Creed started the smaller of the two tractors and ran the front spike into a big round bale of hay. “She told me to bring this many bales into the barn right before she left. Think they’ll last until we thaw out?” he yelled over the hum of the engine.
“She’s a smart old girl. When we get ice or bad weather she brings the cattle into this pasture and puts the big bales in the barn. She could use the little square ones to feed but says that she’d have to come out here three times a day if she did. She knows what she’s doing so I expect she knows how many bales you’ll need. It’s also the reason she had that lean-to built on the back of the barn,” Sage said with a smile.
“Okay, open ’em up,” he said.
She pushed the doors back and he stuffed the bale into the doorway. Before he could back away the cows were already chomping at it.
He killed the tractor engine and hopped down from the seat, picked up a clean bucket, and went in the stall to milk the cow. “How often during a winter does she do this?”
“Depends. Usually when we have a snow coming through. Maybe once or twice a winter. Sometimes not at all. Once the snow is melted, she turns the cattle back out into the whole ranch and brings in the big bales as she needs them.”
“You always keep a milk cow?”
“Not always. Grand likes one in the winter so if we get stranded down here and can’t get into town for supplies we have fresh milk and butter. She even makes cheese, but I have no idea how to do that. I do know how to run the electric churn and make butter.”
“That’s good. In the spring we’ll be too busy to milk a cow twice a day,” he said.
* * *
There was that we business again. And she’d almost used the past tense when she talked about Grand. That was enough to depress Jesus on a good day in heaven. She grabbed a feed bucket, filled it with grain for the hogs, and headed toward the hog pen.
She yelled at the hogs to drown out the niggling voices in her head. “Hey, pigs! You’re going to be happy to know that the snow is slowing down and in a few days it’ll warm up and your whole pen will be a brand-new mud bath,” she said, but it didn’t cheer her or the hogs up. They snorted, ate the grain, and she knew they’d much rather have a big bucket of cornmeal softened up with hot water or warm milk.
The chickens were happier with their breakfast. Even the rooster flapped his wings and crowed. They gave her eight big brown eggs in exchange for the chicken scratch she’d spread out on the floor of the henhouse.
When the ranch was really Creed’s, would he expect her to keep helping with chores? She’d always helped Grand and she’d miss not going out to check on the ranch every day, but when it was his, he would probably hire some help. The bunkhouse might even be full again and there could be cowboys all over the ranch.
“Dammit!” She shook her fist at the chicken coop.
She didn’t want to think of Grand in the past and she wanted to think of “if” not “when” Grand sold the Rockin’ C. And if Creed really did buy the property, she’d be damned if she helped do one thing. He and all his cowboy friends could feed his own hogs and gather his own eggs.
Noel bounded out of the barn and stopped when she reached the chicken yard wire fence. When she stopped moving, she sunk down until her pregnant belly was brushing the snow.
Sage let herself out the gate and secured it by turning the wooden latch crossways. “I’m okay, girl. I’m just mad. You going to be able to get out of that snow or do I need to give you a helping hand?”
Noel stuck her nose in Sage’s hand.
“I’m really fine, but you’d best be getting back to the house. You’ll have frozen puppies if you stay out here much longer.”
With one jump, Noel was moving toward the house and barely sinking into the snow at all. They were halfway to the house when movement caught Sage’s eye. She followed the tiny tracks to the big cedar tree between the house and barn. She bent at the waist and pulled her dark hair back so she could see underneath the lower branches of the tree.
Two cotton-tailed bunnies stared up at her. They huddled together against the tree trunk, their light bodies sitting right on top of what snow had drifted under the tree. Her special paint gods had given her the next painting. It wasn’t going to be the whole big cedar but just the bottom branches and the two brown rabbits surrounded by snow. She stood up and backed up slowly so she wouldn’t spook them and imagined a bright red bow and a bunch of mistletoe hanging from the bottom limb right in front of them.
“Good Lord, I am besotted with mistletoe and holiday pictures.”
Besotted! Shit! I’ve never used that word in my whole life. I don’t even like that word. It sounds so formal. Erase that, Lord!
She made a motion in the air like she was erasing a big blackboard. “What the hell is the matter with my paint gods that all they are giving me are Christmas pictures with mistletoe in them? Will it be my best year ever next winter? Will they refer to this as the Sage Presley mistletoe season? Or will it put a screeching halt to my career?”
Maybe it wasn’t paint gods. Maybe it was hormone devils making her see mistletoe since that was the
