A Texas Ranger's Family by Mae Nunn Page B

my will in case I don’t change His?”
    â€œPrezactly.”
    Â 
    â€œLaVerne, how long can you afford to stay away from your ranch?” Erin asked.
    Her head was bent forward in submission toLaVerne’s blow-drying skills. They were near the end of a string of embarrassing acts that constituted being groomed by another person. But LaVerne didn’t seem to mind a bit so Erin went with the flow and covered the awkward moments with conversation.
    â€œWell, that’s the beauty of having a married son who lives nearby and works the place. Jake and Becky will have it all to themselves one day and this is good practice for when I go home to be with my Maker.”
    â€œDid you always live in West Texas?”
    â€œGoodness, no. I was a city girl. Grew up in Fort Worth and met my Percy when he brought a herd of Angus to the stockyard in ’62. As tickled as my mama was to see me married off to a Christian man, she was not too happy about him carrying me almost four hundred miles from home. Even today, the coyotes, rattlesnakes and scorpions give me the willies, but it turned out to be a wonderful place to raise our two sons.”
    â€œDoes it bother you that Daniel didn’t stay in Fort Stockton?”
    â€œIt did early on ’cause he’s my baby. But from the time Percy took the boys to visit the Texas Ranger museum in Waco till Daniel was commissioned, he never wanted to be anything else. When Jake was ropin’ and brandin’ fence posts, Daniel had his nose in books about the early days of outlaws and renegades,” LaVerne reminisced. “My, how that boy dreamed of wearing the badge.”
    She tossed the hair dryer into a laundry basket, finger-combed Erin’s short bob and pronounced it cute as a bug’s ear.
    â€œDaniel’s where he always wanted to be and Jake could run the Double-S in his sleep. We only work aboutthree hundred head these days. That’s hardly enough cattle for a proper Texas cookout.” She chuckled. “Why, we make more money leasing land to mule deer and blue quail hunters than we do selling cows. With close to no rain for the last twenty-something years, everybody’s just had to adjust.”
    â€œI did a pictorial once on the drought in East Africa. The starvation and disease were horrendous.”
    â€œWell, we’re not that bad off yet, but all the ranchers are about in the same shape. We’re prayin’ for another big turnout at the Barbecue Bonanza. Folks all over Texas have to get in their cars and drive out there or we’ll never make our goal.”
    â€œWhy not skip it altogether?” Dana suggested as she entered the room leaving the doors standing wide. She carried what looked like a huge T-shirt the color of red dirt. It had been split open all the way down one side. “Don’t do the barbecue this summer. Give people a chance to miss it and then you’ll draw an even bigger crowd next year.”
    â€œNothin’ doin’. No matter what we have to climb over or run around, the cook-off happens or somebody at the boys’ ranch may not get a nice Christmas.”
    LaVerne accepted the garment and motioned for Erin to raise her left arm. Daniel’s mama slipped the shirt over Erin’s head and arm, whisked it behind her back and beneath her bandaged right side, finally snapping it shut down the seam.
    â€œThere, how’s that?” LaVerne stepped back to admire her work. “I probably coulda done better with one of my caftans or even a bed sheet, but Daniel insisted I use this old thing of his.”
    â€œI can’t believe he actually parted with it, much less let you take a pair of scissors to it,” Dana added.
    Erin ducked her chin to her chest to see down the length of her body. Even upside down there was no mistaking the Texas Longhorn mascot. Bevo exhaled puffs of smoke and raised his hoof in the Hook ’Em Horns hand signal that even college