INTRODUCTION
Probably the least successful of all dude ranches in America has been Sarah McKenzie's Dude Ranch on Lake Knead Island in Kansas. It's had four initiated foreclosures on it in the past seven years and in the tradition of singer Loretta Lynn's dad, Sarah's dad who was a resident in a nursing home, always managed to find the money from somewhere to pay off the bankers. Unfortunately daddy died last year.
The problem with Sarah's ranch was deep-seated. She didn't farm cattle because most dude ranches run cattle or horses or both and Sarah saw no challenge is taking her share of city folk prepared to be fleeced of big bucks to go on a two-mile cattle drive, chocking in dust and being splattered by cow shit and spit and return from vacation with the 'trophies'' of insect bites and a broken arm and lie about being rodeo star on the cattle drive and being offered same-sex sex.
Sarah switched the goats but a religious sect rustled them off and they were uninsured, so another ranch finance crisis for daddy to come to the rescue just a few days before the foreclosure auction. Sarah thought she'd go in for sphagnum moss and convert the property into a dude ranch for floral art lovers but unfortunately that very first summer was an extra long drought and the peat patches dried to dust. And so a few months later it was daddy to the rescue again, this time only two days before the foreclosure action.
The next brain wave was to fatten pigs, 400 of them, but they all went down with some kind of disease that forced Department of Ag to quarantine the island and the smell of roast pig wafted through six counties for two weeks while the pigs were slaughtered and the carcasses were burnt. Sarah lost big on that project and swore she'd never again eat pork.
She bounced back opting for sheep but a coyote gang from Lister Creek Ravine on the mainland swam across one summer's night and decimated a big slice of the flock. Sarah raced out with a shotgun and managed to kill one coyote and put an ounce of buckshot into the ass of her farmhand who left in a fit of pique and a very sore ass after repairs but a big fat check in compensation. She sold off the remainder of the sheep and actually made a profit.
Sarah took out a new bank loan and is now preparing to restock with a flock, er herd, of llamas because she'd been at a bar drunk in remorse over the loss of her sheep where a drunken old timer taking her up to his room told her coyotes were shit-scared of llamies, er llamas.
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CHAPTER 1
Harry Titter swam the 600 yards to the ranch and drying him off Sarah asked why didn't he hire a rowboat to cross from the mainland. Harry said he couldn't because he was broke. He'd had a few beers the previous night and negotiated a half hour with a hooker for seven bucks. She sent him into the bathroom to wash his dick before he touched her but she then disappeared with his money belt from her rented room, robbing him of the $700 he was carrying, his life savings.
"Seven bucks was a miserable offer for thirty minutes. Even I wouldn't do it for that."
"How much would you charge Mrs McKenzie?"
"Shut your wicked mouth young man. I was just speaking hypothetically."
"Is that a higher class of fuck?"
"Jesus Harry shut your mouth or I'll close it for you with the skillet."
"Yes ma'am."
Sarah asked Harry about his ranching experience and said he'd done horses and cattle and sheep but stayed clear of swine, now adding a hooker called Melanie as a new species of Sus domestica.
"What about llamas?"
"What about them?"
"I'm talking about South American camelids."
"Oh what the tourists ride in Egypt for have their pictures taken beside a Spink?"
"Sphinx. A little like that," Sarah sighed.
"Oh I know, the cute thinks with long necks and sweet, trusting eyes that turn theatrical when you down them with a bullet."
"I wouldn't know. I don't murder animals. I let the meat works do that. Do you think you could help me farm llamies, er llamas?"
"Sure Mrs McKenzie. Were you thinking of forty-five bucks an hour?"
"What have you been smoking boy?"
"Nothing."
"I pay twelve hundred a month including food and you sleep in my house but if you want someone sleeping with you git out to the barn."
"Hmmm. I'll have to think about that."
Sarah hauled down her shotgun.
"Boy you go dress in your wet clothes and swim back to the mainland."
"Um twelve hundred a month is fine with me Mrs McKenzie."
"Well welcome to Mrs McKenzie's Dude Ranch boy. Work a couple of days and I'll give you money in advance to pay for a pair of decent boots. Call me Sarah."
"Yes ma'am."
Sarah lifted the twin barrels to point at his chest.
