She handed her babies a snack in the backseat and promised it would only be a minute this time.
Unloading her tired mare from the trailer, she said, "Hopefully the last time today old girl."
She patted the dog on the back of the truck, apologizing that he couldn't come this time, but he should really stop getting in fights with porcupines.
She tightened her cinch and climbed up on her tall dun mare. They were getting a few stragglers off the mountain today... the ones that were missed in the gather for a reason. Those dang cows couldn't have just gone down the road and through the gate. As they climbed the steep hill, all she heard was the music of her spur catching the brush and her mare's footfalls and heavy breathing."I know you're tired old gal. As soon as we get to the top of the hill, we'll know what the rest of our day is going to look like."
She thought about what that meant in a general sense. How you can't see what's about to happen or what's around you when you're in the thick of it, but everything is made clear on top of the hill.
As they reached the summit, relief flooded over the girl. There was a fence at the top of the hill. Those wild old cows were just standing there, and she pushed them back along the fence, down the hill, and through the gate.
As she loaded her horse back on the trailer and let her babies out of the truck to play while they waited for her husband, she thought about their way of life. It was sure hard some days, but she couldn't think of anything else that could offer a person quite such a great perspective or such a hell of a view.
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