4. Beck #2
“I’m all the way on the other side of the property, Tate,” I explain.
Tate’s land is on the opposite side to where I am now, and I gaze off over the rolling hills, assessing the distance between myself and the barn.
I’d need to go back and get help to corral the cows to where they need to be.
“Can you keep them contained until I get there?”
“They’re on the fuckin’ road, Beck,” Tate says. “I ain’t keepin’ em anywhere.”
Fucking cows. Cows are surprisingly mischievous, and damned near impossible to keep in one spot. They’re always escaping somehow, and I’ve been making their mission easier every day that I can’t properly repair the fences.
Those fences will be the death of me, and this ranch.
“I’ll take care of it,” I say before hanging up and finding Austin’s contact in my phone. He picks up on the second ring.
“You still at the barn?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he answers.
“You got a friend you can take over to Tate’s and get my fucking cows off the road?”
“Shit,” Austin says. “Yeah, I think I can grab Dylan. Nash is around here somewhere, too.”
Nash is my little brother, and he somehow always has a cool head in a crisis. I’m lucky he’s here, too. It won’t be long until he’s busy with training and hitting the road for the rodeo circuit. He doesn’t waste time with the small town competitions.
He’s a world class bull-rider, competing at big events that draw crowds from all over the world. Once the season is in full swing, I’ll be lucky to have his help for the odd week here and there between his competitions.
“I’m on my way, I just won’t be able to get there for a while.”
“We’re on it,” Austin reassures me.
I put my phone back in the pocket of my jeans and give Willow a nudge to get moving. She picks up her pace into a lope again, transitioning seamlessly into a gallop and we head in the direction of Tate’s to meet Austin there.
The cows are all over hell’s half acre by the time we arrive, so herding them back onto the property is a feat in itself. Hell, finding the last few stragglers is the real challenge. We finally get the last one about two miles up the road.
All the warm golden rays are gone, leaving everything shadowed in blue and grey by the time we manage to corral them into a fully fenced off pasture and make our way back to the barn.
“That pasture will be out of rotation until we can get those fences back up,” Austin points out as we work on untacking the horses.
Once I have Willow’s saddle off, I pick up a brush from the bucket beside me and start using it to loosen the dirt and debris from Willow’s tawny coat.
“I know,” I mutter through gritted teeth. Brushing Willow is usually a meditative practice for me, it calms me, quieting my mind after I've processed everything on our ride. “Won’t be able to fix ‘em for some time, though.”
“Then we’ll be down to two fields for rotation.” Austin clicks his tongue and gives his head a shake.
We already rotate the cows every five days to give the grass time to grow back and breathe a bit.
If the cattle spend too long in one field, they can overgraze.
Being down a pasture means the grass won’t have time to recover before we rotate again.
From what I saw out there today, I don’t know if the fields can handle it.
It’ll mean thinking about supplementing feed, something I can’t afford at the best of times.
It’s fully dark by the time I lead Willow back out to her field, and she promptly rolls in the grass, dirtying herself all over again. I shake my head and turn to start my walk home, the lights from the house like a beacon.
I climb the stairs to the large log-cabin style home my parents built on the hilltop. That was back when the ranch was thriving. They’d built the house and several guest houses in the hopes of having tourists come to stay. It was my mother’s idea, designed it all herself.
And then she left. My theory is that she felt entirely alone on this big ranch with us three kids. Neglected and under appreciated by my father who spent all his days from sun up to sun down out in the fields, whether he really needed to or not.
A knot of resentment forms in my gut. While I can understand her decision, I’ve never forgiven her for leaving us, and I’ve never forgiven my dad for not trying harder to make her stay.
He didn’t change his ways either, and we were left to fend for ourselves while he tended to the land.
This big old cavernous house and the surrounding guest houses were a painful reminder of everything it felt like we were missing.
But tonight the air feels different when I open the front door to the main house and step inside the foyer. The smell of something earthy and vibrant hits me, like eucalyptus and lavender, and there’s a soft din of conversation coming from the kitchen.
I follow the sound of my father’s voice, his familiar deep timber rumbling through the house. Whatever he’s said is followed by a bellow of a laugh, a sound I haven’t heard in years, if not decades. Not since our mom left, anyway.
But my heart stops when I reach the threshold of the door and see what–or who–it was that made him laugh like that. I figured I’d escape interacting with our visitor, having spent all evening getting my cows out of the road.
Clearly I misjudged how long my dad can sit and gab with anyone who stops by. Because sitting at my kitchen table, long legs stretched across to an opposite kitchen chair, bare feet poised on the seat, is Lyla fucking Morgan.