The feed in the trough tasted much better than the hay and grass that Bryan had been expected to eat for most of his first 13 days on the Peace ranch. Even as he made his way toward the bottom of the trough's feed supply, he felt lingering tingling in his groin. His balls ached from the forced electroejaculation session.
He had finished the feed when he saw Zeke return. A tug at the nose ring chain turned Bryan's heavy face away from the trough and the ranchhand led him through the barn to a stall. Zeke walked through, leading the bull, but swung a barred gate closed at the other end. Bryan gave a confused moo and thrust his large head through the bars. Zeke walked around the stall and closed the heavy door on the other side.
"No range for you now, buddy," Zeke said, following the instructions of his employer. He got his hands on the bull's head and shoved it back through the bars of the gate.
"Eat, drink, and be merry," Zeke laughed, equating the projected daily electroejaculation with the "be merry." He moved around the stall and got a bucket that he carried to a pump. He filled it with water and returned to fill a trough, which was located just outside the stall's gate, with the water from the bucket. "If you get thirsty," he said.
"Moo!" It might have meant any of a thousand things if Zeke had been fluent in translating bovine to English.
He wasn't.
Bryan mooed again, trying to beg Zeke to help him but watching in resignation as his friend left the barn to complete other duties.
He tried to engage his brain with thoughts of escape plans, but the need for sleep now overweighed everything. Standing on all fours, he dozed off and his mind shut down.
He still dreamed as a human. Well, for the most part.
In this particular dream, he had gone out drinking with Zeke and Cal. There had been ample consumption judging by the empty bottles scattered on the tabletop in the bar where they sat in the dream.
"Why don't you make your move on someone, Bryan?" Zeke coaxed.
"Yea," Cal said. "Don't let any of those girls cow you."
Elbows prodding him in the ribs, Cal and Zeke proved relentless until a drunken Bryan got to his feet and, in a swaying manner, crossed the crowded floor of the bar towards a table of three girls.
As he got next to the table, the scene changed. Instead of hitting on a girl, he delivered his line to a group of giggling heifers gathered in the space outside his stall, their hooves trodding down the mud.
He turned his head to look back at his friends. Zeke held up the rectal probe from the electroejaculation session and waved it in the air over his head. "Go for it, Bryan!"
Cal, not wanting to be left out, had gotten his hands on the plastic collection vessel for gathering the bull semen and tapped it on the tabletop. "Go ahead, stud," Cal encouraged.
Bryan bellowed, shook his heavy head, and woke up.
Dull eyes contemplated their surroundings.