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“I don’t know. Let me grab my bag, and we’ll go.”
I stepped back inside and looked around, spotting the leather bag I had seen earlier when unpacking. I grabbed it, along with a bottle of water, and returned to the porch.
“All right, let’s go.” I handed him the water.
He chugged it down as we headed off the porch and around to the backyard to cross the field between our properties. It was easy to determine where mine stopped and his began because mine hadn’t been plowed in years and his was laid out in neat rows of not-long-sprouted soybeans. We had to go almost completely across the field to get to where he had left the dog panting and whining in the dirt.
I dropped to my knees and began tending to her, checking her out from head to toe. It didn’t take long to find the problem. Even my minimal movement to check her leg brought howls, which dropped away as she passed out from the pain. I found a splint in my bag and adjusted it to keep the leg stabilized until he could get her to the regular vet in town. I also gave her a quick shot to keep her under so that she wasn’t in so much agony and didn’t injure herself further as he tried to get her to her regular veterinarian.
“I tried to get her to my truck, but she just kept fighting me. She’s a big dog. I couldn’t handle her,” he said.
“You should be able to manage her now. What were you doing out here? How did this happen?”
“One of our cows was loose, and I brought Marilyn out to help me get it back up, but she stepped in a hole and went down. I thought she’d been shot for a moment. Will she be OK?”
“She’ll be fine. They’ll properly set her leg and secure it with a cast while it heals, so she won’t be rounding up any cattle for a while. They’ll most likely give her some pain medication and antibiotics as a precaution too.”
“Thank you. I’ll pay you for coming out here with me. I’m so glad you were home. We don’t have any vets around here that make house calls, and I don’t think I could have gotten her up out of this field without you. Stock dogs are a lot bigger and heavier than folks think they are, especially if they’re fighting you to get loose.”
“She’s a beautiful dog. Go ahead and get her out of here.”
“You want me to drop you off at the house?” he asked.
“No. I’ll walk myself back. Thanks.”
I didn’t ask him the obvious question: why he hadn’t taken the truck to come to my house in the first place. I figured he had just panicked and thought it was quicker to hightail it straight across the field rather than go around the roads that edged our properties in the much faster truck.
I looked around as I walked. Once I was off the Tankersley property, everything within sight to either side and in front of me was mine. It was surreal. As I got closer to the house, I could see where the property began to split off on one side where the house Jon had purchased sat. It had once been a nice house, placed on the much smaller five-acre plot that sat at the front corner of my family’s place sometime in the early 1900s by a man who was a bit of a hermit. When he had died several years back, no relations could be found, and the place had fallen into ruin, eventually sold off as a distressed property.
That’s when Jon bought it and started fixing it up for resale. Grandma had been glad, since it had become more of an eyesore by the day. I remembered how excited she had been about it, even though I wasn’t. Jon had already been helping Grandma out for some time, taking care of any problems around the house, and I was glad she had him to help.
I had to wonder now if things might have been different if I hadn’t let his presence put me off coming home more often. It wouldn’t have changed the fact that Grandma passed away when she did, but maybe Jon and I would have resolved our differences sooner and I wouldn’t have wasted my time and money going into a partnership, both personal and business, with Shaun. As it was, I’d be lucky to get even a portion of the money I had put into the clinic back. At some point, I was going to have to stop ignoring him and face the music, most likely selling my half to him at a loss.
For now, I’d just try to get sorted out here. I had some money in the bank thanks to my savings and the bit of money my grandmother left me, but it wouldn’t last forever. In fact, I doubted it would last more than six months, at best. I’d have to find something to do, even if it wasn’t working as a veterinarian. Maybe I’d visit the other vet in town to see if he could use any help. He was getting older, so perhaps he was looking for someone to take over or even just a vet assistant. Whatever it was, I was making a fresh start, building a new life. And I was doing it in Muskrat Creek.
