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herds together to push them to their pasture, Harry had stripped
back the broken wires, replaced the rotten poles, and was waiting
for them.
This time the cattle were more hesitant to return to their
home. Maybe the cattle thought that they had numbers on their
side, or maybe they realized that the new fence was going to be
more of a challenge to tear down, but whatever the reason, they
made Tanya, Joel, and their horses work hard to get them
through the open gate. No sooner would they get one of the critters
near the opening than it would veer off in another direction
and the chase would be on again. Even resorting to some Wild
West type of hooting and hollering didn’t seem to make any difference
to these cows and calves.
It was the end of the day, well past suppertime, before the cattle
were all back where they belonged, the fence was mended, and
everyone returned to the Circle H ranch yard, including two very
sweaty horses and two exhausted riders.
Later that night Joel phoned Buck Smith. One of Smith’s hired
men, a young bull rider named Tyler, answered the phone. He
told Joel that Smith was away at a rodeo in Pocatello, which is
where he would like to be himself but he had to stay behind and
take care of things. Tyler said was sorry to hear about the cattle
breaking through the fence and knew that checking that fence
was something that they had been meaning to do. Joel asked
Tyler to let Buck know that it had happened again, and Tyler said
that he would.
There was not much more Joel could say or do right then. He
didn’t think that it was his business to tell them to move their
near-starving cattle off the pasture that shares a fence line with
his grassland. Joel understood that a big spread like the Buck
Smith Ranch Corporation couldn’t possibly be on top of all of the
details the way that a smaller operator would. At the same time,
he didn’t want to wake up one morning to the sound of 300 cows
bawling in his meadow and consuming all of the grass he had for
his own livestock.
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