Pepper's introduction to the concept that a horse is nothing more than a factory for producing manure and urine began at 6:30 in the morning. His introduction to the concept that he was a factory worker whose job was to return the stall to a manure and urine free environment began at six thirty-one, that same morning. Pepper was not happy to learn that this job was called 'mucking out a stall', and that he would be doing that job every day that a horse had been kept in a stall. He thought that the smell was pretty bad, and that the manure was gross.
One of the things that Pepper learned very quickly, was that taking care of a horse was a lot of work. It wasn't just a matter of setting out some food and water, such as you would with a dog or a cat. Mucking out a stall required a lot of time, but at least it wasn't back breaking work. It was just a matter of removing the manure, the dirty hay, and laying fresh hay after cleaning up the floor.
The most physically demanding part of the job, was pushing the wheelbarrow filled with manure and dirty hay out to the compost pits. The bar and chain made that a much more difficult task than it would have normally been.
The one thing that struck him the most about the job, was that horses were big animals. They scared him. He couldn't pick one up, and put it where he wanted it. Instead, he had to work with the horse to move it. Sometimes the horse had other ideas about what it wanted to do. By the time he had finished mucking out the stalls, he had been stepped on, kicked, bit, and squashed against the side of the stall. It seemed that horses instinctively knew incompetence when they saw it.
After finishing his work in the barn, Pepper then learned the meaning of the expression: 'a tough row to hoe', by working in the garden.
His idea of a garden was a little space that was eight feet long by three feet wide, filled with one or two rows of flowers. He discovered that out in the country, a garden was a hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, and was planted with row after row of vegetables. Weeds grew up between the rows, and around the vegetables.
His job was to take a hoe, and remove the weeds. It sounded simple enough when Craig told him what to do. It should be noted that Craig was rather surprised that Pepper didn't know how to operate a hoe. It was calmly explained to Pepper that he was to take what he thought of as a weirdly shaped tool, and use it to dig under a weed and remove it. Pepper's first attempt to follow instructions, involved swinging the hoe like it was an axe. Craig immediately disabused him of that idea. There was a technique to it, which involved short chopping strokes. Pepper soon discovered that it was a lot more work than it seemed.
Pepper discovered that he was pretty inept at the job when Craig chewed him out about destroying the plants. Apparently, the job also involved distinguishing the good plants from the bad plants. His previous experience with vegetables involved fully mature plants or their fruits that had been harvested. He had never seen a bean plant, a tomato plant, or a squash plant. He had no clue what the various plants were.
Complicating everything he did, was the bar and chain. He couldn't move more than five feet in any direction without having to pick up the bar and move it. The chain caught on things and would pull him up short.
He discovered that trying to run while wearing the bar and chain was not a good idea. That discovery came upon encountering his first snake. His struggles to get away had destroyed more plants in the garden. Craig was a little amused, but mostly disgusted.
Pepper was hot, tired, hungry, and sore by the time he returned to the bunkhouse. His hands had blisters on top of blisters. After years of sitting around his little store, he had finally been introduced to the true meaning of the word 'work' ... and he didn't like it. After washing up, he dragged his aching and exceptionally hungry body over to the main house for dinner. He was the last to arrive.
After the bowls and plates of food had been passed around, the meal started with someone saying grace. It was a short prayer thanking God for the food, and asking him to watch over everyone. It was the same prayer that had been said over every other meal that he eaten, since getting kidnapped.
Pepper sat there, fidgeting and uncomfortable, throughout the short prayer. He was half tempted to say amen when the prayer was over just because he was so thankful that he could finally get to eat.
The food looked and smelled delicious. There were two pot roasts, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, creamed corn, and hot fresh biscuits. The food was laid out in quantity. Pepper was pretty sure that there would be a ton of leftovers.
Pepper had just gotten the first forkful of meat to his mouth when Mrs. Daniels said, "Someone destroyed my garden."
"What?" Pepper asked, wondering if she was talking about the same garden he had been working in all day.
Donny had been busy the entire day. He had stopped by Dan's place in the middle of the day, to make sure that everything was running smoothly. This had meant driving around the place checking out the stock to make sure that they were healthy, checking the wheat field, and stopping by the logging operation. The entire visit had taken almost four hours. He then swung by Joe's place, and essentially repeated the same set of activities. His aunts had managed things quite well in the absence of their husbands.
As a result of his busy day, Donny had been unaware of any problems at his ranch.
He asked, "What happened?"
"Someone destroyed almost a week's worth of food," Mrs. Daniels said glaring at Pepper.
She normally took care of the garden, but the absence of Donny for a week had required her to attend to other matters. She took a lot of pride in her garden, and in the fact that it was able to feed so many people. Montana is not the place to grow gardens although it is possible with a lot of planning and effort. Almost all of her plants were started early in a greenhouse, and then transplanted into the garden late in the season.
