"You said it. You meant it."
"I did not." I leaned back and stretched my legs out in front of me. "Shit, Eli. When you lost josh, you stopped taking life for granted. You were what? Twenty-two, twenty-three? You learned early. Before Morgan died, I trusted life. I knew who I was, what I wanted to do and how good I was at it. I knew I loved Morgan and that he loved me back. I knew you were always going to be there. Morgan and you and I would totter into old age together. We picked each other for family, you and me, even before I found Morgan. That's closer than DNA could ever be."
"Then why did you say it?"
"Dammit, Eli, I'm tired, I'm half frozen, and I let my alligator tongue overload my humming-bird brain." I grabbed her shoulders and hauled her around so that I could look into her eyes. "You weren't serious about running away to Africa, were you?"
"You're not the only one who worries about the future."
"Eli, I swear to God, I won't do anything that doesn't make you happy. And you are my family forever and ever. Now you can slap me upside my head if you'd like."
She shook her head. "It's okay, Maggie. We're both tired. Let's leave it for another time, all right?"
She stood up as though she were an old woman.
I watched her and Sugar Pie walk across the lawn in the moonlight. For the first time since we had known one another, I felt I'd inflicted a hurt that would take a long time to heal, if it ever did. And I knew damned well that even after it healed, it would leave a scar.
For the first time I realized how much Eli had lost when Morgan died. He was my husband, but he was closer to her than any of her own brothers had ever been. Maybe it was time I stopped wallowing in my own grief like a hippopotamus in a mud hole and paid some attention to the other people I loved.
Chapter 35
In which Loba leaves for her new life
Thursday morning, Tonesha stuck her head into the room in which I was examining a highly pregnant Weimeraner "There's this big track outside with something about a sanctuary painted on the side. I guess it's the guys for that wolf"
I glanced at my watch. "I hadn't expected them this early. Tell Mr. Olafson I'll be right there." I turned to my client. "She's doing fine, Carly, but she's a youngster herself. We may need to do a Cesarean."
"When will I know she's ready?"
"Put her in her crate when you're not with her and give her a stack of newspapers. It's her first time, so she could be a little late, but dogs are usually right on the money sixty-three days precisely, so plan on bringing her in the day she's due to whelp, or if she starts frantically building a nest and looking anxious, whichever comes first."
"Thanks." Carly slipped the clip of her leather lead onto the dog's collar. "Come on, little Mo, baby. Let Mommy help you down."
I helped Carly lower the dog carefully to the floor and scratched her mouse-colored ears. "Ask Tonesha to give you a treat for her on your way out. I'll come with you."
Mr. Olafson from the wolf sanctuary was waiting for me at the reception desk. No matter how long his family had been in this country, his Viking genes had remained undiluted. He was completely bald, but wore a bushy red beard. He looked as though his hair had migrated from his skull to take root on his cheeks and chin.
He probably weighed about two-seventy, but at six feet five or six he wasn't fat. He wore threadbare jeans and a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up to reveal forearms bigger than my thigh. I put his age at something over thirty but under fifty.
He came forward and enveloped my hand in his. My calluses met his calluses. "Doctor McLain. Great to meet you!" His voice filled the reception room so full that even the dogs and cats went silent momentarily. "How's our girl?"
"Sleepy, and please, it's Maggie."
"Ah, and I am Nels. My son Lars is waiting in the truck. Where is she?"
"Right this way."
"Good. Need to get her settled and leave for Minnesota. Is it always this warm so early?"
"Don't give me that," I said. "The last time I was in Minnesota for a conference it was a hundred and five degrees, and your mosquitoes were carrying off small children."
By the truck, Nels's son Lars was a slightly smaller copy of his father with no beard and a long red ponytail. He grinned at me, but didn't say a word.
"Nice set-up."
"I kept Loba inside her den and gave her a dose of tranquilizer with her breakfast. I hope she can walk."
"Oh, don't worry. We'll get her into her cage, all right."
Lars nodded.
