Lone Wolf Ranch

 

Connor
 

 

The dinner at Aiden’s home wasn’t anything like Connor expected. With Drake and the entire family gathered at the large table, Connor had expected some sort of reaction when he revealed the fact that Drake was a dragon. He was disappointed when no one seemed at all surprised. None of the adults objected to Drake’s inclusion in the pack, with Katty and Ronin voicing their agreement that it should have been done years ago. Feeling that he had their support, Connor decided to speak his mind.

“Shamus, something has been bothering me, and I guess now is the time to ask. Is every wolf shifter family a pack? Or, I mean, is every pack a family? Or, like, is every head of a family an Alpha?”

Shamus sighed, then said, “No, Connor, not all heads of a family of wolf shifters are Alphas. Many families are like humans, with just their immediate family. That doesn’t mean they’re not a pack.”

Connor shook his head as he asked, “Then where do these families get the support they need? Who protects them? Who takes care of their kids if something happens?”

“That’s for the father of the family to decide. He made the choice to move away from his pack.”

Connor took a moment to digest what he had just heard. Granted, Shamus was almost 500 years old, but that didn’t excuse him for his extremely outdated, chauvinistic attitude. Finally, he took a deep breath and calmly said, “Bullshit.”

Shamus growled, “What did you say, pup?”

Connor looked the old man in the eyes as he replied, “I said bullshit. That’s what your answer is, and that’s what your attitude is. Outdated bullshit.”

The room was as silent as the grave as Shamus sat and returned the boy’s stare. After what seemed like an hour, he very quietly said, “If I spoke to my father like you just spoke to me, he would’ve taken me outside and beat my ass. His father would’ve simply ripped your throat out for disrespecting your Alpha. I’m going to give you a moment to get your thoughts together, then I’ll allow you to explain yourself. After that, I’ll consider what I am going to do about it.”

Connor continued to glare, intentionally holding eye contact, knowing it was disrespectful and, if shifters were like real wolves, knowing it was a challenge to authority. He also knew what he considered right and wrong, and regardless of the consequences, he had to do what was right. He finally broke eye contact with Shamus and looked around the table, trying to read what his cousins were thinking. Did they agree with what Shamus was saying? Had he misunderstood? Finally, his gaze landed on one face, and he knew he hadn’t misunderstood, and he knew what he had to say.

He looked Shamus in the eyes again and said, “When you found Carol and Danny, you could smell family blood in them, couldn’t you? That’s why you helped them. If they hadn’t smelled like your brother, you would have left them on their own.” He waited a moment for Shamus to reply. When he didn’t, Connor shook his head and went on, “You have led this pack, this family, for hundreds of years, and you’ve kept it insulated from the world. I can’t, and won’t, tell you how to run the pack while you’re still alive, but know this; after you’re gone, this pack will include any shifter in what we consider our territory, be they wolf, cat, bird, or whatever. A pack that I lead will never turn their back on another shifter in need, never.”

Shamus sighed, then said, “It seems that you’ve already forgotten the conversation we had in Drake’s cavern, but I’ll say it again in front of the entire family this time.” He looked around and noted that every eye was on him as he went on, “What Connor said is true.  My beliefs are out of date. For centuries I have kept our pack insulated from other shifters. I have allowed other wolf families to live in our area without offering them the protection of a pack, and I have done my best to keep our pups from mixing with those outside this pack. While that may be true, you, Connor, are not giving me credit for seeing the error in my ways. You’re not giving me credit for the changes I’ve tried to make since we met. I remember telling you that I scented two boys at the boys’ ranch that I planned to bring into our family. I remember telling you that you could go to the bears and speak to them. I remember telling you that we could go back to Colorado and look for runaways.”

Tears were slowly rolling down Connor’s face as Shamus reminded him of these comments. He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes as he mumbled, “I’m sorry, Granda.”

