Lone Calder Star (Calder Saga 9)

Quint chose not to comment on that. “We won’t be breaking for lunch so you’d better throw together some cold sandwiches after breakfast. Empty and I will get the horses saddled and ready.”

Last night’s rain had softened the parched ground, making it muddy in the low areas where the runoff had collected. No clouds lingered to mar the blue of the wide sky, but there was a touch of coolness in the fresh-smelling breeze.

Quint noticed little of it, his attention focused on the eight head of cattle, mostly heifers, trotting through the open gate into the west pasture. Dallas waited for them at a discreet distance from the gate, her presence on horseback applying an oblique pressure to turn them north.

When the last cow showed signs of balking, Quint pushed his horse forward to drive the animal through the gate, then rode through himself, preceded by his shadow. He glanced back at Empty and waited for him to draw abreast.

“I’ll ride over and see what I can find on the other side of the river,” Quint told him with a nod toward the tree-lined banks a hundred yards from them. “You check out this side.”

Empty responded with an acknowledging nod, and Quint split away from him, pointing his horse toward the river and lifting into an easy lope. He noted with approval that Dallas had already moved her horse after the loosely bunched cattle, maintaining their northward drift.

Ahead of him, the river made a sweeping curve. Quint followed it until he came to a place where the bank sloped gently to the water’s edge and a well-worn path identified it as a favored crossing point of the cattle. Reining in, he slowed his horse to a walk and swung it onto the cattle trail.

An earsplitting whistle pierced the morning air. Instantly Quint turned his horse away from the river, a frown gathering on his face. Empty Garner was the only one Quint had ever heard make a sound that shrill. And it wasn’t a signal the canny old rancher would issue without cause.

Quickly he rode clear of the obstructing trees and spotted Empty some distance away. The old man motioned for him to come, then dismounted to inspect something on the ground.

It wasn’t until Quint rode closer that he saw the dead cow. Empty knelt on one knee beside the bloated carcass. When Quint halted up next to Empty’s ground-hitched horse, the old man straightened up.

“What happened? Was it struck by lighting?” Quint asked, voicing his first thought.

“I wish,” Empty replied grimly and continued his visual study of the dead animal.

“What do you mean?” Quint frowned and walked his horse closer.

“Take a look at that crusty discharge around the nose and the scoury look to the rump,” he directed. “There’s a dark bloody look to both. If I’m right about what killed it, you won’t be shipping cattle anywhere for a while.”

Quint immediately grasped the significance of the two symptoms. “You think it could be anthrax?”

Every cattleman had knowledge of it, although in Quint’s case it wasn’t firsthand. While the disease wasn’t as common as it once had been, nearly every year isolated cases were reported somewhere in the country.

“It looks like anthrax to me.” There was a certain gravity to Empty’s expression. “Fifteen or twenty years back, the Barlow place lost nearly a dozen head of cattle to anthrax. He told me one day they were fine, and the next they were dead. And I know for sure that I never noticed any sick cows—except those fence-cut ones—when we checked this area the other day.”

“I’ve heard anthrax can take them quick.” Automatically Quint’s attention shifted to the handful of cows within his range of vision, his mind already considering the possibility that others in the herd might have contracted it. “We’d better get the vet out here.”

Dallas rode into view, pulling up a good distance from them. “What’s wrong?” she called.

“Dead cow,” Quint answered. “Ride back to the house and phone the vet, have him come out as soon as he can.”

“Do you want me to call the rendering truck, too?” She had the horse on the bit, ready to ride away.

“No.” Quint gave a firm shake of his head, recalling that care had to be taken in disposal of an infected carcass. “But tell the vet it looks like anthrax.”

“Anthrax.” Like Quint, an instant after she assimilated the word, Dallas shot a look at the trio of cows grazing near the tree line, alert for any sign of illness or distress, leaving little doubt she had been raised on a cattle ranch.

“You might as well stay at the house and bring the vet out when he comes,” Quint told her.

With an acknowledging lift of her hand, Dallas swung her horse toward the house and sent it forward at an easy, ground-eating lope. Quint watched her leave, then glanced at Empty.

“I’m going to check the rest of the pasture and make sure there aren’t any others that are sick or dead. Give a whistle if I’m not back when the vet gets here.”

“Good luck,” was all Empty said.

But luck wasn’t with him. Twenty minutes later Quint came upon the bloated remains of a second cow with the same bloody discharge around the body openings and a lack of significant rigor mortis. Quint marked the location in his mind and crossed the river to check the other side.

Roughly an hour later, Empty’s piercing whistle summoned Quint back to the site of the first cow. When Quint rode up, the vet’s mud-splattered pickup was parked at the scene. Dallas stood slim and straight near its hood, her attention on the big man crouched next to the carcass, making a thorough visual inspection of it. She turned at Quint’s approach.

“What did you find?” she asked, searching his face.