Page 33 of Taming the Wild Cowboy

“Yeah.” He didn’t want to tell him that she’d been camping so he simply said, “Motels are expensive, and they charge extra for pets.”

“Makes sense.”

Trev didn’t like the way his uncle looked at him.

“She’ll take a couple of the night shifts so we can get more sleep.”

“Sounds good.” Wade spoke as if he was dying to share the punch line of a joke.

“But …” Trev prompted.

“Just thinking about what happened the last time a woman showed up with a horse on this ranch.” Trev frowned and Wade hummed the first bars of the wedding march.

“Stop.”

“Just saying.”

It was pure coincidence that Hayes had met Bailey, his bride-to-be, at the Tree Fork where she’d been working while hiding a semi-stolen horse. And it was just another coincidence that he and Maclyn had kissed.

“Horses,” Trev corrected. Wade cocked his head. “Mac brought two horses. One horse, marriage. Two horses … I don’t know. Not marriage.” He got to his feet and took his half-filled cup to the sink.

“Maybe two horses means a double wedding.”

Trev tried to count to ten, made it to five before he leveled a dark look at his uncle. “I’m going to bed. Don’t plan any weddings while I’m gone.”

*

“The trickiest part is separating the cow from the calf.” Trev closed the pen gate behind the mama cow he’d tricked into entering. The cow whirled with astonishing speed considering the fact that she was a stocky fourteen-hundred-pound animal that had just given birth. She butted the gate in an effort to get back to her baby, who was tottering on unsteady legs.

“Grab the calf in any way you can.”

Mac wrapped one arm around the baby’s chest, the other around its rear end and held the squirming heifer while Trev pulled one of the loaded hypodermics out of his shirt pocket. The calf didn’t flinch as he expertly gave the injection but struggled mightily while he put a squirt of probiotics into her mouth. Maclyn managed to keep hold.

“She’s slick.”

“Oh yeah. Sometimes it’s like hanging on to an eel. Next …” Trev loaded a plier-like implement with a numbered tag. “Left ear for heifers, right ear for bull calves.”

“Reasoning?”

The baby jumped when Trev attached the tag, knocking Mac onto her butt. He recaptured the calf, and Mac took another tighter hold, determined not to let go until the process was done.

“Heifers get a metal clip in the right ear when they get the bangs shot,” he said as if nothing had happened. Meanwhile, mama was throwing dirt and straw over her shoulder on the other side of the gate. “Don’t want too much stuff in one ear. Also, you can tell heifers from bulls at a glance.”

Trev took a plastic tape out of his back pocket and wrapped it around the heifer’s hoof at the hairline. It was crazy to Mac that the weight could be taken by measuring a foot.

“Any guesses?” he asked after making a note in his booklet.

“Uh … fifty pounds.” The calf looked like fifty pounds but felt like a good hundred when she struggled.

“Sixty-five. Nice birth weight. Last step, we take care of the navel.” He grabbed the container of betadine, took off the lid and pushed it up onto the calf’s umbilical cord shaking it for a few seconds. Reddish-yellow droplets escaped, landing on the straw and Mac’s jeans. “Done.”

Mac released the calf, grimacing as she looked at the yellowish smear the calf had left on her jacket sleeve.

“Yeah … that’s just processed milk,” Trev said. “You get used to it.”

“Can I use the washing machine on the porch?”

“Of course. I take it that everything is okay in the house?”