Excerpt
But as quickly as those feelings arose, the next moment he
remembered the weight of all the debt on the shoulders of the
Circle H as the perky and persistent Mary Lou Schwartz, with
two men in tow, interrupted his thoughts, “Oh there you are, Mr.
Hooper,” she said. “Mind if we join you?”
“Not at all,” Joel lied, falling into the trap of polite Western
hospitality.
“This is my trainer, Buddy Green, and this is my husband,
Jerry.”
Probably in that order of importance, Joel thought. God, he
had to stop that. He could be so cynical sometimes.
Mary Lou continued, “We’ve been over to look at the palomino
again and we took her out of the stall so that Buddy could see her
move around a little. Hope you don’t mind. Buddy has looked at
the papers and likes what he sees.”
“Glad to hear that,” Joel responded, and he really was glad.
Like any horseman, Joel was proud of his stock.
“We thought about it and would like to offer you 10,000 dollars
for her. How’s that sound? If you accept, we can write the
deal up right here on a napkin and we can haul her out of here
tomorrow.”
“Well now, you folks are moving a little too fast for me. I need
to check with my partner and see what she has to say.”
Tanya is my partner? Joel thought. Where did that come from?
Joel was really just buying time. These folks had just doubled their
offer on the palomino filly in a one-hour time frame. That kind of
eagerness indicated to Joel that if he accepted this offer, he might
be leaving some cash on the table, even though this offer far
exceeded the kind of money his dad had been able to attract and
would certainly take care of his current financial woes. However,
Joel sensed that something special was happening here. He had
just stepped into a horse-trading league that his dad probably didn’t
even know existed. So, with that thought in mind, he took a big
breath and courageously continued: “And besides, I know that my
partner wouldn’t allow me to accept that kind of money
Libros Libertad 