A Second Chance for the Cowboy: The Sawyer Ranch Cowboys, #1

By Z. Peabody

The years of good and plenty that Quint Sawyer now cherishes have not always been the case. And it is only by Grace that Quint is given a second chance at love. Quint is a fourth-generation cattle rancher. His heart and love is in the land that he works. For Quint, there's no better life than the open range of his mountainous home.

 

The first time he met the fiery Penniford Elliott, they didn't hit it off, and every time they've crossed each other's path since then, Quint has gotten Penni out of one mess after another.

 

"It doesn't matter where or how your life starts; it matters how your life ends."

 

Penniford Elliot is far from her home in the upstate suburbs of Illinois. For one Summer, Penni traded in her structured life to go visit her aunt in the unpredictable, wide open spaces of Montana. Penni soon discovers that she isn't cut out for the wide-open spaces or the ever-present Quint Sawyer.

 

This book is about redemption, finding love, and getting a second chance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Z. Peabody Publishing LLC
• Release date: Jul 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985589207

Book preview

Prologue

2006

W here is he? I ask my wife as I charge into her favorite room in this house: the sunroom. This room is a new addition. She has always wanted a room off the main house made of glass on three sides so she can look out at the mountain range and see the sun set and rise.

She looks over her shoulder at me. I can tell she’s been crying. My heart lurches in my chest. I know why, our son. Tonight, I put a stop to the selfishness of the one person on this planet who can bring my wife to her knees other than God himself: our son.

I knew what I would be walking into after she called me at the bunkhouse. I knew when she called that she’d been crying then too. As soon as I could, I hightailed it home, prepared for a fight, but now here I am, with my loving wife of twenty-eight years, sitting here on the verge of tears again. All I want to do is comfort her, but I know there is other business to attend to.

I open my arms out wide and hold them poised until she rises from her favorite chair and then walks slowly to me and into my outstretched arms, where she starts to cry fresh tears. I hold her tight while she burrows her face against my work shirt.

I close my eyes and kiss the top of her copper-colored head, cursing beneath my breath. My Duchess is a strong woman with strong faith. It takes a lot to get her teary-eyed, but when she does show her emotions in this way, someone has either gone on to Glory, or our son, Quint Jr., has said or done something to hurt her feelings. As of late, and with the way Quint Jr. has been acting, the latter possibility is more likely.

Duchess pulls her head from my chest. He’s in the cabin, she says, tears streaming down her cheeks. This is it, Quint. I feel it. She sniffles. He’s really going to do it this time. She sobs louder.

Our only child came into this world, finally, after Duchess and I were married six years. We started right off trying for a lot of children, but the good Lord had other plans and instead blessed us with one healthy child. No man was ever prouder when we found out Duchess was pregnant. When I first held my son in my arms, I felt a new love in my life.

I carried on and celebrated for over a week, hosting a party at the bunkhouse, the church, and right here at the house. That was twenty-two years ago, and though my outward appearance doesn’t give away how heartbroken I feel about this news regarding my son, I’m still happy with him, my blessing.

I’m also steaming on the inside. When I got the call from my sobbing wife telling me that our son had emptied his inheritance savings and plans to go out and see the world with his street friends and try to marry some girl who doesn’t want to have anything to do with him, I was seeing red. Now, here I stand, patting my wife’s trembling body while her tears stain my dirty shirt and my son plans to leave.

The whistle of the teakettle on the stove sounds. Let me get that, honey, I say and then turn her around, lead her back to her favorite chair, and help her sit down.

I rush out of the sunroom and march down the hall and into the kitchen, where Mrs. James, our domestic assistant, is putting a plate full of Duchess’ famous butter cookies on a tray next to a teacup.

After she fills the teapot, Mrs. Viola James hands me the tray, and before I can say, Thank you, she offers, Spare the rod, spoil the child.

Thank you, Mrs. James. I nod and begin to back out of the kitchen with the tray.

Did she tell you? she asks.

I stop. She did. As soon as I get her settled, I’m on my way….

You need to talk to that boy. He’s been hanging around those kids in town. They filled his head with a lot of mess. They take advantage of him.

Mrs. James is a good, saved woman of Ethiopian descent and has been my wife’s best-friend since Mr. and Mrs. James came to Montana after we got married twenty-six years ago. Mrs. James’ husband is my supervisor on the ranch and a good man too.

I know, Mrs. James, I say, turning to leave.

I told you years ago that you shouldn’t over-indulge him, and you shouldn’t have allowed my baby to hang around them.

He’s a grown man now, Mrs. James. And I—

Bah, she replies, cutting me off. Grown means gone. You sent him to that university, and he got his head filled with a lot of mess. What was wrong with the university right here? she asks and slams the kitchen towel normally slung on her shoulder onto the table.

