State Fair (10 page)

T
HE NEXT MORNING—SATURDAY—WHILE WE GRABBED A QUICK breakfast of cereal, coffee and juice, I told Gabe what I’d overheard Milt say in the Bull Pen hallway last night.

“I bet he was referring to Levi,” I said. “Remember how he was against Levi getting the job?”

“He’s a jackass,” Gabe said mildly, not as upset about the remark as I was.

I poured maple syrup on my oatmeal. “I wonder who he was talking to.”

Gabe sipped his coffee, his expression mild. “Who cares?”

“I thought you’d be more upset. When you add that to the letters Levi received—”

“What letters?”

“Levi received some threatening letters. Do you think Milt might be behind them?”

He was still calm, surprising me again. “Sweetheart, I’ve listened to idiots like Milt Piebald my whole life. I’m sure Levi has too. You can’t let people like him pitch a tent in your head. The only thing it does is keep you from doing what you have to do to succeed. Levi made it to where he is today because there’s no one better qualified
and
he worked his butt off. Milt can’t do a thing about that so he’s just shooting off his mouth to make himself feel more powerful than he actually is.” He looked back down at the newspaper folded next to his plate. “Wonder how many rat dogs are going to charge the cattle this year?”

“Okay,” I said, doubtfully. “You would certainly know better than me about how much credence to give Milt’s remarks.”

Since we knew we’d likely want to leave the fair at different times, Gabe and I took separate vehicles. We parked in the Booster Buddies preferred lot and were lucky enough to catch a ride with a rancher who was also heading to the Golden Hill Auto Center on Highway 46. The dirt parking lot next to the auto center was already crowded with dozens of trucks and horse trailers. For a moment I just stood and listened. The sounds of snorting horses, clinking spurs, loud masculine laughter and the high murmuring of women’s words as they calmed their mounts composed a symphony I never tired of hearing.

Daddy’s truck and trailer was parked over by a back fence. He was unloading Tanya, a new ranch horse he’d bought from his good friend Charlotte Brown over in Riverdale. Rooster, my little brown quarter horse who was as solid as a gold brick, and Badlands, the big sorrel gelding Gabe liked to ride, were already saddled and waiting for us.

“Thanks, Daddy,” I said, kissing him on the cheek.

“What’d you two lazy birds do, sleep in this morning?” he said with a soft drawl that revealed his Arkansas roots.

“We got up at six a.m.!” I said, reaching into my pocket and giving Rooster pieces of carrot. The other two horses nickered for their share. I promptly heeded their commands.

Daddy chuckled and checked my rigging. “I’d eaten breakfast, plowed a field and done my taxes by then.”

“Ha-ha,” I said, drying my damp palms on the sides of my jeans. “You ready to ride?”

“Ready to watch a bunch of yahoos try to kill themselves or someone else,” he grumbled. Every year he carped about this cattle drive and every year claimed it would be his last. Every year for the last thirty years.

After everyone saddled up, we rode over to the portable corrals next to the dealership where the cattle, already agitated because their routine had been broken, were bawling to beat the band. The route chosen for the cattle drive this year was one we’d used the last few years. It had proven to be the safest route for the hundred or so head of cattle that were driven, Old West-style, to the fairgrounds.

Even over the bawling cattle I could hear my cell phone, which I’d stuck in my shirt pocket. I ignored it since I had a good idea who it was and I wasn’t up to hearing what Aunt Garnet had gone and done this morning.

“Same thing as last year,” yelled Cody, whose parents owned a ranch out near Parkfield. He was cowboy in charge since it was his family’s cattle. “We’ll be driving them down Golden Hill Road, right on Confederate Road, left on North Salina, left on Crestline, over the bridge then right on Creekside Avenue past the Pioneer Museum and into the fairgrounds. We’ll be going through some crowded neighborhoods and we’re expecting a lot of spectators so be extra careful. Go slow and pay attention.”

“I hope the horses and cattle are paying attention,” I said to Gabe. “Because the riders who should be listening sure aren’t.”

“Paramedics are standing by,” Gabe said.

Of course, the usual new-to-the-country-life folks showed up for this traditional event with their green-broke horses and fringed and spangled outfits that resembled something you’d more likely see on Hollywood Boulevard rather than a cattle drive.

