office a year and a half ago—and had a young son. Curious though he was, that wasn’t the reason he couldn’t bring himself to reschedule. The weary resignation in her voice when she’d called first thing this morning had strummed his heartstrings like a fine guitar.

Following her directions, he turned left off the highway onto the paved road that ran between the sprawling Grant Ranch and its considerably smaller southern neighbor, the Sage Flats Ranch. After a mile, he turned right onto Grant Ranch Road, which was only paved for the first twenty yards until it passed through a massive log gateway adorned with an exquisite metal sign proclaiming the lands beyond to be the Grant Ranch.

He knew there was some serious money tied into this operation, but as the Grant Ranch employed its own maintenance crew, he’d never been called out to do any electrical work, and what he’d heard about the ranch’s wealth didn’t come close to the truth of it. His family’s spread at the feet of the Owl Creek and Absaroka Mountains near Meeteetse was a drop in the bucket compared to this place. The compound, comprised of the main house, at least a dozen employee cabins, several barns and silos, and an enormous indoor arena, was easily five times the size of his family’s, which had only a main house, his two eldest brothers’ houses, a couple cabins for visiting family, and one big barn.

Longing stirred. It didn’t matter how long he spent away from it; ranching would always be in his heart.

“Not in the cards, though,” he murmured.

The road flirted with the river for a mile before he came to the intersection Ms. Garrett had noted, and he turned right as instructed. Gravel pinged the undercarriage of his truck and crunched beneath the tires in a long-familiar and cherished song as the road twisted and dove and climbed through the gullies eroded into the plain by snowmelt and runoff.

Gradually, the road narrowed and deteriorated, forcing him to reduce his speed, and a mile and a half from the intersection, it curved sharply to the left and his truck rumbled jarringly over a cattle guard. The fence post on the left bore a hand-painted wooden sign announcing his arrival to the Garrett Ranch. He figured he was less than half a mile from the highway now, and judging by the angle of the road, it would take him all the way out to the highway. So why the wandering route across the Grant Ranch?

He turned left onto the driveway just beyond the cattle guard.

Driveway was a loose term. It was barely more than a pair of parallel ruts through the sagebrush choked with flattened, winter-dead grass that was the only sign of recent use. She hadn’t been living here long—a few months at most. The track started down a shallow, narrow gully littered with the sun-silvered skeletons of dead cottonwoods, and when it leveled out and widened, the small cabin Ms. Garrett called home came into view beside a spring-fed pond all of twenty feet in diameter. It was idyllic with a copse of young cottonwoods, willows, and quaking aspen clustered around it and the cabin—a beautiful oasis in the middle of the sagebrush and desert.

The cabin itself was a quaint, whitewashed log structure that probably dated back to the very beginnings of the Grant Ranch prior to Wyoming joining the union as a state. It was in need of a lot of work, but it showed some minor improvements like fresh, cheerful sky blue and sunny yellow paint on the shutters and trim and flower beds recently tilled and waiting to be planted.

What was a young mother doing out here so far from… anyone?

There was no vehicle parked in front of the cabin, so he continued down the trail to see if maybe Ms. Garrett had parked down by the small barn. She’d given him permission to go inside if she didn’t make it home from work before he arrived, but he’d never liked entering someone’s house when they weren’t home; it seemed too much like an invasion of privacy.

Sure enough, there was an older pickup parked by the barn, so he pulled his truck in beside it and climbed out. The unmistakable sounds of a horse in trouble had him jogging inside. He located the horse—a paint mare in labor—and a young woman with a sweaty, smudged face and blood-smeared hands in one of the barn’s two stalls. A little boy he guessed was her son perched on the rails of the stall with tears brimming in his big blue eyes.

The woman glanced up when she heard Gabe’s approach, and the worry widening her eyes was a punch to his gut. Something was wrong with the delivery.

“Ms. Garrett?” Gabe asked.

She nodded. “You must be Gabriel Collins. The electrician.”

The catch in her voice triggered a primal need to alleviate her concern, and he climbed over the railing to join her in the stall. “Yes, ma’am, but Gabe will do. What’s going on here?”

“She can’t seem to get the foal out. I thought I could try to pull, but I can’t even feel the foal.”

“Is Diamond Dot and her baby gonna be okay?” the little boy asked.

“I hope so,” Gabe replied before Ms. Garrett could. “How long has she been in labor?”

“I don’t know. She was acting funny this morning before I went to work, so I put her in here and called Jim to ask if he could check on her a couple times today, but I called him again as soon as I got home and found her like this—fifteen minutes or so ago—and he’s been tied up with calving all day.”

