“Right away.” Mike backed his horse a few paces, then wheeled it around and pointed it toward camp. The horse broke into a canter on its own, eager to be away from the place that smelled so strongly of death.
Ty’s horse made a swing to follow, but Ty checked the movement and surveyed the area a minute longer, then rode over to the shade of some scrub willows where the two injured calves were being held.
Around noontime, Chase rode out from camp at Broken Butte to look over the first batch of cattle that had been brought in. Quint followed, astride a short-coupled bay mare renowned on the ranch for her ability to mollycoddle the greenest rider, hence earning the name Molly. Having ridden since the age of two, Quint was far from green, but neither was he an old hand, especially in the occasionally explosive arena of roundup.
When Chase halted his sturdy buckskin gelding a short distance from the small her
d, Quint reined the mare around to come alongside him. The tractable Molly obeyed and stopped of her own accord abreast of the buckskin.
Copying his grandfather’s pose, Quint folded both hands over the saddle horn and surveyed the scene. A cow and her calf attempted to break from the bunch, only to be turned back by the day-herder.
“They’re a bit snuffy,” Quint observed, quick to use one of the terms he’d picked up from the older hands.
“A bit,” Chase agreed with a touch of drollness.
Hoofbeats drummed somewhere behind them. Frowning, Chase swiveled in the saddle, his gaze narrowing at the sight of a horse and rider galloping into camp. His haste clearly signaled trouble of some sort.
“Come on, Quint,” he said to the boy. “Let’s see what’s up.” He swung the buckskin around and lifted it into a canter. Quint followed suit, pounding his heels against the mare’s sides, urging her to close the gap with the buckskin. They arrived in camp at the same time as the approaching rider.
Chase took one look at the grim expression on Mike Summers’ face and demanded, “What happened?”
“We got about a dozen head of dead cattle and a couple wounded calves. Ty sent me back to notify the sheriff, says we’ll need to make a report.” The horse shifted restlessly beneath him, the bridle bit clanking against its chewing teeth.
“Wounded? How?”
“Looks like they been shot.” Repressed anger laced the terseness of his reply.
Chase’s own lips thinned. “Where is this?”
“Over at the bottom of the bluff, where those buzzards are congregating.” Mike motioned to the northeast. “Not far from Three Mile Gate.” With that information passed along, he rode over to use the mobile phone in the truck to call the sheriff’s office.
Off to the northeast, some three miles distant, circling buzzards made black dots in the sky. Chase studied them with hard eyes. His fingers tightened on the reins, and the buckskin shifted, gathering itself in anticipation of a signal to move forward. But Chase glanced at his grandson, who had never seen death. Young as Quint was, he would be doing him no favor to shield him completely from it.
“Are you and Molly up to a long ride?” Affection gentled the grimness of his expression.
“Sure.” Quint had heard the exchange between Chase and Mike Summers, and now wore the avid look of a boy about to embark on a kind of adventure.
“Let’s go.” But Chase regretted the hard lesson Quint would learn.
As he pointed the buckskin toward the distant bluff, Mike yelled from the truck, “They’re sending someone out. Tell Ty to keep watch for a patrol car.”
Chase nodded and touched his spurs to the buckskin. The horse set out at a jogging trot, and Chase didn’t increase the pace. He had a fair idea of what they would find when they reached the site, and he wasn’t in any hurry to see it.
There was no hope for one of the calves, Ty discovered. The bullet had shattered the right shoulder socket. The outlook wasn’t so grim for the second calf. A bullet had gouged a deep crease across the top of its neck, but had failed to sever its spinal cord. The danger now was from the infection that had already spread through the animal’s system.
Shane Goodman was at work, doing what he could with water and his kerchief to break the hard scab and crusted blood caked over the wound. Ty stepped in to help him, a muscle coming to life in his jaw at the sight of the pus that seeped through the first cracks. It was slow work, but the fever-drained calf was beyond caring.
After the wound had been cleaned and the raw, inflamed flesh exposed, Ty walked to his ground-hitched horse and rummaged through his saddlebag for the tube of antiseptic salve to slather on the wound and protect it from flies. Over the cantle, he spotted the approaching riders. Even at a distance, there was no mistaking his father. And he had Quint with him.
Ty swore under his breath and turned, tossing the tube to the cowboy with the calf. “Here. I’ll be back.”
He gathered up the trailing reins, looped them over the sorrel’s neck, and stepped into the saddle. With a touch of the spur, he sent the horse forward and rode out to intercept them. A fresh breeze swirled off the grass, but its clean scent couldn’t erase the death stench that had been burned into him.
Chase greeted him with the message, “The sheriff’s office has a car on the way.”
“Good.” Ty nodded briskly. “We’ve got one calf we might be able to save, but we’ll need a trailer for him. He’s too weak and too sick to make it on his own.”
“And the other one?”