Page 81 of Roping Her In

“Jake, you come on up here by me,” he said. “And I think we have….” He looked around, clearly not finding who he wanted. “Nope, I guess it’s just us.”

He beamed his usual optimism out to the group gathered. “I’m Smiles Glover, for any of you who don’t know me. I’m the lead vet here at my family ranch, Shiloh Ridge.”

The group next to them started to have Glovers leading them too, but Jake tuned them out, as he shuffled to Smiles’s side.

“This here’s Bev Russell.” Smiles grinned at her like she’d hung the moon. “She graduated a year ahead of me with her large animal veterinary degree, and she also has several certifications in horse care, and currently works for Doctor Carver in town.”

Smiles turned toward Jake and beamed at him. “This here’s Jake Ahlstrom. He’s the lead vet out at Three Rivers Ranch and has a whole team out there he works with. And while they don’t have as many cattle as we do, they have way more land, so he knows what he’s doing as well.”

Smiles turned and plucked a clipboard from the fence post. “The three of us are going to split you guys into three smaller teams, and we’re going to be checking the cattle and the calves before we send them down the chutes to get tagged. If there’s any that need to be pulled, we’ll tell you what to do with them. But otherwise, I think we’re ready.”

“Smiles did check the herd only a couple of days ago,” Bev said, her voice just as professional and no-nonsense as Jake expected it to be. She was like Smiles’s polar opposite, though when she looked at him, a small smile came to her face. “They should be good, but we want to make sure everyone is in tip-top shape before we start working on ‘em.”

“Oh, and we’re supposed to let you know that there’ll be runners checking on us to make sure we don’t need any food or water or medical supplies or anything like that,” Smiles said. “Since this is a pretty big place, and we’ve got roughly fifteen hundred cows we need to process today, we want to make sure everyone stays hydrated, and healthy, and happy.”

He looked at Jake, who gazed back at him and shook his head. “I don’t have anything to say,” he said. “I got put in this group.”

Smiles laughed. “He’s right. If you’ve got a problem, you come to me. I’ll see if I can figure it out.”

He paused for a moment and then seemed to realize he had more to say. “You may have noticed that us Glovers are all wearing blue today, and if you didn’t, well, now you know.” He pinched the chest of his shirt and waved it. “We’ve all got blue polos that say Shiloh Ridge Ranch right on the front. You can ask anyone wearing a shirt like this for anything, and they’ll know what to do.”

“Or they should,” Bev said.

Smiles laughed again. Jake simply liked being in his presence, because he really exuded all the optimism and good vibes a person could possess.

“We should,” Smiles said. “We have fifty gallons of water out there, and we’re gonna be heading straight across this pasture and through a big gate. You’ll then see some of our rails and paddocks set up. We’re gonna go to a corral beyond that, where we’ve got a team out there cutting cattle for us, and my brother Rock is leading that team.”

He pulled a walkie-talkie out of his pocket and clicked the button. “This is a go for Rock. This is Smiles coming at ya. My team’s ready to walk across the pasture. Are you ready to cut cattle for us soon?” He grinned out at everyone and pushed the button again. “Over.”

The walkie-talkie crackled, and a voice came through. “Oh my word, Smiles,” Rock said, his voice set on high-grump. “Yes, we left ten minutes ago, just like I said we were. Bring your team. I’ll be able to see you when you get here. We’ll cut you the cattle.”

“Roger that,” Smiles said. “And you forgot to say ‘over.’ Over.”

Rock did not come back on the walkie-talkie and say over, and Jake couldn’t hold back his laughter. Bev giggled behind her hand too, and Jake found several other cowboys in the crowd smiling, including the Blackwells.

“All right,” Smiles said, and he tucked the walkie-talkie away. “Let’s head out, my friends.”

The group turned around and headed across the pasture. As Jake walked by the food table, he grabbed an apple and a breakfast burrito that had been rolled in aluminum foil and labeled with the word ham on the outside of it.

He’d eaten before he’d left the ranch, but it was a ninety-minute drive from Three Rivers to Shiloh Ridge, and they’d had to be there at eight-thirty that morning. As he had plenty of work ahead of him that day, he didn’t feel too bad munching on the burrito on the trek out to the pre-staging area.

Rock and his team of horsemen cut the cattle in, and it was clear they were going to be starting with the cows and not the calves. Jake fell into the work easily, because checking cattle for signs of distress came to him as easily as breathing.

Only about an hour in, Conrad climbed up on one of the rails and yelled, “Jake, you guys need anything?”

Jake looked up from where he was checking a hoof that one of the Blackwell brothers held for him. “I’m good,” he said. “Clancy?”

“If he’s got any of those breakfast burritos left, I’d take one.” He put the leg down, and he and Jake went over to the fence.

“He wants a breakfast burrito,” Jake said.

“Get one for my brother Thane too, would you?” Clancy asked. “He’s over on the other side of the paddock, but he’ll want one.”

“Yeah, sure,” Conrad said. “Do you guys still have water?”

“I think we’ve got plenty of water,” Jake said. “But if you’ve got bottles of lemonade, I’d take something.”

“I’ll bring a bunch of stuff back,” Conrad said. Their eyes met, and it sure seemed like he had something more he wanted to say to Jake. But he didn’t, and he stepped off the rail. “I’ll be back in a minute.”