Chapter 77 Preparing for a Seminar
He felt two pairs of eyes focused on him, and was suddenly awake. He knew what two pairs of eyes they were. Sam and Lucy had been his alarm clock for years. They had a regularly scheduled time to be let out every morning, and they did not make a sound when that time arrived; they just stared at him. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Okay, I’ll get up.”
They both rushed him with eager tongues as he spoke.
“No, none of that,” he replied. “You two are terrible.” He sat up, pushing the two muzzles away from his face. He found his jeans and slipped them on, and then headed for the motel room door. There was a patch of grass out back. He’d take them out there. It was still dark out, and few were stirring at that hour of the morning. Sam and Lucy, his two border collies, dashed out into the grass and sniffed about, doing their business.
Evan stretched and took in several deep breaths. He had a seminar at 8:00 am, and he needed to get an early start. He was grateful that he didn’t have to use an alarm clock. The shrill noise irritated him. He enjoyed the quieter and calmer things in life. Sam and Lucy finished relieving themselves and came to him. Sam rolled over and exposed his belly for a good scratching, and when Evan squatted to take care of that need, Lucy took advantage of the situation and showered his face with kisses. “Hey dum-dums,” he cooed. “How’re my little dum-dums?”
He straightened and returned to his room with the two eager pets waiting at the door and looking up at him. He used the card on the door and opened it. The two dashed in and took up positions on the bed, where they curled up and looked at him to see if it was okay. “Nice of you to ask first,” he said sarcastically. He continued getting dressed and went to the door, taking his hat off the dresser. “You two behave,” he said, turning the handle and stepping through the open door. The two dogs settled in and put their head on their paws while their eyes watched him leave.
There were a half dozen early risers already in the restaurant when Evan arrived. They greeted him with a nodding of the head and a sort of acceptance that those who are in the habit of being up before the sun have for others who are of the same niche. It was an elite fraternity, and those who were a part of it believed that they were enjoying the best part of the day. For Evan, it was hard to remember a time when he had slept late; 6:00 a.m. was sleeping in, and anything past 7:00 a.m. was just pure laziness. Even in calving season, when he was up at 2:00 a.m. checking the heifers, he was up before 7:00. He sat near a window and turned his cup over in the saucer; the universal signal that he was ready to drink coffee. He took it black, but on some rare occasions, just for a change of pace, he put a little milk or cream in it. Since there was cream on the table, he decided to indulge himself.
Evan didn’t really have to rehearse for his seminar. He had done it hundreds of times before. He did pretty much the same thing every day when he was training his own horses. Today, there were several people lined up with unruly horses, which were most often the product of human ignorance more than of being bad horses. People did not fully understand the thought processes of horses. They tended to think of them like their other pets, and nothing could be worse than treating a horse like a predatory animal, like dogs and cats are. He had long since gotten over his disgust with the ignorance of horse owners and worked as an educator rather than a prosecutor. He repeated his mantra often throughout his seminars, “Let horses be horses.”
He considered the day’s work while he ate one of his favorite restaurant breakfasts that he rarely had at home. He loved to have two large biscuits cut in half and laid open on a plate with two over-easy, fried eggs on top, and then creamy sausage gravy with a sprinkling of cheddar cheese on top. He could have it at home any time he liked, but for some reason, he saved it for mornings like this one. It was filling and would stick with him until lunch time, even if he felt a little bit bloated when he got up from his table just as the sun began to break the horizon. He paid his tab, nodded to the other diners, and returned to his room.
At the sound of his footsteps outside the door, Sam and Lucy raised their heads, perked their ears, and watched the knob. When the door opened, they both leaped from their spots on the bed and greeted him as though he had been away for years. That affection was one of the reasons that Evan had the two dogs; the other was that they were perfectly trained to help him work cattle. In some respects, they were better than a couple of other riders. They could get into tight spots, like a patch of willows where no man on horseback could ride and bring out whatever cow-critter had taken up hiding in there. The two had developed a form of telepathy and seemed to react and know what he wanted before he gave the command. Their loyalty was unquestioned, and they were always friendly to strangers, which made it possible for him to bring them along when he did seminars. He only did a few during the summer, because he was typically busy tending to the cattle for the stock growers' pool; a job made necessary by grazing regulations that insisted that the animals be scattered out in small bunches rather than congregating in the valleys. He did most of his seminars in the fall and winter months when things were slow around the ranch. He did Monte Vista, because it was close and because it allowed him a three-day weekend.
The isolated ranch up in the mountains could get a little bit lonely at times, and he enjoyed getting back into civilization for a few days. As he was getting ready to go out to the pickup and head down to the fairgrounds, he suddenly thought of Alexandra. It was a little less than a year ago that her car had broken down, and they had spent that week together. He smiled whenever he recalled the memory, which was actually pretty often. He remembered how it felt to hold her. He remembered the feel of her kiss on his lips and the smooth skin beneath his fingers. He could still hear her laugh and still see her sparkling green eyes.
Whenever her memory rushed in upon him like it did that morning, he paused and let it linger for a moment, and then, like pushing the “off” button on the remote, he shut it down. She had made a choice which did not include him, and he needed to just let it go. That morning, it lingered a bit longer than normal, and there was a strange stirring in his gut that he had learned to trust as a premonition. Was she in trouble? Was she hurt? He’d had that feeling several times over the past year and had gotten to the point where he had to dismiss it as something crazy, because he was completely helpless to know what was really going on in her world. “Come on, guys,” he said to the dogs and started for the door.