Men in Kilts

by Katie MacAlister

  “No,” I said, opening the door and smiling at Doris. “Not important. Thanks.

  Bye.”

  Not important my Aunt Fanny! Not only had someone been spreading rumors about an infection that just showed up, but they even named it, pinpointing the disease that Iain thought was affecting his sheep.

  I hurried home to find Iain seeing the vet off.

  “Well?” I asked as soon as the vet waved a cheery goodbye and headed off down the drive. “Well? Is it EAE? Will you have to cull the flock? Can you save any of them? Did he give you a vaccine? Why are you just standing there? Why don’t you answer me? Dammit, Iain, I’ve been worried sick about this and all you can do is stand there like a great big oatcake and not say a single thing!” A tiny smile touched his lips as he pulled me into a hug and kissed the top of my hair. “Ah, love, what would I do without you?”

  I mumbled into his jacket that he couldn’t exist without me and hugged him back.

  “It’s not EAE,” he mumbled against my mouth after he kissed me properly. It took me a minute to recover from the effects of those rugged, manly lips.

  “Thank God for that.”

  “Packer thinks it might be Gutierrezia. He’s given them oxytetracycline. It doesn’t look as if we’ll lose more than half the ewes affected.” I blinked. Douglas Packer was one of our local vets, a nice man, but very young, just out of vet college. Iain liked him, but tended to reserve judgment on the vet’s calls. “Gutierrezia? What’s that? Is it contagious?” Iain opened the trunk of the car and gathered up the groceries. I hurried for the kitchen door. “It’s a plant, love. It acts as an abortifacient.” I peeled my coat and gloves off and followed him into the warmth of the kitchen. “A what? Oh. It makes the ewes abort?”

  He nodded.

  “How would your sheep get a hold of Gutierrezia? They’ve never done this before, have they?”

  “No,” he grunted as he set down the groceries.

  “So then how could they get this Gutierrezia? Does it grow around here?”

  “No,” he repeated, standing still so I could help him out of his coat. He thought I was just being polite to help him; in truth, my motives had to do more with the opportunity to run my hands over that big chest rather than with courtesy. “It doesn’t grow in locally. The only way for the sheep to be getting into it is for someone to have given it to them.” I stopped finding excuses to caress his ribcage and stared at him. Grim eyes dark as night stared back at me. “Someone deliberately fed our sheep a plant that would make them abort their lambs? Someone came onto our land and did that?”

  “Aye,” he responded, his jaw tight and unyielding.

  “But how did they get to the sheep? Oh.” I remembered that he had told me earlier all the ewes affected were the ones alongside the dirt track that separated the south border of Iain’s land with Kin Aird. “They probably used the track, huh? But that only goes to Kin Aird and Bridget’s farm…” Bridget! It had to be her. No one else would be so perverse, so evil.

  “That witch! That bitch .‘ By God, I hope you sue the pants off her for this, Iain! How dare she retaliate against you like this, just because you didn’t want a murder house on your land? How dare she kill those poor Utile innocent unborn lambs!”

  I expected Iain to jump to Bridget’s defense, but he surprised me by simply nodding his head.

  “You… you’re not going to say it wasn’t Bridget? You’re not going to defend her against my tirade? You’re not going to tell me that she wouldn’t be so cruel as to viciously attack you in this manner?”

  “No, love, I’m not. Her Mules have been moved.”

  Iain looked worn to a frazzle. I pushed him toward a chair, put the kettle on for tea, and started unpacking groceries.

  “She moved her sheep? Why would she do that?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck. “She’d move them if she thought there was a chance they might get into the Gutierrezia. Those are pedigreed sheep she’s bought. She’d not be wanting to expose them to the possibility of losing their lambs.”

  I ground my teeth against calling Bridget every name I could think of. Instead I slammed cans of soup onto a shelf in the pantry. “So what are you going to do about it?”

