Daisies in the Canyon(15)

“Okay, girl, let’s go home and get some breakfast. I’m having another helping of cold fried chicken and some more cake. You’ve been a good runnin’ buddy. You want me to save you the bones?”

Martha wagged her tail and stood up as if she understood every word. They walked back to the house, woman and black-and-brown brindled dog with one blue eye and one brown one. When they got there, Martha flopped down on the porch under a rocking chair and shut her eyes.

“Had enough of that, have you? Well, I’ll bring you some bones anyway.” Abby went inside with a lighter heart than she’d had since she’d left Galveston.

Bonnie was sitting at the kitchen table with a bowl full of peach cobbler topped with a double scoop of ice cream in front of her. Shiloh had something that looked green and horrible in a tall glass, sipping on it while she watched the Weather Channel on television. They were both dressed in faded jeans and work shirts. Shiloh’s dark hair was braided and Bonnie’s was pulled up in a ratty-looking ponytail.

One of Bonnie’s shoulders raised slightly. “Guess you intend to go with Rusty to feed, too. I thought you were still in your room.”

“I’ve already had a four-mile run like I do every morning,” Abby said. “Where’s the rest of the chicken?”

“Rusty ate it for breakfast. There’s plenty of other things in there, including bacon if you want to cook,” Bonnie told her.

“Well, shit! I told Martha I’d give her the chicken bones for running with me.”

Bonnie rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “You ain’t never had a dog, have you?”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You don’t give chicken bones to a dog. They ain’t good for them. They splinter,” Bonnie said.

“And what makes you so smart when it comes to dogs?”

“Mama gathers up strays like cats gather fleas. Ain’t never been a time there wasn’t half a dozen sleepin’ up under the trailer porch and there has always been enough cats in the house to clog up the vacuum brushes every time I cleaned,” Bonnie said.

“Does she work as a vet’s helper or something?” Abby asked.

“Hell, no! She’s a bartender. She owned the bar at one time, but she lost it when she mortgaged it to get one of her boyfriends out of jail. He skipped bail and the bank foreclosed, but the man who bought it kept her on as the bartender. Better get something to eat. Rusty said he ain’t waitin’ on none of us,” Bonnie said. “And he showed me where the dog food is. I’ll take on the job of feeding them a can in the morning and one at night and keeping their automatic feeder full out in their pens.”

It aggravated Abby to have Bonnie tell her what to do and to know more about dogs than she did. Truth was, the youngest Malloy daughter had probably had a much rougher life than Abby or Shiloh. That meant she had more reason to work hard and try to stick out the year.

Shiloh finished her ugly smoothie, put on her coat, and headed out the kitchen door toward the barn, setting off toward the fence line separating the Lucky Seven and the Malloy Ranch. Bonnie scraped every single bite of the cobbler and ice cream up out of the bowl and rinsed it before she grabbed her coat and followed behind Shiloh. That left Abby, who still hadn’t eaten. She grabbed two pieces of ham and cheese, rolled them up together like a pencil and ate them on the way, taking time to pinch off a bite for Martha when she cleared the porch.

“Okay, ladies, there’s room for one person in the front seat of the truck. The other two have to sit in the back,” Rusty said. “You want to draw straws?”

“Who was here first?” Abby asked.

Shiloh held up her hand.

“Then she should go first today. Are we ready?” Abby asked.

“Not hardly. We’ll need about twenty bales of hay stacked on the back of the truck. You and Bonnie can ride on top of it or leave a little legroom between a couple of bales and sit on the side,” Rusty said. “If you didn’t bring work gloves, there’s extra in the tack room. Ezra bought a dozen pair at a time. But you do not get a new pair every day. A pair should last six months at the very least. If you lose them, the price of new ones comes out of your weekly paycheck.”

The cowboy had leadership qualities. She could have whipped him up into a good soldier in no time. He pointed toward a room toward the back of the barn with a window in the door. It was the only one that had light shining, so she figured that was the tack room.

“Ezra was partial to these small traditional bales. I wanted to go to the big round ones so we would only have to feed two or three times a week, but he wouldn’t have any part of it. Stubborn as a mule, he was. Guess he passed it on to y’all,” Rusty said.

Abby bit back a sarcastic remark. If this was ever her ranch, she’d have big round bales like she saw scattered over the pastures on her way from South Texas. Especially if it meant only feeding cows three times a week.

Rusty sat down on a bale of hay and motioned toward the left where the hay was stacked from dirt floor to the rafters of the barn. “To make it fair, we’ll take twenty-one bales. That’s seven for each of you. We had a damn fine hay season last year, which means if it’s scant this year, we won’t be hurting next winter. Ezra believed in keeping the barns full. Never knew him to buy hay, but he said back in 1990 he ran plumb out and had to get fifty bales from Lonesome Canyon. It aggravated him so bad that he cleared off another forty acres that next spring and put in more alfalfa.