by Jeannie Watt
She stared at her message for a moment. If she didn’t add some specifics, then Joe would start asking direct questions. She put her fingers back on the keys. We had some trouble with the plumbing in the house. A pipe froze two days ago and the plumber came. We had to wait forever for him to arrive and it was a bitch not having water, but he thawed the pipes and reinsulated. He assured us it won’t happen again. Also, the laser printer died, so I bought a new wireless model, which UPS delivered today. Hopefully I can get it up and running before you get home. She debated about another
There. She’d added enough reality that Joe wouldn’t think she was sugarcoating. Jodie pushed Send and slumped back in her chair.
She was doing the right thing. She hoped. Joe should be enjoying his vacation, not pacing the floor over what was going on at the ranch in his absence, driving his blood pressure up and her mother crazy.
So, when he came back, would she tell him about Colin Craig and Dave Hyatt while she was confessing the other truths? She usually told her father everything, but this…this she might just keep to herself.
SAM NEVER EXPECTED to relive high school, but that was exactly what he was doing. In the evenings, unless he had a call, he and Beau went over that day’s math lesson, with books and papers spread across the antique oak kitchen table that had once belonged to his grandmother. Sam was brushing up on long forgotten skills. Beau had asked why he needed to learn math that hadn’t been important enough for Sam to keep in his brain over the years. Sam had scrambled for a reply and finally settled on the benefits of building a base of knowledge, because you never knew what you might need to know. Plus the self-discipline was good for the brain. The answer sounded pretty decent, if he did say so himself. Beau was not impressed, but he had gone back to work on the problem that had him temporarily stymied.
Tyler went out Friday night without his brother, since Beau was grounded. He wasn’t happy, but he didn’t argue with Sam. Instead he sullenly continued to wipe down the kitchen counters while Sam put dishes into the cupboard.
“But I get to go tomorrow, right?” The basketball team was working at a local charity function.
“Yes, but you’re not going out afterward. If Ty goes, you’re coming home with me.”
Beau looked as if he wanted to say something more, but just rinsed the sponge and headed for the kitchen table.
Four hours later the Beast pulled up to the house. Beau was sitting on the sofa, staring sightlessly at the TV, and Sam was almost asleep in his chair.
“Have a good time?” Sam asked with a yawn.
“Not bad,” Tyler replied.
“What’d you do?” he asked casually, although he was also checking for the telltale odor of smoke or alcohol.
“Hung out at the bowling alley, which is why I smell like smoke,” he said gruffly. “Then we went to the café for food.” Tyler did not seem thrilled to give a recitation of his evening’s activities—even an abridged one. He walked away without another word, shrugging out of his hooded sweatshirt as he headed down the hall to the bathroom. Sam watched him go, then shook his head and went to shut off the kitchen light before going to bed. It was his job to know what his nephews were doing, his job to see that they didn’t get into trouble, which was so easy to do nowadays.
A few minutes later, he heard the boys talking in the bedroom they shared. Tyler was giving an expanded version of the evening, no doubt. Sam just hoped Beau wasn’t hearing something that he himself should be aware of.
He took off his shirt and tossed it in the laundry basket in the corner of the room. Then he sat on the bed, resting his forearms on his thighs, his head bowed.
Dave and Maya should be the ones raising their boys, feeling the swell of pride when their sons did well, and propping them up when they didn’t. Setting the rules, enforcing the consequences. Sam felt more at ease in his role now than he had a year ago, but he still saw the potential for disaster every time Beau and Tyler went out the door.
And he missed his brother. Sometimes he wondered how life would have turned out if he hadn’t talked Dave into taking his place at the fateful veterinary conference, hadn’t convinced him that Maya could use a little time away from Wesley. Would he have been hit by the car instead of his brother? Would Dave and Maya be mourning him?
Logically, it would have been better that way. Then his brother would have had the opportunity to see his boys grow into men, and Sam’s nephews would have had parents who knew what they were doing.
Instead, Sam had the boys, the boys had him. All he could do was to hold on tightly and hope for the best.
IT SNOWED THE NEXT DAY, just as Lucas had predicted. Big lazy flakes drifted to the ground early in the morning, becoming a total whiteout by afternoon. Twenty-four hours later, the temperatures dropped and the wind picked up, piling drifts around the ranch buildings, to the point that any door facing north was unusable. The first calf dropped in the middle of the blizzard, but fortunately, the birth went well and Lucas had the baby and mama in the warm barn. If Jodie could have her way, all the animals would be in the barn. It was not weather for any creature to be out in.
For the most part the cows didn’t seem to mind. They bunched together and put their butts to the wind, hunching up against the cold as their hair grew thick with rime ice. Lucas assured her that the animals had seen worse. They were all strong and well-fed, and the only ones he was worried about were the very pregnant heifers, which he had in pens near the barn, out of the wind and ready to be brought in if necessary. At least they were the only ones he worried about until the next morning, when the sun finally broke through, glinting off the crystallized snow. He went out to start the tractor to feed, and found part of the herd in the far pasture missing. At least five cows, maybe six. Each worth several thousand dollars.
