Page 29 of On the Land, We Shoot Straight
“Thanks,” Cole said and sat up.
Grady snorted. Cole shrugged and crawled back over to his own bedroll. Grady listened as he got his pants off, cleaned himself up and rifled around in his saddlebag for fresh pants.
Grady’s eyes drifted closed. He felt good, like he’d just had the orgasm of his life. But he was also feeling unbalanced.
“Night,” Cole said as he settled in.
Grady grunted.
17
T
he horses slowed toa trot as they approached the edge of the hill in the early hours of the morning the next day. Below them, spread as far as the eye could see, were the cattle. Grazing on what they could make of nothing. The dam was near empty, puddles of mud ringing it and inching closer to the center.
“Probably shoulda come on sooner,” Grady said.
Cole flicked his reins over his wrist, sat Chloe and looked at the dam.
“It’s changin’.”
“It is.”
“They look all right, though.”
Grady cast his eye over the closest of the herd. They could look better. There were some bony hips out there. The one at the front lifted her head in a lazy gesture, noted the horses and then the men atop them and settled in to watch. The cows around her followed suit, lifting their heads one by one in a languid movement and resting their eyes on the top of the hill, untilGrady and Cole had all those eyes on them, drinking them in and waiting on what was coming next.
His granddaddy had added cattle ranching to his holdings when Grady’s daddy was born in 1924, something for Old Man Leo Grady to leave to each of his sons—the farm for Roy, the ranch for Henry—and a mutual assurance between the two. But Grady’s Uncle Roy was killed in the war long before Grady was born, and his daddy married late and his mama had him in ’58 and a lot of miscarriages in between getting married, having Grady and giving up. And now only Grady was left, grateful for his granddaddy’s foresight—if the wheat fails, you got the wool; if the wool and the wheat fail, you got the cattle. But as he regarded the hundreds of eyes on him, the stalks of grass chewed down to barren dust at their ankles, he reckoned old Leo didn’t account for if you got no water, you got nothing.
Grady turned Red, Cole followed, and they cantered down the hill.
“Where’s Dog?”
Cole rode up alongside Grady as Lady kept pace beside them.
“Anywhere but here.”
Grady pulled up once they were at a level with the cattle, and Cole pulled up next to him. They’d move them like they did the sheep, and Grady reckoned Cole knew that. So he said nothing, nudged Red with his boot and set out to flank the side closest to them. Chloe’s hooves pounded the earth as Cole set her off in the opposite direction. Lady streaked ahead of him for the rear of the herd, her paws barely touching the ground as she stretched her legs out and brought them in, a black-and-white bullet skimming the surface of the earth. Grady pulled his left rein in, guided Red to take up the side and looked over to the far fence and saw Cole making the same movement. The cattle began to bunch up between them, their hooves pounding the dry groundand kicking up dirt until they were a herd of red fur at the center of a dust storm, the riders tall above them.
The cattle were huddled and moving out quicker and easier than the sheep, like they knew the drill and were happy to be moving on. Grady held the side, Lady held the rear, and Cole held the far side until they made the gate they’d left open before riding up the hill.
For the next five hours, they rode. Kept an easy pace and had the herd cresting the rise over the middle pasture by noon. The deepest dam on the property was still holding a decent amount of water, helped by the recent, if sporadic, rains. The hay bales were tight cylinders of straw scattered as far as the horizon line, and in the pasture beyond this one, the ryegrass would be ready for them once they had their fill of the hay. The cattle passed through the last gate like a river of brown going through an hourglass, splayed out on both ends and tight in the middle. Their heads bobbed slow and easy, their calls constant between each other, ringing out in a continuous deep baritone as they arrived.
Cole jumped down as the stragglers went through. He left the reins loose, and Chloe waited as he went over to the gate, brought it back in a wide arc, and slipped the wire circle over the pole. Grady watched as the cows fanned out, most of them bunching around the first of the hay bales and feeding. Mesquite trees dotted the pasture, and once they’d eaten and downed their fill from the dam, they’d team up around the place in the shade to sleep.
“We gonna head back to the lake?” Cole swung himself back up into the saddle.
Grady stood in his stirrups to adjust his seat, sat and leaned over to spit.
“We could.”
“Cool.”
“You wanna eat first?”
“I could eat.”
Grady nudged Red, turned at a walk before setting off at a canter for an outcropping of rocks and trees at the center of the pasture. The biggest rock rested on top of some smaller ones and made for a nice cave, cool for sitting in and wasting away the heat of the day.
