Paul Marchant

She got home later than she’d wanted to. She’d been out on a breeding project over by the Nebraska line. It had been a windy, miserable day by most folks’ standards, but a little rain had come with the never-ending east Wyoming wind, so she knew better than to complain.

Way back when I was in grade school, one of the biggest events of the year was the science fair for the fifth- and sixth-graders.

The newest tractor on the place is 40 years old. We call the 2003 Ford the “new pickup.” The closest thing we have to a side-by-side ATV is the ’93 Chevy 3/4-ton with a modified flatbed we use to feed the cows.

I grew up on a diversified little outfit. Along with my uncle’s family, we ran a couple hundred range cows, a mink operation and a little dairy where we milked 30 or so cows.

I had a free weekend, and I’d worked it out so I could help my dad move cows from one unit of the forest allotment to another.  My folks had just bought the ranch in southern Idaho’s Oakley Valley a year or two earlier while I was in college, and it would be several years before I would make that same ranch my permanent home.

His color was just ordinary old bay, but he was a real looker – big, stout hip; nice, neat, pretty head; solid, heavy bone; four black feet and built like a brick house.