Craving My British Cowboy novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Pipe

Jemima and Rex trace the dry creek to the neighbor's pump and she confronts his foreman; Zelma arrives with water and a question.

I woke in Orville's old bed with a rooster screaming outside the window.

It was 5:40 a.m., and I had slept in my coat.

The farmhouse had nothing so luxurious as central heating.

In the hall, the bathroom door was shut and water was running behind it.

A man was singing in there.

He was singing "Greensleeves," in a baritone, very slowly, and flat.

I stood in the hall with my washbag and a growing sense of injustice.

The door opened on a cloud of steam, and Rex Carew stepped out with a towel around his neck and a shirt, thank God, buttoned to the collar.

"Morning," he said. "There's one bathroom."

"I noticed."

"There's one coffee pot, too. I made it. You'll want it."

"I'll want a second bathroom."

"I'll put it on the list." He pushed his wet hair back. "Right after the roof, the fence, the creek and the tractor."

He walked off down the hall, and I stared at the back of his neck until I remembered I was angry.

By seven he had pulled my rental out of the mud with a tractor older than I was.

By half past, I was in his truck with a chipped mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST UNCLE, bouncing up a rutted track beside a creek with no water in it.

"How long have you lived here?" I asked.

"Fifteen years."

"Doing what?"

"Breaking horses. Running forty cows of my own, on a grazing fee I paid your uncle." He changed gear. "I'll pay it to you now, if you like. It's in the lease."

"The lease I haven't read."

"Ten years, signed in August. It's in the folder on the kitchen table." He watched the track. "I'm not your hand, Jemima. Nobody hired me and nobody can fire me. I'd rather you knew that before you got angry about it."

I looked at his profile.

It was a good profile, which annoyed me more.

"I'm not angry," I said.

"You're gripping that mug like it owes you money."

I loosened my fingers.

The track climbed to a fence of silver cedar posts, and he stopped the truck.

On the far side of the wire stood a metal box the size of a refrigerator.

A fat black pipe ran out of it and away across a pasture that did not belong to us.

The creek ended at a steel gate set in a concrete weir.

Behind the gate, a pond of clear water sat pretty and untouched.

Below it, nothing.

I got out and walked straight up to the wire.

"That's his side," Rex said behind me. "He's holding what rises on his own spring."

"Is he."

"I'm only saying."

"I heard you."

I took out my phone and photographed the pump, the pipe, the gate and the pond.

"Ma'am!"

A man in an Ullrich Land & Cattle cap came jogging across the pasture.

"You can't be taking pictures out here. This is private property."

"I'm standing on mine." I pointed at my boots. "I'm photographing yours."

He stopped a few yards off.

"Mr. Ullrich's gonna want to know about this."

"I imagine he will. Tell him I'll be here until he arrives."

Rex made a small noise behind me that might have been a cough.

It took Lamar Ullrich twelve minutes.

He came in a gleaming white truck with a thermos and a napkin of kolaches.

"Miss Fairley! Good morning. I do apologize about all this."

"About the water you've taken from my cattle?"

"Now, now." He chuckled. "I'm just a friendly neighbor. Orville and I had our differences, God rest him, but I'd like to take this headache off your hands."

"No."

"The offer might go up, if you were smart about it. Say, Monday."

"No, Mr. Ullrich. I'd like you to open your gate."

He looked at me.

"It's my water, honey."

"It's a creek, and it crosses a boundary. I'll have a surveyor here Wednesday to say whose water is whose." I put my phone away. "Until then, my neighbors and I will manage."

Lamar's smile did not leave his face, but something behind it shifted.

He looked at Rex.

"You going to let her talk like this, son?"

Rex had one boot on the running board and his hat tipped back.

He was watching us the way you watch a good chess game.

"It's her gate," he said. "I'm only holding it."

Lamar laughed, short and unpleasant.

"Y'all will be sorry before Christmas," he said, and drove away.

The dust took a long time to settle.

I stood at the wire with my heart going, and found that I was shaking.

"You didn't help," I said.

"No." Rex pulled his hat down. "You didn't ask me to. You were doing fine."

I looked at him then, really looked, and he gave me a very small crooked smile.

I was still thinking about that smile at dusk, when a rattling pickup came up our lane with six blue barrels roped in the bed.

Zelma Rudd climbed out holding a cane she clearly did not need.

"Water for your cows," she said, dropping the tailgate. "Pie's in the cab."

She looked at me sideways, her small face unreadable under the white braid.

"Orville never told you why he left it all to you, did he?"

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