# Car 54

####
© 2005 / revised 2014
K Pelle

### Chapter 50:
Caution - Slow Moving Vehicles on Roadway

When I awoke the next morning I slipped out of bed, dressed and went downstairs, but for once I managed to do it without waking Sandy. In the kitchen, I made coffee very, very quietly, then as I was drinking a cup, I turned the radio on quite low so I could listen to the news and weather. Once more they were forecasting good weather, which was good news for our road building project, maybe we could get the worst of it out of the way before we got hit by a summer storm.

When I went outside to do the chores, Princess, the undersized Collie and her son, Little Duke, jumped up to join me on my rounds. Old Duke never moved a muscle and that simply wasn't normal. Somehow I knew right away that he'd never move again, so when I touched him I wasn't surprised to find that he was already cold and stiff. He had seemed fine last night. He'd eaten with the other dogs when I'd fed them all after finishing the chores the evening before and he'd greeted us when we came home from the housewarming parties. He must have passed on sometime last night after curling up on his favourite blanket the same way he'd done thousands of times before, but now he was gone. I was going to miss that dog.

Duke was a purebred Border Collie and I remember Grampa Bender telling me that a friend had given Duke to him about the time of my third birthday, so that would mean he was fourteen years old. That's pretty darn old for a cattle dog, about the equivalent of a hundred dog years. He'd still been young enough to sire a pup last year though. Oh, I didn't have proof of that, but all you had to do was look at Little Duke and you could see that he was a chip off the old block. If you knew both dogs you'd notice that Little Duke acted the same way and even had many of the same habits.

It had been almost uncanny to watch the two Dukes work cattle together, they almost seemed to read each other's minds. And no, Princess didn't work the same way, instead she was more excitable and much noisier. She danced around, barked, yipped and even whined at times as she was working. Duke and Little Duke moved smoothly, but quietly and their main tactic was intimidation, combined with the occasional nipped heel on any stubborn cow that didn't herd well. They seldom made any sound louder than a snarl, yet the cattle took those two much more seriously than they ever did Princess. If Duke or Little Duke barked, they were calling for help to handle something they weren't accustomed to or something dangerous. Barking was their cry for a human to come tell them what to do or else a plea for a human to handle a problem they couldn't master.

Duke had acted as Grampa Bender's door bell when a car drove into the yard and his intrusion alarm if danger was approaching. He'd been company through long cold nights, a guide through raging blizzards, a willing worker when needed and a constant friend, always ready with a joyous greeting. Just over a year ago he had sat beside Grampa Bender's bed for hours when his old buddy had fallen ill and he hadn't left that duty until help had arrived. Even then he hadn't moved aside until he saw that a family member was there to handle the problem. It was only after he was certain that his master was being cared for that he'd finally dashed outside to relieve a painfully overextended bladder. Yet when I had moved up to the cabin to care for the ranch he had accepted me as his new friend and master on the ranch, doing his best to teach me what should be done and when I should do it. Later, he had been the proud father who had protected his son at a time of danger, then he'd fed his mate when she was unable to hunt and had shown her by example that I was someone to trust and obey. Above all he had soldiered on as long as he was able, doing his best for me, just as he had for Grampa Bender. In many ways Duke had been far more than just a cattle dog.

After fifteen or twenty minute, I realized that I'd been sitting beside that still form for some time, quietly stroking Duke's fur and remembering things about him that I had liked or admired. The two other dogs had been just as still, quietly watching as I said my goodbyes to the old timer, almost as if they were joining me in mourning his passage.

With a heavy sigh I got to my feet and went to get a shovel. Duke wasn't the first dog who had died on this ranch, so I knew just where Grampa Bender would want him to be buried. On the north side of the kitchen garden, just below the knoll topped by the tower of the old wind generator stood a line of five spruce trees. Soon there would be an sixth, but first the grave would need to settle, then I'd have to find a suitable sapling that could be transplanted to it's new place of honour. It really didn't take long to dig the hole or to carry over the cold body, now wrapped in his favourite blanket, but I'll admit to taking my time and shedding several tears as I slowly covered that still form. I left the soil mounded and unpacked, so others who might want to say their own goodbyes could easily find the spot where an old friend lay at rest.

Then swinging the shovel up and resting the shovel handle on my shoulder, I walked off to begin my daily chores. I think Duke would have understood that I wasn't being hard hearted; I had paid respect to the dead, but life goes on, even when death pays a visit. Besides, the work on a farm or ranch never really ends, cows still have calves, chickens still lay eggs, crops still grow and all the animals still need feed and water.

There weren't a lot of barnyard chores to do in the early summer and those that needed doing were easily handled in a short time. It didn't take long to check the horses, fill the feeders for the pigs and chickens, gather the eggs and finally, milk our one and only dairy cow. Soon I was turning the Jersey cow out to graze in the small pasture near the barn, then I was heading toward the house, carrying a pail of milk in one hand and a bucket of eggs in the other. On the porch I paused to set down my burdens for a moment, pausing to pet the two dogs, give them each a few treats and let them know that they'd done well, even if their talents hadn't been called on that morning.

