Finding Fraser(81)

As we approached, the animal bleated a little and kicked her legs weakly. Morag ran her hand across the wooly flank and made soothing noises as she tucked handfuls of the straw around to make a bed.

Hamish shone his light on the tail end of the sheep, which was awash in mud and blood. He made a little gagging noise in his throat. Morag made her own disapproving Scottish noise in return. “Righ’ man, you don’t have to linger at that end. Jes’ hold her head steady—I can do the rest.”

I knelt down near the head. “Will she bite me?” I asked, a trifle nervously, and remembering my experience with Cara all too clearly.

“Nah—she’ll be fine. Jes’ take ahold of her front legs there, young man, and you grab her head, Emma, gentle now …” The rest of what she had to say disappeared in a flurry of grunting and bleating.

I couldn’t tell who was making which sound.

What I could tell, as I put all my weight down on the sheep’s head to stop her from whipping it around, was that Hamish wasn’t doing his job. I could tell this, because one of the legs he was supposed to be holding smacked me, hoof first, square in the ear. My glasses slipped dangerously down my nose.

“What the hell…” I sputtered. I leaned my left elbow down on the sheep’s head, and tried to feel for the damage with my right hand. My hand was mud-covered when I inspected it in the beam of the flashlight, but there didn’t seem to be any blood. Luckily it had been a glancing blow, and my glasses hadn’t broken either.

“Hamish,” I gasped, “Can you try to grab her legs?”

“Ugggh,” grunted Morag, and the sheep bleated anxiously in unison. She yanked her head out from under my forearms and I could feel the wind as her teeth snapped shut beside my right cheekbone.

“I thought you said she didn’t bite,” I yelled at Morag.

“We’el she never has done before,” came the tense reply. “But as I’ve got mah whole arm inside her now, I reckon she’s a mite uncomfortable, aye?”

She grunted again, and then the animal lay still for a moment, head down, flanks still trembling.

“Nearly there,” said Morag, through gritted teeth. “Yer boyfriend’s run off, then, has he?”

“What?” I yelled, whipping my head around. “Hamish?”

Sure enough, I could see a flashlight bobbing halfway down the hill.

“I’ll see yeh in the mornin’, Emma,” came his voice, floating through the cool night air. “Somethin’s come up!”

“Arsehole,” muttered Morag. “Men are useless at this sort of thing, anyhow. No stayin’ power.”

The sheep bucked its legs, but I managed to dodge beneath the hooves.

“Aye—atta girl,” said Morag, approvingly. “Yer learning, ain’t yeh?”

I didn’t have even a moment to think about Hamish, as the sheep suddenly began whipping her head back and forth, frantically.

“Jes’ hold her head, luv,” Morag panted. She was on her knees by that time, her hands busy doing something I was just as happy not to see. The sheep stirred distractedly under my grip and then suddenly jerked her head as if to sit up.

“Hold ’er, hold ’er,” cried Morag. “Almost got it … now!”

The sheep closed her eyes and grunted, and the farmer was suddenly awash in a tangle of legs and head and blood and …

I focused on the mama sheep for a minute, until the night sky stopped spinning.

But Morag was beaming, and took up a great handful of straw to swipe the gore off a tiny, mini-sheep. When she’d cleaned it to the point of it looking more like a wet rat than anything, she lifted it carefully over the mother’s back leg and the baby immediately nestled in, nursing.

The mama sheep began straining under my grip again. “Ye can let ’er go now, Em,” said Morag, so I did. The mama nosed her new offspring with a tired kind of interest, and I felt badly for holding her away.

“Whoops,” said Morag, and vanished from out of the flashlight beam. The mama sheep and I both peered through the dark, trying to see what was going on. I got the impression of something whirling through the air, and when Morag reappeared, she was beaming and wiping off a second arrival. She placed the other wee lamb in beside the first, and leaned back on her haunches. She was bloody to the elbows on both arms, but she slapped her hands onto her knees and grinned at me.

“I should have seen tha’ comin’, but it’s such a late delivery and this mama’s so tiny. Couldn’t sort it out until the second wee one poked out his nose.”

Morag got to her feet wearily and I realized I could see her face without the flashlight. The sun was near to rising. She slapped me heartily on the shoulder.