The Dinosaur Hunter(2)

I heard Ray Coulter calling my name. Ray’s a good kid. Seventeen years old, tall like his daddy with fine features like his mother, smart as paint and a hard worker, too. There aren’t too many places left where they make them like our local boys and girls. By the time they’re eight years old, they can ride a horse and drive a tractor, crack open the block of a truck engine, and shoot a rifle or a handgun and hit what they’re aiming at. They respect their elders, too, even when we don’t deserve it.

“Over here, Ray,” I called back.

Before he could get to me, Ray slipped in the cold wet swamp of the holding pen and went down hard in the mud and manure. If that had happened to me, I’d have turned the air blue with some elaborate cussing, but not Ray. He just picked himself up and made his way on over. Like I said, a good kid. A ranch kid.

By then, it was a wild scene in the corral, the rain roaring and the thunder hammering and the lightning strobing us in stuttering blue-white flashes. “Help me get her up!” I yelled, trying not to sound too hysterical. Together, we grappled with the heifer, both of us going down a couple of times before we finally got her on her feet. She stood there trembling, her mouth foamy with drool, her eyes rolling, and her nose flared. All bad signs. Then she started to moan. “She’s trying to push her calf out,” Ray said.

“Well, she can’t,” I replied. “And I don’t think chains are gonna work, either.”

“A C-section, Mike?” I saw his eyes light up. “I’ve never seen one of those!”

“Well, Ray, I think tonight’s your lucky night. Your mom’s probably already waiting for us.”

Ray and I pushed and pulled the heifer through the double doors that led to the surgery, then clamped her neck in a steel rail catch. This, of course, didn’t make her happy, and she rattled the walls with panicky squalls. I kept talking soothing cow talk to her but she wasn’t much consoled. Cows are smart. She was in trouble, she knew it, and she doubted a couple of idiots like me and Ray were going to get her out of it. Truth was we couldn’t. Only Jeanette could and the operation she was about to perform in that cold, concrete room didn’t allow much error. I didn’t know another rancher in Fillmore County who would attempt what she was about to do. But then, they’re not Jeanette Coulter.

Jeanette was in her green scrubs. She finished washing at the sink and gave me and Ray the once-over. “Well? I can’t do a thing, you two covered in gumbo and cow shit! Get yourself over to the sink and wash up!”

Ray and I slunk past her, stripped off our rain gear and shirts, scrubbed our hands, faces, and upper torsos, then pulled on clean white T-shirts that were kept in a cabinet beside the sink for just that purpose. Jeanette watched us, then said, “Not that I don’t trust you, Mike, but we’re gonna check this little mama before I cut her. Ray, you do it.”

I confess I was grateful that she’d picked Ray over me. Pushing my hand up inside an expectant mama cow isn’t exactly my favorite thing to do. But Ray smiled like his mom had done him a favor, got out the K-Y, and ran his arm up to his shoulder.

When Ray did his duty, I made certain I was a good piece away from that heifer’s head. I saw a cowboy lean in close to a cow’s head one time, just to scratch her ears while the vet was inserting his hand in the other end, and he got his clock cleaned for his trouble. Three cowboy teeth went flying and everybody, including the vet, laughed out loud. Even the cowboy grinned, showing the big, bloody gap in his teeth. “You gonna buy me thum new teeth, bossth?” he asked before spitting blood. The boss rancher provided a long stare at his employee before replying “Nope,” and he didn’t, either.

“Calf’s backward, Mom,” Ray reported. “Its legs are all tangled up, too.”

Jeanette pressed two fingers to her forehead, closed her eyes, then shot me a look like it was all my fault, which I guess it was, me and that damned bull. “All right, looks like we got to do this thing. Mike, you set me up. Ray, you shave. I’ll do the epidural.”

Ray got to work with the electric razor, and I set out the hemostats, scalpels, needles, and sutures our surgeon would need. When Ray was finished, I applied antiseptic over the shaved area. By then, Jeanette was done with the epidural and the little mama’s legs were quivering. I released the catch and Ray and I did our best to let the cow down easy. “You hold her, Ray,” Jeanette ordered. “Mike, you get over here and help me.”

I took up station beside Jeanette. When she glanced at me, I gave her a reassuring smile, which earned me a full-bore, Jeanette Coulter frown. She turned back to the heifer and cut decisively. “Lidocaine,” she ordered and I squirted it in, numbing the separated tissue. She cut deeper, a spray of blood erupting from the wound. I patted the droplets off her face with a damp cloth while she applied a hemostat to the bleeder. When she took up the scalpel again, she cut delicately into the muslin-thin wall of the uterus with her reward being a pair of black hooves that pushed through the opening. “Get it, boys,” she ordered and Ray and I immediately complied, lifting out the slippery calf and swinging it clear. It had to weigh at least a hundred pounds, a lot of calf for such a small cow.