It was his choice to—

You wrote the checks. You had a say so, she says sternly.

Mrs. James is more than just our assistant, she is also a good and powerful prayer warrior and close friend.

Well, I’ll try talking to him, I say in my defense.

Well, go, go. Why are you still in here? She waves me out.

The gush of air my lungs have been holding blows out, and I turn to walk back out of the kitchen and into the sunroom.

After I settle Duchess with her tea, I turn to leave.

Quint, Duchess calls at my back.

I turn around and walk back over to her. Yeah, honey. You need something?

No. Just be easy on him, she requests. He stayed gone over a month last time.

I don’t like lying to my wife. I don’t like lying period—that’s why I just pat her on her shoulder, nod, and walk out, making my way to the back of the house and out the back door. I won’t tell my wife that I plan on giving Quint Jr. a kick in the behind, and if he doesn’t give me the answer, I want regarding how he plans to get his life together, I’ll be forced to throw my only child out.

The closer I get to the supervisor’s cabin, just across the backyard of the main house, the louder the music coming from inside the cabin gets. I hurry, taking the steps two at a time until I’m on the porch. I fling open the door, then stop dead in my tracks. I cover my nose from the stench.

When Quint had returned from college, he was a mess. That was when a hard change in our son, one that got him kicked out of school. It wasn’t the alcohol so much; he would go weeks without drinking. Quint hated himself, and he hated me too. But why?

This cabin is generally given to the ranch supervisor, but a year ago, when Quint Jr. got out of school, he came home and moved in the supervisor’s cabin.

When Quint up and left last year, we didn’t hear from him for over a month. That was when Duchess thought it would be a good idea if Quint Jr. moved into the supervisor’s cabin. She didn’t want him to feel like we would be constantly looking over his shoulder. So, she asked Mr. James if they could move into our house and live with us while a new cabin was built for them with their own plot of land.

Now, some children who leave for college come home with a different view of the world than they had when they left home sometimes. They look at the private world they grew up in with indifference. They see it as confining. That was how Quint Jr. came home, a totally different child than the one we knew before he went away to college.

After his first year in college, he became moody a lot when he’d come home on breaks. He didn’t want to go to church, he slept way into the afternoon, and large sums of money began to be withdrawn from our account, which we allowed him access to while he attended school.

Unbeknownst to us—because he changed his parental contact number at the school—he was missing classes and drinking. Once we discovered what was happening, we closed off his access to that account and made him make up the classes he’d failed over the summer.

After that year, he stopped coming home for his summer breaks. Soon after the first summer he stayed at school, we got a call from the police. Quint Jr. was drinking heavily and got into a fight while under the influence of alcohol. We learned he’d gotten into a lot bar fights, and the last one put him in the hospital. Quint was forced to come home at that point, and his mother took care of him.

That, and the aftermath of what happened after, would forever be a dark cloud over our lives.

You would think that after such a string of horrid events, he would change, but no. Quint Jr. only got worse. The drinking didn’t stop. We received multiple calls from the police in Havre telling us that Quint Jr. got pulled over drunk or was arrested for disorderly conduct, and being the owner of a truck that was used as a get-away vehicle in a robbery.

When we cut off his money completely, his well went dry, and he severed all communication with us. We went back and forth with him for his court dates, but he would just ignore us in court and dodge out of the courthouse with his friends afterward.

One day, last year, he showed up at home a mess. Of course, we took him back and helped him clean up as best we could. But the drinking and hanging out with his new crowd, causing him to disappear for days on end, didn’t stop. I never disowned him or called him out as not being my son.

Maybe I can take some of the blame in this. I’ve always wanted a child, and when Quint Jr. came along, I knew my prayers had been answered. It didn’t matter that we wouldn’t be blessed with any other children. Duchess and I are happy with the child God gave us.

So, I indulged him at a young age. In my misguided thinking, I thought that if I gave him everything he wanted and needed, he would be happy, feel loved, and always want to be here.

Mrs. James was right—I should have been stricter with Quint Jr. But my parents were strict with me, which I hadn’t liked one bit. My father made me work from sun up to sundown. I started out working this land next to the people who tended it for us at an early age. But my father taught me to appreciate this land and give back to it, same as we took.

I couldn’t stand the idea of Quint having the same kinds of thoughts I had of my parents. I wanted to be my son’s friend. But Quint has friends. What he needs are parents—a father and a mother.

I step further inside the cabin, leaving the door half-open in the hopes that the smell would filter out. I survey the mess. Beer bottles, ashtrays full of cigarette butts, and food in containers half-eaten are strewn across the couch, the tables, and the counter in the kitchen, and clothes litter the floor.

I hadn’t stepped foot in this cabin since he came home. I wanted to give him space, to not crowd him. We worked together some days, whiles others, he blew off work and disappeared.

