In the Time of Man

Chapter 18

Around the end of August, Clint Peeler always got his first sense of the coming winter. The south wind of summer across the high plains abruptly shifted and cool air cascaded down off the Front Range of the Rockies and weakened the strength of the sun. A visitor might never notice the difference but it was a subtle variation in the intensity of the heat and it reassured Clint Peeler of the comforting cycles of the seasons on his ranch.

The J-Bar 4 was not as pretty as some of the operations nearby but it was productive and Peeler loved its topographical breaks and wet weather draws and the proud stands of cottonwoods rising up out of the prairie. When the air was clear, the mighty Rockies shimmered purple and snow-capped to the west. After he had inherited the spread from his father, Peeler had set his house next to an arroyo and positioned the foundation so that an expanse of glass in the living room framed the morning side of the mountains. 

Another good year was concluding on the J-Bar 4. Rains had been consistent and pasture grasses grew long and green all the way from calving season up through the approaching autumn. Very little money had been spent on supplemental feed and beef prices on the hoof were close to record highs. Peeler had culled his herd of a couple hundred steers and still had more than enough bulls and heifers to insure a bountiful calving season the next spring. He was thinking of buying a new pickup and maybe even building an outdoor fireplace and barbecue pit down near the creek passing behind the house.

The solitary problem Clint Peeler had encountered all year was the two dead animals with the strange cuts. Fortunately, the scientist he had invited out to examine the carcasses had kept his word and no one in the Rocky Ford or La Junta area had heard of the mutilation incident on the J-Bar 4. As expected, predators stayed away from the carcasses and they had rotted and then dried in the sun before Peeler had tossed a can of gasoline on their remains and burned away the evidence of the oddity, if not his memory of the scene.

On this Saturday morning, though, he had no specific plans beyond riding a few fence lines and doing cursory checks on his herd. Clint Peeler loved the weekends because he was able to spend almost every minute with his twelve year-old son Toby, who already had acquired the same love of nature and the rolling plains as his father. Toby understood horses with an insight that was beyond anything the boy could have learned and his dad marveled at how when he sat his favorite Appaloosa they almost became a hybrid creature functioning with one mind. 

By the time Peeler had finished dressing he noticed his wife Mary Lou was setting out breakfast and the warm light on the east side of the house was already causing Toby to stir. The boy had turned his back to the annoying sunshine in an attempt to fall back to sleep but his father entered the room and nudged him on the shoulder.

“Hey, buddy boy,” Clint Peeler said. “We goin’ ridin’ this mornin’?”

“Unh.” Toby rolled over and faced his dad. “Yeah. What time is it?”

“Time to go. Sun’s up. I want to run into Pueblo and look at some trucks after lunch, too, if you wanna go with me.”

“No kiddin’, dad? You really thinking about gettin’ a new truck?”

“Told ya I was.”

“Cool, dad.  I want that big, black Chevy dualie, the one with the computer screen and all the map technology.”

“Just get dressed. We’ll see.”

“Okay.”

The fence line along the easternmost border of the J-Bar 4 got hammered every winter by drifting snow and Clint and Toby Peeler rode straight in that direction when they left the horses’ stall behind the house. Peeler wanted to check the tension in the wires and see if any fence poles had been loosened by rain or cattle rubbing up against them. Toby had been asking his father repeatedly about getting a four-wheeler side-by-side for doing this kind of work around the ranch but Peeler had told his son that nothing was better than horses and it was good to keep doing some things the old way.

The animals nickered softly but Peeler’s mare kept turning its head against the reins and trying to point back to the stalls and the feed trough instead of stepping up the rising plain. Toby’s horse, though, had its head back and was snorting almost as if it were claiming command over the surrounding terrain.

“You talk to him, buddy boy?” Peeler asked his son. “You get him that way?”

“No, dad. Cooper just knows stuff, ya know? He’s a good horse, ain’t he? He’d rather be out here than back in that old stall.”

“I reckon he is. Good thing, too, ‘cause I don’t know if you are big enough to control him if he ever got to be cantankerous.”

“Sure, I could.”

“Whatever you say, son.”

Peeler made a point of guiding them away from the spots where the mutilated animals had been discovered and kept to the southern edge of the ranch along a rocky creek bed that ran off of their property and emptied into the Arkansas River. Toby had been told by his father that the dead bull and heifer were weak and had been pulled down by coyotes or wolves. His dad had managed to keep him away from the bodies by telling his son it may have also been disease that brought down the cattle and that they needed to avoid getting close to prevent any potential infection.   

Toby reined Cooper down off the rise and into the shallow water in the creek, laughing as his big horse high-stepped over rocks and splashed up mud beneath his hooves.  Clint Peeler was about to tell his son to get back up on the flat top and be careful but he saw Toby smiling and talking to Cooper and he did not interrupt their fun. 

“Hey, dad.” Toby reined Cooper to a halt.

“What is it, son?” Peeler heard the worry in his child’s tone of voice.

“You see that?”

“What, Toby? What are you talking about?”

The boy pointed straight ahead of him in the draw but Clint Peeler’s vantage point on the ridge above obscured his view of whatever had attracted his son’s attention.

“I think we got a dead cow, dad.”

