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“What do you mean?” I raised a brow
The ID says Weston Duke, but—”
“Thank you!” I interrupted her without thought, wondering what this was about.
She blinked, startled, and then raised a brow as I reached towards the phone.
“Anything else?” I added, silently encouraging her to leave.
“Nope.” She grinned suspiciously, and then shut the door behind her.
I picked up the phone and stared at the blinking light. Weston had called. Why would he be calling? I’d updated him on the heifers yesterday, so it couldn’t be about that…
Clicking the flashing button I waited a second and then spoke, “Hi, Mr. Duke. How can I help you?”
“Hey. I got a situation.” Weston’s powerful voice came through the line with an urgency behind it that wasn’t normal.
“Is everything alright?”
“Nah. Found Eugene munching on some locoweed. Some fencing was down and he’d escaped, only to run right towards a pile of that poisonous—” he muttered a few curse words under his breath, thinking I couldn’t hear, and then returned to a normal volume. “That poisonous plant.”
“How much and for how long?” I asked, ignoring commenting on his language.
“Don’t know how much, but not for more than a few hours,” he answered.
Relief rushed through me, knowing that not much damage could be done in a couple hours of eating locoweed. I assumed Weston knew this too, and an odd feeling bubbled up in my gut.
“I can come out and get some blood to test his levels while you watch for any symptoms. Though, I doubt he ate enough for it to become toxic if it wasn’t for too long,” I replied, trying to reassure him.
“How soon can you get here?” he quickly asked, the urgency and shortness still present.
“I’ve got three more patients to see, and then was supposed to go with Doc on some farm calls, but he can handle those alone. I’ll be out in an hour and a half,” I answered.
“Okay, thanks.” Then the line went dead.
I hung up the phone, curiosity filling me, along with a sense of dread. Once was just a random event, twice is a coincidence that had me thinking there was something more going on. Unless Eugene ended up in a similar area to where the last batch of locoweed was found. The only problem was the fact that Weston and I had cleared that area of the weeds leftover from the two heifers that had originally been poisoned, so that couldn’t be possible.
Something was amiss. Truly wrong. Picking up the pen that I’d set upon the desk, I began spinning it around my fingers. Two separate incidents of locoweed consumption in the middle of November in Montana on the same ranch; locoweed was common in Montana, it enjoyed the mountain environment.
My fingers stopped moving immediately, and I sat up straight in my chair.
While locoweed was common and liked cooler temperatures, there was snow on the ground now. Plus the weeds that we’d found looked to have been placed there, not ripped from frozen ground as if it had been growing in the wild.
I stood from my spinning chair and shoved out of my office, crossing the hallway towards Doc’s closed door. Rapping my knuckles quickly on the frame, I danced between my feet, waiting for Doc’s weathered face to appear.
The doorknob finally spun and it swung open, revealing a similar layout to my office except with different pictures, different books. It was also crowded with more stuff than mine. Doc ran a wrinkled hand over his hair and smiled at me.
And then it quickly fell from his face as his eyes met mine. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I have a crazy theory,” I started, wringing my hands together as his silver brows pulled together.
“Go on.” He was curious as to what I had to say.
“You know the two heifers with locoweed poisoning from the Duke Ranch?”
He waved his hand in the air impatiently. “Spit it out.”
“It’s the middle of November, Doc, with snow covering the ground. The weeds we found looked like they had been pulled from soft soil, not wet frozen dirt. Plus, Weston just called and said he found Eugene eating some after escaping his pasture, so I’m headed out there in a bit to draw some blood to check his levels. Doc, once is random. But twice?” I paused and watched his face, letting him have some time to come to his own conclusion.