“For Pete’s sake, look at that one,” I said.

A thirtyish woman in Daisy Dukes, a paper-thin white T-shirt stretched tight across her impressively enhanced chest, bright pink straw cowboy hat and neon green and blue boots rode by us on a wild-eyed paint controlled only by a braided halter. It was a spectacular wreck just waiting to happen.

“Howdy, cowboy,” she said to Gabe, giving him an appreciative look.

Gabe grinned, touching the rim of the white straw Stetson I talked him into wearing. “Ma’am.”

She giggled and blew him a kiss.

I rode up next to him, took off my Ramsey Ranch cap and smacked his Levi’s-clad thigh. “I’ll ma’am you, Chief Ortiz.”

He laughed and adjusted his seat in his saddle. “Hope she doesn’t fall off her pony. She might experience road rash in some mighty delicate places.”

“Hope she has her plastic surgeon on speed dial.”

Of course Miss Daisy joined the other inexperienced riders at the front of the herd completely ignoring the shouted suggestions of the real cowboys that if you didn’t have much experience herding cattle to please stay at the side or back of the herd. Oh, no, these dudes and dudettes wanted to be at the front so their friends and family could snap pictures and take movies of them leading a “real” cattle drive. The fact that half of them were sneaking sips of beer at nine in the morning made me wonder why the city’s insurance gurus allowed this event to continue every year.

Still, despite my complaints, I’d be as disappointed as anyone else if they ever stopped it. As big a pain as these crazy, half-drunk wannabes were, they also gave us something to laugh about up in the Bull Pen. I saw Daddy on the other side of the herd and I waved, then circled my temple with my finger. He saluted me and shook his head. This cattle drive wasn’t exactly a reenactment of the Old West, but more like a scene from the editing floor of the movie
City Slickers.

At the start, the inexperienced riders always became overly excited, like a bunch of sugar-high toddlers, and did way too much yeehawing, making the already skittish cattle a bit wild-eyed. But once the cowboys yelled at the riders to shut up and slow down, they usually relaxed and went with the flow. We were moving along nicely with no incidents, slowly maneuvering the cattle down Confederate Road, the longest stretch of the drive. The connecting street’s intersections were blocked off by Paso Robles police cars and the closer we moved to the fairgrounds, the larger our audience. People lined the street with their lawn chairs and coolers, snapping photographs and taking home movies of something most of them had only seen in television Westerns.

Crossing two bridges—one over the river and one over the 101 freeway—was the next challenge. By this time the cattle were relatively quiet considering all the new sights and sounds they were experiencing. But some of the horses, as well trained as they were in ranch work, were getting spooky. The echoing sound of their hooves on the concrete bridges and the rumbling sound of trucks roaring underneath them as we crossed over Interstate 101 was enough to make all the sensible riders keep a close rein on their mounts. Halfway across the bridge over the Interstate, I felt Rooster tuck his tail underneath him, his front end coming up off the ground a little while he danced a nervous two-step.

Once we made it over the bridges, I let out a sigh of relief and felt Rooster start to relax under me. Only a few more blocks to go. Once we turned right on Creekside Avenue, we were within spitting distance of the fair. I could see the top of the midway’s giant Ferris wheel. So far, things were going okay. The city slickers had listened to the cowboys and were riding nose to tail, keeping the cattle in line, resisting their urge to shout “yee-haw.” My phone rang twice during the ride and finally I’d turned it off. I’d pay big-time for that later.

I was riding along just fine, keeping an eye out for any recalcitrant cattle when Rooster tensed beneath me, started tip-tapping. I tightened his reins, murmuring, “Ho, boy, ho.”

“Heads up!” a woman yelled behind me. Hoofbeats clattered on the pavement. “Loose horse!”

A riderless horse dashed past me in a flat-out gallop, reins dragging.

My heart tumbled like a bucket of rocks. The call “loose horse” reverberated down the line of riders like an electric current. A steer bolted in front of me, swerved a sharp right trying to break from the herd.

“Hup!” Gabe yelled, touching his heel to Badlands, who immediately did what he’d been trained to do. Badlands cut off the steer, expertly pushing it back into the forward-moving herd.

