Chapter 7 Bode
The ride back to the ranch is quiet and I finally have a chance to think without Maggie chewing off my ear with questions she doesn’t need to know the answers to. Kelpie is tired, and I second the motion of collapsing in a warm bed the minute the horse is stalled and fed.
I slip down onto the hay-dusted floor in the barn and roll out my neck as I unbuckle the straps from Kelpie’s saddle.
The silence lasts for about two more minutes before I hear him coming.
“Where the fuck is Maggie-Mae?” Ford snaps, his ugly mug appears over the back of my horse with his dark scowl and tight jaw.
“Out in the fields being a real cowgirl.” I smile at him and pull my hat off my head with a huff.
“What the hell does that mean, Walker?” He narrows his eyes at me as I walk Kelpie into the stall, making sure the bucket is full of food and closing it up for the evening.
“Her and Gus are bonding,” I say, tugging on the latch to make sure it’s secure. “She wanted to take her time getting back, have a moment to herself to become acquainted with the ranch.”
Ford stares at me like I’m insane. “She said that?” he questions as I hang up the blankets from Kelpie’s back.
“No,” I shake my head, “not out loud…” I shrug. There’s no way in hell that girl is getting the calf and that temperamental, lunatic horse back to the barn. There’s no use in telling Ford the truth, he’d get worked up and throw a fit.
At least this way, she’ll stumble back in an hour with a sour look on her face, too embarrassed to admit she’s wrong, and we can get back to our work in the morning.
“You left a brand new hand to wander back in the snow alone?” He starts following me as I wander to the edge of the barn. The back doors are still open on the hill, and Magnolia-Mae is nowhere in sight.
“She’s a city girl, she’s probably got a GPS or something. What’s that one thing? Siri?” I say, looking over at him. “It’ll lead her back eventually.”
“You gotta be fucking kidding me?” Ford looks like he wants to hit me, and it wouldn’t be the first time it happened.
“We all got hazed walking onto the ranch, Lawson. She wants to be a part of Whiskey River, I’m gonna treat her like every other hand.” I justify my actions, but I can’t help but feel a little worried as the sun starts to dip below the horizon.
“So you fill her boots with sand, feed her horse too much grain so she’s cleaning shit for a week…” Ford snarls and whirls on me. “You don’t leave her out in the dark in the snow!”
I’m ready to fight Ford if it comes to that, but my eyes catch a silhouette in the orange sky.
“I’ll be damned,” I huff under my breath.
Maggie, in all her glory, has her head bent down whispering to the wriggling calf as Gus trots down the trail towards the barn.
The closer she gets, the clearer her shit-eating grin shines against the growing night sky.
“What the fuck does she have on that horse?” Ford asks, stepping past me and up onto the fence edge of the corral to get a better look. “Is that a goddamn calf?”
I should be fuming that she’s this stubborn, but instead? I’m genuinely impressed she hauled that baby up onto Gus’s back and made it back in one piece. “Yup,” I answer Ford.
Ford’s dark gaze turns to me with his signature scowl. “Is that why you left her out there? Because she wanted to bring a damn calf back?”
“No.” I shake my head, biting back my grin that this is causing him just as much stress as it had me. “I left her out there because she’s stubborn and refuses to listen. Congrats Lawson, you hired the worst ranch hand we’ve ever had.”
“That calf won’t make it more than a night with how skinny it is,” he huffs, climbing off the fence, closing the distance between us. “What’s going to happen when she gets back here in the morning and that baby is dead? Hmm? Did you even try to explain that to her?”
“Of course I explained that to her!”
He shifts on his boot heels and shakes his head. “I’m not taking care of a sick calf, Walker.”
“I’m not either.” I huff.
“Good. Then you can bury it with her when it dies.” He pushes past me toward the bunkhouse.
I glare at his pinned back shoulders as the bunkhouse door slams behind him.
Like hell I am. We’ll do what we usually do and let nature take over.
There ain’t no way in hell I’m digging a hole so that Maggie feels better about her new pet dying.
I turn back to see her combing her fingers through the calf’s fur, her lips moving a mile a minute, no doubt praising both animals for how well they’re doing.
Those green eyes find mine, and she flashes me a smile that’s part sweet and part I warned you.
It takes every ounce of my willpower to keep a straight face and narrow my own eyes as she slows Gus down in front of me.
“Where can I put Wanda?” she asks me.
Who the fuck is Wanda?
When I don’t answer out of sheer confusion, she tilts her head to the side. “Did you lose your voice from all your hollerin’ at me?”
Goddamnit.
“I mean, I wouldn’t complain if you did. That ride back was pretty nice without all your huffing and puffing.” She sighs just as the calf wriggles again. In an instant, she’s leaned over the saddle horn, calming it down, and the realization hits me.
“You named the calf?” A throaty, annoyed rumble leaves my voice. She was going to be a bigger problem than expected.
Maggie looks up and nods. Her eyes sparkle in a way you’d never see in an adult, like she’s still riding the high of curiosity and excitement. “She looks like a Wanda, don’t you think?”
“Maggie, it’s a calf. It looks like a calf. Eats like a calf. It’s a cow, not a kid.”
“Technically, right now, she is a kid. Just not a human one, so she needs extra love and care, don’t you, Wanda?
” she says halfway through her sentence, turning her attention back to the whiny thing.
“And you never answered my question. Is there a spot in the barn I can put her where she’ll be warm? ”
I glance around us, just to make sure that I’m not going insane and not caught in some sort of weird dream that eventually turns into a nightmare.
Though now we’re closer to the nightmare part, where I hope I wake up soon because, holy hell, Magnolia-Mae could spend hours talking to a wall and be content.
“Bode.” My name rolls off her lips in part annoyance and part concern. “She needs a warm place to sleep, and I need to feed her.”
“There’s no room in the barn,” I say with a gruff finality, cutting off any other reasons she needs to be here any longer. “She can sleep out here.”
“Absolutely not,” she counters. “She’ll freeze to death!”
And then maybe we won’t waste time trying to nurse it back to health in the middle of winter. My eyes find hers again, and then they see her bottom lip. Bitten red from the cold and rolled out far enough… is she pouting?
“She can sleep with Gus.” Maggie straightens at the idea, and for a brief moment, I glance at the horse.
Gus has bucked me off more than a few times in his time here, and forcing him to sleep with a needy calf feels like trouble and revenge at the same time.
Still, I’m going to owe him an apple or… six after this.
“It’s settled,” she says. “Gus and Wanda will be roommates until you build her a new home.” My mind is lost in the sweet tone of her voice before her words ring true.
“What? No, I ain’t building anything for that cow,” I argue as she starts to trot toward the barn, leaving me in the cold. “Magnolia!” I holler.
“I really wish your voice had gone out!” she yells back, but it’s clear she’s smiling.
I tilt my head to the sky, praying for any sort of saving grace to the falling snow, and at the same time, pinch the top skin of my hand to wake myself up from the nightmare I’ve clearly ended up in.
“Oh shoot!” Maggie yells from the barn at the same time the clattering of the feed buckets sounds. The air around me fills with a heavy breath of fog as I let out a sigh and walk back to the barn to make sure she hasn’t hurt herself.