He didn’t want to deal with it.
There was enough to deal with between the ranch and the house, and that work was good, honest, solid stuff which fed his soul.
And those kids. Well, now, Zane was in crisis, but Michael and the girls? He thought this was the place for them. They needed it.
Even Zane seemed to be focused on working on the house these days. It was unexpected, but the kid was good with his hands. He had a feeling Ichabod had bribed the kid, but it didn’t matter. The man wasn’t in the studio at two a.m. every single night, and he seemed like he was sleeping.
Whatever it was, Ellis approved.
His phone rang again, Ichabod’s name popping up. Huh.
“‘lo.”
“Hey, Ellis. I’m sorry to bother you, but, uh, there’s a bunch of cows in the yard and we’re trapped in the house…”
“No shit?” He snorted. “Sorry about that, boss. The cussing. I’ll come look. Take me about five to get there. I’m working fence.” He was on horseback, but not far out.
“Thank you. I don’t know what to do, and Michael and Allie are wanting to make friends…”
“No, you keep them inside. If they wandered in from a far pasture they might be not handled a lot. Or if someone dumped them to get rid of them, they could be trouble.”
“Did you hear that, Michael? Did you hear they could be bad cows?” Now it could be him, but Ichabod sounded a little panicked.
“There’s no such thing as bad cows, Dad, only bad cow owners.”
Oh, he wasn’t so sure about that, not one little bit. Ellishad dealt with bison herds before. Those were bad cows, not friend-shaped. Fuzzy, murderous little bastards. Or huge, as the case may be.
“I assume I’m on speaker. Michael, do not go out and mess with the cows. I’ll be there in a second.” He hung up the phone on, “But Dad,” and then loaded up on Rio. “Come on, boy, we’ve got to go rescue the greenhorns from the mean cows.”
Rio gave him a side-eye, like, “what the heck are you talking about?”
Ellis shrugged. “They’re city folks. They’re trying. One day, Michael’s going to be a cowboy. I have no hope for Ichabod though.” They took off toward the main house, Rio more than happy to head towards the barn and food and curry combing .
And Michael, who always, always had apples or carrots or sugar or something in his pockets.
He got up close, and sure enough, there were half a dozen mangy-looking, half-starved cattle. With four calves. What the actual fuck? One of the calves had obviously tried to get into Ichabod’s studio. And Ichabod had kind of hustled it out of the way, enraging the momma cow, who was bellowing at the top of her lungs.
Well, shit. Taking the chance someone had trained them at some point to come for feed, Ellis whistled, sharp and loud. Sure enough, all those momma cows lifted their heads and turned to stare at him. All right, well, that was good. The fact that the bull didn’t pay attention was bad, but that meant that Ichabod could manage to get the door to his studio shut.
Unfortunately, that meant that Ichabod had somehow ended up in the studio, and God knew where the kids were. Somewhere in the back of his head, Ellis could hear a disembodied voice say“never work with children or animals.”Thenhe chuckled softly. He’d be fucked on both of those counts there right now, wouldn’t he?
“Come on, cows.” He whistled again. “Let’s get some food.” He rode over and leaned down to unhook the clamps to the pasture gate, and he let it swing open. He’d get the cows in there, get them some feed and water, and then figure out what the fuck.
Hopefully, they were branded and they could find out who they belong to, but they didn’t appear to be in the best possible shape.
It was that lead momma cow that came though first, the big Hereford swaying side to side as she ambled up to him, lowing softly, expressing how unhappy she was.
“I know, Momma, I know. We’ll get you some hay, and that way you can feed that baby. You don’t you stress it. Come on, Momma. Come on cows.” He was trying to figure out how he was going to circle around and get the gate shut behind him without any of the others zipping out. About the time he got everyone in but the bull, Ichabod streaked out of his workshop wearing a pair of cut-off denim overalls and no shirt along with a pair of flip-flops, running to beat the band and closing the gate behind him. Good man.
Good Lord. Flip-flops. This man was an accident waiting for a place to happen.
“Watch that bull,” he called. “I need to get me a rope from the barn.”
“Okay.” Ichabod skirted the bull carefully, heading to the porch of the main house, where Michael was all but dancing from foot to foot while watching Ellis play roper. This little herd was child’s play for Rio, so he left his horse ground-tied while he climbed the rail to go grab a rope. He had one he’d bought and conditioned up last week, and he’d been working his arm on all sorts of targets.
“Let’s hope to hell I don’t make a damn fool of myself,” hemuttered. He grabbed the rope, then began the process of getting back to Rio, getting back out of the gate, and opening the gate to the horse exercise ring. He would put the bull in there for now until he decided what to do with him.
Thank God Herefords were generally pretty docile, even the bulls. “All right, big boy. Let’s get this done.” He nudged Rio toward the bull. “Time to work, Rio.”
