“Nothing that a trim and some highlights and throwing away your rubber bands wouldn’t fix.”
Mia frowned thoughtfully. She kept her hair twisted and off her neck because it was easy. And, she silently admitted, because she was used to being…invisible. It was comfortable. Safe. No one noticed a woman who did everything she could to avoid being noticed.
But she’d been working for years to build a new life, hadn’t she? Why else had she gone back to school? Worked as an intern at Royal Junior High? And if she was building a new life, did it make sense to hold on to the past? To cling to her old ways of doing things? To continue to hide when what she really wanted was to embrace the life she’d always dreamed of having?
She took a deep breath and asked, “How much do you think I should have trimmed?”
Amanda grinned. “Trust me.”
Five
That afternoon at the Royal Round Up, the ranch hands were moving the herd to winter grass and Dave was happy to be on horseback joining them. Yeah, he could have stayed back at the main house and just issued orders, but running a ranch was in his blood. Nothing felt better to him than being on a horse, doing the work necessary to keep a ranch this size operating.
Every month of the year had different demands when you worked and lived off the land. In October, there was plenty to get accomplished while getting ready for winter.
Dave tugged his hat brim lower over his eyes and guided his horse after a steer wandering off on its own. He turned the animal back toward the herd, then mentally reviewed the list of chores still to be done.
After they had the cows, bulls and steers moved to their winter field, the six-month-old calves would be separated from their mothers and weaned. Then the vet would have to come out and vaccinate them before they were turned out to the pasture along with the rest of the herd. Dave knew that a lot of the ranchers in the area turned the calves into feedlots, where they spent their days caged up in small pens with hundreds of other animals. Nothing wrong with the system, Dave supposed, but he preferred keeping his cattle free-range even if it did mean more work for the ranch hands.
His gloved hands tugged at the reins and sent his horse off to the right, where one or two of the heifers were beginning to stray. A cloud of dust hovered over the moving herd and swirled around the cowboys moving in and out of the steers with calm deliberation.
“Hey, boss.”
Dave looked over as Mike Carter rode up, then drew his horse alongside. “Herd looks good.”
“It does,” Mike agreed, squinting into the late afternoon sunlight. “I sent a couple of the guys ahead to set up the temporary weaning pens for the calves.”
“Good. If we can finish separating the calves from the cows by tomorrow, I’ll have the vet come out the day after to take care of their inoculations.”
“That’ll work,” Mike told him. “We can get the identification ear tags on them at the same time and have the work done, I figure, by the end of the week.” He grinned. “Just in time for the first-calf heifers to arrive.”
Dave smiled, too. “Always something, isn’t it?”
“If you’re lucky,” Mike agreed. “By the time the doc’s finished inoculating the calves, the first year heifers should be here. He can check them over at the same time. Save himself another trip to the ranch.”
“Good idea,” Dave said, watching as a couple of the cowboys swooped around the edge of the herd, guiding them toward the winter grasses.
There hadn’t been much rain this year and the grasses were sparse. He’d already cut back on the number of head of cattle they were running, in spite of the fact the stock ponds were still full and water wasn’t really an issue for the herd. The point was, the grasses had dried out and without enough rain, they wouldn’t be coming back.
Ranching was always a series of strategic maneuvers. Paring down the herd, moving calves and saving breeding stock. You had to plan for weather you had no way to predict and try to outthink Mother Nature from month to month. It wasn’t easy, but it was all Dave had ever wanted.
Right now, his concern was the land. Making sure it stayed healthy. Dave was thinking they needed to thin the herd again. With the first-year heifers arriving, and their calves born come spring, the ranch would be carrying more beef than the land could support if they didn’t act soon. Now was the time to make that beef sale.
“We’ve got to get that deal with TexCat, Mike.” He shook his head as the dust cloud rose even higher as if to highlight exactly what Dave had been thinking. “The grass can’t support too big a herd for long.”