Coming Home to Wyoming (Peaceful Valley Series Book 1) by Hill April

Author:Hill, April [Hill, April]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blushing Books Publications
Published: 2016-01-22T08:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

Four years later, the ranch in Crabapple Valley was up and running, and even turning a small profit. Griff had hired several cowhands the first year, one of whom took off with one of the ranch’s best mares two days after he showed up for work, and three of whom were still there, and Griff hoped they would stay on forever. His first year, he’d taken in a stray mongrel he called Amos, the ugliest dog he’d even seen, and the best cattle dog he’d ever had. It took another week to discover that Amos’s idea of entertainment after a twenty-hour work day was to spend the remaining four hours running the local coyotes ragged. Within one short week, they began scouting the place to be sure he wasn’t around before making a try at the hen house, or stalking a wandering calf.

Over the first three years after he left Eileen a ‘Roon in the care of the Goodspeeds, he’d sent money every month to help with her keep, and written fairly regularly to her as well. In her first letter to him, though, she had made no secret of the fact that she still hadn’t forgiven him for dumping her there, that she would never forgive him even if she lived to be two hundred years old, and that she now wanted to be called Elyn, because it was her pa’s pet name for her, and because she was getting damned sick and tired of telling people how to spell Eeileen a’Roon. In the next few letters, though, “Elyn” began to concede—one small step at a time—that Martha and Abner were treating her wonderfully, and were beginning to feel almost like her real parents.

Before long, she was writing to him about how much she enjoyed being in school, even though she was the oldest one there, and all the boys were puny little runts with pimples who didn’t even shave yet. The most agreeable surprise to Griff was how rapidly she was continuing to change, from a half-literate foul-mouthed tomboy, to a well-spoken young woman—though not quite all the way to becoming that female creature she had always claimed to detest—“a proper lady.”

Somewhere in the early summer of his fourth year as a cattleman, when the round-up was done and the cattle shipped, he decided to make a buying trip, to have a look at some young Hereford bulls he’d seen advertised. The year had been a good one, but he knew that if he wanted to be able to compete, and start making real money in the currently thriving cattle business, it was time to expand, and increase the size of his herd.

It was going to be a long, hard trip back to Kansas, most of it in a hot, mostly airless railway coach. The only good thing about it, aside from the chance at finding a good bull or two, was that he’d be passing a short distance from the ranch at Rainbow Water, from Martha and Abner—and from Elyn O’Malley.

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