The Cows That Still Knew Her Horn

“Four hours,” Curtis said. “We’ve tried everything. We tried bunching them from the side. We tried pushing them east along the fence. They break every time and come right back to the wire.”

He had tried everything a man does when he thinks cows are something you push. Cold, scared cows do not want to be pushed.

They want to be led somewhere they trust. A machine coming out of the snow is a wolf to them, and a wolf is a reason to stay bunched.

I didn’t say that. He knew it somewhere under the pride. The thing they trusted had just been sitting in my shed for a year.

“Which way are you going?” I asked.

“East along the fence to the corner, out the gate, a mile east on the county road, then north up Edith’s lane to the cedars,” he said. “Edith’s at her gate.”

Three miles. A mile along the fence, a mile crosswind on the road, and a last mile turning partway into the wind. That last mile worried me.

“Get your machines back,” I said. “All of them. Way back. Behind the herd and off to the north side, so they can see you’re not coming at them. Nobody hollers. Nobody revs anything.”

Curtis looked at me for a long second. Then he turned and waved at the boys. They backed the four-wheelers off a good hundred yards and shut them down to idle.

I rolled the window the rest of the way down. Snow came in across my lap. I needed my arm out and my voice out, and I needed them to see my face.

Behind me, Gus braced his boots against the headache rack and cut the first sack open with his feed knife, an old bucket between his knees.

I looked down the fence for one cow.

Black cows in a blizzard are all the same cow. Then the wind lulled, and in the middle of the pile I saw one standing with her head a little higher than the rest, the way old boss cows stand. Granny. Nine years old that fall.

I put two fingers on the horn.

Two short taps.

The same two taps I gave every morning for fourteen winters. The same two Gus used to push with his little hand.

The sound went out thin and flat in the wind, and I did not know if it would carry a hundred yards.

Then I leaned out into the snow and called her the way I used to. “Come on, Granny. Come on, girls. Come on, come on.” It is not a pretty call. It is just a woman’s voice going up at the end of every word.

Nothing happened.

I counted to ten. I could feel Curtis watching from beside his truck. I thought about driving away with nothing, and him telling the county that even the help couldn’t do it.

I tapped the horn again. Two short taps. “Come on, girls.”