As Chancy had grown older, she didn’t get much taller after she’d adjusted to that twelve-year-old spurt of growth. All the crew fell in love with her, but she just went on treating them like family. She never saw a one of them as a man. Each was a good friend and helpful. They were almost kin.
And she tried her durndest to be like the crew. Tobacco chewing failed with her. She gagged. For once the observing males had been serious. They didn’t laugh. It was only when she wasn’t there that they exclaimed and shook their heads and laughed.
Her biggest trial was learning to whistle. Shrill whistling. She could whistle ordinary, but the guys could all do that ear-piercing one when they were herding cattle. They didn’t even. have to use fingers in their mouths. Try as she did, she could only bring out a little bladder-sounding squeak.
She could whistle a tune good enough, but she couldn’t whistle a loud sound worth a darn, and she was cursed with a female holler.
When she was about sixteen, one of the guys was rolled under his horse and ended up in the hospital. Tim had been squashed. Really pitiful. And Chancy visited Tim in the clean, white room at the hospital.
She’d been as concerned for him as for one of the wolf-ripped dogs. She held Tim’s hand. He was out cold and didn’t know it, but his, uh, maleness rose under the sheet.
The others of the crew watched her, their eyes amused and compassionate with the problem. That way, and out cold. Men are vulnerable.
If she noticed the problem, at all, she never seemed to.
While he was still in the hospital, it was a trying time for Tim. Beside being squashed, he had broken ribs. So he was helpless to move as she came into his hospital room.
That she was there was bad enough for Tim, but she’d put her hand on his forehead to see if he had a fever.
He’d raise his one good knee. The crowding rest of his visitors, from the place, watched and bit at their laughs. But they were sympathetic. They understood.
Chancy never caught on at all.
And she was puzzled when Tim left them and moved to another ranch. But sometime later, she went to Tim’s wedding to a charming girl who giggled.
It was not the first time that Chancy had heard giggling but it was something she’d never really understood. She asked Creep, “Why did the bride giggle?”
Chancy was interesting but she was a nuisance.
Chancy was eighteen when her daddy died. He was just through. Apparently he figured Chancy was old enough and he was free to find Elinor, his lost love.
Chancy didn’t even cry because her daddy had been so withdrawn for so long that she hadn’t really known him well. She’d forgotten how he’d once been. It was too long ago.
It was the minister who explained love to her. Why her daddy had gone to be with her mother. Their love had been special.
Chancy was thoughtful about love. It was crippling, obviously. And she decided she’d never get entrapped in such a serious mess.
So it was about two years after Chancy’s daddy had been planted next to her almost forgotten momma, and Chancy had no inkling what would come of being in charge of the place.
Chancy could only remember a woman who sat on a cane chair that had a high back and woven armrests. Her mother had watched what Chancy did and smiled.
That was about all she remembered of her mother. She didn’t recall anything about walking on the picket fence.
So Chancy was then twenty years old. She’d taken her first two years of college by TV lessons. She was registered by mail and bought the books the same way. She sent in her computer assignments on time.
Chancy worked hard and she did well, but she wouldn’t go on campus. The older men had been determined that she should mix with other females who were her age. But she was stubborn. And she owned the ranch. She was their boss if she ever got around to realizing it. They weren’t about to mention it to her.
With the times changing and becoming more complicated, it was obvious to the crew that they needed another man. One who could organize and direct them as they ought to be handled. They needed a man who knew computers and how to run the place more efficiently.
Chancy was no leader.
The assembled crew told her seriously that they needed somebody who knew how to direct them. along. Silent as her dad had been, he’d at least nodded or shaken his head. He’d been a mute sounding board...when it was serious enough and they’d had his attention.
So three of the men went east in Texas to find somebody who knew how to take care of the place. And they were directed to Cliff Robertson.
Clifford Robertson had a degree from A&M, which, in all sports and just competition is Texas University’s mortal enemy. Cliff not only was born and bred on a place like the Bar-Q-Drop, but he knew how to run a place. He understood men.
In the Texas questioning statement, the crew inquired nicely with remarkable subtlety, “A woman who is still budding, owns the place?”
“How old?”
“Twenty.”
Cliff smiled. “She’ll be okay.”
They weren’t sure what that meant. But the man was exactly what they wanted, so they didn’t warn him about Chancy. They didn’t want to discourage him. What little they’d said was enough.
Cliff had green eyes, blond hair and he was a wedge-shaped man. All shoulders, no hips and long legs. He wore boots as a part of him. And he had a good, easy stride.
He knew women. They didn’t boggle him. The crew members took him places to eat so they could watch his reaction as the women watched him. He could handle that real easy.
He didn’t flirt, nor was he distracted. Women were easy for him when he wanted one. He not only understood and could handle women, he knew how to organize a place and make it profitable. He liked animals. He was efficient and he knew what to do.
And he was young enough not to demand half of the proceeds from the place.
If it hadn’t been for Cliff, who was about ten years older than Chancy, she would never have made it to being the breathtaking adult she came to be.
At that time, to the crew, she was a problem. They had to spend too much time being sure she was all right.
Even so, the men looked at Cliff with some sweat in their hair and down their chests and under their arms, and they narrowed their eyes watchfully as he first met Chancy. Men had trouble meeting Chancy. They got a little silly. If Cliff reacted that way. they’d have to find an older man who would be harder for the crew to handle.
Chancy