“Yeah!” Gabe lifted a fist in triumph.

I laughed at his excitement. Gabe had grown up in Kansas working his grandpa Smith’s wheat farm, but everything he knew about cattle he’d learned from Dove, Daddy or me. He’d been a good student, easy to teach, because was he was a natural on a horse, one of those riders who just relaxed and trusted the experienced animal underneath him.

“Good job, cowboy,” I said, riding up next to him. His lean, long-legged body looked sexy on horseback. Then again, to me, almost any man looked sexier on the back of a horse.

“Thanks, but you trained this old guy,” Gabe said, patting Badland’s glistening neck. “So most the credit goes to him . . . and you.”

That was another thing I found sexy. He wasn’t afraid to let me be the smarter one sometimes. “To be fair, I started the training. Daddy finished it. Despite his name, Badlands is a darn good cowpony.”

After our little excitement, we stayed even more vigilant. No one could really relax until the cattle were inside the fairgrounds, in the pens. This group of cattle was better than last year’s wild bunch. This year they were spicy enough to make it fun, but not too dangerous. Good thing, since it seemed we had twice as many weekend riders. Word came up the line that the thrown rider was okay and someone had caught the horse.

“What are your plans after this?” I asked my husband, our shins occasionally bumping as we rode next to each other.

He readjusted his Stetson. “Thought I’d catch some of the animal judging. Maybe watch the cutting horse competition this afternoon, then head over to the wine pavilion.”

We drove the cattle into their final pen near the beef barn where they’d stay until the country rodeo the second to the last night of the fair. While waiting for Sam to bring the horse trailer from the GMC dealer, we let tourists take photos of the horses.

“Want to meet for lunch?” Gabe asked, loosening Badland’s cinch, then tying up the saddle’s rigging for the trip back to the ranch.

“How about Mustang Sallie’s at noon?”

“I’ll meet you there, but I refuse to eat that crap.”

“How about the Kiwanis stand?”

“Deal. Their cheeseburgers are worth risking my arteries for.”

After we loaded the horses back into the trailer, Daddy and Sam headed back to the ranch.

On my way to the museum’s booth, I cut through one of the commercial buildings to cool off. I’d gotten caught in a human traffic jam between the spiel of a waterless cookware salesman and a slice-and-dice demonstration, when, over the din of voices, I heard someone yell my name. The voice carried a distinctively familiar timbre that instinctively made me want to bolt in the opposite direction.

“Young lady, you freeze right there!”

Dove’s voice and personal charisma were powerful enough to make the crowd part like Moses did the Red Sea. She marched up to me waving her shiny blue cell phone. “What, pray tell, is the use for this contraption if you never answer your phone?”

“Hey, Gramma,” I said in my most conciliatory voice. “I was on the cattle drive and you know how nervous those cattle can get at the least little noise . . .”

She grabbed my upper arm like I was six years old and maneuvered me through a side door to the concrete walkway between buildings.

“You have to do something,” she said, once we could hear ourselves talk. “Seriously, honeybun, I think I may kill her. I caught her snooping through my books this morning. I’m sure she set her alarm to get up early. She is dying to sink her claws into my corn bread recipe. Bet she thinks it’ll get her a blue ribbon at the Arkansas State Fair.”

I held back the urge to laugh at the mental picture of my great-aunt Garnet tiptoeing down the hallway carrying her house slippers so she wouldn’t wake up Dove. Since Dove habitually rose at 5 a.m. that meant Aunt Garnet had to get up pretty darn early. Dove’s cheesy corn bread was good, but it wasn’t
that
good.

“Isn’t there a two- or three-hour difference in Arkansas and California time? Maybe she got up early because it felt later to her. Isn’t five o’clock here like seven or eight o’clock there?”

Dove was silent a moment and I realized that hadn’t occurred to her.

“Nevertheless, I caught her going through my cookbooks.”

I lifted up my hair, trying to catch a breeze and cool my sweating neck. “Aren’t your cookbooks in with all your other books?”

“What difference does that make?”

“Maybe she was just looking for something to read.”

“Something to read like notes that would give away my corn bread recipe.”

“I think you’re being . . .”

Dove narrowed her eyes, placing her hands on her plump hips.