Chapter 6: Over the Gate

I went down the back stair in my father's flannel shirt and my barn boots, with Nels two steps behind me.

The kitchen was dark, and the hall bedroom door was shut.

A line of light lay under it, thin and yellow.

Delores had gone to bed with the lamp on and had not come out to ask what the noise was.

"Don't hit anyone yet," Nels said in my ear.

"I'm not going to hit anyone."

"You've got the face you had when you hit that boy behind the school in the sixth grade."

"He deserved it," I said, and went out the door.

The trailer sat backed up to the loading chute with its tail gate down and its running lights off.

Travis stood at the chute with a flashlight, and a driver in a feed cap sat up in the cab with the window open.

In the barn lot the cows were milling and calling, and a dozen bred heifers had already been cut out and herded into the alley.

I ran across the yard and climbed the gate.

I stood on the second rail with my back to the chute and my arms stretched out along the top.

"Go home, little sister," Travis said. "You'll catch cold."

"This is my father's herd."

"It's the estate's herd, and the estate is Mom, and Mom says it goes to the sale barn tonight," Travis said.

"At three in the morning."

"Prices are better when you get in early," Travis said, and grinned.

"Then why are your lights off?"

He shone the flashlight in my face.

"I told you," he said. "I'm not asking you."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Stepmother Sold the Farm, So I Married the Man Who Left from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.