Chapter 1

Author’s note: This story was rewritten after finding so many errors. I’ve cleaned it up but I’m sure some still exist. Additionally, I know the distance/time to reach some of the locations are not realistic. Remember this is fiction. Finally, I speak very little Spanish and utilized Google Translate for that dialog. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

My story starts when I was just a kid. I loved western television shows as a tot and when I had a friend over to play, it was always Cowboys and Indians. My parents always said I was born in the wrong era.

As I got older, my parents moved into a rural area and bought me a pony. Pleasure riding was nice but I soon became board and wanted more. I wanted the true adventures of being a cowboy.

My Christmas and birthday presents always consisted of something to do with being a cowboy. One of the first gifts I received besides western clothes and boots was a lariat. I immediately began practicing and was soon lassoing anything from a corner post on the fence to the neighbor’s dog. That same dog became my practice calf as I would take off after it on my pony to rope it with my lasso and then jump off to throw him onto his side and tie three legs.

As I got older my parents saw that my wanting to be a cowboy was not a passing faze I was going through and actually bought me a real horse. This horse was from a working cattle ranch and had what the owner called ‘cow sense.’ The owner said I could come out and ride with his hands anytime I wanted to learn how the real cowboys did things.

Being an only child, my parents indulged in allowing me to pursue my quest of being a cowboy. I would spend most of my weekends and a lot of holidays out on the ranch. Here I learned how different it was from roping the neighbor’s dog to roping a real calf. I also learned about cutting cattle, team pinning and when I was in my mid-teens, bull dogging. Mr. Blanton, the ranch owner, told my parents I was pretty good and should enter me into some of the local rodeos. He showed me how to practice for the shows and three months later I had my first competition.

I had entered calf roping, bull dogging and team pinning. Mr. Blanton was going to be my spotter in bull dogging and he and one of the ranch hands would complete the three-man team for the team pinning.

I did well for a first-timer in the calf roping by placing second. I actually placed first in the bull dogging thanks to Mr. Blanton. He and his horse pushed the bull tight against me so I could drop around the bull’s horns right out of the shoot. Being just over six feet and about 170 pounds of muscle, I was able to hook a horn and roll the bull onto his side in short order.

We placed fourth in the team pinning event but that wasn’t really bad since there were twenty-two teams and our team had never practiced together before that day.

I competed in every rodeo held within a two-hundred-mile radius from the time I was fifteen until I was seventeen. Some of these were strictly amateur events and only gave trophies or ribbons but most I entered gave cash prize winnings. I’d always give this money to my dad and he would put it into an account he’d set up for me. It was my plan to eventually buy my own pickup and horse trailer.

Needless to say my social life during high school was all but non-existent. When a girl I liked learned that I had my own horse, they were fascinated and would jump at the chance to come out and go riding. Some of these rides became quite intimate when we would stop to have a picnic lunch I’d prepared. It was on one of these picnic lunches that I lost my virginity.

Unfortunately, the girls could not accept the demands I placed on myself for being a cowboy and eventually left me for the preppy jocks that could spend time with them at the mall or upscale parties.

Right after I turned seventeen Mr. Blanton passed away. He had two children, a daughter and a son. The daughter competed in some barrel racing events when she was younger but lost interest about the time she graduated high school. The son, who was older than his sister, never had an interest in the ranch. In fact, I’d only seen him at the ranch one time in the years I’d been going there. They decided to sell the ranch which eventually ended my rodeo days.

Eight months after Mr. Blanton died, mom and dad were killed and a tragic car accident. They were broad sided by an eighteen wheeler driven by a guy that had one too many and was over the legal limit. Between the insurance policies on my parents and the settlement from the trucking company, I could live comfortably for the rest of my life. The money was set up into a trust fund until I turned eighteen.

Dad’s brother, Uncle Frank, came to live with me because I had not yet reached that magic age of adulthood. I had never gotten along with Uncle Frank and hated to be around him. He could never hold down a regular job and thought his purpose in life was to drink beer and smoke cigarettes. I had to constantly stay on him about smoking in the house and he would say something smart and tell me he was the adult in the house. He also had a habit of slapping me on the back of the head much like the boss did in that television show, NCIS.

Before he died my dad would always purchase a lottery ticket and attach it to the refrigerator with a magnet. He’d say, “Jake, when we win this lottery, we’re going to buy us a huge ranch and you can raise us some cattle.”

I was opened the refrigerator to grab a soda when I noticed the lottery ticket. It had been there for almost three months now so I pulled it off and dropped it into the trash. After grabbing my soda, I started to my room but stopped and looked at the trash can. After a minute of pondering, I reached into the trash, pulled out the ticket and put it into my wallet.

It was three days after my eighteenth birthday that I had stopped by the local convenience store to put gas in my truck. When I reached into my wallet for the cash I noticed the lottery ticket and pulled it out to have the clerk scan it. When she scanned the barcode under the red light, the machine started to play music and the display started flashing, “We have a winner.” I looked at the clerk questioningly and she said the ticket was the unclaimed Mega-Million winner for $216 million.

The following day I skipped school to go to the lottery office. I took the cash option and after taxes got $108 million. The next day the newspapers were headlined with “Eighteen-year-old wins lottery for birthday.”

It was about six weeks before my graduation. I talked to the lawyer who had handled my parent’s settlement and asked what would be best to do with the winnings. He said a trust would be a better method than a bank because the entire amount would be insured whereas a bank only insured $200 thousand. I asked how accessible the money would be to me and he said I could have a regular bank account for my everyday expenses and if I needed to make a large transaction to simply call and he could set up the transfer. The lawyer had been a good friend of my parents for many years and I trusted him. I told him that would be good and would let him know when the money had been placed into my account.