Lass Small - Taken By A Texan

His daddy nodded as he named them. “Kayla Davie went back to Tyler Fuller. Sometimes that happens. Women aren’t at all predictable. She probably thinks she can help Tyler be a really great lawyer, and she could be right. But don’t you fret none, you’ll find a woman for yourself. Like I found your mama.”

“How’d you find Mama?” Tom tilted his head back so that he could look at his daddy from under his Stetson brim.

His daddy gazed off across their land, remembering. “I’d really planned on being a bachelor. With seven brothers, I didn’t think it was at all vital to the family that I get married and have kids. Then your mama came along on a horse that was limping...”

Tom waited. Then he responded, “I don’t think I’ve heard this particular part of your life. What happened when Mama came up on a limping horse?”

“I was out looking for a heifer that was due, and she’d gone off into the bushes and got lost or killed or something. And your mama came along up on that limping horse.” From under the oak, he looked at the horizon. Then he looked at the nearby nuisance, the lacy mesquite trees. He said softly, “She was really something.”

Tom inquired, “She push a stone under the horse’s shoe?”

“Now, I never even once thought of something like that happening! I just wonder if that could have been so!”

Tom licked his smiling lips and waited.

“She was so concerned about the horse. She asked if I’d look at it. That she was late getting back to the Sullivans’. I’d heard the Sullivans had company, and I’d been invited over for their dance that weekend. I let my unmarried brothers go. I stayed here. I had no need to meet some woman like that who was visiting.”

“So she came looking for you?”

His father snorted. “Well, I never even once thought of it thataway! Do you suppose she trapped me? She said she was just out riding. It was fretful to find her all by herself like that. I scolded her.”

“What’d she do.” Not a question but just a nudge for his daddy to go on with the story.

“She told me to hush and fix her horse’s foot. Think of a person calling a hoof a foot.”

And Tom remembered. “She wasn’t a ranch girl.”

“Naw. City.”

“So what happened?”

“She flung a leg over the horse’s neck and almost slid down. I caught her in time and pulled her away from the horse.”

Tom mused, “That horse would have been too old to be the one that was their biter.”

“It was a grandparent of that one that’s such a nuisance.” But his daddy was remembering. “Your mama was nice to hold. Women are just...different.”

“She let you hold her?”

“She wiggled and objected. She was so soft!”

“Daddy, you shock me. Now don’t tell me your hands got out of control on her.”

“Heavens to Betsy, no! I was in shock or they might have! I couldn’t think clear a-tall, boy. I was sundered right then.”

“What’d you do about the stone under the horse’s shoe?”

“I put your mama aside very carefully and told her to stand still. Of course, she didn’t do as I directed. But then, you know your mama. Nobody can direct her.”

“So you quarreled?”

“Oh, no. I went to the horse who was really peeved. How ever that stone got under his shoe, it was a chore getting it out! I asked your mama-to-be how that stone had happened? She said that she’d gone through the creek.”

“That wasn’t far from where you were, was it?”

“She never did admit to anything. She just watched me and waited. She didn’t flirt or talk or anything. She surely was a beautiful young woman.” He shook his head once. “She made me prickle.”

“So that was when she wrapped you around her little finger and just kept you thataway?”

“Yep. That about tells the whole story.”

“Did you get the stone out of the horse’s shoe? Or did you just watch her?”

And his daddy said, “So you understand what a woman can do to a man? Was that Kayla rattling you?”

“Yeah.”

His daddy sighed with some regret. “I got to tell you she’s really something. I agree to that. I just wonder why you didn’t do your chasing before she met Tyler?”

Tom explained, “I didn’t really notice.” Tom was gently turning his head, looking around. “Then there was such a choice! I thought I had the time.”

“Men are greedy.”

“Yeah.”

There was a thoughtful silence. Then his dad advised, “You better get to looking farther for other women and get serious. Men snatch them up awful quick.”

“Do you suppose the magic She will come out here on a limping horse?”

“Who’s that?”

“Mama did it for you. Think there’s a woman who could cotton to me?”

His daddy frowned as he studied his son. Still frowning, he observed, “You got all the parts. You look good. You seem smart enough. I think you’re a catch. You be careful you get a good woman. Don’t get panicked and bring in a shrew.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“Yeah.” His daddy watched his son for a full minute. Then he sighed and mounted his horse. He asked, “Coming?”

Tom came out of his thoughtfulness and looked up at his father. “Hmmm?”

“What you thinking, boy?” His voice was gentle.

“I think I’ll go over to the prairie dog kingdom and see how the dog is doing. He might be lonesome.”

“Go by the house and take Queenie along.”

Tom had been pensive. But as his daddy’s words soaked in, he smiled a tad and he said, “Right.”

Tom watched as his father moseyed off on his horse. The dogs chose to go with his dad.