I opened the door into the inside kennel and stood aside for the two men. Loba slept quietly on her side with one paw protectively over the shreds of one of her toys.
"Can you take her toys with her?"
"Absolutely." Nels dropped to his haunches outside the cage. "Look, Lars, what a beautiful bitch. See the size of her." He grinned over his shoulder at me. "She'll make an excellent addition."
"If we can let her go free, Papa," Lars said.
"Why wouldn't you be able to?" I asked.
Young Lars turned soft blue eyes on me. "She may be too imprinted on human beings."
"We'll give her every chance," Nels said. "It may take a year or so to know for certain." He stood easily. "But then again it may work out perfectly."
"How do you go about it?"
"A pack won't generally accept a stranger. The she-wolves will view her as a threat and try to kill her or drive her off. So, we start a new pack. We have a couple of young males who just came into the sanctuary. We'll put her in one big fenced in area next to them where they can see one another, but not touch. Then, if that works, we'll try them on supervised visitation. If that works, we'll turn them into a single paddock."
"And if that works," Lars continued, "We'll turn them out into our twenty acre pen."
"Twenty whole acres?"
"Yep," Nels said. "If they work out together and can learn to hunt on their own, we'll take them up north where there's no other pack close, and let them go."
"Possibly Canada," Lars said.
"What happens if they don't work out?"
"Then we'll look after them and use Loba as a brood bitch."
I sighed. "I'd almost rather you kept her than turned her loose where she could get hurt."
"Now you sound like that Marion woman," Nels laughed. "Loba's a wolf. She deserves her chance to be what she was born to be."
"I'll still worry. Can I call you? Will you keep me up to date on her?"
"If you'll agree to pass on the info to that Marion woman so I don't have to," Lars said.
Nels twinkled. "My son tends to get annoyed with people who try to make pets out of wild animals."
"So do you, Papa." He turned to me. "That woman..." He shook his head.
"Go get the cage, son," Nels said. He hunkered down beside Loba's kennel.
"How does one wind up in the wolf rescue business?" I asked.
"My Norwegian granddad used to tell me horror stories about wolves when I was growing up in North Minnesota," he said. "If I'd really been bad, he'd give me the old baby-in-the-sleigh tale."
I shook my head.
"You know it, I betcha. People traveling home across the snow at night. A pack of wolves starts chasing the sleigh. They throw everything out to lighten the load so the horses can outrun the pack, finally, in desperation, they throw out the baby." He raised his eyebrows. "That was me, according to Granddad."
"I'd think you'd keep a safe distance away."
"I'm a zoologist by trade. Took an internship one summer at a wolf rehabilitation sanctuary. Saw what people do to wolves and stayed. It's grown since then."
Young Lars came back in carrying a large traveling cage onehanded.
"Remember," I said. "She's perfectly capable of waking up rarin' to go the instant you touch that door, and she'll probably go straight for your throat."
Instantly the two Vikings went into action. Lars pulled two sets of heavy gauntlets out of the traveling cage and handed his fat
her a muzzle.
"That is a significant muzzle," I said. "The trick is how to get it on her."
"No problemo," Lars said.
"Should I-uh-wait outside?" I asked.
Lars eyed me. "Keep out of the way and you can stay."
Nels opened the cage, bent low so that he didn't tower over Loba, and drifted silently inside like a wraith. Amazing in such a big man.
Lars held the door shut.
Loba raised her head and peered at him bleerily.
He duck-walked to her, the muzzle ready in his hand.
As Nels positioned the muzzle over Loba's nose, she exploded. I yelped.
Loba would tear him to pieces.
I'd warned him Loba could be playing possum.
So fast that I wasn't even certain how he'd done it, he straddled Loba's body, grabbed the scruff of her neck with one hand, and slipped the muzzle over her nose with the other. With his weight pressing her down, he snapped the muzzle closed, and clipped a heavy chain lead to her collar.
She continued to scramble frantically under him.
Then he stood up with her in his arms-all ninety or so pounds of her. He held her around her waist with one arm and kept her hind claws away from him with the other.