Peeler spurred his horse and raced ahead of Toby and down the embankment toward the little stream of water and saw a heifer lying motionless. He slid off his saddle and went to the body while Toby sat Cooper and did not move from the location he had been when he spotted the carcass.

“Dad, shouldn’t you be careful?” Toby called out. “You said the other ones that died might have had a sickness.”

“It’s okay, son. I’m not worried.”

“Can I come look?”

“I’d rather you didn’t, buddy boy. It’s not a very pleasant thing.”

“You think it got sick, dad?”

“No. I don’t.”

“How’d it die then?”

“I reckon somebody killed her, son.”

“Who’d do that?”

“I don’t know.”

Toby slipped off of Cooper and walked cautiously up to where his father knelt examining the cow. He tried to lead his Appaloosa in that direction with the reins but the animal resisted and Toby left him standing in the creek. His father’s mare had turned and climbed back up beyond the ridge line and was grazing a hundred yards distant. 

“What happened, dad?”

“I don’t know, Tobs.”

Toby appraised the animal and the cuts that had been made on its body.

“They took her udder, dad? Why’d somebody cut off our cow’s udder?”

“I have no idea, son. No idea at all.”

Toby walked slowly around the carcass and took in the horrific sight. 

“Her ear’s gone and an eyeball and her tail? Dad, what happened?”

“I don’t know, Toby. I told ya. I just don’t know.”

“We better call the police on your cell phone, huh, dad?”

“No, son. We aren’t callin’ the police.”

“How come? Somebody killed one of our cows. That’s against the law, ain’t it?”

“Yes, it is. But the police aren’t gonna have any luck finding out who did it. You think anybody who can do this to a thousand pound heifer is worried about the Rocky Ford police?”

“What are we gonna do then, dad?”

“Nothin’.” Clint Peeler started up the incline leading down to the creek. “Let’s go get our horses. We got work to do.”

“Why we doin’ nothin’, dad?”

“Because that’s all we can do. This here is kind of the world as it is, nature, and nothing we do is gonna change things. Let it go, Tobs.”

The boy was quiet as their horses carried them to the east fence but he was clearly confused and Clint Peeler was not surprised when his son started talking again about what he had just experienced. Peeler was trying to act like the animal’s death was part of the natural order of things on a big ranch but he knew his son sensed his father’s unease.

“Dad?”

“What is it, buddy boy?”

“I read somethin’ on the Internet about this happenin’ to cattle.”

“You don’t have any business lookin’ at stuff like that, son. You know better.”

“Yeah but it was a link on a page I was researchin’ on farmin’ and ranchin’ for my homework. I just clicked on it. They had pictures that looked exactly like our cow just did.”

“Well, I’m sure you got good enough sense to not believe that kind of stuff when you see it on the Internet.”

“Yeah, but there was a buncha people saying about what it is that’s causin’ that to happen to some cattle. It was some weird stuff about diseases and suckin’ out the cow’s blood. It was kinda scary.”

“Well, they don’t know what they’re talkin’ about, Tobs.  You need to just leave it alone.”

“But why, dad? What if it happens again? What we gonna do?”

“We’re gonna do what we just did, son, which is nothin’. I told you.”

“I don’t understand, dad. Why are we lettin’ somebody kill our cattle?”

“We ain’t lettin’ anybody do anything, Tobs. It’s just happenin’, that’s all.”

Peeler hoped his son was weary of the discussion and they rode on to only the sound of the horses falling hooves until the eastern fence line came into view. Turning his horse to the north and parallel with the string of wire, Peeler went from fence post to fence post, leaning over in his saddle and checking them for sturdiness. 

“Dad?”

“Toby. You have let it go. Please, son.”

“But why? I’m kinda scared.”

“Well, don’t be. Look, son, there’s some things you can do somethin’ about in life and some other things you just can’t change. We don’t control everything. We’re supposed to let nature be sometimes.”

“So you think a bobcat killed her, dad, or a coyote or somethin’?”

“Here’s what I think, Tobs.” Peeler sat up in his saddle and looked at his boy. “I don’t think nature or god or whatever intended for man to ever know everything. We’re supposed to live with some mysteries and this is probably one of them.”

“We can’t ever know what did it then?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

Peeler trotted off down the wire again looking at the uprights with the intention of stopping only if he saw one that appeared to have lost its footing. Toby followed on Cooper and paced his father’s horse. The boy appeared to have decided it was best not to ask more questions but Peeler saw the worry on his son’s face.

“I’m sorry, buddy boy. It’s just that sometimes you gotta let happen whatever it is nature wants to happen. Those things in the world we can’t do a damned thing about, Tobs, it don’t do us any good to worry about ‘em.”

“Okay, dad. I understand.”

“Nature knows best, son, and she keeps her own secrets. Besides, a little mystery makes life more interesting, I think.”

“Sure, dad. It’s okay.”

“Hey, we can mess with this stupid fence later. Let’s see how fast that big ol’ plow horse of yours is. I’ll race you back to the house.”

“He ain’t no plow horse. I’ll show you.”

They reined their horses hard to the left and Toby spurred Cooper and the Appaloosa quickly leapt ahead of his dad’s mare. The men and animals almost flew across the undulating prairie with their excited eyes and thundering hearts, filled with the sheer joy of just living.