Unbridled and Unbranded

The Double Rider Men’s Club 5

ELLE SAINT JAMES

Copyright © 2011

Chapter One

Ryder, Colorado

Calista Warren had a keen sixth sense when it came to sensing trouble. Dusty, her ranch's lead foreman, had disaster written all over his weathered features as he approached the barn where she was readying to feed the chickens.

Before he even stopped walking, Dusty started speaking. “Sorry to tell you this, Callie, but I’m giving my notice, today. I’ll be moving on in two weeks.”

“What? Why?” Calista dropped the bucket filled with grain at her feet in utter surprise. She wasn’t sure she could run this ranch without her lead foreman’s help. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. It had been a brutal few months with mischief and bad luck running roughshod over her careful plans to get the ranch into a lucrative and successful place so that she could sell it.

The bucket she’d held hit the ground at an angle and tipped over. Half of the feed spilled out across her well-worn boots. She started to squat down to sweep it back into the bucket, but felt her time might be better spent cajoling Dusty to stay on for just a bit longer.

Before she opened her mouth to speak, Dusty Bartlett shook his head. He then put a gloved hand up flat and said, “And I won’t be talked out of it, neither, so you can save your breath.”

Callie lowered to the ground, and began shoving dirt-coated grain back into the bucket. “Where are you going? If you don’t mind my asking?” She had an idea of where he was headed, but hoped she was wrong.

Her head bent to her task, Callie saw him shuffle a bit. He kicked a rock with one toe of his boot. His pause before answering made her know exactly what his intentions were before he spoke. “Got me a job at Kincaid’s. I figure once you sell this place, I’d be lookin’ for job anyway.”

Callie stood up, schooled her face to show no emotion, and headed for the chicken coop behind the barn with the feed. She was about to argue his faulty reasoning, but changed her mind. “I see. Well, I’m sorry to see you go, but I wish you the best.” She sped her gait, not wanting him to see how upset she was at his defection. He was deserting her to what she considered enemy territory and right during a critical time.

Score one for Drew Kincaid. It was a big victory he’d won today by luring her best worker and ranch foreman away when she needed him the most.

“Maybe you should think about selling this ranch to Kincaid,” Dusty said. He’d matched her speed walk and was only a few feet from the chicken coop by the time she realized he’d followed her.

“Is that a part of your new job description? Persuade me to sell my family’s century-long blood and sweat equity so that Kincaid will have a better water supply? No, thank you.”

“He’ll make you a good, fair offer for this ranch, Callie.” Dusty’s defense of Drew Kincaid turned her stomach more than his desertion. “It ain’t like you’re keeping this place for sentimental reasons. If you’re gonna sell anyway, why not let him take the place off your hands?”

“Over my dead body,” she said quietly, and stepped away from him. She opened the door to the large chicken coop enclosure and resisted the urge to slam the door once she was inside.

“What if I don’t want to wait two weeks to leave here?”

“No problem. Then I won’t owe you any further pay.”

“Right. Then I’ll clean out and be gone by the end of the day.”

“Fine.”

“One other thing you might wanna know,” he added tersely.
Fuck. Now what?
“Billy, Tex, Dale, and Emmett are coming with me. You want them gone by the end of the day, too?”

Callie couldn’t see her own face, but felt the blood run to her feet. She couldn’t lose so many trained hands and survive. And having Emmett leave her employ especially hurt. A lot. His skill set was her bread and butter. The man with the golden touch when it came to cow insemination. Or at least he was better than any of the others.

There were already a few dozen cattle in various stages of pre-insemination all due to be impregnated in the next few days. If he left, she’d have to start over with another cow inseminator. Callie wasn’t sure she had the heart to start over, and she knew she didn’t have the funds.

“Tell them they ought to be men enough to come tell me themselves.”

“What would be the point?”

She shrugged. Maybe she could talk them into staying. Especially, Emmett. She’d paid good money for his schooling. She should have insisted on a written agreement and not a handshake. They wouldn’t have done this to her father.
Ever
.

“They came because of me, they’ll leave with me when I go.”

“I see. I hadn’t realized you all were a package deal when I hired the four of them at completely different times than when I hired you.” He shook his head as if she were too foolish to understand his prerogative and looked away.

That was fine. She was done with him and his disloyal friends. She turned her back on Dusty, plunged her hand into the bucket, and flung out a handful of seed.

The chickens roamed around until she tossed the first handful of feed out. Then they flocked to her. If only chickens could help manage her ranch. For a bit of feed each and every day, she could finally buy herself some better devotion. Because right now all she felt was the full weight of her cowhands’ treacherous behavior.

What am I going to do now?

This hiccup in her plan was the most recent in a long list of setbacks that had started only days after her father’s funeral.

Even for as hard as Callie worked, she wasn’t sure she wanted to struggle and fight so hard to keep this ranch, even if it had been in her family for generations.

One thing was certain, she needed help. She needed lots of it. And it better come soon.

