Ty looked out on the horses munching grass in the corral as Slim walked by without saying a word to him. Kyle seemed to go out of his way to circle around the other side of the pasture to avoid him. The cowhands were loading the trailers for the next rodeo, and they were making it clear that Ty was persona non grata.
Ty hadn’t felt this kind of loneliness since he was a kid.
By the tenets of the will, he was still in charge. But no one spoke to him. No one looked to him for direction or guidance.
He watched Mandy, clipboard in hand, wave each cowboy with a bronc toward this or that trailer. Watched the men mount up and trot their horses over to bull pens, ready to load the animals when Harold gave the word.
They all had heard the rumor that Prescott had a buyer. And they all hated him for it.
No one could hate him more than he hated himself. Even if selling was the right thing, the rational thing. Doing the right thing wasn’t always easy. A truth he’d learned courtesy of the land development company.
And it sure didn’t get you friends. Or the woman you loved.
Ty didn’t hear Harold until the old cowboy had pressed a boot to the fence rail.
“How you holding up?” Harold said in his typical blunt fashion.
“I didn’t come here to win any popularity contest.” The words sounded churlish, even to him.
“They say it’s lonely at the top,” Harold offered. The crusty cowboy was dressed for work with his Prescott T-shirt and jeans and the black Stetson that rarely left his head. “I wouldn’t know though. Never wanted to find out. I prefer working with the men.”
“Never thought you cared much about being around people, Harold. You always seemed to go your own way.”
A rare smile curled Harold’s mouth. “I don’t care about being around just anyone, that’s true. But this here stock company is my family—literally and figuratively. They understand me, let me be. But most of all they care about me. And I care about them. Every one of them.”
“I care. And getting the best deal is how I showed it. Stan will be taking on every wrangler that chooses to move to Colorado.”
Harold nodded. “Working for Stan will never be the same as working for JM, or anyone associated with Prescott.”
“Stan pays same wages we do.” Ty had checked into that.
“Ranch hands don’t do it for the pay. They do it for the way of life and to feel valued. By those you do it for. See Kyle over there?”
Harold motioned toward the shorter young cowboy who had avoided Ty. “He’s grown up around rodeo. His father was a bull rider. His mother a barrel racer. Getting a college degree in equine studies with the help of a scholarship from us. The same scholarship that helped you. Works here so he can learn about breeding broncs and bulls. I can ask him to do anything. Muck out stalls, wash down the horses. He loves what he does. He knows I not only appreciate it, I value when he takes extra care with my brood mares, when he checks the fencing to make sure the bull I’m breeding is secure. He’s a quiet sort, but he’s humming just about all the time. I doubt he’ll be humming around Stan if he decides to go.”
“I’m sure Stan will value him too, Harold. Or he’ll find another outfit that will.” Ty refused to feel bad for making the Prescott family a bunch of money.
“Maybe. But Davis over there has been working here since high school. First summers and then full time after he graduated. JM knew his father, his mother, knew his sisters, attended his father’s wedding. It’s a family here. An extended family. You were once part of it. Even after you got your fancy education. JM made you part of Prescott.”
“He also gave me the duty of securing the family’s future.”
“And the only way you’ve seen fit to do that is to break up the community JM built by selling the damn thing, is that right? And breaking that girl’s heart in the process.”
“She’ll start another stock company. She’ll have the money to do it.” And she’d do it without him.
“It’s not losing the company that will break Mandy’s heart, Ty. Because you’re right. She probably will start another company. But it won’t give her what JM wanted for her, for the family. I knew my uncle just about as well as anybody could know another. He wanted to secure his family’s future, all right, but it wasn’t by selling the company. And the fact you haven’t figured that out yet, well, I guess I underestimated you.”
Ty met Harold’s gaze. And realized what a fool he’d been.
*
Mandy was bone weary as she hung her hat on the peg inside the ranch house’s side door. It was past midnight. The last rodeo of the regular season was over. The last rodeo maybe forever. The thought made her insides ache.