Chapter Thirteen:

  The three siblings rode back to the main bunkhouse to meet all the other riders for the daily assignments. Usually everyone would have met up just after dawn, except for Sundays, and get their jobs for the day. Everyone had been told to meet up mid-morning to give people a chance to sleep in and settle back in after the long trail run. The thirty-plus riders who had gone on the run, and the fifteen who had stayed to work the ranch, slowly filled out of the bunkhouse or rode in from the family compound.

  Marsh, Drago and Kate stood on the raised platform that stood between the main bunkhouse and the McClintock’s main house. It also doubled as a stage for the bands that played during the several shindigs that were held throughout the year. The riders and hands gathered around, greeting each other with kind gestures and friendly horseplay. The four new hires—Laura, Ed, Tommy, and Piggy—were escorted to the front where they stood waiting awkwardly.

  The two men and Kate continued their quiet discussion as they wanted for everyone to file in. Finally, Drago stepped forward and shouted, “Alright, quit your grabassing and listen up!” The chatter quickly became a murmur. “You all got to have you some nice beauty sleep this morning and rest your delicate little heads,” Drago said in a mocking tone. “I hope you enjoyed it, even though it appears most of you ugly lot obviously didn’t profit from it.”

  The crowd chuckled at the playful jabs. Laura constantly looked around, sizing up the gathered crowd. She noticed no small number of people who were clearly spliced, with various mutated features. There were also a few cyborgs, including the loud old man on stage. The ages ranged wildly too including clear elders all the way down to a few teenagers. And she had noticed at least 7 of the tell tale neck scars she now looked for ever since Paul Tinhorn had mentioned them. She could see the difference he had mentioned regarding the level of scaring. The marks on the back of the neck of the younger people were much less prominent.

  “Mr. McClintock, in his questionable wisdom, has decided that this should be an easy day as to allow you delicate flowers to ease back into the routine and tend to your saddle-sore behinds.” Drago said with exaggerated tone and gestures. Marsh rolled his eyes and grinned.

  ”So, we’ll keep it simple today. Teams 1 through 4 split up and ride out to the herds, take the count and tend whatever needs tending, call into Lin with anything that requires treatment. Jase, I want you to go with Chad's team and head for the raptor pens, there's a new flock of pups ready to leave the nests and you know things get squirrely as hell when they first step out,” Jase nodded. “Team 5, I want you on feed and water, don't forget the maintenance on the wagons after. 6 and 7 I want you to pick different directions and inspect the fences, patch what you can. Call into Mateo what you can’t. We’ll hold off on any extra assignments for today. If you all can survive doing the bare minimum for a week next Saturday is the annual Fall Festival.” The gathered crowd cheered at the announcement," Yes, yes, as usual Mr. Padilla will be running the barbeque,” more cheers,” Mr. Birnbaum will be here with his band.” more cheers,” And of course we will be having the annual lava melon pie eating contest, where I will be defending my title for the tenth year in a row,” lots of cheers, as Drago bowed and then waved his hands down to quiet the crowd before he continued,

  “ As you may or may not know our Foreman John is going to be off for a bit on a personal matter, so Kate here is going to be in charge in his stead.” Some friendly jabs came from the riders as Kate smirked. “Don’t get too excited now, Ms Kate has orders to ride you all into the ground if needed. I expect John might come back to find your lot finally whipped into real dino riders when he comes back.” Drago said playfully.

  Drago nodded in recognition to Kate, who was pointing at the new hires. ,”Aw yes and finally we have a few new green horns among us. We haven’t sorted them out to where they’ll be permanently yet so watch after them and make sure they don’t get eaten or trampled to death or something worse.”

  Tommy started to look green like he might throw up. Piggy grumbled something to Ed who just scowed and grunted.

  Laura found herself realizing the full weight of her situation, she is now an employee on the largest Dino ranch in the known world. She looked around at the massive mounts tied off just outside the fence, she felt the tremors pulsing through the ground as a herd of brachiosaurs slowly walked in the far distance. The horrifically dangerous collection of teeth and claws that were the raptors and the allosauruses that quietly lapped water from a tank next to the enormous barn. She had of course seen dinos all her life, but mostly in cities. Small dinos that were pets, and medium sized dinos that pulled trailers and wagons down the street. There were constantly pterosaurs flying around the skies and delivering packages, but they were always far away. She was going to half to work with these things, even learn to ride one possibly. She suddenly felt very overwhelmed. She didn’t even notice the man stomp over to her as the crowd dispersed.

  The cold metal hand of Drago tapped her on the shoulder, making her jump.

  “Well, good morning to you too, missy,” Drago grumbled. Marsh and Kate laughed.

  “Don’t worry about it, Ms. Laura,” Marsh said with a grin. “Drago has that effect on women and small children.”

  “And small animals, and large animals too for that matter,” Kate added.

  Drago grunted in derision, “Hmm, That's because all of those creatures are wise enough to not mess with the Ram Rod,” Drago shook his fist at the pair,” Unlike you fools.”

  Drago turned back to the new hires, “ If you didn’t catch it my name is Drago, not Mister, not boss, just Drago or Sir. Do you savvy?”

  He received a collection of nods and yes sirs from the four, “Good, now follow me to the office over there.” Drago pointed to a two story building with the same Thundersaur skull and T/R marker attached to the front of it. They all followed as he turned and marched away.

