D I V O R C E by cmsix

Chapter 29

I guess the old gal that owned the place was keeping an eye on me somehow, because as soon as we hit the cafe a waitress led us to a long table that was already setup with water and menus waiting on go, and the waitress seemed to be too.

We barely got our orders finished before the other waitress came out with the salads and bread to spread around. Our food started hitting the table before we were finished with our salads, and it kept coming until we surrendered.

After the meal we unhooked Boyd's truck from the horse trailer and he took off for home, with a five thousand dollar tip he was damned proud of. Randy and I hooked the trailer to the pickup I'd bought at the credit union and then unloaded the sixteen quarter-horses. Marilyn took over as soon as we'd get one out, leading it off the pavement and hobbling it out behind the lot.

The girls were thrilled to get a close up look at the horses and then asked right away if they were good to eat. Marilyn was pretty friendly with them by now and she spoke up.

"They aren't bad, but they're more useful to ride. We can eat one or two if you want to, but let's wait and see which ones give us trouble."

"They let you ride on back?" Louise asked, with her not quite right but improving fast English.

"Aháy," Marilyn replied, in her not quite as far along Caddoan, but it did make Louise, Helen, and Nancy smile.

Marilyn gave me a big surprise then, when she opened the front compartment door of the hourse trailer. I'd noticed that it was the type you usually saw at horse shows, with the small dressing room space in front, but I hadn't thought there would be anything in there. I was wrong, as I seemed to be a lot lately.

Marilyn had us come up and peek inside, one at a time. She introduced us to Geraldine, and Margie. They were German Sheppard mothers and at the moment they couldn't stand for a proper handshake greeting. Geraldine was nursing ten puppies and Margie was nursing eight. She did let Calvin and Dooder, two full-grown German Sheppard males, out of their traveling cages though, and she brought them outside to meet us.

"I figured if we were going to be living way back in the sticks we'd need some guard dogs," Marilyn said.

"I'm sure you're right," I said, just as the girls all started giggling.

I turned to see what was so funny and then laughed myself. Calvin and Dooder were getting a sniff of probably the first Indian pussy they'd ever run across.

I'm sure that Louise, Nancy, and Helen would have been upset if they hadn't already seen dogs, since they would have probably thought Calvin and Dooder were wolves, or at least close to it. They had seen other dogs before though, back during their travels with Carroll.

"I think we should pick out a male each to stay in our campers tonight," Marilyn said, "They're housebroken, and fairly well trained as watchdogs, but I don't think we should let them run loose in a new location on the first night."

"You're probably right about that. Well Louise, since you giggled first you get your choice," I said.

She considered carefully and picked Dooder, but I don't know how she'd be able to tell later, they seemed identical to me. We let them roam around and piss on things for a while, and Marilyn even let the females out for a potty break too. Of course the girls descended on the puppies when they saw their chance.

Actually, the pups were pretty far along, probably five weeks at least, and they were old enough to stand up and wobble around in the big cardboard boxes that were their current homes. Helen found out right away that their little teeth were very sharp too.

We spent the rest of the day, til nearly sunset, just walking around among the stuff, getting familiar with the dogs and even with the horses to some extent. I went over to the security trailer just before sunset, and let the guards take off.

Carl had already been told that this would be the last shift we needed, and Carroll knew to call him in the morning to get details to pay for the portable office and storage building that would not be where they were, or when they were at least. I'd decided I might as well keep them.

We went to the cafe for one last meal in this time and then everyone made their way to the campers for the night.

"Where Dooder sleep?" Louise asked, once we were inside.

"Anywhere you want him to, I guess," I said.

"We fix bed," she said, and then the three of them made Dooder a pallet beside our bed, as if he couldn't find his own place. It surprised me that he went right to it and lay down when they called him.

What the hell, it was a good idea, so I shucked my clothes, took a piss, and got in bed myself. The girls were right behind me.

I'm pretty sure I didn't even turn over once in my sleep all night. I woke a little before sunrise and it was because the bed moved when the girls got out. I just lay there and watched their round naked asses jiggling as they made their ways to the bathroom.

When they came back out to dress I took my turn and I knew right away that they were happy to be back, or at least I assumed we were back, and they probably knew from the view out of the bathroom window. Whatever caused it they were flying high and feeling mean this morning; every one of them pinched me on my naked ass as I headed in to shake the dew off my lily.

When I came out to dress they were gone already and after dragging on clothes and boots I went toward the kitchen. There was enough light by now to see out and the giant pines were a dead giveaway again. Dooder even gave me a little half bark as I left the bedroom.

"Carl, Dooder scratch door," Nancy said, when she saw me.

"He probably needs his own trip to the bathroom," I said, and headed for the door.

"Dooder use bathroom?" Helen asked.