“Where would they have gone?” Jodie asked when he came in to report. She already had a headache, having spent the morning trying to load the wireless printer she’d bought to replace the printer that had died the week before. Wireless had seemed like such a good idea at the time, but right now…
“That’s what I need to find out,” he said grimly. “The snow’s so deep they probably walked over the fences.”
“Won’t they come home when they get hungry?”
“They should be hungry now and they aren’t home. And I have two heifers ready to pop.”
Jodie tensed slightly as she realized what came next, but all she said was, “I’ll call Sam about the heifers.” This was what she was paying the retainer for. It was also an opportunity to make that first contact since learning she’d been inadvertently involved in his brother’s death, to hammer home the point that her professional life was separate from her private life. It was indeed a sad situation, but the hard truth was she would defend Colin Craig the same way today as she had then. She was a lawyer. That was what she did.
So why did she keep having to repeat that bit of information to herself?
Because she’d never had a case that had crossed over into her personal life before. This was new territory. Territory she needed to conquer.
“Let me call,” Lucas said. “I can give him the particulars.” He went to the phone, and for once Margarite didn’t grumble about slush on the floor, but simply headed to the cleaning closet for the mop.
Jodie listened as Lucas talked to Sam. Missing cattle. Oh, yeah. That would go over well. Her head snapped up when she heard Lucas say, “They haven’t come back, so I’m afraid they may be in one of the culverts. Yeah, if the boys could come, that would be a big help. And Sam…I think the one heifer is carrying twins.” He blew out a disgusted breath. “Yeah. Hope the county road is open. I plowed to the mailbox last night when the snow slowed down. There’s probably only six inches or so on the road, but it may have drifted some. Okay. See ya.”
“You think the cows might be in a culvert?” Jodie asked when Lucas hung up.
“Oh, no,” Margarite said as she c
ame into the room, mop in hand.
Jodie glanced from the cowboy to the housekeeper, not quite understanding. “How big are these culverts?”
“Big enough to handle flood runoff during wet years,” Lucas said.
“Cattle walk through them to go from pasture to pasture,” Margarite added. “And sometimes they take shelter in them.”
“Wouldn’t that keep the cows out of the weather?” Jodie asked, not understanding the problem.
“If the culvert drifts shut, the cattle can die of carbon dioxide poisoning.” Lucas looked past Jodie to the housekeeper. He spoke to her when he said, “I’m going to saddle some horses, then head out. I’ll check the culvert on the Gypsum Creek side. Margie, have the boys check the one on Samuels Creek. Jodie, you better go watch that heifer.”
“What do I do besides watch her?”
“Just watch her. Sam will be here soon. I hope.”
If the county road was passable.
“Why is my father in this business?” Jodie asked with a moan after Lucas disappeared back outside.
Margarite shrugged. “Keeps a body busy. And your father is fortunate that something like this won’t make or break him. On a normal ranch, losing this many cattle would devastate them.”
Jodie’s insides went tight. “Don’t talk about losing cows. I don’t want my dad to have a heart attack when he comes home.” And she meant that literally.
JODIE WAS IN THE BARN watching a confused heifer lie down and then stand up, over and over, when Sam arrived.
“Thanks for coming,” she said when he walked into the barn.
“No problem.” He set his equipment down and Jodie backed away from the paneled corral as if to give him room to work, putting her gloved hands deep into her coat pockets.
Sam seemed to be in no hurry to do anything. He walked from one heifer pen to the other, then stood back and watched the two animals deal with impending birth in their own way. In turn, Jodie studied the strong angles of his profile, wondering what it had been like for him to be plunged headlong into single fatherhood.
It couldn’t have been easy….
“Are Beau and Tyler here?” she asked casually.
“They’re already on their way to Samuels Creek.”
“It’s weird to think of them riding. They seem like such jocks.”
“Lots of kids around here cowboy and play sports. My dad had a little ranch before he and my mom moved to the coast. The boys rode right up until he sold the ranch.”
“Why’d your parents move?”
“My mom has asthma and couldn’t take the desert allergens anymore.”
“Oh.” His mother had also lost a son.
Sam didn’t get into the pen, but instead just watched the heifer, as Jodie had been doing. The only difference was that he probably had an idea of what to do if something did go wrong. He walked over to the pen where the second heifer stood breathing heavily, but other than that gave no sign that she was in labor.
And then the cow started to strain.
“She’s standing up.” Jodie stated the obvious, glancing at Sam and wondering what he was going to do about it.
“Some give birth that way.”
“I see.” Jodie swallowed. After all the hoopla about early calves and hard times for heifers, well, she just didn’t know if she was ready to watch. So she didn’t. She wandered over to visit Bronson in his stall. He hung his nose over the half door and Jodie stroked it. She heard Sam climb the panels and hoped it was for some routine reason.
“Jodie, I’m going to need some help here.”
“Does it involve blood?” she asked. She was already on the move, willing to do her part, even if she threw up, but she wanted to steel herself.
“No.”
“Be right there.”
There was a tiny reddish calf lying in the straw, and Sam was peeling away the sac surrounding it. The cow was still standing, facing in the other direction. Sam handed Jodie a towel. “Rub,” he said.
