Page 40 of The Cowboy Who Worked Late

She held up one hand, palm out. “He knows the horse care. He organizes all of their care, and I handle all the farriers. But what if I promoted a farrier to foreman too? And we had one from both sides.”

Up came another hand. “And both sides have proper management, which would leave me to manage far less.” She pressed her palms together, her fingers lining up and pointing toward the ceiling. “I might even be able to get back to doing some private horseback riding lessons—you know, stuff I used to really enjoy.”

She looked over to Momma, and found her smiling for all she was worth. “That’s an excellent idea, don’t you think, Bard?”

Daddy looked like he’d eaten lemons for breakfast instead of scrambled eggs. He grunted, which Angel took to mean,Probably a good idea.

He blinked a couple of times and asked, “What are you running toward?”

“I just said it.” She lowered her hands, sure her vision was crystal clear.

“Say it again.”

“I want to maintain what Lone Star is and has,” she said, “But I can’t do it by myself. So, if we want to maintain the excellence in farrier care,andwe want to be the most excellent boarding stable there is within a five-hundred-mile radius, then I need more help.

“I need people who can lead the people under them the wayIwould do it. So, I want to promote from within. I want both sides of Lone Star to have representation—horsemen and farriers.” She used her hands to show both sides, and then she pushed her palms together, her fingers pointing up toward the ceiling. “And then me and Daddy, we’re at the top. We’re the ones going ‘How are the farriers doing? How are the horsemen doing?’ and we get reports,” Angel finished. “But I’m not the one passing out the folders.”

Daddy nodded, his lips pressed together. They twitched, and then turned up into a smile.

“Henry, or Clay, or Levi can pass out the folders.”

“I think this a real good idea, Angel.”

Relief sagged through her, more than she’d even thought it would. “Really, Daddy?”

“Yes,” he said. “It’ll be a different kind of management for everyone.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But we have good men here. And if I’m wrong, then I’ll fix it.”

“I believe in you, Angel,” he said, some of the best words Angel had ever heard.

She squeezed his hand. “Thank you, Daddy.” She got up and cleared away their dishes, leaving Momma and Daddy to talk with her not so close. Of course, they could talk with just their eyes, but Angel kept her back turned to them as she noisily cleaned the dishes and put them in the dishwasher.

When she returned to the table, she found Daddy sitting in her spot next to Momma, and they’d clearly been talking. She took Daddy’s place at the table and said, “So, I’d love some advice on who you would move to foreman and how we would then shift things around. Looks like we might have two promotions that we’re going to be doing.”

“Maybe more,” he said. “Maybe you need more team captains, new team leads. If you had more people in management, that would free up some of what you do as well.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I have been feeling like we need a new scheduler.” She swallowed, not sure she should keep speaking. “In fact, I feel like we need to have our schedulers who schedule the arrival of our horses be the ones who then meet the owners when they come, so they can say, ‘Hi, I’m Justin, and I spoke to you on the phone two days ago about Cloudy White. Welcome to Lone Star.’”

“So you’re gonna have people who make the schedule be the greeters?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Why not?”

“That’s a lot of scheduling,” he said.

“Yeah,” she said. “So we hire someone to schedule things, and we move our current scheduler to a…a Welcome Greeter.” She made up the title on the spot. “Someone who makes the confirmation phone calls two days before, like we already do, and is also the one who greets that specific owner at the gate.”

“That will require a lot of new training,” he said.

“We already have team leads who know how to do that,” she said. “So maybe they can make a few phone calls on the days before they become greeters.”

“We don’t typically assign greeters until morning-of.”

“So we’ll change that,” she said, firing right back. “Things can be changed, Daddy. We can implement new systems. Our culture is good. We have good people willing to step up. Either we trust them, or we don’t. And I think we should trust them more by giving them more time to prepare than the morning-of for a new board coming in.”

She exhaled angrily. “Heck, Henry has to have a stall, an exercise ring, and his crew ready within ninety minutes of roll call this morning. That’s almost not okay. It’s almost asking too much of those men.”

“Maybe,” Daddy said, which was his way of saying he’d think about it, and maybe Angel was right, and maybe she wasn’t. Daddy could admit when he was wrong. It just took him a while to get there.

---