"Good morning. You must have gotten up early and sneaked away darn quietly," Sandy greeted me as I came inside.

"Yep, morning," I answered, setting the eggs and milk down, then going to the hand sink to clean up a bit.

"Good morning, Chris. You sound awfully sober. Is something wrong?" Lucille asked, which surprised me because I hadn't even noticed her car in the yard.

"Morning Lucile. I suppose I am a bit down," I sighed. "When I went outside this morning I found old Duke and realized he'd died in his sleep. I buried him out past the end of the garden where Grampa Bender would have wanted him to be. I'll have to wait until after the fall rains start to find a Spruce sapling to shade his grave though."

"Oh, that's so sad. I'll miss that old dog," Sandy sniffed.

"Oh my. I don't want to be the one to tell Gramps about that," Lucille shook her head. "He loved that darn old mutt, but then so did you."

"Well, if Duke had been a person, not a dog, he'd have been about a hundred years old, so he hung in there for a long time. If you've noticed though, he left behind a carbon copy. Little Duke acts just like Duke always did," I poured myself a coffee and took my normal seat at the kitchen table.

"Yeah," Lucille snapped. "The moment anyone drives in the yard they have to protect their crotch."

"That's just a dog's version of a handshake," I chuckled, but then I sighed. "I suppose I should be the one who tells Grampa Bender that Duke is gone, but I really need to be here and working on the new road for the next few days. So I think I'll have to ask Mom or Dad to tell him the sad news."

"I'd definitely appreciate someone else doing that," Lucille sighed. "Now I have to ask, why did you say something about a Spruce sapling right after you said you buried Duke where Gramps would have wanted him to be."

"Well, you've seen that row of Spruce trees between the big knoll and the garden, haven't you? Each of those trees stands over the grave of one of Grampa Bender's favourite dogs that he's had over the years," Sandy said, having heard the story, then she changed the subject. "Breakfast, Chris? The guys should be here to work on the road in about half an hour and you should be ready for them."

When I finished breakfast and stepped outside, I glanced up toward the gap in the cliffs where we were going to run in the road and I chuckled. I was no longer seeing just dirt and rock in the cliffs on each side of the eroded gully, I was seeing an expression of geological history, all because of Mark Jackson. Over the last few Saturdays he and I had walked up and down that valley several times and he had explained to me how he thought the various layers had been laid down over geological time.

According to Mark at some time in the past the whole area, probably an area much larger that the county had been cover by a huge lake or parhaps even an inland sea. The sandstone and shale that made up the valley walls had been deposited as sand and mud on the bottom of that lake and over millions of years those had eventually been compressed into sandstone and shale. Then over the next several million or more years, running water had eroded it's way down through the relatively soft stone, leaving the valley walls almost as they stood now. However at some point during that time a faultline had developed at the bottom end of the upper valley, either raising the upper valley, or dropping the lower valley, and as a result, isolating the section which was now Mile High Ranch. He also suggested that at some time in the past a tilt in the underlying layers of basalt and granite had formed, so when the fault had shifted it created a blockage so the whole upper valley had become a lake. Eventually that blockage had been eroded away, leaving the ranch high and dry as it was now, but as the water wore through that blockage the lake created beachs at the various levels. We saw those levels as shelves along the valley walls.

Then when Mark had surveyed the route down from the upper plateau along the erosion gully, he'd had to take several factors into account. Primarily he set out to establish an easily negotiable grade down the slope and he wanted to try to avoid crossing the main flood path of the water which rushed down the gully on a seasonal basis. His next objective was to design a roadway that wouldn't become clogged by drifting winter snow and lastly he tried to create a design which relatively unskilled equipment operators could build. While he sought to meet those objectives, he was also trying to take advantage of the grades, shelves and past erosion levels of the gully walls so we'd be faced with the simplest and easiest job possible.

Once he'd shown me the plan and had walked the staked out route with me, I was positive that he had succeeded in most, if not all of his goals. The only questionable point in my mind was if his route solved the problem of drifting snow, but we'd have to wait for winter for the proof of his claims on that score. One positive point as far as I was concerned was that his route no longer followed as closely to the bottom of the gully as it had before, instead it ran part way up the bank of the wash. At some point in the past the water had taken a slightly different route, so along the far side of much of the gully there was an earlier erosion channel and that was the main portion of the route the new road would follow. There were two minor negative points to his design, the distance down the grade was going to be longer and a large outcropping of shale had to be blasted away. The increase in the distance we'd travel to climb the hill was negated by the fact that we'd be climbing a greatly reduced grade. The only real negative point would be the investment of time and money involved in removing most of a thick vein of shale, but I might even gain from that if the blasted shale could be handled as sheets or slabs. That all depended on the material and the blaster, so I was at the top of the hill waiting for him before eight in the morning, which is when Charlie Engels and his son-in-law, Allan 'Boom Boom' Jeffries was supposed to arrive.