Shamus shook his head and continued, “No, Connor. I’m the one that should be saying I’m sorry. I tried to act like all these things were normal for me when they weren’t. Until I met you and got to know you, I would have left those other boys at the ranch. That bear clan has been in Chinook for twenty years, and I’ve never reached out to them. There are at least a dozen other wolf families in our territory that I’ve never offered anything other than permission to run wherever they like except on the actual ranch.  My ultimate shame comes from the fact that I never even considered asking my oldest friend to join us simply because he’s a dragon. Fortunately for me, he has forgiven me. Now I need to know, Connor, can you forgive me? Can you teach me to be a better person?” Shamus paused for a moment, then added, “No, you’ve already taught me to be better. Will you please continue to do so?”

Connor jumped up and ran to Shamus. They both wrapped their arms around each other as Connor said, “I’ll call you on your bullshit as long as you call me on mine.”

Everyone turned when Rory said, “For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.”¹

Connor looked up into Shamus’ eyes and added, “In all that the Law leaveth open, the word of your Head Wolf is Law.”¹

Shamus grinned and said, “Well, this head wolf says that you and I need to visit several families and extend an invitation.

When Connor agreed, Ronin asked if he could go with them when they visited the bear clan because he is friends with the teenage son of the leader. Katty wanted to meet the other wolf families, but Shamus refused. He explained that since none of the pups knew who any of them were, it should stay that way until each family decided what to do.

After dinner, the conversation naturally turned to making plans for the next day’s work. Monday, Katty would take the hired hands to continue haymaking while Connor and Ronin went to Chinook to speak with the bear clan. When they returned, Ronin would teach Connor how to drive a tractor so they could start making small bales.

“I’m guessing the small bales are for the horses?” Connor asked.

Ronin nodded as he explained, “We have three hay sheds. One here, one at Clint’s, and one at the big house. Each can store four thousand small bales. Right now, we’re down to less than a hundred in each. There’s a field out on Clear Creek Road that was cut on Saturday that’s just over 100 acres. You and I will bale it all into small bales, then put it in the sheds. With the horses able to graze 4 or 5 months of the year, it should last us the year.”

Rory moaned as he asked, “I guess that means you’ll want us to restack the remaining bales so the new can be put in the back?”

Shamus said, “No. Both of you need to be in the field with them. One running the bundler and the other loading the bundles. It’s supposed to rain on Wednesday, and I want those bundles under cover by noon on Tuesday.”

Clint glanced at Aiden, who nodded and said, “Shamus, I want to buy a new telehandler and attachment for that operation. The oldest telehandler has served us long enough, and before it dies, I want to trade it in.” When Shamus just nodded, he continued, “The attachment I’m talking about has claws and an offset design that will let us safely stack the bundles higher. If you agree, I’ll see if Janet can bring one out tomorrow morning and demonstrate when the boys unload.”

Shamus had turned to look at the two men. Knowing there was more to the story, he waited. Clint cleared his throat and said, “We’ve been thinking about selling small bales. We did some checking, and with the two balers and one bundler, we can bale thirty thousand bales in a week. Rather than just doing that once a year for our own use, we could bale both cuttings on that entire section and sell what we don’t keep for our own use.”

Aiden continued for his brother, “Doing that, we’d pay off the extra equipment in two years, and it should last us ten, so the profits make it a smart move. It’ll also make our own hay handling and storage easier and safer.”

On hearing this, Shamus turned to Aaron, who nodded and agreed, “They’ve shown me the numbers, and I have to agree. Most cattlemen prefer large round bales, but as you know, small bales are easier to handle for horses. Per acre, we can get about thirty percent more for the small bale bundles from horse owners who don’t bale their own hay.”

Shamus turned to Connor, who was staring at his smartphone, and asked, “What do you think?”

His faith in the boy was confirmed when Connor looked up and asked, “What’s in these fields? Alfalfa, Timothy, Bermuda, or what?”

Ronin spoke up, answering, “Katty and I overseeded Timothy in all our hayfields a few years back, so most are a Timothy/Alfalfa mix. The section they’re talking about was plowed under and is almost pure Timothy.”

