excerpt
He couldn’t believe the noise. What was that sound? Looking
at the clock he saw it was five a.m. Usually at this time, Joel
was awoken to the serenading of his feathered friends, but this noise
was different. This was not bird calls but cow calls. Mooing! “Hell!”
Joel thought as he jumped into his jeans and raced to look out the
kitchen window. Sure enough, Buck Smith’s herd of about 300 head
of cows and calves were practically trampling each other to get at the
small stream that wandered through the meadow. These cows
weren’t just starved, they were thirsty as all get-out; his bet was that
they were out of water in their own pasture.
Jumping to the phone, he called Smith’s place. A very sleepy
sounding Tyler, Smith’s hired hand, answered the phone. He
promised to be over to help out in a hurry. Joel hadn’t said anything
about the water to Tyler. He wanted proof first. In this part
of the country, to let your stock go without water was a serious
offense against everything that a rancher stood for.
As he headed down the hall of the house, Tanya stuck her head
out of her bedroom door and asked what was happening. Joel briefly
filled her in on the details and asked her to get dressed and have the
horses ready to ride when he got back. There wasn’t much he could
do about moving the cattle out of his meadow until they were ready
to, and until he had the manpower to do it. But right now, he had
something else to do. He called for Harry who was now standing
outside of the caboose, looking at all of the commotion.
Manolis Aligizakis 