  He lifted his hands in a gesture of defeat. “Our ewes have been treated. We’ll probably lose some, but the rest of the flock should be safe. I’ll keep an eye on the other hirsels to be sure they’re not being poisoned as well.” I stuffed a loaf of bread into the breadbox and slammed the little door closed.

  “You’re not going after Bridget? You’re not going to make her pay for what she’s done?”

  “How can I make her pay, love? I can’t prove she’s had a hand in this, anyone could have climbed the fence and had access to the track and the sheep. I don’t even know where the Gutierrezia came from. All I have is the suspicion that Bridget’s decided to pay me back for losing the abattoir by spreading rumors that there was infection on the farm, following that up with enough proof to have everyone believin‘ it.” He accepted an apple that I tossed from one of the grocery bags, taking a chunk of it with a quick savage bite. “I suppose we should be grateful she only poisoned a few ewes. It would have been much worse if she’d introduced infected sheep into the hirsel.” My blood ran icy at the thought of that.

  “Well, hell!” I stomped around the kitchen, putting groceries away with muttered imprecations. “This is so bloody frustrating!” He agreed.

  “So you’re not going to do anything at all?”

  He beetled his brows at me. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Oh, good.” I set the teapot on the table and plopped down in a chair next to him. “So what’s the game plan?”

  He poured himself a cup of tea. “It’s naught to do with you, love.” I stared at him. He wasn’t going to go all quiet alpha on me again, was he? Not after everything we’d been through?

  Not after we had been married? “Dammit, Iain, now is the time you’re supposed to open up to me. You’re supposed to trust me. You’re supposed to tell me everything!”

  He looked surprised by the fact that I was yelling. “I do trust you, Kathie.”

  “Good,” I ground out, poking him in the chest. “Then you can just tell me what you have planned in retaliation for Bridget’s cruelties.” He gave me one of his long, level looks, the kind that made me feel like I was being unreasonable despite the fact that I knew I wasn’t. “I’ll not retaliate, love.

  I will investigate the matter, but I won’t retaliate.” I pouted over that for a moment, toying with the thought of offering myself as a tool of revenge—oh, how I would like to get Bridget in a quiet little room for a couple of minutes, just me and a few common garden implements—but that look squelched the idea. “OK, so how’re you going to investigate?” He shook his head before blowing on his tea. “I’ve not decided yet.”

  “You must have some idea!”

  He shook his head.

  “Well, OK, how about this—we look for the person starting the rumors, then we prove Bridget was behind him. Or her. But it probably was a him.”

  “That won’t prove she poisoned the sheep.”

  “No, but it will show she had knowledge of illness before it actually appeared, and thus must be guilty.”

  He shook his head again.

  “Well… what if I look for the rumormonger while you go after the source of the poison?”

  “I’ll not have you involved in this, Kathie.”

  “But—”

  “No.”

  “Iain—”

  “No.”

  I argued for twenty straight minutes, but in the end he made it clear that he had no intentions of allowing me to help. I certainly wasn’t going to let Bridget get away with her evil plan, however.

  While Iain was working to prove Bridget’s complicacy, I’d focus on finding out who had started the rumor of disease on the farm a good two weeks before the first ewe was poisoned.

  It was a job worthy of a mystery writer!
>
  Chapter Twenty-one

  April meant lambing in our area of the Highlands. A few months before the ewes were due to start popping lambs out, Iain brought in the local vet and handed him a big wad of money to do ultrasounds on all of the pregnant ewes.

  The ultrasound allowed him to know how many lambs the ewe was expecting.

  Each ewe was then marked on her side with a bit of paint indicating how many lambs she was carrying— nothing for singles, blue for twins, green for triplets.

  In addition to the ultrasound, the ewes were dipped, vaccinated, and crutched.

  Crutching the sheep meant Iain and Mark spent a long week rounding them all up, and one at a time, clipped the ewes around their hindquarters and under the belly, clearing the way to the ewe’s teats so the lambs wouldn’t have to break out a tracking dog to find them. The ewes were also crutched at tupping time, with the idea that clipping away the wool gave the ram better access and thus a better success rate.

