By Chance: Day 9

Word Count: 54,035

Summary of Events:

The first group of kids arrived and Steele sat with them through the classroom-style lesson Alida taught them, even though he knew everything she was teaching the kids, before the headed out to the arena, where he was to supervise half of the group as they groomed some horses while the rest of the group rode under Alida's instruction. Since he'd been simply introduced as a professional rodeo cowboy, Steele wasn't surprised that it didn't take long for the questions to come…

Excerpt of the Day:

“Do you have the crutches because you got bucked off a horse?” a different boy — who looked very much a farm kid, after all, his sweater was Farm Boy branded — asked.

“Or a bull?” another boy asked.

“No,” Steele replied. “I don’t compete in those events.”

“Do you throw the steers down?” the first boy asked.

“No,” Steele replied.

“Well, what do you do then?” the first boy asked.

“I do tie-down roping,” Steele replied.

“What is that?” one of the girls asked.

“It’s where you rope a calf and tie up three of its legs the fastest,” Steele replied.

“That sounds lame,” the petulant boy spat. “I could probably do it.”

“Throwing a rope takes work,” Steele replied. “Not to mention you’re on a moving horse chasing a moving calf.”

“But what’s the point of it?” a girl asked.

“It’s a competitive version of an actual ranching activity,” Steele replied. “That’s what all rodeo is, except the bull riding. I don’t know who decided that was a good idea. But roping cattle is a way to restrain them so that they can be branded or tagged or otherwise have a mark applied to them to identify who owns them in case they get stolen, as well as to vaccinate them against diseases.”

“But they don’t actually do that in rodeos,” the second boy said.

“No,” Steele replied. “That’s not the goal in rodeo.”

“So then why do you have crutches?” the first boy asked.

“Because the rodeo season’s effectively over,” Steele replied. “There’s just the big final rodeo in November, but only twelve of the best in each event go there, everybody else goes to their winter jobs.”

“You didn’t make it to the big finals?” the second boy asked.

“Actually I have qualified,” Steele replied. “But I went to my winter job at the feedlot just to have something to do for the next month, and my job is kind of training for my event because I ride horses and rope cattle. Unfortunately, we had an angry steer who caused a bunch of chaos in which one of my coworkers hit his head on a metal fence and I broke the top of my shin bone on a fencepost.”

The petulant boy laughed aloud. “You hit your leg on a fencepost and broke it?”

“Yes,” Steele replied. “The post was about this big around, and was made of three millimetre thick steel pipe. I was on a horse that went from zero to top speed in the drop of a hat while too close to the fence. Doctors were expecting to have to surgically piece my leg back together. The fact that I only have a minor fracture to the top of my shin is impressive.”

“Is your coworker who hit his head okay?” a worried-looking girl asked.

“He’s still in hospital,” Steele replied. “Which is good, because we were all worried that he’d died. It’ll be a long time before he gets back on a horse again, but at least he’s still alive.”