Wolf trailed after the truck on foot. He looked over. “They’re here for Bill.”
Wyatt turned back to his bull without comment. His eyes were bloodshot. He was still a young man, but the sun and wind had already begun weathering lines around his eyes. Those lines were deeper than they had been yesterday, and Buffy blamed herself for that.
He ran his forearm across his brow and lifted his black Stetson with one hand to shove some unruly dark hair off his face with the other. He replaced the hat to anchor his sweat-soaked hair.
She had to try. One more apology. Maybe she’d stop screwing up after this. “Wyatt, I’m sorry.”
“I know,” he said shortly.
“The words don’t mean anything, and Mr. Leonard’s money only goes so far.”
“You know how long I planned for that bull there?”
Wolf split a look between them and went back to the buffalo.
Buffy wished he’d stay and let Wyatt divide his anger, which made her a coward on top of everything else. “I know a purebred bull is an extremely valuable animal. You’ve got a herd that’s pure black. The Angus breed is especially valuable. He’s worth a lot of money.”
“Ten years.” Wyatt stared at the bull whose head was now hanging low. The bull’s legs wobbled. “My dad and I decided we were going to get away from the more exotic breeds. We had white Charolais mainly. I’ve got Simmental and Chianina mixed in. Those are big breeds. For a long time, it was the theory that you’d buy the smallest cow around—that’s Angus or Hereford—and breed them to the biggest bull. The cow is cheap to feed because she’s little, and the calf will grow fast and give you a better return, but we started having trouble calving.”
“Those little cows giving birth to whopping big calves.” Buffy nodded. “I was called in during my last year of college to do a lot of cesareans.”
“Which costs a lot and is risky for the cow, and there goes your profit. So Dad and I started going back to straight Angus, but we wanted to do it right. There was so much mixed blood in the breed that we weren’t sure what we were getting. We decided to get a purebred. A purebred Angus has really beautiful lines. They’re a healthy, hardy animal that thrives in the conditions in the Black Hills. We probably didn’t need to get one as expensive as that one.”
Wyatt’s bull wavered. He was standing about thirty feet in front of them. When he staggered sideways, Buffy got a better look at the ugly slash in his side. Blood dripped from his belly and ran down his legs. This close, Buffy could see smaller cuts on the bull’s head and neck, and one leg was badly lacerated. It was obscene on the proud, beautiful animal. The bull dropped to one front knee. Buffy prayed that he hadn’t lost so much blood the dosage she used would kill him. She told Wyatt nothing would go wrong, but the world played cruel tricks, or at least that had been her experience. She could have prayed all night and not covered everything that could go wrong.
“He was worth it,” Buffy said as the bull dropped another knee. “He’s magnificent.”
“Dad was finally going to retire and have a little fun. He surprised me with the bull on the day I bought the ranch. Dad sold for a fraction of what he could have gotten from Mr. Leonard, but Dad had lived like a miser and saved a lot of money; he didn’t need Leonard’s cash. And his father had handed it on to him for a token payment, so he wanted to do that for me. Still, not every rancher in the area made the same decision for their sons. A lot of my friends who had hopes of ranching left when their fathers couldn’t afford to pass up Leonard’s money.”
Buffy opened her mouth to give her usual automatic support for Mr. Leonard the naturalist, but she couldn’t speak the words, not after his ruthless performance this morning. She no longer believed Leonard’s motives were so pure.
“I could have paid market value for the land, because Jessica had just died and I got a life insurance payment.” Wyatt pursued the subject of his wife. “But instead, here I am buying the place for a song, and Dad comes up with Coyote there as a present.”
“Coyote? You named him?” The bull’s back end sagged to the prairie grass, and Buffy reached into her truck and picked up her vet bag.
“Not really. He’s got one of those million-dollar names, Marquis Blazing Star Stewart. I think that’s it. I just call him ‘the bull.’ ” Wyatt got out, and the two of them walked toward the dazed bull. “But sometimes we call him Coyote after USD.”
“After what?”
Wyatt gave her a look that was pure disgust. “The football team?”
