For my new mystery, I decided to add in a little romance. Having never juggled two boyfriends before, I started out with just one cowboy, although now I'm thinking he'll have a little competition. His name is Tyler Ransome. I'm not going to tell you his whole story because as I wrote his journal, I found a surprising subplot.
Here's part of what Tyler had to say:
I don’t even know how my life turned out so wrong when I
thought I was doing everything right. I followed my dad’s example. He was a
good man who always played by the rules. Honorable. Hard working. He built our
ranch in Wyoming from nothing to a respectable cattle and cowhorse operation. Mom
was a rodeo queen he met at the Calgary Stampede. She was beautiful, smart, and
as much in love with Dad as he was with her.
People used to stare at them when they first married. They
were an odd-looking couple. John (my dad) was a small wiry guy who packed
plenty of muscle in that short frame. His folks were mostly from England. My
mom’s people were from Norway. Ingrid was tall and blonde and towered over Dad
by a bunch of inches.
They raised two sons and three daughters together, worked
the ranch all day long in all weather, and still held hands when they went to
church on Sundays.
My brother Jacob was the oldest. It naturally fell to him to
take over Dad’s business. The rest of us kids didn’t mind. Jake loved the ranch
and loved working it. My sister Katy went off to college and became a vet,
which left her no time to take care of a ranch. Sarah married a cowboy up in
Canada and is building his business with him and their three kids. Maggie’s the
baby—she’s still drifting around trying to figure out what she wants to do when
she grows up. We all hope she finds out someday. In the meantime, Jake and his
wife, Elle, pay her to help out with their kids and the house while Elle helps
out in the field. Saves them from hiring one more ranch hand.
Even as a kid, I had a knack for horses. Just got along with
them, could figure out how to make them do what I wanted instead of what they
wanted. Any time Dad got an ornery colt or a stubborn filly in, he’d just hand
the lead rope over to me and say, “They’re all yours, Ty. Work your magic.”
Some folks say I got
the best of my parents. I’m tall, like my mom, and have her blue eyes and her
inability to sit down and relax. I got my dad’s strong jaw and
stubbornness. Ever since grade school, the girls would giggle and call me Tyler
Handsome. I guess I could have used that to my advantage and gotten all
big-headed about it, but lucky for me, I had a family around me to put me down
a peg or twelve when I needed it. Jake’s two years older than me and about six
inches shorter, but he can still kick my ass. And my sisters were always quick
to point out when my hair was stuck up all lop-sided, or if I
had something in my teeth or a pimple on my nose.
Trust me, I never thought I was God’s gift. No one gave me
that privilege.
I was twenty-two when I graduated from the University of
Wyoming with a degree in business. I had already decided I was going to be a
horse trainer. I tried my hand in Wyoming, but it’s a hard land with a lot of
miles between neighbors. Soon, I went down to Texas and found work with a
couple of trainers, assisting them and learning how to deal with clients and
the business end as well as the horses. Horses I could manage. People are
tougher.
I finally moved to a stable in Arizona and set up my own
shingle. Thought about making up some fancy name, but decided to keep it
simple. “Tyler Ransome Training.” I only had a couple of clients with pretty
rank horses. It was okay. I was building a business.
It took me five years, but I finally had ten steady clients
and a QH stud, Sonny, of my own. When I started, I took anyone who wanted to train
their horse to do anything. Now I had clients who competed in reining. Reining
is a good event, mostly because the shows pay money to the winners. It’s so
much better than just a blue ribbon.
I was living as cheaply as I could and saving as much money
as possible, which is hard to do when you’re also trying to keep your horse
shod and vaccinated and competing. The stable’s board fees kept going up, too,
threatening my clients. Horses are a luxury, and when times get tough, the
first thing to go is the training, then the horse. I knew I needed my own place
if I was to ever control costs.
I talked it over with my family and they agreed to lend me
the money for down payment on a ranch. I found a nice twenty-acre place on the
outskirts of Scottsdale, not far from the stable. It needed a lot of work,
which I was willing to do.
A few years later, I was doing all right. I leased part of my
place to a Western trainer, had ten nice clients, and took them all to the best
shows. That’s when I met Melissa. She was beautiful and outgoing. She rode
horses and had competed in AQHYA events. I confess I saw a little of my mom in
her, with those blue eyes and blonde hair. I thought I had found what my dad
had.
I was wrong. Melissa may have had some of my mom’s
beauty, but she wasn't much on the inside. She “let” me handle most everything on
the ranch, unless it was her own horse, which she took care of. The household
work was left mostly to the housecleaner I had before I married. Melissa was
spoiled, but I loved her and was unable to see her as anything but lively and
outgoing. Her family had money and knew a lot of people. She got me going out
to parties and introduced me to those wealthy folks. Soon, I had another level
of clientele—the kind who could spend hundreds of thousands on a good horse.
I was mostly happy, until we had our two boys, Zachary and
Seth. I loved being a dad and had all these notions about raising my sons the
way I was raised. I had such happy memories of working the ranch all day with
my dad, then coming in to the smell of something good on the stove that my mom
cooked for dinner.
Melissa had other ideas. She nagged at me to get a nanny for
the boys so she could continue to go shopping and lolling around with her
girlfriends. It was the first time I ever said no, and I was surprised and
angry when she went to her daddy, got the money, and hired the nanny anyway.
Seemed like that was the beginning of the end for us. The
unhappier I got, the more time she spent away from the house. She started to
come home late, drunk. I was worried that she’d cause an accident, or get killed
in one. When I tried to talk to her about it, she’d say I was old-fashioned and
needed to lighten up. Even two DUIs didn’t stop her.
I’ll never forget our last evening together. We went to a
party at her friend’s house. It was a birthday party for their daughter, who
was turning six and a friend of Zach’s. I didn’t exactly want to go, but I knew
the couple and knew there would be adult beverages. I wanted to be there, to be the
designated driver.
Let's just say that night changed my life.
There was a year-long nightmare of court appearances, where
I fought my wife for control of my ranch, custody of my remaining son, everything. After a year and a half, I had had enough. I was on the
verge every day, on the verge of either killing myself or killing her. Neither
of those options were healthy. I sat down at my desk and signed all the papers.
The divorce papers, the custody papers, the settlement agreements, everything
that gave her everything I owned. All she allowed me to keep was my truck and
trailer, and my stud horse.
She only let me keep my stud because she thought he had laminitis. Seems like the vet gave her some false information, and I wasn't in the mood to correct her. Okay, so it wasn't my finest moment, but I needed that horse.
After that, I wrote a letter to my clients, giving them
notice. Bless their hearts, they had believed in me and stuck with me through
the whole ordeal. Melissa thought I would continue to train on the ranch—my
ranch that she owned. Somehow she would continue to punish me for her sins.
Well, I’m no Jesus.
I wrote a letter to Zach and sent it to my brother to give
to my son. I hoped he would be able to see his nephew.
Then I loaded Sonny in the trailer and drove.
Texas might have made more sense, but I went west instead
and ended up in southern California. I guess I wanted to get lost in a crowd of
people. I also guess I thought people in California tend to be a little more
understanding about a fella who lost it all.
It’s been three years now, and I’m building a new business,
renting space at an equestrian center. I’ve got five clients. Only one of them
does reining. The rest do pleasure events—horsemanship and trail and
showmanship. And four of them have Quarter horses. The fifth has a Paint. I’m
going to smaller shows and doing different things, but I’m surviving.
I miss Zach until it aches sometimes. And I wish that
ex-wife of mine would die. Does that sound harsh?
Stay tuned to meet more of the cast.