  Several kilometers away Jase entered the raptor pens with Chad and his team, team 3. Team 3 like Jase all rode raptors, specifically Utahraptors. The largest and fastest of the breed. The females anyway, the males were a fair amount smaller and a whole lot more colorful. They usually had bright blueish green feathers on their tails that they fanned out and waved around to attract females, and the fore claws were much less pronounced. Whereas the females, like Split, had darker reddish brown and blue feathers and huge eight to ten inch fore claws. The females do the hunting and the largest strongest female always leads the individual packs. This pen had a pack of Dakotaraptors, a fairly recent addition to the ranch. They were slightly smaller than the Utah's, but comparable in speed and intelligence. Raptors had been a favored mount for dino riders for hundreds of years. Their speed is unmatched and their abilities as hunters makes them extremely useful in a variety of jobs. And thanks to careful breeding they have become a very reliable and very trainable dino. Especially the Thundersaur brand raptors which were recognized around the world for their quality. The ranch shipped both fertilized eggs, and fully trained mounts all over the continent, and raptors were one of their top requested breeds. While raptors were highly trainable thanks to their intelligence level only a fool would approach one without caution. Especially a green broke raptor of any species. While the breeding pack had become a custom to the riders presence, and even friendly, a raptor pup was all instinct, and they are lethal at 6 weeks old. This was also the time training would need to begin and culling if needed. Most of the intelligent dino breeds had a genetic abnormality. Almost all of the dino breeds had 80 chromosomes, but the ones that displayed intelligence had a rare odd numbered 81st chromosome. This gene is not always present in every dino and it becomes apparent as the dino grows to maturity. In the more domesticated species like Triceritops and Stegosaurus it doesn’t really matter, if a calf shows the signs of lacking the “intelligence chromosome” it is tested for confirmation, then if negative for the gene its gelded and either sent back to grow with the herd where standard herd dynamics will keep the dino in line until its ready to go to market or as is the practice at Thundersaur ranch, released to the free range lots where it will become game for the predatory dinos. However in the case of predatory dinos this is not an option. Something like a Raptor or a T Rex that test negative for the 81st chromosome has to be culled right away lest it run wild and hurt people or other dinos. Thanks to monitored breeding, and Calli’s skills with genetic manipulation, a non intelligent predator dino is a rare thing at the ranch. This species of raptor however is fairly new to the ranch having been procured in a trade with the Jax family at the Iron Horn ranch in South Dakota. And only been through a few generations of culling. So far the ranch's efforts have lowered the cull amount of every clutch from half to less than a quarter. This latest group is about ready for training, and the riders have found that the best way to start is to do a little game of "dino see, dino do” using their own mounts as examples. This can be as simple as giving the raptors a stop and go command and rewarding them with treats, usually dino biscuits. The other raptors pick up on the game quickly and start to join in, and when they do they also get the biscuits. It may take awhile but eventually the pups will pick up on the game too, and this is usually the most dangerous part of the game. As soon as the pups join in, Wranglers hidden outside the pens will begin watching the brush to the sides of the riders in the pen. The intelligent raptors will join in the game to get the treats, the others will respond to instinct and start hunting the riders instead. The wranglers have long range tranquilizer guns that fire quietly so as not to spook the other dinos. Once the pups are darted they are taken to the med lab and tested to be sure they lack the chromosome and then if needed they get put down.

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  Today was the day for testing this newest group, all the riders save two lined up to play the stop go game. Chad took one side and Jase took the other as they were the most experienced with raptors and should be more likely to see a hunting pup coming for them. The games went on as usual and before long the adult raptors were all playing and happily purring as they ate their dino biscuits every time they followed commands. After about an hour the pups finally started to emerge from the bushes. They were definitely a bit slower to get the idea of the game but that was okay, it was just important that they tried at this point. Bobby rode next to Jase and Split on his raptor, Peggy. Bobby was a good hand but he was definitely more guts than brains, which had its uses but also its liabilities. Bobby had grown a goofy smile on his face after the pups had been playing for a good while and nothing had happened, “Hey I think we’re okay, maybe we finally bred the biters out of this pack!”

  “Will you shut the hell up! Ms. Jenn hissed at him as every other rider shot him a murderous look,""You’re gonna jinx us, you…”

  Click, click, click rang out from all the riders' arm bracers to their ear implants—the silent warning from the wranglers outside the fence. This was immediately followed by the thwip, thwip, thwip, thwip of several darts flying past the riders’ heads and disappearing into the brush past Jase. The group froze, as did their mounts, sensing the change in action. Jase stared at the brush, his hand instinctively on his sidearm.

  Suddenly, a small, juvenile raptor flew from the bushes straight for him, a flash of red and brown fury aimed for his throat.

  Thwip! Thwip!

  Two darts slammed into the tiny dino’s flank. In one smooth motion, Jase ducked as Split flipped around to face the flying, now-tranquilized dino. They watched, seemingly in slow motion, as the limp baby raptor slammed into Bobby, knocking him off Peggy to the ground with a loud thud.

  Chad reacted instantly, throwing a full bag of dino biscuits across the pen in the opposite direction. It burst open, scattering the treats in several directions. The Dakotas instantly ran for the spilled pile of treats, no longer paying attention to the fallen rider lying under an unconscious raptor pup.

  Chad and Jase both ran toward the man. Jase carefully lifted the heavy pup off the man and wrapped it in a saddle blanket to hide it from the remaining raptors. Chad carefully inspected the fallen man. Bobby had a decent cut on his face where one of the claws hit, but otherwise seemed unharmed.

  Bobby quickly came to his senses, jolting upright and looking around wildly. He suddenly had a sheepish look on his face as he met eyes with Chad, who looked sternly at the man. “Whoops, sorry boss.”

  Ms. Jenn shook her head as she rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Damnit, Bobby.”