Some Disobedience E-Book

Angel Rupert

• Herausgeber: Bentockiz
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

The days had been too cool. He wanted his first repose on his favorite bench for this calendar year to be warm and relaxed. So, as he descended the stairs from the footbridge, he looked out across the brown grass and the blue water with both hope and expectation. The hope he felt was innate, the bred into his blood hope of a farmer at the first breath of spring, the irrepressible and reckless assumption that thawed earth and warming temperatures guaranteed germination, growth, and new life. The expectation he harbored was both new to him and more complicated, reliant as it was on the resilience of his spirit and the resourcefulness of his imagination.

Leseprobe

Title Page

Some Disobedience

Unjustified Changes

Angel Rupert

Some Disobedience / 6th of series: Unjustified Changes / By Angel Rupert

Published 2023 by Bentockiz

e-book Imprint: Uniochlors

e-book Registration: Stockholm, Sweden

e-book ISBN: 9789198847055

e-book editing: Athens, Greece

Cover Images created via AI art generators

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Introduction

Through books we come into contact with everything important that has happened in the past, analyzing also current events and putting our thoughts together to predict the future. The book is a window to the world, acquiring valuable knowledge and sparking our vivid imagination. It is a means of entertainment and is generally seen as a best friend, or as a slave that carries together all valuable information for us. The book is a friend who stays together without demands, a friend you call upon at every moment and abandon when you want.

It accompanies us in the hours of boredom and loneliness, while at the same time it entertains us. In general, a book does not ask anything from us, while it waits patiently on a dusty shelf to give us its information, to get us out of dead ends and to travel us to magical worlds.

This may be the travel mission of our books. Abstract narration, weird or unconscious thoughts difficult to be understood, but always genuine and full of life experiences, these are stories of life that can’t be overlooked easily.

This may be the start of something amazing.

Chapter One

After breakfast Pete loaded some vet supplies into a cooler and set it in the bed of his truck. Robert had a couple sick animals in his herd and he asked Zach to come along “in case we have to wrestle one down.” Zach well knew that either Pete or Robert (short and stocky like Pete, and just as strong) could wrestle down any animal that needed containment a lot easier and quicker than he could; but Pete was the boss and if he said “go,” you went. Besides, he was glad for the distraction the excursion would provide.

After riding awhile in silence across the blank sage prairie on a faint track that only Pete could spot, Zach finally spoke to the windshield the words that had been weighing on him since yesterday evening. “I think I have to get back to Boston.”

Pete showed no surprise. “Allison O.K.?”

“Allison’s fine. But I think it’s important for me to return as soon as possible.”

Pete nodded. “Whatever you have to do.”

“I wish I could help you out with Grandee’s bunch. I was looking forward to giving herding a try.”

“You’d be good at it. You care about the animals more than yourself—that’s the most important part of herding. You can’t teach that.”

“I’m sorry not to be able to fill in.”

“We’ll manage—plenty of herders out there. You need to take care of yourself and that bride of yours.”

Zach nodded. “I do. I will.” An idea suddenly came to him. “What if I wanted to fly back, save myself a few days on the road?”

Pete shrugged. “Frontier flies four times a day out of Riverton to Denver—ten-seater twin-props. They’re rarely full. From Denver, you can catch planes to anywhere.”

“And my truck?”

“If you don’t mind leaving it out here, we can park it in one of the bays of the equipment shed—stay there long as you want.” He looked at Zach through the reflector sunglasses. “Reserve the right to sell it after five years.”

Zach laughed. “If it’s here in two years, it’s yours.”

“And don’t assume you can retrieve it between December and May—these dirt tracks can be quagmires or snowed in, sometimes both in the same day.”

“I don’t know when I will get back to pick it up, Pete. But I can assure you it won’t be in the winter.”

Pete nodded. “Want me to ask Ruth to book you a flight to Boston via Denver? I don’t know the first thing about flying, but she’s done it a number of times. Went to see your mother-in-law at least twice.”

