The Heifers an Old Man Fed for Free

They charged us $38 a head per month, which was fair, and they had good water and a set of old corrals.

The plan was simple. The cows would stay home on what we had and on hay.

The heifers would go north to that good grass, where we could keep them in shape through the winter and bring them home in February to calve close to the house.

I had hired Rusty to haul them in one trip, because a pot can take 58 heifers that size in one load, and my gooseneck takes fifteen at the most.

It was about 380 miles from our place to the lease, and Gillette is close to halfway.

He quoted me $3,600. That was for the round trip, loaded miles and empty miles both, the way a hauler figures it on a long run when there is no load waiting to bring back.

It worked out a little under five dollars a mile, and that was a fair price.

He asked to be paid up front. I did not like it, but he is family, and Sigrid wrote him the check at our kitchen table the Thursday before.

He folded it into his shirt pocket and said thanks, and then he had a second cup of coffee and asked about our boys.

Why I did not just call somebody

I know what some people would say. Call a lawyer. Call the sheriff. Take him to small claims court.

Sigrid said it herself in the church parking lot, standing by the pickup with the wind pulling at her braid.

I could have done any of those things. In January, maybe, some judge might have told Rusty to pay us back.

But 58 heifers carrying calves needed water and hay that afternoon, and they needed a trailer, and no piece of paper in the world was going to haul them.

So I called the sale barn instead. It was Sunday and nobody picked up in the office.

I called the barn manager’s cell phone, which was written on a card in my wallet, and that went to voicemail too.

He was likely in church himself, the way decent people are on a Sunday.

“Then we go,” Sigrid said. She did not say it like a question.

She opened the passenger door of the pickup and climbed in and fastened her seat belt, still in her good wool skirt.

We were home in twenty minutes. I changed into my brown canvas coat and my work boots and my old tan felt hat while Sigrid changed into jeans and her red barn coat.

I backed the white flatbed under the gooseneck and dropped the ball into the hitch on the first try, which does not always happen.

Sigrid hooked up the safety chains and the breakaway cable and checked the lights while I threw six small square bales of grass hay on the flatbed behind the trailer neck.

The trailer is a silver aluminum 24-foot stock trailer we bought used in 2014 for $11,000.

The pickup is a one-ton with 280,000 miles on it. Neither one of them is pretty. Both of them start in the cold.

We filled the fuel tank in town and pulled out north at half past eleven.

Sigrid had packed a thermos and a bag of sandwiches while I hooked up, because that is how Sigrid is.