Chapter 1: Backside Against The Wall

Lorraine Harper waved at her son Grady on her way out to the road to get the mail from the ranch mailbox. She grabbed the usual bundle of crap ads that nobody ever read, at least nobody she knew. God, tough as things were right now, who had the money to take a cruise to Majorca, or even to Laramie, for that matter? She shook her head at the injustice of it all.

Then she saw an official looking light brown manila envelope with a Denver return address in the upper left corner and her name as the addressee. A thrill of worry ran through her stomach.

"Oh no, what now?" she murmured to herself. She half ran into the house. The junk mail was tossed aside onto the kitchen table. She slit the top on the manila envelope and pulled out a dozen stapled together pages with a notary stamp at the left hand bottom of each page.

"Grady! Get in here right now," Lorraine yelled at her son.

He dropped the pitchfork he had been using to load manure into a wheelbarrow and ran to his mother. "What's wrong, Mom?" he asked as soon as he stepped up on the front porch.

"Ah Honey, you remember how I wondered what happened to your biological father? After he deserted me when I got pregnant with you, he seemed to have dropped off the ends of the Earth." Grady nodded his head slowly and looked at her, waiting for what she was leading up to.

"Well we don't have to wonder any more. That son of a bitch was in prison. He'd gotten himself convicted of rape and murder. A fellow prisoner killed him, stabbed him to death. His damned lawyer is trying to get his legal fees plus costs from us. He claims the jerk signed over his half interest in the ranch to him in lieu of cash."

"Mom, that's crazy. How can he sign over what isn't his to begin with? You guys were never married and Grandpa left us the ranch before you ever met that clown. No way."

"Well, we have to get a lawyer and answer this summons or we'll lose it by default. This couldn't have happened at a worse time; the taxes are due and we're almost broke. Between rising operating costs and lowered everything else, we just don't have any money for an attorney. According to this, we have ninety days to respond before it goes into a default judgment." She looked at the bunch of papers in her hand as if she wanted to shred them. "Damn!" she cried in frustration.

He looked at the name of the law firm and shook his head. "Relax Mom, let's just take a run up to see that lawyer and find out what this is really all about. This whole thing smells like spoiled fish to me." Grady gave his mother a hug and took the papers away from her.

While she fretted, Grady read and reread the document. Finally he looked up from the papers and told her, "Mom, this looks like something written by an Arab who never quite mastered the English language. Man, Herman Sloan could do a better job than this and he's the worst student in the senior class."

"Yes, but look at all those notary stamps. It's got to be a legal document.

Grady grinned at her and forced himself not to laugh. "Mom, I can get a baptismal certificate for Big Henry notarized, if I want to."

"What are you talking about? Big Henry is our stud. You can't baptize a horse. What would you notarize?" She wondered if her dear and sweet son had just gone crazy.

"Well I could get a notarized statement that Big Henry was dipped in the water by a real strong Missionary Baptist who had a friendly Mormon missionary help him and then pronounced him saved." Grady couldn't hold back his laughter.

"Honey, be serious. These are legal papers. I can tell."

"Mom, you can't tell shit." Lorraine jerked back at her son's sudden outburst.

"What..." she got out before he interrupted her.

"Mom, please listen to me. That jerk knocked you up and you had me when you were sixteen. Grandpa made you leave school and stay home because he thought you were an embarrassment to him and his good name."

"What does that have to do with these papers?" At times like this Lorraine realized her son was miles ahead of her in too many of the ways that counted the most.

"Look, when you write a letter or a legal document, or even an essay, there tends to be a certain flow to the words if the writing is the real deal. This stuff doesn't have that flow." He looked back down at the papers and shook his head.

"Well, what do you think we should do?" With that question Lorraine ceded control to her eighteen-year-old son.

"First we should head on into Denver and talk to this clown. Know thy enemy and all that stuff." Grady nodded in agreement with his own logic. "Then we decide what to do after we learn a little more about what's really going on.

He hugged her close for a moment and added, "Mom, I'm sorry I put you down just now. You and I both know you aren't stupid. You couldn't be too stupid, not the way you have almost single handed kept this ranch going like you have.

"The thing is though you don't have much education. Please let me try to find out what this clown," he looked down at the signature, "Ameer ben Adhem, is really trying to pull. His name is probably the Arab version of Tom Jones."

"Okay, when do you want to go face him?"

"Tomorrow morning, right after the milking is done. I'll get Jack Bradley and his sis to come do the chores and spend the night. We might have to spend the night in Denver. I'll go call them right now."

As Grady turned away, he heard his mother say, "Damn, at times like this you look so in charge and sexy I'm sorry you're my son."

Grady turned back and laughed, "Well, when we get back I'll take Karen Bradley for a walk around the barn and leave you in here with Jack. He's nineteen and very good, from what I've heard."

