10 Kissing a Girl

“RAMIE? RAMIE?” Kyle was standing right in front of me. I started out of my reverie.

“What?”

“You’re asleep on your feet. You didn’t even look up when I pulled in.”

“Kyle, I was...” I couldn’t tell him. He claimed to not be time traveling, even though I’d seen him twice. Still, the last time I’d seen that corporal, Kyle certainly was not there. And how did I go off time-traveling if I wasn’t listening to him and Aubrey making love? I looked over and the raven had his head tucked under his wing, sitting on the porch railing. “I was talking to my buddy, Blackfeather,” I said, nodding toward the bird. “We were discussing how jealous we were that somebody was getting laid.” Kyle laughed at me.

“Not tonight, we weren’t. Wasn’t the right time.”

“Aw. Too bad. So sad.”

“Go to bed, Ramie. You look like you’ve been up for days. I’ll call you for breakfast.” Kyle headed for his door and I turned to go into my room.

Up for days? Yeah, I have been. And I’m worried about Miranda.

Seemed like nothing happened for weeks except we went to school and worked our asses off on the ranch. And Kyle and I worked up a rudimentary business plan. It was nice that Aubrey was over and helped us. She still didn’t much care for horses, but she thought it was pretty cool that we might be able to make a business out of them. I still had to sell Pa on the idea.

“So, I figure we can board up to a dozen horses. There’s good riding trails. It’s minimal cost, even in winter. The south pasture could support another couple dozen rescues,” I said. “I’ve been reading a bunch about them and most just need a safe place and dependable food and water. Rescues won’t be for riding or working. They’ve earned their retirement. Though we’d be watching for a stud and some brood mares among them. And for the future, we’d like to acquire the thousand acres south of us just to let rescues run wild. When we get to that point, we could have a herd of over a hundred horses with no problem.”

“What’s the real business, Ramie?” Mom Ash said as she looked at my spreadsheet. “Mostly, this just looks like a trade-off of boarding horses for rescuing horses. That doesn’t turn a profit.”

“Horse-breeding,” Kyle responded. He was right with me. “We want to breed top quality ranch horses.”

“Not show horses,” I added. “We know a lot about bringing up a foal and gentling him. But it’s long term. That’s why there’s no line item for it in the revenue yet. It will take until we’re nearly out of college to get our first batch ready to sell. We looked at Bows’ and Bells’ pedigree. They were abused horses, but they come from good stock. Their hooves are recovering pretty well and we think this spring we could have Bolt cover them. That is, if you don’t object, Pa.”

“Am I getting a stud fee?”

“Um ... well...”

“I’m kidding, Ramie. That’s one of the better ideas you’ve got for this ranch. I was afraid you were going to try to throw show horses or racers. What’s this?” he asked, pointing to the top of the sheet.

“We had to come up with a name for the operation. We chose LK Stables. Laramie and Kyle,” I said. Pa nodded.

“What about the kids?” Mom Mar asked. “They seem to be as much a part as you are.”

“Those wild Indians don’t want any part of the business, Ma,” I said. “They say they just want to be ranch hands and spend time out with the horses. They really do have a nice touch with the rescues. I still think they should have an interest in the business, though, even if they take no part in managing it.”

“I wonder,” Pa said. He went to his fireproof file cabinet and started rummaging around. He pulled out an account book that went back years.

“When the ranch was started back in the 1800s, your great-great-great-grandmother was raising horses. It wasn’t until about 1920 that they started raising cattle to any large degree. That’s when we acquired the Bell Bar-B brand. Then, when your Ma and I took over, we changed the name and brand to the Alexander Bell Cattle Company mark. The first horse ranch here, though, was known as the LK Ranch and this was the mark,” he said showing us the LK brand.

“That’s so cool. We could resurrect the brand!” I said.

“It’s still registered to us. We’ve kept all ranch brands renewed every year. They are part of the property of the ranch. You’ll need to verify with the Wyoming Livestock Board where you intend the brand to be used and on what kind of animals,” Pa said. “You can do all that when you register your business.”

“There’s so much to be done we didn’t know about!” Kyle moaned.

“That’s why you are in school and are going to college. This is a good first cut,” Pa said. “We’ll look at it a little more closely and make some suggestions. You still have to come up with a good case to invest in your business. So far, all I’d be willing to invest is hobby money.”

Investment? Damn. I hadn’t even thought of that.

I listened to Aubrey and Kyle make love in the next apartment. I saw the raven dancing on the windowsill. I rubbed off a pretty satisfying climax. And nothing happened. I was really worried about Miranda. I wanted to go help her. She was cut off from everyone she knew with three kidnapped girls and a team of horses. There was no telling what was happening to her. I sat with my laptop and looked at maps and checked Wikipedia for the stats on every small town we might encounter between Memphis and St. Louis. And from St. Louis to Omaha. I had no idea how quickly the traveling girls could make the trip.

By modern roads and Interstate Highways, it was less than 300 miles if you crossed the Mississippi at Memphis and went north on the west side of the river. It was close to 350 miles if you stayed east of the river and approached through Kentucky and Illinois. I got caught up in the Adventure of Huck Finn—a condensed version—and was trying to figure out why they chose to drift on the river most of the length of Missouri to Cairo, to get to Illinois, when they could have just floated to the other side of the river and been in Illinois. What should Miranda do? There was no bridge across the Mississippi south of St. Louis. We’d have to barge across the river and that meant being dependent on other people. I didn’t like that. We should turn north.

I still had the laptop open when Aubrey came in.

“Were we so uninteresting you had to look up porn on the internet tonight?”

“Really, Aubrey! I was doing research on ... the ranch, you know.” She tried to sneak around to see what was on my screen, but I closed the laptop. Then I realized I was sitting in bed naked because I’d started on my research before I thought about getting dressed. Aubrey stripped off her pajamas and got under the covers with me.

“I like sleeping with you, Ramie. Can we live together when we go to college?”