It took the three of us twenty minutes to put them back through the middle cut and onto Bart’s side. Thea stood in the open gap with her arms out, and the cows went around her like water around a rock.
When they were through, Bart stood by the cut end and looked at it. I watched him look at it.
“Wire’s old,” he said.
“Wire’s cut,” I said.
He did not answer. Clem sat on his four-wheeler and turned his cap around in his hands.
“I’ll pay you for the hay,” Bart said, and his voice was flat. “Whenever I can.”
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“I did not ask you to pay me,” I said. “I asked you how it got cut.”
He looked at me then. His eyes were red around the edges, like he had not slept, and his jaw was tight. For one second I thought he was going to tell me.
Then Thea called from the pickup that she was cold, and he turned around and walked back to the Ford, and they drove off down the section line with the dust hanging behind them.
Clem Said It Out Loud
Clem did not leave right away. He got off the four-wheeler and walked down to the middle cut and crouched by the curled end with his knees popping.
“Clean,” he said. “Lineman’s pliers, maybe. Or bolt cutters.”
“I know,” I said.
“Three places.” He stood up slowly. “He wanted them in there.”
“I know that too.”
Clem nodded and looked across Bart’s side of the line. From there you could see most of his pasture rolling away to the north. It was brown and short and you could see dirt between the clumps. His stock tank had a ring around it where the water used to be.
“He sold forty pair at the sale barn in July,” Clem said. “Did you know that?”
I had not known that. Forty pair was a third of his herd.
“Got cheated on the price, too,” Clem said. “Everybody was selling. He’s got nothing put up. He’s been feeding last year’s bales and he’s on the bottom of the stack.” He paused. “I heard he’s been trying to buy hay from Kearney to Valentine and nobody has any.”
“He could have asked me,” I said.
Clem looked at me for a while.
“Could he?” he said, and then he got back on his four-wheeler and went home.