All God's Creatures

by Carolyn McSparren

  "I told that fool to keep those two bastards in his other pasture. They stand there talking to my ladies and getting them all riled up."

  "Who owns the property?"

  "A guy named Barrows who lives in Olive Branch and runs a halfbaked commercial operation. We've butted heads more than once. He's a real s.o.b."

  He started the ATV again. Back at the office, he stormed, "Heather, honey pot, get Barrows on the phone for me. Those two damn bulls are up on the hill again."

  He shut himself in his tiny office, I said goodbye to Heather with his angry voice reverberating in my ear.

  "Had enough?" Heather asked.

  "I'll be back tomorrow. Barring emergencies at our place."

  "Thank you so much. Rick won't let me near a cow until after the baby comes." She blushed. "He thinks I'll break."

  I watched Heather in my rear view mirror as I drove away. Those two were so in love, just at the start of their journey. Please, Lord, I prayed, Let it be a long and happy one. Don't let it end too soon for them as it had for Morgan and me.

  Despite hints from Eli, I had so far avoided Morgan's office except to slip my expired passport from the pages of the scrapbook. I stopped at Kinko's on the way back from Rick's to get some new passport pictures, filled out the paperwork, and sent my old passport and a check for renewal. I would have enjoyed seeing the Mona Lisa with Morgan. Now it had become an obligation. Not the best possible mindset to start my travels. I always devoured books and loved music and art, but culture never gave me the immediate thrill I got from saving an animal's life.

  That evening Nels Olafson called. "Loba's home and settling in."

  "Good."

  "She's used to being alone in her enclosure, so she's not missing the pack she never had. The two male adolescents next door to her are trying to bite at her muzzle through the fence and flipping over on their backs to offer their bellies to her. Characteristic submission behavior."

  "How's she taking it?"

  "Lording over both of them. Lars thinks we may actually be able to let them be together-under supervision, of course-in a couple of weeks."

  "Let me know how it goes."

  "Promise." Well, at least one creature was working out her new life. Maybe there was hope for me.

  I slept badly. The only time I allowed myself to grieve was at night in bed. I had forced myself to stretch out across Morgan's side of the bed, but I still woke curled into a ball on my side cradling a pillow wet with tears. My head hurt.

  I wanted to stay in bed with the cats, but instead I went to the experimental station. We should be through with the Al in an hour or so, then I could get to the clinic and do my regular job.

  I arrived at the station just as Heather and Rick pulled up in Rick's elderly truck.

  "Good," he said. "You can give me a hand herding the ladies in from the paddock."

  Heather stopped in the office to boot up the computer and start the coffee. I trailed Rick.

  The instant Rick opened the door between office and barn, I realized something was wrong.

  Outside in the paddock cows bawled and stampeded past the doors.

  "What the..." Rick ran toward the overhang where the ATV was parked.

  I ran too.

  Giant black shapes hurtled by, circled, ran into one another, crashed into the fences and the building like rifle fire.

  "Holy crap!" Rick shouted and pointed.

  At the far end of the pasture I could barely make out two black and white shapes with giant appendages sticking out from each side of their foreheads.

  And giant appendages fully extended from the underside of their bellies as well.

  As we watched, the marauders cornered cow after cow, mounted, flagged, dropped off and chased the next nearest female.

  Not one of those females had ever been bred naturally.

  No neat sterile pipette.

  This was an invading army of two bent on gang rape.

  Rick raced for the ATV. "Can you handle a shotgun?"

  "You're not going to kill them, are you?"

  "I'm damned well going to drive 'em away from my ladies. Can you shoot?"

  "Certainly." I pulled one of the pump shotguns from the gun rack and jumped into the ATV beside him.

  "Shells are in that box." Rick pointed between my feet.

  Yesterday's ride had been a sedate spin in a limousine compared to this.

  "Shoot over their heads."

  I managed to load and press the shotgun hard into my shoulder. I pointed it high above the heads of the fleeing herd, and pulled the trigger.

  Boom!

  For an instant, the herd stood dead still.

  Then they ran in the other direction.

  All but the bulls at the far end of the pasture. They were too preoccupied to stop what they were doing.

  Boom!

  This time the smaller one swung his horns in our direction.

  Boom! Boom!

  Too close to ignore. Both bulls jumped down from their latest conquests.

  Rick drove between them and the cows, herding them as expertly as though he'd been on a horse.

  "Again! Keep it up!" he shouted.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  I broke open the gun and inserted more shells. The expended cartridges dropped at my feet or had bounced out of the ATV.