Connor nodded and said, “I don’t know enough about the entire operation, but if Aiden and Clint think it’s worth a try, and Aaron likes the numbers, then it must not be a horrible idea. The worst thing that happens is we try it, and it isn’t as good as we thought. If that happens, we can sell some of the equipment and return to how things are now.” After a pause, he looked at Clint and asked, “Where are you going to store it?”

Clint replied, “There’s room in the machine shed.”

Aiden smacked his brother and said, “He means the hay, dimwit.” Turning to Connor, he said, “We’re looking at options. Until we know if it will be profitable, it would be unwise to invest money in permanent sheds. We can rig up some hay tents for now.”

When Shamus saw Connor biting his lower lip, he knew the boy was holding back, most likely for fear of offending someone. He waited a moment to give his protégé time to work up his courage and was about to speak when Connor shook his head.

“No, even indoors in ideal conditions, we’ll lose five to ten percent of the hay. A hay tent isn’t much better than being stacked outside. Two steel buildings, fifty feet by one hundred feet and forty feet tall, would store fifty thousand bales. We keep nine, and we can probably ship out the other six thousand the day we bale. If the hay doesn’t turn out to be as profitable as we hope, we can always store the round bales in there.” Connor stopped and turned to Shamus to say, “Sorry, I got carried away, but that’s what I would do if it was up to me. In fact, over the next few years, I think we should build several buildings like that around the ranch, either near the hay fields or near where the cattle are usually fed with hay.”

Aiden was laughing as Clint said, “We’ve said the same thing, Connor. Now maybe you can help us convince Shamus to bring this place into the 21st century.”

Katty looked at her dad and uncle, then glared at Connor as she asked, “Are you thinking we should get out of the cattle business and go to just selling hay?”

Shamus answered that one with, “Nothing is certain, but I don’t think that will ever happen. Too many vampire packs depend on us for blood.”

Connor knew now wasn’t the time to ask, so he filed that one away for a later conversation. Ronin, it seemed, saw it differently because he asked, “Shamus, how much of our operation depends on the vampires? Or other shifters? I guess a better way to ask is, do we sell anything to humans?”

Shamus turned to Aaron, who explained that while humans certainly dealt with the pack-owned businesses, all the ranch’s cattle that they didn’t process themselves were sold to either vampire or shifter-owned processing houses. The pack-owned processing houses also sold only to vampires or shifters. Shifter-owned ranches got priority in all sales of cattle, horses, or hay, with vampires being the next in line.

On hearing this, Katty and Ronin seemed as surprised as Connor. Since they got their work assignments, the twins had been lost in their phones and, as such, hadn’t reacted at all. Emmet was, like his grandfather, more focused on the business aspect of the ranch and took this news as a good thing. Shamus saw the teens’ reactions and realized he needed to educate the pups on shifter history, as well as give them more information on other so-called supernatural beings. He was about to broach the subject when Connor saved him the trouble.

“Shamus, is it okay if Katty and the boys join me in the library a few evenings this week? I’d like to dig into those books you told me about, and it looks like I’m not the only one with questions.”

When Shamus agreed, the pups, after checking with their parents, all decided they would spend the next week at the big house. Sleeping and eating with Shamus and Connor, researching during the evenings, and of course, working during the days. With this plan in mind, Connor, Katty, and Ronin went for their evening run, saying they would see Shamus back at the house. When Shamus left, his truck was full of young boys as the twins helped Danny into his car seat while Emmet took the seat up front. Once a twin was buckled in on either side of Danny, they all headed to the big house.

Monday morning found Connor and Katty cooking eggs and bacon for a hungry bunch of pups. The twins were on toast and waffle duty while Ronin and Danny set the table. Once everyone had eaten their fill, Shamus offered to clear the dishes while everyone else headed to the stable to care for the horses. After this, Shamus explained that he had business in town and suggested that Connor and Ronin put off their visit to Chinook for another time. Connor suggested Wednesday, as it was due to rain.

With that decided, Ronin led Connor to the large metal building that stood about 100 yards behind the stable. As he opened the door, Ronin said, “Shamus calls this the tractor barn, but most of us just call it the machine shed. There’s one at our place and one at Clint’s, but this one is the largest.”