Tom went to his own horse and took up the reins. He looked at the horse and indicated the bunch leaving them as he asked Oscar, “You that easy?”

The horse blew through his loose lıps in disgust at such a question, then walked on off with his burden.

So at the ranch house yard, Tom whistled for Queenie. Think of a dog having such a name. It must irritate the hell out of her. They’d labeled her Queenie while Tom was gone, so he hadn’t had any part of the naming. But she was now used to being called such a name.

It was rather apologetically that Tom called to Queenie. She came with curiosity. That was the best part of her. She was endlessly curious. If something went into a hole, she watched, but she looked around to see if there was an exit hole. She was an unusually smart dog.

Tom told the other dogs to run along, but he took Queenie. He closed the gate so that the other couple of dogs stayed where they were supposed to be.

It didn’t take forever to get out to where the prairie dogs lived. The holes were many and the ground was bare and hilly from their digging.

As soon as they approached the prairie dog mound, the dog was there. It was the dog that Kayla Davie Fuller had bought from the dogfight pit and one of those given to Tom to find a home.

The dog was not a family dog or even a barn dog. It was a loner. However, the dog did notice Queenie quite avidly. He ignored the human and the horse and was zeroed in on the female dog. She wagged her tail and her smile was big.

Off a way, Tom stepped down from the saddle and watched, not intruding. Queenie obviously communicated with the big, mended dog, who had fighting scars and healed rips. She was impressed. The big dog moved and watched her watch him. She continued her pleased smile.

The two looked at the prairie dog hill. The dog in charge apparently told her why he was there. That he was invaluable in keeping the rodents under some control.

She apparently was curious. So after several serious tries, he caught her a prairie dog and gave it to her, laying it before her.

Queenie was intently curious. She sniffed the gift, and it flipped over to run! The male caught it again! It wasn’t dead! He’d given Queenie a live one.

Tom watched, absolutely fascinated. How amazing to realize what the male dog was doing to impress the female. How typical of all males to show off, and willingly be the slave of a female. After she’d eaten the little creature, the dog took Queenie to a small rill that emptied into a bigger stream down a ways.

She lapped the water. She looked at the male dog and then lapped some more. She had indicated to her host that the water was good.

There was no difference between the males of all species. The male courted the female in the very similar ways of all males. They all communicated.

After a time, Tom went to his horse, mounted and turned it slowly to go back to the ranch house. He went diagonally, at first, so that he could look back at the dogs.

. Queenie saw that he was leaving. She watched but since he did not call to her, she didn’t feel committed to follow. She turned alertly to the male dog and her smile was big.

The male dog stood with his head up and his neck stretched, watching after the human on the horse. Then he turned and looked at the bitch. He smiled. She moved and flirted and played around the big dog.

He sat and laughed.

Tom left knowing that delivering Queenie to the isolated dog had been a good thing. The fact that he’d supplied another male with a handy, willing female was balm to his own lonely feelings. Tom had helped a male to a life of better interest. And apparently Queenie hadn’t minded at all.

Then Tom wondered who in the world had named that female dog...Queenie? When the two dogs met just what real name had she’d given as hers to the male and what real name had the male supplied as his?

For some reason, Tom turned his horse away from the direction of the ranch and toward the stream. There he allowed his horse to drink rather slowly and quite a bit. He encouraged it as he went upstream and also drank water. The man and his horse were oddly silent and watchful.

The horse kept looking up and to a certain spot. He blew his lips as he watched and lifted his head higher.

Tom glanced around the area and was aware they were very alone. Then he noticed the attention of the horse, and he looked out and away. He saw nothing to cause the horse to give such attention.

Then Tom saw a dot in the distance that was a dog. With a deep breath and using his fingers in his mouth, he whistled the ranch double whistle for dogs at that distance, and the dog came his way. Tom noticed it had come from some distance, and that it was not one of the ranch dogs. It was the human whistle that caught the dog’s attention. It walked oddly.

Tom told the horse, “Steady.”

Although it wasn’t yet summer, the dog could have rabies. Sick dogs generally left home. Or he could be lost. And he could be a calf killer. The approaching creature could be just about anything.

The man and the horse looked other places, to keep track of the area, but they were for the most part concentrated on the approaching dog.

Because of the waterless area beyond, Tom didn’t go to meet the dog. If it had come across that stretch of barren land, it would be thirsty, and there was water close to where Tom was standing.

The dog could smell it. He was urgent to turn back, but the water lured him on. And Tom remembered that he and the horse had drunk especially—for a reason. Was there a person out there on the flat, alone? In danger? Harmed? Where would he be? She?

With more intentness, Tom watched the approaching dog. So did the horse. The dog was coming from a bleak area. The land was used to graze cattle—on occasion—depending on how the weather had been, which year. If it’d been wet, there’d be enough growth for a herd, if it had been dry, other places were used. Beyond, the land was fragile.