Holidays on the Ranch (Burnt Boot, Texas #1)(38)

“Next time you’re in Burnt Boot, you are more than welcome to visit Salt Draw. We’ll bust out a pitcher of sweet tea, and I’ll make some cookies. And you can meet Angel and Pistol. Have you met Shotgun? Did Finn bring him along when he signed the papers?”

“Haven’t met any of the animals. I heard that you rescued a cat at the general store. Are you serious about me visiting Salt Draw?” Verdie asked.

“Yes, ma’am, I am serious. I’d love to meet you.”

“Cops! Cuff him, Mary!” Joe held up a foot and hopped along the perch on one leg.

“Who is Mary? And what about cops?” Verdie asked.

“It’s this damned parrot that came with the Chihuahua.” Callie went on to tell Verdie the story of the dog and the bird.

“Little black-and-tan older dog?” Verdie asked.

“Do you know who he belongs to?”

“Belonged to, not belongs. Old man Rawling died about two weeks ago. His family intended to have Pete and Joe put to sleep the day after the funeral, but they both vanished. Those two made their way from a couple a miles away to Salt Draw. You say they’re in the house?”

“Finn brought the dog in and the bird followed him. He threw a squawkin’ fit when we tried to put him in a cage, so we made a roost from an old folding clothes-drying rack,” Callie answered.

“Dickie bought that crazy bird for his wife, Mary, about six years ago. He’d promised her that someday he’d take her to a tropical island, but then she got cancer and he couldn’t take her, so he bought her the bird. She died about a year later,” Verdie told her.

“That explains a lot. Now we know where they came from and that no one is coming to claim them. And, Verdie, I meant it when I said for you to come visit us,” Callie said.

“Honey, I’d love to come for a visit, but when I do, we’ll leave the sweet tea in the icebox and bust out some bourbon. You can go on and make cookies, though. My favorite is gingersnaps. I’ve got to go now. The damned old buzzer will ring in a few minutes, and we’ll all shuffle down to the dining room to eat shit that is good for us. I don’t know why in the hell I thought I’d be happy in a place like this. There’s a real good recipe for gingersnaps up in the cabinet in a little wood box. And I’m guessin’ that Angel is the cat and Shotgun is a dog?”

“I’ll look for the recipe, and, yes, ma’am. Angel is the cat I found at the store, and Shotgun came to the ranch with Finn.”

“I figured that’s the way it is. Now you go on and make them cookies. Finn likes them.”

“He does?”

“Oh, yes. We sat right over there at the table and had them when I sold him the ranch. Bye now, and you have a good day. We’ll talk about that damned feud another day,” Verdie said.

Callie put the receiver back on the wall base and rolled her neck to get the kinks out. “Poor old darlin’ is lonely. She lived in this house or on this ranch her whole life, and now she has nothing but a buzzer to regulate her life. I wonder if she ever had a cat in the house, Angel. What do you think? Do you smell the ghosts of cats past in here somewhere?”

***

Finn fished his cell phone out of his pocket and answered on the third ring. “Hello, Miz Verdie. How are things in the big city?”

“Boring as hell. I hear y’all got a couple of inches of snow up there and that there’s more on the way toward the end of the week and it ain’t goin’ to melt off before the big one hits,” she said.

“That’s what they say. I’m working on this old John Deere tractor. How old is this sucker, anyway?”

“Well, let me think. My oldest son was still in diapers when we bought it, and I mean them kind of diapers that you wash and put on the line, not the kind you ball up and throw in the trash. He was born in 1954, so I’d say it’s a 1955. Lord, we thought we’d died and gone straight to heaven when we got that thing with its double-barreled carburetor. It would fire right up in the wintertime no matter how cold it got. You get that live power shaft fixed, and she’ll run another fifty years.”

“I’m working on it.” Finn backed up and sat down on a bale of hay. “The old mama barn cat has a litter. I just saw one peeking out at me.”

“Crazy old cat ain’t got a lick of sense. She’ll throw a litter in the winter every year, and the funny thing is they usually survive better than the spring litter does. So tell me about this woman I hear you got in the house. Gladys says she’s pretty sassy,” Verdie said.

Poor old girl not only missed the ranch but Burnt Boot. Finn could well understand the way she must feel. If someone jerked him up by the roots and tried to plant him in a place as big as Dallas, he’d be climbing the walls within a week. He leaned back on the stack of hay and got ready for a long conversation.

“She was my spotter over in the war.” He went on to explain the situation with WITSEC.

“They let women do that?”

“It don’t happen real often, but she was very good at it,” he answered.

“Well, shit! I knew I was born in the wrong time. I’d have made a damn fine sniper or spotter, either one. I can shoot the hair out of a billy goat’s beard at a hundred yards.” Verdie laughed.

“The way you ran this ranch single-handed, I don’t doubt it,” Finn said.