While I was waiting, I checked the fuel and oil, then started the D6 Cat that I'd borrowed from my neighbour on Saturday. After waiting a few moments for the engine to warm, I drove the Cat out of the brush where I'd hidden it and played with it for a short while. Meanwhile Matt and John had driven over from their new house, then gone down the hill to bring back Dad's D4 Cat with the subsoil rippers and my old Massey Harris tractor with the front end loader. At that point I was using the blade to shear away scrub brush and peel back the thin topsoil from the approach section to the new grade. Mark's design for the road called for the approach road to swing left of it's present position so the new road could begin it's descent along the side of a secondary erosion channel until we could cut over to that existing shelf. By avoiding the main erosion gully in that section of the grade, we could bypass one of the steepest sections of the old road and also eliminate one of the worst stretches for snow buildup during blizzards.

Charlie was almost a half hour late and very apologetic when he arrived, but that didn't really bother me since I'd been working steadily on the new approach road. He was late enough that Matt and John were coming up the hill with the D4 and the Massey just as we were unloading the backhoe from Charlie's trailer. Matt and John were parking the two tractors off to the side of the new road just as Charlie's son-in-law arrived, so it was time for introductions all around. I noticed that Allan 'Boom Boom' Jeffries made particular mention that he preferred to be called 'Al' when he wasn't playing hockey and I also saw that he'd arrived ready to work. His pickup truck was loaded with the drills and equipment he'd need and he was towing a huge air compressor on a trailer behind his pickup.

Since Charlie was in a hurry to get to his other job, he left as soon as introductions were made, then I explained to Matt and John what I wanted each of them to do so I could spend some time with Al. Once Al and I were alone, I explained what I wanted done and suggested we should look at the job, but we hopped in my pickup rather than walk a quarter mile down the road, then have to slog back up the hill afterward. About a third of the way down the grade I pulled the truck off to the side as far as I could and parked. We got out and I pointed across the erosion channel, then about sixty feet up the opposite wall of the gully.

"There's my problem. If you look upstream or downstream from that shale outcrop, you can see traces of an old wash as well as the stakes on both the uphill and downhill side of the new roadway. Unfortunately we need to cut right through that shale outcrop in order to meet that shelf farther downhill. I really don't want to have a hump in the road to climb over that shale slab."

"Well, first off, that's not shale, it's slate and I'd advise you to take the whole lot out of there, because if you try to build a road on that sloping sheet, everything could easily slide when it rains," he said quietly. "Work wise, that's quite a chunk of rock, but I can break it up into a lot smaller chunks quite easily. It's going to fracture into slabs though, probably in sections from an inch to maybe a foot thick and the biggest hunks might be four to five feet across."

"Wonderful!" I nodded in approval. "If it's that small I can shove it over the bank, then shift it down where I want it with the front end scoops on the tractors. Since it's so hard, water doesn't wear it away fast, so I'd like to use a lot of it to line the channel down further, but some of it will become rip-rap to prevent some of the banks of the gully from eroding much more."

"Well, you sound like you know what you're doing," he laughed. "Either that or someone who knows what they're doing gave you some good advice."

"The latter," I chuckled. "Mark Jackson did the survey and the plans for the whole thing. Since he works for Hydro and surveys a lot of the roads they build to maintain their power lines, I thought he'd know what he was doing. He'll be dropping around once in a while, probably in the evenings or early morning though."

"Sounds good," Al was looking around, then he pointed. "Do you suppose you could bring one of those Cats down here and shove the top off that little knoll there, beside the road? If you could do that, I could pull my rig off to the side, string my air hoses across the channel and up to that rock shelf, then start drilling my blast holes this morning."

"Isn't that a little far to haul your hoses and drills. I was thinking we'd just look at it today, then I'd run in a rough trail up top with the Cat so you could get closer to the job."

"Hell, that isn't far compared to a lot of the jobs I've done. Besides, if you don't mind I'd just as soon get started on the job today. The wife has a baby coming and we could use the cash just as soon as we can get it. Jobs are a bit short this year, in fact this is the first job I've had in three weeks."

"Not a problem then, and if you'd like I can cut you a cheque for your work every night after you finish for the day."

"Oh no need of that. I figure there's only three, maybe four days of work to break up that ledge, then I'll be looking for another job. Besides, we're not completely broke, just on the way."

"Do you just do blasting or do you work at other jobs as well?"

"There isn't a lot of blasting work to do in the area, so when I'm done here I'll take anything," he said sharply.

"Well, it may not be at your blasting wages all the time, but if you can run a tractor or a backhoe, I could use another operator for a couple of weeks. That way, if we do need any more blasting done you'll be here and we'll know you're available."

"You'd hire me on for two weeks, just like that? I haven't even done anything yet."

"Hey, Charlie recommended you and I trust him, so that's all the reference I need."