She blushed at the thought, "God, you'd do just that, wouldn't you?"

"In a heart beat, mother of mine, in a heart beat. I still remember what I walked in on when I came home early that one night."

Lorraine's face went from blushing pink to burning red. "Yes, you little dick, I also remember you clapped your hands while you stood there and applauded. Poor Henry ran out of the house naked and hasn't spoken to me since."

"You had just turned thirty and Henry was barely twenty-two. Now I know why Grandpa named this place "The Cougar Ranch." Grady laughed at the embarrassed expression on his mother's face as he left the room to go call Jack and make arrangements.

The next morning they left as soon as Jack and his sister arrived, they left. On the way to Denver Lorraine told her son, "Honey, I am well aware that you and I are much closer than most teens are to their parents, but there are limits. There are times you get a little too close to the edge of what is acceptable subject matter for us to talk about."

"Oh come off it, Mom. Would you rather I had started to run in circles when I caught you and Henry in a delicate situation and cry to the heavens in a horrified voice, 'Oh dear, my mother is no longer a virgin!' I think not."

"Damn it Grady, this is just the attitude that pisses me off sometimes. You just don't seem to know when to bite your tongue and shut up."

"Mom, I have a pretty good idea what happens when you go to the dances in Walden on the week-ends. I figure you try to hook up with one of the graduate students from the University of Wyoming in Laramie and a good time is had by all."

"But..." she tried to interrupt.

Grady would have none of her denials. "Please Mom, I know you have a healthy love life. Also, when I was a little kid, you always made certain I was watched over when you went out. You have always been the best mother I could ever hope to have. "I'm eighteen and I'm never lonely for a girl. We both like sex and if you weren't my mother..." He looked at her out of the corner of his eye and grinned at the expression on her face

"Grady! You just crossed over the line with that remark. We never have and we never will. No matter what happens on some of the ranches around here in the wintertime, I have never ever considered you and I..."

Grady laughed at he indignant expression. "Never, Mom? Not even once wanted to go on a double date with me and whoever I happen to be deeply in love with at the time? Think hard now." Her face turned red and got redder.

"Look, we both know you would never be happy with some old rooster who is all squawk and damned little anything else. Hell, if that were the case, you'd hook up with Barney Smith."

She snorted and began to laugh. "Please, remind me to not use you to run my social life.

After she got herself composed she said, "Grady, you are a damned attractive young man and of course I appreciate how you look in a tee shirt and jeans. You are a ... uh..." Her tongue stopped working.

"Busted!" Grady laughed at her embarrassment.

In a softer voice he continued, "It ain't the lookin' that's a no-no, it's the doin' where the trouble begins. Neither one of us wants to do more than look and appreciate each other's finer points. Okay?"

"You little turd, you just love to push my buttons." She grinned at him and added, "You are one evil teen."

"While we're on the cougarish ways of some of the women we know, I think I've found a way out of our financial problems. Why don't we start a guest house for cougars from back east who would like to get away from it all and take the best memories home with them?"

Lorraine's face turned sour. "If you mean what I think you mean, the answer is not only no, but hell no! I will not turn our ranch into a Nevada style brothel."

"Mom, we're about one step from bankruptcy. The best we can hope for right now is to hang on another year. In three months I turn nineteen and Grandpa's trust fund will be turned over to me. We can use it and..."

"Grady, no means no. I refuse to become a madam to keep the ranch." She started to cry as she thought of the probability they would lose the only home either had ever known.

"Mom, I will fight you on this. You forget half the ranch will become mine, once I hit nineteen. Grandpa left me a trust fund to further my education. I checked last week when I started to put this plan together. There's almost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in it as of the first of the month."

"Grady, no!" Lorraine was horrified that he would even consider he could use that money for anything other than to get a full college education.

"Get used to the idea Mom." Grady slowed down and pulled in at a scenic turnout and parked.

"Honey, I know you mean well, but your whole idea is just a little impractical. In fact it's a whole lot impractical. For one thing, the county commissioners would lock us both up if we started a ... a ... a cat house for hungry New York women. God, think for a minute, where can you find a bunch of ah ... male entertainers?"

"Mom, I could put an ad in the Laramie paper, The Daily Bulletin, for personal attendants to serve as escorts on a ladies only guest ranch." He grinned and told her, "I'll turn the interviewing over to you. I have no idea what the requirements would be, except in a general way."

"You forget about the legal aspects of opening a brothel. This is Colorado and not Nevada."

"Mom, you keep calling it a whore house. It's not even close. We could run guest ranch, ladies only, for the thirty-plus crowd.

"The entertainers and the personal attendants would be there to serve our valued guests. Any of the personal services the ladies might request would be between consenting adults. If the lonely ladies decide they wish to play and the attendant is willing to follow the game rules, then what they do is between the two of them. Like the song says, 'It ain't nobody's business but their own' No laws are broken. I already checked it out online."

