The Influence(13)

“How much did we make?” Dave asked as Lita counted up the cash.

“Three hundred, give or take.”

Ross saw Dave’s pained grimace but said nothing as he helped fold up the table. He was right: they weren’t making enough to live on. How long would it be before they had to throw in the towel, sell their ranch and try their luck in the workaday world?

They finished putting everything away, then got into the cab of the truck and drove slowly down the street between the other vendors who were packing up and getting ready to go.

“Did you have fun?” Lita asked.

“Sure!” he said with exaggerated enthusiasm.

She jabbed him with an elbow. “Smart ass.”

“No. I did. Kind of. I mean, it was nice to get out of the house. And I got to meet some of your neighbors. By the way, that Cameron Holt seems like a real piece of work.”

On the other side of Lita, Dave nodded. “He is. But he has the biggest ranch in the valley, wields a lot of power, and the rest of us kind of have to tiptoe around him.”

“Why does everyone call this a ‘valley?’” Ross wondered. “It’s not.”

Dave chuckled. “You’re right. And I do it, too. I’m not sure why.” He thought for a moment. “Maybe the people who founded the town came over the mountains—” He pointed out the driver’s window. “—and after coming through there, this flat area looked like a valley to them.”

“But there’s no mountains on the opposite side. There’s just…desert.”

“They have to call it something, I guess. I could say Cameron has the biggest ranch in the area or the biggest ranch in the region. But it doesn’t have the same cowboy poet ring as biggest ranch in the valley.”

“So, this Cameron. Are you guys on good terms or what?”

Dave shrugged. “I guess.”

“I don’t like him,” Lita said decisively.

“I don’t either,” Ross said. “The dude definitely gave off a vibe.”

“He’s a consistent customer,” Dave said. “That’s all I care about.”

“I was wondering about that.” Ross decided to broach the subject. “Do you guys have enough customers? I mean, do you sell enough honey and eggs to survive?”

Next to him, Lita and Dave shared a look.

“For the moment,” Dave said without elaborating.

They drove in silence for the rest of the trip home.





FOUR




Cameron Holt usually watched Fox News while he was eating breakfast, but those assholes were going on about immigration again, talking about closing the border and deporting all the illegals, and he got so angry that he had to turn off the TV. How the hell did those politicians and talking heads expect him to bring in his beef without illegals? The ranch was closer to Mexico than it was to any city in America, for God’s sake, and there was no way in hell any white man would put up with the shit he needed to dish out in order to make sure his cattle were branded and fed and foaled and rounded up and driven to market on time.

If those fuckheads in Washington would bother to come out and talk to an actual rancher for once, they might discover how the world really works.

Besides, it was their illegality that made his cowhands so valuable. Not only did they work cheap, keeping costs low and profits high, but if they didn’t obey him, he could hold the threat of deportation over their heads. And if any dared to defy him or tried to call his bluff, they were out. Because he could always find more to take their place. They were hard workers, these Mexicans, almost all of them, and they were plentiful.

He glanced out the kitchen window at the dusty corral and the barn beyond. It was a hard life out here and most Americans were soft. They couldn’t hack it. His wife sure as hell couldn’t. That bitch Debbie had taken off after only two years, and now she was living in some apartment in Los Angeles, probably spreading her fat thighs for every swinging dick that came sniffing around. Well, fuck her. The ranch was doing a hell of a lot better without her than it had with her.

Cameron finished his eggs and coffee, left the dishes on the table and, hitching up his pants, went outside. He saw immediately that one of the steers had somehow gotten around the fence and was eating grass by the side of the barn, and he bellowed at the top of his lungs that someone better get his ass over here right now or heads were going to roll.

Three cowhands came speeding around the corner of the barn. He wished they were Keystone Cops chaotic, clumsily falling over each other, so he could laugh at them, but they were quick and competent, each carrying a length of rope that they lassoed around the animal to help them drag it back to its pen. Angry that the steer had escaped and angrier still that the cowhands were so easily able to take care of it, Cameron grabbed a switch from a nail on the side of the barn and whipped the backs of the workers as they passed in front of him. “Useless!” he yelled. “Perezoso!”