"What? She sent you in to try to talk me into staying?" I hear him holler over the loud music.

Turn the music down, son! I yell up to him in the loft.

I notice him roll his eyes, but I let it go for now. Getting into a shouting match with him, like so many times before when I’ve had to correct him on something, will only shut him down, and then he won’t talk to me. He turns away, and turns the music down.

I look up, and in the loft overlooking the living area is my son. A month’s worth of growth hides his lower face, and he’s wearing a stained white shirt and ripped jeans. My son’s once-stark, bright-gray eyes are now bloodshot red with heavy dark bags beneath them. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days. His hair is so long now, it touches his shoulders in a messy mass of black curls.

I walk just below the loft and stare up at him. Come on down here, son, we need to talk, I say sternly.

Instantly, like so many times before during our conversations, he becomes defensive. What do we have to talk about? How you want to treat me like a child? Keep me from living my life? Whatever you have to say, you can save it. I’ve made up my mind, he says and disappears.

Knowing full well the only reason he’s not coming down is because I asked him to, I walk up the steps to the loft area.

You’re not a child, son, but you’re our child, and we never want to hold you back. That’s why your ma sent you to that school so far from home. We wanted to give you independence. It was good for her to go away to college. She thought it would be good for you too.

The loft area is almost as bad as downstairs. Clothes and leftover food boxes litter the pool table, which is clearly not being used to play pool.

Leaning against the pool table, his arms folded across his chest and a look of defiance on his face, is my son. He rolls his eyes, picks up a big black trash bag by his feet, and begins to grab clothes off the floor and shove it into the bag.

Well, I’m glad you decided to clean up this place, I comment.

He stops and looks at me. I’m leaving.

I’m kicking myself. Of course—foolish of me to think he would clean up this mess. What brought this on, son?

Doesn’t do any good to explode, shout at him, or tell him he isn’t going anywhere and that this is his home. All that hasn’t worked in the past.

He just looks at me. "You know this all is a bunch of bull. This place is your life, and you’re pushing me into your life!" he shouts, moving over to the railing and gripping it tight.

"I get up when you say. I do the work you want, even eating is when she wants." My son says the second-to-last word with a nod.

He has almost crossed the line. I walk up to him. Son? I wait a moment. When he doesn’t look at me, I step closer into his space. Quint!

He jerks his head in my direction and steps back.

Now, son, your mother loves you more than her own life, and right now, more than you deserve. You will respect your mother, the woman who gave birth to you. You need to respect her and call her what she is to you. Do you understand?

He stares at me and just nods. I’ll take that for now. I wasn’t expecting an answer, but I do demand his respect.

And I would appreciate it if you would tone down your loudness. Show me the respect I’m due, I continue.

"What about you and Mother respecting me and what I want to do?"

What do you want to do, son? I reply.

I want to have fun. I want to live my life. You sent me away to school to get rid of me, and then, when I want to go and do what I want, you hold me back. He goes back to picking up clothes and putting them in his garbage bag.

He’s not thinking straight. Son, all your mother and I ever did was support and try to help you, but the way you’re living your life is not God’s plan, I say in defense of me and my wife.

See…? He turns back toward me and points. That’s what I mean. Nothing is ever good enough for you. Everything I do, you complain about. You lecture me on my life, but you don’t let me live it the way I want. I’m a grown man, he declares, his voice rising.

I walk up and get in his face. When you show disrespect, I will put you in your place, and you’re not grown unless you’re gone and out on your own.

That seems to stun him. I’ve never said anything like that to my son. Seems harsh, but the way he’s been acting and what he said about his mother has me riled up.

If you want to be treated like a man, then act like one, I say.

Quint Jr. shoots daggers at me with eyes that used to be clear gray, identical to his mother’s. Now, they are so bloodshot-red, no trace remains that this person is our child.

What do you want from me? he hollers back.

I want you to be the responsible and caring person we raised and took to church.

"So, you want me to be like you? What about what I want, who I want to be? You and Ma assumed I wanted to go to college, so I went. Then you wanted me to come home and work this ranch—that’s what you wanted. Well, I don’t want to be like you." He turns around, not knowing what to do. Finally, he turns again and walks down the stairs, his garbage bag gripped in one fist.

I follow him downstairs. There was a time you loved this land too, son. I never wanted you to be like me. I only wanted to be an example of a man of God to you. When you were young, you promised me you would one day take over the ranch. I know that was the talking of a ten-year-old, but you loved this ranch…almost as much as I do.

I think back on the day I told him he could go out camping, with me on his first track out to the north field to move the calves and their mothers. He was so excited, he barely slept the night before. The next day, he had to ride in the wagon with Mr. James because he couldn’t stay awake in his saddle.

That was then, and this is now, he replies. I’ve changed.

Before he steps out the door, I ask loudly,