  My shoulder hurt like hell. In the jouncing ATV, it was impossible to hold tight enough to avoid some kick when I pulled the trigger. I'd have a bruised shoulder. I might have a black eye.

  What the hell. It was in a good cause.

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  The cows peeled off to their left while Rick kept the ATV between the herd and the two bulls on his right. They were now running towards the front of the pasture.

  Boom!

  I spotted the hole in the fence. They'd trampled the wire on their side of the pasture, crashed through Rick's lovely board fence, and chased their first cows until they caught them.

  They might have been at it since midnight.

  The smaller bull took one long look over his shoulder, swung right and bolted for home. He tangled in the barbed wire and cantered off across his home pasture with fifty feet of barbed wire and locust wood fence posts trailing behind him like a bridal train.

  The bigger bull turned through the gap in the board fence and took two steps up the hill.

  Boom!

  One minute he was conning. The next he'd fallen flat on his side and lay with his head canted straight up where his horn had hooked into the dirt.

  Rick stopped the ATV against the broken boards. To get past, a cow would have to jump over both ATV and passengers.

  They wouldn't. They were already settling down as far from the scene as they could.

  Rick leapt from the ATV and ran to the bull on the ground. I followed him. My shoulder and jaw screamed. My ears rang. I'd probably be half deaf for a couple of hours.

  "Bastard's dead." Rick said.

  "What? Dead? Did I shoot him?"

  He leaned over and spoke directly into the ear that hadn't been close to the gun blast and shouted,"Not a scratch on him-well, a couple of barbed wire scrapes. No buckshot." He looked grim. "He screwed himself to death."

  I saw his shoulders begin to shake.

  "Hell of a way to go, though." Rick said, and bent double laughing.

  A moment later we were both leaning against the ATV helpless with tears of laughter.

  From the barn, Heather called, "Are y'all okay? What happened?"

  That set us off again. I hadn't laughed, really laughed, since Morgan died. What a blessed release!

  By the time we drove sedately back to the barn, Heatherwas standing waiting for us with her hands on her broad hips and a schoolmarm frown on her face.

  While Rick cuddled her and told her what had happened, I went into the office to find a soft drink or water from the tap. I still held the shotgun open in the crook of my elbow. I could actually hear out of my left ear.

  Gravel spewed
outside, and a moment later a little bald man stormed in. A fringe of white hair stood up around his head like a Banty rooster's coxcomb.

  "Where's my bulls?" he shouted. "Y'all done stole my bulls."

  "Mr. Barrows, I presume?"

  "Who the hell are you? Where's that damn vet, or whatever he calls hisself?"

  I pointed. Barrows stormed past, slammed the door to the bam, and a moment later started shouting.

  I followed.

  "Y'all done kilt my good bull?" Barrows screeched.

  I dragged Heather back into the office. "Go get us some cold Co'Colas, then sit down in here. Rick and I can handle this."

  "I'll sue your ass, you see if I don't! I'll sue you, that wife of you'm, the whole State of Mississippi, the county and the federal guv'mint! Them was prize longhorn bulls. Worth a mint! I'll have your hide, you killing my good bulls that'a way."

  Rick's earlobes were crimson. I stepped between them.

  Barrows took one look at me and jumped back. "There, you see that woman threatening me with a shotgun? Call the po-lice. I'm gonna arrest every dad-burned one of you."

  I casually moved the shotgun. "Mr. Barrows, I am so sorry for your loss."

  Rick snorted.

  "I do think you ought to sue, I really do."

  "Say what?" Rick snapped.

  "Well, Rick, he might as well. Of course, after the courts see your suit, they may not be all that interested in his."

  "My-? Oh, yeah, my suit."

  "What the hell you think you can sue for, woman? It's my bull done got killt. Tothei'n gonna be plumb wore out for quite a spell, I reckon. May be too tuckered to climb a cow ever again." Barrows nodded with satisfaction.

  "I am also a veterinarian. I can assure you he will recover his libido. I assume you purchased those bulls at the sale barn in Collierville?"

  "What of it?"

  "They'll no doubt have records of exactly how much you paid for them and when. They do depreciate, you know, when they get old. I assume you didn't insure them? No, I didn't think so. So you have no valuation other than your sale price."

  Barrows opened his mouth, but I kept talking.

  "Then there is the damage to the station's fence, and to the station's pasture from all the cows stampeding. There's no way to tell which cows your bulls bred, norwhich cows will 'take' from your semen and which from the semen we used yesterday on a small group. The station has complete records on this herd for testing purposes for many years back. Your bulls could wreck twenty-five or thirty years of work. Quite a loss.

