Rancher's Deadly Risk

“I have the students’ names,” she said quickly, passing her list to Les.

He took it almost as if it might bite him, then muttered a word no teacher was allowed to use within the school. “Ben Hastings,” he said. “Damn, why did it have to be Ben?”

“He never struck me as the bullying type,” Linc remarked.

Cassie started to bristle. “I didn’t make up the names.”

Linc glanced her way again. “I didn’t say you did. I’m just surprised. As high a profile as he has because of his basketball skills, I would have thought that if he were a bully we’d have known long ago. That’s all I meant.”

Cassie caught herself, realizing that she was taking everything too personally. She’d been upset about James all afternoon, and if she were honest, she suspected some of that had to do with some bullying she had endured when she’d been a plump adolescent. Boys and even some girls had picked on her weight mercilessly.

“As far as I know,” Les said, “the worst cases of bullying we’ve had in the district have been in the elementary and middle schools. A few fights, name-calling, some blows. But it seems to get better by this age. Or at least less extreme.”

“Things have changed,” Linc remarked. “We got a lot of new people in town when the semiconductor plant opened, and even after the layoffs there are still a lot of students who didn’t grow up around here. That creates a different kind of tension.”

Les lifted a brow. “In what way?”

“Outsiders versus insiders. It used to be most of these incidents could be worked out between families who had a stake in keeping things friendly. It’s not like that anymore, and new kids make obvious targets. James Carney is a new kid, for one thing, despite the fact he was born here. The family just moved back after years away. He’s also a serious student, he’s small and he isn’t involved in sports. Very much an outsider. He makes easy pickings for a pack.”

“So what are you saying?”

Linc leaned forward. “I’m saying we have to nip this in the bud. We can’t allow serious bullying to go unchallenged or we’ll have more of it. I get why you’re reluctant to suspend these students. Hell, it’ll probably just make the whole thing worse for James Carney, and maybe even for Ms. Greaves here.”

“Cassie,” she said automatically, as she waited to hear where he was taking this.

“Cassie,” he repeated with barely a glance in her direction. “Look, Les, we have a different dynamic now from anything we’re used to around here. We’ve got new kids, new ones who don’t have to go home at night and help in the family ranch or business. Kids who are, relatively speaking, on easy street. They get fancy electronics, most have newer cars, and if they take jobs it’s for pin money. What makes you think that isn’t going to breed resentment?”

Les’s frown had deepened and Cassie felt her stomach turn over. Under no circumstances did she want to see another incident like she had today. The memory still sickened her, the sight of James cowering and those boys spitting on him.

“I’ve been watching the changes take hold,” Linc continued. “A lot of the new kids are going to go to college. They’re not going to stay here. The other students know it. Outsiders just passing through. We’ve been having more and more instances of division, separate groups forming, and some name-calling. Why the hell else do you think I have a zero-tolerance policy on bullying for my football players? I never used to need one, but I’ve made it clear over the last couple of years that one instance of bullying is enough to get a player thrown off the team.”

“You’re not proposing we suspend all these students!”

“Not yet,” Linc said quietly, sitting back. “But your idea of starting an antibullying program is a good one. We’ve got to educate before this gets out of hand. And it will get out of hand. The bullying won’t just be going in one direction, either. The factions have been forming. We can’t let the divisions get any deeper or uglier.”

As she listened, Cassie got an inkling of why Linc was so well-liked and respected by students and faculty alike. He seemed to truly have his finger on the pulse of this school.

“How do you know all this?” she asked.

“I pay attention. My students talk to me.” He gave her the briefest of smiles. “I’ve been around a while, too. It’s easier for me to see what’s happening than it would be for you, or even for Les. He doesn’t have as much student interaction as I do.”

“So we start a program?” she asked.