“I’ve never flown, Pete. So if she’s able to help with the arrangements, I’d be grateful. But I need to make a phone call first, to be sure.”

Pete nodded. “Good luck.”

Zach said, “Thanks,” but didn’t add what they both already sensed—I’ll need that luck (for the trip home and what awaited him there). That said (or, in this case, said and not said), Zach felt a sudden sense of relief, a pool of calm spreading through his tormented soul, at this decision made out here in the wilderness—their wilderness, his.

Robert’s camp was deserted when Pete drove up to his wagon—no Robert, no horse (Dingo), no dogs (Judy and One-eye, that had two good eyes).

Pete shook his head in disgust. “I told him just yesterday I’d be here first thing in the morning and to have the sick animals penned and waiting. And this is how he responds,” he said and waved toward the empty campsite. He honked his horn in two long blasts that seemed to Zach maybe the most incongruous intrusions into this wilderness since—well, since the plane’s roar that dawn. (To Zach, any sound out here not of natural origin—even Santi’s harmonica or Anna’s dinner triangle hung by the cookshack door—was an unwelcome reminder of civilization, those places where human order took precedence over natural.)

Pete got out of the truck and carried a box of supplies into the sheepwagon. Zach slid off the seat and looked around the campsite. Compared with the Sweetwater campsite where he and Allison stayed last summer and he spent a weekend earlier in the month, this camp was significantly more desolate and lonely. It sat in the middle of a broad plateau that stretched off in all directions, with no tree or grass or water in sight—only sagebrush and dirt and sky. He had no idea why Robert wasn’t waiting here now per Pete’s request, but he knew instinctively that if this were his camp, he wouldn’t be spending much time not sleeping in a place so monotonous and spirit-draining. He didn’t know what sorts of terrain lay beyond the visible horizons, but it would have to be something more interesting than this.

Pete came out of the wagon holding an empty wine bottle. “Maybe now we know why he forgot my instructions.”

“Where’d he get that?”

“I don’t know where they get this stuff—drops out of the sky, for all I know. Hardest part about running a ranch—keeping your herders sober.”

“But if he was drunk, he wouldn’t be riding.”

“You’re right about that—usually passed out. Last week I checked on Marco’s camp and saw his herd spread in every direction across the valley and him passed out on the floor of the wagon. When I threw some water on his face to wake him, he sat up and said without missing a beat, ‘No sleep. Just rest eyes.’”

Zach laughed. “A good long rest. What did you do?”

“Chased him out of the wagon and told him to tend his bunch. He fell getting out of the wagon—chin first into the dirt leaving a pretty good-sized welt. But he managed to pull them together while I was unloading his supplies. Better herder drunk than most sober.”

“Got to take the good with the bad.”

“Got to take what you can find. Speaking of which—” He pointed to the east. A rider on a horse had just appeared on the plateau and was headed for them at break-neck speed. Pete tossed the bottle into the bed of the truck then took a few strides in the direction of the rider and waited with his hands on his hips for the wayward Robert to arrive.

Robert kept the horse in a straight on full gallop until it was so close Zach was certain he’d flatten Pete. But Pete never flinched or moved. At the last possible second (or a few seconds past the last possible second), Robert yanked back on the reins, rose up in the saddle, and jerked Dingo’s neck to the side, throwing both horse and rider into a panic stop that ended with them standing broadside in a cloud of dust not a yard from Pete’s unflinching figure. The dogs emerged from that cloud of dust, did a quick circle of Pete then of Zach and the truck, then jogged off to get a drink of water from the dishpan under the wagon.

Pete waited for the dust to dissipate then said, “That was a fool-ass stunt.”

“Good, morning, Senor Pete,” Robert said, tipping his cowboy hat. “How are you?”

“Tired of waiting. Where you been, Robert? I told you to have your herd and the sick ones here this morning.”

“Herd at lake. Too far bring back.”