Helmut Heinrikson had been called Mutt so long, he had forgotten how to spell his name. Mutt had worked his capricious grandfather's sheep ranch so many years he thought it was his own. Therefore it was a huge shock to him, when his grandfather's will was unearthed at last, and it showed some distant niece was to inherit the ranch. Mutt insisted that his grandfather had verbally promised him the ranch many times in the last ten years, but he had no way to prove it.
Mutt decided he would not be moved, but the lawyer advised him to wait until he met the niece, or his distant cousin. Maybe everything could be worked out quite amicably. The lawyer had sensed from some emails that this new rancher was a very educated or intelligent woman. She might be quite ready to let Mutt have the ranch.
Mutt was determined to defend his rights, and started plotting how to do this. In case he was forced out of his home, he prepared a second hermitage for himself up on one of the steepest mountain sides in the hinterland of the sheep ranch. He would not be driven off the land.
On Sunday mornings when his hired hand and his family went to church, Mutt drove a truck full of provisions as far as he could drive and then carried up several loads of supplies up to half-cabin, half cave tucked into a cliff-side. From there he could watch the whole sheep ranch and keep an eye on things.
The third Sunday he was still up there nesting up his secrete place, when a woman with a backpack and a sturdy walking stick in one hand, and an open book in the other came trudging by.
He hailed her and told her in no uncertain, and rather rude terms that shes did not belong here, and should get out.
"Oh, but I'm just looking for certain herbal flowers. I don't intend to move here. I"m just passing through--"
Mutt would not hear of it. He grabbed a riffle and started down a slope with grass and rocks towards her.
The short-haired woman with a rounded fifty-ish figure got a big "O" expression on her face, and then nimbly turned and ducked behind a large rock almost as tall as she.
When Mutt twisted his foot and had to stop to favour it, she popped up and said, "My dear man! You must have been greatly wronged to be so very angry! For sure my presence here is not such a big problem. What if we sat down and had a talk about your past?"
He growled and moaned about his foot at the same time. He did not want to talk about his past with this stranger - this woman! Mutt took a step or two forward and lurched to a sitting postion on the ground, leaning heavily on his rifle.
The woman crept forward with slow steps as she said, "Toss that gun aside. You don't look like you could tolerate being a hermit in a prison. You like broad, beautiful vistas for your own self-made prison."
Mutt growled and muttered to himself angrily. He had been taught never to swear in a woman's presence but he could not think of anything else to say.
When she was about six or seven feet away, the woman sat down on the grass in a cross-legged way. That pained him somehow, for it was how his grandfather liked to sit. His own knees were long too stiff to try it any more.
"Hey," the woman said cheerily, "Where's your manners? Shouldn't you be asking my name?"
"I won't!" he answered bluntly.
"Let me guess at yours then. Are you Helmut Heinrikson?"
"How do you know that name? Where are you from?"
She grinned as if sharing a secret, "They warned me down in the village that if I came up this way I would run into you, and you are very protective of your land."
For a second Mutt marveled that anyone down in the village would remember his real name, but she had said, "your land," and that sent him off into a blast of confirmation that this was his land and he was not about to give it up to anyone else. So there!
She listened with interest on her face, and when he sputtered to silence, she nodded, "I can see that you are very attached to this land. It has been your domain for a long time. Now I'm just a naturalist, who likes to go look at plants and pick a few to study more closely at home. I wrote a whole thesis on clover, for instance. I don't mind touching a cute wooly lamb if someone else is looking after it, but I really wouldn't know what to do with a ranch full of 600 sheep.
Mutt began to breath more evenly as he saw that she was not here to challenge his right to the ranch. Whoever she was.
"685 sheep on this place." Mutt said in a tamer voice. "137 were lambs in spring."
"Whoa," said the woman. "That must keep you so busy you don't often have time to come up here for a day off, eh?"
Mutt shrugged and combed his long beard with his fingers. That was not as many sheep as he thought he could handle but this moving up here had eaten up three whole days, and it was going to take longer to go back down there if he had to do this more often.
Suddenly he blurted out before he had thought it through, "Some far off cousin is suppose to have inherited this land. If she tries to take over--" He stopped short.
The woman cocked her head thoughtfully, "Have you talked to her? Maybe she'd like to make a deal so you can keep it.
A belligerant anger welled up in his chest again. Mutt could not believe that anyone would be that kind to him.
Even though he didn't exactly say anything, she seemed to read his thoughts or feelings. The woman sighed, "You know, Helmut, when you are so angry you don't think clearly. You really need to toss your anger and resentment over the cliff and come back down to have your ankle looked after. See how it is swelling there? I bet you can't stand on that foot any more.
He looked down in amazement at the bulge swelling up above his boot. Somehow he had wedged it up against his other knee and though it had been throbbing all this time, he had forgotten that it would swell so much. Leaning on his rifle he tried to pull himself up to a standing position. It didn't want to work.
The woman put her backpack on her back again, adjusted it for comfort and came up to stand beside him. "Come, I'll help you up and to your truck. You need extra feet today."
Gritting his teeth he let her pull on his right arm and then crouch under his arm and guide him down the path to his truck. Every step was super-painful, but she encouraged him to scream if he needed to. With his gun and her sturdy legs and her stout walking stick they managed it down the rugged path to the truck. But by the time he got there, Mutt had almost yelled himself hoarse.
They were arriving at the passenger door of his truck when he noticed her face and saw that though she was grimacing at his yells, she was also smiling.
"What you grinin' at?" he asked as she eased him backwards into the passenger seat.
She bounded around to the driver side and got in behind the wheel before she said, "I like to think you got a good percentage of your bitterness out of your system in all that yelling."
She had the truck backed up and spun around to go down the dirt lane before she threw at him in the breeze pulling through the truck windows, "we'll make a fine pair, Cousin Helmut."
Moments later she added, as Mutt held up his foot so it wouldn't bounce on the truck floor, "You may be great with your sheep, but you need a human shepherd yourself."
Ruth Marlene Friesen
The Responsible One
Privacy Promises ~~
Sitemap
Ruthe's Secret Roses (official site)
©2001-2022 Ruth Marlene Friesen
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada