THE COW HE CAME TO BUY

THE COW HE CAME TO BUY
THE COW HE CAME TO BUY t1

PART 1: THE MAN WITH FORTY DOLLARS

The day the wealthy rancher came to take our last cow, my seven-year-old son wrapped both arms around Clover’s neck as though he believed love alone could make a rope impossible to pull.

I watched from the porch and could not make myself move.

Clover stood beside the fence in the bright May sunlight, red-brown hide shining over her ribs, white blaze running clean down her face. There was a rope around her neck, though nobody in our family had needed one in three years.

She would follow Oscar anywhere.

That morning, she stood so quietly beneath his arms that the bell at her throat did not make a sound.

Oscar’s face was buried against her shoulder.

His sandy hair stuck up in the back because I had forgotten to smooth it after breakfast.

His whole little body trembled.

He did not cry.

That was worse.

The man who had come for Clover remained mounted ten yards away.

Adrien Brandt.

Even if I had never met him, I would have known the name.

Everybody in Kestrel Flat knew it.

Brandt ran cattle north of town on more land than I could picture at once. People said he kept two thousand head, fourteen hired men, three barns, two bunkhouses, and enough winter hay stacked along the creek to feed half the territory.

People also said he was hard.

Not cruel.

That distinction seemed to matter when men spoke of him.

Hard meant he expected a day's work for a day's pay. Hard meant he remembered a man's mistakes. Hard meant he could look at a horse, a fence post, a beef steer, or a hired hand and know within five minutes whether he was getting what he had paid for.

He had answered the card I put up at the livery.

GOOD MILK COW FOR SALE.

GENTLE.

INQUIRE AT THE DUNORE PLACE.

I had written those words myself.

I had stood looking at them for almost ten minutes before I forced my hand to pin the card to the wall.

Now the consequence of that little square of paper sat on a bay horse in my yard.

Forty dollars was the agreed price.

Thirty-six dollars was what I owed the bank.

Twelve dollars was all I had.

The arithmetic was merciless.