Lars opened the door, and together, the two men slid Loba into her big wire cage and shut the door.
"That was slick," I said in awe.
Nels grinned at me. He had red claw marks down his forearms.
"Are you hurt?"
"She didn't break the skin." The two men swung the cage between them, walked out of the office and set it down on the tarmac while Lars opened the back of the eighteen wheeler. Cool air billowed out of the dark interior. "Now, if you'll get her toys, we'll give her some water. As soon as she's in the dark she'll be quiet."
By the time I returned with the few remains of beddie, blankie and toys I could collect, Loba was safely stowed in the back of their truck. They'd managed to get her muzzle off somehow. I was glad of that. I hate muzzles, even though I knew they are often necessary.
I handed Loba's bag to Nels. From inside the truck came strange scratching sounds.
"Want to see the rest of our loot?" Nels asked me.
"Sure."
Lars jumped up into the truck and reached a hand down and swung me aboard. I saw that Loba was lying down, but watching me intently.
"Oh, the babies!" I cried, and dropped to all fours. A pair of tiny cheetah cubs sat like bookends as close to the front of their cage as they could get. "May I?" I asked over my shoulder.
"Sure. They're real tame," Lars told me.
I wiggled my finger through the wire mesh and was rubbed vigorously by a pair of tiny whiskered faces. They still had long, fluffy kitten fir on their backs. The cubs didn't growl or purr-they trilled.
"Haven't located a zoo yet that wants them and neither did the people whose female produced them," Nels said. "So we took'em. We'll either find 'em a zoo that needs 'em, or they'll live with us."
"What else?" I said and stood. From over my left shoulder I heard what sounded like castanets. I peered into the darkness. "I know that sound. You must have an owl."
"Hunter shot it. Only one wing. We're taking it to a wildlife program in Minnesota that will use it in an education program for children. Now that one I would not attempt to pet-not if you want to go back to your office with all ten fingers."
There were several other cages, all empty, and what looked like a couple of box stalls.
"They're for the musk oxen we're picking up in St. Louis. Turns out they've got a breeding pair. Speaking of which, we need to get going. It's a long drive to northern Minnesota."
"Surely you won't drive straight through again?"
"Surely we will," Lars said. "I drive, Papa sleeps. Then he drives, I sleep."
"I'd offer to fix you breakfast or something-"
"No, thank you."
Nels handed me a file of paperwork. "This is a copy of the bill of lading and the permit. We FedExed that woman the other paperwork."
"Okay." I walked to the back of the truck and prepared to jump down.
Then I hesitated. "Could I have a minute to say goodbye?" I felt my stomach begin to flutter and swore to herself I wouldn't cry. Hadn't this dumb wolf tried to kill me?
"You betcha," Lars said. "Papa and I will wait outside. Don't try to jump down without some help. It's a long drop."
Both men jumped to the tarmac and disappeared around the side of the truck.
I knelt beside Loba. Another goodbye. My life seemed filled with them. At least Loba was going toward happiness and not into an empty life. She'd find a mate, not lose one.
"Go with God, Loba. I can't believe I'll miss you." Loba slid forward on her belly. I put the palm of my hand flat against the front of the cage.
Loba gently licked it.
I lost it. I wanted to open that cage and drag Loba out.
"It would be wrong for you to keep her," Lars's gentle voice made me jump. "We'll teach her to be a real wolf"
"She just better be happy."
Chapter 36
In which Maggie interrupts an orgy
When I woke early Friday morning, I remembered I had agreed to help Rick and Heather artificially inseminate cows at the experimental cattle station in North Mississippi. When I heard the rain drumming on my bedroom windows, I prayed they'd cancel.
They didn't cancel, and I couldn't in all conscience back out on them, so I drove down to the station and along the gravel road in front that had turned to slippery muck. This was in a sense my first tentative step toward finding someone to take over from me when I retired-a sort of interview in place. I knew I liked Heather and had heard good things about her from the vets at the animal emergency clinic where she filled in, but I didn't know her husband Rick at all. I'd only met him once at Morgan's funeral. I wasn't sure I'd recognize him.