"Well, I'm sure willing," he held out his right hand. "Damn, I'd like to call the wife and let her know I've got at least two week's work."

"No problem, I've got to drive down the hill to turn the pickup around anyway. It's not that far from the first turn around to the house, so we'll drive all the way. Then you can use our phone to make your call. Besides, I need to let the gals know how many guys will be around for lunch," I grinned, shook his hand, then headed for my truck.

Al must not have been paying attention as he drove past the viewpoint into the valley when he'd arrived, but he was quite taken with the view of the ranch buildings as we came out of the gorge.

"Wow, that's quite a setup," he stared ahead.

"Thanks, that's Mile High Ranch, and I suppose you could call me the manager," I chuckled. "The place belongs to Grampa Bender, but since he's in the hospital with a bad ticker, I'm looking after the place, and since I know I'm mentioned in the will I try to do a good job."

"Unh huh, sure," he snorted. "Charlie has told me a lot about you and the rest of the Bender Clan, of course I'm not sure my wife believes him. Em and I were out to the stock car races at Pine Lake early this spring and I think you're the reason she's pregnant. She got so excited about that darn race that she was wild that night, even worse than she usually gets when I've been in a tussle at a hockey game and that's saying a lot."

"Oops, sorry about that," I chuckled. "Some women do get a bit wound up at those races."

"Tell me about it," he laughed as I pulled to a stop by the house.

While he was making his phone call I went looking for Sandy since Lucille said she was out at the garden. I found her planting Nasturtiums on the freshly turned soil over Duke's grave.

She looked up at me and smiled with tears on her cheeks. "I thought he'd like these, since he always seemed to roll around in the ones I planted by the bridge."

"I think he liked the way they stink," I smiled, giving her a hug.

"Probably," she sighed. "What are you doing back here so soon."

"Oh, the guy who's doing the blasting wanted to call his wife. I've hired him to work for the next while. If he's not blasting rock, he can run a tractor. Since his wife is pregnant and he was having trouble finding work, he jumped at the chance."

"You old softy," she chortled, hugging me tightly.

"Well, his wife is a shirt-tail cousin, so ..."

"A what kind of cousin?"

"A shirt-tail cousin," I chuckled again. "Emily's Great-Gramma was a naughty girl and got pregnant, then wouldn't marry the guy and her son used her last name."

"Let me guess, she was one of Grampa Bender's girlfriends, right?"

"Yeah, the family thinks she liked to visit, but didn't want to live here and when Grampa Bender wouldn't move to town she got annoyed and went off on her own. We know Grampa Bender has helped out the Engels, father and son, but other than that ..."

"Unh huh, and you're just like your granddaddy, only you're fixing the road so your gal friends can come and go at any time," she jabbed me in the ribs and grinned.

"Hey, I'm not the one who brought all these women around. That was Carissa and you. I didn't go chasing any women at all."

"Oh sure, try telling that to everyone. Maybe you'll get lucky and someone might actually believe it, but you'd better hurry, even Jackie isn't as credulous as she once was," she giggled, then slipped away and scooted back toward the house.

I knew that I was just being teased and that I had gotten involved with several young women, but I also knew I hadn't sought them out intentionally, still I didn't like being teased about it. Instead of looking for an argument though, I headed back to my truck to wait for Al to finish his phone call.

Only moments later we were on the way back up the hill to get to work for the day. By ten in the morning I had levelled the top of that knoll he had pointed out, then he'd parked his truck and trailer and was soon stretching his air hoses up to the rock outcropping. I'd scarcely gotten back to the top of the hill before Leo Burton, the District Agriculturist came driving up, closely followed by a truck from the county road maintenance yard.

At the front end of that truck they'd loaded an old sheep's-foot packer, but the rest of the space on the flat deck was filled with sections of corrugated iron culverts which the driver unloaded at the side of the road. I was surprised when a second truck drove up with another load of culverts, but Leo just grinned and told me to talk to the driver. That driver said both loads had been used before and since every piece was damaged, the county couldn't use them again, which meant I could have both loads at scrap metal prices. I didn't care if the culverts were used or not, and since they were still great for our purposes, I wrote out a cheque to the county and handed it to the driver. It was a good deal all around. The county was glad to clean up their work yard while I had more than enough culverts to do the job at hand and had managed to get them very cheaply. Since Leo and the county drivers left as soon as they'd unloaded the packer beside the 'scrap iron' corrugated pipe, I was able to get back to the job at hand quite soon.

Now before I go any further with my description of what we were doing, I should explain a bit about the sandstone in the area we were working. It isn't one of the extremely hard or very dense forms of sandstone, which means that rainfall and snow melt, which both contain minute amounts of nitric and carbonic acid, eventually break the sandstone down into plain, old, garden-variety sand. Of course that means water running down the gullies is loaded with loose sand during a gully washing rainfall. It also means that any slope or vertical face of sandstone usually has a sloping pile of loose sand at its base and any surface that nears level will have a covering of loose sand. Of course nature being what it is, there are plants which thrive in that loose sand which do die and decompose and there is also some clay in the sandstone cliffs, so that loose sand eventually becomes a very sandy topsoil. Sandy topsoil is not the best material with which to build roads, in fact it's a very poor material since water and pressure both move it so easily.

