Sixty Cows Down the County Road

Addie dropped back and rode beside me for a little bit. “Was that Uncle Rich?” she said, even though she knew.

I said it was. She was quiet a while. “Jasper’s going to feel bad,” she said finally. “He didn’t do anything.”

“No, he didn’t,” I said. “And you be good to him at school Monday.” She nodded. She is a better person than I was at sixteen, and some days a better person than I am now.

When we topped the last rise, I could see our home place down along the creek, the house and the red barn and the cottonwoods gone yellow and half bare.

And I could see the gate to our home pasture, standing open at the end of the lane.

Somebody was standing at it, with one hand on the latch.

At first I thought it was Ron, and then I thought it was Harlan, who had been following behind and might have gone around.

But the man at the gate was too tall for Ron, and Harlan’s pickup was still behind us on the road.

Then I saw the pickup and the stock trailer parked in our yard, and I understood. Rich had turned around in a field approach and taken the section road around the long way, and he had beaten us home by ten minutes.

He was standing beside the gate with his hat in his other hand. He was not holding it closed, and he was not holding it open wider.

He was just standing where a man stands at a gate when he means to help put the cattle in.

Brynn saw him first. She pulled up hard and looked back at me, and I shook my head at her, and she understood.

She swung Pistol wide to turn the leaders into the lane, and old Grandma walked down the lane toward the gate where Rich stood.

The cows went past him the same way they had gone past his pickup, one at a time, into the home pasture.

He stood very still. He kept his eyes down. Every now and then he put out a hand to turn a calf that tried to slip past the post.

Elden rode down the lane beside me. When we got close, Rich looked up at him, and then he looked at me.

His eyes were wet. I had not seen Rich Haas with wet eyes since their mother’s funeral.

“Jolene,” he said. His voice did not sound like his voice. “I’d have hauled them. For nothing. I should have said it Tuesday.” He swallowed. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I was thinking about Lisa and the money and I wasn’t thinking about my brother.”

I sat on my horse and looked down at him. I had a lot I could have said, and some of it I had practiced in my head on the drive.

But I thought about Kyle, crying in that hospital bed, listening to his cows. And I thought about how Kyle loves his brother.

“You should have,” I said. That was all I said. It was enough. He nodded like I had hit him, and then he nodded again like he agreed with it.

“I’ll be over in the morning to feed,” he said. “Every morning, till Kyle’s home and on his feet. I’ll get the boys to help. No charge. I don’t want to hear any argument about it.” He looked at the girls. “And I owe these two an apology.”