Paul Marchant

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.

A lifetime spent in the pursuit of happiness, quite often generally and specifically in pursuit of a cow, in some form or another, has taught me nothing if it hasn’t taught me the world of agriculture is full of paradox and Renaissance men and women.

We always like to have a dog or two around our place. We’d really like to have a good dog or two around our place, just to try it out and see what it would be like. We have actually tried it once or twice, but it has been a short-lived experiment.