“She loves cats,” the distraught mother said through tears.
“Not now I don’t,” Maira piped up.
“Doc, Drake here got bitten pretty badly too,” Tamsyn said. “Can you take a look?”
“We need to go over to the clinic,” he said. “I want to run the full decontam ray over these bites and scratches. Come on along, Drake.”
“Charge the bill for him on the ranch account,” Tamsyn said as the whole group prepared to move.
The doctor acknowledged her request with a wave and Tamsyn watched him lead his patients and their families and friends away, Drake trailing behind reluctantly.
The incident put a damper on the festivities, at least as far as the families with children were concerned and the park emptied out a bit.
At sunset things picked up as the band, hired by the Fafields from the city, arrived and set up their equipment on the bandstand, while a crowd gathered. Soon the group launched into their repertoire of songs, covering a range of genres. Dancing began as night fell. Sparkling lights had been strung all around the center portion of the park and things grew lively again.
Tamsyn was a good dancer and had no lack of partners, including one slow dance with Jonny Fafield, which she didn’t move fast enough to avoid. The two of them had been an item in high school, pretty serious, but then he’d gone away to the capital city for college and she’d stayed on the ranch and inevitably they drifted apart. Jonny had indicated any number of times he’d like to hook up on a casual basis but Tamsyn wasn’t interested. Casual wasn’t her. She’d also finally seen through his façade of being a rich, handsome nice guy to understand the dark bully who’d use his family’s power and position to get anything he wanted was the true Jonny. She’d rather stay single forever than be in a relationship with a man of such caliber.
The festival ended promptly at midnight, the band playing one last song, and then everyone left the park.
Tamsyn waited by her groundtruck until her three wayward ranch hands showed up, worse for the wear. Drake’s arm was heavily bandaged, Piers had been in a fight and was sporting a black eye and Clemt was drunk. She plucked a bottle of feelgood from his hand and threw it in the nearest recycling container. “By the looks of you you’ve had enough rotgut tonight.”
The three men loaded themselves into the truck and she got behind the controls, shaking her head. Pretty much the usual for these affairs. The ranch hands are going to have a hard time rolling out of their bunks to work tomorrow.
Briefly she considered giving them the day off but the ranch work was waiting and there was fence to be mended, a stock pond to be dredged and refilled, a barn roof to repair before the next windstorm…the list was endless. She compromised.
“You can have the morning to sleep this off,” she said loud enough to penetrate their stupor. “Report for work at one o’clock or get docked for the day’s pay.”
Drake patted her shoulder awkwardly. “Aww, you’re a good boss.”
“Yeah? Don’t forget it when we’re on the big cattle drive next week. Less complaining would be a sweet relief.”
She let the truck’s AI take control as she passed through the neat little suburb outside the town proper, nothing special, simple colony housing, but kept with pride, landscaped as much as anything could be in this environment, and then she hit the open road which would take them to the ranch’s turnoff eventually and the truck accelerated to top speed.
Thank goodness it’s four months till the next damn festival Mrs. Fafield intends us all to celebrate. Tamsyn leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. She trusted the AI to get them home safely as it had done many times before. She hadn’t overindulged in feelgoods like her men had but she was tired after a long day of socializing and the dancing had been vigorous. She couldn’t seem to nap though as she kept having dreams which were dark and full of ominous shadows, with giant feral cats surrounding her, their eyes glowing and their teeth dripping blood.
Tamsyn hated using meds to sleep but she decided once she was home at the ranch she’d use a pill to chase away the bad dreams and catch a few winks. She might have given her workers the morning off but she wasn’t about to baby herself.
Chapter Two
Rolling out of bed in the morning was one of the hardest things she’d ever done. After a quick breakfast she headed for the barn and found Rasty, her foreman, on the job, feeding and watering as needed and mucking out stalls.
“I guess you had a good time at the festival yesterday,” he said as she strolled up.
“The usual, I’d say. Thanks again for hanging back here to keep an eye on things.”
“No problem, happy to be left out of the goings-on. Too many people, too much noise and chaos for me these days. Besides, last time I showed my face at one of those shindigs Mrs. Fafield kept giving me the come hither eye and I’m not about to get roped into her bed. Did that once, which was enough.”
Trying to scrub away the mental picture of her foreman and the town’s dowager in bed together, Tamsyn stifled a laugh. “Hey, if you’ve got it under control here,” she said, “I’m going to ride out to the western perimeter and check on the sonic fence. The control board says a couple of sections are close to burning out and I want to replace the power cells. Remember the last time we lost a couple hundred head to a downed fence?”
“Yeah, had to chase them all over hell and gone. Never did find all of them.” He leaned on the pitchfork. “I can hold the fort here. The guys know what you want done when they finish their beauty sleep?”
“I left my notes on the board in the kitchen,” she replied. “There’s a stack of leftover baked goods in there too from yesterday so be sure you get your share before the slug-a-beds wake up. I’d give them a wide berth today, especially Clemt. Even with headclear his hangover’s going to be a beaut.”
Rasty gave her a jaunty salute and resumed his work cleaning out the stalls while she saddled her horse. The ranch had all kinds of vehicles for patrolling the varied terrain the acreage encompassed but she preferred to ride whenever possible. Packing the power cells into her saddlebags, she got into the saddle and took off. Blaze was eager to run and she gave him his head, enjoying the freedom and the wind in her hair.
Eventually Tamsyn reached the part of the fence in question and she let the horse browse while she made quick repairs, frowning over how fast the old cells had burned out. Not for the first time she wondered if the feed store was pulling a fast one on the ranchers and selling refurbished cells as new. There was no way to tell and old man Slocum wouldn’t have done such a thing but his two sons ran the place now and Tamsyn wasn’t sure she trusted them.
Job done, she sat in the shade of a small stand of trees and drank deep from her water bottle before pulling out a snack and an apple for the horse. Usually she’d be in a good mood after completing the job and with another ride in front of her but today she couldn’t shake an odd feeling of uneasiness. It was as if there was a big storm coming, waiting to break and unleash havoc but the skies were clear and the forecast hadn’t mentioned any bad weather.
