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By bedtime, Rusty had gathered quite a file on Kevin Vanzant and was awaiting further information from the home office on Jack Barton. She sent Cameron a text.
Still running down a couple of leads. Did the home office send files to you? You need to know what I know about all this.
A couple of minutes later she got an answer.
Yes. Reading through them now. What the hell with all the women going missing from Barton’s camp?
She replied to his text.
That’s part of what we’re here to do. To find out. Get caught up on the info and we’ll talk tomorrow. I wish you were here.
When he responded, she smiled.
Yes, ma’am. I wish I was there, too. I miss your face. Sleep well, love you.
Rusty sighed. She missed his face, too. Then she crawled into bed, pulled up the covers and fell asleep.
***
The vet clinic had been closed for a couple of hours when Sam Carson got called out on an emergency at the McCoy farm up the mountain. Two bulls on neighboring farms had gotten into the same pasture and had a terrible fight before their owners got them separated and penned up. But John McCoy’s bull had suffered injuries serious enough to need stitches to stop the bleeding.
Sam arrived on scene in a timely fashion and was in the barn with McCoy and his sons, Rob and Lee, and the injured bull. He had just sedated the bull and they were standing back, waiting for him to drop, when the bull took a sudden leap forward and swung his head, hitting Sam in the chest with a blow that lifted him off his feet and slammed him against the wall.
Sam came down hard, twisting his knee as he landed, then couldn’t get up.
“Oh shit! Boys! Grab the doc,” John yelled, and got between his bull and the downed vet while his sons pulled Sam out of the pen.
Sam was out of danger now, but the damage had already been done. He knew he had a broken rib because he’d heard it snap, and his knee was throbbing and already swelling. It hurt to inhale, but he didn’t think his lungs had been punctured.
And to top it all off, the sedation he’d injected into the wounded animal kicked in. The bull was down and still bleeding profusely.
“Doc! Doc! Are you okay?” John cried as he climbed over the corral.
“Not really,” Sam said, “but let’s get bully-boy stitched up before I pass out.”
“Oh man, I’m so sorry,” John said. “Tell us what to do to help.”
“Help me back in the pen, and somebody get my bag,” Sam said, and they all raced to get him situated.
Following Sam’s instructions, John sluiced and cleaned the cut on the bull with antiseptic, then Rob and Lee held the loose skin together so Sam could stitch it. By the time Sam finished, he was in a cold sweat from the pain, and the bull was beginning to wake up. He gave the animal an injection to offset the sedation and then they cleared out of the pen.
“Get me and my stuff back to the truck,” Sam said. ‘I’m leaving medicine for you to administer for six days. Keep him penned up until the wound is well, and get your damn fence fixed. We don’t want to be doing this again anytime soon.”
John shook his head. “The boys are driving you to the ER, and they’ll park your truck at your place before they go home. You’re not going to be driving it for a while.”
Sam didn’t have any breath left to argue.
He spent the night in the ER, and an ambulance took him home around daybreak. Now he was laid up at home with a swollen knee and a cracked rib. He tried to get a substitute vet in to cover for him, but none were available until tomorrow, so he called Leslie.
She answered her phone as she was walking to her car to go to work.
“Hello?”
“Leslie, this is Sam. I had a run-in with a bull out at John McCoy’s last night. I have a broken rib and a swollen knee, and I can’t get anyone in to sub for me until tomorrow.”
“Oh, Sam! Oh no! I’m so sorry. What do you need me to do?” she asked.
“Just leave the Closed sign up, but if you wouldn’t mind going by and putting a sign on the door letting everyone know the clinic will be open tomorrow, I would really appreciate it. And call Amber and let her know you both have the day off. Allan Morris out of Bowling Green will sub for me tomorrow.”
