A Rancher For Their Mom

Chapter Two

April kicked the front tire of the cantankerous tractor. What was wrong with this miserable piece of equipment? How could she plow the west field for hay or the north field for sunflowers if the tractor wouldn’t start?

“Is there a problem?”

April jerked around, coming face-to-face with Joel. He grinned, making her knees weak. Stop it. Ignoring her crazy feelings, she said, “I’ve got an uncooperative piece of machinery. I’ve watched my father-in-law coax this ancient thing into starting several times. Of course, Vernon did most of the plowing.” But at this point, she didn’t have an option. A noise at the barn doors drew her attention. The boys stood there, watching.

“Do you mind if I try?”

Stepping to the side, she motioned for Joel to go ahead. “No. It might cooperate with you better than me.”

The boys snickered, and Joel laughed. The wonderful, rich sound eased her heart.

“I don’t know, but I’ve worked with some mighty grumpy equipment, and you have to know just how to coax them to life.”

“You mean a wrench up the side of this thing won’t work?” She ran her fingers through her hair, dislodging the clip holding it back.

“My gramps used that technique, and it worked, but let me look at the motor and see if I can find the problem. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll try your plan B, which is a wrench up the side of this thing.” His eyes twinkled, and she heard the boys snicker.

Joel’s humor found her funny bone and she joined in with everyone’s light spirit, surprising herself. From the boys’ wide-eyed and openmouthed expressions, they were as surprised as she. Finally they laughed.

“You needed that,” Joel softly said.

Was she that much of a grouch?

Joel didn’t wait for her to respond, but looked into the engine. “The ignition coil has come loose. Let me plug it in.” He did so, then hopped onto the seat and turned on the ignition. The tractor roared to life. He winked at her. “Let me pull this out of the barn before turning off the engine.”

She nodded and shooed the boys out of the way. When she glanced at the porch where she’d put Cora down for her nap, April saw the little girl sit up and rub her eyes. When Joel drove out of the barn, Cora stood and started down the steps.

What was it about this cowboy that had all her children following him like a pied piper?

April scooped her daughter up before she could run in front of the tractor.

Joel parked beside the barn, where the plow’s disc blades sat, and turned off the engine. He hopped out of the cab and waved at the boys.

Cora squirmed in her mother’s arms.

“I’m impressed, but the real question is, will it start again?”

“Well, if it doesn’t, we’ve got the wrench option.”

“Thanks for getting it to work, but what are you doing out here?” She cringed at her abrupt words. What a crab.

“If you have a cup of coffee, I’d like to explain.”

She studied him, but his gaze remained true, not shying away from her probing. Ross often wouldn’t meet her gaze when he had a plan he knew she wouldn’t approve of. “Okay.”

Lots of questions flew through her mind as they walked inside. After a moment, it occurred to April how silent the boys were, which caused the hair at the back of her neck to stand up. April poured coffee for the adults and milk for the children, then joined the others at the table.

Surprisingly, Cora sat between her brothers on the bench seat on the other side of the table. The boys were wide-eyed and seemed to vibrate, waiting for—

April took a sip of coffee. That hair on the back of her neck felt as if it was dancing.

Wes looked at Joel, then his shoulders straightened and he seemed to grow up before her eyes, as if her son had given Joel permission. That didn’t make sense.

Setting his mug on the table, Joel cleared his throat. “I’ve been hired by your sons to help you plant your fields this week.”

That was not what she’d expected this rodeo cowboy to say. She turned to her sons.

“Todd and me wanted to get you some help after Mr. Moore’s accident today, so when we saw Mr. Joel at the feed store, we talked it over and hired him to work this week,” Wes explained.

“And we paid him, too. We gave him a dollar and thirty-seven cents.” Todd’s chest puffed out. “It’s legal.”

April groped with what she’d just heard. It had seemed to come out of nowhere. Staring at her mug, April considered her options, which were limited at best. The nightmare of Mr. Moore being knocked out this morning, landing on his right arm and dislocating it, sat in the forefront of her mind. Whom would she hire to replace him? Everybody else had their own ranches to care for, their own fields to plant. “You’re not tied up this week at the rodeo?”

“I explained to the boys that I have morning chores that I need to do first, but I can be here before seven. That was fine with them.”

She wanted to tell him no. She didn’t need her boys getting any more involved with a traveling cowboy, but one look at her sons’ precious faces and she knew she couldn’t throw away their effort to help.

