Page 24 of Heart of Stone
“Yeah. But the women in town don’t feel the same way. You should have seen him smilin’ at the ladies and kissin’ hands like he was royalty. They ate it up with a spoon. The only good thing was that he came away with enough dinner invites to last him two weeks.”
“That’s good!” Luke was willing to take any respite from Dandy Jim he could get, and if the ladies of Serenity could tolerate him better, well, Luke would be glad to chuck him in their midst without a qualm. “Maybe Mrs. Wilson’ll latch onto him.”
“Maybe, though I wouldn’t wish that man on sweet little Agnes. ‘Course, she’s probably too smart to be taken in by his fancy talk.” He pushed his hat back on his head. “Well, I guess we should get to work mendin’ this fence. I’ll leave it with you to set up patrols. If we need to hire more hands to cover it until fall, that’s fine. We don’t want to lose any more head before we can get them to market.”
“No, we don’t.” Luke didn’t like big losses, especially not preventable ones. “I’ll get right on the patrol schedule. Remind me to tell you about an idea I had earlier,” he added, deciding he would bring up the horse breeding idea after all. He had practice with tracking bloodlines; he’d been doing it informally for the horses born and bred on the ranch since Priss had realized he had an interest in such things. “It might be time to think about movin’ away from cattle.”
Stone gave him a questioning look. “Is that so? I’ll be interested in hearin’ what that’s all about. But let’s talk about it away from the city slicker. That man is about as nosy as Mrs. Wilson.”
“You won’t get no argument out of me. I don’t like the idea of him hearin’ anything either,” Luke agreed firmly. He wasn’t sure why he distrusted James Rivers as well as disliked him, but he trusted his instincts. “He ain’t nothin’ like Priss, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t take them for family if I didn’t know different.”
“They ain’t blood kin, and I suppose he wasn’t around her enough for good sense to rub off on him.” Stone began to roll up his sleeves. “I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m goin’ to stay until we get this done.”
Luke nodded and touched the brim of his hat. “Yes, sir. I’ll make sure the men start patrollin’ as soon as possible. If we need any extra hands, I’ll have an estimate about how many ready for you when you get back.”
He saw a flicker cross Stone’s face at the “sir”, but Stone simply nodded. “Right. And don’t wait dinner. I don’t want Dandy Jim to miss a meal and have cause to complain.”
“I’ll treat him as good as gold,” Luke said dryly.
“Don’t overdo it.” Stone turned and headed over to the wagon, lifting a large fence post out of the back by himself and carrying it over to where a couple of hands were working the broken end of a post out of the ground.
Luke couldn’t help but watch, allowing himself the little luxury of admiring the display of strength and the play of muscles in Stone’s arms. He felt a flare of heat in response to the sight, and he turned away and headed quickly back to Mist. There wasn’t any point to looking when he couldn’t touch, and he wasn’t fool enough to torture himself over something he couldn’t have.
CHAPTER15
Stone was dead tired by the time he accompanied the rest of the hands back to the stable, but he took the time to care for Raider and thank his men for their hard work before dragging himself back to the house. It was well after dark, so he wasn’t surprised when he entered through the kitchen and found that supper had already been cleaned up and put away.
He went to the sink and pumped the handle to set the water flowing, and then he dunked his head under it, gasping at the chill. Fortunately, Mary always left towels in reach, so he mopped himself up before going to the ice box to see what was left from supper.
“You’re safe.” Luke’s voice came from behind him, startling him. “Dandy Jim went upstairs to take a bath. Apparently, he don’t hold to our primitive ways, and he wants bath water heated up more’n once a week.”
“That’s a lot of bathin’ for a man that don’t look like he ever did a lick of work in his life,” Stone replied. He pulled out a piece of ham and carried it over to the counter so he could make himself a sandwich. “We got the fence patched. Shorty said that there didn’t seem to be no more breaks.”
