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“A jagged piece of metal sticking out from the fence didn’t do this.” She pointed. “See the bruising here and the red welts?”
“What the hell caused that?”
“If I had to guess, your bull was whipped.”
“I’m going to kill someone.” Shane’s hands flexed.
Okay, now she was a little freaked out. But she forced herself to concentrate on Vidar. Shane probably didn’t mean it literally. She hoped anyway. She felt a familiar cold sweat go over her body and her fingers began to shake. Not now. She didn’t need this right now. This hadn’t happened in a long while. It must have been seeing Kilgore that triggered all these raw feelings.
“Hey,” Shane said softly.
Reba clenched her jaw.
“I’m not mad at you. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” she said between stiff lips, but the apology helped.
Shane let out a big sigh and placed his hand on his bull. “It’s okay, Vidar. This isn’t going to happen again. We’ll bring Pat or Tommy next time.” He stroked the bull soothingly.
“Who are they?” she asked, mesmerized by the kind motions of his hands.
“Tommy’s my brother’s assistant foreman and Pat’s one of our ranch hands who’s good with the bulls. I should’ve been back here, but I wanted to be out front watching the rodeo instead of being back here doing my job.”
Technically, his job ended once he offloaded the bulls into the bullpen and didn’t pick up until their rides were over for the day. “Don’t blame yourself,” she said. “The UPRC was lax, and your bull got hurt on their watch.”
“Yeah,” he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
The twist in her guts eased, and she sympathized with the pain in his voice. He really did feel for Vidar. Reba felt a tinge of kinship toward Shane at that.
With practiced movements, she began to clean the wound and apply medication to prevent infection and to accelerate healing. The bull moaned softly, but he didn’t thrash or buck anymore. Reba worked quickly and efficiently, her movements confident and sure.
Finally, she stepped back and wiped the sweat from her forehead. The bull stood still, his breathing heavy and labored. Reba knew it would take time before Vidar could be back in the arena, but she had done everything she could to ease his pain.
“He should heal up from this in a few weeks.” Risking a glance at Shane, she saw that he was still brooding. She wished she had Dolly’s way with people. Dolly would be able to cheer him up or distract him somehow. Reba didn’t have a lot of luck with the social graces, so she defaulted to what she did best. She was a vet.
“If you see signs of infection, feel free to give me a call. I’ll be on the roster for San Antonio.” Easing up to a standing position, she went around to free Vidar from the neck gate.
“Thanks,” Shane said hoarsely. “I need to get to the bottom of this. Someone had to have seen something.”
“Just don’t do anything stupid,” she said, backing away from the banked rage in his eyes.
It stung that seeing Dr. Kilgore today had made her so jumpy about these things. Shane and Kilgore were leagues apart in their anger management and still, Reba wanted to run away.
“No one gets away with hurting my animals. Any animals,” he muttered.
“Do I have to stick a sedative in you, too?” she asked, hands on her hips.
Shane’s lips quirked in a reluctant grin. “Maybe. I hear you got the good stuff.”
“Yeah, if you weigh as much as a bull.”
Rolling his neck, Shane winced at the cracks in it. “I don’t want to think Jennings did this in revenge for tossing him. But who else would do it?”
“Don’t go on a witch hunt,” she warned.
“Does this happen often?”
“Never,” Reba said, feeling her temper begin to boil. She was going to report this to Diane and hopefully they could put the word out to stop whoever had done this from doing it again.
