Vance Changed The Trailer Lock Before Our First Ranch Call

The new padlock was the color of a clean nickel. It hung below the latch where I had wrapped blue baling twine to keep the old chain from clacking.

My key went halfway in and stopped.

Vance watched from his pickup. He had parked across the gravel lot outside Rapid City, South Dakota, with the engine running.

"We need to clear something up," he said.

I was thirty, a Dominican American man with brown skin, close black curls, and a thin white scar through my left eyebrow. I made my living trimming livestock hooves, though most ranchers knew me first as the man who almost whispered to nervous cattle.

I had my work apron folded under one arm. Inside that trailer were my hoof knives, my grinder, and the hydraulic chute we used to hold a cow still without hurting her.

"We have eighty head at Inez's," I said. "We need to leave."

"I canceled that."

"You moved it?"

"I canceled you."

Vance was a white American man of thirty-six with a sunburned neck, pale lashes, and sandy hair clipped flat at the sides. Even sitting down, he kept moving. His thumb tapped the steering wheel like somebody else was winning a race.

"Clients need one boss," he said.

"Then they need to call the company."

"They did. I told them you were seasonal help."

I put my apron on the hood of my car.

Two years before, we had formed Bent Wire Hoof Care. I had put in $36,000 from years of trimming work and selling my old service rig. Vance had put in $24,000. We had divided the membership sixty percent to me, forty to him.

He handled calls and towing. I handled most of the cattle and the books after supper.

"Your truck is yours," I said. "The trailer belongs to Bent Wire."

"Name on the tow vehicle is mine. Insurance sees it as one unit."

"That isn't what our papers say."

His thumb stopped.

"You threw those out when we changed chutes. Remember? All those greasy boxes?"

I remembered carrying an empty pump carton to the dumpster. I also remembered tying three folders with blue twine and taking them home.

"I remember cleaning," I said.

"Don't make this ugly, Emilio. I'll pay your last week."

There had been smaller things. A fuel receipt with lunch tucked into it. A client he said had paid late, though the check had cleared on Monday. Once, he told a ranch hand he had trimmed twenty more cows than I had.

I had corrected the books and let the stories go.

Now he held up a folded check.

"Six hundred. Fair enough."

"What does the memo say?"

"Why?"

"Because you folded that part under your thumb."

He opened it. FINAL SEASONAL WAGES.

I left it in his hand.

My phone rang. Inez Valdez never called twice unless a gate was down or someone was wasting her time.

"Tell me why your partner says you quit," she said.

"I didn't."

"Tell me why my cattle are in a holding pen."

I told her about the lock. I kept my voice low. A person could hear better when I did that, if they wanted to.

"Stay there," she said.

"You don't need to drive in."

"I wasn't asking."

Vance rolled his window up halfway.

"You won't get sympathy from her. She hates delays."

He was right about that. Inez was fifty-five, Mexican American, and brisk enough to make a weather report sound late. She had hired me before there was a Bent Wire, back when my whole kit fit behind one seat.

Twenty minutes later, her ranch truck came into the lot. Dust slid across the empty stockyards beyond the fence. The September sky looked white above the Black Hills.

Inez climbed out holding a stiff brown envelope.

"I released the cows," she said. "They can wait. I charge people extra when they make me do things twice."

Vance got out smiling.

"We can still cover your place. Emilio's just upset about a staffing change."

"Then staff this." She handed him a copy of her contract. "Eighty head. Sixty dollars a head. Paid in full."

I looked at the total: $4,800.

There was no matching payment in the company books I had closed on Sunday.

"When did you pay?" I asked.

"Friday. He said the bank instructions had changed."

Vance reached for the envelope. Inez moved it behind her back.

"My copy," she said.

She pulled out the payment receipt and handed it to me.

The contract named Bent Wire Hoof Care. The receipt named a business I had never heard of: Harlan Range Services.

Across the bottom, in Vance's neat block letters, were four words.

DEPOSIT TRANSFER APPROVED BY OWNER.