Gabe glanced over the mare, noted the gleam of sweat and the labored breathing and didn’t waste time asking who Jim was. The worry in Ms. Garrett’s eyes ignited into panic when the horse folded her legs and lay down in the straw with an exhausted groan. Gabe shed his button-up shirt and draped it over the railing beside the boy and offered the kid a reassuring wink.

He recognized the problem quickly upon closer inspection—the placenta had separated prematurely and was being pushed out first, blocking the foal. Gabe strode to the sink across the barn from the stall, hoping that the new bottle of hand soap sitting on the upturned bucket beside it meant it was operable. Cold water spilled from the spigot, and he quickly scrubbed his hands and forearms and the blade of the Leatherman he always kept on his belt.

“If you haven’t already called your vet, I suggest you do it now,” he remarked as he climbed back into the stall and started cutting away the placenta, careful to avoid nicking the foal.

“I called her before I called Jim. She should be here any time. I actually thought it was her when you came in. Um… do you know what you’re doing?”

“This ain’t my first rodeo, Ms. Garrett. We had this happen with a couple of our mares, and since I was the one on foaling duty both times, I got to be the one who helped.”

“And did everyone… survive?”

“Yes, ma’am, they did. But I don’t know how long she’s been like this, so you might want to do a little praying, if that’s your thing. Even if it isn’t, it probably wouldn’t hurt.”

“Is Diamond Dot’s baby hurt?” the little boy asked. “How come he isn’t coming out?”

“I don’t know if he’s hurt or not yet, squirt,” Gabe replied, “but the stuff that fed him and helped him grow in his mama’s belly came out first and he’s stuck behind it. Don’t you worry, though, okay? We’ll get him out, and hopefully he’ll be just fine.”

“You’re gonna do your best to help them, right, Mr. Collins?”

“You bet I am.”

He cleared the placenta out of the way, and as soon as that was done, he slid his hand into the birth canal, ignoring Ms. Garrett’s grimace and her son’s gasp of concern. He found the foal’s front hooves and let out a breath of relief. The little guy was facing the right direction and still kicking. With a firm grip, Gabe pulled with the mare’s next contraction, and the foal’s nose appeared.

“I know you’re tired, mama,” he murmured, “but we’re almost there. Just a couple more.”

She responded to his voice, and with a low groan, she gave a big push. He pulled with it, and the foal’s head, neck, and shoulders appeared.

“Atta girl, Diamond Dot.”

The barn door opened just as the next contraction hit, and Gabe didn’t pay any attention to anything but the task at hand until a forty-year-old woman he knew well was standing beside him.

“Fancy meeting you here, Sparky. Guess I’m going to owe you another dinner for doing my job, eh?”

“About time you got here, Terri,” he grunted, now supporting most of the foal’s weight. “The party’s almost over.”

“So I see. Need a break?”

Gabe gave one final tug, and the foal came free. “Nope.”

He lowered the newborn horse to the straw and let Terri take over, lingering several minutes while the veterinarian cleaned the colt’s nose and gave him a quick preliminary examination. Assured the foal was all right, he stepped out of the stall and over to the sink to wash the blood and amniotic fluid from his hands and forearms. A faint smile played upon his lips as the old relief and awe filtered through him. Thank God he hadn’t called to reschedule.

Ms. Garrett joined him at the sink, holding out a towel. His shirt was tossed over her shoulder. No longer distracted by a struggling mare, he became acutely aware of her. She was pretty enough smudged and grimy, more adorable girl-next-door than blatantly beautiful—the type of woman he’d always found most appealing—petite and just shy of five and a half feet tall. Long, light brown hair was pulled back in a practical braid, and she had the kind of big blue, innocent eyes he’d never had much success resisting.

“Thank you,” she murmured. “I don’t want to think what would’ve happened if you hadn’t arrived when you did.”

“It was my pleasure, Ms. Garrett.”

“Please. Call me Annemarie.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She held his shirt out to him, and after he realized his T-shirt was stained beyond salvaging, he tugged the hem free from the waistband of his jeans and asked, “Do you mind?”

“Not at all,” she replied and politely averted her gaze.

He stripped out of his dank, gritty T-shirt and dampened a corner of the towel to wipe away the worst of the sweat, grime, and afterbirth.

As he was stuffing his arms into the long sleeves of his denim button-up shirt, Annemarie glanced at him. Her cheeks flushed prettily, and she hastily looked away again but not before he saw her lips curve into a smile that made his pulse jump and his own face heat uncomfortably. More than once while he buttoned his shirt, her gaze shifted covertly to him. No sign of a wedding ring on the hand she held out to take the towel, and he’d heard no rumor of a boyfriend.