Page 51 of Cole's Joy
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, while I wasn’t taken out on a stretcher, I had Lane take me to the medic as soon as I got in the back. He told me to go to the hospital, but I waited until Lane was done before we went. I know, but I didn’t want to worry him. Anyway, we were just north of Denver this past weekend, and on Friday, I was watching Lane do his event. I want to say it was a little old lady, but I think she would put me over her knee if she heard me talk like that. Anyway, as I was saying, I was watching Lane, and stepped up to this woman. She must have thought I was someone else, because she asked a question. I automatically answered. I don’t know what she saw when she looked at me, but she immediately handed me a business card and asked if I would meet her and her boyfriend for breakfast the next morning. She said she had a business opportunity for me.” He looked at his parents with a grin. “I asked if I could bring my brother, and she said only if we would bring our appetites.”
John and Iris laughed at that, and John pushed the bowl of macaroni salad that Lane had been eyeing, closer to him.
“Did you?”
“Did we what?” Lane asked as he took a healthy helping of his favorite salad.
“Bring your appetites to breakfast?”
“We did, and true to her word, Cole bought our breakfast. It was a buffet, so we were able to fill up. I’ll be honest, Dad, it was hard at times, but we learned to save our money, and though I had won a small purse from riding the weekend Kade was hurt, it kept us going. There were days that we only ate once in order to make our money stretch. We’re not dead broke, we still have about a thousand dollars left between us, but after that breakfast with Cole and Lois, we thought it would be best to come home, heal, and talk with you and Mom.”
“About?”
“Again, being honest here, but you know how much Kade and I hate cow farming.”
“Yes, and I resigned myself to you not taking over the farm when you were back in high school and wanted to start going to the rodeos.”
“Okay, then this might be a good conversation,” Kade said as he sat back in his chair and looked between his parents. Without saying anything, he withdrew the piece of paper with the numbers on it, and passed it to his father. John took it, opened it, looked at it, and passed it to his wife.
“What’s this?” Iris asked.
“That would be our weekly pay if we take the jobs offered us. Each. For the first ninety days, then a raise if we work out, then another one annually after that.”
“You’re telling me that someone wants to hire the two of you and pay you this amount on a weekly basis? What on earth would you be doing to earn this?”
“We’ll get to that, because I want to tell you that Lane and I figured we could live off of half of one of those numbers,together, and we could send the rest home to you, and you can put it toward the girls’ college.”
“You’d be willing to do that?” John asked in shock. “How the hell could you live on what you said?”
“We’d have a place to live, rent free, I believe, don’t quote me on this, because we still have questions, but we wanted to talk to you so we could call Cole and ask our questions together. But I believe we might be responsible for utilities, and our own food.”
“Well,” John laughed. “There goes one weekly check.”
“Ha, ha, very funny. Not,” Lane said with a laugh.
“What would you be doing, and where?”
“Have you ever heard of Fool’s Gold, Colorado?”
“Yes,” John said with a laugh. “Remember the summer before your senior year of high school, we went as a family for a week of survival training. We rode in a helicopter, did rock climbing, camped out in the woods. The people running the place were former military?”
“Oh, yes, I remember that. It was fun, but what does that have to do with anything.”
“That was in Fool’s Gold, Colorado.”
“Oh, wow, I hadn’t realized that. Well, I asked about that town, because Cole said it was roughly an hour away from the ranch.”
“Do you know the name of this ranch?” Iris asked as she rose from the table and went over to the counter to bring over her laptop.
“Erin’s Way,” Kade answered. They watched as John went to join his wife and they looked them up on the internet, it was long enough that both the boys, even with their injuries cleaned up from their lunch, washed down the table, put the food away, and started a fresh pot of coffee. Their parents didn’t look up until they sat back down.
“This Cole person wants you to work at Erin’s Way?” Iris asked in confusion.
“No,” Lane said as he pulled out another piece of paper, opened it and grabbed a pen from the lazy Susan in the middle of the table. He used that as a pointer and explained the layout the way Cole had to them. It took some time, but the boys explained it as best they could remember.
“Let me get this straight,” John scratched his head. “This guy wants to sell his racehorses, and bring in rodeo stock to raise. Then he wants to allow rodeo folks that have their own horses to board them, then come in and train in a rodeo sized arena? Does he have that space?”
