The Dinosaur Hunter(3)

“Looks to be a heifer,” Ray reported.

“Wipe the mucous off its face before it suffocates,” Jeanette ordered. “Then get some burlap and clean her up. Mike, you get back over here and let’s get this little mama sewed back together.”

While she sutured, I sprayed antiseptic. “Don’t drown her, for gosh sake,” she scolded after I got a little too enthusiastic.

The uterus stitched, Jeanette took up a bigger needle with a thicker gut and began to lace up the hide. When she was half-finished, she said, “Ray, why don’t you put in a few sutures? Try to do it like you saw me. Not deep, just catch the hide.”

Ray eagerly came over and took up the needle. Jeanette inspected his work and said, “Not bad,” which was high praise from her. She took the needle back, finished sewing, tied the thread off, and announced the end of the operation, saying, “Let’s see if she’ll get up. Mike, go give her a nudge.”

Imagine a doc expecting a human female to stand up after a C-section! But Jeanette knew if the cow didn’t get up, it would die. I knelt beside the fresh new mama and nudged her but she didn’t take the hint. For a minute or so, she just laid there, looking dazed, but then something clicked in her brain and she suddenly got up on her own, staggered a little, her eyes wide and glittery. She looked at me, then at Ray, then at Jeanette, and then started bawling. “She wants her calf,” I said.

Jeanette was stripping off her gloves. “Then let her have it. Put them in one of the stalls. We’ll let them have a night in the barn. And make sure there’s plenty of water. She’s gonna be thirsty. Come on you guys. Stop grinning and get moving. I got to clean up in here.”

I checked my watch. It had been a little over two hours since I had yelled up at Jeanette as she stood in the window. Nude. That was a hard image to get out of my head. Anyway, she was both a fast and good surgeon. She was also a damn fine boss. I was in love with her, of course, but I wasn’t about to let her know that. Too many complications and, anyway, I knew she was never going to get over old Bill even though his ashes had been scattered across the ranch five years ago. Heart attack. At the funeral, a cowboy who’d once worked on the Square C confided to me he was surprised Bill had a heart. Well, he had one and still did. Jeanette’s.

Ray and I shepherded mother and child into the barn, picked an empty stall, got them in it, and it didn’t take two seconds before the calf was suckling the heifer’s teats, a very good sign. I tagged the calf’s ear and Ray gave it its shots. When Jeanette came into the barn, we were putting everything up. She said, “Ray, you get back to bed. Did you finish your homework?”

“Yes ma’am, but it’s gonna be hard getting to school with all this rain.”

“We’ll see about that. Mike, I guess I’m done with you.”

Ray pulled on his coat and went out. I went back into the surgery and got my slicker. I knew Jeanette wasn’t going anywhere. She would spend the night with the heifer and the newborn, just to make sure they were OK. “Well, good night, what’s left of it,” I said as I passed her.

“You were supposed to check that heifer every two hours,” she said to my back.

I stopped but I didn’t turn around. “Yeah. Guess I got distracted working on your tractor.”

“Cows come first on the Square C, Mike.”

Jeanette had me dead to rights and there was nothing I could say so I just nodded and went on outside. The rain had stopped, but there were still distant pulses of lightning, enough to light up my way as I carefully slogged through the mud to my trailer. I kicked off my galoshes at the door, shucked off the slicker and wet clothes, and crawled beneath the blankets on my narrow bunk. There was no sign of the cats. A few hours later, when I woke, it was just starting to get bright outside and a glance out my window told me the storm was done. I could even make out some stars. Montana weather can do that, turn on a dime and leave you nine cents change.

We’d saved the heifer and her calf, I had seen Jeanette naked from the waist up, Ray had gotten to see a C-section, and Montana had scared us all half to death but hadn’t managed to kill us. I was content but that was because I didn’t know a young man was on his way to us, bringing with him a knowledge of the astonishing creatures that had once walked our land and an ancient and present reality I knew all too well called murder.





2




I found three dead mice beside the refrigerator, gifts from Rage and Fury. I thanked them, let them out to go back to the barn, percolated some stout coffee, chowed down on some burnt toast well buttered, and then went outside, carrying my second cup of joe. After a rain, it makes for tricky walking because of the gumbo, our black, clay soil that gets hard as a brick when it’s dry and slicker than a Hollywood lawyer when wet. Gumbo also has the strange quality of being as sticky as it’s slick. Walk on it if you can without falling down and pretty soon you’re picking up about a foot of the stuff glued to your boots. Try to drive on it and it builds up on your tires until your truck engine fries itself. Bottom line: It’s nasty stuff.