Dreamers and Ranches

By Althea Quill

A fatherless young man dreams of being a cowboy, not the shoot-’em-up type but the real cowboy with the cows, the horses, and the sunsets. For as far back as he can remember, he read everything he could find about being a cowboy. One day, a letter changed the life of his little family. Before he knew what happened, he, his mother, and three sisters were headed to their new lives out of the city and to his grandfather’s ranch.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662450075

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Dreamers and Ranches

Althea Quill

Copyright © 2021 Althea Quill

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2021

ISBN 978-1-6624-5006-8 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-5007-5 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Prologue

The smell of spring grass was dancing on the cool breeze as Derek sat, overlooking the small meadow. Little flowers in purple, yellow, and white bobbing with the breeze, seeming to dance to a song only they could hear. The sky above was a brilliant blue with fluffy clouds skimming by lazily. As the sun warmed his back, he tried once more to count calves. This was proving an impossible task since the grass was already tall enough to tickle his horse’s belly. A smile spread across Derek’s face and lit his eyes as he once again lost count. A pair of twins playing was to blame this time. This year’s crop looked good. Of his thirty cows, twenty-two had already given birth. The three sets of twins were his pride and joy. Each set looked like a mirror image of the other. One set of twins, the color of dark chocolate, each had a white heart on opposite hips. Another set, the color of milk, had a red heart on opposite shoulders. The third set, the color of his tan horse, had half hearts. When they stood head-to-head, their halves met and were complete. At the moment, all six of them were running and playing and headbutting, other calves trying to get them to play. They were the most rowdy in the whole herd. The smell of fresh bread mingled with the smell of the grass on the breeze, and he turned his eyes to the cabin in the bottom of the meadow.

His smile broadened when he saw his Lizzy step out of their cabin. Her waddle was getting more pronounced. She has a basket with freshly washed clothes to hang on the line. After she set the basket down, she arched her back, stretching as she looked up the hill to him. From this distance across the meadow, he cannot hear her, but he knew she was singing. She was baking again. Lizzy claimed that singing made the bread taste better, sweeter. Since her bread always tasted sweet as honey, he never argued the point. The breeze trickled past her bringing the smell of her bread, freshly cleaned laundry, and light notes of her voice lifted in song to him. He often worried his face would break from his smile, and his heart overflowed with love for this woman. He slowly turned his horse and started across the meadow toward her. His morning chores and count complete and his stomach rumbling for what he knew would be a delicious breakfast but only after he tasted the sweet honey of his wife’s lips.

Chapter 1

The Billboard Is Going Up Today

That doesn’t fit, Derek thought as he stood there confused. A door slamming behind him made Derek jump and spin around, scattering envelopes and packages off his cart. The two men entering the room took no notice of Derek. Zach and Pete wouldn’t notice him, even if Derek was on fire. He stooped to pick up the scattered mail as he attempted to ignore the conversation continuing above him. Reality crashed down around Derek as the image of the meadow, his cows, and his wife faded from his mind. He felt like a bucket of ice water had been thrown in his face. His daydreams had not been that vivid since he was a kid. Looking over his shoulder, he shot a glare at the offending billboard. The one that had sucked him in, and the same one Zach and Pete were discussing. A strong man sat on a horse with dark mane and tail and butterscotch-colored body, overlooking a meadow with cows dotting the backdrop. In the corner advertised a new cologne. The scene seemed out of place in the hustle and bustle of the city, but the company claimed that the scent would be reminiscent of a cowboy riding the range. Or so the billboard seemed to scream. Derek looked around for the small package that he had come into the office to deliver. Finding where it had fallen out of his hands when he jumped, he laid it on the rich redwood desk and turned to leave. He had not finished schooling, so many things the upper class took for granted were lost on him. The expensive wood the desk was made of being one such thing. However, he could not resist letting his fingers trail along the laboriously polished glossy sheen of the deep-red wood. Derek held a deep appreciation of hard work. The cost of the effort, the craftsmanship, not the cost of the item.

See, I told you. The billboard is up, and you can almost feel the sun and smell the grass. Zach’s voice always seemed to whine and spoiled to Derek, never more than now as he bragged about being right to Pete.

I still don’t understand why a cowboy on a horse will sell the new line. The cologne is supposed to be subtle and sweet, not reeking of sweat and animals. Pete was the opposite of Zach in every way. Where Zach was short and squat, Pete was tall and lean. Pete ran marathons, and his office boasted of how many with the lines of ribbons, trophies, and framed checks all over. Even with all the workouts and such, he would never understand the feeling of straddling a thousand-pound animal and how it made you feel like a man. Of course, thought Derek ruefully, neither did he. For as long as he could remember, he had dreamed of being a cowboy, not an outlaw like the other kids his age but a real cowboy, riding a magnificent horse on the range and caring for his cows. He had read everything he could get his hands on to learn the lifestyle, the lingo, everything about having cows and horses, every birthday wish, every thought. His family was poor and never had more than the bare minimum to survive, but anything he could went into dreaming of being a cowboy one day. The closest he got was the summer his father was actually sober and had worked feeding the animals when the circus came to town. Derek had followed him to work one day and gently ran two fingers along the velvety muzzle of a big black stallion. Dreams had exploded in his mind of swinging on top and riding away from everything, freeing the soft-eyed animal from what Derek viewed as abuse because it wasn’t in a meadow with cows, and both of them running free until they found a herd to care for. Then his father found him and dragged him home by his shirt collar. Derek still bore the scars from that beating. The long scar running down the left side of his face from his hairline to his jaw made his skin feel tight when storms rolled in.

