All Roads Lead me Back to You by Kennedy Foster

Author:Kennedy Foster
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Mid-August, and the flies were bad despite a second release of natural predators, tiny wasps that preyed on fly eggs and larvae. Horses stamped and thrashed their tails, thundered madly up and down the pens, and rolled the dust of the wallows into their sweated coats. Farther uphill, cooler, the cattle suffered less.

When the time came to take the bulls off the herd, Sixteen and Kid gave little trouble. Old soldiers, they knew the drill, probably remembered that a good feed of mash awaited them at the pasture gate. All the same, Alice and Domingo double-looped each bull and convoyed him down to the open-stock rig, one on either side like a ceremonial guard. Hamster was another matter. A rollicking little character with a sense of humor expressed in ponderous bucks, he ducked and shimmied among his admiring heifers, soon infecting the whole harem with unwisdom. Forefeet scraped dust; phantom horns hooked. Snippy moos in the hot collies’ very faces. The bull’s owner, meanwhile, squatted on the ramp of her trailer in the gateway.

“Shoulda brought them something to eat,” Alice sighed, stroking sweat from her eyebrows as they stood their horses in the cottonwood shade, taking a breather. “Wonder if it’s worth going back down for.”

“I wish my other horse,” said Domingo. He leaned to stroke the Mouse’s wet shoulder. “This guy is tryin’, but—”

“Yes,” she agreed, “but he’s not quite ready for the bull. Well, let’s see what Tommy can do.” Walking the gray horse out of the shade, she showed him Hamster, let out the reins, sat deep in her saddle, and set her left hand on the horn. A hand too tall for this work, Tom Fool, but he had the advantage of a quiet mind and great natural authority. Now if that enthusiast Glen could prevent himself from interfering…

The two grass eaters squared up, took each other’s measure. A thousand pounds a side, give or take; the gelding’s height imposing, but the bull’s weight of muscle animated by a brute will to dominate. To kill, even. He was polled, and Alice was glad of it. Horns would have tipped the balance of risk. Hamster determined to hold his ground; Tom Fool determined he should not. At first it was a chess game, the bull cruising among his little bunch, hiding out behind this cow or that; the horse easing him toward the edge of the herd. Hamster didn’t like that. He darted out and around, leaving his pursuer stuck in the middle. Another try, same result.

Alice brought her horse to the mark again. This time the gray cut through the herd fast, head low as if driving his own kind. Heifers quickstepped out of his way. Coming face-to-face with Hamster, he lowered his forehand, bent his hocks, juked right-left-right with the bull, tight as his shadow. Hamster reversed and trotted away, whipped around, scratched up dust, and charged. Defying instinct, Tom Fool bounced forward, his ears pinned flat. Unexpected, that big white hurtling shape! Those long

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