However we had a natural method of defeating the sand's tendency to be so easily shifted underfoot. First off, I should explain that when sand falls off of our sandstone cliffs, it doesn't fall as individual grains of sand, instead it falls as small clumps and nuggets. Those clumbs and nuggets pack quite well and they lock together if they are tightly packed, but water does tend to break them down into finer grains over time. Secondly, we needed to prevent a lot of the water from the upper plateau travelling along our road and undercutting it, so we were going to dig drainage ditches in the clay of the plateau. All of those ditches would either drain away from the new road or into the main gully and the clay we dug out of those ditches would be mixed in with the sand in our roadbed. That clay would bind even the small grains of sand together almost like cement so our road would be much more stable. My problem was knowing how much clay to mix into the sand to bind things solidly.

I'd told the District Agriculturalist about my problem and he took samples of sand, sandy clumps and clay soil to the University of Edmonton and had them run some tests. The engineering department found a mixture of those materials which packed well and retain it's shape, even in pouring rain. They recommended that the top three to four inches of our road should have 40% sandy clumps, 40% loose sand and 20% clay. Those ingredients needed to be mixed together, moistened and then packed well with a sheep's-foot packer before the surface was levelled to a final grade. They also suggested that the road's surface should be lightly crowned and a mixture of annual rye grass and dryland grass seed should be spread on the verges of the roadway as soon as possible. The sloping sides of roadside drainage ditches should also be seeded and the uphill ends of all culverts should be protected with rip-rap, preferably rip-rap bedded in loose clay soil.

Matt, John, Al and I worked on that road for eight to ten hours a day and for six days a week over the next two work weeks. My cousin, Tom spent five days just cutting out damaged sections of culvert and joining good sections together so we could drain our roadside ditches. Then he spent two more days cutting and rebuilding five sections of four foot diameter culvert into one long pipe which would handle the flood water at the point where our new road crossed the big gully. Both George and Wil each spent a couple of days helping us with two tractors as they ran double disks and cultivators up and down the roadway to mix the clay with the sandy soil. Even Dad came up at the last, insisting on riding on the old road grader pulled behind the old Massey tractor, saying that the final grade had to be done correctly so the road would have just enough crown to drain off well. I even seeded the roadside the last day, walking the full mile and a half up and down, cranking the handle on the little seed spreader, but before I finished that job I thought my right arm was about to fall off.

We completely finished the road at about three in the afternoon on a Friday and we had a barbeque after chore time that evening. We invited everyone who had anything to do with building the road, as well as all of our close friends and family. The yard was packed, but the best part for me was when Mom and Dad drove in with a new car and helped Grampa Bender into a wheelchair so he could be wheeled around the ranch.

Grampa Bender spent a little over an hour 'back home' and since he hadn't been back since he'd had his stroke, he wanted to see all the changes we'd made. He had been there for a little while at Christmas, but it had been cold out then and there had been snow on the ground, so we hadn't taken him outside. So, with Lucille wheeling the chair and acting very much the nurse, we went on a tour. He had to see the old pig pen and had a laugh about 'Rotten' Ray and 'Slimy' Sid being trapped on the roof by the old sow and the dogs, then he had to shake his head about the cougar I'd had to shoot a few days before. Of course he had to be wheeled out to the barn and had a long look at the new cattle pens and the breeding pasture we'd built for the Quarter Horse stallion. He chuckled over our snowmobiles and my motorbike, but he just shook his head at the D4 and D6 Cat tractors as well as the backhoe. None of those were the kind of machine he was accustomed to using on the ranch.

Of course he commented about the new road and about the two new houses at the beginning of the ranch road, saying 'Dang kid is t'only fella I kin think o' who could figger howta make money offen thet worthless chunka dead-dry dirt. Not ony thet, but them folks is happy he dun it.' After that of course he had to praise Sandy for her vegetable garden and for the flowers she'd managed to grow near the house.

Still, I think his biggest reason for coming out had been to sit for a few minutes at Duke's grave. I wheeled him over to the little grave and he smiled at the flowers Sandy had planted on it, then quietly thanked her for that, but gave me strict instructions on where to find a Spruce sapling and when to transplant it. Soon though Grampa Bender was slowing down and acting sleepy, so Mom and Dad drove him back to town. As soon as they drove out of the yard Lucille phoned the Rest Home to let them know he was on the way and that he was fine, but a bit tired.

The party carried on for a few hours and although we had some beer after we'd eaten, no one got carried away or drank too much. It was just a happy gathering of friends and my way of adding a little extra thank you to those who had helped with the job.

