"Your Daddy was such a fool." The woman folded Sam into her arms. "But it's over now. You're back and things are getting on to normal."
"Not hardly." Sam wished she'd held the words back, but it couldn't be helped. She sighed. "I'm sorry, Kassie. But as soon as Daddy and the men are back on their feet, I'm out of here."
Kassie pulled back to gaze into her eyes. "You sure about that, Honey? We don't get many second chances, and that's what this is."
"It might be, but I can't give on this one. Daddy’s a stubborn mule with a sore tail. I mean can you believe he’s still insisting I marry?”
“Oh, preposterous, you don’t need a man!” Kassie slammed her dishrag into the sink.
“And I swear if I have to look at that smug mug on Joe again, I’m going to punch him in his teeth. I'm just here long enough to keep everything moving until Daddy’s back on his feet. I care too much for you and the crew to let it fall apart because my father is being a jack ass." It had taken her some time to arrive at that conclusion, but honestly, she wasn’t sure what her father had in store. Shot gun wedding was still a very real concept in the old fart’s brain.
Kassie patted her shoulder and moved back to her work. "You see the weather reports this morning? Bad storm moving in."
That knot of sick tension tied itself into Sam's gut again and she set her third pastry on a napkin. A bad storm was never good on a cattle ranch, but this late February? Disaster. "I’m praying. Last night they said the system would go far enough north we'd just get a few flurries." Sam sighed and leaned against the counter. “But I figured I'd better prepare for the worst case scenario. I went ahead and put an ad for help just in case.”
"Well, we're in line for a direct hit now. The Jet Stream dipped unexpectedly." Kassie started hot water in the sink. "You better get that help hired." By the look on the pretty woman’s face, she considered that an impossibility on such short notice.
"No problem." Sam grinned. “I used the internet. That computer?” Everybody on the damn ranch was technophobic.
Kassie's brow furrowed with a mix of wonder and doubt. “It can do that?” The woman considered a computer nothing more than a very expensive typewriter. She'd used it to compile her cookbook, but Sam handled the electronic correspondence with the publisher for her.
“It can. Last night's weather report said it could start north of here early this evening, which means we don’t have a minute to spare. If we're going to get hit, it could start any time now.” Sudden urgency launched Sam into action and she grabbed a plastic container from under the cabinet and began loading it with Kassie’s pastries. “I’m praying somebody answers the ad in time, because once it hits, we’re deaf, dumb and blind. Hopefully the money’ll draw them.” More like the promise of money. She was paying them on faith. She had a few things she could hock though, if push came to shove.
"Not so long ago everyone would have jumped in to help just because. Now they have to get paid extra to do a good deed." Kassie dropped a pan into the sink full of hot water with an angry sizzle. "Makes me wonder what this world's coming to." The bitterness in her tone betrayed a personal hurt. But Sam knew better than to ask, she’d tried that enough times to know the woman didn’t tell her secrets.
Sam snapped the lid onto the loaded dish, ignoring the odd tremble in her hand. More like her entire body. Ever since she’d returned from the convent, it seemed to never go away. “I offered more than we have to give but there’ll be nothing if the cattle die." She'd become pretty good at hiding the almost painful quake that constantly wracked her muscles. It made her feel like a rabbit caught in the path of a cattle stampede with no bolt hole. Some monumental disaster was bearing down on them like a panicked herd with flaming hooves and Sam fought to keep her head.
"Are the cattle in that bad a shape?" Kassie's words drew Sam back to the conversation.
She shook her head and continued to pack supplies for herself and the one man she prayed would answer the ad and come with her for several days roughing it as they dealt with the cattle and the storm. Without the help of at least one experienced hand, she might as well stay at the house. "Thomas saw a couple of early calves on the ground when he made his last hay run. A few calves won't break us any worse than we're already broke." She shrugged. "We have just enough hay to get through decent weather until spring, but that can be dealt with later. The real problem is stock getting stranded out of reach of hay or water. That'll spell a death sentence for anything not in top condition." So many things needed doing, it’d take a miracle getting them done.