AUTHOR'S NOTE:
After nearly THREE months, I finally completed the next chapter of this tale! I thank everyone for their patience!
In the chapter below, Sam is once again tending the cattle in Mr. Wu's absence. But the impatience she is experiencing this afternoon is quickly forgotten when…
Chapter 27 - Temporary Homecoming
Last week in August...
Sam's patience with her horse Blossom was wearing thin on this late August afternoon. Yesterday's heavy rainstorm had made mud patches in the pasture, and Blossom was acting like she didn't know how to walk through puddles. She refused to go where Sam wanted her to go during the young blonde woman's tending of the Garmadon Ranch cattle.
Exasperated, Sam decided to dismount the horse in order to guide the animal on foot through a particularly saturated piece of the pasture. Just then, however, her Australian Shepherd dog Blaze began to bark, startling Blossom. The horse moved suddenly, causing Sam to lose her balance during the dismount and fall into the wet slime. The next thing she knew, she was sitting on the ground, cringing at the thought that her entire backside was now covered in muck.
Puffing air out of her cheeks in frustration, Sam reminded herself that by this time tomorrow, she would be finished with her cow herding duties. Mr. Wu would be returning to Garmadon Ranch sometime this afternoon on Cole's horse, Rocky.
The ranch owner had spent a majority of the month of August in Sasnak City, visiting with Zane and Cole in the military hospital. Zane needed to remain in the hospital for several more weeks. Cole, however, would be leaving the hospital in a matter of days, and from Sasnak City, he and Brooke would be traveling to Brooke's home city of Ogacich, in the United States, to see her father's doctor.
In a telegram for Miss Gayle, which Mr. Wu had sent from Ouroborus after collecting the black-haired cowboy's gelding, he had informed his housekeeper of his anticipated day of arrival. He also mentioned that he would be attending to ranch business matters the following morning before taking over the herding duties from Sam.
Slowly and carefully, Sam extricated herself from the mud and stood up. She was definitely looking forward to her bath before supper, even more so now than before. But today's bath had to be an extra quick one. She had several tasks on her list of things to do before tomorrow's special event - Kai and Jay were coming back home from the army after their 90-day enlistment period. After months of missing her brown-haired cowboy deeply, Sam would finally be in Kai's arms once again.
The cowboy's wife had a feeling, however, that the men's time at home was going to be temporary. Though Kai did not specifically say so in his letters, she figured he and Jay were going to re-enlist. The war was going badly for the Yellow Army.
But for however long Kai would be at the ranch, he and Sam would live at their cottage. So at midday tomorrow, after she returned from the range and freshened up, Sam planned to ride over to the little house and do some rudimentary tidying and setting up of things, since no one had lived there in three months. There she would wait for her husband to arrive around suppertime, after he - along with Jay - had paid a visit to their boss and his housekeeper at the main house.
A basket containing a picnic supper would accompany Sam to the cottage tomorrow. A special baked item would be contained in the basket as well. In honor of the first wedding anniversary of the Smiths and the Walkers, which had occurred last Monday, Miss Gayle had volunteered to bake a strawberry pie for Kai and a blueberry pie for Jay.
Because Sam had been busy with mentally going over her plans, she had not initially noticed the sound of galloping hooves coming across the pasture. She looked up to see a rider heading her way.
It wasn't Bo the gardener who, like Sam, was filling in for the absent cowboys. She'd never seen Bo ride his horse so fast.
Instinctively, Sam reached for her sidearm, which had managed to escape the mud. She'd had some target practice with the weapon she had inherited from the legendary markswoman Bansha, but that was a while ago.
Swallowing her nervousness at the approaching potential danger, she pulled the gun out of the holster and assumed the stance she remembered Kai had taught her. Holding her weapon in both hands and raising it in front of her with straightened arms, she pointed the gun at the approaching horse and rider.
Then Sam saw the rider wave his hat in the air. He must not be planning any skulduggery if he wants me to notice him, she thought.
"Sam!" the rider called. Blaze began to bark energetically, and he bolted in the direction of the rider and the horse.
Then Sam realized who was heading toward her.
"Kai!"
She hurriedly tucked her firearm back in the holster and ran with all her might toward him, trying to avoid slipping in the puddles.
Kai finally reached Sam. He hopped off his gelding Flame before the horse had even fully stopped.
They met in a tight hug. The momentum of their embrace allowed him to easily lift her up and twirl her around. His beard tickled her face. Blaze pranced happily around them.
He set her down on the ground once again, and they hungrily sought each other's lips, craving the kisses they so longed for during the past three months.
Their lips finally parted. "Oh, Kai! I missed you so much!" Sam cried, happy tears streaming down her face.
"I missed you, too, Sam," her husband replied, touching his forehead to hers.
A confused look spread across her face. "How is it that you're here a day early?" she wondered.
Kai grinned. "It was Jay's idea to purposely give you all the wrong date so we could surprise you!"
"And you did!" Sam blushed, realizing that Kai had now discovered the secret she had kept from him in her letters - her time spent cow herding. "I guess Miss Gayle must have told you where to find me," she said sheepishly.
"Yep, she did. Later you'll have to tell me what in tarnation you were thinking, young lady, to be coming out here while wearing my clothes" - Kai pretended to frown - "but right now I'm taking over for the rest of the day, so you can go back to the main house, get cleaned up, and head to our cottage to do what you need to do. I'll meet you there after the herd is settled for the night and I've had a chance to go to the main house to say howdy to Mr. Wu. Then in the morning we can go back to the main house for an ace-high breakfast, and then I'LL be the one going out on the range tomorrow!"
Kai began to escort Sam toward Blossom but didn't see that Blaze was in his way until the last split-second. In the attempt to avoid stepping on the dog, the cowboy lost his balance and fell in the mud - dragging Sam down with him. He landed on his back and she fell on top of him.
After a few seconds of realizing what had just happened, a smirk spread across his face. "Too bad we can't go to the cottage right now, shuck off every stitch of our muddy clothes, and jump in the Ninjago River together to get cleaned up," he chuckled, his soft brown eyes mischievously twinkling.
"I see you haven't lost your brashness," she grinned.
Though she had told him he hadn't lost his brashness, Sam noticed that there were ways in which Kai had indeed subtly changed during his tour of duty. For one thing, in conversing with her, he accidently let cuss words slip out, obviously a habit he had picked up while being in the sole company of other men for so many weeks.
And, before he had gone away to war, he had always loved her at night with a sense of frisky playfulness, even on that last night before he left for Camp Goldland.
But his exposure to so much death had an effect. Tonight, as they reunited, he loved her with an air of seriousness, as if it were the final time they would ever be together.