Todd worried his bottom lip and Wes reminded her of a cat waiting to catch a mouse. The thought of the boys going out and hiring Joel to help with the planting made her heart swell with pride. She knew she couldn’t refuse.

“Then I guess you have a job.”

The boys jumped with excitement. Cora didn’t know what was happening, but she joined the celebration.

The grin on Joel’s face made her fingers tingle, which scared her. Maybe she should back out now, before disaster struck. But as soon as the idea formed, she glanced at her sons. Could she crush their enthusiasm?

“Now, you’ll need to tell me what you want done,” Joel said, breaking into her internal debate.

“Don’t worry,” Wes piped in. “Mom’s good at telling people what to do.” He said it so casually he didn’t notice the smile on Joel’s face or the wide-eyed look on his mother’s.

* * *

“So these are the horses you picked up from the Landers ranch.” Jack Murphy walked up to the corral housing the new stock.

When Joel returned earlier with Sadie and Helo, Jack had been in Amarillo. “Yup, these are the horses.”

Jack rested his boot on the bottom rail. “They’re a little young.”

“True, but I think the lady needed the money.”

Jack’s brow wrinkled. “She say that?”

“Not exactly, but looking around, I could see things needed repair.”

Jack rubbed his chin. “I worried about that when Vernon died. He talked to me when he was sick, asking me to keep buying from the Circle L Ranch. I agreed with him, wondering how his daughter-in-law could run that ranch by herself, having three little kids.”

A perfect opening. “I guess that’s why April’s sons hired me to help this week.”

“What?” Jack sounded as if he’d swallowed a frog.

“When I went to get the feed earlier, I saw the family. The boys slipped around the back while I was loading and hired me for the week. Apparently, their hired hand had an accident between the time I was there in the morning and when I saw them at the feed store in the afternoon.”

“They hired you?” Jack asked.

“They did. I told them I’d have to finish chores here before I could go out to their place, but they were okay with the setup.” Joel faced his boss straight on. “You okay with that?”

“Works for me. At least you’ll have something to do with yourself instead of hanging around here, complaining you’re bored.”

“What? Was I that much of a problem?” Joel asked.

“Hank was afraid he was going to have to babysit you this week and didn’t know what he was going to do. He’s a cook, not a babysitter, and planned on telling you you needed to take up knitting.”

“I couldn’t have complained that much.”

Jack’s brow arched.

“Knitting?”

Both men grinned.

“How well did you know April’s father-in-law?”

“April?” Jack’s smile widened.

“Hey, a little background would help me understand what’s going on and the situation there.”

“Okay. We went back several years. Vernon loved the rodeo but loved his ranch more.” Jack shook his head. “Kinda funny how his daughter-in-law took to ranching like a duck to water, but his son—

“Vernon said he never saw someone love ranching like April. She was a natural. There was nothing around the ranch she wouldn’t do, or try to do, which surprised him.

“Too bad his son wanted nothing to do with the place. But Vernon and Grace never regretted Ross marrying April. They got the daughter they wanted and the grandbabies they’d hoped for.”

Joel wanted to ask more, but he saw the gleam in Jack’s eyes. “I asked if they were coming to the rodeo, but April—”

“April?” Jack again poked him, enjoying himself way too much.

“Mrs. Landers said no. Well, what she really said was ‘we’ll see,’ which the boys knew was no. So I thought you could throw in tickets for both days of the rodeo. April’s got a couple of budding cowboys there that need encouragement. If that’s a problem, I’ll pay for the tickets.”

Jack’s smile widened. “No, it’s not a problem.”

There was way too much satisfaction in Jack’s answer.

“Yo, Jack, I need to talk to you,” Graham “Shortie” McGraw shouted across the arena. “Now.”

“Coming.” Jack turned back to Joel. “See you later.”

As Jack strode across the arena, Joel wondered at his boss’s reaction. What amusement did he find in Joel calling Mrs. Landers April? It was her name. Now, if he called her sweetie or punkin like his grandmother had called his grandfather, then Joel could’ve understood Jack’s reaction. And why did giving away the tickets to the rodeo feel as though he’d made some deep commitment? They were tickets. That was all. So what had made Jack smile?

* * *

“He was way cool, Mom,” Todd said, his spaghetti spilling out of his mouth. Sauce dotted his chin.

“Todd, keep your mouth closed while you’re eating. It’s polite.”

