Blindside; A Rainey Wingate Story

By K.C. Riggs

Blindside is a Rainey Wingate story, another adventure in her life on an Arizona ranch.

What starts out as a routine morning on horseback turns into anything but, when the weather suddenly turns against her.

Rainey is a young ranch wife on a contemporary Arizona ranch, finding her way in a new family and their long ranching traditions. She is smart, funny, and resourceful. She'll need all of that and more to get through this day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.C. Riggs
• Release date: Jul 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201452773

K.C. Riggs

K.C. Riggs K.C. is a third generation Arizonan and has lived all over this great state.  She lived in Show Low and Lakeside when there was still miles of forest separating them, in Lake Havasu before the bridge—when the island was a peninsula—and in many other spots, large and small. The beaches of the Sea of Cortez are a lifelong favorite, and while the been-there list is growing, there is still a lot of traveling to do! Most of Africa still beckons, as does most of South America, eastern Europe, the Mediterranean… The list of jobs and careers is long and varied. It goes back to hand-canceling checks in a bank vault and includes working in lumber yards, for veterinarians, wrangling dudes, waiting tables, working on ranches, surveying and engineering. And her favorite, raising two incredible daughters. In between all this, she has written fiction most of her life, but only in the last few years learned how to finish and publish it. That’s the fun she gets to have now, writing novels and short stories.

Book preview

By the time we’d trailered the horses to the pasture where the cattle were, the angry steel-grey ceiling of clouds had dropped to just above the hilltops. The wind couldn’t make up its mind which way to blow so it whipped in all directions. There wasn’t any smell of moisture in the air. It had a dead, dry, stale feel, like opening something that had been in the freezer way too long.

It hadn’t looked that threatening when we left the home corral thirty minutes ago, just grey overcast and a bit of wind. We’d dressed warmly, but the most in the way of weather gear we’d brought was an old slicker tied on the back of the saddle. It was March after all, almost spring.

My horse was a long-legged bay mare with a PhD in cow and more common sense than most people I knew. Her eyes always told exactly what she was thinking. The look she gave me when she stepped out of the trailer said, You don’t seriously mean to attempt this folly.

I know, Connie, I said, patting her thick winter coat of almost curly hair, so different from her satin slick summer coat. It’s a little bitey, but we only have to move the cows two pastures. Let’s go get it done.

Resigned, she snorted and twin billows of condensation were whipped from her nostrils by the wind. It was getting colder, much colder.

I checked the saddle and cinch and mounted up, pulling on my gloves as I waited for the others. There were five of us; my husband Rio and me, along to help his uncle and two cousins. That had seemed like plenty. We just needed to push the herd of about three hundred mama cows—oh yes, and about a hundred new calves between a week and maybe thirty minutes old—out of this pasture, through the neighbor’s and into their next one.

On a sunny day this would take about three hours. The most time-consuming thing was to look for newborns and make sure their mamas stayed with them. A day-old calf could easily make the trek to the new pasture but newborns and their mamas needed to stay put for a couple of days.

So we needed to act like we were just riding through the herd checking new calves. The cows were used to this and if we did it right, the cows would stay with their babies and we could decide which ones to hold back. If we did it wrong, the cows would know that they got to move to a new pasture and in the excitement, inevitably a mama or two or three would leave their babies behind.

On this first foray through the herd we also looked for any cows who might need assistance with a birth, and for any sign of predators.

We had parked on the east end of this pasture, the Humphrey, named for a long dead homesteader. Our goal was two miles to the west, into the Wagon pasture.

Rainey, you take the south hill, Rio’s Uncle Sam called out over the wind. The rest of us’ll fan out and sweep the rest of the pasture. Meet us at the tank and we’ll tally up.

Got it, I said and nudged Connie. She took off at a fast walk for the south hill—really the only one in the pasture—we always got south hill and she knew it. We were good at it. Well actually, Connie was good at it. And I went where she did.

Standing dry grass was still plentiful in the pasture. It had been a good summer and fall for rainfall. Even though the grass was dormant now, it was still fairly nutritious and the cows would come back through this pasture another time before the summer rains came. Before we hoped the summer rains came. But that was a long way off. Right now the grass whipped back and forth as it was battered by the wind.

Uncle Sam’s cows were black and black white face, and they stood out nicely against the straw-colored grass. I didn’t see any between us and the bottom of the hill a quarter mile away. And by the smart pace Connie set, she didn’t either. She swung her head just a little, left and right, scanning in front of her. Her ears swiveled too, as she picked up subtle sounds. And all without ever missing a step on the cow trail we followed.

I pulled the hood of my jacket up over my ball cap. My hair was twisted up