Zach and Pete continued their conversation about the billboard as Derek pushed his cart across the huge office and rolled back out into the hallway to finish his rounds. Being the mail boy for a large advertising firm in New York had stability. A good paycheck to provide for his three younger sisters, sisters that had never felt their father’s rage. Derek had shielded them from all that, taking the beatings for them. He never resented them for it. It was his job as the big brother. Things got better at home when his father ran off. However, providing for four children took its toll on his mother. He found a job delivering messages all over the city, dropping out of school to make more money so his mother didn’t have to work as much. He earned a reputation for being the fastest runner. Some of his more frequent customers were teasing that they thought he was faster than even making a phone call. Now at twenty-three, the only job he could get without a high school diploma was to be paid under the table to deliver messages, internal mail, and sometimes when the real mail got to be too much, he was trusted with a few of the lower rung employee’s mail. Today, however, he had ended up on the top floor delivering internal messages in the offices since the normal messengers had both called in sick. With the flu running rampant in the mail department, so had half the mail clerks, so he was also sent with the mail as well. That was where he saw the new sign. He had gone into Mr. Shoeman’s office to deliver a package and a couple of internal messages while he was in a meeting and had glanced out the window to be slammed face-first with the meadow and cowboy on the billboard. Immediately, he had been sucked into a daydream. That was his horse he sat on. His meadow he looked across. Before he knew it, he had fallen into a whole new reality created from the ghosts of his childhood dreams.

His father’s sneering voice echoed in his mind as he opened the door to the next office after getting the permissive head nod from the next secretary.

Daydreams don’t pay the bills, son!

Daydreams don’t feed your sisters, son!

Daydreams will take you nowhere, son!

Daydreamers never amount to anything, son.

The last one to echo was also the last words he had heard from his father before he walked out. The rumors said that he was living with some rich woman, satisfying her whims in and out of bed when her husband was away. When her husband was home, he was just another gardener.

Derek straightened his back and forced his mind from the dark thoughts as he laid the mail on the desk and headed back to the door for the next stop on his route. He had not let himself think of things in the past since the day his father walked out. Had not let himself daydream since he dropped out of school and got his first job. He had to be the man of the house and provide for his mother and sisters. They would have it better then when his father was there, even if that meant he had to do without. It was not pride that drove him. Loyalty, he told himself. Loyalty to the only family he had. He had found an old stitched piece of fabric in his mother’s things once that said family was the world. Loyalty to family was your world. He had liked the words, even if he did not fully understand the meaning behind them. That is how he tried to live: loyalty to his family. That was his world. Images of how he had found his mother that day fluttered through his mind. She had come home late from work, bone-tired, and collapsed into a chair. The small wooden chest that had been by her chair for as long as he could remember was open in her lap, and its contents spilled across her legs and onto the floor. She looked like she had fallen asleep crying again. He had helped her to bed and placed the items back in the box, closed the lid, and put it by her chair. The piece of fabric he had laid reverently on top. Then he had woken his sisters to get them ready for school. That was the day he had decided to drop out of school so his mother would not have to take on the burden alone.

The next office was much like the last one. He checked the name on the door to the name on his last package as he entered.

Derek forced his mind away from the haunting memories as he pushed his cart to the service elevator. If he was lucky, his daily payment in cash would be in his locker, and he could buy food for dinner. If not, well, best not to dwell on it. Never helped things. He traded greetings with the handful of other workers in the mail room, wrapping up their day and getting ready to go home. They talked of sports, or family plans for the weekend, or who was doing what with whom. Derek never joined the conversations, and when cornered with a question, he claimed too much work to dally around gossiping like hens. It was the most personal he got with his coworkers. His embarrassment of his low status keeping him on the outside looking in and for the most part was left out of such conversations. He hated weekends. If he got lucky enough to get scheduled to work the weekend, Saturday was shorter hours, and Sunday was no hours, which always meant there was no money to buy food for dinner.

After returning his cart and gathering his jacket from his locker, he saw the white envelope on the bottom of his locker, as was common. With a sigh of relief and letting his mind wander to what would be for dinner, he reached to pick it up. That was when he saw the note hiding underneath it. Fearing it was a letter telling him that they couldn’t have him working there anymore, he ducked into the bathroom to read it in privacy. He always felt dirty for being paid