I did have a chat with Frank Dolens though, since Tom wouldn't take any payment for all the work he'd done on all those culverts. I suggested he should find a used extended-cab pickup for Tom to use as a mechanics truck, since he'd done so much work on Car 54. I was willing to either pay for it outright or share the cost with him, but I wanted to dress it up and add one of those full width tool lockers in the box. He jumped at the idea, but asked about George, so I grinned and said I was giving George a horse, then told him about George's lack of skill at riding.

"So, if he doesn't ride well, why are you giving George a horse?" he asked.

"Well, Beth wants to get back into Appaloosa horses and has sold me her Quarter Horse mares. She's already picked up two mares and is trying to find an exceptional Appaloosa stallion to have them bred. Earlier this year I made a deal to buy four Quarter Horse mares and while I was looking them over I noticed an old Appaloosa mare that the rancher's daughter had owned and ridden for years. She's as gentle as any horse I've ever seen and she's exceptionally well trained, but she had been bred by mistake. The stallion's pedigree was prime, in fact he'd already been sold and the mare's pedigree is excellent, but she's old. I bought her anyway, on a gamble that she'd throw a wonderful colt and I was right, that little colt is going to be blue ribbon quality, at least I think so."

"So what has this got to do with George?"

"Well, I have absolutely no use for an old Appaloosa mare and an immature Appaloosa stud. So I'm going to give George the pair. Since that little stallion is going to be worth quite a bit of money for stud fees, George is going to have a reason to get involved with horses. Just add it up, Beth is nuts about horses and George is nuts about Beth, so since she owns the mares and he'll have a great future stud, it should bring them closer together. Beth is going to go crazy over the little stallion's pedigree and I really think that mare is tame enough for even George to ride. Now, I've kept both horses hidden away from everyone, but Sandy, Lucille and the veterinarian, so please don't say anything about them for now. I've been hunting for a decent gift for Tom's birthday and I figure I'll give George his birthday gift the same day."

"You sneaky son of a gun," Frank laughed. "I know just the truck to get for Tom and I can have it ready in a couple of weeks, if that's soon enough."

"That'll do fine Frank, but mum's the word, okay?"

"Don't you want to know how much the truck's going to cost you?"

"Nah, I figure I owe you quite a bit anyway, and if it's too much I'll have a reason to retire from driving Car 54," I laughed.

"Black mailer!" he accused. "That old clunker car, with you behind the wheel, has paid for itself ten times over in used car sales. That happens to be the best advertising deal I ever made, but if you're still driving next year, we're going to have to switch cars. I've bought almost all the body panels available for that model in all the junkyards in Alberta and I've got dealers looking for fenders and door panels in Saskatchewan."

"Well, I'll drive this year, but I don't know about next year. It's getting harder and harder to get away from the ranch every time I want to go racing."

"You can do it this summer though, can't you?"

"Yeah, but like I told you this spring, the ranch and my education come first."

"Well, I'll talk to you about it at the track on Sunday."

"Yeah, okay. If it doesn't rain, but the weather forecast doesn't look good."

Frank's wife Jennifer came over to us then and not much later they left to do something else in the later evening. In fact their leaving seemed to be a signal and inside of an hour, the yard was empty. Even Lucille had left since she had to go to work early the next morning, so Sandy and I finished the last of the cleanup, then had a cup of cocoa out on the porch before we gave up and went to bed.

It was John's turn to do the chores the next morning, but I was already up, so I called him and told him I'd do them that morning. After the chores, a shower and breakfast, Sandy and I decided to go down to Uncle Tom's so she could see her sisters while I worked on Car 54 with Tom and got it ready for the next day out at the track. There really wasn't much to do on the car, but I did enjoy sitting and jawing with Tom, because although he was still in high school, he had a very adult attitude toward life. I suppose we wasted an hour or two, just shooting the bull and kidding each other about our lives and our lady friends. But then, since I was involved with Sandy and Lucille while he was involved with the McAdam twins, we were in a rare minority that most young guys would never understand. In fact I don't think either of us understood the situation all that well either.

From Uncle Tom's house, Sandy and I drove to town and chatted with Grampa Bender for a while, then we drove out home and had Sunday dinner with Mom, Dad, Will, Corrinna, Beth and George. George's parents and his Grandmother had driven to Red Deer to see George's aunt and uncle, but Beth hadn't wanted to go, so George had stayed with her. I got a kick out of Dad changing his tune about the new road, but had enough common sense not to mention that I'd noticed. I did catch a grin and wink from Mom though, since she'd been there when Dad had told me the layout would never work and we'd never get it done in time because of the amount of work we had to do.

I and Sandy were still chuckling about that when we drove home that night and I really liked the difference in the road as we drove down the hill. We were only about half way down when I started to notice sprinkles on the windshield though, so although we had been planning to go for a walk that evening we soon squashed that idea. Instead we raced for the house as soon as we parked. We even managed to postpone petting the dogs until we were standing on the porch instead of greeting them as we stepped out of the truck the way we normally would.

