I sat on Doc's lap. They made Matt and Eric come along, and they had squeezed in next to Rick. We were all in the back. Dad and George rode up front. With as much wind as we had, the snow was patchy. Some areas were deep, some bare. The service road we used to get out to some of the cow pastures looked clear.
We made it about halfway to the field before the truck got stuck in a drift across the two track road.
Dad put it in reverse, but the wheels spun. "Damn it," he muttered.
George grumbled and got out. He glanced at Doc before shutting the door.
Doc sighed quietly but I shifted off him so he could get out and help. The two of them inspected the drift and had a quick conversation before going behind the truck. George gestured at Dad to go forward.
He gunned it and the two men pushed us through the drift.
"Well, he's strong as hell," Dad muttered, probably not aware he had spoken aloud.
Doc and George hopped on the edges of the truck bed and rode back there until the next drift. They had to push us through several more, but with their help, we were able to make it out to the windbreaks and check the cows. We threw out some more hay, broke ice on the tank, and headed for the horses.
None of the stock were ours, but Dad owned some of the land and most of the cows were Rick's or George's. Dad liked helping out with the stock, and they often used our property to get to the stock since the fields were closest to us.
The horses were easy enough to care for. They all belonged to different people in the town and they paid a little bit to keep them in the field.
Then we headed for the notorious gully. I'd spent more than one afternoon after shitty weather helping to get cows out of it. It was a bad part of what was otherwise a pretty nice pasture and they did put up fencing, but invariably, the cows pushed through the fence during the bad weather.
This storm was no exception. The fence was buried in snow, and the cows had simply walked over it. We parked the truck as close as we could get and followed George and Doc as they broke a trail for us.
Sure enough, about twenty cows had packed themselves into the small gully and couldn't figure out how to turn around and get out. To be fair, the last one was kind of stuck in the narrow opening into the gully. Though the gully entrance was somewhat sheltered from the wind, snow had drifted down and filled the entrance.
Dad sighed and went back to the truck for some ropes.
It took us a half hour to get the first cow out of the gap. Then it took another ten minutes to convince her she didn't want to go back in with her friends.
The cows mooed frantically, and we tried to get a couple more to leave the gully where they would otherwise starve.
Finally, after getting pissed off at cow stupidity, George actually jumped down into the gully on the far side, landing on the back of a cow, and unleashed his wolf just enough to scare the shit out of the cows. Literally, we saw when he followed them out. It coated his legs, but finally, the cows came out of the gully willingly. Now we just needed to get them back to the rest of the herd. The storm would return according to the forecast, and we didn't want to have to dig them out again.
"Help me chase them across the pasture?" George asked.
Doc glanced at me, before nodding. "Sure."
"We'll meet you all back at the house." George waved.
"Be careful," I whispered.
"Yeah." Doc hugged me and headed out after George.
We climbed back into the truck as the wind gusted, kicking up sparkling snow in the late afternoon light. The next wave of storm would be here soon.
The trip back to the house went relatively quickly as we had already broken trail for the truck on the way out. The wind buffeted us, but the heater took the chill out of the air, and I wasn't shivering by the time we made it back. A little surprised I hadn't heard from the demon in a while, I turned my attention inward. She ignored me. I was good with that.
George and Doc made it back about a half hour after we did, and he curled up with me in the armchair with the blanket wrapped around both of us until dinner time. Somehow, he managed to get forgotten and no one noticed that he didn't eat dinner.
The storm kicked back up full force, and the roads were still closed when we finally fell into an exhausted sleep at the end of a long day.
Chapter 27
Ed
"I'm going to puke," Ed groaned out.
Nikolai twisted around and looked at him. "Truly?"
"Oh my god, just watch the road." Ed clutched his seatbelt and squeezed his eyes shut.
"You will survive a crash." Nikolai laughed as he drove Alex's Mustang through the snow, magic acting like a plow in front of them to sort of clear the road.
Allan echoed Ed's groan. "You're insane."
"Perhaps." Nikolai chuckled. "While puke covering Alex's car is amusing, it would smell."
The mage waved his hand, and Ed's nausea instantly eased. He still wanted to puke, but that was all mental now.
"I should have stayed with my car. I'm going to die in a car full of mad men," their other passenger gasped.
Ed glanced over at her and gave her a sympathetic smile. They had seen her car running on the side of the road, stuck in a snowbank, and Nikolai had pulled over. She was tall, had long blond hair and light blue eyes. She had been grateful for the rescue up until she had taken