Connor shielded his eyes as Ronin turned on the bright overhead lights. Once his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw several tractors of various sizes, all neatly lined up in a row against the wall to his left. On the right side were all sorts of machines that could be hooked behind the tractors, but he had no idea what any of them did. Some were bright blue, some were green, and others were red. He noticed that everything in the shed looked clean, and while some looked a lot older than others, they all looked to be in good shape.

Ronin pointed at a green tractor and said, “I’ll start you in the 61.” As they walked towards it, he explained, “This is a John Deere 61R 165. It has all kinds of fancy features, but for today, I want to focus on the basics.”

Ronin led Connor around the tractor and explained how the 3-point hitch allowed the operator to raise and lower whatever was attached to it. He pointed to a shaft sticking out and explained that it was called a PTO, which means Power Take Off, and it allowed the tractor’s engine to turn mower blades, pumps, or many other things that could be hooked up behind the tractor. He then pointed at the side and told Connor to climb in the cab.

After following his cousin up the steps, Ronin told Connor to sit in the driver’s seat, then spent several minutes explaining what each of the many controls was for. That done, he had Connor turn the key. When the big 6-cylinder diesel roared to life, Connor couldn’t stop the giggle that came from his lips.

Ronin laughed and said, “Cool, huh?” When Connor nodded, Ronin said, “Just remember, these aren’t toys. They can be fun to operate the first few times, but you have to always be aware of the size and power of what you’re controlling.  In 2020, there were almost 12,000 major injuries to farmers in the US, and every year, almost 200,000 farmers die around the world. Most of those can be prevented.”

On hearing this, Connor quickly pulled his hands away from the controls and stared at his cousin in shock, asking, “Really? It’s that dangerous?”

Ronin gave a serious nod and said, “Yes, it’s that dangerous. Shamus, Dad, and Clint will yank any one of us from the cab and tan our hide if they catch us goofing off while working with the machinery. And Katty and I will do the same with the twins or Emmet. We expect you to stop us if you see us doing something wrong as well. Sometimes it’s tempting to take shortcuts, and all of us have to take care of each other. We never operate these things alone. All the cabs have two-way radios, and there’s always at least one other person in the field with you just in case you need help.”

Connor slowly moved his eyes around the cab, then looked at the other machines around the shed. Now that he looked at them, he could see how many of them could chop a man to pieces in a matter of seconds. He looked back at his cousin with a newfound respect and listened with a bit more attention as Ronin explained what they were going to do.

With Ronin sitting in the jump seat beside him, Connor drove the big tractor out the large sliding door and around the field for a few minutes, getting a feel for how it handled and how the controls affected the speed. Ronin explained how to control the travel speed with the transmission so he could use the engine speed to control the PTO speed for whatever was hooked to the rear.

Once Connor had a good feel for the operation of the tractor alone, Ronin had him drive back into the shed and guided him as he backed up to a large red machine with lots of yellow steel bars sticking out that led up to what looked like a meat grinder. When Ronin stood up from his seat, Connor also started to stand, but he froze when his cousin snapped at him.

“NEVER leave that seat with the engine running. There’s a safety interlock that’s supposed to keep the PTO from turning if the seat is empty but never trust it. Turn it off, and make SURE you’ve set the brake!”

After Connor had turned the engine off, he followed Ronin to the rear of the tractor, where he heard, “This is a baler. You’ll pull it along behind you, and the hay feeds into these forks. It goes up into the head where it gets compressed, stacked, and tied into a bale.” He pointed to the chute in the rear and added, “The bales come out there. Dad and Clint used to pull a wagon behind, and us kids would stack the bales onto the wagon. When the wagon got full, they would bring it to the shed, and we’d unload them all and stack them all by hand.”

“Sounds like a lot of hard work.” Connor mused.

“It was. Thank the gods that Dad convinced Shamus to buy a bundler.” Ronin said as he pointed to another machine sitting opposite the baler. “We let the bales fall to the ground, and someone runs the bundler around to pick them up. It stacks the bales into bundles of 21, then spits the bundle out onto the ground. Last time, we used the telehandler with forks to stack them, but it sounds like Clint has a better idea. We’ll see this afternoon.”

