Chancy's Cowboy

With the times changing and becoming more complicated, it was obvious to the crew that they needed another man. One who could organize and direct them as they ought to be handled. They needed a man who knew computers and how to run the place more efficiently.

Chancy was no leader.

The assembled crew told her seriously that they needed somebody who knew how to direct them. along. Silent as her dad had been, he’d at least nodded or shaken his head. He’d been a mute sounding board...when it was serious enough and they’d had his attention.

So three of the men went east in Texas to find somebody who knew how to take care of the place. And they were directed to Cliff Robertson.

Clifford Robertson had a degree from A&M, which, in all sports and just competition is Texas University’s mortal enemy. Cliff not only was born and bred on a place like the Bar-Q-Drop, but he knew how to run a place. He understood men.

In the Texas questioning statement, the crew inquired nicely with remarkable subtlety, “A woman who is still budding, owns the place?”

“How old?”

“Twenty.”

Cliff smiled. “She’ll be okay.”

They weren’t sure what that meant. But the man was exactly what they wanted, so they didn’t warn him about Chancy. They didn’t want to discourage him. What little they’d said was enough.

Cliff had green eyes, blond hair and he was a wedge-shaped man. All shoulders, no hips and long legs. He wore boots as a part of him. And he had a good, easy stride.

He knew women. They didn’t boggle him. The crew members took him places to eat so they could watch his reaction as the women watched him. He could handle that real easy.

He didn’t flirt, nor was he distracted. Women were easy for him when he wanted one. He not only understood and could handle women, he knew how to organize a place and make it profitable. He liked animals. He was efficient and he knew what to do.

And he was young enough not to demand half of the proceeds from the place.

If it hadn’t been for Cliff, who was about ten years older than Chancy, she would never have made it to being the breathtaking adult she came to be.

At that time, to the crew, she was a problem. They had to spend too much time being sure she was all right.

Even so, the men looked at Cliff with some sweat in their hair and down their chests and under their arms, and they narrowed their eyes watchfully as he first met Chancy. Men had trouble meeting Chancy. They got a little silly. If Cliff reacted that way. they’d have to find an older man who would be harder for the crew to handle.

Chancy treated Cliff like one of the bunch. No flirting, no wiggling, no licking lips slowly, no rubbing against him.

His eye wrinkles were white as he considered her. The crew expected that. It was a normal, male reaction to her. And since she acted like a normal person, Cliff apparently figured he’d be okay.

However, every single man on the place managed to find a way to warn Cliff. They explained her thinking she was one of them and could do whatever a man could do.

Each man warned Cliff that it was up to him to discourage her pushy conduct.

That caused Cliff to pull his head back and give the first couple of men a startled look.

So each assured Cliff that she would be pushing in to help the men with the herding and cutting and branding and everything else! To remember that she considered herself one of them.

And at separate, found times, each one of them told him in a deadly voice, “Don’t you let her experiment with you.” Their eyes were squinched up and very serious.

They told him that no man who had all his marbles would get within fifty miles of her.

Having seen her, Cliff nodded soberly.

The men went on that if a man was around her, he’d spend all his time rescuing her—from water, blizzards, being lost or risking being trampled by beeves or horses. And they’d add, “Fooled you there, didn’t I.”

And Cliff understood there was a serious problem.

But then Clifford Robertson moved to the spread: He brought his neat little sports car towed behind his truck. He had his clothing packed neatly. He stopped near the house and got out He looked around and breathed. His soul smiled. It was as he’d remembered. It was a perfect place.

The sky was wide and the trees were oaks and hackberry, and pushing in were the relentless mesquites. There was a proliferation of wild, spring flowers and the Texas bluebonnets that filled his soul.

His room was in the house. That had caused Cliff to hesitate. He would rather be around the men. And he wondered who was the chaperone for the nubile female.

The terrifying woman was as he remembered. A slip of a girl who greeted him nicely and didn’t do anything else. Well, she showed him his part of the house and where to put his things.

His unit was downstairs at the front of the house, which was of adobe. The walls were thick and the air inside was cool. There was a separate door to the outside.

His part of the downstairs had been built for her parents. There was a reading room next to the bedroom with a desk, and he had his own bathroom. It was just right.

And he looked at the nubile woman and wondered why she hadn’t taken her parents’ suite for herself? He asked, “Where are the rest of the bedrooms?”

She replied simply, “Upstairs.”

He already knew that the cook and the yardman slept in rooms in the back of the house.

That was all she said. Cliff found a brief surfacing of curiosity in that he wanted to see her room.

Having shown him his section of the house, Chancy took him to the house’s separate barn to introduce him to his horse.

The meeting of those two would be interesting for her to watch. Jasper was a big horse. He was independent, curious, self-directed and willing to share. He was an individual animal that was also pretty smart.

As they walked to the barn, she lied. She said, “Here, we trade horses around so that we can know them all.”

That caused Cliff to pause and look at the neophyte. So he settled that right away. He told her firmly, “If I take a horse as mine, I’d rather no one else rode him.”

Chancy glanced over at him as she considered him with a tilted-back head. “That’s a little stingy.”

He looked around as men tend to do. He was stem. “It’s the way I work. Then I don’t have to remember which horse I’m on and what quirks it has. I can understand the animal better.”

“You call them... animals?”

He grinned. “I’ve never ridden a human.” As soon as he said that, he sunk his teeth into his lower lip.

Apparently she didn’t understand the unintended innuendo.

She was twenty, by then, and all the crew had treated her as if she was isolated and had never read nor heard anything.

The two went into the barn. Cliff asked, “The other horse. Is that yours?”

And she smiled. “Yes.”