Mel's Arc

Chapter 15 of 36

The market win kept the season alive, but it did not solve the real problem. Mel and Ted wanted to run their two ranches as one. Neither spread had the land or barn space to hold both herds. Mel spread her father's old maps on a blanket in the pasture. Ted brought a basket of bread and cheese and set two plates down beside her. "We can't stack two herds in my barn," Ted said. He tore off a piece of bread. "And your barn's smaller than mine." "I know the numbers." Mel tapped the map. "My land runs flat. Good for hay. Your land climbs. Good for grazing." She looked up. "We keep both. We just use each for what it's best at." Ted set down his cup. "That means one barn does the work of two. We'd have to build." "Or add on." Mel pointed to Ted's home on the map. "Your barn's bigger. We raise the roof, extend the far wall. Move my stock there. My fields stay open for hay." Ted studied the lines. He was quiet a long moment. Mel watched his face and waited. She used to reach for men who left. Ted stayed. He chewed the plan over the way he chewed his bread, slow and sure. "Lumber costs," he said at last. "But we cleared enough at the market for that." "Then we do it." Mel folded the map. "One barn. Your hill, my flat. We stop being two small ranches and start being one that works." Ted grinned. He knocked his cup against hers. "Partners, then. Real ones." They spent the afternoon marking posts in Ted's pasture. Mel drove the first stake herself. Ted paced out the new wall. By dusk they had the shape of it staked in the dirt, a barn wide enough for both their herds. Mel stood back and looked at the stakes. For the first time the merger was not a worry on a ledger. It was a plan in the ground. She had beaten the Caldwells' squeeze, and now she was building the thing they'd tried to stop. Ted came to stand beside her. "It'll take a crew to raise it." Mel's smile held. Then it cooled. A crew meant hiring hands. Hands meant men who bought their feed and sold their stock through the valley. Through the mill and the store the Caldwells still controlled. "No one in the valley will work for us," she said. "Not if the Caldwells lean on them." Ted's jaw tightened. He'd seen it too. They had the land, the plan, and the money. They just could not raise a barn alone, and every hand for miles answered to the family they had crossed. Mel stared at the stakes in the dark. The plan was set in the ground. Now she had to find the hands to build it.