After hooking the baler to the tow hitch, Ronin showed Connor how to connect the shaft to the PTO so the tractor’s engine could turn the machinery in the baler to create the bales. After hooking up the hydraulic lines, Ronin climbed into another big green tractor, he called it a 6195M, and hooked it to another baler. Once they were both back in their tractors, Connor heard “follow me” from the two-way radio, so he followed Ronin onto the county road and out to the hay field.

Connor had never imagined something as basic as baling hay could be so complicated. As he drove the tractor beside the row of raked hay, he listened to a constant stream of information from Ronin telling him to watch the bale weights and count the flakes and telling him if he needed to increase or decrease his ground speed to adjust the aforementioned issues.

An hour later, Connor heard the twins arguing over the radio. Rory was upset that he had lost their ‘rock, paper, scissors’ and was stuck with the boring task of driving the bundler. Shortly after Rory started picking up bales, Regan pulled into the field, driving a huge red tractor with a forklift thing on the front. He was towing three flat wagons with wheels in the front and back. Connor stopped to drink some water and watched as Regan stopped and climbed out of his tractor and put wheel chocks around three of the wagon wheels. He then unhooked the tractor from them and started picking up the bundles and stacking them on the wagons. Long before Regan had filled all three wagons, Connor was back baling hay, but he noticed when Regan hooked up to the loaded train of wagons and headed up the road towards the big house.

The boys all stopped for lunch when Regan brought a cooler full of sandwiches, chips, and water after unloading his sixth round to the shed behind the big house. After they ate, Ronin told the twins to bale so he could teach Connor how to operate the bundler and the forklift. After an hour in the bundler, Connor understood why Rory was upset. Thank the gods this thing has a radio, he thought. After running the bundler for two hours, Ronin said it was time to learn how to pull a wagon. When he climbed into the big Massey Ferguson, the wagons were already stacked full of bundles. Ronin coached Connor as he pulled the loaded wagons back to the shed behind the stable. When they pulled up to the shed, there was a tractor-trailer unloading a telehandler with an odd attachment on it.

The boys walked up to join Clint and Aiden, who were listening as Janet, the salesperson for a local implement dealer, was explaining the benefits of this new hay attachment. Once the machine was off the truck, Clint climbed in and took a few minutes to get to know the controls; he then started unloading the wagons. As they watched him stack the bundles, Ronin started nodding his head and mumbling to himself.

When Connor asked, he explained, “With just forks, we were stacking the bundles in straight stacks, and because they could tip over, we only went three bundles high.” He then pointed towards the new machine and continued, “See how that thing pushes the top bundle forward so they interlock like bricks?” Connor nodded. “Now it’s safe to stack them all the way to the rafters. That almost doubles the capacity of each of our sheds.”

Aiden, Ronin, and Connor all took turns using the new machine to unload the wagons and stack the bundled hay bales. While Ronin was taking his turn, Connor saw Janet loading an old telehandler onto her trailer. He assumed that meant they now owned the new machine. His assumptions were confirmed when, while he and Ronin were heading back to the hayfield, the two-way radio crackled with Clint’s voice, making sure the radio in the new machine was working.

After the first trip to unload, Connor was left on his own to load, move, and unload the wagons. He had lost track of time but could tell it was getting late by the position of the sun. He laughed when he heard Clint sing, “Here we come to save the day…!!” over the two-way.

Five minutes later, Clint and Aiden pulled up, driving flatbed tractor-trailers. Clint told Connor that he was to simply load the trucks. Clint and Aiden would drive back to the shed, where Emmet would unload them. This would speed up the operation. By the time the sun was touching the western horizon, they had filled the sheds at the big house and at Clint’s place. In the morning, they would have no trouble filling up the last shed.

The sun had just gone down when Connor and Ronin parked their tractors and balers in the machine shed. As they joined Shamus and the other pups at the kitchen table for supper, Shamus told them of a change in plans.

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¹ From the poem “The Law of the Pack” by Rudyard Kipling, in “The Jungle Book”

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