Page 53 of Swift and Saddled

I pulled back and looked up at him. “Then why did you walk away?” I sniffed.

“I came to get the wire cutters. Then we’re going to get her in the truck and take her home.”Oh.Wire cutters.

“We-we’re bringing her home?” I asked.

“Yeah, where else would we take her?” Huh. Good question. Wes kissed my temple. “There’s a blanket under the jump seat. Get that out for her, okay?” He let me go and got a small pair of wire cutters from a toolbox under the front seat. “I’ll be right back.”

I stood in the rain and watched Wes walk back toward the trees. Once he was out of sight, I climbed into the truck and felt around in the back for the blanket Wes was talking about. I found it and pulled it out.

Less than five minutes later, I saw Wes coming back through the trees, and this time he had the calf in his arms.

When I saw him through the rain, I imagined that this is how some people might feel when they saw a man carrying a baby. I wasn’t a big fan of babies, but apparently I was a big fan of baby cows, because Weston Ryder had never looked better.

A cowboy, with his white shirt clinging to his body, his brown cowboy hat, and a calf in his arms that he’d just rescued from a storm?

Damn.

Damn.

He made it to the truck and I opened the passenger door for him. I hopped out but left the blanket inside. I wanted it to stay dry.

“I need you to climb in the back, sweetheart,” Wes said.

Well, this was definitelynotthe context in which I thought this cowboy would say those words to me, but I did what he said. I was not graceful about it—it was less of a climb and more of a flail and fall.

He gently set the calf on the blanket and then wrapped it up and around her body. The calf was looking up at him the way Waylon did—with complete adoration.

He quickly shut the door and ran around to his side and got in. It was then that I noticed a growing crimson stain on his shirt.

“What happened?” I asked. I didn’t even try to mask the concern in my voice.

“What?” he responded.

“Your ribs,” I said. “You’re bleeding.”

Wes looked down and let out a heavy exhale. “Must’ve had a run-in with the barbed wire. I didn’t feel it. I’ll look at it when we get home.” With that, he started the engine and got us back to the Big House. I spent the drive alternating between looking at the baby calf, who was probably the cutest thing I’d ever seen, and the cowboy, who was absolutely the greatest person I’d ever met.

When we pulled in to the garage, the thunder was getting louder, and I noticed that Amos’s truck wasn’t there. I hoped he was somewhere safe.

Wes got out of the truck and opened the door to the house, then he came back and got the calf and I got out behind them. Waylon came running out of the house and into the garage.

I was glad he’d stayed home today. I knelt and gave him a good rubdown.

Wes set the calf down on a dog bed near the door to the house. He walked to the back of the garage and returned with a space heater and a stack of blankets. He turned on the space heater and arranged a nest of blankets around the calf.

“Sweetheart,” he called. That was me. “There’s a heating pad in the hall closet. Can you go grab it for me? You should see it right when you open the door.” I nodded and ran inside to the hall closet, grabbed the heating pad, and got back out to the garage as fast as I could.

Both Wes and Waylon had settled in next to the calf. It looked like Wes had cleaned her cuts—there was no more blood sticking to her chocolate fur. I quickly pulled my phone out of my pocket and snapped a picture before Wes noticed.

I wanted to remember this moment.

“Thank you,” Wes said when he saw me with the heating pad. I handed it to him, and he turned it on low. He put it down next to the calf, whose eyes were starting to droop.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

“We give her a name,” he said. That was the last thing I expected to come out of his mouth. He must’ve seen myconfusion because he said, “When calves get left behind, we bring them home. We name them and they’re ours. Growing up, we had Dolly, Tammy, Patsy, and Reba.”

I wasn’t a country music fan, but I could pick up on the theme in the names Wes just shared. So I said the first name that came to my mind: “What about Loretta?”

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