Chapter 8

There was a bunch of things Miss Sarah had wanted to ask J D before they left Dallas for the ranch. He seemed so involved with his men and those damned dogs, he just about ignored her like a worn out shoe. She even stumbled a few times only righting herself when he caught her. She had to wonder what a girl had to do to let these Texas boys know she was interested in them. Whatever it was, it was a lot different from those boys back home!

Herr Bauer, she was now calling him that, was not much help to talk to. Almost all his time now was spent with Riga, and the riders who were taking them and the mares to the ranch.

One of the ranch hands had ridden back early with a Sgt. Williams, saying something about some purchase or some such thing. Miss Sarah could not imagine anything more important to purchase than Riga and the mares! They had cost $1,000 and now that money was hers. She was rich, if she only knew though, what rich was. If it not been for Riga she would try to buy something for herself in Dallas or even go back East and start over.

Whom was she kidding? The way J D and Herr Bauer had described things; this was going to be an opportunity of the lifetime. She would be with Riga, and would help if not manage his breeding, and maybe even get a better chance at J D again.

All in all, her miserable life seemed to be getting a lot better since she met Herr Bauer.

Miss Sarah was not an orphan, although many times she had wished to be one. Her real mother was not around while she was growing up. Her father said she had died. He now had several ‘wives’, two of whom had to be even younger than Miss Sarah. The fact that he ‘sold’ her, in effect anyway, to a neighbor, not only meant no one cared about her anymore but that she felt that she was no better than a slave or some animal. They had fought a war against slavery, hadn’t they?

Why? She wanted to know why things had turned out to be so bad for her. Then Herr Bauer and Riga showed up. Going with them was not a hard choice.

On the ride, she reflected on just what a new life out here could mean. So far, everyone had been nice to her. She made the connection that J D and Herr Bauer had a lot to do with that. Sarah had never been to a ranch before. Farms, yes, she had grown up on them. She equated them to a ranch and ended up thinking the only difference was that a farm grew food and a ranch raised horses or cows.

The idea that some ranches in Texas would seem to be larger than some entire town or even a city back home never dawned on her. Miss Sarah was thinking that twenty or thirty new foals might be too many for just one ranch. Even twenty would require an awful lot of feed and work, but she was determined to do her best and get it done. She liked when she heard J D and Herr Bauer talk about record keeping, selective breeding and optimization or desired conformation. It was the kind of horse talk she had only dreamed of people considering back home. That kind of thing was one of the reasons she had latched on to Herr Bauer. He was not like those people her father had told her to ‘listen to and obey’. Herr Bauer had treated her like, like, she always dreamed a father would treat his daughter.

Miss Sarah had most everything right. There were one or two corrections that she would have to make to her thinking. J D had been thinking the ranches should raise 20,000 to 30,000 head. That there would be 400-500 men to take care of the horses, working under Herr Bauer and Miss Sarah and his thoughts ran more to creating an entire new breed of horse, not just to breed a few for himself. Even that estimate of everything would now be low when he found out just how much more land Sgt. Williams had been buying and the discussions and planning Molly was putting into his head about raising horses like they had done in Kentucky when she was growing up. Yep, Miss Sarah was going to be mighty surprised.

Soon, even horses that were not desired for breeding stock, and were gelded, would be sold off for far more than that $1,000 she held so dear now. She would find much more for herself too in a new life. If things worked out, a dynasty would be created and she would/could be a part of it ... if? That her life was going to radically change for the better was a foregone conclusion, she just did not know it or know how yet.