Surfing Midland (Complete/ First draught).

Chapter 24

"Hey Leah, wanna go swimming down at the pond? It's so hot, and Adrian has given us the afternoon off I mean if Trisha says it's okay for you to come along. There's a bunch of us going down." It was tough to say no to a swim, the heat in Montana during summer was dry and drained your energy like nothing else.

The past few days I had spent inside, working was a little much to ask of me, but I did what I could. Mostly that consisted of mucking out stalls, hosing down the horses and giving their coat a brush.

The ranch used mostly horses to move stock, so there were a lot of horses to take care of, not to mention Trisha trained and sold surplus horses that the ranch didn't need. At the moment the ranch housed twenty-four horses, which was a lot more then I was expecting. They weren't all housed in one barn but instead in three barns spread around the place, it was a long walk between all three, but at least my legs were getting a workout.

I still hadn't memorised all the horse's names, but a few that were stuck in my mind were Happy Jack, Fat Tony, Butter-Bean and Periwinkle. I considered them all odd names for horses, but the names were so unexpected that they did stay in my mind, the problem was figuring out which horse had which name.

"Hey Trisha, I was wondering if I could go swimming with everyone else down at the pond." Trisha had already laid out the ground rules for working with the horses; then I had to stick around. I still had a few stalls to muck out and water buckets to fill, as soon as Trisha looked at me, I knew my answer.

"Sorry Leah, you know the rules. Sonia gets to go because she's all done for the morning." Even though I felt more than disappointed at the prospect of staying back, I didn't complain as I nodded and went trudging back towards Devyn and the waiting crew. Shaking my head before I even opened my mouth I heard Devyn groan, but I didn't stick around long enough to listen to him complain as I went back into shed two and carried on with my chores.

It was another hour after the group left for the lake that I finished mucking out the stalls and giving the horses drinking water. By that time I was sweating heavily and felt ready to die from heat exhaustion as I walked out of the stable and back towards the house. The group hadn't returned, which I was glad for but was also disappointed that they were probably going to be out there all afternoon.

As the rookie in the horse sheds, I still had to wash down the horses that had been exercised for the day, but there was no way I was doing that on an empty stomach and went straight to the fridge to fill my stomach.

"So I take it that Trisha won't let you go down to the pond?" Devyn's voice was so sudden in the emptiness of the kitchen that it startled me right out of the fridge. Leaning back to peer around the door, I gave him as best a glare as I could manage, but it only made him laugh a little.

"Don't do that! What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were the main driver to take everyone down to the lake?" Even though I tried to sound a little disappointed that Devyn was here and that I had missed out on a half-day swim, I was glad that he was here because it meant that he was going to help me... at least I hope that was what his being here meant.

"Sorry, I figured Trisha wouldn't let you go down because you have the biggest job on the ranch and are pretty new at it. Don't worry, I used to have that job too, and I know how long it takes. So I thought I would stay back and help you out, no one else was particularly interested, so it looks like it's just you and me. What are you making?" Devyn asked as he sat down at the kitchen table, watching what I was doing in the refrigerator. I felt a little self-conscious of the fact that Devyn was sitting behind me, every time I bent into the fridge to retrieve something he could see my ass.

"Nope, I have to finish the horses before I can do anything else. And I'm making sandwiches, do you want one?" The other day I had been so hungry that I had attempted to make a grilled cheese sandwich in a skillet on the stove top. The bread had ended up so charcoal that not even the dogs would eat it, Trisha had warned me off attempting anything else. It didn't worry me that she had warned me off of cooking, I would have burned the house down if I had tried anything more complicated then that. I knew one thing, cooking wasn't as straightforward as it looked.