Down in the valley, a calf mooed again, and Mike raised his hand to his mouth and mooed in return. All through the forest below, calves suddenly began to bawl, from every corner of the woods.
Mike smiled.
"Got to say 'hi' to my calves. Excuse me."
Mike trundled downhill, and Bron crept near the dead calf. He really couldn't see any bite wounds or bullet holes. He carefully kept searching the ground for tracks, but there was absolutely nothing.
When he looked downhill a few minutes later, Mike was there with his Oreo Cookie Cattle. Two dozen calves surrounded him, licking him, just wanting to get petted, and more were walking in from the woods in every direction.
Bron went down to him, and the calves shied away.
"You drive the ATVfor me, little brother," Mike said. "I'll lead the calves."
"Little brother?" Bron asked.
"Hey, I'm only thirty," Mike explained. "I wasn't fathering no kids when I was thirteen. Besides, I always wanted a little brother."
So Bron figured out how to drive the ATV as Mike led the calves, like the Pied Piper of cattle. When they reached the upper pasture, Mike urged the calves out into the fields, then watched.
He came and crouched beside the ATV. In the mountains, a gun fired once, twice.
"You about ready for breakfast?" Bron asked.
"Shhhh..." Mike urged, tilting his ear. There was only silence. After fifteen seconds, he said, "I was listening for a third shot. If a hunter or hiker gets lost or injured, they call for help by firing three times, slowly."
When it became clear that no more shots would be fired, Mike squeezed Bron's shoulder. "It's got to be eight by now. Olivia will have breakfast."
Chapter 9
Music Lessons
"The oldest tales say that the gods sang rather than spoke. Such things are forgotten now, but it was once said that 'In the beginning, God sang, Let there be light!"'
While Mike and Bron had made their rounds, Olivia took her plates from the CRV. She scraped her registration tags off and glued them onto her spare set of stolen plates, and attached them to the Honda.
She hadn't been stopped by a policeman in years, so she hoped that her luck would hold.
Mike hadn't had time to fix the window, but he'd get to it soon. He was handy that way, able to repair anything that broke. It came from growing up in poverty, living with parents who knew how to "make do."
While Mike and Bron were gone, she went online and ordered a computer and an iPhone. The phone she had overnighted, so Bron would get it in time for school. She realized that if she worked things right, she wouldn't have to go into town for weeks. She could buy her produce at the market in Santa Clara, eat meat out of their freezer.
She'd keep a low profile.
So she plotted and worried about what the Draghouls might do. One of them was dead. That might actually be a good thing—having one less Draghoul in the world. She wanted them all dead.
If I had any guts at all, she thought, I'd go confront them. I'd put a bullet in each and every one of them. Finding them wouldn't be too hard. They'll be holed up in the nicest hotel in town.
But she could never confront them.
There were some things her mind just couldn't wrap around, and killing was one.
Dying was the other. Logically, she knew that she had made some dangerous choices—falling in love with Mike, teaching at a school. She'd always feared that the enemy might catch her.
But just as a smoker always imagines that it will be the other guy who gets cancer, Olivia had never really confronted the truth: that she was living too close to the edge.
Right now, she felt as if she were walking in a canyon, and an avalanche was poised to slide on top of her—rocks and dirt by the ton.
She fought back her fear until it felt manageable, then went in the house and made breakfast for "the boys."
Neither spoke for a bit. She knew that Mike was anxious. He had a breeder coming in from Australia at nine, and a lot was riding on this visit. Anyone who flew eight thousand miles to look at Mike's cattle was nearly sold already. The question was, what would he want to buy, and could Mike part with it?
They were halfway through breakfast when Mike said, "You should probably take the truck into town, pick out a car."
By that, she surmised that their talk had gone well.
"You sure?" she asked. He knew that her savings were running low. "You don't want to come?"
"I trust you," he said.
She looked to Bron. He seemed anxious. "Okay."
A few moments later, the Australian knocked on the door, and Mike went to talk with him, both as excited as boys out catching lizards.
Olivia took Bron to Saint George, and there picked out a used Toyota Corolla with tinted glass, a sunroof, and an upgraded sound system.
Olivia paid a couple thousand down, and financed another fourteen.
When she threw the keys to Bron, he stared in surprise.
"Follow me home?" she asked.
"But, don't you want this one?" Bron asked.
Olivia smiled. "You're old enough for your own car. Just take good care of it. It's the only ride you've got. But it's a Toyota. It ought to last you for the next twenty years."
Bron's hands tightened on the keys, and he just stared into Olivia's eyes. She knew that he wasn't used to people giving him things—anything—much less a car.
"What about gas?" Bron asked. "I'll have to get a job."
"Your job is to go to school and prepare well for the rest of your life. Let me worry about the gas."
She figured with the extra money that they got for taking care of Bron, she could make the car payments—and more.
Bron stood staring at her for a long moment, and then asked, as if the question were being painfully extruded from him, "Olivia, are you my real mother?"
She knew what he was asking. Did you give birth to me? Did you give me up? What the hell is going on?
"I'm not your birth mother," Olivia said. "But that won't matter. You'll see."
Mist filled her eyes, and she drove home in tears, watching every few seconds to make sure that Bron was still following her.
That afternoon when they got home, Mike was still dickering with the Australian out by the back fence.
Probably talking about feed mixes or some such nonsense. She wondered what the Australian wanted—a bull, breeder cows, bull semen, calves?
He might want to buy the whole darned ranch, she thought hopefully. She'd heard once that Australia had more millionaires per capita than any other country in the world. The breeder had never even given Mike a hint about what he was after.
She made a stir-fry with mixed vegetables, pine nuts, and chicken breast, then added a little glaze from a sweet Asian sauce. It took less than thirty minutes to prepare, and it went well with a little imported Japanese rice.
She set the table, went into the living room, and found Bron watching television. The news would be coming on in three minutes.
"Time to eat," she told Bron, flipping off the tube.
Just as they sat down, Mike came in, having said his goodbyes to the breeder, who was driving off.
"So?" Olivia asked for his report.
"I made a quarter of a million today on stud fees," he said, smiling weakly
Olivia breathed a sigh of relief. She'd spent a lot of money in the last couple of days. The stud fees would almost give them enough to keep the ranch running for the year. "Haven't the Australians heard that there's a recession on?"