Todd’s fingers pushed the spaghetti back into his mouth. Wes snickered. She’d made the boys’ favorite meal, hoping to take their minds off Joel Kaye.

After swallowing, Todd continued, “Did you see how Mr. Joel handled Helo and Sadie? He was so good, making friends with them first.” He looked at his brother. “And Mr. Joel’s birthday is in March and he’s a real good cowboy.”

Todd wasn’t going to let go of his brother’s false claims anytime soon.

Wes shrugged off the comment. “He was good with the lasso. I want to learn how to do that, too, ’cause you have to do that to be a cowboy. Opa was good. He started to show me how to throw, but—” Wes fell silent.

“Maybe Mr. Joel could show us,” Todd suggested, his eyes going wide.

Wes perked up. “Yeah, that’s a good idea. He threw as good as Opa.”

Cora clapped her hands together, squishing a strand of spaghetti between them. “Yeah, cowboy.”

The boys hadn’t stopped talking about Joel since he’d left this afternoon. Of course, maybe that was a good sign, since the incident with Mr. Moore stepping on the pitchfork and knocking himself out had given them all a scare. Both boys had gone white, but Todd had seemed particularly shaken.

“I don’t know if Mr. Joel will have the time to teach you. He’ll be here to plant crops and do other chores that Mr. Moore would’ve done.”

The boys fell silent, then traded calculating looks.

“Okay.”

Why did Wes’s okay worry her more than a protest?

April needed to stop any shenanigans before they got out of hand. “Maybe Mr. Waters could show you how to whirl a lariat after church sometime. He used to compete in the rodeo.”

Todd rolled his eyes. “He’s ancient, Mom. He must be fifty.”

“No, eighty,” Wes added.

Todd’s brow crinkled. “Yeah, and I don’t know if he would remember how to throw.”

April choked on her spaghetti and quickly took a sip of tea. Andrew Waters was only thirty-eight.

“I don’t know, boys. I don’t want you to bother Mr. Joel while he’s working.”

The boys’ faces fell.

“Aw, Mom.” Wes put his fork down and frowned. He made it sound as if she’d just stomped on his dream.

Todd stared down at his plate, too, his posture only emphasizing how much the boys wanted Joel Kaye to teach them how to throw a lariat.

“I promise I’ll check with Mr. Waters to see if he’ll teach you how to throw.” Her words went over like lead weights on a rubber raft.

“May I be excused?” Wes asked.

“Me, too,” Todd added.

She felt lower than a snake’s belly, stomping their hopes. She nodded and the boys slipped away from the table. Cora frowned, reaching for her brothers. April pulled Cora from her booster seat, wiped her hands and mouth, then set her on her feet. She hurried after her brothers.

“Good job, April,” she murmured to herself. “No one’s happy.” And that included her.

* * *

April poured herself a large iced tea and wandered out onto the back porch. An hour and a half ago, she’d put three subdued children to bed, and those sad little faces had nearly brought her to her knees.

Scanning the bare fields behind the house, April felt a ray of hope and a huge helping of pride.

When Joel had told her the boys hired him, it’d taken her a moment to understand what he was saying. That her boys understood she needed help and wanted to provide it made her chest puff out with pride. It also disheartened her that they knew the ranch was in trouble.

With the death of her husband and in-laws over the past three years, she was now the only adult left on this ranch. Her neighbors had helped for a couple of months after Vernon’s death, but they had their own ranches to care for. Lately, several of the ranchers at church had offered to rent her fields to plant their own cash crops.

She’d toyed with the idea, but it felt as though she’d be giving up on the ranch, on her dreams. She loved this place and had never thought that she’d be in this position.

Her father’s job as a rig manager for a major oil company had kept them on the move throughout her life. She’d lived on several continents and in some exotic places, but none had felt like home until they moved to this place in the Texas Panhandle. When her father had been transferred to Lubbock her junior year in high school, she’d found her heart’s desire on the Llano Estacado and the Caprock.

Added to the feeling of coming home, the first day in English class she’d met Ross Landers. He’d smiled at her and she’d been smitten. Ross had introduced her to all his friends, but it was when he brought her home to this ranch that she knew she was in love.

A home.

Roots.

And something that lasted. The Landers family had ranched this piece of land since the 1880s. Over five generations, through good times and bad, through times of plenty and drought, the family had persevered. That legacy flooded her with purpose and direction. She could do this. Needed to do this.

