I don’t usually get riled up about strangers, but today? I damn near snapped. It started at the feed store.
I was picking up mineral blocks and fencing wire, wearing my usual—mud-caked boots, faded jeans, and yeah, my long blonde braid tucked under a beat-up ball cap. The guy at the counter gave me this look like I was lost. Asked if I needed directions to the gift shop.
I said, “Nah, just here to buy the same stuff I’ve been buying every week for ten years.”
He laughed. Laughed. Then he asked if my “husband” would be loading the truck.
I told him my husband left five years ago and the cows didn’t seem to care. I run 240 acres on my own. Fix broken water lines, birth calves at 2 a.m., haul hay like it’s nothing.
But people still see the blonde hair and the woman part and just… assume. Even my neighbors treat me like I’m playing rancher. Roy, the guy across the creek, keeps “checking in” on my fences like I didn’t graduate top of my ag science class.
He’ll say things like, “Don’t overwork yourself, sweetheart.” Meanwhile, I patched his busted water line last winter in the middle of a snowstorm. I try to let it roll off, but it builds up. You get tired of proving yourself twice just to be seen as half capable.
Then today, after all that, I got home and found a letter nailed to my barn door. No stamp. No return name.
Just a folded-up note that said one thing:
“I know what you did with the west pasture.”
I couldn’t imagine what “I know what you did with the west pasture” was supposed to mean. Maybe it was some prank by local teenagers. Or maybe Roy left it, trying to get me rattled.
The man’s about as friendly as a prickly pear sometimes, but writing ominous notes isn’t exactly his style. Then again, I couldn’t think of anyone else with enough interest in my operation to leave a cryptic message on my barn. I stuffed the letter in my back pocket and tried to move on with my day.
I had chores to do, animals to feed, phone calls to make. But that note kept popping into my head like a stubborn weed. By late afternoon, I realized I wasn’t gonna be able to focus until I got some answers.
So I did the only logical thing I could think of: hopped in my old truck and drove across the creek to Roy’s place. Roy was out by his workshop when I rolled up. He saw me stepping out of the truck, started waving, then noticed my face was dead serious and let his arm drop.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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