Sixty Cows Down the County Road

Patty Kessler said, “Oh, honey, of course,” and then she was quiet a second. “Ron will want to know why you’re not hauling,” she said.

I told her the trailer fell through. She did not ask anything else, but I could tell she knew.

I did not call Elden Moe. Elden lives at the corner where the county road turns west, and he is eighty years old.

His wife passed two winters ago. He does not run cattle anymore, and I did not want him to feel like he had to come out.

I also did not call Rich. If I am honest, there was a part of me that wanted him to hear about it from somebody else.

I am not proud of that part. I prayed about it that night and asked to have it taken from me, and I think mostly it was.

Thursday evening I told Kyle. He was sitting up a little more by then, and he had color back in his face.

I told him we were driving the pairs home Friday, the girls and me, on horseback.

He looked at me a long time. “Rich won’t haul them?”

“Rich is busy,” I said. It was not a lie, exactly. Kyle was on enough medicine that he did not push it, and I did not want him lying in that bed stewing about his brother for the next six weeks.

He reached over and took my hand. His hand was cold from the room, and I could feel the tape from the needle on the back of it.

“You be careful at the Moe corner,” he said. “The old cows always want to go straight there. Put Brynn up front.”

“I already did,” I said, and he smiled for the first time in nine days.

Friday came up crisp and sunny. I was out at the barn before the girls, while the sun was just clearing the east hills and the frost was still white on the corral rails.

By seven it was full daylight and the sky was the clean blue you only get in late fall.

I caught my sorrel gelding, Rusty, and brushed him down. Before I put the saddle on, I stood there with my hand flat on his neck and said a prayer.

Nothing fancy. Just that we would all come home in one piece, the girls and the cows and the horses.

Then I put on my brown felt hat and my tan canvas ranch coat, and buckled on the old chaps that had been my mother’s.

They are stiff and they are scarred, and they still fit, which is more than I can say for most things from that long ago.

Addie came out in her gray coat with a black wild rag tied at her throat against the wind. She saddled her bay mare, Edna, without a word.

Brynn came out last with her hair still wet, leading her little buckskin, Pistol, and talking a mile a minute.

We trailered the three horses down to Harlan’s in our little bumper-pull, which holds horses fine but would hold maybe three pairs of cattle if you prayed hard.

Harlan met us at the pasture gate with a thermos of coffee and a sack of cinnamon rolls from his wife.

“I’ll open the gate and get out of the way,” he said. “Then I’ll follow along in the pickup behind, in case you need anything.” He looked at the girls on their horses and shook his head. “Your dad is going to be mighty proud of you two.”