Page 29 of Colt

Back to your notes.

Right.

“Like I was saying,” Beck continues, “good old Ulysses bought the land and a hundred head of cattle from a rancher who was fleeing the law and/or a vengeful wife—never did get the whole story. Rumor has it he married the vengeful wife, though. Her name was Uma, and he was obsessed with her.”

“Ulysses and Uma.” I laugh. “They sound like quite the pair.”

“When they weren’t fighting, they were working it out between the sheets. She had fourteen kids.”

“Fourteen?” I nearly shout.

Beck nods. “Told you he was obsessed with her. Anyway, it was their son, Ulysses Junior, who started breeding the quarter horses he and his rancher friends used to work cattle.”

“Working cattle.” My hand is cramping, but I keep writing. “What does that entail?”

“In a nutshell? Keeping ’em alive. Getting ’em where they need to go. Keeping ’em in line, really. We drive them out to certain pastures to eat, then bring them back in once we need to. We’ll vaccinate them, do pregnancy checks, care for the sick ones. That kind of thing.”

“And you do that for how many cows?”

He grins. “Our herd’s on the small side. Only a thousand head.”

“A thousand?”

Beck just keeps laughing. “Lucky River Ranch down the road has over fifteen thousand head of cattle on their property.”

“Wow.” Just…wow. I knew some of these ranches were massive, but I didn’t have an appreciation of just how big they were.

“Anyway, Junior knew his shit, because next thing he knows, his horses are in high demand all across Hart County and then across Texas. Some of my ancestors dropped the ball a bit after that. Bad investments, shit luck. That kind of thing. But once my dad took the reins, he really turned things around and did Ulysses proud.”

“What makes your horses so great?”

“Simply put? They have good cow sense.”

“And that means…”

Beck stops working for a second and props his elbow on the end of his pitchfork. “It’s like they know what the cows are gonna do before we do, and they react just as quickly. It’s a trait that we’ve bred into them, that they’re born with. You need that kind of agility and intelligence in a horse to control the herd. You need the horse to work with you, if that makes sense, when you’re trying to keep a thousand head of cattle in line.”

I lift a brow, surveying my notes. Ideas are already starting to fire inside my head. Ulysses—I gotta do something with that rad name. And the horses, we absolutely have to center the logo on something related to them. I’m feeling yellow. Is brown too obvious? Maybe throw some turquoise in there?

“That’s pretty incredible, actually,” I say. “How is that bred into the horses?”

Beck lifts a shoulder. “You recognize it in one animal, then breed it with another. Helps if you got good trainers, and we just so happen to have the best.”

I’m turning to a new page in my notebook when there’s a loud bang on a nearby wall. I jump, my hand flying to my chest.

More bangs, followed by a whinny. The ground vibrates when another series of bangs reverberates through the stables.

I shoot a panicked glance at Beck, who merely peers around the open stall door. “Ah. That’s just Big Brother.”

“Big Brother?”

Beck grins. “He’s the biggest stallion we got. Almost sixteen hands high. That’s how we measure the horses, by the way.” He splays his gloved hand to demonstrate. “Ornery as all get-out. Just like his bestie.”

That’s when I hear a familiar voice in an unfamiliar tone.

Colton speaks to the horse calmly, almost soothingly. “Easy, boy. It’s just me. I know you’re excited, but we gotta behave ourselves today, yeah? Easy. Easy. Just like that. Good boy. That’s so good. Easy. We gotta be patient. I promise you’ll get what you want if you just listen for a sec.”

A literal tingle moves through me, making my pulse skip a beat.