"Yes Sarah. Went do we eat?"
"We'll get you clothes dry first. I'm not having a guy in my kitchen wrapped only in a blanket. How old are you Harry?"
"Twenty-seven. And you?"
She looked at him malevolently.
"I asked you a simple question Sarah."
"Sixty-six."
"Oh, old enough to be my oldest sister."
She smiled, revealing three missing teeth, and hung up the shotgun.
After clearing away dinner the rotund Sarah came into the living room and saw the new guy nursing Goldie, one of her eight cats.
"What are you doing with my cat?"
"Nothing suspicious. I just like a bit of pussy around me, that's all."
"Boy I'm keeping my eye on you. I've always said nobody from Colorado can be trusted."
"I'm from Wyoming."
"Or did I mean Wyoming?"
Sarah's middle daughter Fiona called that evening and was hugely worried when her mom said she'd hired a young guy who wasn't like the usual piece of shit she usually hired. He was fit, well-built and was only a week away from being born handsome and had farmed horses and cattle and like to have a bit of pussy close by.
She said with pride, "Goldie's taken to him."
"Mom the guy's a pervert?"
"Well you'd be in the position to judge dear after some of the creeps you have cohabited with. Anyways, who says a pervert can't manage Llamies, I mean llamas?"
"What are they?"
"Probable a distant member of the Ostrich family."
"Omigod mom, you're into farming Ostriches now?"
"What are you smoking darling?"
"Mom, you eccentric woman. I'll be there tomorrow to boot that weirdo off your ranch."
"He could drown darling. I'm on an island, remember?"
"Christ mom, why can't you be like anyone else's mom and spend whole days at the hairdressers, have hopelessly degrading affairs, abuse your children and giving money to the church?"
"Because that life would be repugnant to me darling. Go bury your head and come up smiling."
Sarah yelled, "Where are you Harry?"
"About to step into the shower. Want to come scrub my back."
"No I always fell pregnant when I succumbed to that offer."
"How many kids do you have?"
"Well talk about it later. I want to call my livestock agent."
The agent was unable to say how long would it take to procure 500 llamas but it was unlikely he could fill that order any time soon. It could take several months as they were only four times as abundant as hen's teeth. He laughed as his own joke.
He called back an hour later and said he had sourced twenty-four suri llamas, the smooth-coated type, and could have them delivered ready for barging over on Saturday. They were priced at $750 each but if Sarah took the lot the seller would let her have them for $600 each.
"At $600 you could make good money on them Sarah if you breed them successfully. None of them are registered purebreds. The herd comprises five adult males, thirteen adult females and six cria that are now weaned juveniles. The other juveniles were sold. My recommendation is you take them, settle them in and then get me to stock you up with yearling beef cattle. You can't operate a dude ranch without cattle and cow boy hats Sarah."
"Well okay Andy, let's do that. I have the funding available."
Sarah was pleased about that transaction but thought the llam... llamas must have gold feet to be costing that much but the agent said that was the going price because breeders sold them in small numbers to hobbyists who were generally well cashed up. Where the price was going Andy didn't say. Through the roof with suckers like her buying them, perhaps?
"You were asking me about my daughters," Sarah said, handing Harry a cup of coffee and she then sat on his bed.
"Yeah but first where's your husband?"
"Somewhere in Scotland. He returned there fifteen years ago on vacation and now lives there, unmarried, with four more kids but they came after he'd divorced me."
"What was he on after abandoning a real character like you Sarah?"
"Hormones. He could never resist chasing a bit of skirt. I refused to return to Scotland. The Scots make the place so boring."
"So you have three daughters."
"Yeah my eldest Doreen is forty-four and a grandmother and lives in Texas. My youngest Sophia is still to marry and is twenty-seven. She could be a good match for you. Then my middle one is a redhead, Fiona, a real troublemaker. She's thirty-six and has been married five times: one husband was killed in Iran, another was shot dead by an irate husband, another died of over-exertion in bed... he had to be lifted off her... and the other two were straightforward divorces, the bastards in quitting their marriage, claiming my lovely daughter was a shrew."
"Was she?"
"The truth is never far distanced from disparaging claims."
"Ah what mother could admit her daughter was a shrew?"
