Page 3 of The Cowboy's Bullfighter
“Coop, Ricky. Y’all about ready to go?”
Ricky opened the door, his expression a little panicky. “Yessir. I don’t—If we lock up the trailer, do you think everything will be safe?”
He glanced around. “No. But I’m gonna hook the trailer to my truck and take it with us. So why don’t you go ahead and make sure everything that might fall or break is put away.”
“Okay.”
“Is the sewer line hooked up?”
Ricky grimaced. “They turned off the water hookup yesterday because I couldn’t pay the space rent. So we’ve had to use the little composting toilet that Benji got us since there were so many of us. I cleaned it already.”
“Okay, let me tell Ryder.”
Ricky nodded, ducking back inside, and he could hear Ricky calling to his sibs. “Tie it all down. We’re moving out.”
“Boss! Unhook the sewer line. They turned the water off on them yesterday.”
“Fuckers,” Ryder snapped. “They’re just kids.”
“I know. You got a business card? I’ll leave that and a couple of twenties for the space for today.”
Ricky poked his head out the door. “The manager is in space six.”
“Even better.” Coop marched his ass over to knock on the manager’s door. He didn’t give a shit that it was still pre-dawn.
“What the fuck do you want?” A guy in shorts and a tank top answered the door, scowling.
“Space three is leaving. Here’s forty bucks for the day they were over.”
The man’s eyebrows went up. “You’re not the renter.”
“I want a receipt. The renter is in the hospital and you just turned off the water on his brothers and sisters. Not gonna have you saying they owe you.”
Coop could tell no one ever stood up to this son of a bitch.
“You can just?—”
Ryder appeared at his elbow. “Receipt, you sorry sack of shit. Now!”
The asshole sputtered but took the twenties and then scrawled out a receipt.
“Sign it,” Ryder said.
The man sighed, but signed the receipt, and Ryder took a picture on his phone of the jerk doing it.
Fuck, Coop adored him.
When that was all taken care of Coop headed back over to where the kids were.
The littlest one, who was just about kindergarten age—in fact, he reckoned she’d be starting in the fall—was standingthere, thumb in her mouth. Her eyes were about the size of saucers, and she had on aLittle Mermaidnightgown and a pair of rainbow galoshes and was holding a stuffed penguin that had seen better days.
“You just about ready to go, baby girl?”
She glanced at Ricky, then held her hands up to Coop and burst into tears.
He scooped her up. “Oh now, don’t be like that. We’re going to go, we’re going to take your little trailer, and we’re going to go to my big house, okay? You’ve been there. You remember when Benji came and helped me paint, and we worked on the kitchen. I got me the beagle dogs? Thor and Loki.”
“Loki!”