Obviously, he would never have been entrusted with managing the University's prize cattle herd if he hadn't been good with large animals, but that didn't necessarily equate to being good with clients.
I vacillated between excitement and trepidation. What on earth would I do if he should not only turn out to be the perfect person to take over from me, but should want the job right away and be able to come up with the money to buy into the partnership? If Eli were satisfied with him, I could retire at once.
I was reminded of that old saying, "Lord, I want to go to heavenjust not yet." I had to admit I wasn't ready either to fish or to cut bait.
I hadn't visited the cattle station for manyyears. I hardly recognized it. Perfect dark wood fences were freshly creosoted to cut down chewing from either cows or insects. A large, metal agricultural building had replaced the old wooden cattle barn.
Rick met me at the front door with his hand outstretched. "Hey, Doc, glad you could make it." He was about six feet two, lanky and long-muscled, and had deep brown eyes and a broad shit-kickin' grin that made me want to break out in a chorus of "Mamma, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys." No wonder Heather fell for him. He led me into the front of the building, which was set up as an office and laboratory. Heather was hunkered over a big Gateway computer. She greeted me cheerfully, but her smile was for Rick. "What do you think of the place, Maggie?" she asked.
"Marvelous," I answered, and watched both of them swell with pride. "How many cows are we inseminating this morning?"
"Forty today, forty tomorrow morning. Heather's keeping a list of the flank numbers."
Rick led me through the door that divided the air-conditioned office space from the bam. Along the right hand wall twenty large black Angus cows swished their tails lazily as they champed the hay in the bins in front of them. Rick removed the sticks of semen in their neat glass tubes from a comer refrigerator, and asked cheerfully, "Want me to go first?"
"Absolutely. I'd like to see your technique. I don't do this often enough to be as good at it as you are."
I watched him artificially inseminate a couple of co
ws, then moved in beside him to do my share. The operation went quickly.
When we were finished, he grinned at me. "You been funnin' me. You're better than I'll ever be. Want to help me shoo these ladies out into the pasture and get in the next twenty?"
In a small holding paddock beside the barn another twenty Angus cows ate or chewed their cuds. Rick shooed the first group into the main pasture, then opened the gate that led from the holding pen into the stock area, and began to get the second twenty ready for insemination.
"How do you separate the ones we've done today from the rest we're doing tomorrow?"
"A couple of boys come in the afternoon to do the chores. They'll check the flank numbers and cut another forty into the side paddock. Piece of cake to get 'em in tomorrow morning. Want to see the rest of the place after we finish? We've got fifty acres in this pasture, plus the holding paddock. It's stopped raining."
"Sure. This is a very slick operation."
"I've kept records now for the last twenty years. Not me personally, of course. Heather and I have been here three years since we got out of school. She only works part time. The rest of the time she works at the emergency clinic."
Rick was happy where he was. Even though the herd officially belonged to the university, he definitely felt proprietary towards them. He probably wouldn't be interested in a partnership with McLainScheibler.
Heather might want to join us as an employee after the baby was bom. We didn't pay as much as the emergency clinic, but the hours were better and her driving time would be less. We would all enjoy having a little one around.
Rick walked around to the side of the building and climbed into a four wheel ATV. A gun rack mounted on the roll cage held a rifle and two shotguns. Rick saw my eyebrows raise. "I am death on possums and rats. Last thing we need is Hanta virus."
I nodded, climbed aboard. Rick took off so fast I narrowly avoided whiplash. We sped, rolled and jounced all the way to the far end of the property, then did a wheely and headed back.
Suddenly, Rick jammed on the brakes. "Son of a bitch," he snapped. Across Rick's immaculate brown fence and up a slight rise, through scrub trees and underbrush, a ramshackle barbed wire fence listed crazily. On the far side peering down at us stood two of the gmngiest long horn bulls I had ever seen. Both were black and white with at least a six-foot span of sharp horns. Both were caked with mud, beady of eye and two or three hundred pounds underweight.
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