The Heifers She Bought in the Sandhills

“Ten fifty,” the auctioneer said. “Ten fifty, going once. Ten fifty, going twice.” He looked at the boy. The boy smiled and shrugged. “Sold. Ten fifty. To the same young lady.”

People clapped. Not a lot, not loud, just a little patter of gloved hands the way people clap at a county fair. Kinley put both hands over her mouth.

I went over and put my arm around her, and she was shaking.

Ivo took off his hat and rubbed his head. “Well,” he said. “Now you’ve got to pay for them.”

The line at the clerk’s table was long, ranchers settling up for cows and bulls and hay. We stood in it with Kinley holding her envelope against her chest. Ivo stood behind us with his own checkbook.

When we got to the front, Dorcas Lund was sitting there beside the clerk.

Up close she was older than I’d thought, and smaller. Her hands were folded on the table, chapped and red from the cold. She looked at Kinley, and then at the envelope.

“You’re the young lady who bought my last two heifers,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Where are you from, honey?”

“Logan County, Colorado,” Kinley said. “By Sterling.”

Dorcas raised her eyebrows. “That’s a long way to come for two heifers.”

“Two hundred miles,” Kinley said. “My mom hauls cattle.”

“Well, I’m glad she does.” Dorcas tipped her head. “Why’d you come so far, though? They have cattle in Colorado.”

Kinley looked at me. I didn’t say anything. It was her story to tell or not.

And she told it. She told Dorcas Lund about the two years of Friday nights with the neighbor’s twins and the lamb checks and the birthday cards. She told her about the little black heifer in Sterling.

She told her about her dad.

She didn’t say it mean. She just told it plain, the way it happened, the hand going up across the ring and the four seventy after she’d quit.

Then she said, “I’ve got nineteen hundred. The heifers came to twenty-one hundred. Mr. Kucera said he’d stand good for the rest, but I want to pay him back, so I’ll need to work it off.”

Dorcas didn’t say a word.

She just looked at Kinley for a long moment. Then she reached across the clerk and took the pen out of her hand.

She pulled the ticket for the second heifer over in front of her, drew a line through ten fifty, and wrote eight fifty underneath. She initialed it. Then she slid it back.

“Dorcas,” the clerk said softly.

“It’s my sale,” Dorcas said. “And my heifer.”

Ivo cleared his throat behind us. “Dorcas, I said I’d cover it.”

“I know what you said, Ivo Kucera. Put your checkbook away before you embarrass yourself.”

Ivo put his checkbook away. Kinley counted out the nineteen hundred dollars on that folding table in twenties and fifties and a few hundreds, her fingers going careful and slow. The clerk counted it again. It came out the same.

Dorcas watched the whole thing. When it was done she said, “Now, what are you going to name them?”

Kinley looked at the two tickets in front of her. Then she looked up.

“Ma’am,” she said, “what were your daughters’ names? Mr. Kucera said they used to show your cattle.”

I saw it hit her. I saw Dorcas Lund’s face go still, the way a face does when something reaches all the way in.