The morning sun hung low but hot, burning through a sky bleached pale by August. Isobel, Sierra, and Bella Rose perched on the weathered plank bench beside the corral, the air thick with the scent of singed hair and dust. Beyond the rails, men moved with a rhythm born of years in the saddle—separating bawling calves from their mothers with the precision of a drill team.
Wren, tall in the saddle, turned his bay gelding with the lightest flick of his wrist, sliding a calf neatly away from the heifers and into the holding pen.
When the separation was done, the real work began. One man’s loop dropped true around a calf’s neck, pulling it up short before another hand flipped it onto its side. A knee at the nape, sure but not cruel, and a third man reached into the fire for the branding iron.
