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"Eleven. But Carson, don't worry about being there. It will be quick and uneventful."

"Eleven your time?"

"Yes, Eastern."

"Mackie, I'm s⁠—"

I don't let him get to whatever he's pushing out.

"Tell the cows I said hi."

"Mackie."

"I'll keep you posted, cowboy." I end the call before he can stop me.

The screen goes dark in my hand.

EIGHT

Carson

While shepherds watched their flocks by night / All seated on the ground

There's a click.

"Mackie. Hello?"

I pull the phone away and look at the black screen.

The wind cuts across Dutch's porch and straight through my shirt. Eleven below tonight, and I came outside without a coat because I wasn't thinking past getting somewhere private.

Pregnant.

I stay there another few seconds with the phone in my hand. Then I shove it into my pocket and go back inside.

Dutch is exactly where I left him at the kitchen table. He's seventy-three, bowlegged from a lifetime of horseback, his gray mustache stained darker at one corner from coffee. He's wearing the same canvas vest he wears most days and reading the feed-store receipt he covered in numbers before my phone rang.

He doesn't ask who called, tapping the paper with one thick finger.

"Like I was saying, I'm not asking you to come up with bank money."

I sit back down. Dutch's place runs along my east fence, a hundred and fifty acres I've looked at nearly every day since I bought mine. Good grass, good water, fences already tied into mine in two places. There's enough ground to grow without moving cattle down the highway or leasing pasture from somebody who can change his mind next year.

And Dutch knows exactly what that means to me. He has since before I had enough cows to call what I owned a ranch.

"I carry the note," he says. "You make the payment to me, not some bank in Casper. We set it low enough you can still operate, and after you ship calves every fall, you make an extra principal payment if the year allows it."

I look down at the figures.

"How long?"

"Twenty years if you need all twenty. Less if you don't."

"Interest?"

He names a number low enough that I look up. Dutch shrugs. "I'm not trying to get rich off you."

"You could get more selling it outright."