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Ty glanced again at the heifer in labor. Stumpy Niles had left him to keep a vigil on the young cow while he went to assist one of the other cowboys, whose cow was rejecting her newborn calf. When Ty had come on duty at the outset of the night shift, Stumpy had taken him under his wing and stayed at his side through each calving, giving him instructions and advice. All of the births had gone smoothly, the cows requiring little assistance from Ty.
There hadn’t been much razzing, mainly due to Stumpy’s presence. As the night crew had come on duty to take over from the day shift, two of the cowboys Ty had met during the fall roundup gave him a hard time, asking him whether he knew which hole the calf came out of and warning him against poking around the wrong one. Ty had done his best to ignore them.
Ty ran a glance down the calving shed, but there was no sign of Stumpy returning, and he looked back at the heifer. Her labor was well advanced; she was fully dilated, but nothing was happening. The large brown eyes were rolling, showing rings of white around them. Ty began to get the uneasy feeling that something was going wrong.
Jiggling his weight from one foot to the other, he tried to generate some warmth. It felt as if his ears were going to fall off despite the wool knit scarf that covered them. He’d never been so cold in all his life as he moved closer to the heifer and crouched down beside her tail.
“What’s holding back your calf, little momma?” The words of concern were stiffly murmured, his facial muscles too numb with the cold to let his mouth properly form the words.
“Is she in trouble?”
Ty looked up to see a red-cheeked Jessy Niles, layered in warm clothing that gave a slight waddle to her walk. She didn’t wait for an answer as she came over to stand beside Ty, bending in the middle to get a closer view of the situation.
Earlier in the evening, he’d noticed her around the calving shed, but he hadn’t seen her for a while. Ty didn’t like the idea of some ten-year-old kid looking over his shoulder, especially when he didn’t know for sure what he was doing.
“What are you doing out here? It’s past your bedtime, isn’t it?” he muttered.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I got up.” The shrugging movement of her shoulders was barely noticeable under the heavy jacket she was wearing. “The calf should be coming any minute now.”
That was what Ty had thought several minutes ago, but so far there wasn’t a sign of it. The cow was in some kind of difficulty. The beginnings of a nervous sweat started to chill his skin. Then he saw something and relief shivered through him.
“Here it comes,” he announced as a contraction expelled another inch of the dark, sac-enclosed object.
A second later, his hope sank to the pit of his stomach. Instead of a miniature pair of cloven hooves emerging, it was the calf’s white-faced head. His hands curled into fists.
“You’d better get your dad,” he told the girl. “Tell him to come quick. The calf’s coming head first.”
Jessy Niles needed no second urging as she sped away to locate her father and advise him of the situation. Ty spent agonizing minutes waiting for help to come, fully aware the opening wasn’t large enough to permit passage of the calf’s chest and front legs. The natural calving order was front feet first; then came the head of the fetus.
When Jessy came running back, out of breath from the cold, he looked up anxiously. She stopped beside him, shaking her head while trying to summon her voice. She sank to her knees on the straw floor.
“He can’t come,” she panted, and a shaft of fear went through him. “He said . . . you’ll have to handle it.”
“Me?” Ty looked back at the cow, feeling helpless.
It took Jessy only a second to realize he didn’t know what to do. Instantly she took charge. She’d been told that she’d seen her first animal born when she was four years old. Since then, she’d spent a large part of every calving season in the sheds. She had observed nearly every calving situation imaginable and had recently taken part in her share of them.
“First you have to push the head back through the birthing channel between contractions. Better hurry up and get your coat and gloves off,” she advised him.
Only for a minute did Ty hesitate. The calm authority in her voice was reminiscent of her father’s. His numbed fingers worked hurriedly to unfasten the buttons while he shrugged out of the bulky coat. There was too much on his mind, the situation too urgent to pay any attention to the frigid air as he pushed the sleeve of his sweat shirt past his elbow and rolled th
e wool sleeve of his shirt just as high.
With Jessy hovering close by and giving him instructions, Ty managed to maneuver the calf fetus back inside the cow’s womb, then groped around to find the front legs and shift it into the normal birthing position. All the while, he was scared to the marrow of his bones. His heart was hammering in his throat. He felt weak and shaky, his stomach churning with sickening intensity. A nervous sweat had broken out, chilling his skin.
At regular intervals, muscular contractions clamped down on his arm, squeezing it hard and sometimes forcing him to wait until the pressure eased. But the contractions grew steadily weaker. By the time he had the calf coming the right way out of the birthing channel, the young cow was too exhausted from her prolonged labor to help him.
His breath was coming in grunting gasps as Ty strained muscles already quivering from the high tension and alternately pulled and rested, pulled and rested. The front feet and head emerged, then the chest and shoulders.
“Hurry,” Jessy urged with an anxiety in her voice that Ty didn’t understand.
The next thing he knew, she was crowding beside him and grabbing at the calf to help him pull it the rest of the way. When it was lying on the straw, Ty sagged back on his heels, taking a second to gather his shattered nerves. But Jessy didn’t pause. She began wiping the mucuslike membrane sac away from the calf’s nostrils.
“Don’t just sit there!” Impatience flashed in her hazel eyes. “The cord’s wrapped around its neck.”
After the ordeal he’d just been through, he just couldn’t bear to lose the calf.
Ty shouldered her out of the way and lifted the calf’s head to carefully unwrap the umbilical cord that had become twisted around its neck. Bending over the wet and curly white face, he blew into its nostrils the way he’d once seen a groom do with a newly born foal to clear its air passages.
