The Queen of Honduras Came to Texas to Buy Bulls, and Fell for the Shortest Cowboy in the Arena novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Horse
The Queen of Honduras rides into a Texas arena for the cameras, her horse bolts, and a short cowboy catches her, owns the bulls she came to buy, and is mocked for it, before her chamberlain tells her she's engaged.
The horse they gave me was the wrong horse, and I knew it the second I put my boot in the stirrup.
He was a tall gray gelding with a white rim around his eye.
He kept shifting his weight.
"Majesty, smile," Elena said from below me. "The cameras are on the gate."
Three hundred people were packed into the stands of Roscoe Strother's arena outside Marfa, Texas.
There were reporters from Austin and Tegucigalpa. There were ranchers in good hats and wives in good jackets.
There was a banner over the gate that said WELCOME QUEEN ISABELLA in letters as tall as a child.
I was supposed to ride through that gate, circle the arena once, and stop in front of forty Brahman bulls.
Then I was supposed to point at them and say I'd buy them.
Four hundred bulls in all, for the ranchers of Olancho, whose herds had died in two years of drought.
It was the reason I'd flown two thousand miles.
Roscoe Strother stood at the rail in a white hat and a belt buckle the size of a saucer.
"She's a fine animal, ma'am!" he called up. "Gentlest horse on the place!"
The gray tossed his head and nearly pulled the reins out of my hands.
I'm a big woman. I'm five foot eleven, and I'm built like my grandmother, wide and solid all the way down.
I'd been riding since I was six, on her hacienda outside Juticalpa.
I knew a scared horse when I was sitting on one.
"Elena," I said quietly. "This horse is wrong."
"This horse is on the program," she said. "Ride."
The gate swung open.
The crowd stood up and cheered.
I squeezed with my legs, and the gray walked out into the light.
For the first few yards it was perfect.
Then something buzzed over my head.
A camera drone, flying low for the shot.
The gray screamed and went straight up.
I felt the saddle tilt under me.
I grabbed mane and leaned forward, and he came down hard and bolted along the rail.
The crowd's cheer turned into one long gasp.
Strother's wranglers came running from the chutes, waving their arms.
That only made it worse.
The gray spun away from them toward the far fence, and my hat flew off, and the pins came out of my hair.
We were bearing down on that fence.
Then a man stepped off the rail into the dirt, right in the gray's path.
He wasn't running.
He wasn't waving anything.
He just stood there with his hands low and said, "Whoa, now. Whoa, son."
The gray slid to a stop so close I could have touched the man's hat.
The man took the bridle by the cheek piece.
He put his other hand flat on the gray's neck and kept talking to him, low and slow, nonsense words.
The horse blew out hard and dropped his head.
The whole arena went quiet.
I looked down at him.
I had to look a long way down.
He was a short man, maybe five foot four, compact and broad through the shoulders.
He had a sweat-stained gray hat and a sun-creased face and the calmest gray-blue eyes I'd ever seen.
"You all right, ma'am?" he asked.
"I think so."
"You sat that real good." He nodded at the drone, still hovering. "Somebody ought to shoot that thing."
Somebody in the stands laughed, and the sound broke the spell.
"I'd like to get down," I said.
"Yes, ma'am."
He moved to the gray's shoulder and held up his hand.
I swung my leg over and came down the side of that tall horse with all my weight.
He caught me at the waist.
He didn't stagger.
He set me on the ground.
Then he let go, fast and polite, and took his hat off.
The top of his head came to my chin.
Every camera in the arena was clicking.
Roscoe Strother came striding across the dirt with his arms spread wide.
"Majesty! Thank God. You all right?"
He clapped the short man on the back hard enough to knock him a step.
"Thank you, son. Real kind of you." He grinned up at the stands. "Pony rides are out back, folks, if this little fella wants to give you one."
The stands roared.
The short man's ears went red.
He put his hat back on and said nothing at all.
I looked at Strother.
"Who chose this horse for me?"
His grin slipped a little. "Ma'am, he's the gentlest horse on the place."
"Then I'd hate to meet the others."
Fewer people laughed at that. But they laughed.
Behind the fence, the forty bulls stood in their pen, huge and gray and humped at the shoulder.
Every one had a fresh Strother tag in its ear.
The short man was looking at them.
He wasn't looking at the queen, or the crowd, or the cameras.
He was looking at those bulls.
"Mr. Strother," I said, loud enough for the reporters at the rail. "Tell me about these animals."
"Finest Brahman in Texas, ma'am. Strother bred, every one."
The short man turned his head.
"No, sir," he said. "They're not."
Strother laughed. "Clyde, go on home."
"Those are Bennett bulls," the man said to me. "Rocking B. I raised every one of them. He bought them off me in September."
Three hundred people had gone very quiet.
"Is that true, Mr. Strother?" I asked.
"I bought 'em fair and legal." Strother's face was going red. "Little man needed cash. Ain't my fault his daddy died broke."
The short man, Clyde, flinched.
He touched his hat brim to me.
"Ma'am," he said, and walked back toward the rail.
I opened my mouth to call him back.
Elena's hand closed on my arm.
Her nails went into the inside of my elbow, under the sleeve where no camera would see.
She smiled for the stands and spoke through her teeth.
"Andrés Montenegro lands in Midland tomorrow at nine."
"Why would I care when a banker lands?"
"Because he's your fiancé," Elena said. "You'll meet his plane, and you'll smile, and you'll wear his ring."
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