Page 31 of A Cowboy's Convenient Marriage

She gave him a grateful smile, and he thought that maybe he ought to remind her that he didn’t know anything about cows. Maybe it was just the idea of having someone beside her.

“So I really don’t have any idea what to do if we start getting chased by a cow.”

“Just run. That’s all you have to do,” she said, laughing.

He lifted his brows but had to chuckle. He supposed that was as simple as it got. “Is that what you’re going to do?”

“I’ll probably make sure that you’re running, and if you’re not far enough ahead of her, I might make myself bait, but usually a cow doesn’t chase you too far away from her baby.”

“You’re not going to make yourself bait for me.”

“Then just run,” she said.

They had almost reached the calf, and he kind of understood what the problem was. It didn’t raise its head when they got close.

“Yeah, this little fella definitely isn’t feeling very good.” She reached out and touched his ears and then ran a hand on his nose.

“What are you doing?”

“This is kind of the equivalent of your mom putting her head on your forehead when you were sick when you were younger,” she said. “If he has cold ears and a hot, dry nose, it almost certainly means he has a temperature. I am not sure what the problem is. These calves are too young to be vaccinated, but we’ll probably give him a shot of some antibiotics and maybe a B shot to kinda give him a little jolt of energy so he’ll get up and eat.”

“Is that the mom?” he said, seeing a shadow moving quickly out of the corner of his eye.

Ada looked up, and her eyes got big.

“Yeah. Let’s get back,” she said, her words clipped. Short, quick.

He wasn’t going to run away from her, no matter what she said, although it did sound like she would be safer if he was safe, so he made sure he stuck beside her.

They moved back, and just like Ada said, the mama cow did not follow them very far away from the baby.

“I’m texting Tobias. He is usually in charge of the calves, and I’m letting him know that we’re going to get this little guy a couple of shots.”

“We’re coming back?” he said, his heart beating hard from the little bit of excitement with the cow coming toward them. He couldn’t imagine how bad it would be if they actually had to touch the calf while its mom didn’t want them to.

“I’ll get someone to help me. You’ll be fine.”

“I can help you. If you tell me what to do. But I don’t want you to get hurt.” As the man, part of his job was protecting his wife. Of course, Ada hadn’t said whether she was going to marry him or not, but still, a man took care of the women in his sphere.

She smiled, as though she appreciated his concern and protection. “Thanks. But honestly, I’ve been doing this since I was little. I’ll be fine. I’ll just grab someone around the shed when I grab the shots and have them come and give me a hand.”

He didn’t like the idea that she didn’t need him. He wanted to be needed.

Maybe she understood that, because they took two more steps toward the fence before she said, “Unless you really want to help. In that case, there’s two jobs. One is to keep the mama cow away from the person who’s giving the shots, and the other job is to give the shots.”

Neither one of them sounded like jobs he could do. They certainly weren’t jobs that he’d ever done before. But he wasn’t the kind of person who didn’t do something just because it sounded hard.

“Which job is more dangerous?” he asked, figuring that should be his job.

“Well, it depends on how good the person who’s keeping the cow away is. That would probably be the more dangerous job, unless the person isn’t very good at it, and then the person giving the shot is in a bad predicament. You can’t really look up to see what the cow’s doing, not if you’re paying attention to what you’re doing, so you could be blindsided pretty easily.”

“All right. It sounds like I’ll keep the cow away, and I’ll yell at you if I’m not able to.”

“All right. It shouldn’t take long to give two shots. So, I’m just going to need you to keep her out of the way for about five seconds. And then we can run for the fence.”

Running for the fence didn’t exactly sound like a safe activity either, but again, Ada had been right when she said that the cow wouldn’t chase them very far.

“So you’ve done this a good bit?” he said as they climbed the fence and dropped down on the other side.

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