AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He nodded. “Exactly.”
I shivered. “What do I do if I’m out here alone and run into that?”
“Come get one of us.”
“That’s the answer I was hoping for.”
“Don’t worry, we don’t expect you to know what you’re doing. You’re just our eyes on the ground so I don’t have to be out here riding around all the time doing the basics. That’s all we’re asking of you, just the basics. The complicated stuff we’ll still handle.”
I nodded. Okay, the more he talked, the more I felt I could probably handle this.
Until a few hours later when we came back by to check on Red as Reece had taken to calling her, and it seemed, magically, there was now a calf on the ground beside her!
“Oh my gosh!” I cried as we drove up. “Look! Look!”
We’d gotten lunch after Reece had driven me around the rest of the pastures. He’d sketched out a rough map of the land to help me orient myself—it was a bit overwhelming. The ranch was two thousand acres large. Two thousand!
Then we’d done a little more work on the bunkhouse. I hadn’t quite finished yesterday. And now, here we were again. And there was a new baby cow!
“Excellent,” Reece said, hopping off the ATV and then unzipping a bag on the back of it.
He showed me how to load the tagging gun, then held it out to me. “Just grab the ear and push the trigger as quick as you can. You don’t always have a lot of time since the moms can be protective of their newborns.”
I blanched. “Don’t you think I should watch you do one first?”
He smiled his Reece smile. “No better way to learn than by doing. The more you do while I watch and can run interference with Mama cow, the better.”
I gulped. “Um. Sure.”
I wore a pair of gloves Ruth had lent me and I awkwardly grabbed the gun from him. A tag with #4 stuck out from what was essentially a giant ear-piercing gun.
“Just get the ear in between here,” Reece pointed at the little slot in the gun, “and pull the trigger.”
I looked around at all the cows milling around us to see where their ear tags were placed and they all seemed to be in the flappy part, but not too near the edge. Okay, okay, I could do this. I could totally do this.
Except, as we got closer and closer to Red and her small baby, still wet from afterbirth, I was pretty sure, nope, no way could I do this!
But Reece was there beside me, talking to the mama calmly and jovially, congratulating her on her baby and then he was all, “Go, do it now. You got this. Go for it before she gets riled.”
So I approached as quick as I could and leaned down. The calf scrambled to its feet. Oh my gosh, yay, it could get to its feet all on its own! I was so excited I almost lost the little guy, or girl, crap, that was something else I was supposed to look for.
“Straddle ‘em,” Reece called, again stepping between me and the mom. Something Mama Red did not seem happy about at all. “And do it quick. Don’t know how long mom’s gonna be distracted over here.”
Shit! I got a leg over the baby cow who started wiggling like it wanted to bolt and grabbed its ear.
Its little head started waving back and forth but somehow I slipped the ear in between the flap on the gun. I slammed my finger on the trigger. I jolted with the impact of the piercer, but the cow didn’t flinch at all as the tag went in.
I jumped off and was about to scramble away when Reece called, “See if it’s a boy or a girl. Grab a back leg and peek under the skirt.”
Good Lord, this was no time for jokes. But I did it. Before the calf could scramble away again, I awkwardly grabbed the wet back leg and peeked underneath.
“Girl!” I called triumphantly. “It’s a girl!” I let go and then jumped back and looked at Reece. “I think, anyway. Not sure what a boy would look like.”
He laughed. “Pretty sure you’d know when you saw it.”
“Will you double check just in case?”
He laughed but did. The mother cow mooed at us, but Reece was able to confirm that it was indeed a female calf. The mother moved in and continued licking at her calf, but not for long before the calf was out of her reach, nuzzling for one of her nipples and sucking earnestly, if ineptly.