“Your local high school?” Buffy thought that might be a normal conversation they could have. She’d gone to high school. . .for a while. She’d graduated early, and she’d taken college classes the whole time and spent every summer and holiday and weekend working with buffalo, so she hadn’t socialized much. But she’d been to an occasional football game. Never cared for them, but still. . .
Wyatt snorted. “The University of South Dakota. It’s where I met Jessica.” He got near enough to touch the bull and carefully knelt beside him. He patted the bull’s stout shoulder. “Sorry about this, old man. Bet you never figured on having to fight a monster like that for the girls, did you?”
Buffy ran her hands over the bull. The worst wound, the one in his side, had hanging flaps of skin. She’d be sewing all night. The bull panted steadily, and she breathed a sigh of relief. His neat, black head drooped like it weighed a ton.
“Let’s see if we can roll him onto his side.”
The bull went down flat without a protest. His feet flayed around a bit, but there was no strength behind them.
Wolf came trudging across the prairie carrying a cardboard box. “Bill’s starting to wake up. We’re ready to load him. This is everything you brought to tend the bull.”
“Thanks, Wolf. Just set it here beside me.”
Wolf laid the box down then knelt beside the bull so he, Buffy, and Wyatt were lined up down the length of his belly, Wolf nearest his head. “He’s a fine animal, Wyatt. He’s young and strong. He’ll be okay.”
“Yep, I think he’ll make it.”
“You could go back with Wolf, Wyatt. I’ll be at this for a long time, and it’s really a one-woman job.” Buffy glanced at the setting sun. It had to be nearly nine o’clock at night. Would this day never end?
“I’ll stay.”
“I have the CB if I need any help. You look exhausted.”
“I’ll stay.”
Buffy had known he would. The truth was she didn’t want to be left alone out here. But she’d had to try. “Fine.”
Wolf gave the bull an affectionate slap on the neck, and the bull started. It blinked its eye resentfully at Wolf as if it didn’t want its sleep disturbed.
“Don’t like lettin’ anyone else be in charge, do you, boy?” Wolf got up with a grunt of exertion that told Buffy how tired he was. He walked back to the buffalo.
Buffy immediately began rummaging in her box.
“Tell me what to do, Buffalo Gal.”
“I already told you it was a one-woman job.”
“I can sew up torn skin as well as you most likely. We can be out of here in half the time.”
Buffy pulled battery-operated hair clippers out of the box Wolf had brought. “I want to clip the area along the wound; then I’ll disinfect and wash it. Then I’m going to pack it with antibiotic powder, and I’ll start sewing.”
“Let’s get on with it.”
Buffy gave Wyatt a long look. She saw his determination and gave up on working alone. She didn’t like kneeling here beside him, shoulder to shoulder, his warmth seeping into her, his scent teasing her on the soft evening breeze. She clicked the clippers, and they came on with a tooth-tingling buzz.
The noise prevented them from talking, which was just as well. Between exhaustion and anger, she didn’t think Wyatt had anything to say she wanted to hear. But the bull didn’t need to be shaved bald. The skin along the big wound and several small ones was clear in a few minutes. While Buffy worked in the bl
oody fur, cleaning the wound, Wyatt cleaned beside her. She heard Wolf drive away, leaving her and Wyatt alone with Wyatt’s herd and the big bull sleeping under their hands.
She’d just gotten comfortable with the silence when Wyatt said, “He bred at least one of my heifers. I wasn’t quick enough to see which one. The buff calf’ll kill her. My Angus are too small to give birth to a baby buffalo. Look at this wound on his back leg.” Wyatt pointed to a cut with the blood dried to a hard black crust. “He got this cut hours ago. That buffalo has been out here all day. Who knows how many he bred.”
Buffy examined the muscle wall under the cut for damage. “Bill hadn’t really been accepted into the herd yet. While the rest of them ran together, he just wandered a different way. And this pasture isn’t that far from the Commons as the crow flies. Yes, I’d say we need to figure he’s been with this herd most of last night and all day today.”
