Page 5 of My Apocalypse Cowboy
"All right," I say, standing. "Guest room's upstairs, second door on the right. Bathroom's across the hall—water's solar heated, so there should be enough for a shower. Tomorrow we'll see how much you remember about handling animals."
She stands too, swaying slightly. Now that she's got food in her, the exhaustion is hitting her hard.
"Joseph." She stops at the bottom of the stairs, one hand on the banister. "Thank you. For the chance."
"Don't thank me yet. Ask me again in thirty days."
"Will you regret this?"
It's a fair question. Taking in strays is dangerous because you never know what kind of trouble they might bring, what secrets they might be hiding. And Rebecca Rennick, for all her apparent honesty, is still essentially a stranger I caught trying to steal my most valuable possession.
But looking at her now, worn out but not broken, grateful but not subservient, I find I'm more intrigued than worried.
"Ask me in thirty days," I repeat.
She nods and heads upstairs. I listen to her footsteps overhead, the sound of the shower running, then silence. Probably asleep before her head hit the pillow.
I finish cleaning up the kitchen, check the simple security setup I've got around the property, and make my evening rounds. The cattle are settled in the back pasture where they're hidden from casual view. The perimeter is quiet. Everything's as it should be.
three
Rebecca
Myfirstdayofactual ranch work is a disaster of epic proportions.
"Easy," Joseph says for the third time as I approach the ornery black cow that's decided the water trough belongs to her alone. "Don't let her see you're nervous, she’s probably the grumpiest cow I’ve ever met."
"I'm not nervous," I lie, gripping the lead rope so tight my knuckles are white. "I'm just... cautious."
"She weighs twelve hundred pounds. Cautiousness is smart."
The cow—Bertha, according to Joseph's extremely creative naming system—snorts and tosses her head, clearly unimpressed by my veterinary school credentials. Three years of studying animal anatomy apparently doesn't translate to actually handling animals that don't want to be handled. Though I can see from her stance and the way she's favoring her left rear hoof that she might have a stone bruise. That's something, at least.
"She's just testing you," Joseph says from where he's leaning against the fence, managing to look completely relaxed while I'm having a standoff with livestock. "Show her who's boss."
"Right. Boss. That's me." I take a step forward, trying to project confidence I absolutely don't feel.
Bertha takes two steps back, directly into the water trough.
Water explodes everywhere. I jump back with a yelp, slipping in the sudden mud and going down hard on my ass. Bertha, apparently satisfied with her victory, wanders off to terrorize a different section of pasture.
"Joseph, wait." I touch his arm. "Bertha's limping slightly on her left rear. Might be a stone bruise or an abscess starting. We should check her hoof before she gets worse."
He pauses, looking back at the cow with new attention. "You sure?"
"Pretty sure. The way she's shifting weight, keeping pressure off it." I feel a flush of confidence. "That might be why she was extra grumpy this morning."
"Show me."
It takes some doing, but we manage to get Bertha into the small holding pen and examine her hoof. Sure enough, there's a small stone wedged against the sole.
"Good eye," Joseph says as he carefully removes it with a hoof pick. "How'd you spot that?"
"Gait analysis. We spent a whole semester on lameness evaluation." I watch him work, noting his gentle competence with the animal. "You're good at this too."
"Practice." He releases Bertha, who immediately stops favoring the foot. "Three years of learning everything the hard way."
"Well, now you've got someone who actually studied this stuff. Even if I can't wrangle chickens."
