Page 52 of Cattle Stop

A snort echoes it. A tree branch waves slowly, stirred by the wind. Leaves rustle too, and there’s the wet huff of another puff of breath.

A calf emerges from the woods, legs stained with mud, head held up, nose outstretched.

“Buttercup,” Cooper says. “Hey there, buddy.”

Whit points. “There’s the rest of them too.”

“You weren’t in the fields, were you?” Cooper gives Buttercup’s neck a scratch. “You’re right here, we found you. No, I don’t have a bottle for you. You gotta wait till you’re back at the barn, after staging your jailbreak.”

Buttercup still nuzzles all over the pockets of Cooper’s pants, leaving wet marks from his nose and a swipe of saliva across his thigh when he licks him.

“Gross.” Cooper shoves at Buttercup’s head, though it’s far more of a pat than any real attempt to push him away. He taps out a text to Drew on his phone with his other hand, scratching behind Buttercup’s ears. “Keep your tongue to yourself, my man.”

It’s a quiet wait. And a long one. More cows gather around, one rubbing her back against a sapling until it threatens to bend under her enthusiasm, and two others gently sniffing Whit as if wondering what he’s doing out here, too, and how he happened across their patch of woods. The entire herd finally wanders into sight, chewing their cud and unconcerned with the wrench they’ve thrown in the farm’s morning. They blink sleepy brown eyes and shuffle to let the sun filtering through the trees warm their backs.

“I asked Drew for some extra hours,” Whit says.

Cooper turns, his hand hovering above Buttercup’s nose. “You did?”

“My folks sold their house for less than they wanted to and—and my dad had skin cancer. Last year.”

“Holy shit, is he okay?”

“He’s fine now, but the cost of the medical bills—”

“Drew said no? To you working more?”

Whit’s eyes cut toward him. “He didn’t have the money. He was already paying you.”

“Oh.” Cooper shifts his weight to his other foot. “I’m sorry.”

Whit pushes his mouth to the side. “It’s not your fault.”

“Still, I—” Don’t think of you as a person who might ever actually care about something was probably going to be the end of that sentence. “Um, that sucks, though.”

“I don’t want to bring it up with Drew again, he’s got enough on his plate. I’ll figure out how to help my parents at the end of the season.”

Buttercup nudges his nose into Cooper’s hand for another pat.

Slowly, Cooper scratches beneath his chin, still staring at Whit. “You’ve been working with Penny. Picking up shifts at Murry’s.”

“She told you?”

“Brad said—um, I heard, is all.”

“Right.” There’s that curtness again.

Cooper licks at his lips. “You don’t like Brad.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, at least it’s never a mystery with you,” Cooper says to lighten the heaviness on Whit’s face. Whit’s expression stays stony, though, and the joke falls flat. Still, Cooper tries again. “I always know exactly what you think of me too, that’s for sure.”

Whit huffs out a breath, the corners of his eyes creasing as he stares off toward the road. His mouth works once, a flex at the corner of his jaw, though he doesn’t say anything, and eventually the rumble of Drew’s Jeep cuts through the woods.

The cows’ ears prick at the rattle of grain in a bucket as Drew shakes it on the other side of the tree line. With a slow lope that turns into a jog, they’re off, the entire herd crashing through the underbrush and weaving through trees to try to get a nibble of that grain.

“Stampede,” Cooper mutters, following after the stragglers.