  I like to think of it as a bikini wax for sheep.

  Crutching was also done to keep down parasite problems, a subject so repulsive, I socked Iain on the arm when he explained it to me.

  As lambing time drew closer, the ewes were separated into groups by their colors, and herded into specific lambing areas, allowing Iain and Mark an easy way to check on the ewes carrying one lamb, the twin-bearing ewes, and even those who were expected to pop out triplets. Lambing time itself was fraught with worry and concern—most of which was for the ewes having one lamb, since they were often the most trouble. Single lambs were usually quite big, and thus prone to getting in awkward positions during the birth.

  This lambing season was worse than normal due to the mystery campaign against Iain and his sheep that culminated in the loss of thirteen breeding ewes.

  Word had continued to spread about the possibility of our sheep being diseased. A week before lambing was due to start, Iain was paid a call by an agriculture official who ordered an investigation into the illnesses with an eye to quarantining the farm should anything turn up infectious.

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” I asked Iain that night when we were cuddled up in bed.

  He shifted beneath me and was silent for so long I thought he had drifted off to sleep. “The ministry could order the ewes to be destroyed.” His voice rumbled deep in the chest beneath my ear, but it didn’t take much to hear the unspoken pain that accompanied the words.

  “Even the pregnant ewes? The ones ready to pop? They’d kill them?”

  “Aye,” he said. Just aye . No more, no less, but it was enough to fill me with dread.

  We spent a tense, stress-filled eight days before the sheep were cleared of infection, confirming the vet’s assessment that the ewes were poisoned with an abortifacient, but we didn’t have time to so much as sigh with relief before the lambs started dropping.

  Most of Iain’s sheep were hardy hill sheep, not spoiled rotten I sleep only in a barn sheep, so they generally did well birthing by themselves without assistance.

  Both Iain and Mark spent long days out in the lambing parks and on the hills, however, checking on the low ground and hill ewes, making sure those who had birthed were OK, that the lambs were alive and kicking, as well as assisting in the difficult births. Roughly two-thirds of the ewes lambed without problem; it was the other third that kept everyone busy.

  This was my first time at helping out at lambing, and I was a basket case worrying that I might do something to hurt either the ewe or the lambs. I had no idea what to expect other than the gruesome scenarios presented in Ian’s sheep books.

  “It’ll be all right, love,” he reassured me. “You’ll not be asked to do something beyond your experience.”

  “What experience? I have no experience! I have no experience whatsoever in birthing things! I know squat about it!”

  He grinned. “You’ll know more than squat by the time April’s over.” If I survived it, I would. Not a very reassuring thought, that.

  I dogged Ian’s footsteps the first few days, watching how he helped with a breech birth—one of, if not the worst case birthing scenarios—and one in which one leg or another was folded back. My admiration for him shot sky-high when I saw how gentle he was with the ewes—even though they were livestock, not pets, he still treated them with great compassion and did his best to ease the ewes who were having troubles.

  We all carried satchels with lambing supplies in them: iodine, twine, towel, sharp knife, rope, antiseptic wipes, antibiotics, and so on. At one point I looked at the rope and wondered what Iain expected me to do with it Hang myself if I couldn’t get the lamb out? It seemed reasonable to me at the time.

  Once a lamb was born and it seemed to be thriving, its ear was tagged, and its number and the ewe’s number were recorded in notebooks we all carried. My notebooks tended to have more information than just the normal numbers, sex, and date of birth. Mine had descriptions of the lambs, little head sketches, and notes about any characteristics that I found particularly amusing.

  Ian didn’t find this amusing at all, but then, he knew what was coming, and he knew me. I didn’t understand his attitude at first. He wasn’t a cold, callous person, and yet that was the attitude he struck with the cute, adorable, fluffy white lambs.

  “They’re not pets,” he said for what seemed like the hundredth time when I showed him my notebook so he could transfer the information to the master book.

  “No, of course they’re not, but that doesn’t mean I can’t find them cute! Just look at the sketch of Cottonball I did— isn’t that the cutest little lamb you’ve ever seen?”

