Page 13 of Forget That Guy
Those bison had been suffering for hours, and the Kolders should’ve put the damn bison down the moment they’d seen the wolves had all but eviscerated the bison.
The Kolders were a little bit too soft, in my opinion, to own animals.
We got a call out to them several times a month because there was something wrong with one of their animals that they couldn’t handle.
This particular one took the cake.
There was no way those animals were surviving, and it pissed me off to no end that they couldn’t handle the hard parts.
Did anyone want to kill their animals? No. But they did it anyway to end the animal’s suffering.
My mind was going a million miles an hour by the time that I pulled up to the Windsor Ranch.
The youngest Windsor, DeeDee, met us in the middle of the driveway already on her horse.
“Hey,” she said subduedly. “Do y’all want to ride the side-by-side or a horse? Got two already hitched up. Dad thinks that youshould ride the horse so not to spook the cows any more than they are right now, but he said to leave it up to you.”
I looked at Young who immediately caught one of the bags and slung it over his shoulder.
I did the same with the other and we mounted the horses.
Young wasn’t a natural in the saddle, but he’d done it enough now that he could pass.
I’d been riding since I was a young girl.
Young mounted his horse and was following DeeDee before I could mount the paint.
I cooed at the horse that I was riding and held out my hand, letting him sniff me.
He nudged at my jacket and I laughed, pulling out a small sugar cube left in there from the last horse I’d visited with yesterday.
“Ohh.” I smiled as I ran my hand down his neck. “You’re cute, aren’t you?”
He ate the sugar cube up, and I mounted him before tapping him lightly to get him going in the direction I could see Young and DeeDee heading.
I didn’t end up catching up to them until they were already at where Denver was standing.
But before I could get there, a thunderous bang filled the air, and I flinched.
The horses didn’t, though.
Which showed how well they were trained.
When I got up to the man holding the rifle in his hand, his face was grim and his shirt was covered with blood.
My stomach sank as I saw the five downed cattle.
“I guess I don’t need you any longer,” he sighed. “This one was the only one left that I thought might make it, but she went downhill pretty damn quick in the last half hour.”
I looked at the cow.
Then I looked at the man.
He looked pissed as fuck, and I felt bad for getting here as late as I had.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly.
He shrugged. “Part of life.”