Looking very uncomfortable, Craig said, "I had Pepper work in the garden, and it didn't go all that well."
"I think you are a master of understatement," Mrs. Daniels said. "What happened?"
"He doesn't know a weed from a vegetable," Craig answered.
All eyes turned to Pepper at that statement. The man looked around a little embarrassed at being the center of attention. It seemed to him that he couldn't do anything right.
"Is that true, Pepper?" Mrs. Daniels asked.
She was of the opinion that the damage had to be intentional. No one could do that much damage in one afternoon by accident.
"Everything looks the same, to me. A plant is a plant, unless it has a flower on it," Pepper said.
The shaking heads around the table suggested that he wasn't earning any brownie points.
Mrs. Daniels said, "Weeding the garden is something we send little kids out to do because it doesn't require any real skill. I find it inconceivable that a grown man can't do a child's chore. Did you destroy so many plants on purpose?"
"I thought they were weeds," Pepper said.
"You managed to mangle a dozen corn plants, destroyed a third of the lettuce bed, dug up half of my herbs, and stepped on dozens of other plants. We are going to have to go a whole week without lettuce because of you. I'm going to have to buy mint from the store until some new plants get established. I really dislike mint from the store," Mrs. Daniels said.
"Which ones were the mint plants?" Pepper asked.
He didn't like the look that came over her face when he asked that question. It was pretty obvious that she wasn't happy.
Unable to believe the words that were coming out of his mouth, Craig said, "The ones that smelled like mint when you picked them up."
"Oh," Pepper said somewhat embarrassed. He had thought that some of the plants had smelled pretty nice.
Seeing the Mrs. Daniels was about to explode, Craig said, "In his defense, I would like to say that the bar and chain was a problem. I didn't realize that it would knock down the plants like it did."
"I guess some of the damage can be excused," Mrs. Daniels said somewhat disgusted.
"Don't forget that snake. That's when I crashed into those tall plants," Pepper said. He put his hands out about three feet and said, "It was that big."
"What color was it?" Donny asked.
"Brown with yellow stripes," Pepper answered.
Craig was starting to feel a headache coming on.
He said, "It was a common garter snake."
Looking at Craig, she said, "I don't want that worm in my garden ever again."
"Yes, Ma'am," Craig said.
Pepper had thought that she was talking about the snake at first. Then he realized that she was talking about him. He didn't like being called a worm, but he wasn't going to protest. He figured that he was in enough trouble already.
"You'll have to find some other job for him to do."
"Yes, Ma'am," Craig said.
Donny asked, "How did he do mucking out the stalls?"
"He did all right," Craig answered.
Donny said, "I guess we will have him muck out three barns tomorrow. He can do ours in the early morning, Dan's in the middle of the day, and Joe's in the afternoon. That should keep him busy."
"I'll drive him over to Dan's place when he finishes up here," Craig said.
"We'll see if someone over there can drive him over to Joe's place, later," Donny said. Taking care of this tinhorn from Los Angeles was a lot more work than it was worth. "We should have just killed him."
"He's here, and we made a deal," Mrs. Daniels said.
"I know, Mother," Donny said.
The discussion had come to an end, and everyone returned to eating. Pepper dug into the food, eating twice as much as he had ever eaten before. He wasn't sure if it was because the meal tasted so good or because he was so hungry. All he knew, was that he took seconds of everything, and thirds of most everything.
Much to his surprise, he wasn't the last one to finish eating ... and there wasn't much food left over.
After everyone had finished eating, Craig asked, "What's happening with Sonny?"
"The police tried to question him, but his attorney stopped it on account of the painkillers he is taking," Mrs. Daniels answered.
She had talked to the attorney earlier that day to find out what was happening. Her brother in law had given her an overview about events in Los Angeles, but he couldn't tell her many details of what happened after the arrest. Most of what she knew concerning that was from the attorney. Dan didn't want the police to know that he was in town so he was avoiding any kind of contact with them ... even indirect contact via the attorney.
"He needs painkillers?" Sam asked.
Donny smiled at the question and said, "No. He was fine while staying in the camper with us, although he was a bit grumpy. That is just a ploy to keep the police from questioning him. According to the lawyer, they can only hold him for ten days without pressing charges. It appears that holding him in a secure hospital facility, counts as part of those ten days."
Craig said, "How good is his lawyer?"
"Uncle Dan seems to think he's pretty good. He picked him after watching the guy talk about the case on the television, during one of the news programs where they were speculating about how the case would be prosecuted. I was pretty impressed when I talked to him," Donny answered.
Mrs. Daniels said, "It is good to know a little about a man's views and politics before you hire him. When you get someone who is already arguing on your side of the story before you hire him, then he doesn't have any words to eat later."
"That's true," Craig said.
Donny said, "Dan and I spent almost three days looking for a good lawyer to handle Sonny's case. I had talk to a dozen of them before hiring this guy."
