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“First of all, yes, you’re coming in here with all the cows. Second, Branson is very used to it. He’s a ranch horse. He’s been cutting cattle for years. Third, these animals are going to run as far away from you two as they can get. That’s what makes herding possible.”
After a moment of consideration, Richard nodded and let Branson move ahead. I heard muttering under Richard’s breath about stupid, rash decisions and stupid places you couldn’t get to without a decent truck. I bit back a laugh. Once the gate was secure behind us, I swung back into the saddle and moved ahead of him, glancing back over my shoulder.
“You can get here with a truck. But thanks to the Silver Fork River, the vehicle route here is eighty-five miles versus eight if you go over land on horseback.”
He seemed surprised, but he didn’t say anything.
“Stay over on the edge while Birdie and I look for the heifers, okay?” I gestured to an area off to the side where he and Branson could simply stand and wait without running the risk of getting in the way.
Richard nodded and moved Branson where I’d indicated. I had to admit the man seemed to have picked up some horsemanship skills fairly quickly.
It didn’t take long to find one of the missing heifers since she was standing there with a calf attached to her udder. “Fucking Christ.”
The fact that the calf was nursing was encouraging. I pulled out a little notebook from my saddlebag and handed it over to Richard. “Take notes for me, will you?”
I dismounted and approached the calf as close as I could without pissing off its mother. “Bull calf,” I called over my shoulder. I added an estimated time of birth and some general remarks about how he seemed to be doing.
When I glanced back toward Richard, I found that he’d discarded the notebook and instead was pointing his phone at the calf.
Irritation tightened the muscles along my shoulder. Could this guy even focus on the job for five minutes? “Now’s not the time for social media, McQueen.”
Richard rolled his eyes. “I’m not. I’m making the notes like you asked.” He turned his phone and flashed the screen toward me. I squinted, taking a closer look. “It’s an app,” he continued. “Kind of like a dating app, though technically more of a hookup app. A friend of a friend created it after double-dipping the same dude one too many times.”
I blinked, having no idea what he’d just said. “Huh?”
“Look, no offense or anything, but those spreadsheets you’re using to track your herd are pretty crap. I mean, sure, the information is there, but it’s not super useable. I figured there had to be a better way to go about tracking everything. And then I remembered my friend Sacha’s friend Georgio, who could never keep all the men he slept with straight, so he created this app to track vital information. You know, pictures, name, age, kink preferences, etc. Then he shared it with a few friends, and together, we all created this database of hot dudes. After working on the spreadsheets for a couple of days, I realized it might be useful in other ways, so I emailed him and asked if he could make some tweaks. He sent it to me late last night.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
Richard grinned. “It’s called Meat. Except instead of tracking man meat, it tracks cow meat.” He touched a few buttons on the screen. “You see, you can put in pictures, ear tag numbers, other vitals. There’s a map function that will track what pasture they’re in. Anyone with the app can update the information in real time. I’ve been putting in info on nearby cattle while you’ve been searching for the heifers.” He clicked to another screen, and a map appeared with little red dots scattered around us.
With another button press, one of those lights turned a light blue. “See, that’s your new bull calf.” He handed the phone to me. “Check it out.”
I took the offered phone and clicked on the bull calf’s dot. A screen popped up with a photo and all the vitals I’d called out listed underneath.
My mind swam. I thought of how much I hated the paperwork aspect of being a rancher—the spreadsheets and ledgers that had to constantly be updated by hand and that inevitably contained errors—such as the one that led to three heifers going missing.
“This is… incredible,” I told him.
Richard shrugged. “It’s more that after several afternoons in Jed’s cramped office doing data entry, I figured there had to be a better way.” He flashed a self-deprecating grin. “As my father likes to point out, I’m lazy. If there’s a shortcut, trust me to find it.” He tried to keep his voice light, but I could hear an edge to it. The corners of his lips tightened, the smile not quite reaching his eyes when he mentioned his father.
