Page 51 of The Bride
I shouldn’t have unhooked myself. Okay. But I needed to think. The pen was directly east of the barn, which means I had been heading west. I knew the winds were coming out of the north, which means the gust most likely took me south. If I continued to head in a northwest direction I would eventually hit the barn.
Visibility was zero, but I wasn’t talking miles. The barn literally had to be a hundred feet in front of me.
But each step got scarier. The calf was no longer fighting me, but that might have been because she was getting weaker in the cold. I was moving in a total whiteout, and every time I reached my hand out to feel for the line, there was nothing.
Snow started to seep through my winter gear. I could feel it in the back of my neck and down my back. I stopped for a moment and once again tried to get my bearings. What if I was going in the wrong direction? What if I had gotten turned around?
Why didn’t I bing a compass? What if I let calf go? Would I have a better chance of making it on my own?
This was bad. This was serious.
“Jake! Jake!”
I was screaming. As loud as I knew how to scream, but there was no way he could hear me. Not over the wind and bleating cows.
“Jake! Jake!”
Another gust of wind pushed at me, so hard it knocked me off my feet. I could feel the snow at my back even as it covered my face. In another five minutes I might be fully covered by it.
I thought about my dad. I thought about how hard this all was. But then I thought about Jake and what it would do to him if he lost me this way. I was the only thing Jake had left.
I pushed myself up and I moved forward, dragging the calf behind me. I had no idea if forward was right or not, but it was the only direction I could think to go.
* * *
Jake
Igot backto the barn and hefted the calf over my neck, my shoulders screaming with pain. I set it down and swatted it on the ass. I fell to my knees and dropped to my elbows and took a few breaths.
I didn’t want to think about it. I certainly didn’t want to say it, but I was pretty sure I was done. Mentally, I counted what Ellie and I had carried in my head. We weren’t close to filling the barn. Maybe only half capacity.
But it was getting too dangerous out there. Hypothermia was legit and could happen so damn fast. And Ellie was at least a hundred pounds lighter than me…
Ellie. I didn’t unhook around her. I came straight from the pen to the barn and I didn’t pass her. That wasn’t possible. Unless she was in the barn already.
I hopped up on my feet. “Ellie!”
Nothing but crying calves and horses. I took the goggles off my head and searched again. “Ellie!”
Think. Would she have gone back to the house? Without telling me?
It was so damn cold, maybe on her last trip she’d called it quits.
Ellie wouldn’t quit.
Right? I knew that much about her. When it was important, when it mattered, Ellie dug in. Hard.
Last I left her, I had taken a calf over the pen fence. She had the rope and was moving back. I got another calf and started back after her. Which meant if she had gone back to the house I might follow the line close enough to get a visual. I put my goggles back on, hooked myself to the line heading to the house, and started out knowing, full on knowing in my gut, this wasn’t right.
She would have waited for me at the barn.
Which meant somehow, at some point, she had unhooked herself from the line that led from the barn to the pen.
The damn calf got away. The calf got away and she unhooked herself and went after it.
That’s what she would have done. I made my way back to the barn, unhooked my line, and rehooked myself to the pen line. As fast as I could I moved against the wind and the snow.
“Ellie! Ellie! ELLLLLLIE!”
