Paul Marchant

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

—Robert Frost

Colleen is my neighbor. She and her husband, Rick, live on a little 9- or 10-acre piece about 5 miles down the road from my place. Colleen rescues things.

As if from the staccato blast of a Gatling gun, I felt three sharp, painful smacks to my head just under my hat and directly behind my right ear. Except for the occasional Red Ryder BB gunfight with my cousins when I was a kid and the time my back was peppered by some shotgun pellets from an idiot pheasant hunter as I was fixing a fence, I’ve never really been shot.

I was up on the mountain checking fences and water troughs before we moved the cows from one unit to the next.

Sometimes I’m a walking cliché. I tend to leap before I look, try to run before I walk, step over a dollar to pick up a dime, put the cart before the horse, count the chickens before they’re hatched … Well, you get the idea.

6:43 a.m.
He cracks the bedroom door open, just an inch or two, and hears her discussing with the 2-year-old the civil rights of the roan horse and the heeler dog, and why they have to sleep outside.