Chapter One
There areways to start a day off on the right foot and then there are wrong foot days.
Today had been predestined to be a wrong foot day from the moment I put my bare feet to the floor of my cabin and felt a wet squish between my toes. Living with a cat, that squish could have been anything from a hairball to dead mouse remains.
It had been a hairball. Bane, the old ginger barn cat who had moved in without consent four years ago, had merely twitched his crooked tail when I had filled the air with profanity. I should have booted him off the bed for the cold mess between my toes.
Looking back on the start of my morning, it would have been wise to call off this project until a right foot day rolled around. Several of the young men who worked under me would have agreed. The hands who hailed from the Shoshone-Arapaho reservation had an innate sense—or probably simply more common sense—when it came to pushing back against the gods. Not that I had any firm belief in any deity. My faith had withered up and died twenty-one years ago.
“So, are they really bones?” Landon asked, his voice pulling me out of the mental pit I had fallen into. I sighed, tipped my old black Stetson off my sweaty brow, and shrugged. The owner of the Prairie Smoke Ranch gave me a flat look. “That wasn’t helpful at all.”
I glanced from the wealthy ex-hockey player to the now idle Bobcat parked right where we’d wanted to install a windmill watering system for the Angus cattle we raised.
“I’m not sure. Perry seems to think so,” I replied then took a step closer to the layers of hard sandstone that now lay exposed to the warming May sun.
“But you’re the ranch foreman,” Landon argued. He was worried. I could tell by the set of his firm jaw and the unease in his gray eyes. “You’re supposed to know everything.”
That made me chuckle. Sure, I knew a lot. About ranching and money and anguish. About dinosaur bones? Not so much.
“They could be bones from cattle,” I offered. The small circle of men in worn denim, tank tops, and dusty cowboy hats grew tighter around the unexpected find. Perry shook his head, rising from where he’d been kneeling beside the hole in the ground.
“Nope, don’t think so, boss.” Perry wiped his hands on the seat of his Wranglers and turned his hazel eyes my way. “They’re too old, I think. They’re too weathered. And this one here,” he waved a gloved hand at the big bone we’d snapped in half with the bucket of the excavator, “that’s just too big for anything that’s roaming around here now.”
“Well shit,” I huffed and gave Landon a long look. “This is your call. It’s your land. What do you want to do here?” I motioned to the mess we’d made.
“Uhm…”
I sniggered. Ah Lord there was nothing like a city boy who came west. Since I’d done the same thing a lifetime ago, I had more patience with the city slickers who spent their time here fishing and hunting than most. Landon Reece was a good man who had been touched by the spirit of the Tetons just as I had and still was. Every time I looked at the mountains, I felt a calm move over me. And since Landon was one of a few gay men within a few hundred miles, his husband Montrell Pittman, the bandleader for late night talk show personality Oliver Reed Doyle, being the other, I tended to give them both plenty of slack. It wasn’t easy being an old queer cowboy. Although Montrell had no interest in ranching at all and Landon…well, Landon did. Bless his eager heart.
“As I see it, we have two options,” I said then leaned on the bucket of the excavator that we’d rented. Our little skid steer wasn’t able to dig as deep as we’d have to go. And now the cost of the excavator and the man running it had to be written off as losses. Like I’d said wrong foot day. I was blaming this all on Bane. A warm wind blew over us, rustling the tall grasses that had shot up. “We either call someone who buys and sells bones to come dig the site, or we call the college. I know they have a couple of paleontologists at UWW who will come out to assess any uncovered fossils.”
“Sir,” Perry spoke up. Landon smiled and reminded him to call him by his first name. It would take time for my men to become his men as well, but we’d get there. “Right, Landon. Well, sir, as I see it, the better option I think would be to call the college. They’ll send out a professor to poke around and see what we have here.”
“How do you know so much about fossils?” Landon asked, and our young Native American employees laughed. It was well known among the men how much Perry loved all things dinosaur.
“Oh well.” Perry rubbed the back of his deeply tanned neck. “I’m kind of an amateur fossilist.”
“He also watches that dinosaur hunter show on Discovery Channel,” Kyle Abbott tossed out. “All the time. Like porn only…dino bones and not human boners.”
That got a laugh from the men idling in the sun.
“Fuck you all,” Perry mumbled, a rich red blush creeping up his neck to his ears. Kyle, our “irrigator,” the man who was in charge of water and irrigation for the ranch, slapped Perry soundly on the back. “Assholes aside,” Perry quickly got us back on track. “I’d give the scholars the first dibs, sir. This way if there’s something important buried there the whole scientific community will benefit from it.”
Landon nodded. “Okay then, I’ll ride back to the big house and call the college.” With that, our new boss swung a leg over his four-wheeler and headed back home, bouncing along a rough dirt path that we politely called the Elk Creek Path. The land that made up the Prairie Smoke Ranch—all ten thousand acres—was crisscrossed with manmade and nature made paths. Some we’d made into roads, others, like this one that ran along a now dry creek, had been created by the elk, bison, and moose that shared the land with our six hundred plus cow/calf pairs.
I looked around at the eight workers who were enjoying this setback far too much.
“Since we’re on hold on this water tank and windmill, why don’t you all head back to the ranch. There’s a feed order waiting for pick up in Copper Falls and the steer pens need mucked out. We’ll be moving the cows and heifers to pasture in a few weeks, so all the calves will need to be tagged tomorrow.”
The younger men jumped to it. Perry, who was twenty-two, and Kyle, at thirty-five, hung back as the hands climbed into one of two beater Ford pickups we had for ranch use. Dust rolled behind them as they followed along in Landon’s path.
“Can you get your grandfather back here to dowse another site?” I asked Perry.
“Yeah, probably. I’ll call him when we’re back home.” He looked skyward. “Should I tell Joe to head back?” He cocked a thumb at the man napping in his excavator. I nodded. It irked me to no end to lose this watering spot. Now we’d have to move down the old creek bed, hoping that Aaron Yellow Horse could locate the creek that had mysteriously started running underground two years ago. This was prime grazing land for the cattle. Having water easily accessible to them and the wildlife that would use the watering tank would have been a great asset.
“Okay, do that. I’m heading home for lunch then I’ll be up at the big house to explain to the owner about insemination techniques.”
They both had a chuckle at my expense then went about their duties. Kyle would get Joe and the digger taken care of. He’d already been paid for the job and now would get a second call. Perry would make sure the hands were following orders, which they did for the most part. Young men tended to get easily distracted, but overall they were a good, hard-working group. And I got to spend the next hour with two gay men and an Asian woman from Manhattan to explain standing heat cycles. It was all Bane’s fault.