“Definitely. As for what happened today, I’m concerned. It’s one thing when you see this among third graders or even seventh graders. But these students are on the cusp of adulthood. In the spring or in another year they’re going to walk out of here men. They should be past this by now. Sure, they might have little shoving matches, or call a name or two when they get annoyed, but this kind of ganging-up should be well behind them. We’re going to have to tread carefully so we don’t make things worse.”

Cassie spoke. “So you agree with the way Les wants to handle it?”

“We have to do something. From the minute you walked in on it, from the instant they ignored your authority as a teacher, we haven’t had a choice. There has to be a statement made, punishment doled out. We can’t let anyone think they can get away with any of that. But I’d really like it if we could find a way that wouldn’t cause more grief for James Carney.”

“He didn’t do anything,” Cassie said. “He wouldn’t even talk to me. In fact, he said I was making it worse. If they want to be mad at someone, it should be me.”

Les spoke. “We can make the detentions about the way they treated Ms. Greaves and nothing else.”

Linc looked at her, really looked at her, for the first time, and she felt an electric shock all the way to her toes. “How did they treat you exactly?”

“Well, it wasn’t just that they wouldn’t come with me to the principal’s office. When they passed me to get out the door, they made sure to bump into me, and it wasn’t exactly just brushing by.”

Linc’s dark brows lifted. “That’s definitely not good.”

Les slapped his hand on the desk. “We can’t let that pass under any circumstances. We’ll have anarchy.”

“But this isn’t about me,” Cassie protested.

“It is now,” Linc answered. “You just got bullied, too.” He sighed. “Okay, this is how I see it. Leaving out the gruesome details for now, put the bullies on detention for ignoring Ms. Greaves—Cassie. Make it about ignoring a teacher’s direction. We’ll get to the rest of it as we go, but for now let’s take the spotlight off James Carney. Maybe they’ll duck and leave him alone since he won’t be the source of their headache for the time being.”

Cassie turned the incident around in her mind, remembering the way those students had bumped her shoulder on their way out. It had been a little more than disrespectful. Almost like a hinted threat. Linc was right, she had been bullied, too. A little flicker of anger started burning in the pit of her stomach.

“I don’t want to make Cassie an inadvertent target,” Les said.

Cassie shifted in her chair. “Look, Les, we can’t let this go. What do you think those students will do to me, anyway? They can get as mad as they want. Surely you aren’t suggesting they’d physically hurt me.”

Les looked shocked. “No, of course not. You’re a teacher.”

Cassie didn’t think that was much protection, but on the other hand she figured these students wouldn’t want the veritable hell that would come their way if they treated her the way they had treated James.

Linc spoke. “Just make it clear to them that it’s unacceptable to ignore a teacher, and then add something about how touching her, so much as touching, however briefly, is a crime called battery. I don’t think any of them is stupid enough to ignore that.”

“I agree,” said Cassie. “Let’s get this program going, give the students detention for ignoring me, call their parents about their behavior and see how much help you’ll get. Keeping the spotlight off James is the best thing to do. I don’t want them turning on him any more than they already have. He’s the one in most need of protection.”

“Okay then.” Linc rose from his chair, an almost iconic figure in old jeans, cowboy boots and a faded chambray shirt. “I’ve got to get to the locker room again before the team wonders if I fell off the edge of the planet. We have an away game tonight.” Then he turned his attention to Cassie. “Are you okay with this? Really?”

“Being the center of the storm? Of course. Those bullies don’t frighten me, they make me mad.”

One corner of his mouth ticked up in a smile. “I’ll give you a call tomorrow morning and we’ll set up some meeting time to get this ball rolling.”

He strode out, and Cassie’s gaze followed him helplessly. Wow, she thought, he was going to call her. Maybe she didn’t stink as bad as she sometimes thought. Les called her attention back.

“If you’re okay with this, then that’s how we’ll handle the matter for right now. But not for too long. I don’t want those students to think they’re going to get away with bullying anybody.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Finally feeling satisfied with the direction they were taking, she said goodbye to Les, picked up her book bag and headed out for the weekend.

