Anne Muler grunted in effort as she hoisted the last hay bale up onto the cart. The light green hay landed in a cloud of dust as it settled atop the already overladen cart. Pure Alfalfa cuts were always harder. The bales were more dense than grass hay by far. Her arms felt like jelly, but the first job of the day was done. Tomorrow, Anne would take the goods into town and sell them. The cattle and horse ranches that surrounded her small 100 acre lot, were always hungry for quality feed. The 25 year old rancher leaned against the wall of her hay barn and splashed some water against her face. The summers seemed to get hotter with every passing year. Two hours of working in the dusty barn had left the blonde cowgirl sweating through her plaid button-up. "This ain't no life for a lady," Anne chuckled to herself as she rested, and admired the results of the morning work. Nearly fifty bales of neat, freshly dried alfalfa lay stacked in the back of her cart. A good load that would fetch her a good price in town, and just the first of dozens of such loads.
Truthfully, Anne wasn't much of a proper lady, and never wanted to be. The sole owner and inheritor of her family ranch, Anne had always been a tomboy. A rambunctious blonde raised rough and tumble in the heart of Texas cattle country. Other girls liked to kiss and curtsy, while she preferred to cuss and carouse at the local saloon. When her father had passed away, Anne had been the only one able to keep the small family ranch going. They had never been able to prosper, not really, but with some grit and hard work, she had made an honest life for herself.
Her ranch was small, at least compared to all those around, but that in itself was sort of a blessing. Anne didn't have the money for a full crew of ranch hands, and couldn't pay competitive rates for those that she could find from time to time. The best she could manage was some seasonal help to help with the harvest or the spring sheep shear. More often than not, the buxom lass did the dirty work herself. She herded the sheep, fixed the fences, seeded the fields, and anything else that needed doing. A hard life that often saw her working from before dawn until well after dark, but a satisfying one. It was a life that had honed the woman into a spartan form. Her body was sculpted by years of lifting sacks of grain and wrestling unruly sheep. Her arms were strong, hands calloused. Her legs were thick, and her muscular rear notably wide. Her fit, bottom heavy frame tended to stretch out the un-ladylike pants that she liked to wear. A woman of impressive physique through struggle and necessity.
A woman of strength... and loneliness, though she would never admit to such a weakness. The burden of keeping her ranch running day in and day out, more or less on her own, left her little time for any sort of courtship. Sure, she was pretty, young enough, and more than healthy, but her unladylike demeanor made her a bit of a hard sell to many of the local ranchers. They wanted a wife to stay home, to cook and clean and look after the kids. To be silent, obedient, and godly. Anne knew she was none of those things. She had had a suitor or two, but most of those had been men eager to add her lands to their own through marriage and lacked any real affection for her. No one seemed to want a wife who swore like a sailor and drank like a fish. "Eh, not like I have time for that nonsense anyway," Anne muttered to herself. She had little time for suitors, and even less for loneliness. There was simply too much to do.
"Miss Muler? You in here?" came a familiar voice from the door to the barn. It was Ms. Dottie, the old seamstress that Anne had hired to do the cooking and cleaning around the ranch.
"Over here, Dottie," Anne answered as she got up from her spot and wiped the alfalfa dust from her clothes.
"Sorry to bother you, Miss, but there's a man here saying he's looking for work," Dottie said sweetly, though the look on the chubby seamstress's face said that she was holding something back.
"Well, good! We sure could use the help. But the look on your face tells me that you got more to say," Anne said as she used a handkerchief to wipe some of the drying sweat from her neck and plunging neckline.
"Well... it's just that the man... well he's one of them horse folk. Y'know... a beastman," Dottie said, her voice low and secretive. "You know that I never judge a soul without good reason, but I ain't heard good things about their kind. Nothing good at all. I think we might best just send him along his way," Dottie said as she fretted with her flour-stained apron.
"I've heard the same stories, Dottie, but we're not in a position to be passing up good labor. If he can work, and he's clean with the law, then I don't see why we wouldn't hire him," Anna answered. The truth was that she had heard the stories as well. Horse men were said to be a subspecies of Minotaur. Bigger than humans, stronger, and more volatile. Minotaurs made for prized soldiers, but poor civilians... or at least that was what was said about them. They were said to be slaves to their more basal impulses. Violent, sexual, vulgar. Hiring one as a full-time farmhand would likely give the local housewives months worth of juicy small talk. But Anne had never been the sort to give a shit about social propriety or petty gossip. "I ain't gonna decide either way before I've had a talk with him in any case," Anne said as she placed her straw hat back on her head and headed towards her ranch house.
As Anne walked up to her house, she spotted the prospective farmhand, and knew now why Dottie had been so apprehensive. The half-equine fellow was more than just big, he was immense. Probably 500+ pounds of half-human muscle. Though he was sitting, she could tell that he stood well over seven feet tall, probably closer to eight. A monster, even by minotaur standards. His body was built thick and wide. His shoulders were heavy, sloped, as if the weight of the world itself rested on his back. The short, tight fur that covered his body was a rusty brown and a shaggy mess of white hair hung over his eyes. The horse-like man stood and dusted off his breeches as Anne approached.
"Oh, hello. You must be Miss Anne, right?" he asked as he extended one massive, dinner plate sized hand towards the blonde ranch owner. Anne took the man's hand and shook it, even though her own hand was only able to grasp two of his thick fingers.
