The Cowboy Who Lost His Ranch to a Size 20 City Girl novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Calf Sale

The sale barn in Elk Bend sat at the end of the main road, long and tin-roofed, with a ring of wooden bleachers and a smell I was learning to love.

At nine on Saturday morning, October twenty-fifth, the bleachers were full.

The buyers' seats in the front row were nearly empty.

"Four," Jace said quietly beside me. "There should be twenty."

"Where are they?"

"Holcomb's order buyers. He told them to stay home. He's telling the whole county our calves aren't worth the trailer."

Our two hundred and sixty calves were penned behind the ring, bawling in shifting lines of red and black.

If the bidding stayed low, we would lose the ranch's whole year.

Chet sat on the bleacher in his best hat, gripping his cane.

"Well," he said. "Holcomb warned us."

"He did."

"Anything you want to do about it?"

"Yes," I said, and unbuttoned my coat.

I'd spent the last two weeks on Lottie's yellow phone.

Her address book was a fat leather thing held shut with a rubber band, forty years of buyers' names and numbers in square black pen.

Beside each name she'd written one line.

Likes a quiet fed calf.

Pays on the day.

Hates the phone, send a card.

I had called every one of them, and I'd mailed nine cards.

"Come with me," I told Jace.

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