Chapter 6 #2
“Don’t go past the fence. You stay at the rail. Let Ellis do his job.” A guy could say a lot of things about Ichabod, but the man was a good dad, and they loved him and minded him.
The kid, of course, came up to peer at the cows over the fence, while he got Rio settled and walked out bit.
“Where did they come from? Do you think they just appeared?” Ichabod’s voice was filled with shock.
“Dad, aliens steal cows. They don’t drop them back down.”
Ichabod glanced at Michael and frowned. “All right, smart ass.”
“Dad, you said a cuss!”
“I’m sorry, Michael, my bad.”
“You didn’t see anybody drop them off? There’s a goodly many.” It should have made some noise over the cattle guard.
“No.” Ichabod’s frown deepened. “You would have thought I would have noticed. And I’m assuming that unloading cattle is noisy.”
“It is. But you don’t have any fence down unless somebody cut what I just strung, in which case I’m going to be hot.”
“You’re already hot.” Ichabod’s eyes widened, and his cheeks went pink. “I mean, you’ve already got to be hot.” Ichabod was suddenly staring very hard at the fence.
“I am pretty warm.” And pretty tickled, but he wasn’t going to say that part out loud.
“Well, there’s a couple of options that we got here, one of which is they let them go on the road close to the house, and they smelled feed or water and headed this direction.
It could be that someone dropped them off and was being really stealthy, which seems ridiculous. ”
“Well, I don’t think they have any brands. I mean, I’m assuming the hair doesn’t grow over the brands.”
Ellis did glance at Ichabod this time. “No, the hair does not grow over the brand.”
“All right then. Learn something new every day.”
Ellis wasn’t sure why somebody would drop off a bunch of skinny cows and calves no matter what. Even if they’d paid twenty-five bucks a head for them at the auction house, why throw away two hundred bucks when you could send the bull out for beef?
Still, he didn’t suppose it mattered. Not now, anyway. They were here. There wasn’t a marking on them. Nobody had come to claim them, and there were calves.
So he had a tiny little skinny, pointless herd. It was a perfect thing for a kid who thought he wanted to be a cowboy like Michael did to start on.
“So are they nice?” Michael asked, and Ellis glanced back at him.
“They’re cattle. The bull seems a little fractious, but he may just be hungry.
Right now they seem to be pretty docile, but they’re not pets.
Understand kiddo? Not pets. These are livestock.
They’re big. They’re not particularly bright.
And they don’t know or care if they hurt you.
They’re not trying to be mean, they weigh two thousand pounds. ”
Or fifteen hundred because these guys were damn skinny.
“I’m not saying they’re mean; I’m saying that they’re not to be played with. And you’re not to come out here and mess with them unless I’m out here or your dad’s out here.”
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no,” Ichabod said. “Unless Ellis is out here, you leave the big creatures alone. I am not big-creature-friendly. I’m not a hundred percent sure that I’m small-creature-friendly.”
“Oh, you do all right with cats, Dad.”
“All right, well, I do okay with cats. Go team me. But this is not a thing. You guys listen to Ellis, do you hear me?”
The girls nodded, eyes wide.
Michael seemed a little less convinced.
Zane, of course, was nowhere to be found, but Ichabod had a wide-eyed expression that begged him to help keep the preteen safe.
So Ellis leveled him with a hard stare. “Michael, if something was to happen to you I would never forgive myself. You’ve got to remember that sometimes when an adult tells you something about an animal, you have to listen even though you love them.
If you want to get out and work these cows with me, then we will do it together, but if I hear that you were out here by yourself trying to mess with them, I will never let you into the barn again, do you understand? ”
Now Michael looked at him with that awe he always seemed to have in his eyes. “Yes, sir. Not that I didn’t believe Dad, but Dad is kind of scared of big animals.”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with having a healthy respect for them. They can trample you in a heartbeat. Like I said, that bull weighs two thousand pounds. How much do you weigh?”
Michael flushed. “A little bit a little under a hundred.”
More like eighty, if he knew his stuff, but he let it go.
“That’s right. So, he weighs twenty times what you do. That’s like me with a hummingbird, buddy. Okay?”
Michael nodded, his eyes wide, and Ichabod appeared about as relieved as a father in over his head could be.
“Why don’t you guys go inside? Go find Zane and ask him to help you wash up, okay? I’ll be in in a minute and then we’ll have something to eat for lunch.”
“Okay.” Michael and the girls all trooped inside without much more protestation.
Ellis had a feeling that Michael was trying to show he was meek and agreeable so he wouldn’t get his beloved animal privileges taken away.
As soon as the kids were gone, Ichabod turned to him, waving his clay-covered hands in the air. “Is this a thing? Do cows just arrive?”
“Well, like I said, the way I look at it is one of two things,” Ellis told him.
“Either somebody dropped them off out on the road and they made their way in here because there’s a barn.
They smelled food and water, which happens more than you would think if someone can’t afford to feed their herd anymore. Or someone’s messing with you.”
“Messing with me. Who would do that? I mean why would they do that?” That vague confusion made his belly ache a little. It shouldn’t be arousing, but it was.
Ellis gave him a sideways look. “Can we talk about this later? I need to get these animals fed, and it’s gonna be a long explanation I think.”
That earned him a head tilt, a slow blink. “Sure. Okay. I mean should we call animal control or something?”
He fought not to laugh, trying not to let it show on his face.
“No, sir, they wouldn’t show up here anyway; they don’t have the resources for this.
It’ll take a rescue, if we want someone to come and get them.
We could send them off to auction, but they’re pretty good-looking, aside from the fact that they’re skinny.
I know these cows are proven producers, too, so if no one calls for them I think we could keep them and fold them into whatever herd we eventually start. ”
Ichabod looked doubtful, but he also seemed ready to defer to Ellis. “If you say so.”
“Now, let me go do that thing, and then at some point we’ll talk about it.
But I would bet that somebody who couldn’t afford them sort of herded them along until they reached our land and then let them loose.
” He wanted to figure out what to tell Ichabod about Rick and the cowboys who were loyal to him before he blurted it out.
“That’s crazy. I mean if nothing else these animals are worth several hundred a piece right?”
“Oh, that bull is probably worth a couple thousand, but some people would rather give their animals away than try to auction them off.” He got that.
If somebody had heard he was in the market for cattle then they thought maybe he would keep them rather than sending them right off to the slaughterhouse.
“All righty, let me go play cowboy some more. I’ll come back and have a meeting with you in a bit. ”
“Thank you, Ellis. I had no idea what to do.”
Ellis chuckled. “I reckon you’re going to learn pretty quick.
” He glanced down at Ichabod’s feet. “The biggest thing you can do is do me a favor. Don’t ever come out where there’s cow shit with flip-flops on again.
That’s an extra tetanus shot waiting to happen.
Oh, and I think you’re pretty fine, too, honey. ”
He left Ichabod with a stunned expression on his face, but he heard the laughter when it started up. He reckoned that made his day. Even dealing with these cows felt a little better now.