Wyoming Tough - Diana Palmer [12]
Mallory was the boss. He made all the big decisions, although he was democratic enough to give his brothers a voice. They were all opinionated. Darby said it was genetic; their parents had been the same.
Morie understood that. Her dad was one of the most opinionated men she’d ever known. Her mother was gentle and sweet, although she had a temper. Life at home had always been interesting. It was just that Morie had become an entrée for any money-hungry bachelor looking for financial stability. Somewhere there must be a man who’d want her for what she was, not what she had.
She rode the fence line, looking for breaks. It was one of the important chores around the ranch. A fence that was down invited cattle to cross over onto public lands, or even onto the long two-lane state highway that ran beside the ranch. One cow in the road could cause an accident that would result in a crippling lawsuit for the brothers.
Darby had been vocal about the sue-everybody mentality that had taken over the country in recent years. He told Morie that in his day, attorneys were held to a higher standard of behavior and weren’t even allowed to advertise their services. Nobody had sued anybody that he knew of, when he was a boy. Now people sued over everything. He had little respect for the profession today. Morie had defended it. Her uncle was a superior court judge who’d been a practicing attorney for many years. He was honest to a fault and went out of his way to help people who’d been wronged and didn’t have money for an attorney. Darby had conceded that perhaps there were some good lawyers. But he added that frivolous lawsuits were going to end civilization as it stood. She just smiled and went on about her business. They could agree to disagree. After all, tolerance was what made life bearable.
She halted at the creek long enough to let her gelding have a drink. She adjusted her earphones so that she could listen to Mark Mancina’s exquisite soundtrack for the motion picture August Rush. There was an organ solo that sent chills of delight down her spine. She got the same feeling listening to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor played on a pipe organ. Music was a big part of her life. She could play classical piano, but she was rusty. College had robbed her of practice time. She’d noticed a big grand piano in the Kirks’ living room. She wondered which of the brothers played. She’d never asked.
She stopped at a stretch of fence where the last snow-and-ice storm had brought a limb down. The ice was gone, but the limb was still resting on the fence, bending it down so that cattle could have walked over it. The limb was a big one, but she was strong. She dismounted, buttoned her coat pocket so that the iPod wouldn’t fall out and went at the limb.
She had to break pieces off before she could ease it onto the ground. In the process, one of the sharp branches cut her cheek. She muttered as she felt blood on her fingers when she touched it. Well, it would mend.
She pushed the limb onto the ground with a grimace, but she was glad to see that the fence wasn’t damaged, only a little bent from the collision. She wrangled it back into some sort of order and made a note on the iPod so that she could report its location to the brothers with the GPS device she always carried with her. They were pretty high-tech for a low-budget operation, she thought. They had laptops that they used during roundup to coordinate all the activity.
She paused as the crescendo built on the soundtrack, and closed her eyes to savor it. How wonderful it must be, she thought, to be a composer and be able to write scores that touched the very heart and soul of listeners. She was musical, but she had no such talent. She didn’t compose. She only interpreted the music of others when