We were still standing there moment or two later when we saw lightning strike a tree that had grown at the edge of one of the cliffs on the eastern side of the valley. Only seconds later we heard an exceptionally loud crash of thunder, then the skies seemed to open and a virtual cloudburst pelted down. In moments we couldn't even see the barn, which was only a hundred and fifty yards from the house.

"Well, this ought to test out our road building ability," I said quietly.

"That's putting it mildly," Sandy broke into laughter. "Talk about a test and a half, this is something else."

It had been warm all day, but about then the wind came up and we really started to feel the temperature drop, so we went inside. John had obviously done the chores, because there was a fresh jug of milk in the refrigerator and more eggs in the egg basket. Since we still had electricity, I started to make a small pot of coffee, while Sandy went to find a sweater because she said she felt a bit chilly.

I had thought the rain would last a while, or perhaps even turn into a hail storm, but it didn't. Before my pot of coffee was perked, the rain had eased off to a light rain, almost a drizzle and the skies grew noticeably lighter, then darn if the sun didn't peek out as it hit the horizon. I glanced out a window to the east and there was a brilliant rainbow that seemed to have one end anchored on the visible crest of our new road.

I called Sandy to come look, then broke into laughter when she grabbed a camera and ran out on the porch to snap a shot of that rainbow before it disappeared.

The rain lasted about an hour before it petered out, but it was the sign of what was to come for the next while. The next day, the races at Pine Lake were rained out, but we never got any real heavy rain, just showers, while up at the track the rain came down in buckets. Then for the next two weeks it was cloudy a lot of the time and we had some rain every day, but there wasn't really enough rain to do any damage to the new road. It stood up well to the few heavy showers we had, but what that rain did do was settle any loose soil that we'd left behind and it sprouted the seed that I'd spread along the verges of the road. Inside of three weeks you could see a light greenish tint to all the areas where I'd spread seed, but the surprise was the road surface itself. It stood up well to the little bit of traffic we'd had, in fact it seemed to pack even tighter than before.

That rain did one other thing too, it helped our hay fields, so we were going to have a bumper crop of hay that year. The previous fall I'd spread alfalfa seed on the hayfield near the upper lake, but the plants hadn't seemed to grow much. In fact the alfalfa didn't show up in the bales of the early hay crop we'd taken off a few weeks before. After that rainy period though, the alfalfa seemed to take over and our second crop in that field was going to be a humdinger. The crop from there was going to be about half alfalfa and half fescue, a mix that usually sold extremely well.

That rain hadn't been heavy enough to set back the other work around the ranch either. Since Al hadn't been able to find another blasting job anywhere near home and didn't want to travel right then, I hired him to work with Matt, John and me. We repaired some of the trails around the ranch, did some fencing and looked after my growing herd. We even spent a week slapping up an open faced pole barn to give some extra shelter to the stock, but working with the corrugated metal roofing on that pole barn gave me an idea. Since it looked as if we were going to do extremely well on our hay sales that year, I gambled and bought the material to put up the shell of a steel framed and steel sheeted machine shed. I even added the extra material to build a workshop to go next to it. Until I had more money in the kitty, I planned to leave both buildings as a shell, but even the shell of a building needs to sit on a foundation. That meant we had some concrete work to do before that material arrived so we'd have solid footings as a base for the walls and roof of the two buildings. We staked out the area, cleared the ground with the big Cat, and hauled in the gravel and cement, built the forms for the footings, then spent a whole day mixing and pouring concrete.

The Friday after that concrete had been poured, the materials for the building arrived and two hours into the next morning an army of people arrived to throw the building up. Dad, Wil, Tom, George, Mark and Luke joined Matt, John, Al and I as we started on the frame about nine in the morning. Sandy, Corrinna, Mom and Beth helped out by making coffee and lunch. By four that afternoon the last panel was on the roof of the new equipment shed and the workshop frame was up, with the walls fully sheeted. At that point there was an exodus of all the extra helpers who needed to do chores at home, so Matt, Al and I carried on with the roofing while John did our chores. We finished putting up the last roof panel before the guys left for home early that evening.

By that time the hay fields were ripe and ready, so we started on that job the next morning and for the next twenty days we worked ten to twelve hours a day, seven days a week. I had leased a small tractor, a new mower and a hay conditioner. We borrowed Dad's baler, and his small tractor and hay wagon, and Wil came to work with us about half of the time. Tom and George showed up to put in a hand once in a while and even Carissa and Jackie spent some time helping us. The weather held warm and dry, and we didn't even have much dew on the ground most mornings. By the time I had to think about going off to school we had more hay cut, baled, staked and under cover or sold than we'd had the year before. Then I was able to sell all the extra hay I wouldn't need in order to overwinter my herd and the price of hay bales was nearly as high as it had been the previous year.

