Winds of Wyoming (A Kate Neilson Novel) Read Free Page B

byways. But he didn’t mind the extra work. The Whispering Pines needed every drop of water the heavens could spare, as his dad used to say.
    He felt a stab of pain slice through his heart. Would he ever stop missing his dad? At breakfast, his mom had told him the intern she’d hired to take over his dad’s marketing duties for the summer would be arriving soon. He rubbed his chin. Though his dad had died months ago, he wasn’t sure he was ready to see someone else seated behind his desk.
    His two-way crackled to life. “Hey, Bossman, can you hear me?”
    Mike groaned and lifted the radio from his belt. Why couldn’t Clint just call him by his name? “This is Mike. Go ahead.”
    The ranch manager’s voice sputtered through the airwaves. “Just checked the cattle. They weathered the storm okay, even the calves.”
    “That’s good news— really good news. I’m not far from the Battle Creek pasture. I’ll take a look at the bison, but they should be fine. What about the horses?”
    “Tanner and I are headed over now. Rusty is going to meet us there. We’ll round up the riding stock and drive them to the corral by the barn to get them ready for the guests.”
    “Good plan. I’ll catch you later.”
    He steered around a boulder that had tumbled off the damp hillside onto the road and made a mental note to bring the front-end loader when they worked on the road. Within minutes, he reached his destination, parked across the road from the fenced pasture and turned off the engine.
    Tramp jumped out the window. He trotted toward the enclosure, tail high, nose to the ground.
    Mike followed, sidestepping the boggy patches, until he came across grooves in the grass. “What in the …?” He eyeballed an ATV trail that tore up the hillside.
    Tramp came bounding back as if to say, “Come on. Let’s go.”
    He stroked the dog’s head. “What do you think, pal? Our crew knows better than to ride all-terrains through a wet meadow.”
    But who would cross their land without permission? And what were they doing near his bison pasture?
    Tramp licked his hand and scampered away.
    Mike listened for the sound of an engine but heard only bird calls and muffled snorts from the herd. Probably kids out joyriding. If they were smart, they would have avoided the buffalo. But few people realized domestication was not the same as tame in a bison’s brain. He’d learned quickly to never turn his back on the capricious beasts, which remained as wild as when they ruled the Plains a hundred-plus years earlier.
    He watched his dog feverishly zigzag up the hill following the fence line, probably hot on the trail of a jackrabbit. Most of the herd grazed some distance from him, spread across a brown-green hillside splotched with snow dollops and outlined by the blue of the Sierra Madres. High above him, a pair of hawks floated on an air current.
    The scent of dung drifted on the breeze. One buffalo cow scratched her back on a low tree branch, grunting with pleasure, while another wallowed in a mud hole. Others chewed their cud in apparent quiet contemplation. In contrast, cinnamon-colored calves cavorted like school kids at recess.
    Tranquility. The perfect word to define the moment. Whatever the ATV driver was up to, he or she hadn’t messed with his animals, thank God.
    Tramp barked.
    Mike turned toward the yap, thinking the dog had cornered the rabbit. Instead, his collie stood nose-to-nose with a calf—on the wrong side of the fence. Mike did a double-take before running toward the pair. He stopped when he saw a break in the wire.
    So that’s how, flashed his first assessment of the situation. The second followed immediately. The calf had a momma who would charge to its rescue sooner than later—and faster than a creature her size should be able to move. He yelled, “Tramp. Tramp, come here!”
    Tramp’s attention did not waver from the calf.
    Though his dog’s behavior frustrated him, Mike knew the stray calf activated his