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“This sale isn’t worth another step on that leg.”

He shuts his mouth. They wheel him out.

Tessa starts calling cattle from the booth.

“First group in the north empty pen, fourteen head. Nine black, four red, one red baldy. Origin South Eleven and South Twelve on camera. All fourteen held as mixed.”

The clerk repeats it on two serialized sheets. Nora initials both.

She doesn’t pretend she can name every animal by color. She calls the ones she can prove by official tag or ranch number and notch and markings she photographed yesterday. Everything uncertain stays uncertain. Every mixed group stays held.

“South Twelve started with twenty,” she says. “I have nineteen possibles split between north empty and ring hold. Five bait identities confirmed. One animal and one bait identity unaccounted for.”

“West alley,” someone calls. “Three head behind the scale.”

Cole sends two people down the parallel pedestrian route and keeps them out of the alley until the cattle clear the blind corner. They open a pen ahead and step into view behind. The cattle slow when the chasing stops and walk in.

“Three secured. Two black, one red. Red has a torn left ear.”

“Don’t call her bait on the tear alone,” Tessa says. “Put camera three on her right rear leg and neck tag when she settles.”

I sit on the auction-block step while a medic cuts my sleeve away from the dressing. Feeling is coming back into my right hand. The shoulder refuses anything useful. Blood has worked through two layers of gauze.

“You need to go back to the clinic,” she says.

“After the count.”

“That wasn’t a medical option.”

“Then keep it together until the building is safe.”

She pads it without taking the sling off, marks the edge of the blood with a pen, and writes the time right on the dressing. “No gates. No lifting. No telling me adrenaline counts as treatment.”

“That last one may exceed your authority.”

“Test it and I’ll call counsel.”

“Camera three has the red heifer,” Tessa says. “Partial neck tag ending seven-one. Right rear white mark confirmed. That’s the sixth bait animal.”

All six bait heifers accounted for without using a brand alone.

Then security calls from the east service road. “Mott is outside. Carrying a gray archive box.”

I stand. The medic grabs my good forearm and fails to stop me, because she’s half my size and assumes reason will participate.

The service-road camera comes up on the booth monitor. Mott crosses behind the east pens with a box against his chest. When he passes under the yard light, I can read the label: ORIGINAL INTAKE TAGS, RETIRED SERIES.

The real tags. The ones that link numbers taken off living animals to fake accounts and every replacement mark that followed.

A marked county unit is waiting beyond the feed shed.

The deputy opens the passenger door from inside. Mott climbs in with the box. The unit swings away from the public exit and heads west down the service road.

“Truck’s ready,” Cole says. “We can cut them off before the south turn.”

It’s less than a mile. My left hand works. Cole can drive. Every piece of me my father built has already put us in the truck and decided what happens when I open the door.

“Garrett,” Tessa says.