Once they finally got all the Chedwick people on their way home and the bridal couple driving to Denver to catch a plane to Hawaii, Rachel knew she could finally work on photographing the cattle. It was her last project in Colorado. On one hand she was excited to do the documentation and since Alyssa was gone she would have time to do a little more exploring. On the other hand, she thought she might be sad to be leaving soon.

There were a lot of places she wanted to visit with her camera, she’d been in Colorado for months and had barely gotten off the ranch. There had been plenty to photograph on the ranch, it had some very pretty areas. But she wanted to go a bit further afield before she left.

Adam planned to get his work done in the morning and then meet up with her after lunch to work on the cattle. That gave her plenty of time to do some exploring and in great light, too. Morning or late afternoon light were the best. Adam had also said he would take her to some places that were his favorite on the weekends.

They’d decided it would take two weeks to get all the herd documented. Which meant she’d also be there when Beau and Alyssa got back. So, she could hear about their grand adventures in Hawaii.

Her first morning she decided to get up early and drive toward the National Park to see what might be feeding in the clearing Adam had shown her. She left before dawn, it was about a half hour drive, so she should hit the meadow right as the sun was coming up, which was good because she wasn’t sure she could find it without some daylight. There were no street lights along that stretch of road, at least not many.

She took a bottle of water and a thermos of coffee with her, glad someone had made the morning kickstart. There were some granola bars and a big bowl of peaches. She’d heard that the western slope of the Colorado Rockies had delicious peaches, but she hadn’t tried one yet. She washed the peach and wrapped it in some paper towels, she noticed it had a heavenly smell that made her want to eat it immediately, but she wanted to get on the road. Gathering up all her snacks she put them in a backpack, slung that over one shoulder and the camera bag over another. She carried her coffee out to the Silver Bullet and climbed in.

She drove toward the National Park entrance. There was only one main road, so it wasn’t hard to find. The sun was just barely starting to rise when she saw meadow where she’d seen the mule deer the first time. Nothing was moving about and since it was too dark to take any pictures she decided to eat the peach since she could still smell it.

Parked on the side of the road she pulled it out of the bag and it filled the whole car with the sweet smell of peaches. She took a bite and the taste exploded on her tongue, it was sweet and so juicy it dribbled down her chin. She grabbed up the paper towels and wrapped it around the peach to catch the extra juice, although she didn’t want to waste a drop. She slurped the juice as she took another bite. The pulp was the perfect consistency, not too mushy, not too woody, just perfect. She reveled in the taste and although some of the juice was lost to the paper towel and her hands it was the most delicious peach she’d ever eaten. She decided that the people who raved about the Colorado peaches were geniuses.

When she was finished with her sticky snack she found some hand wipes in the back pack and cleaned herself up as much as possible, just as something walked into the clearing. It was pretty far away, on the far side of the meadow, but looked really big. She grabbed up her camera and used the telephoto lens to zoom in on it. Gasping she waited while it lowered its head to eat. When its head raised again she was certain it was a moose. It was too big to be a deer and it was not quite shaped right either. She’d never seen a moose before, but it sure looked like she was seeing one today. She took a few pictures, but it was still so dark, and it was so far away she didn’t get very good pictures.

If only he would move closer. She quickly put aside the idea of crossing the field. Not knowing what the ground was like under all the grass would make traipsing across the field foolish. A Moose could be dangerous if he felt threatened and she had no intention of making him feel uncomfortable. As she watched the big guy eating it looked like he was wandering a little closer to her and with the light getting stronger she was able to take a few better pictures.

A small herd of deer also entered the area on the other end of the field from the moose and neither seemed inclined to get closer to the other. She swapped back and forth between taking pictures of the deer herd and the moose.

A car came down the road moving at a fast pace. All of a sudden it slammed on its brakes and backed up halfway onto the shoulder but was still sticking out a bit onto the road. A family of five jumped out of the car yelling about seeing the deer. They started off across the field toward the deer. The moose was not in their direct line of sight because of some trees and Rachel was worried they would agitate it. Both the deer and the moose heard the commotion however and wasted no time leaving the area.

Rachel shook her head at the idiots that some people were, as the family whined about the deer leaving. Then they piled back into their car to take off back down the road. Rachel was disappointed that the idiot family had scared the animals off, but was glad the animals had not waited around. She was fairly certain those were the kind of people who would get too close and then be angry when one of the animals fought back.

She decided to take a few more pictures of the meadow and then start back towards the Rockin’ K taking pictures as her whim dictated.

* * *

Adam was finishing up his work for the morning. He’d added in some of tomorrow’s work also thinking maybe he could get caught up enough to take a week day off to spend with Rachel. He knew he wanted to take her back into the National Park on Saturday to drive her over the Old Fall River Road. And he’d talked to a friend about using his boat to go out on the lakes on Sunday, Grand Lake and Shadow Mountain Lake were connected by a canal, so he thought they could explore both lakes and give her lots of picture taking vistas. If they had a third day they could either rent a boat to visit Lake Granby or he could take her into the National Forest or to Hot Sulphur Springs, although he would have to see if she brought a swim suit if they wanted to get into the springs. There were too many places he wanted to take her and not enough time.