Wyatt never quit working. “All these heifers are the age to be bred. I could lose a dozen of them, and if Bill is carrying brucellosis or any other disease, the state has to quarantine at least this whole herd until they’re tested and found healthy. If even a few of them are sick, I could lose six hundred head of my best young stuff.”
Buffy shook her head. “Bill is healthy. He was checked carefully before we moved him here.”
“And he’s been with your herd for two weeks or so, right? Are you sure every buffalo cow you’ve got is healthy? Are you sure none of them has passed anything on?”
“No, that’s possible, but not likely. Look, I’m sorry—”
“Stop! Stop with ‘I’m sorry!’ ” Wyatt roared. Then he clamped his mouth shut.
In the deepening dusk, Buffy saw his determination to control his temper and the exhaustion that weakened his iron will. She was just as tired. She almost reached for him, but she knew that was exactly the wrong thing to do. She knew buffalo men, and Wyatt was cut from the same cloth. The refining fires of the West forged them into pure, unalloyed steel. She had a desire to comfort him that was purely female. She recognized it as a better part of herself. But she was also a woman who’d worked with mean animals and hard men all her life. She squelched her softer instincts.
“All right, forget sorry. Forget Leonard will make it right. Forget all of that. Just get over it.”
Wyatt’s eyes, drooping with exhaustion, popped open. “Get over it?”
“That’s right, you heard me.” She faced him. “Get over it! It happened. You’ll do whatever you need to do to get through today, and then you’ll get through tomorrow. That’s life. This is an ugly mess, and it may get uglier, and you’ll do whatever you have to do. Anything else you say about it is just whining!”
Wyatt’s jaw tightened until she thought his teeth might crack. He glared at her with those blazing hazel eyes. It wasn’t the first time he’d burned her with them. It wasn’t the first time she’d accused him of whining. She almost smiled.
Wyatt was the strongest man she’d ever met, and she’d met some strong ones. If ever a man had a right to complain, it was Wyatt Shaw.
He breathed in and out. His nostrils flared, his eyes got hotter, and he rose to her challenge. “That’s right. I’ll do whatever tomorrow brings, because the sun will rise tomorrow, and I don’t have any choice but to live through it.”
Buffy was so proud of him she wanted to. . . Well, never mind what she wanted to do—it was a bad idea. “So you stay here”—she jabbed a crimson finger at the bull’s belly—“and you survive as best you can, and I will, too. So I’m sorry—not because it’s my fault—it isn’t! I’m sorry because I know your life is going to be a complicated mess for a while. And then it will be over.”
“My life?” Wyatt asked.
“No, this mess!”
“And what?” Wyatt sneered. “We’ll all look back on this and laugh?”
“I don’t see much chance of that.”
Their gaze held a moment; then she went back to sterilizing the cuts. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Wyatt’s fist clench for a second; then he turned to his bull and began working alongside her again. It was almost companionable—in a demilitarized zone kind of way.
Buffy sprinkled topical antibiotic on the wounds. “The bleeding has stopped. He would have been okay without our help if he could have avoided an infection. The skin flap might have caught on something and gotten worse, and it would have left him with an ugly scar.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want him to be ugly, now, would we?” Wyatt said dryly.
Buffy threaded a needle and handed it to Wyatt then got one for herself. The big bull breathed in and out but was otherwise still.
“I don’t see muscle damage.” The bull’s eyes fluttered open once in a while. “He’s not really unconscious. He’s just stoned out of his gourd.”
Wyatt laughed as he sewed. “What is that stitch you’re using?”
“It’s a little more difficult than the one you’re doing. I’m not that long out of vet school, so maybe it’s something new.”
Buffy showed Wyatt how to do it, and he adapted to her method. “I’ll bet this would leave less of a scar.”
“Oh, not really. Your stitch isn’t going to leave a scar that’ll show once his hair grows back.”
“I meant on myself.”
Buffy’s hands dropped to her sides. “You mean you sew your own cuts?”
“Yeah, sure.”
Buffy grimaced. She thought of scarring and pain and infection, and finally all she could say was, “That’d hurt.”
