Page 15 of Cole's Joy
“What?”
“Nicely done.”
“What?”
“You avoided answering my question of you keeping in touch with any of your rodeo pals.”
“Yeah, I did that didn’t I?” She sighed, shook her head, and looked at him sadly. “The answer would be no. After I was rushed to the hospital, and told I would never walk again, Ididn’t find this out until years later, but Benson refused to allow anyone in to see me. Even Clem. When friends from the rodeo tried to see me, they were turned away. This was six years ago. I spent almost a year in rehab, then I’ve been here on Broken to get it set up and running, and training the ladies. I lost all contact with everyone.” She shook her head and rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t even know how to get in touch with any of them.”
“Do you think any of them are on Facebook or other social media sites?”
“No clue. I’m not on any of them. If someone was trying to find me, they wouldn’t be able to.” She studied the man she thought as a father figure, and asked, “Why people from the rodeo?”
“You know we’re starting to breed rodeo stock, right?”
“Yes, but I didn’t know how serious you were about it.”
“I personally would like to get out of the racehorse business, and switch over to rodeo stock. Now that the ranch is bigger, we can even look into getting some bulls and breeding them. Personally, and I’m not putting any pressure on you or Erin, but if it were me, I’d ditch the racehorses, and go strictly to rodeo. We don’t have a use for racehorses in Colorado. The area is full of rodeos and why can’t we not only breed the bulls, but I’d like to look into maybe having a training school. Something like you do here with the rehabilitation of people and their challenges. We could teach people how to properly mount a bull in the shoot, train the clowns so their reaction time is faster, teach the young ones how to throw a rope.” He stopped talking when he saw the expression on Naomi’s face. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to speak out of line. Your grandfather started The Double A, and you inherited it, and turned it into New Double. I didn’t want to step on any toes.”
“No, no, it’s not that. I was picturing what you said. I only have one question for now.”
“What’s that?”
“What would you do with the current racehorses we have?”
“Sell them?” He posed it as a question and gave her a funny look when she started to grin. “What?”
“We need to talk to Erin.”
“About?”
“Do you know what Riceman Stallions is?”
“No, isn’t that the horses over at Erin’s Way?”
“Yes and no.” She explained what she was talking about and afterward he sat there in shock. “What do you think?”
“Holy shit, I don’t know what to think. Can I get back to you in a few days, and do you think I could talk to Erin about it?”
“Sure, but here,” Naomi said as she grabbed a piece of paper and wrote something on it. “This is the website I just told you about. Check it out, and see if we can’t do that with the stallions before, or if, we decide to sell. Oh, also think of who you’d sell them to. People over in Kentucky? Or someone else? Take your time, if I agree to do this, we don’t want to make any rash decisions. I know it might be too much, but do you think you could come up with some cost analysis?”
“For?”
“How much would a bull cost? The broncos? I know we just made those stables, and the race track is on the list to build, but what about making an arena for the training? I would love to see some barrel racers training here. We can have people come here to train on the off-season, or we could even board their horses for them over the winter.”
Cole didn’t say anything, but he stood up, walked around the desk and hugged her. “Thank you.”
“No problem. I sort of like the idea. I just need all my ducks in a row before I go to Erin about this. You’ll want to know if youwant to sell all the horses, if so, to whom. Do you want to gather the sperm from the stallions so we can have that as backup if funds are low and we need ready cash. I know that sounds cold and calculating, but we do have some pretty good horseflesh over at New Double. You’ll also want to look into everything about the rodeo stock you’re thinking of. I’m not saying you have to do this, and you might not be able to afford him leaving, since you’re short-handed, but what if Clem takes, say a couple of months to follow the rodeo circuit leading up to Nationals? Let him get a feel for what’s what, which the best bulls, broncos, etc. Who owns them, who breeds them? See if anything is for sale.” She looked at him in shock, then grinned. “Who’s ready to call it quits, but still wants to be around horses? Who was injured and can’t get back up on the horse? Those are the people you’re going to want to hire for New Double. Those are the ones that love and respect the horses for what they were bred to do. Those are the ones that can start out in the rehabilitation program here at Broken, depending on their injuries, then they can slide on over to New Double.”
“Damn.” Cole couldn’t think of anything other than that to say. He stared toward the door, but Naomi called him to wait. He turned with a raised brow. What she said next brought tears to his eyes, but he quickly left so she wouldn’t see them.
“I trust you Cole. I’ve known you my entire life. You were at The Double A before I was even born, you have been more of a father to me than my own flesh and blood. If this is something you think would benefit New Double, then please, do all the homework and we can sit down and discuss it. I trust you.”
“Thanks,” he said around the lump in his throat and quickly left. He didn’t stop until he reached his truck, praising the Lord that no one saw the tears of joy in his eyes. He had to blow his nose and wipe his eyes before he could start the truck to drive home to get started on this endeavor.
CHAPTER 7
Cole lookedup from his paperwork when he saw Duane Manchester striding toward his office. He immediately jumped to his feet and rushed to the man. “What’s wrong? Is it Lois? Laurie? Lorissa?”
