“Yeah?”
“And I saw that one of the young ones was lying flat out.”
“They do that sometimes,” Casie said, but she was already swinging her feet to the floor. It was as cold as January against her bare toes.
“But she was separated from the others like you said wasn't normal and she didn't get up when I climbed through the fence.”
A number of pretty serviceable curse words swerved through Casie's mind, but she managed to steer them back on the highway and speed them out of sight. Swearing was just a manifestation of an overabundance of emotion, Brad said. “She didn't get up at all?”
“Not until I got right up to her. Then she ambled away a few steps and lay back down.”
Casie was already pulling a pair of less-than-sterile jeans over her long underwear. The pants had once belonged to her mother. It was entirely possible that they had been Clayton's before that. But couture was not exactly her main concern at five thirty on a frosty April morning. “What do you think was wrong with her?”
“I don't know. I'm a city girl,” Emily said, and for the first time Casie recognized the taut angst in the teenager's voice.
“Okay, well . . .” She pulled a sweatshirt from the chair near the darkened window. “You'd better come along, but really, it's probably nothing.”
They only had one flashlight between them and that one was a weak representative of its breed. Nevertheless, it did its feeble best to illuminate the frosty night.
Jack appeared in its watery light, blinking and dancing ahead of them, overjoyed by this new adventure.
It only took them a few minutes to reach the pasture. The heifers were mostly on their feet now, eyeing them with suspicion, ready to run. Emily handed the flashlight off to Casie, who swept it sideways.
“Did you see her ear tag?” Casie asked.
Emily shook her head. Her striped stocking cap had a braided string falling from the top that jiggled when she moved. “I don't think she had one.”
Casie would have liked to disagree, but Clayton's livestock management techniques had suffered considerably in the last couple years. With his wife's death and his own failing health, it was entirely possibly that ear-tagging newborns had not been high on his list of priorities.
“What'd she look like?”
“Are you messing with me?” Em asked.
In a world gone commercial heavy on Angus beef, Clayton had held on to his Herefords. Every last animal was brown with a white face. He'd been known to say on more than one occasion that if folks in New York City could tell the color of a critter's hide by the taste of their steaks, they were better cattlemen than he was.
“Well . . .” Case swept the beam of light across the yearlings and sideways to the sloping hill beyond. The animals were in a tight bunch, every red eye focused on them, every beast ready to bolt. “. . . they look okay to me.”
“Do cows get stomachaches?” Em asked.
“Are you projecting?” Emily had had a touch of the flu for several days, but it hadn't seemed to slow her down any.
“I was just wondering.”
“Well, they can bloat if they get too much rich feed.”
“Like chocolate cheesecake?” She'd been digging through Kathy's recipe boxes again. And although Casie knew they should focus on the ten million farm tasks that needed to be done, it wasn't in her to discourage anyone from creating baked goods that did nothing to improve her health but so much to improve her mood.
“Like alfalfa,” she corrected, forcing her mind away from the Amarillo coconut pie the girl had concocted on the previous day. “Excess gas builds up in their rumens or something andâ” she began, but suddenly the triangular beam of light swept across an unidentifiable lump. She swung the flashlight quickly backward. The hazy ray settled on a dark form lying on the eastern slope of the hill.
“Oh no,” Casie said.
“What is it?” Emily's voice sounded high pitched and tense as she squinted into the distance.
“Looks like a cow.”
They made their way through the darkness, circumventing the prone creature until they stood behind her, but the blackness was not making their task easy. Nevertheless, they could hear grunting noises issuing from the animal.
They crept a few inches closer, straining to see. A small heifer lay flat out on the ground. She was facing downhill. Her tail was cocked up. Beneath it, a bone-white projection was covered in a gauzy, blue-veined sac.
“She's in labor,” Casie said.
“What?” Emily turned toward her, her face a pale oval in the darkness. “I thought you said the yearlings were too young to be moms.”
Which was true and probably why this tortured animal was now lying in a position no right-thinking bovine would adopt. “I said they hadn't been exposed to a bull.”
“So this is like, what . . . a virgin birth?”
What this was was trouble, Casie thought, and scowled as she focused the light on the cow's hind end.
“Case?” There was no longer any humor in the girl's voice. “We're not going to just leave her here, are we?”
Seconds ticked away in the blackness.
“Case?”
“Chinese takeout,” Casie said suddenly.
“What?” Em's voice sounded dubious, as if she'd finally realized that Casie had slipped over the razor-sharp edge of sanity and into the dark abyss beyond.
“A warm work space. Clean fingernails.”
“Now's not the time to lose it, Case.”
“Those are the reasons I want to go back to the city.”
Emily shifted from foot to foot. Spring or not, the temperature still dropped below freezing with disturbing regularity. “But not immediately, right?”
For a moment she almost said yes, almost marched back into the house to pack her modest bags and say
adios
to it all, but finally she shook her head and heaved a sigh. “Right now we're going to get her up and chase her into the barn.”
In the end, chasing her into the barn wasn't nearly as simple as it sounded. Casie shouted, Emily flapped her arms, but it was Jack nipping at the heifer's hocks that finally sent the frenzied animal shuffling uncomfortably through the gate. Once she was mixed with the older cattle, the job became increasingly more difficult, but finally she stood alone in a fourteen-by-fourteen-foot pen that had been built into the corner of the barn for just such an occasion. Her eyes were rimmed with white, the hair on her head and neck wavy where it was soaked with chilly sweat.