"That's me. Owner and caretaker of the Muler Family Ranch," Anne said proudly, though she was still reeling a bit from just how large the fellow was. Her eyes hardly came up to his navel. A single one of his thick biceps was thicker than her waist. She knew that having a huge guy like him around would make her farm duties a hell of a lot easier, but she just couldn't help but feel a little intimidated. She could see why the other ranchers might be wary about keeping a walking behemoth like him around.
"Name's Doyle. It is very nice to meet you, Miss Muler. I heard you were looking for hired help. I got experience. Some of the other ranches turned me away, said they don't need the help. I ain't much for figures or geography, but I'm a hard worker," the equine man said. His voice was low, like the creaking of a tree that was about to fall, but soft as well. The deep baritone of his voice almost made the very air around him hum.
"Well I can see that you're certainly strong," Anne chuckled as she marveled at the absolute size of the lad. His accent was slight, but hinted at the old world. Irish maybe? "I'm always looking for help, Lord knows I could use it. But there's some stuff you should know first," the well-built woman said as she appraised the rust-colored fellow. She took a seat atop the railing of her porch, which left her about eye to eye with the huge man as he sat on the lowest step. "Firstly, I can't pay a competitive wage. I ain't got the money these other ranches got. Mine is a small operation. You'll get room and board, as well as three square meals, but your paid wages will be a little lighter than you might find at some other ranch," Anne said honestly. Her first rule was to always deal squarely with folk, even if they were massive half-men with bestial features.
"That's fine by me, Miss. Work for my kind ain't easy to come by, so I'll take what I can get," Doyle answered with a smile, or as much of a smile as he could manage with his equine features.
"Alright. Come on with me, then. I wanna see your work ethic in action. Help me clean out the barn loft and we'll see if you're worth hiring," Anne said as she hopped off the railing and motioned for the big fellow to follow her. The porch creaked as he got up, and Anne could feel the ground beneath her feet resounding with the impacts of his heavy hooves as he followed her.
Anne stood on the second story loft of her hay barn and let another two sacks of cracked corn animal feed fall down to the horse man below. She watched for the umpteenth time as the bulky beast man caught the two sacks using just his right arm. She dropped another two, and he deftly caught them with his left arm before depositing them on a nearby pallet. It was a job that would have taken Anne half a day if she had been doing it herself. She would have had to raise up the barn pulley lift, load it up with a dozen sacks of feed, and then carefully lower it to the ground floor before unloading it. With Doyle's inhuman strength, the job was almost done after less than an hour.
"I tell you, the other ranchers are missing out not hiring you," Anne said with an impressed whistle as she dropped yet another sixty-pound sack of feed down to the horse man on the floor below.
"Thank you, Miss. I appreciate the chance to prove myself. Most folk around here are rightly wary of my kind," Doyle answered as he caught the bag in a single hand. He caught the weighty sack with the ease that one might catch a feather pillow. "And... I understand that kind of sentiment. My Minotaur cousins haven't done beast-folk like me any favors through the years."
"Well, I tend to judge people on their actions, not their relatives," Anne said as she went to toss another sack of feed down to the massive man down below. As she went to heave the sack over the edge of the upper loft, Anne felt her boot catch on a loose nail in the aged plank flooring beneath her. It happened in an instant. The momentum that had been meant to heave the sack of grain over the side of the loft had been spent heaving her own body instead. Anne fell over the side of the loft in an almost graceful tumble. Her arms reached out to break her fall, but only open air greeted her fingers. Anne didn't have time to scream. Her mind hardly had time to process the fact that something had gone horribly wrong. She saw the dirt floor of the barn some twenty feet below rushing towards her and knew that at best, she was going to come out of this with a few broken ribs. At worst... well a broken neck was a quick way to go at the very least.
Anne landed hard, but not in the way she had expected. Instead of impacting the hard-packed dirt floor of her barn, she had landed roughly in Doyle's tree trunk sized arms. The blonde rancher took a moment to gather her wits. Her body had tensed up in anticipation of a hard fall, but relaxed slowly as it realized that a bone-breaking fall had been interrupted by the dense muscle of a rust-colored horse man. He had caught her as easily as he had caught the dozens of sacks of grain that she had thrown to him earlier. He stared down at her through the mop of hair that hung over his eyes.
"N-nice catch..." Anne managed to mumble as she looked up into one of the beast man's big, deep, intensely brown eyes. He was so big, she felt like an infant in his arms. He cradled her, muscles inhumanly powerful, but gentle in every way.
"Watch your step, Miss Muler," The massive man said as he gently let her down to stand under her own power.
Anne caught her breath as the massive man before her once again stood up to his full height. Her heart hammered hard in her chest, though she couldn't be sure if it was from the fall, or from something else. She looked up at him, simultaneously marveling at and fearful of his impressive strength. The scent of his sweat hung heavy in the air. A scent worked up no doubt before her fall. He smelled good. Like leather, tobacco, oak aged whiskey. It was an earthy scent, powerful. Anne stood and craned her neck up to look the bestial man in the eyes. No man had ever impressed her in this way. He was a physical specimen far beyond anything she had ever known. A giant right out of some biblical tale, and she couldn't help but feel small while standing beside him. It was a feeling she had rarely known, and one she wasn't sure that she liked. She was, however, entirely sure of one thing.
"You're hired," Anne said simply as she grinned up at the hulking tower of equine man that stood before her.