Last Chance Llama Ranch by Hilary Fields Page A

adorned the arms of the somewhat saggy chenille-upholstered sofa. An antique spinning wheel sat nearby, a basket of new-spun wool at its feet. Wow , she thought. People actually still spin? A calico cat, fat and placid, occupied the house’s sunniest spot, blinking sleepily at Merry from the rug by the sofa.
    The older woman beamed. “Ain’t you a peach?” She plunked two steaming plates of huevos divorciados down on the scarred, round wooden table that dominated the sunny little kitchen, poured satisfyingly dark coffee from an old-fashioned Chemex carafe into two earthenware mugs, then seated herself. “This maybe ain’t the life I imagined for myself, but I’ve got the house fairly well the way I like it.”
    Merry was distracted into forgetting the astoundingly good smell of the food in front of her, though her stomach growled in protest at being denied the dish of fried eggs divided by a dam of refried beans and tortilla chips, one egg topped in salsa verde , the other in salsa roja . This isn’t the life she chose? Dolly seemed so at home Merry could hardly envision her anyplace else. “Do you mind if I ask…?” she began. “I’d love to learn more about you. For the magazine, I mean. I mean, not just for the mag, but my readers would love to get to know you. Or,” she paused, concerned, “do you need me to get a move on? I do really want to pull my weight—my considerable weight, as your nephew would say.”
    Dolly snorted. “Never mind Sam. Boy’s got a bee up his butt this morning, though I don’t know why. He gets ornery every now ’n’ then, but that’s his own business. Moody so-and-so.” Dolly passed Merry a worn but scrupulously clean cotton napkin. “Eat up, hon. We can talk after we chaw. I wanna get to know you a bit too, and the fluffies can wait awhile—there’s plenty of natural grazing right now with the good monsoon rains we’ve been having, and they ain’t too high-maintenance, not really.”
    Five minutes later Merry had divorciadoed her huevos from the plate, and relocated the to-die-for dish to her stomach. “Oh, man , that’s good,” she sighed, patting her tum. “With food like that, you could make this place a major tourist destination if you wanted to.”
    Dolly beamed. “I do cook for the guests we take on overnight adventures,” she said modestly. “And I send along picnic baskets for the ‘lunch with the llamas’ tours. Haven’t heard any complaints yet.”
    Merry had seen the Cassidys’ ancient, cringe-worthy website, so she had an idea what they offered tourists. But she—and her readers—needed to know more. “I’d love to hear all about it,” she encouraged. “What you do here, I mean, and how you came to run the ranch.”
    Dolly waggled a finger at her guest. “Not without more coffee.” She poured Merry a second cup of spoon-could-stand-up-in-it sludge, handing over the mug with a jerk of her head to indicate Merry should precede her out the door. Merry, who never messed with a woman who had perfected the secret to effective caffeination, did as bid and stepped out onto a porch guarded by a row of rattan rocking chairs.
    Her breath caught in a totally wham-out-of-the-blue sob.
    “Oh,” she said, a bare wisp of sound. Merry’s butt thumped onto the seat of one of the chairs. Her eyes filled with tears that didn’t quite spill over, blurring the very sight that had started the waterworks. What she’d seen last night had been impressive enough. But out back…
    Dorothy Cassidy had a million-dollar view.
    A hundred miles of painters and poets’ inspiration rolled and rollicked from Dolly’s humble stoop all the way to the horizon. A field of rough southwestern scrub grass, saturated a rare deep mint from the recent monsoons, was rimmed on either side by stately cottonwoods, their boles wrinkly as Shar-Peis and their bushy canopies teased into music by the breeze. A little creek could be seen to one side, glinting in the morning light. And