“It hurts some, but usually you’re already hurting like crazy, what with having a cut big enough it needs to be stitched. A few more pinpricks don’t make much difference, and I’m a long way from a doctor out here.”
“You’ve really done it?” Buffy was having a hard time imag-ining a man taking a needle to his own flesh.
Wyatt paused to unsnap his sleeve and shove it up to his elbow. A jagged cut ran the length of his left arm. “I did this one. If it’d been on my right arm, I might have needed to go in.”
Buffy didn’t like the looks of the nasty scar. “A doctor could have done better for you. You wouldn’t have that scar.”
Wyatt gave a rusty half laugh. “Yeah, I’m ruined. My dreams of being Miss America are over.” He reached for the thread.
“Do you sew the boys up?”
“Of course. With those two wild animals, I’d be running to the doctor for stitches twice a week. I just sewed a cut on Cody’s foot a few days ago. I wouldn’t do it if I thought he was hurt seriously. I’d want a doctor to rule out any complications. But he kicked his bare foot through a window and slit the top of his arch.”
“And he lay still for it?”
“No,” Wyatt said, as if she’d lost her mind. “That kid has never laid still, night or day, in his life.”
“How’d you get him sewn up?”
“I wrapped him up so tight in a bedsheet he wasn’t able to move a muscle. The doctor taught me that years ago.”
“You’re saying a doctor knew about this and didn’t demand you bring him in?”
“Who do you think taught me to put stitches in? Well, I mean besides my mom. A doctor gave me some good tips that improved my methods. The first time I did it, Cody was two years old. I wrapped him up, and Jessica held him down. He screamed the whole time, and I bet anything I’ve got hearing damage from it. And Colt thought we were killing him, so he screamed, too. It wasn’t pretty.”
“How could you stand it?”
Wyatt shrugged. “It would have been stupid to drive fifty miles to a doctor and make that poor guy listen to the screaming. And I’d have had to listen to it, too, in the doctor’s office. It was our problem. We took care of it.”
Buffy didn’t want to ask about Wyatt’s wife, but her mouth took charge. “Your wife must have been tough.”
“No, actually she hated me for it the first time I did it in front of her.” Wyatt laughed, and Buffy heard affection in his laugh. “Cody had cracke
d his chin and needed a couple of stitches. My wife cried the whole time, but she held him down for me. Then she fainted dead away when it was over, so I had an unconscious wife and two screaming kids on my hands. Long afternoon.”
Wyatt sighed. “I had to call a neighbor lady to hold him when we took them out. He screamed just as loud, and it didn’t hurt him a bit, and Jessica wouldn’t speak to me for a week afterward.”
Buffy put the last stitch in the bull’s belly; then she turned to several lesser cuts on his head and neck. Wyatt began stitching on the back leg.
Buffy said, “She cried, but she did it. She sounds like a hardy woman.”
“Jessica hated the ranch. She spent more time not speaking than she did speaking.”
“But she stuck with you?” Buffy straightened and looked at Wyatt. “Even though it was a life she hated?”
Wyatt quit sewing and looked sideways at her. “Sure she stuck with me. We made a commitment to God and to each other. We both intended it to last for a lifetime.” He paused then added quietly, “She was never happy, though. I was born to be a rancher. Never wanted anything else. But the year I graduated from high school, Dad was talking about retiring. I was born when he was older, and it was just too much responsibility for me. I wasn’t ready for my whole life to be laid out and settled. I went off to college, thinking I could leave these Black Hills behind. I met Jessica while I was there.”
“She wasn’t raised on a ranch?” Buffy asked.
“About as far from a ranch as you can get. She was from a suburb in Connecticut. Her dad commuted into New York City every day to work.”
“How did she ever get to South Dakota?”
“Oh, it’s a long story. Something about a friend whose grandmother had spent her childhood here and always loved the country. How does anyone end up anywhere?”
Buffy thought of all the twists and turns that had led her here.
“She fell in love with the idea of the wide-open spaces ringed by these rough mountains. I’m sure I was homesick and talking about missing the land. She got excited about getting back to nature; then she fell in love with me.” Wyatt smiled fondly.
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