The Girl with the Golden Spurs. Ann Major

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СКАЧАТЬ as handsome as a prince. Much as Lizzy wished she could give up and go home, she couldn’t. Not with her black-haired brothers, Hawk and Walker, and her sister, Mia, who was a natural born cowgirl if ever there was one, making bets about the exact hour Lizzy would chicken out.

      She was used to people regarding her with secretive, speculative glances when they thought she wasn’t watching. She supposed they did so because everybody—her siblings, her aunts and uncles, even her mother—was jealous of her since she was Daddy’s favorite. She hated the way her father’s favoritism caused her problems on every level.

      Hawk had said he’d give her an hour in the heat and thorns at best; Mia had said two. When Lizzy had heard Walker and her cousin, Sam—who never laughed at her—laughing, too, she’d made a bet of her own that she’d make it the whole day, even if every second of it was torture. Hawk and Mia had really smirked at her then, which was why she had to stick it out.

      She’d show Hawk and Mia and Daddy, too. She’d show everybody, even Mother, who took such pride in Mia—she’d show them, she was a true Kemble if it killed her!

      But even though she was Daddy’s favorite, she didn’t feel like a Kemble, and she never had. She often felt she’d been born into the wrong family.

      On the Golden Spurs taking part in roundup was a sacred family tradition. Every family member was expected to participate alongside the hands. Even Aunt Nanette flew in from Montana to help work cattle and prepare the camp lunch. Of course, the lunch was always fancier than their normal fare when bossy, stylish Aunt Nanette took charge. She hired half a dozen caterers and had them flown in by private jet from Dallas.

      For a hundred and forty years, Kembles had been working this land. They’d endured bandit raids, Union soldiers, drought, the Depression, inheritance taxes and now, in the twenty-first century, family dissention and constant lawsuits. They’d come close to selling out and giving up on the ranch dozens of times. Then oil and gas had been discovered, and there was too much at stake to sell out.

      “As long as the family sticks together, the ranch will survive,” was the family motto.

      Being a Kemble was like being part of a football team or being a believer in a cult religion, or maybe it was worse, more like the Mafia, because it was family. There was a do-or-die feel to being a Kemble. You were supposed to feel your Kembleness in your bones, to dedicate your entire life to the ranch. Or you were the worst kind of traitor.

      So Lizzy felt terrible that she’d been born with this weird feeling that she didn’t belong here and that she lacked the talent to ever be a rancher. This lack in herself filled her with self-doubt. She wanted to please her father by becoming the perfect cowgirl more than anything, but she didn’t think she ever could. As if he sensed this, her father, who was not normally intuitive, had done everything in his power to turn her into a proper Kemble.

      “Keep your eye on me, honey,” Daddy had said only this morning when she’d begged to stay home. “And you’ll be fine.”

      Easier said than done. Daddy was everywhere at once.

      The sun was a fat red ball low against the horizon, but that didn’t mean her daddy would order the cowboying to stop anytime soon. She was tired of the hot rivulets of wet dust running down her face and throat. More than anything she wanted to wash her pale, curly hair so it was no longer matted with dirt and sweat. She’d been in the saddle so long, her butt felt numb and her legs ached. Her throat was dry from all the blowing dust. She probably had chiggers, too.

      Nearby a calf escaped, and Hawk waved his cowboy hat and whooped at it. There was laughter and gritos as he and his terrier, Blackie, galloped toward the squealing calf in pursuit. Lizzy jumped forward causing Pájaro’s hooves to tap skittishly.

      “Easy, boy,” Lizzy said. Phobic about dogs, Pájaro danced backward. Tensing, Lizzy pulled back on the reins. She hated it when horses did anything except walk in a straight line. She’d been bitten, thrown and kicked too many times to remember, and that wasn’t even counting today.

      It had all started on her fifth birthday when she’d begged Daddy for a doll, a beautiful Madame Alexander doll in a gorgeous velvet black dress, but he’d given her a dreadful Arabian mare named Gypsy instead. Daddy had told Lizzy the best way to make friends with the huge, snorting beast was to give her an apple. Only when she’d tiptoed fearfully up to the mare with the crescents of apple in her palm, the brute had snorted and then bitten off the tip of the little finger on Lizzy’s left hand. Mia had grabbed the apple and fed the beast expertly. Not that Daddy had even noticed her doing so.

      At the plastic surgeon’s, Lizzy had cried and cried about wanting a doll instead of a biting horse. Not that her daddy had had the least bit of sympathy.

      “Don’t be such a big crybaby, Lizzy. She knew you were afraid.”

       How do you not be afraid when you are?

      Ever since Gypsy, Lizzy had had problem relationships, you might say, with horses and cows—with any large animal, really.

      But she loved her daddy. And her daddy was determined to make a cowgirl of her or kill them both trying. So, here she was, out in the blazing sun, in thorny brush country, getting herself all sore and sunburned to make her daddy proud.

      “You were born to this life, honey,” Daddy was constantly saying, but there was always a lack of conviction in his voice that scared Lizzy deep down and made her wonder why he was trying so hard to prove she belonged.

      Even though he took her everywhere, constantly instructing her about the operation of the ranch, somehow, she never quite felt a true kinship with the Golden Spurs. It was as if her life were a puzzle, and a big piece in the middle was missing.

      “Why can’t I do the cowgirl stuff then?” she had asked him.

      “Because you’re stubborn and you’ve made up your mind you can’t. Change your mind, and you’ll change your result.”

      And so their discussions went, if you could call them discussions. Daddy, who never listened, always did ninety percent of the lecturing, and if she said anything, that just kept the unpleasant conversation going.

      Sometimes she made small improvements in her horsemanship. But who wouldn’t have, considering how many hours had gone into her training? Sometimes she went for months without a mishap, but she always backslid.

      No father ever spent more time grooming an heiress for the running of his empire. Before she’d been old enough for school, he’d carried her with him everywhere, whether on horseback or in his pickup or in the ranch’s plane. He’d taken her to San Antonio to the board meetings, introducing her to everyone important, who had anything to do with the ranch. He’d taken her to feedlots, to auctions. He’d let her play at his feet when he’d worked in his office.

      Sam and her siblings had begged her father to take them, but almost always, he’d insisted upon Lizzy going because ranching came so naturally to the rest of the brood. He’d taught her to shoot and to ride, but she disliked guns and horses. The other children had watched her leave with her father for her lessons or trips, their eyes narrowed and sullen with jealousy….

      One minute Lizzy was hovering on the edge of the herd, watching her daddy, mother, her uncles, cousins, brothers and her sister do the real work while she tried to stay out of their way and endured the blistering day. Then she saw him—a real live Border bandit…or maybe a drug runner—lurking in the brush, staring holes through her, stripping her naked.

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