"But it's the idea of the thing."

"Mom, what's the difference between the ladies flying a couple of thousand miles to sign up for a summer of fun and pleasure and you going over to Woods' Landing to hook up with a law student to get your ashes hauled?"

"But..." Lorraine's mouth opened and closed as she tried to think of something to counter his argument."

"Honesty time here, Mom." He started the engine on their old truck. As he pulled back out on the highway he told her, "Far as I know everybody loves sex. Well, that is, at least the ones that I know of anyway. The way we make it work is that we hire the service crew and pay minimum wage plus room and board. They make their money off their tips given them by grateful ladies and everybody goes home happy."

"Let me think for a minute," she told him. They rode the rest of the way to Denver in silence.

Once they checked into motel and got a not too pricey double room with two beds, Lorraine told Grady she was restless. "I think I'll go to the bar next door and have a couple of beers. Don't wait up for me."

Grady laughed at her subterfuge, "Go kick up your heels, Mom. I'll see you when you get back here in the morning. Remember to get here early enough to shake up that weasel that calls himself a lawyer. I want to grab Baghdad's version of a super lawyer and shake his ass loose from his ankles."

She blushed, grabbed her purse and left. As soon as the door shut, Grady shucked out of his clothes and took a hot shower. He dressed in fresh underwear and a clean tee shirt. The day's jeans would have to do. Then he left and walked across the street to the small coffee shop he had noticed when they first arrived. It was dinnertime and he was hungry.

At the table next to the one he chose were two attractive women who appeared to be in their early to mid thirties. "Ladies," Grady greeted them and nodded as he sat down.

The bolder of the two smiled and asked, "Do you always wear a cowboy hat when you sit down to eat?" Grady detected an east coast accent.

This was a game he started to play when he was fifteen. He recognized the message she sent to him with the question. She looked over at him and stared hard at the well-defined work hardened muscles that supported his upper body. She obviously liked what she saw. Oh yes, ladies, I know exactly how to play your games.

"Only when I'm trolling for cougars, ma'am." Her face reddened and the smile faltered for a moment. In an instant she realized this was not some inexperienced teenager she could flirt with and leave confused after an hour or so of teasing.

Her friend looked back and forth between Grady and her friend, confused. "Isn't a cougar one of those big cats that have spots or stripes or something?" she asked.

Grady let out an explosive, "Haw!" He looked at her to see if she was serious. He decided she was

"Shirley, you have leopards and tigers confused. A cougar is another name for a mountain lion." Her friend reached across the table and patted her hand.

"Oh oh, don't tell me your name is Laverne," Grady laughed. "That would be just a little too bizarre."

After her blush reached her face, she answered, "Not hardly. I'm Jessica Daniels and this is my sister in law Shirley Daniels. We've been staying at the hotel across the street and withering on the vine while our two not so attentive hubbies, troubleshoot problems with the microwave repeaters someone installed wrong. This town is boring."

"Yeah," Shirley told him. If we had some way to get hold of the guys, we'd tell them we want to go home. There's nothing around here for two women to do."

"Oh no, there's a lot for you to do. You just need a guy to do it with." Grady's suggestive smile left no doubt what that "something to do" was.

"Oh, we couldn't do that. Well, not without our husbands." She turned to Jessica and asked, "Could we?"

"Jessica," Grady asked, "What does Shirley mean when she said you two couldn't do that?"

"Believe me kid, she didn't mean what you thought she meant. The "that" she was referring to was dancing or drinking with a stranger."

"How about you?" he asked. "Believe me, I know a cougar when I see one. I'm not trying to be insulting, but you started to play a word game with me that only a fellow player would do."

Jessica looked hard at Grady. "Just how old are you? You look like you're about nineteen or twenty and you act thirty."

He grinned, "Well, I'm almost nineteen. My mother and I are here on business and hope to leave tomorrow to go back to our ranch up near the Wyoming state line. You haven't eaten yet have you?"

"No, we just sat down a couple of minutes before you arrived." Jessica looked him over and decided, "Why don't you join us as our guest?"

Grady grinned as he answered, "Sounds good to me, thanks." The grin changed to a cocksure smile as he sat down at their table. He removed his black John B Stetson hat off his head and placed it on the fourth chair at their table. Jessica was delighted when she saw the full head of tousled hair the hat had hidden.

Shirley was silent for a moment. Then she asked, "What were you talking about when you said you were trolling for cougars? I don't get it."

"I just did it," Grady grinned. "By the way, I'm Grady Harper and our ranch, believe it or not is the Cougar Ranch."

"Are you shitting us?" Jessica asked.

"Nope, it's all an interesting story in itself. The fact is that Great Grandpa named it the Cougar Ranch. Our brand is a letter cee on it's back with three vertical scratch marks through it. We use chemicals to brand our stock nowadays."