  Iain sighed. “Kathie, don’t make sketches of them. And don’t name them. All that’s needed is the basic information.”

  “I can’t help it, they’re so adorable! I want to take the camera out with me tomorrow.”

  “Just don’t get attached, love. You know where they’re headed.” Yes, I did, and I had a couple of big issues with that, but it didn’t seem to be the time to hash that out. Iain was coming in exhausted each night. He barely had enough energy to eat supper, then he’d crash on the couch, a book resting on his chest as he snoozed a few hours away before heading back down to the barn to tend the orphans. Poor man. Lambing season wasn’t an easy time.

  David and Joanna normally helped out at lambing time, but with Jo preggers, she was excused from duty, so it was that I ended up apprenticed to David as he made his rounds. We were given morning patrol of the twin lambing park so David could get a half day’s work in at his regular job.

  David and I marched out each chilly April morning, our breaths collecting in clouds on the pure, sharp air as we flung satchels over our backs, climbing the hills to see how many new lambs were born, and who might be having problems. We tagged their ears, trimmed and swabbed iodine on the umbilical cords of the newborns, made sure the ewe was dropping milk, and checked to make sure the placenta had been passed.

  The only thing we didn’t do right off the bat was dock tails and castrate the ram lambs. I drew the line at docking tails. Even though I knew why it had to be done, it still grossed me out royally, although later I became quite handy with the ring castrator. I think it kind of worried Iain that I was so proficient.

  Men get a little funny when one of their wife’s talents takes the form of castration.

  “Mmm,” David said our third morning out. “We’ve got a problem ewe here.” I had been watching a newborn lamb nurse happily, his tail wagging furiously.

  I looked over to where David stood. Whoops! There was a nose sticking out of the ewe’s hindquarters. Not good—lambs in proper presentation were born with their noses between their front feet. This little fellow’s feet were nowhere in sight.

  “Well, there’s nothing for it but to see how he’s laying.” David stripped off his gloves and cleaned his hand, then smeared a lubricant on it and lying on the ground, slipped his hand in alongside the nose. Just the sight of his wrist disappearing up the ewe made me nervous. We had
n’t had any problem births the past two days, and Iain had said he would handle any serious problems.

  This looked mighty darn serious to me.

  “Um, David, I can go yell down your father if you want.”

  “Ah, I found a foot. No, it’s under control, let me see if I can’t figure out which foot belongs to which lamb.”

  That was the problem with multiple births. Sometimes the leg that was coming out was not attached to the “first out of the chute” lamb.

  He worked on that ewe for a good twenty minutes, pushing the nose back in and pulling the proper legs forward until the first lamb was born. His brother soon followed, and we were rewarded with the sight of the ewe making those lovely mom noises and maaamg at her babies while they maaaed back at her.

  “It’ll be your turn next,” David grunted as he wiped down his hand and arm.

  Me? No way! “Huh-uh! Not me. I don’t know nothin‘ ’bout birthin‘ no babies, Miz Scarlett.”

  He gave my shoulder a pat, and watched the lambs. “You’re a sheep farmer’s wife now, Kathie. I’m afraid you’re not going to have a choice.” He was wrong. I knew Iain, and if I absolutely wanted nothing to do with the lambing, he wouldn’t say a word about it. But I had wanted Iain, I had wanted a life in Scotland, and I wasn’t about to refuse to help him when he needed every pair of hands, so when the next problem ewe came up, I wiped off my hand, greased it up, and with only a few “Yuk! I can’t believe I’m going to stick my hand up a sheep!” comments, I set about to learning what the inside of a sheep felt like.

  It was warm. And slimy. And absolutely fascinating. The first thing I felt was a smooth little hoof. It was pointing in the right direction, and the flat side was down, as it should be. “There’s a hoof,” I told David. He nodded. That was good, front hooves should be the first thing to come out. I followed the hoof up as far as I could and found the lamb’s face.