Chapter 42

Luckily we finished with our visitor shortly before lunch and I made it down to eat just in time. After I was seated and had enough time to stuff in a few bites, Jaycee spoke up.

"Is everything settled now? Are we leaving tonight?" she asked.

"I believe so."

"Then you'd better spend some time with Geron, Percy, and Damien to let them know what you expect them to do while you're away. Probably better let Harriette in on your departure too," Jaycee said.

"Hold on a second, I'm not taking care of all that. Fawne can deal with choosing a new cook and such. Harriette is going with us. I am not leaving without my favorite cook. Choose about half of the serving staff to come along too please," I said, remembering that I liked the French Maid service, quite a lot in fact.

"I don't see why we should leave half of them here. With you gone there will be no one for them to serve anyway. It would be cruel to leave those dedicated young ladies here with nothing to spend their days doing. And surely you need to bring some of Harriette's helpers along too," Fawne said.

"Well, of course we should. You see, that's why I have to leave the details to you; I'm not qualified to make those kinds of decisions. And be sure you bring Francine along," I said, and Jaycee just laughed in my face while Fawne smiled at me as if I were a much younger man, eleven-year-old is the vibe I was getting from her.

With that settled, Meka, Tutsie, and I finished our meal and went outside to play. We didn't get to play long though, because I remembered that I wanted to take a few of the warhorses back too. I was sure that George would be impressed.

We made our way to the barn from home, rousted out the grooms there, and discussed their marital status. Both were married men and had children. I gave them the news that they should bring all their immediate family and all their things and I even showed them how to get into the basement for storage.

It turned out to be a busy afternoon after all. What with moving the very best two stallions and the eight largest and best mares, we ended up filling all vacant stalls in my barn.

I had the grooms and their families assemble temporary bedding near their things and promised them better accommodations when we arrived. They seemed a little confused but I could tell that Big Boy had fogged them when he figured out what I was doing. I decided to have a word with him.

"I'm afraid we're going to need more space for our traveling show," I said.

"Yes, I can tell already. I will prepare two residences for the grooms and their families and I think we should probably double the size of your horse barn, at least," he said.

"That should do nicely for now," I said, agreeing, and actually surprised that I didn't encounter any resistance. Thinking about it I figured that something else annoying might be coming up soon and that this generosity could be a down payment. No sense worrying about it now.

No matter what the new women had learned, they stamped their little feet and demanded to be allowed to bring a few dozen dresses and such each. I didn't care but I made them draft their own help to move things. I did ask Jaycee if they were bringing along any clothes that could possibly do them for their shopping trip.

"Of course not, they don't have a thing they can wear. It doesn't matter. We can put them in sweat pants and T-shirts long enough to get them to Wal-Mart for tight jeans, trashy blouses, and Cowboy boots, and then we can work our way up from there. Hell, let Ethel deal with it, she'll be happy to.

Jaycee was right; Ethel and Wanda would be shickled titless with a shopping trip of these proportions. Then it hit me and I lost it laughing, thinking about six or eight ranch hands pushing buggies around behind Ethel and crew while they sailed through Wal-Mart buying everything in sight.

My happy mood dimmed a little near sunset, when the thunderclouds started rolling in. Meka and I gave Tutsie an extended walking near the front door and then it was bedtime.

Meka slept with us tonight, since we were traveling. Tutsie decided that exactly in the middle of my chest was the best place for his rest, and damned if he didn't give me a little growl when I wiggled after he'd settled in. Then, the lights went out.

I don't know how I could tell when I woke, but I knew something was different. Meka and Tutsie were awake too but the rest were still snoozing. Tutsie let us know that he wanted to take a trot outside. We got out of bed to walk him and I was surprised that it didn't wake anyone else.

That was nothing compared to the surprise we got when we opened the bedroom door to go outside. I had assumed we had already arrived and that it was probably near morning. We hadn't and it wasn't. And, we weren't inside the house. My bedroom door hadn't opened into the hall; it had opened to the outside. The outside of where was my next question.

"Daddy! Look," Meka said, waving her arm around in an all-encompassing gesture.

Look indeed. We could see that we were still on our basic traveling plot of a hundred acres or so. We hadn't left my bedroom and gone into the hall because my bedroom was no longer in the house. That was easy to see because the house was largely disassembled, as if it were some bunch of giant Lego blocks that normally fit together perfectly but currently were scattered around the playroom floor.

A look in the sky, at the three moons overhead, let us know that we were not on earth either. A glance toward the swimming pond showed me that all the horses and mules were out grazing peacefully. Not far from them the grooms and their families were sleeping peacefully near the stacks of their possessions.

At first I wondered what the hell was going on and then realized that we were allowed to wake and come take a look at what went on when things happened to our residences during the night. Hell, it wasn't magic as it seemed, someone had to build and rebuild and remodel and on and on. It had to be done, but we just didn't have to be conscious while it went on.

Probably I should have been more curious about what we'd end up with, but it didn't really matter. If I didn't like it, changes could be made the next time we went somewhere.

A casual look around did show me we had a much larger house in progress, a much larger barn, and some interesting outbuildings. They were probably the new houses for the grooms and their families. I knew they'd be happy.

Meka had been pretty quiet, and while I'd looked around she'd gawked.

"Everything changing, Daddy?" she asked.

"Looks that way. It will all probably be better," I said, and then she picked up Tutsie and we went back inside and back to bed.

Of course I had no way of knowing how much actual time we spent wherever we were while the changes were being made. It was obvious from seeing the process that it wasn't done in the normal amount of hours we would have slept during a single night.

This fact made me wonder why we'd been allowed to wake up and see what was actually going on. Tutsie needing to take a leak was an acceptable cursory explanation, but it wouldn't hold water, so to speak.

They absolutely had to have some other method of taking care of our bodily functions during the time we were on hold while they were changing things around like they did.

Now that I knew they had to actually do construction and couldn't wave some type of magic wand and have things just change, I realized that some of the things they'd done overnight must have taken at least weeks of real time, if not months.