She took the towel and started gently rubbing it over the calf’s long damp hair. The little guy was all bones and sharp edges. His head lay on the straw and his pink tongue was hanging out.
“No. Like this.” Sam put his warm, weather-roughened hands over hers and began to briskly massage the calf. Jodie didn’t know about the calf’s circulation, but hers took an upswing. He smelled so damned good, and feeling his chest against her back…it was unfair that she had these reactions.
“This doesn’t hurt him?”
“Gets her blood flowing and helps warm her.”
Her. Okay. Jodie tried to keep up the movements as he went back to the cow, who was once again straining.
“Twins?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he grunted. She didn’t want to think about where his hands were right now. “But I don’t believe this one is alive.”
“Oh.” Jodie rubbed harder and the calf’s head started jerking around.
She kept her back turned as Sam continued to work. The calf started to wiggle more as Jodie rubbed it, trying to ignore what was going on behind her.
Finally she heard the sound of something hitting the ground.
“Is it alive?”
“No.”
Jodie chanced a look over her shoulder, saw the cord hanging from the cow and instantly turned back to the calf. “Daisy,” she said in an effort to distract herself. “We’ll call you Daisy.”
Sam continued to do whatever it was he did. She heard the sounds of something being dragged under the panel rails, and knew it was the stillborn animal.
She continued to rub until the calf made an effort to get her feet under her, and the mama cow started moving behind them.
“Better get out of the way,” Sam said. Jodie stood up and, still clutching the towel with both hands, stepped back from the little reddish-orange baby. Sam climbed out of the pen and she followed. He reached for her, taking her forearms and helping her down.
The cow lowered her nose and sniffed at the calf now that she had the pen to herself. She sniffed again and then licked.
“Are we done here?” Jodie asked, glancing over at the other pen, where the cow was still going through the same routine as before. Up. Down. Up.
“I might have to tube the calf just in case it’s too weak to nurse.”
“Tube?”
“You probably don’t want to know.”
“Probably not,” Jodie agreed. “What will you do with the twin?”
The stillborn calf was lying in the straw several yards away from the pen.
“Lucas will take care of it when he gets back.”
“You see a lot of death in this job, don’t you?”
He looked down at her, an unreadable expression in his gray eyes. “I see a lot of life, too.”
The mother cow was licking enthusiastically now and the calf responded, first bobbing its head and then trying to struggle to its feet.
Sam and Jodie stood with their hands on the rails of the pen, so close that she could feel the warmth of his body, the solid muscles of his arm and shoulder against hers. She felt like leaning nearer, but couldn’t.
“I may not have to tube, after all,” he said.
As they watched, the baby managed to make it up to her feet, her tiny hooves wobbling on the straw-covered floor. The mama started nudging her toward the food source. The newborn stumbled, but managed to get her legs back under herself and totter a few steps toward the udder.
“Time for me to go to work.” Sam turned his attention to the other cow. Sure enough, tiny hooves were showing.
“Please be alive,” Jodie murmured.
“This is a normal presentation,” Sam said as he climbed into the pen. “It’s probably fine.” He was right. Five minutes later a calf was on the ground, obviously alive and well. Sam climbed back out of the pen and let the mama figure out what to do next.
The barn door opened and they both turned to see Margarite hovering in the doorway.
“The boys just call
ed. They found the cattle.”
“Alive?” Jodie asked.
“Yeah. The culvert drifted shut only on one side. The herd couldn’t get back through to the pasture. Lucas is on his way over with the tractor to help dig it out and move the cows back. Any calves yet?”
“Two,” Jodie said.
“That’ll make your dad happy,” Margarite said. “I have hot drinks ready whenever you’re done here.” She shut the door, leaving Sam and Jodie alone once more. Jodie picked up the gloves she’d dropped before giving Daisy her rubdown.
“You do a lot to keep your dad happy, don’t you?” Sam asked quietly as he began to pack up his equipment.
She slowly turned to look at him. “I’m trying to run this ranch to the best of my ability while he’s gone, if that’s what you’re getting at.” But she didn’t think it was.
“What happens if you don’t? What happens if you make a mistake? You know…leave a gate open. Injure a horse.”
Jodie slapped the gloves on her thigh to remove the bits of straw and dust clinging to the leather. “He’s going to be angry. He’ll get over it.” Eventually. After he’d had time to stew, then cool down.
Sam just shook his head and continued packing his equipment.
“Don’t judge me or my family, Sam.”
Jodie shoved the gloves into her coat pockets. She’d told her father the ranch would be fine in her care, and she fully intended to live up to that promise. Nothing wrong with that. So why was Sam questioning her?
“What’s the deal, Sam? Why are you asking about my dad?”
His eyes were serious when he said, “I saw a different side of you when we played basketball.”
“Yeah?” And what did that have to do with her dad?
“Yeah. You’re nothing like you first came off.”
She twisted her lips into a half smile, half smirk. She was slightly shocked at what he’d just said, but wasn’t about to show it. “How did I first come off?”
He smiled slightly. “As someone who sees herself a step above the rubes who live here.”