The day was still glorious, although twilight wasn’t far away. Winter nights came a lot earlier up here than she was used to.

But instead of thinking about the glorious weather or the relaxing weekend ahead, she was thinking about Linc Blair again. Dang, he almost acted like it hurt to even look at her. Had she turned ugly since yesterday?

Shaking her head, she tried to think of other things. Despite her reaction in the principal’s office, she wasn’t entirely easy about transferring the bullies’ anger toward her.

She had taught in a school where a teacher had been attacked by a student, and she didn’t labor under any delusions that her status protected her. On the other hand, bullies were usually cowards at heart.

It would be okay, she assured herself.

But it would be even nicer to know why Linc seemed so determined to keep such an obvious distance. He didn’t even make the normal friendly overtures to her, like the other teachers.

No, it was as if he, or she, were surrounded by some kind of repulsion field. Keep away seemed to bristle all over him.

It probably hurt more than it should have because of her bad experiences in the past. Guys seemed attracted to her just long enough to find out if she was willing to jump in the sack with them, and then either way they made a fast exit. It was, one of her friends admitted, weird. But the same friend had reminded her that dating was a series of “noes” followed by one “yes,” eventually.

But never before had she met a guy who seemed to see poison every time his gaze scraped over her and then headed elsewhere.

Not that it mattered, she reminded herself. He was just another guy, albeit one who got her hormones racing every time she looked at him. But just another guy.

And maybe the problem wasn’t her at all. After all, he had said he would call her tomorrow about the bullying program.

No, maybe it wasn’t her at all.

With that hopeful thought in mind, she hurried home to start dinner and get to the homework papers she needed to check. With any luck, all she’d have left to do by tomorrow was some lesson planning.

The thought brightened her mood a bit, easing the memory of the way James Carney had been cowering.

They were going to help him, and other bullied students. Wasn’t that all that really mattered?

Chapter 2

Linc headed home after the game. It was late because the next high school was so far away, a major problem for running athletics in this part of the country. Ordinarily they avoided night games because of the travel time involved, but this week had been different because the other high school had some construction work going on over the weekend.

They’d gotten their usual shellacking at the other school’s hands, though. Nothing different there. Busby somehow always managed to field a stellar team.

But, as he kept telling his players, winning wasn’t the point. Playing the game was. As long as they loved to play, the rest didn’t matter. Sometimes he wondered if they believed him. Regardless, he always had plenty of students turn up for spring tryouts.

But after he shepherded them off the buses and toward their waiting parents, making sure everyone got a ride home, he still had a forty-five-minute drive of his own to his ranch, and some animals waiting for him.

The sheep and goats were okay in their fenced meadows, watched by the dogs, who were probably wondering by now when they’d see their next bowl of kibble. He had a couple of horses in a corral he never left out overnight, but always safely stalled in the barn. It wouldn’t take him long, but he was beginning to feel weary. He started his days at five in the morning, taking care of livestock, and finished at one-thirty in the morning … well, he was getting damn tired.

As the noise of the game and the racket from the players on the team bus began to fade from his immediate memory, along with a running analysis of how the team could improve, Cassie Greaves popped up before his eyes.

Damn, that woman was stunning. Not in a movie-star sort of way, but more like a … a what? Earth mother? She was full-figured enough to qualify, he supposed, though he wouldn’t classify her as heavy. No, she was luxuriously built, exactly the kind of female form that had always appealed to him. With bobbed honey-blond hair and witchy green eyes, she was a looker. Every time he glanced at her, he felt swamped by desire. Amazing, almost like he was in high school himself.

But he’d lived his entire life in this county, and he knew how many people came here, thinking they’d found something wonderful, and then after one winter packed up and left because of the cold, the isolation, the lack of excitement. Hell, even people who grew up here left so why wouldn’t people who didn’t have any roots?