After feeding the chickens, she watered the horses in the barn and put hay out for them. Before she finished that chore, a cavalcade of beat-up rusty trucks exited from the direction of the bunk house headed to the main road and turned south toward Kincaid’s property.

She tried not to look as they left, but when a plume of dust then started back toward the ranch from the highway, she stopped to see if some honor-bound cowboy had come back to help her. If he had, she was already calculating how much she could afford to increase his wages for a loyalty bonus.

She was disappointed to see that it wasn’t a truck returning, but a midsize car that approached. She could see the dust plume as it got closer. Given the day she was having, her very first thought was
now what
?

Perhaps it was news of one of the calves being born. Once she had proof of her bull’s superior semen in the form of a healthy birth, she might not need to worry about Dusty and his crew’s defection. She only needed to present an attractive, stable, lucrative ranch for sale to the highest bidder, other than Kincaid, and then she’d move on to her secret dream. The one she’d been neglecting in order to fulfill her father’s final wishes. The dream she’d once thought would take her out of this town and this hard ranch life. But so far, she was always almost, but not quite there.

Her father had wanted a boy. It had never been a secret. When he’d eventually come to terms with her being a girl, he’d wanted her to get married. Which was practically since the day she’d learned the difference between girls and boys. He’d warned her over and over that without a man’s hand in her life, she wouldn’t be able to keep the ranch running the way it should.

Callie had been adamant she could fill her father’s shoes without a man in her life. She was so busy working, especially after her father’s last hospital stay, that she hadn’t made time to even leave the ranch, let alone to go on a date. Truthfully, she hadn’t made looking for a man to marry a priority in her life. Deep down inside, she wasn’t ready to give up on her dream man, either. He was real. He existed outside of her dreams, but she wouldn’t search for him until this business with the ranch was finished.

She’d been in love with Bo Parker for most of her adult life. He was the only man she was interested in as a life partner, but she knew he wasn’t ever going to be interested in running a ranch.

After her father passed over a year ago, she’d made every effort to sell the ranch. But at the time the only interested buyer was Drew Kincaid. She needed an out-of-town buyer. Someone not associated with Colorado. She might even stipulate that the land couldn’t be sold to him afterwards. And she’d get that proviso in writing. But it was likely a pipe dream. The only reason she cared what happened was because she knew why Kincaid wanted her land.

The water on her northern boundary property line, that she shared with a group of property owners uninterested in cattle, was abundant.

Kincaid had overused his water supply being greedy. He’d also used up the available excess water south of his property but still didn’t have enough for the cattle he ran.

So he pined for her land for the sake of her water supply. Well, he wasn’t going to get it. Drew Kincaid would have to take no for an answer one time in his life. He certainly wasn’t used to it, but Callie was adamant. If he got a hold of her property, he’d spoil her land and use up all her water for no better reason than no one ever told him no.

The dusty, four-door vehicle pulled to a stop next to the front porch of her house. Landon, her accountant and lawyer, stepped out and greeted her.

The smile on his face didn’t reach his eyes, and her bad-news, sixth-sense antenna rose to full staff.

“What’s wrong?”

Landon pushed out a long sigh. “The first cow we inseminated, using Dragon’s semen, last season gave birth in the night.”

“What’s wrong with that?” Callie closed her eyes. Was the calf deformed or something?

“I’m sorry, Callie. The calf died this morning.”

Callie couldn’t help the tears that welled in her eyes. “Why? What happened to him?”

“They aren’t sure yet. It’ll take two or three weeks to get cause of death. Look on the bright side, it is probably nothing to do with Dragon’s semen.” Dragon, her prized and very expensive bull, was a large part of her big plans to make money to keep afloat. She’d been selling straws of his semen online. However, if a calf born from his semen had a high progeny number, she could charge more.

“But it might. And now we’re left waiting. Again.”

“The Bakers’ cow will deliver in a little over a month. When that goes well, we won’t need to worry about this one.”

Callie pulled her gloves off and smacked a thigh to clean off the dirt. “Well, if the birth had gone well, and the calf had a high progeny number, I could be online right now, advertising and making more money than I currently get for Dragon’s semen. Now I have to wait. Again.”

“I’m your accountant, I know money is tight.”

“I have to make a quarterly tax payment in less than a week or face a stiff penalty. I spent a lot of money on additional straws of semen from top bulls across the country. If only I had someone here on the ranch to inseminate my cows with all of it.”

“What happened to Emmett?”

“He and Dusty and the gang quit an hour ago to go work for Kincaid.”

Landon never got riled up about anything. His face went blank for a moment and then very calmly, he said, “That’s unfortunate. You spent a lot of money putting Emmet through insemination school.” He was gracious enough not to berate her for failing to get a signed agreement. If she had, Emmet would be required to stay at her ranch for a certain length of time before moving on with the education she had provided. She’d operated the way her father would have, but that wasn’t serving her well, if it ever did.

“Thanks for not saying ‘I told you so’ about Emmet.”