Page 17 of A Cowboy Of Her Own

Roark laughed. “No. I raise them only for bull riding.”

“Oh. Thank God.”

“You make no sense. You don’t like to see anything killed, but you eat steak. But you get upset because you think you may have eaten one of my bulls.”

She shrugged. “What can I say? I like steak fromthe grocery store. I don’t think of them as cows that way.”

Roark reined Apache to a stop. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Nope.”

“I will never understand women.” He nudged Apache to move forward again.

Priscilla laughed. “I will never understand why a man gets on the back of a creature that weighs over a thousand pounds either.”

“Got me there,” he said with a chuckle, not wanting to get into the dangerous appeal of it with her.

“Earl mentioned that you would have competed in more venues if you’d won that round. What else do you compete in?”

“He’s behind the times. I don’t do that anymore. I’ve just been in bull riding for over seven years now. I can’t risk getting injured and not being able to ride the bulls. But I did used to compete in the reining competition.”

“I love watching that. How do you teach the horse to do all that?”

“Just get a good trainer… someone who does it for a living. Jake Stone in Clifton is one of the best.”

“I’ve never seen it live. I’d love to though.”

Roark stopped his horse again. “How long are you here?”

“Earl wants me to stay the three weeks I would have followed you around on the circuit.”

“Okay then, I’ll take you to the rodeo in town next month. There’s a competition there for fun. Jake will compete in reining. His brother, Gabe, will compete in calf roping, and his youngest brother, Wyatt, will compete in cutting. There is no onebetter than Wyatt in cutting. His horse is amazing.”

“I’d love it. Thanks.” Priscilla grinned at him.

He frowned realizing he’d made plans for them that far ahead when he really should be figuring out a way to get her to finish up early and go back to wherever she came from. Nudging Apache to move along, he rode away from her.

Chapter Four

Priscilla narrowed her eyes at his back as he expanded the distance between them.What was that all about?One minute he was talking with her just fine and the next, he gave her the evil eye and rode off.And men say women are hard to understand.She nudged her horse to catch up to him.

“Tell me about the bulls. I can use that in the article,” she said when she caught him.

Roark glanced over to her and then away. She saw him take a deep breath.Moody much.

“Raising bucking bulls isn’t just a pleasure, it can be very profitable. A beef or dairy heifer may sell for five to seven hundred dollars, but a heifer or weaning bull from a line of proven buckers can go for double or even triple that. The earning potential for bucking bulls is longer and significantly higher than typical show or feed cattle. A bucking bull can start winning money as young as two years old and can compete for another eight years or longer. A contractor with a bull possessing the skills to buck professionally is paid each time that bull leaves the chute.” He shrugged. “Every time a bull bucks, the contractor gets a paycheck on a per-out basis that can range from one hundred dollars an out to eight thousand at the world finals. There have been world champion bulls that have earned close to five hundred thousand dollars.”

“Holy hell,” she exclaimed. “Five hundredthousand?”

“Yep.”

“I’m in the wrong business,” she muttered.

Roark chuckled and turned his horse to the left. “There’s the cattle we need to move.”

“Shouldn’t there be more of us? I mean, how are we going to move them by ourselves?”

“There are only twenty I want to move up there. Once I get them going, just ride along the outside of them and that’ll keep them in line. They know where they’re going so it won’t be hard to get them headed in the right direction.”

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