Some people didn’t find enough excitement in days filled with work or with people they saw every day. His own fiancée had headed out after just two years here, swearing she would die from boredom. She probably would have, too, he had finally admitted. Who wanted a life with a guy who was either tied up at his job or working a ranch? Much fun he was.

So he just tried to avoid the whole thing. When it came to a woman who attracted him the way Cassie did, a woman who hadn’t even survived her first winter here, his guard slammed up like some kind of shield in a science fiction movie.

But he was getting to the point of appearing rude, and that had to stop. When Les had asked him to work on this project with her, he’d had the worst urge to refuse. Proximity with that woman?

But then his better angels had taken over. He and Cassie had to deal with this bullying before it got any worse. And it would if they didn’t find a way to get through to these students. Ignoring it because “kids will be kids” was a recipe for serious problems. Yes, they’d do it. Most of them probably had bullied at one time or another, and most had probably been the victims of it.

But the problem still couldn’t be ignored. That was one thing educators and psychologists had learned over the last few decades. And with the dynamic he’d been watching develop between the students, he suspected that it could get way out of hand.

As the incident had today. As upset as he was for the Carney kid, he also saw a big danger in the way those boys had treated Cassie. So he’d bite the bullet, keep his guard up and do what he could to get the students to understand that bullying wasn’t funny, it wasn’t a joke, and it was never permissible.

He was glad, though, to reach his ranch and deal with the dogs and the horses. They centered him, these animals he kept. Reminded him he was part of nature, too, and that a lot of nature was actually prettier than human nature.

After he’d greeted, petted, stabled and fed, he went inside and made himself a bowl of instant oatmeal. It had been a long time since dinner, and while team parents made sure there were plenty of snacks and water for the players, he was usually too uptight to eat at all during a game. He was like a father with thirty sons on the field or bench.

Sitting at the kitchen table, eating his solitary oatmeal, he noticed for the first time in a long time just how silent the house was. He’d noticed it after his father had died eight years ago, and he’d noticed it again when Martha had left her engagement ring on this very table.

Silence, usually a good companion given his busy days, sometimes seemed lonely and empty. Tonight it definitely felt empty.

This big old house had been meant for a large family. Built back around the turn of the twentieth century, he had only to look at old family photos to know how full it had been at one time. His great-grandfather must have kept awfully busy expanding the place as well as running the ranch and farm. But after the Second World War, youngsters had moved away. The G.I. Bill had offered them different opportunities, and only his own grandfather had chosen to remain after returning from the South Pacific.

So the old days of a dozen kids had trailed away, his grandmother had born only one child that survived, and then his own mother had died giving birth to him, and his dad had never remarried.

From many to just him. Sometimes when he walked around and counted dusty, empty bedrooms, and imagined what this place might have been like in its heyday, he felt the lack of human contact. Five years ago he’d tried a family reunion, met some of his great-uncles and cousins he hardly knew, and some he’d never met, and after a rush of “we have to keep in touch” from everyone, keeping in touch had ended when they left town. They felt no ties to this place, or to him.

He didn’t blame them for that. Time had moved on, and with it so had their lives, which were so far removed now from this thinly populated county that he was sure most of them couldn’t imagine why he remained.

But his roots were very real to him. He felt them dig deeper every time he walked the land, or tended to his livestock, or even did a repair around the house. He was a man of this land and he wanted no other.

Martha couldn’t grasp it, either, although for a while she had tried. He just hadn’t guessed how hard she was trying. Maybe it had been easier for her when everything was new and fresh. Then it had become all humdrum and endless for her, a routine that never changed. He supposed he was to blame for at least some of that, but the fact was, he had two jobs, one teaching, the other tending this place, and he couldn’t simply ignore either one. Animals needed daily care. A teaching job required hours not only at school, but also in the evenings and on weekends.

All work and no play apparently had made Linc a very dull boy, he thought. He needed, he supposed, to find a woman from around here who understood the demands and isolation, someone who could be self-sufficient in more ways than Martha. Someone who would be willing to lend her shoulder to the ranch work and make it part of her life, too.

