(This ficbit was written in response to one of Samantha's Challenges on the Goodreads - Less Than Three Press group. The prompt was "something to be.")
Jace swore fluidly, scrubbing a
calloused hand roughly over his face and across the back of his neck,
glaring down into the ditch. Was it really too much to ask for something to be easy today?
What
had started as a simple 'ride out and check the fence line in the east
pasture' had turned into a seven hour ordeal of rounding up the thirty
head of cattle that had managed to wander free of the enclosure by way
of a sagging section of wire, and then shoring up the failed barrier as
best he could. Without a new post to replace the one that had rotted
out and given away, likely when one of the cows rubbed up against it to
scratch their itchy hide, it was a temporary fix at best. It wasn't as
though he could fit an extra fence post in his saddle bags every time he
rode out, so there it was. Of course, getting right down to it, there
shouldn't have been a need for one, either.
The fence post in
question was so deteriorated around the base that it had crumbled in his
hand when he touched it. The damned thing should have been reported
and replaced long before it ever came to a situation where valuable
livestock could get loose, and when he figured out just who the hell had
ridden that fence last and missed the obvious damage, Jace was going to
tan himself some ranch hand hide.
It was a lucky break that
there were so few cattle in the pasture in the first place. Max Carlson
liked to keep his springers, the cows just getting ready to drop a
calf, nearer to hand in the smaller east pasture before they and their
new calves were moved back out into the several hundred acre area the
ranch used for spring grazing. After tomorrow though, they would be
joined by another hundred and eighty head or so of beef cattle as the
ranch prepared the next week's drive to the stockyard. If Jace hadn't
discovered the broken fence when he did, it could have been a disaster
that delayed the next drive – which would have cost Carlson a
significant amount of money and likely put Jace, as the ranch's foreman,
firmly in the hot seat. Not to mention the fact that the change in
schedule might have resulted in Jace missing out on his much anticipated
back alley rendezvous with his favorite nameless stranger. Oh yeah,
there was going to be some serious hell to pay when he got back.
Finished
with the temporary fix, he had made a note of the geography around the
broken fence section as a reference point and made it another quarter
mile of fence line when he heard the bleating of a frightened calf and
the agitated lowing of what could only be the calf's mother. Following
the pitiful sounds, Jace found a heifer and her calf separated by a good
six vertical feet of eroded creek bed. It looked like the calf had
walked too close to the edge and the loose soil had crumbled beneath it,
tumbling it down the slope. The critter didn't look damaged at all,
just spooked, but he'd have to lay hands on it to be sure.
Dismounting
from his horse, he inched out as far to the edge of the embankment as
he dared and looked upstream and down for a low lying access point.
'Course not. Wasn't nothing about this damn day gonna be easy.
Jace
blew out a frustrated breath and gritted his teeth. Cussing about it
wasn't going to get him back to the ranch house any sooner, nor was it
going to get the calf out of the ditch.
Turning back to his
horse with a heavy sigh, he lifted the ever present rope over the saddle
horn and moved to tie it off to the nearest tree. The sooner he
wrestled the calf from the creek bed, the sooner he could finish riding
this damn fence and head for the ranch house, where he would spend the
rest of the night making preps for the drive into town – and the sooner
he made it to town was that much sooner he could fall into the strong
pair of arms that haunted his dreams in between drives.
And if that wasn't something to smile about, he didn't know what was.
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