Page 35 of Trickster King

I chuckled as I’d already gone through several rounds of therapy over the subject. I’d frustrated the therapists into needing therapy. The sessions amused me more than appropriate. Did they really expect me to do anything other than my best when it came to my wife?

Not only that, but I couldn’t walk away from my fellow Texans, either—and that meant doing the best work I could in the limited time I had.

“Make sure you enroll the therapist for therapy. For some reason, they always seem to need therapy themselves once I get a hold of them.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

NINE

The stallion would be coming home with me.

The farm had seen better days, and I eyed the house, aware if it crumbled, the rest of the place would struggle to meet the bare minimums required to keep horses. “We’re going to need more trailers, and someone is going to have to give Senator Padrino a call and ask if we can take over the last of his pastures for horse storage.”

“I’ll handle the senator,” Randy said, digging out his phone and stepping away.

“Eddie, steal a notebook from one of the on-duty RPS agents along with a pen. I want you to make a list of everything you think needs to be done to turn this place into a working ranch.”

The boy bobbed his head and went to ambush one of the RPS pairs. My agents had learned early on to keep small pads of paper and pens in their pocket to appease my need to take notes. With that out of the way, I headed for the front porch.

Before I had reached the door to knock, an older man, bent and walking with the assistance of a cane, stepped outside. “Your Majesty,” Micky greeted.

“Micky,” I replied, pushing back my various misgivings about the condition of the man’s home to focus on the important business ahead of us: his horses, which were soon to become my horses. “Where are the horses? I’d like to get a chance to look them over and get the first lot of them onto the trailer to drive them over to the ranch they’ll be staying at for the next few weeks before they’re sent to their permanent home.”

“If you don’t mind sparing my old bones, they’re all out in the pasture. We rigged an open stable for them so they come and go as they please. The youngins ain’t seen a trailer in their life.”

“Don’t you worry about that. I’ll get them loaded up. I expect we’ll have all the livestock off your hands by the end of the day.”

“You have no idea how much I appreciate this.”

“Pat,” I prompted, tipping my hat his way. “Geoff? Can you handle the rest of the business while I go see to the horses?”

Geoff could evaluate the situation and make certain everything would go smoothly.

“Of course,” he replied, joining me on the porch and taking my place while I went to see what I had to work with—and bracing for the possibility I’d have a lot of hungry mouths to feed. To my relief, when I spotted the horses, many of them black like Chocolate Cupcake, I saw no obvious signs of neglect beyond a need for all of them to get a good grooming and their hooves checked.

I wondered where the bays and sole chestnut had come from and how many lines I had to work with among the blacks. The mystery would remain a mystery until I reviewed their papers, identified which horse was which, and otherwise calmed the chaos surrounding the animals.

I could only assume Micky had transitioned to an open stabling method to save him the effort of retrieving horses each night and turning them out to graze in the morning.

When I approached the fence, the entire herd of them found me to be most fascinating, and they came over to see what I was about. The braver ones, a dark foal and a bay yearling, sniffed at me and accepted my affection. As the yearling wore a worn halter, I took hold of it, climbed the fence, ignored my back’s complaints, and headed in the direction of the open stable.

A quick check informed me I had a rather tractable stallion in the making. He followed me without putting up a fuss, and once I was in the stable, I located the lead lines. I selected one, clipped it to his halter, and secured him to a post. Arming myself with several other halters and lines, I began the work of catching horses and tying them, pleased to discover they’d been trained enough to stand still once captured.

Only one, an older black stallion, opted to challenge me. After a quick discussion with Geoff, who instructed me on which horse had been best broken to saddle, I got mounted up on the mare with a lasso.

The stallion would be coming home with me. I needed his fire in my lines, and I’d recognized the gleam in his eyes. Chocolate Cupcake’s sire would have a nice home near his spitfire of a daughter, and I’d hope her dam would give me a few more foals with the same spirit.

The mare in question tolerated my weight with good grace, responded to the lightest touch of my heel, and behaved with the curiosity I expected from a smart, healthy horse. While a leaf or plastic bag might send her bolting for the next kingdom, I’d worry about it when either I went along for the ride or she left me on the ground in her wake.

I prepped the lasso, gave it a whirl to make certain the rope behaved like I expected, and tested the mare’s ability to read my signals only using my legs. She moved like a dream, and I expected to be sneaking time in the palace arena teaching her how to be a showcase example of breed.

Maybe his age had caught up with him, but Micky had worked wonders with the mare.

I regarded the stallion with a raised brow, and I used the mare’s presence to herd him in the pasture’s corner, keeping an eye on the fence and the various ways a stubborn stallion might hurt himself—or me—should he get too close. “I reckon you don’t agree with me, but you’re going to be coming along pretty as a picture once I’ve got you roped.”

The stallion’s ears turned back, and he snorted at me.

Once I had him within easy lasso range, I reined the mare in and let fly.

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