So far no luck. Judging by his attraction to Cassie Greaves, that was most likely his own fault. He never seemed to be drawn to women who had lived here all their lives. Maybe that was his own form of looking for something different. Whatever, it had left his life very empty.

He rinsed his bowl and spoon and put them in the dishwasher Martha had insisted he install. It was a bit much for just one person, and he could go a week without running it, but it was convenient when he didn’t feel like washing up after himself. There were days like that, days that were just too long for one reason or another, especially during football season.

Upstairs after his shower, he stood naked in his chilly bedroom and looked out over the moon-drenched fields. There were no curtains any longer. Martha had taken down the ones that had been there at least since his mother had hung them, and replaced them with something she considered cheerier. She hadn’t been gone long when he ripped them down and got rid of all the other reminders.

A childish act, part of him judged, but necessary. He didn’t need reminders greeting him everywhere he went. Not reminders of Martha, anyway.

The air was getting downright frigid, but he ignored an impulse to turn on the heat. Once he climbed beneath the quilts he’d be warm enough for the night. In the morning he’d deal with seeing his breath and having to dress quickly in clothes that felt as if they’d been in a freezer all night.

Conservation. He preached it to his students, and practiced it himself. Like the compost pile out near the barn. Nothing wasted. He’d been raised that way, and rightfully so. So had many of his students, though not all.

He figured he had a good life in all, and was achieving some good ends, mostly. But nights like this, when the moon was full and the house so silent, he felt he could howl at the moon for a mate. Man was not meant to be solitary.

He shook his head at the turn of his thoughts and went to climb beneath the heap of quilts on his bed, quilts made by generations of women in his family. Heat tomorrow, he decided as his skin met icy sheets. Definitely. He was not going to be a happy camper come morning.

He shivered for a while until his cocoon warmed up. Closing his eyes against the bright moonlight, he thought again of Cassie Greaves. Why did she have to be such a tempting armful?

But surely he knew better now. Nevertheless, thoughts of Cassie seemed to warm that cocoon of quilts faster than usual.

Cassie awoke in a better frame of mind than when she had gone to bed the night before. As awful as the bullying she had seen had appeared to be, she was confident that with some education and a reminder of penalties they could probably lessen the problems.

And giving the boys detention for how they had ignored her should help remove James from the firing line. They would know it all had to do with what they had been doing to James, but with the detentions arising from their treatment of her, they’d have nothing to add to their scorecard against James. She hoped.

By the time she was eating her yogurt and drinking her coffee, she felt good about the program Les had proposed, even though she and Linc hadn’t started to work on it. In her experience, the important thing was to create a culture among students, and if possible among their parents, that frowned on bullying. So the question was not whether it would work, but how long it would take.

From what Linc had said yesterday, she gathered there had been a major change in dynamics owing to the new people who had moved here with the semiconductor plant. She’d already heard that sad story of boom and bust. While the plant hadn’t closed down when the recession hit, it had laid off quite a few people. A lot of lives had undoubtedly been hurt or destroyed.

But on the other hand, whatever had brought about the social dichotomy in the school, this wasn’t the first time she had seen it. Sometimes it was about race. Sometimes it was about who was a “townie” and who was a “military brat.” Sometimes it was just about how you dressed and who you hung around with. Kids could find ample reasons to form cliques and exclusive groups. It seemed to be part of human nature in general.

But it could be contained and controlled. Courtesy, which she thought of as the grease on the wheels of life, could be learned, and could overlay baser impulses.

The problem would be one of motivation.

She hoped Linc would have some idea of what would motivate these students, because she didn’t know the student body well enough yet and this was a rather late point in their education to start something that should have begun in the earliest grades.

Linc again. She supposed it would be wise to castigate herself for wasting so much thought and energy on thinking about a man who was making it as plain as day that he’d prefer not to get to know her even casually. Work with her? Yes. Anything else, not so much.