"No, but he'll want to get to work watering those trees," I said, but since they weren't familiar with doggie behavior it went over there heads, surely I wasn't that unfunny.

Dooder did indeed go directly to the nearest tree and he must have been in serious need, because he barely gave it a sniff and then cut loose for the duration on just the one. Randy came out with Calvin before Dooder was finished with his business and Calvin went directly to work too.

"Damn, I see what you mean about the trees now," Randy said, mouth gaping and eyes wider than I'd ever seen them.

"No, you don't have any idea yet. They're like this everywhere, or even thicker in most places. I think whoever is doing this thinned them out around here for our convenience."

"Man, this is so hard to believe," he said.

"Who you tellin'? My first time I woke up almost right here, but with not one fuckin' bit of warnin'."

"What a trip," he said.

Louise stuck her head out the door then, calling me inside to eat, then she saw Randy.

"You breakfast Randy?" she asked.

"Naw, Marilyn is cooking already. She just sent me out to give Calvin a chance to take care of his potty break."

"Oh, ok. I know Bill breakfast, and it ready."

"See you in a bit, Randy. That's my cue."

Back inside I found out that buying wasn't all Carroll taught the girls to do. There was a big stack of cathead biscuits in the middle of the table, and after I sat down I went directly to work on one. Carroll had given them the master's course too; the biscuits were great.

It came to me then, as I took a forkful of scrambled eggs.

"Damn, we didn't get any chickens. We'll be out of eggs again in no time," I said.

"Marilyn chickens. Many chickens in freezer," Nancy said.

"Oh, I know, but I meant live chickens, so we could have eggs all the time," I said.

"Oh, not know about live chickens," Louise said.

What the hell, maybe we could trap some quail and start raising them. There eggs were tiny, but with enough of them they would do, and they actually tasted a little better to me. Still, even with no eggs, we weren't going to run out of food anytime soon.

Ducks! Maybe we could figure out a way to trap some ducks. Hell, Sky, or some of the Caddos might even know how to do it already. No doubt we had plenty of stuff to trade now. If they know how to trap ducks and get the proper encouragement we could do without chickens altogether. I finished stuffing my face full of breakfast wondering if I'd like duck eggs, they were something I'd never eaten.

Randy and Marilyn were already outside looking around when the girls and I left the camper. They both had big smiles on their faces when we reached them.

"I knew that you weren't lying to us, but somehow it didn't hit home until we looked out the window this morning. I can't believe it," Marilyn said.

"Me either, I'd say this is unreal but it's plain to see it is real. But god damned we have got a lot of work to do fast," Randy said.

"That's a fact. I guess the first thing is to get some temporary pens for the livestock. They probably won't last another twenty-four hours in those trailers," I said.

"I know you're right, and I'm glad Marilyn thought of getting those electric fence chargers to go with the fence panels. They won't keep things from coming in but they will help keep the cattle and horses from leaning on the fence and knocking it down, and they keep the damned pigs from trying to root their way out and under," Randy said.

"Louise, Helen, and Nancy said they'd help me with putting up the temporary hen house and setting up the incubators," Marilyn said, and it stumped me for a second.

"Incubator?"

"Yep. I figured it would be too much of a pain in the butt to bring live chickens, so I've got thirty-two dozen live eggs that need to get warm soon, or warmer at least. They told me it wouldn't hurt to just have them in boxes for a day or so, as long as they didn't actually get cold. We kept them in the bathroom and kept the heat on in it, but I want to get the real incubators set up and going as soon as I can," Marilyn said.

"You aren't the only one. I was just bitching about forgetting chickens at breakfast. I think we should all pitch in on the incubators first thing," I said.

"No need for that, they're easy to get going and I know exactly where they are, I found them yesterday. The henhouse won't even be needed until they start hatching," she said.

With that settled, Randy and I walked around a little and decided on a good spot to start putting up fencing. It was a little bit south of where the trailers were now and we were going to fence in a small part of the creek so the stock could get water.

The type fence panels we'd bought would stand up by themselves after several were put together, but Randy had gone ahead and let Bruce and Jack cut us a few hundred five foot lengths of three-quarter inch rebar to drive into the ground for help with stiffening.

The panels were designed to be joined with pins through pipe sections on their ends, sort of a modified piano-hinge arrangement. We could use the rebar instead of the pins and then drive it about a foot or so into the ground for even more stability.

Once the fencing was up, we had heavy gauge welded-wire five-foot by sixteen-foot mesh panels to put against it and tie on with galvanized tie wire. It would help keep smaller varmints from leaking in.  The hot wire from the electric fence would go around the upper inside to keep horses or cows from leaning on it and knocking the whole thing down. For the pigs the hot wire would go near the ground, to keep them from digging out.