“Good.” Luke nodded, appearing satisfied with that news. “I got a patrol schedule written up and posted in the bunkhouse, and I went over it aloud, too, so those that can’t read know when it’s their turn to go out. If the rustlers try to hit the ranch again, we’ll catch it right quick.”
“Let’s just hope they’ve moved on.” Stone put his sandwich on a plate, poured himself a cup of coffee, and took a seat at the table with a weary sigh. “I’ll need to go into town tomorrow and report to the sheriff, so he can be on the lookout. The cattle were all branded, but rustlers ain’t goin’ to sell to anybody who cares about that. We’ll have to write it off as a loss, unless some miracle happens.”
“Yeah.” Luke sighed and raked his fingers through his hair, and after a moment of visible hesitation, he sat down opposite Stone. “It may be time to cut back on sellin’ cattle anyway. Beef prices have been droppin’ the last few years, and it just ain’t as profitable as it used to be.”
Stone swallowed a bite of his sandwich and washed it down with a sip of coffee as he thought that over. “True enough. I even heard Mr. Stevenson sayin’ last year that he was worried about too many head on the market. So what is this idea you mentioned? But I warn you, if you say pig farmin’, I’m goin’ to pretendI didn’t hear it.”
Luke actually smiled a little at that, and he shook his head. “Nah, I ain’t much interested in that myself. I was thinkin’ more along the lines of breedin’ horses. Folks need them for pullin’ buggies and ridin’, and racin’s gettin’ real popular, too.”
“Horse breedin’?” Stone frowned in thought. Good horses did command a lot of money, but it took a lot more care in breeding and raising them than it did cattle, and you couldn’t raise as many. “Well, it’s a thought, but it’s not like we could switch overnight. How could we breed enough to match what we make on beef, even if the price drops?”
“We don’t have to give up cattle completely,” Luke replied, seeming to grow more animated as he warmed up to the subject. “Just cut back so it ain’t our only source of income. We could make a plan and breed more horses and less cattle over the next few years so the change ain’t all sudden-like. I’ve got bloodline records on the horses we already own. I’ve been in charge of the breedin’ for a while,” he added with obvious pride.
“Have you, now?” Stone was impressed with the work Luke had done. He’d known that Priss had put an awful lot of trust in Luke, but apparently, she’d had even more confidence in him than he’d thought. “Was this somethin’ you and Priss had been plannin’ before she died?”
“Nah, it’s just somethin’ I’ve always had an interest in. She didn’t mind me takin’ over the breedin’ for the ranch ‘cause I knew what I was doin’, and I got good results. Beef was sellin’ so well, though, so we never talked about breedin’ horses for more than just our own use. But that’s how we got Mist and the rest of the grays.”
Stone ate the rest of his sandwich as he mulled it over, weighing the pros and cons. He didn’t know near enough about raising horses for market, but what Luke said made a lot of sense. If the price of beef fell a lot, they’d have something to fall back on other than just the mine, which didn’t produce nearly enough to support the whole ranch and pay all the hands, plus the taxes.
“It seems like a good idea,” he said. More than that, he’d not seen Luke so pleased about anything since their quarrel, and he couldn’t bring himself to deny Luke something that made him happy and made him want to stay on the ranch. “Sure, go ahead and get started, so long as we don’t have to lay out a lot of money right at the start. We’re committed to the cattle for this year, anyway, but we can see how much we make when we go to market and then figure out what to do by the time winter comes. And we’ll talk about how much more land we’d have to turn over to hayin’. That suit?”
“Yes, sir.” Luke’s smile widened, and an anticipatory light appeared in his eyes, as if he was already making plans.
Stone suppressed a sigh as Luke called him ‘sir’ again, andhe rose from the table to take his cup and plate to the sink. He was glad to have made Luke happy, but he knew there probably wasn’t anything he could do that would bring back the easy, care-free Luke he’d first met, and that gave him a pang every time he thought about it.