Chapter 12

Pepper’s introduction to the concept that a horse is nothing more than a factory for producing manure and urine began at 6:30 in the morning. His introduction to the concept that he was a factory worker whose job was to return the stall to a manure and urine free environment began at six thirty-one, that same morning. Pepper was not happy to learn that this job was called ‘mucking out a stall’, and that he would be doing that job every day that a horse had been kept in a stall. He thought that the smell was pretty bad, and that the manure was gross.

One of the things that Pepper learned very quickly, was that taking care of a horse was a lot of work. It wasn’t just a matter of setting out some food and water, such as you would with a dog or a cat. Mucking out a stall required a lot of time, but at least it wasn’t back breaking work. It was just a matter of removing the manure, the dirty straw, and laying fresh straw after cleaning up the floor.

The most physically demanding part of the job, was pushing the wheelbarrow filled with manure and dirty hay out to the compost pits. The bar and chain made that a much more difficult task than it would have normally been.

The one thing that struck him the most about the job, was that horses were big animals. They scared him. He couldn’t pick one up, and put it where he wanted it. Instead, he had to work with the horse to move it. Sometimes the horse had other ideas about what it wanted to do. By the time he had finished mucking out the stalls, he had been stepped on, kicked, bit, and squashed against the side of the stall. It seemed that horses instinctively knew incompetence when they saw it.

After finishing his work in the barn, Pepper then learned the meaning of the expression: ‘a tough row to hoe’, by working in the garden.

His idea of a garden was a little space that was eight feet long by three feet wide, filled with one or two rows of flowers. He discovered that out in the country, a garden was a hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, and was planted with row after row of vegetables. Weeds grew up between the rows, and around the vegetables.

His job was to take a hoe, and remove the weeds. It sounded simple enough when Craig told him what to do. It should be noted that Craig was rather surprised that Pepper didn’t know how to operate a hoe. It was calmly explained to Pepper that he was to take what he thought of as a weirdly shaped tool, and use it to dig under a weed and remove it. Pepper’s first attempt to follow instructions, involved swinging the hoe like it was an axe. Craig immediately disabused him of that idea. There was a technique to it, which involved short chopping strokes. Pepper soon discovered that it was a lot more work than it seemed.

Pepper discovered that he was pretty inept at the job when Craig chewed him out about destroying the plants. Apparently, the job also involved distinguishing the good plants from the bad plants. His previous experience with vegetables involved fully mature plants or their fruits that had been harvested. He had never seen a bean plant, a tomato plant, or a squash plant. He had no clue what the various plants were.

Complicating everything he did, was the bar and chain. He couldn’t move more than five feet in any direction without having to pick up the bar and move it. The chain caught on things and would pull him up short.

He discovered that trying to run while wearing the bar and chain was not a good idea. That discovery came upon encountering his first snake. His struggles to get away had destroyed more plants in the garden. Craig was a little amused, but mostly disgusted.

Pepper was hot, tired, hungry, and sore by the time he returned to the bunkhouse. His hands had blisters on top of blisters. After years of sitting around his little store, he had finally been introduced to the true meaning of the word ‘work’ ... and he didn’t like it. After washing up, he dragged his aching and exceptionally hungry body over to the main house for dinner. He was the last to arrive.

After the bowls and plates of food had been passed around, the meal started with someone saying grace. It was a short prayer thanking God for the food, and asking him to watch over everyone. It was the same prayer that had been said over every other meal that he had eaten, since getting kidnapped.

Pepper sat there, fidgeting and uncomfortable, throughout the short prayer. He was half tempted to say amen when the prayer was over just because he was so thankful that he could finally get to eat.

The food looked and smelled delicious. There were two pot roasts, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, creamed corn, and hot fresh biscuits. The food was laid out in quantity. Pepper was pretty sure that there would be a ton of leftovers.

Pepper had just gotten the first forkful of meat to his mouth when Mrs. Daniels said, “Someone destroyed my garden.”

“What?” Pepper asked, wondering if she was talking about the same garden he had been working in all day.

Donny had been busy the entire day. He had stopped by Dan’s place in the middle of the day, to make sure that everything was running smoothly. This had meant driving around the place checking out the stock to make sure that they were healthy, checking the wheat field, and stopping by the logging operation. The entire visit had taken almost four hours. He then swung by Joe’s place, and essentially repeated the same set of activities. His aunts had managed things quite well in the absence of their husbands.

As a result of his busy day, Donny had been unaware of any problems at his ranch.

He asked, “What happened?”

“Someone destroyed almost a week’s worth of food,” Mrs. Daniels said glaring at Pepper.

She normally took care of the garden, but the absence of Donny for a week had required her to attend to other matters. She took a lot of pride in her garden, and in the fact that it was able to feed so many people. Montana is not the place to grow gardens although it’s possible with a lot of planning and effort. Almost all of her plants were started early in a greenhouse, and then transplanted into the garden late in the season.

Looking very uncomfortable, Craig said, “I had Pepper work in the garden, and it didn’t go all that well.”

“I think you are a master of understatement,” Mrs. Daniels said. “What happened?”

“He doesn’t know a weed from a vegetable,” Craig answered.

All eyes turned to Pepper at that statement. The man looked around a little embarrassed at being the center of attention. It seemed to him that he couldn’t do anything right.

“Is that true, Pepper?” Mrs. Daniels asked.

She was of the opinion that the damage had to be intentional. No one could do that much damage in one afternoon by accident.

“Everything looks the same, to me. A plant is a plant, unless it has a flower on it,” Pepper said.

The shaking heads around the table suggested that he wasn’t earning any brownie points.

Mrs. Daniels said, “Weeding the garden is something we send little kids out to do because it doesn’t require any real skill. I find it inconceivable that a grown man can’t do a child’s chore. Did you destroy so many plants on purpose?”

“I thought they were weeds,” Pepper said.

“You managed to mangle a dozen corn plants, destroyed a third of the lettuce bed, dug up half of my herbs, and stepped on dozens of other plants. We are going to have to go a whole week without lettuce because of you. I’m going to have to buy mint from the store until some new plants get established. I really dislike mint from the store,” Mrs. Daniels said.

“Which ones were the mint plants?” Pepper asked.

He didn’t like the look that came over her face when he asked that question. It was pretty obvious that she wasn’t happy.

Unable to believe the words that were coming out of his mouth, Craig said, “The ones that smelled like mint when you picked them up.”

“Oh,” Pepper said somewhat embarrassed. He had thought that some of the plants had smelled pretty nice.

Seeing the Mrs. Daniels was about to explode, Craig said, “In his defense, I would like to say that the bar and chain was a problem. I didn’t realize that it would knock down the plants like it did.”

“I guess some of the damage can be excused,” Mrs. Daniels said somewhat disgusted.

“Don’t forget that snake. That’s when I crashed into those tall plants,” Pepper said. He put his hands out about three feet and said, “It was that big.”

“What color was it?” Donny asked.

“Brown with yellow stripes,” Pepper answered.

Craig was starting to feel a headache coming on.

He said, “It was a common garter snake.”

Looking at Craig, she said, “I don’t want that worm in my garden ever again.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” Craig said.

Pepper had thought that she was talking about the snake at first. Then he realized that she was talking about him. He didn’t like being called a worm, but he wasn’t going to protest. He figured that he was in enough trouble already.

“You’ll have to find some other job for him to do.”