Since we'd done so well, on the hay crop I decided we could afford to put concrete floors in the equipment shed and the workshop. We ended up tackling that job shortly before I went off to Olds for the fall session, but like any of our big jobs, everyone in the family decided to get involved. Not long after we got started, Dad took me aside and pointed out that I'd goofed when I bought the bags of Portland cement. I had enough to do the floor of the equipment shed at the depth I'd indicated, but I wouldn't have enough for both buildings. It was definitely an 'Oh Shit!' moment, but I could easily rectify the error. I borrowed Dad's new one ton and headed for town, but as I got to the house, Sandy waved me down and wanted to get some extra groceries to feed the crew. No problem. We could do that.

So we drove to town and I dropped Sandy off at the grocery store, then picked up the cement we'd need and drove back to pick up Sandy. We were loading the bags of groceries into the truck when I heard a high pitched shrieking voice behind me.

"Well if it isn't that slimy bastard, the cougar killer, here in town along with his little redheaded bitch. Are you buying more salted meat to lure another cougar down to your ranch, just so you can have matching cougar skin rugs on each side of your bed?"

Sandy was fit to be tied, but I knew who it was, it had to be Marjory Deloitte, the local animal activist. She was a pain in the butt who had harped about everything from the extinction of the carrier pigeon to the plight of the latest bug that was being sprayed as a pest. She'd been known to scream so loudly at a local town meeting that she'd destroyed the microphone she was using, in fact the mayor joked that she should be kept on waivers to be used as an air raid siren.

"Forget that thing, Sandy," I advised loudly and winked at her. "It doesn't realize just how much of a fool it is showing itself to be. If it ever got one fact correct the world would stop turning and fall into the sun."

Then I helped Sandy into the truck, closed her door and went around to the other door, then drove directly to the RCMP detatchment at the other end of the street. Sandy followed me when I went inside and I could see she was fuming.

Luckily my friend, Constable Davis was there and I smiled at him.

"Hello, Chris, Sandy, what can I do for you today?" he smiled at us.

"I'm sorry, but in about ten seconds Marjory Deloitte is going to come in your door and will want me arrested for murder, mayhem and various other infractions of the law. She was screaming at me about shooting that cougar that was after my hens and she insulted Sandy as well. Since she's probably off her medications, you might want to be ready for anything to happen."

"Oh wonderful. Are you parked out front?"

"We're parked up the street on the bank side," I grinned.

"Okay, why don't you two go out the side door, Chris. As soon as you hear her slam the door, go to your truck and leave town. I'll handle her highness." he heaved a sigh.

Sandy just stared at him and then me, but she didn't argue. Thank goodness! We went out the side door and when we heard the front door slam, then heard the woman's voice, we hurried to the truck and took the officer's advise as we left town for the day. On the way home I did my best to explain. Marjory Deloitte had only moved to our town a few months before, so it was only by chance that I knew much about her. She came from a very rich family, so she had money and didn't have to work, but she also had some strange malady that was completly incurable. She was on medications of some sort that helped most of the time, but once in a while she decided to skip her medications, then she became a real pain in the butt. Even at the best of times she was somewhat strange, but she wasn't violent, just extremely obnoxious and very, very loud.

"But, she ... You ..."

"Sandy, I didn't talk to her directly, because she had her dog with her. While she isn't dangerous, the dog is. Okay?"

"But you insulted her right back, calling her a 'thing' and 'it.' Wasn't that dangerous?"

"No, that wasn't dangerous because I didn't look at her when I spoke, I didn't use her name, I didn't even use the words 'woman' or 'her' or 'she.' As a result I probably left her very confused. For some reason she expects anyone who is speaking about her to acknowledge her in some way, otherwise she doesn't seem to realize you're talking about her at all. Unless she does something clearly dangerous to me or others, I won't do a thing about anything she says or does. I went to the police right away because I know she needs help today and they were available."

"Well, if she calls me a redheaded bitch again, and that dog isn't around, I'm not making any promises."

I couldn't help grinning at that, imagining redheaded Sandy climbing up one side of that tall skinny scarecrow and down the other, tearing off and spitting out little pieces and ragged tufts of scraggly hair as she went. The image was too good to keep to myself so I described my imaginings to Sandy and got her giggling. By the time we got back to the ranch, Sandy was smiling at things again so I felt I'd smoothed the situation for the time being, but I wasn't making any guarantees for the future.

I'd managed to buy enough Portland cement to finish the job, but the guys had fun ribbing me about running off and leaving the hard work to them, which meant I had to work all that much harder just to feel better about it. Of course they weren't going to let me forget my mistake, but I knew it was all in good fun. The main thing was that we got both floors done, then Matt and I were able to trowel them level that evening and we even had time to 'broom' both floors lightly so they wouldn't be too slippery.

That evening I took the time to total up the books for Mile High Ranch and was pleasantly surprised at what I found. Even after paying for all the material to finish the buildings and adding in all the expected expenses for the next few months, there would still be money in the bank from the sales of that great hay crop. So overall, things looked great to me that fall. All of my friends and family were healthy and the ranch was fully in the black on all fronts. Life seemed to be lookin up and I was relatively optimistic about the future.

### Chapter 51