“I’m at the end of the road,” he said, accurately. “You’d see them before me.”
“Maybe,” I said, “On the other hand, we’re working and you’re not.”
“Oh, I work,” he said.
“Doing what?”
“Screenplays.”
“Any film I’d know?”
Cade’s grin faded. “Why the interrogation, Mike?”
“One bull and one cow dead with cut throats and a note from the Green Monkey Wrench Gang. You know anything about that?”
Cade shook his head. “You going back to being a detective?”
“Maybe. How’s Toby?”
“Gone. Decided to scout locations in South Dakota. He’s a director.”
“He ever direct a movie I might know?”
Cade squinted at me, then said, “Mike, I wouldn’t be surprised,” then walked away, leaving me thinking I needed to find out more about Cade Morgan and Toby whatever-his-name was.
Jeanette fired up the propane branding pot and pointed one of the Square C brands at me. “Mike you gonna just stand around scratching your butt?”
I touched my hat to my observant boss, stopped scratching my mental butt, and got after the work at hand. The first chore was to separate the calves from their moms. Ray and Amelia did this job on foot, sending the calves through an alley into the branding pen. Jeanette told Laura to pair with Tanya, and me with Pick. We have a calf table which is the easiest way to brand but Jeanette likes to do the first few calves the old-fashioned way. Sizing up Laura and Tanya, Jeanette said, “Let me show you gals how to do it. Come in here, Amelia.”
Amelia climbed into the corral. “That one,” Jeanette said, pointing at the largest calf. Amelia nodded and then she and Jeanette tackled the chosen calf, Jeanette grabbing a rear leg and Amelia a front leg and, in unison, flipping the calf on its side. I advanced with the branding iron and pressed it against the struggling calf’s flank. There’s no way to brand a calf fast. It takes a while to penetrate through its hair into the hide so I held it until an acrid smell told me I’d reached flesh. The calf gasped, I pulled back, and Buddy moved in, his task to vaccinate. He had the needle in and out of the calf before it knew what happened. If it had been a bull, we’d have put bands on its balls but this was a heifer so off she went, kicking and bawling for her mom which answered with a long, withering groan on the other side of the fence. Cows are such good moms.
“Ladies,” Jeanette said to Laura and Tanya, “you’re next. Try that one.”
The two dino girls didn’t hesitate. Laura tackled the front of the calf and Tanya the rear and was abruptly rewarded for her choice by a fine spray of manure in her face. Sputtering, she fell back and then the calf, too strong for Laura alone, broke free. “Don’t just sit there,” Jeanette yelled at the two women. “Get her down!”
Laura and Tanya got up and went after the calf again, this time successfully. I advanced, the hide crackled, Buddy vaccinated, and the calf took off. I was pleased to see Laura and Tanya were laughing with excitement and success. But now it was time for me and Pick to try our luck. I handed the iron over to Jeanette and went over to the paleontologist. “You ready?” I asked.
“I don’t know if this is my thing, Mike,” he said.
“You take the back of that little bull, I’ll take his front.”
He considered that. “Do you mind if I take the front?”
Well, that showed the boy wasn’t a complete idiot. But I answered, “Yes, I do mind,” and went after the calf, grabbing its front legs and tossing it down. Pick clutched the wriggling calf’s hind legs and when a little excrement got on his face, he sputtered like he’d been hit by a brown tidal wave. Still, he hung on while Jeanette and Buddy moved in and did their thing.
Jeanette seemed satisfied that her calf catchers had been tormented enough and ordered the calf table activated. A calf table is a wide steel plate on which there are two rails, which form a chute. You push the calf between the two rails, push over a lever to clamp them against the calf, then pull the whole contraption over, which lowers the trapped calf on its side. After that, you can do pretty much whatever you want with the animal, in our case branding and vaccinating. Laura and Tanya took care of most of the calves for the rest of the day, herding and pushing them onto the table. Pick went over and sat at one of the picnic tables we’d set up in the turnaround for lunch. He didn’t look very happy.
When lunch time rolled around, at least half of our calves were branded. We were doing well. By then, the noise was deafening. The calves inside the branding pen were crying to their mothers and their moms were responding by bawling hysterically. It was enough to break my heart but at least I knew there would be a happy reunion at the end of the day.