Pepper couldn't believe what he was hearing. These people didn't fit his mental image of how he thought they would have approached this problem. They seemed to have spent a lot of time researching their options and planning before they acted. They talked slow, didn't dress fashionably, and weren't the least bit cultured, but they weren't nearly as dumb as he thought.
Donny said, "The interesting thing according to the attorney is that the case against Sonny is circumstantial. It is a very weak case, at that. No one saw him shoot the guys, leave the room or the hospital, and they haven't found the gun. With Sonny having been missing for several days, there was no residue on his hands. So long as Sonny keeps his mouth shut, they aren't going to be able to convict him."
"What about the guy that was in the room with him?" Sam asked.
"He was so drugged on morphine that he wasn't even aware there had been a shooting," Donny answered. "It could be speculated that Sonny was taking a walk when the shooting happened, he saw the bodies, and fled the hospital. The nurses were always dragging him back to his room so that is a plausible explanation."
"Is that the story he's telling?" Craig asked.
Donny answered, "No. Sonny isn't telling any story. He is going to let the lawyer do all of the talking for him. All his lawyer has to do is place sufficient doubt on the case that the prosecutor brings. Everyone knows that, so the police are moving slowly in the investigation."
"That's the way to do it. Let the lawyer lie for you," Craig said.
Donny said, "They might not charge him with anything. California law and criminal procedures are a lot different than here. I can't claim to understand how things work there."
"Does that mean I'm free to go?" Pepper asked hopefully.
"You have got to be the world's dumbest man," Mrs. Daniels said shaking her head.
Donny said. "Do you see Sonny here?"
"No," Pepper answered.
Mrs. Daniels said, "When Sonny comes home, you can leave."
Thinking that if Sonny was released and returned to school that he might not be back, Pepper said, "He might never come home."
"Then you might never leave," Donny said coldly.
There was only one reason why Sonny would never come home, and that was if he died before he could make it back. This was Sonny's home.
Seeing the look on Donny's face, Pepper said, "I didn't mean it that way. I meant that he might want to stay out there after having lived in the city."
"That would never happen," Donny said flatly.
Pepper asked, "What about staying for school?"
"He is finished for this semester. He's missed too many classes to return to school," Donny said.
Getting shot during a robbery wasn't an excused absence. Sonny had been put in a position where he had to withdraw for the semester, once the gang members had been killed. He might have been able to stay in school if he had immediately returned to classes after being released from the hospital, but even that hadn't been assured.
"This whole thing set his education back as much as six months. He was taking some summer classes to get ahead on his program," Mrs. Daniels said.
Wanting to change the topic, Craig asked, "So what else is going on in Los Angeles?"
Donny said, "The police are still looking for whoever shot the gang member at the hospital, but they don't have any clues."
"That's good," John said.
Mrs. Daniels said, "Another gang member was arrested today trying to get into the hospital with a weapon. It appears that the police don't like people getting murdered at a hospital, so they've stepped up security there."
"That's good for Sonny," Sarah said.
"It makes it a lot harder for someone to watch over him. You have to assume that the police will stop them, but sometimes they might not. All it takes is one guy slipping past the police," Mrs. Daniels said.
John said, "I didn't think about that."
The discussion continued around the table. Pepper tuned everyone out since he was half dead from having worked so much. Running the store in Los Angeles wasn't exactly a physical job like mucking out a stable or weeding a garden. He was in the process of discovering muscles that he didn't know he'd had.
He picked the bar up and said, "I'm going to bed."
Pepper stepped outside just as the light of day was beginning to fade. There were no streetlights, advertising signs, or porch lights coming on to displace the approaching dark. The light seemed to soften his surroundings in what he considered an unnatural manner. The buildings, trees, and mountains in the distance had lost their hard edges. Colors were muted, nearly bordering on shades of gray.
There was a soft breeze that carried the scent of pine. He could smell the barn from where he stood. There was the smell of things that he couldn't identify that teased his nose. It dawned on him that there was a variety of odors that he had never experienced before.
Despite the fact that there weren't sirens wailing, horns honking, or people yelling ... the country wasn't silent. The breeze made leaves rustle. It provided a soft background noise that was only noticed when the wind stopped for a second or two. A few birds were singing in the trees that bordered the complex. He realized that each kind of bird sang a different call. He'd never listened to birds before. He had always thought of birds as chirping, but these songs weren't chirps. Providing a deep resonant contrast to the high pitch birdsong was the lowing of cows in the distance. He could hear the horses nickering in the stable.
The air was cool, not unpleasantly cool, but nowhere near as hot as the air of Los Angeles. The caress of the breeze on his skin raised goose bumps. There was a hint of moisture in the air, but not enough to call it humid.
Pepper stood there for a minute taking in the sight, sound, feel, and smell of the country.
Finally, he said, "I miss Los Angeles."