Agatha Kristenson - The rancher_s wife

The late afternoon sun was still blazing hot. Kate Sutherland wiped the sweat from under her ponytail and bent again to pull tender green onions from the crusted earth of the garden. The flies and bees sped by in a monotonous tune of buzzing through the corn stalks and over the tomato plants. It hung in the still heat that shimmered over the fields beyond.

Kate straightened again and wiped her brow, looking out over the green-gold rolling plains through the big poplar that stood guard over the edge of the garden. It was almost a blinding color, the wheat gold that burned the eyes and leeched their moisture in a Van Gogh painting. Arles must have been very much like South Dakota she decided.

She moved over to the cucumber patch and pulled three big ones for dinner, feeling their slick green silky length in her hand. Cole would be home tomorrow. She blushed then, realizing those phallic vegetables had made her think of her husband. Well, it had been a long time. Six weeks in France while she'd been here alone on the ranch except for the hired hands.

Kate wandered over to the strawberry patch, her basket almost laden now with vegetables, the good things she grew every summer in this unpromising earth. If the foreman hadn't been so new she could have gone with Cole. She still didn't quite understand what was that special about a Limousin bull but Cole studied every night after dinner, the breeds, the blood lines, the beef per pound, the proportions of bone and gristle and fat. A Limousin bull was finally what he had to have… and so he'd gone.

There were times when she almost hated the pedigrees and charts of the cattle that Cole studied. He kept meticulous records and knew every calf and the day it was born and who its great great grandparents were. For this was the excuse he used every time she mentioned adopting a child. "Hell no! I know too much about genetics. Adopting a kid from one of those agencies would be like buying a bull or a heifer without knowing the pedigree. You're liable to get stuck with anything! A runt or worse!"

A sigh of apprehension escaped Kate's dry lips. What was Cole going to say when he got home tomorrow and found out about the two high school boys she'd hired to help for the summer. They were not of the "best" bloodlines certainly. From the inner city, not much better than foundlings. Hard tough city boys who knew nothing about ranches or ranch life.

But that ad in the magazine had been irresistible. In her frustrated maternity, she mothered everything, Cole said. Even the calves and the cats and the dogs and the geese. Stubbornly she clung to the idea that it was a good thing to give a high school boy a job, particularly boys from the city who'd wind up on the street and get into trouble if someone didn't help.

A small voice in her head whispered that she also wanted to convince Cole that genetics weren't all that important. If she could make this experiment work this summer. If Cole got fond of the boys, then maybe he'd listen to reason about adopting a child.

Here she was, surrounded by all the fruits of the earth and she had no bounty of her own. All the animals on the ranch gave birth and multiplied and she alone was barren. Actually she really didn't know if she was the culprit. When the doctor had wanted to do further tests on both of them, Cole had adamantly refused.

Kate straightened up again and blew a long strand of chestnut hair from her sweaty forehead. The angled sun sent an elongated shadow of her across the ground. Short shorts and a sleeveless jersey did not distort the ripe sensuousness of her body. Long, long shapely legs, sleek curved hips, narrow waist and breasts that looked as though they were made for suckling a man's children.

It was two years ago she'd decided there weren't going to be any. Even the fertility drugs hadn't helped. It had been then that she'd started her campaign to adopt a child but for two years now Cole had remained stubborn and refusing.

Their whole relationship had been affected. Kate walked back toward the house, past the willow and the fish pond. Lately even their lovemaking. Cole didn't want her as often and when he did it was as though he were only going through the motions. A few times when he was drunk he'd even wanted her to do awful things… lurid, debasing perverted things. She'd have done even that if it would have given her a baby… but those… well, "positions" couldn't possibly give her a baby. It was physically impossible.

Kate stopped at the fish pond and looked down at the glinting darts of gold flashing through the water. She popped a strawberry, warm from the sun into her mouth. There was mama goldfish and papa goldfish and three babies shooting through the clear green water. Stop it, she told herself. Everywhere she looked everything reminded her that Kate Sutherland had no child… and all her brooding through ten years of marriage had not brought her one… nor all the tears… nor all the begging.

The gate squeaked and Kate looked up to see the two boys coming through it toward the house. She smiled and waved. They lifted a hand halfheartedly. Poor things, they looked exhausted. City boys weren't used to hard ranch work.

Kate hummed to herself as she washed the vegetables in the sink. She could hear Eric Petersen and Angel Orellio in the office-family room a few steps down. They were sighing and slapping their knees and talking. It was almost like listening to horses or bulls snort when they were hot and tired. She rushed down to refill their beer glasses.

"How about another beer, boys?" They both nodded dumbly, sprawled in the leather director's chairs with their shirts off and their legs spraddled out in exhaustion. Kate took their beer mugs and held them in front of the spout on the old brown refrigerator door. The beer refrigerator was indispensable on a ranch and Cole liked it here in the office where he could get to it without having to go to the kitchen.

She poured theirs and then reached inside to get an icy glass for herself. They hardly looked at her, just stared vaguely into space, getting their breath.

"There you are. A few beers and a shower and you'll feel better."

Angel snorted, his black eyes snapping. He was a dark Indian looking Mexican-American boy, wiry and strong looking but with the concave chest of the perpetual sloucher… terribly handsome in spite of his attitude.

"It will take more than a few beers. That heat will kill a man," he said bitterly.

"Stop beefing," Eric advised, grinning. He had the quiet smiling blondness that indicated his Nordic ancestry. A giant of a boy at eighteen. He had fair almost white blonde hair and deep blue eyes that crinkled when he smiled. Already his fair skin had reddened and burned and was now turning to a deep tan. His shoulders were immense and his hands like two rather dirty hams.

He was going to be fine. The foreman had told her that Eric worked with a slow measured intensity and that he was strong as a bull. No, it was Angel that was going to be a problem. He'd complained from the moment she'd picked them up at the bus station. But then, heavens knows what he'd had to endure in the city. Living in a ghetto with too many brothers and sisters and only his foster mother to feed them with a too small welfare check. Kate felt a rush of pity for him. She must remember to tell Frank to go easy on him. And then she remembered. Cole would be home tomorrow and he wouldn't go easy on anyone when it came to working.

If only somehow she could make Cole see that the boys really could be a help to him for the summer. There was so much to do. Cole complained that the few hands that drifted through were really no help. Somehow she had to make it work… and if she did… maybe… just maybe she could get Cole to realize that a stranger in the house wasn't so terrible. A little stranger.