All that was easier said than done, but a hell of a lot easier done than it sounded. One thing that made it nearly painless was the smallest front-end loader I'd bought. We removed the bucket and put the forklift attachment on in its place; like that it was a snap to carry the fence panels, welded-wire panels, and the rebar posts with us as we went. It was a damned good thing we had it too, because there was a lot of fence to build, even if it was going together like tinker toys.

Marilyn had changed my plans for the cattle trailers nearly right off the bat. She even did some trial loading and found she could get thirty-five horses per single level trailer without much crowding. She told me there was no way we needed over two hundred horses, so she cut them down to three trailers and used the other single level trailers for cows, including milch cows, and six young bulls. She'd even done her best to buy bred cows and bred mares too.

We ended up with a hundred and twenty-one horses, including the ones Boyd had brought in the small trailer. The other three single level trailers had fifty cows each, and the four double layer trailers had two hundred more cows and a hundred sows and a few boars. We had some stock to get pinned up quick.

Randy and I hit it hard, and about eleven AM Marilyn and the girls came out to help. They already had the incubators going and the eggs in them. With them helping, Randy and I put in the fence panels and they tied the welded wire on and strung the electric fence behind us. We worked right on through lunch, and by two-thirty in the afternoon we had the fences ready for use.

Randy used the mule to place a horse trailer first and when it was where he wanted it, he got out and mounted the small wheel loader we'd been using to doodle fencing around.

"I'll be back with the ramp in a minute," he said.

"Marilyn, it's a damned good thing you two decided to join this cluster fuck. I'd have never thought about a ramp," I said.

"Sure you would have, and probably around the same time I thought of one. We had to have the ramp to get the damned things loaded in the first place. Jack and Bruce built it; it even comes apart and can ride under the trailers. Of course it has to ride under three of them, so it's not much good for moving just one truckload of stock," she said, and laughed at me.

They'd done a good job on the ramp. It had high side-rails to make sure the stock wasn't tempted to jump off, and it even had tire-tread rubber mats to make sure they didn't slip on slick metal while trying to use it. When it was put together it was nearly forty-feet long and that helped keep the angle of descent low. The horses and cows were no problem at all to unload.

The pigs were another matter, but not because they caused trouble. All the pigs were riding on the upper levels and even with the long ramp it was just too damned steep. Bruce and Jack had made allowances for this part though. It was made so the ramp could be put from the floor of a single level trailer to the upper level of a two-layer trailer.

It was more trouble to run the pigs down one story and then move the trailer and the ramp to get them to ground level next, but it was better than anything I could have thought of, save building a two story loading chute.

Things had gone faster than they had any right to, but Randy and I both knew it was only because we had enough supplies and the right kind of equipment for the jobs. If we'd had to load and unload all that damned fencing material into the back of a pickup we'd still be at it.

We didn't have a permanent solution for our stock by any means, but at least we had them on the ground. We'd have to build a lot bigger fence before long, but plain barbed wire would do for the cattle, and smooth wire with electric fence would have to do for the horses. Not to mention that being at least a month or two off.

I knew they'd eat every blade of grass in the four to five acres we had them fenced into now within a couple of days, but that's why I had six Schneider trailers with six hundred bales of alfalfa hay each in them. It was enough to keep us going until we could get a bigger fence and get started baling our own hay, with a wide safety margin.

We got to call it a day with still about an hour and a half of sunlight left. I was about to check on if the girls were ready to head for the trailer when I turned around and saw them walking back from it, with the buffalo calves following them.

"We forget our buffalo. They very happy we open door let out," Louise said, not quite accusingly.

We damned sure had forgotten them but I didn't get to say anything about it from laughing. Laughing at Randy and Marilyn who were staring slack jawed at Nancy, Louise, and Helen walking toward us with the little buffalos following like pets.

Those gaping stares weren't lost on Louise, Helen, and Nancy either, and when they got closer they laughed at the two. It was fair enough, my three bedmates had received shock on top of shock during the last two weeks and it was only fair for them to be on the shocker's end for a change.

"Damn, they're following you around like dogs," Marilyn said.

"Come pet Marilyn, they like," Helen said, and Marilyn couldn't wait to, she walked up to the little bull with a horseman's slow step and the little bastard almost seemed to stick his neck out, begging for a good scratch around the ears.

The other three took notice and since they assumed they had a new pet human they gathered around Marilyn too. I couldn't decide who was getting the best of it, Marilyn or the calves, and when I looked at Randy and the way he was grinning I figured he was thinking the same thing.

"Where have they been all day?" Marilyn asked.

"We build log house buffalo," Nancy said.

"I forgot to mention that. Our camper had been parked farther back when we were here before, and the barn/storage room we built then is hidden behind the trailers now. Come on, I'll show you," I said, and we headed that way.