Getting all the cattle photographed was going to eat up the afternoons, but maybe she could get ahead of the game and they could both take an extra day off this week and maybe next week too. He’d have to hustle to do both and so would she. Although with the days being longer they could easily work a little later in the evening.

He was kind of surprised he was so excited about playing tour guide and helping her with the cattle. One of his brothers could help her with the cattle, but he felt reluctant to ask them, he found himself anticipating the time with her.

She walked into the office as he finished paying the bills for this week, he grinned at her eagerness. They had planned to meet after lunch which wasn’t for a half hour, guess he wasn’t the only one anticipating.

“I came back early because I thought you could show me your website and what you might want to enhance. Or some of the pictures other people take to sell cattle online. Plus, some dumbass people chased away the deer and moose I was taking pictures of.”

Instant fear coursed through his veins at the thought of her encountering a moose. He looked up sharply. “You didn’t—”

She cut him off. “No, I did not go near the animals I was very happy staying next to my car and zooming in on them. But another car came along with a family and they were shouting and started off toward the deer which turned tail and bounded off. They didn’t even see the moose, but he was no fool either and took off.”

Relieved that she had been smart about the encounter, he shook his head. “Some people are idiots.”

“Yes, they are. So, show me your website.”

He nodded and turned back to the computer. “We have a web site for our ranch. A lot of ranches don’t. They register with a kind of cattle clearing house that lists how many of which bulls or heifers they want to sell. They list them by breed and other qualifications.”

He clicked on a clearing house, so she could see what he was talking about. “This one is just lists of animals, but this one has pictures of each animal for sale.”

She nodded. “Yes, the one with the pictures looks better to me but that’s my own prejudice showing.”

He grinned. “We used to use one of those, but then we decided to create our own website. It’s been nice having our own, because people don’t have to wade through as much information, if they want stock specifically from our ranch. We have a good reputation.”

He typed in their web address, so their page came up. “So far, we’ve just listed what cattle are available, but if we put the pictures of the available animals up it would be even better. See it’s just a list, unlike that one clearing house that had small pictures of each animal.”

“It’s a nice site, the picture of the Rocky Mountains with some of the cattle grazing in the foreground is a nice touch. But you’re right when it gets to the animal selection it could use more graphics. Right now, it’s utilitarian, but it could be nicer.”

“Exactly. So, if we had you take pictures of the ones we want to sell, plus the ones Beau wants to put in his presentation that would be a great start.”

Rachel said, “Beau also talked about putting a picture of each one into a database.”

“The birthing records. Yeah that would be nice, it would make it harder to get the cattle mixed up. One of the hired hands has dyslexia, I think Beau was thinking it might help with that. But it’s not as important. I’m not sure we could photograph the entire herd in the two weeks you have left.”

She looked at him intently for a few moments and he had to wonder what she was thinking. But then she shrugged, and the moment passed. “Well let’s get started, daylight’s burning.” She sent him a sassy grin.

“So, you’ve picked up on the favorite family saying I see.” He said with a groan.

“It is an excellent saying.”

“Just don’t tell Grandpa K you think so.”

“Too late. I already did.”

He groaned again more dramatically. “Tell me it isn’t true. He’s already bad enough.”

She laughed, and he shivered, as the musical sound vibrated on the air and through his whole body. He swatted her playfully on the ass. “Bad girl, let’s get some lunch.”

He picked up the list Beau had left, of which cattle he needed for his artificial insemination talk at the college. And there was also the list Adam and his father had made of cattle they wanted to sell. They could start on those and then see if there was going to time to photograph the entire herd.

During lunch Rachel made it clear she thought that plan of attack was silly.

She frowned at him. “If we might need to photograph all of them, why don’t we just take a picture of each one we come upon, rather than drive all over the ranch looking for the “special” ones and then have to go back a second time for the rest.”

“But what if we can’t get through the whole herd in two weeks and then miss some of the ones we need pictures of?”

“Well if my idea isn’t working we can always switch to your idea. The herd is not quite one thousand, right? If we only work the weekdays that’s one hundred per day in five hours that would be twenty per hour, but the sun goes down about eight so even with an hour off for dinner we could put in seven hours, that’s only fifteen per hour. When they are all together in one area that will be easy. I can set up my camera and you can bring them in front of it. Or if that doesn’t work I’ll just walk around and take their pictures.”

He nodded. “I see, so we keep track of how many you take each day and if we keep on track with roughly one hundred a day we’ll be good. We can check off the critical ones at night.”

“Yeah, exactly. You can record the order we take them in. So, we can match the image with the animal name.”

“Number, the animals have numbers, not names.”

“Oh, how sad, they don’t get a name. Poor nameless animals. How come Dolly has a name then?”

She looked so disheartened when he told her the story of Dolly he tried to think of every funny story he knew so it would cheer her up. He was rewarded for his efforts with several laughing bouts.