The Steers She Sorted Into His Pen

The morning

We gathered at first light. Royce and two of his hands brought the pairs off the lease into the shipping corrals at six.

I rode my gray mare, Biscuit, on the east side of the herd, the way I have done every October since I was twenty-two.

It was a bright, cold morning, the kind central Montana gives you in the middle of October. The hills were tan and folded back toward the Crazies, and you could see the frost burning off the corral boards in long strips where the sun hit them first.

We sorted the cows off the calves first. That is loud work. The cows bawl at the fence and the calves bawl back, and you holler over it all day.

By seven the cows were in the back trap and the calves were in the big holding pen, maybe a hundred and seventy head, orange and yellow mixed together.

Then we had to sort the calves by owner and by sex. The plan was the same as every other year, except that this year there was a new person on the sort gate.

Royce’s hands would push calves down the alley. Shawna would read the tags at the gate and swing them.

Orange steers went south, to my steer pen. Yellow steers went north, to his. Heifers went into the two smaller pens by the scale.

I would weigh my heifers first while they finished the steer sort, so they could ride on the pot behind my steers.

I had not wanted Shawna on that gate. I will be honest. But it was Royce’s crew, and Royce’s wife, and in a shipping corral you do not start an argument at six in the morning with a hundred and seventy calves bawling and the trucks on the way. You work. So I worked.

What I saw

When Kenna pointed and I climbed the fence and saw the orange tags in Royce’s pen, I stood there long enough to count the near side.

Eleven orange tags in the first row against the boards. Then I looked over at my own steer pen.

It was thin. Not empty. But there should have been forty-seven steers in there and there were nine.

Nine black calves in a pen built for sixty, standing in the corner with their heads up, bawling for their mamas.

I climbed down and walked to the alley. Not fast. I walked up to the sort gate and stood on the other side of the boards from Shawna, close enough that I did not have to raise my voice.

“Shawna,” I said. “Those orange ones are mine. You’ve been swinging my steers north.”

She swung another one north. It had an orange tag. I watched her eyes go to the tag and away from it, and that is when I knew it was no mistake.

You cannot miss bright orange on a black calf at three feet in morning sun.

“Royce said steers north,” she said. “That’s what I’m doing.”

“Royce said yellow steers north.”

She shrugged one shoulder, still not looking at me. “Tags fall out. Tags get switched. The brand on every one of those calves is his brand. If you think some of them are yours, I guess you can talk to your lawyer about it.”

That was it. That was the whole cruelty of it, said in a flat, bored voice, like she was telling me the time.

The brand is his. Talk to your lawyer. Go spend a year and a few thousand dollars proving your own calves are yours, while the money sits in his account.