Cantaro

Prologue

The first time Bart Maverick saw Cantaro it made him weak in the knees. That had only happened twice before in his lifetime, and both times he married the beautiful blonde that caused the reaction. There would be no marriage this time – Cantaro was a magnificent black stallion, an Arabian to be precise. And everything that Bart had been looking for the past two years.

Bart and his older brother Bret had grown up in Texas, in a small town called Little Bend, the sons of a roving gambler named Beauregard Maverick. Beauregard was one of the best in the land at the game of poker, and one of the most unusual –Maverick didn't cheat when playing cards. Oh, he knew how. Knew every trick in the book, and a few dozen more that he'd invented himself. He was such a pure talent, so good without even thinking about it, that he played as much for the love of the game as for money. His two boys were raised with the same love and respect towards poker that their father had for the cards, and grew up with the sole idea of being just like him. To be brutally honest, they were even better.

Their wanderlust began when they returned from the War; they roamed the country, together and apart, and stayed alive through their bright minds and their quick wit. But even the best of the best eventually tire of living life the same way day after day, and first Bart and then Bret settled down with the woman of their dreams and a family on their minds. Bart managed the biggest and brightest saloon in Little Bend, Maude's, and still played poker whenever the urge overtook him. Bret and his wife, a Regional Director for the Pinkerton Detective Agency, lived in Claytonville, some twenty-five miles from Little Bend, and Bret continued to make his living strictly on poker winnings.

Ben Maverick, the boy's uncle and Beauregard's younger brother, owned a rather sizeable ranch just south of town. He and Beauregard had been living there for several years when Bart began planning the creation of the B Bar M Ranch, which would be perfectly suited to Ben's land. After a long and arduous bout of decision making, Ben Maverick packed up and moved to Baton Rouge, where his own son Beau lived with his wife and children. That left the big house, referred to as 'the mansion' by its owner, in the hands of his youngest nephew. Before a decision could be made regarding the disposition of the ranch, a late summer wildfire swept through the valley and left everything in its wake in ashes.

The fire was a good thing and a bad thing. Bart had a layout in mind for a horse breeding ranch, and it would have required almost total destruction of the current buildings. The fire saved him the trouble of tearing everything down, but it left massive amounts of burned-out ruble to dispose of.

And then, one day, Fate stepped in . . . brushed off her hands and decided it was time for a change. Bret and his wife adopted a child, the orphaned daughter of their best friends, and moved back to Little Bend, into the house that he and Bart grew up in. It wasn't long before the younger brother convinced the older brother it was time to do something they'd talked about when the War ended – raise livestock. Only this time it would be horses and not cattle.