April and Ross had married a week after graduating from high school and he’d immediately gone to work on a rig out in West Texas, which had surprised her, since Ross had never mentioned he didn’t want to stay on the ranch. He visited home often while she was pregnant with Wes but missed the baby’s birth. Two years later, when she got pregnant with Todd, Ross immediately got one of the treasured jobs as a roughneck on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico that her father oversaw. His excuse for taking that job had been that the extra money he’d receive would help with the expenses of the new baby.

Ross never came back for any length of time after he left. He made it home sporadically for the next four years. When his mother, Grace, was diagnosed with breast cancer, Ross came home that Christmas. That gave April hope that he’d changed, but she quickly learned that wasn’t the case. Ross refused to take his mom to any of her chemo sessions. He did promise to attend Wes’s first-grade Christmas pageant, but he didn’t show. Instead he got drunk with other oil field workers from West Texas. With Todd, Ross would either throw the four-year-old around as if he was a rag doll, hold him upside down by his feet or ignore him, which confused the boy.

When Ross took the assignment on a new rig in the Gulf, Vernon, Grace and April all breathed a sigh of relief that his disruptive presence was gone. Six weeks later Ross died in a freak accident. After they buried him, April discovered she was pregnant with Cora. The money she’d received from Ross’s life insurance, which her in-laws insisted she save and use for her babies, was now almost gone.

Her father-in-law had had to borrow against the ranch to help finish paying for Grace’s care and meds in the last months of her life. She’d died a year ago Christmas. Vernon died the following September. Now April had to come up with a plan to pay off the loan or lose the ranch. Would the money she made on the sunflowers and hay be enough? Did she need to rent out the other fields on the ranch?

She turned her eyes to the fallow field. Would she survive?

“Lord, I know You have the answers to this problem, but—”

“Mom, what are you doing out here?”

She looked up and saw Todd standing by the back door in his superhero pajamas, his feet bare.

“Thinking. Praying.”

“Are you mad we hired Mr. Joel? He can do Mr. Moore’s job since he got hurt.”

“No, I’m not mad. I’m proud of you and your brother for thinking about the ranch. Opa would be pleased, too.” Her solution to the problem wouldn’t have been to hire Joel, but she couldn’t ignore her sons’ solution. It still amazed her that Joel agreed to the deal for a dollar thirty-seven. Why’d he do it?

A grin curved Todd’s mouth. “I’ll help Mr. Joel. So will Wes.”

“I know you will.”

“But I’m kinda worried about Sadie and Helo. Are they scared being in a new place?”

“You’ll have to ask Mr. Joel tomorrow how they’re doing. He’ll know.”

Todd thought about it, nodded and tore down the hall to his bedroom.

Watching her younger son disappear into his room, she knew her boys would keep her on her toes with creative thinking all through school. Teenage years promised to be...a challenge.

She retrieved her tea off the porch rail. Wouldn’t Vernon and Grace be proud of their grandsons? She knew they would.

Would their father?

* * *

Joel lingered over his coffee, the empty plate that had held his barbecue sitting before him. Working with Jack Murphy doing whatever needed to be done around the rodeo helped defray his expenses on the road and kept him busy. What had he done when he was eighteen, traveling with the rodeo, and had the day off? Shoot the breeze with the other young cowboys or brag about his latest score in the different rodeo events? Of course, things hadn’t changed since he was eighteen. Cowboys still bragged about how good they were and how they would capture the ultimate prize of the championship belt buckle given to the number one cowboy in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, or PRCA.

“You need a refill on that coffee?” Hank Calder asked. Hank ran the concessions for the rodeo. He also cooked for the rodeo workers. If any cowboy wanted a meal, they could buy it. Of course, meals were included with the deal Joel had struck with Jack and his boss, Steve Carter.

“Sure.”

Hank topped off the coffee and sat opposite Joel at the picnic table.

“So, how’s it going? You enjoying this vagabond life?” Hank grinned. The instant Joel joined the rodeo, he and Hank had struck up a friendship.

“I was just thinking about that. When you’re young and green, the traveling and excitement of being in a different city every week is appealing.” He shrugged. “Then you grow up.”

Hank grinned. “I hear ya. I’ve got aches and pains in places I didn’t know existed. And I find new ones every day.”

Joel couldn’t help but smile. “You got that right. I’ve worked beside my dad and gramps since I could sit in a saddle and didn’t experience these aches and pains.” He fell silent. “I didn’t feel old when I put in an eighteen-hour day at the ranch. What happened?”