“Now what?” Emily looked a little skittish herself in the dim overhead lights. Skittish and tired. Her breath could be seen as a frosty bubble. From over the fence that separated the cattle from the machinery, Angel watched them with mild curiosity.
Casie shook her head. “I don't suppose you can rope, huh?”
“Rope? Who do you think I am?”
“Assistant wrangler of the Lazy Windmill?”
Emily looked a little sick as her own words came back to haunt her. “Roping didn't fall under the job description. I'm strictly managerial.”
“Then I'm going to change the job description to includeâ” Casie began, but the heifer was already dropping miserably onto her side.
Despite the animal's discomfort and nerves, nature insisted that she lie down and strain. Which she did in a moment.
The women remained silent, watching, but little happened. One small hoof would exit a few scant inches, then slip back inside when the contractions ceased.
“Is something wrong?” Emily looked fidgety and panicked. “I think something's wrong.”
“Shh,” Casie said, but she thought the same thing.
“What's the fetal mortality rate in cattle?”
“I'm not exactly a bovine midwife, Emily.”
“I bet it's high.” Em's voice sounded strained. “In people, it's eighteen point seven percent in populations without medical assistance.”
Casie dragged her gaze from the heifer for a second. “How do you know that?”
She shrugged. “I just know things.”
“Well . . .” Casie shook her head and turned miserably back to the heifer. “She's not a person.”
“But she still needs help. What about Brad?”
“What?”
“Your fiancé. He's a nice guy, right?” Her expression was ridiculously hopeful.
“What difference does that make?”
“I mean, he's a doctor, isn't he? Maybe he can do something.”
“Are you serious?”
“I'm sure he'd want to help if he knew about the situation.”
“What are you talking about? Brad's not a veterinarian. He doesn't know anything about livestock, and he's three hundred miles away.” Besides that, he'd find it beneath demeaning to work in a poorly lit barn in the middle of the night. But then, who wouldn't?
For a moment, anguish shone as bright as summer lightning in the girl's eyes, but she pursed her lips and raised her chin a notch. “Then I guess we'd better call a vet.”
“I can't afford a vet.” Guilt made Casie's voice rougher than she'd intended. “Remember that hundred-thousand-dollar debt?” she said, but the truth was deeper than that. The truth was, Clayton had insulted, ignored, or failed to pay every veterinarian within the tricounty area.
“Then what are we going to do?”
“I don't know.”
“Well, what do you think the problem is?” All semblance of the cocky assistant wrangler had disappeared.
Casie exhaled and wished she were a thousand miles away. Somewhere warm. Somewhere easy. “I think the calf isn't positioned correctly.”
“Like breach or something?”
“I don't think so.” She took a half step closer and strained to see below the heifer's cocked tail. It looked as if the rubbery, single hoof was pointing downward as it should be, but where was the other foot?
“Do you think it's an occiput posterior?”
“Where do you get these terms?”
“Just tell me what's wrong with it!”
“I think its head might be turned back.”
“Oh God.”
Casie tightened her grip on the flashlight. “We're going to have to push it back in and try to get it straightened out.”
“We?”
“A week ago everything was
we
. You're not changing your mind now, are you?”
“No.” Emily swallowed. “No, of course not. But I don't . . . I don't like blood.”
Casie felt a little sick herself. “Do you think I bathe in it or something?”
“I don't think you bathe at all,” Emily said, but she failed to laugh at her own joke, failed to do so much as glance away from the distressed animal. The girl's face looked strained and exhausted in the dusky light.
But there was nothing to be done about that just now. “Listen, you put Jack away,” Casie said. “I'll get a few supplies and meet you back here in a minute.”
It took slightly longer than that, but they were both back in the barn finally. Judging by the one hoof still presented, the heifer hadn't progressed any.
Casie handed the flashlight to Emily. Despite the hundred-watt bulbs overhead, the barn was cast in shadows. “Give me as much light as possible,” she said and pulled on a long plastic sleeve she'd found in the basement.
“Oh f . . . fudge!” Emily said, watching with growing agitation. Her voice sounded shaky.
Casie glanced at her as she squirted baby oil onto the sleeve like she'd seen Doc Miller do on more than one occasion. “You're not going to pass out or something, are you?”
“How the hell . . .” She winced. “Heck . . . How the heck should I know? It's not like I delivered calves every morning at the Java Bean.”
“What?”
“Where I used to work.”
“I thought it was the Jumping Bean.”
“Jes . . . geez, I'm so nervous I can't even remember my last place of employment.”
“Well, try to relax,” Casie said. “You don't want to spook the heifer any more than she already is.” Speaking softly, she eased closer to the animal. But she might as well have been invisible for all the cow cared because at that moment another contraction tightened her uterus. She stretched out her neck and moaned raggedly. Steam wafted off her overheated barrel. Her legs stiffened and rose from the ground. Casie crouched behind her and waited for the contraction to pass. Then, silently praying for assistance, she slipped her hand along the calf's placenta-covered leg.