wanting to discover more of this side of Ray.
“Let’s get it over with.” He hopped from his perch and started walking away.
“Wait!” I yelled, scrambling down from the fence. “Where are you going?”
He slowed but didn’t stop. “Gotta grind up some more hay for the girls.”
“I assume you’re not talking about your mom and sister.”
He chuckled.
“Hey, you actually laughed at one of my jokes,” I said, falling into step beside him.
He looked at me sideways, stifling his smile. “Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.”
The dust from the cows was starting to make my chest tight, so I pulled my inhaler from my coat pocket and took a puff. Not much came out, so I shook it and got a full blast.
“Asthma?” he asked.
“No, leprosy,” I teased. “Yes, asthma.”
Again, he smiled, and I pointed at him. “Got you to smile again.”
He shook his head and walked to one side of a single-cab pickup. I took my cue and went to the other side. It was dusty on the inside, with a gun hanging from a rack in the back windshield and a cooler in the middle.
I leaned forward, worried about getting too close to it. “Is that thing loaded?”
“’Course not. You always unload a gun before putting it up.”
“Why do you have it?” I asked.
“Feral animals, skunks, wolves, rattlers in the summertime—things that try to hurt the herd. Or my family.” He put the pickup in drive and made a loop around the house, following a trail that led beyond the barn.
I was still reeling from the straightforward way he talked about defending what mattered to him and his family. What lengths he was willing to go to for their protection.
He parked outside of a fence enclosing rows and rows of haybales then nodded toward the camera bag at my feet, gathering dust from the floorboards. “You want to start filming?”
I nodded and began unzipping the bag. Once I had the camera out, I pointed it at him and said, “Rolling.”
He straightened his shoulders to face me better. “What do you want to know?”
“What did we do this morning?”
He explained why we moved the cattle and how we kept them together even without fences or corrals to guide them. Then he talked about how the horses were trained to work with cattle and instinctively knew what to do, just like I’d suspected on my own. “Should we film the feeding?”
“That sounds like a good idea.” I kept my camera trained on him as he drove up to a massive row of round hay bales and backed up to them. “Now, I’m picking up a bale so I can give the girls—heifers—extra to eat in case it snows or rains tonight.”
“You’re not worried about them getting too cold?”
“They have fur to keep them warm and a lean-to they can get under for shelter. Plus, they’ll create their own heat by huddling together. They’re not as helpless as city people make them out to be.”
He opened his door and looked out the back. His hands manipulated a switch by his waist, guiding a contraption on the flat bed of the pickup. The machine clamped on to the bale, and it came down on the bed with a thud.
After shutting the door, he put the pickup in drive and said, “Next question?”
I pushed my lips to the side, thinking. “Favorite part about ranching?”
For a moment, he was silent, and then he took a deep breath. “When I was little, my dad used to tell me, ‘Everyone has to eat, and we get to feed them. That means wherever they are, they have a seat at our family table.’ He didn’t say have to or want to. Get to. Because the fact is, I get to work with animals that are strong and powerful and annoying.” He gave me a look like he was thinking of someone else that was the same way, and I smiled as he continued. “I get to be outside and feel the sun on my skin and experience nature in all of its forms. I get to be a part of the world in a way most people never get to be, and I get to continue my dad’s legacy, even when he can’t.”
My heart jerked painfully in my chest. There was more to Ray than his prickly exterior, but something didn’t make sense.
“If you care about your animals so much, why are you mad that people like my parents don’t want them locked in cages?”
He gave me a