  "Add to that the expense for drugs, time, and manpower to abort each and every one of the cows in this herd and rebreed them on their next fertile cycle. That will of course push the gestation period back and make the parturition date later, so the calves won't be as valuable. That will factor into the equation, as well as lawyer's fees, fees for de positions, court costs. It does add up. You might as well countersue. Maybe the courts won't come down on you quite so hard."

  Barrows's eyes had widened and his mouth-full of bad teeth and worse breath-had dropped open.

  I smiled at him sweetly. "Now, I do think you'd better get your dead bull moved. He's still partially on Station land. We need to get our fence fixed. That shouldn't cost too much. just the cost of boards, creosote and labor. We'll bill you."

  "Now, you see here, girlie..." He glanced at Rick. "You and me's both gentlemen. We can settle this without bringing in lawyers and courts and women and all such, can't we?"

  "Can we?" Rick asked Maggie.

  "Possibly. My suggestion would be that Mr. Barrows remove his dead bull and put up some good fence so this doesn't happen again, and pay for the drugs and the new sticks of semen. You take care of your fence and the labor involved in aborting and rebreeding."

  "What kind o' money we talkin' about?" Barrows asked.

  Rick thought a minute, then named a reasonable figure.

  Barrows started to jump up and down again, but thought better of it. He stared at me with loathing. "I'll write you a check."

  "I think a cashier's check or cash might be better," I said. "Don't you, Rick?"

  "You sat'in' my check's no good?"

  "Not at all. Just good business."

  "Hells bells. Give me time to get my tractor to drag that carcass away and get that fence put back up. I'll be back." He started to turn away.

  "Since we're gentlemen, Mr. Barrows," Rick said. "Let's shake on it." He stuck out his hand.

  Barrows regarded it as though it were wired for electricity, then sighed and clasped it.

  He dropped it a second later and stalked into the bam.

  Rick watched him with aplomb until he heard the far door close.

  Then he grabbed me around the waist, swung me off my feet and kissed me.

  "Hey! I'm still holding a loaded shotgun. Put me down before I blow away one of your cows in the heat of passion."

  He dropped me and loped to the office.

  "Heather, honey pot, you got to hear this," he said with evident glee.

  Before Rick could start his tale, my cell phone went off. "McLain."

  "Maggie, thank God!"

  "Patsy, what's the matter?"

  "It's terrible! We've got half a dozen horses dying. My Marko's been down twice. You've got to come right this minute."

  "Colic?"

  Patsy sounded hysterical. "Nobody knows. Oh, God, Maggie, please come."

  "I'm ten minutes away. I'll call Eli. She can bring down more equipment."

  "Please, Maggie-Oh, don't let him go down!"

  The line went dead and I sprinted for my truck.

  Chapter 37

  In which an idiot causes a tragedy

  On my way to Patsy's bam, I called Eli and asked her to bring every bit of equipment she could find to treat colic. If we had to do surgery they'd have to move the horses to the clinic-possibly to several clinics.

  But first, we had to try the old reliable remedies.

  "Don't forget the Pepto Bismol," I said. Seconds counted in colic cases. If things were actually as bad as Patsy said, none of the horses would be able to survive the four and a half-hour trip to the vet school and hospital facilities at Mississippi State. Starkville was still a long drive away, even with the new four lane highway most of the way.

  I pulled into the Dalrymple farm road so fast I nearly lost the truck on the curve and ended up in the ditch that ran along beside the board fence. I slammed on my brakes in the parking lot among a bunch of crazily parked SUVs and trucks. Recently Patsy had begun boarding and training horses for a few friends. The owners must already have been notified and come running.

  Patsy met me at the door to the stable. Her hair fell around her plump little face in sweaty orange tendrils. Her baggy shorts were drenched and so was her t-shirt. "Maggie! Thank God." She grabbed my hand, pulled me into the stable and toward the double wash racks across the broad center aisle.

  The stable hummed with activity. Big warmblood jumpers who obviously wanted to lie down in their stalls and roll until their bellies ceased to hurt were being pushed and prodded up and down the center aisle by grooms, trainers, riders and parents of riders.

  Marked Fox, known as Marko, Patsy Dalrymple's three-year-old Hanoverian stud colt, leaned drunkenly against the wood paneling that lined one side of the wash rack. He was solid black except for a white sock on his right hind foot. His wet pelt gleamed like black tar.

  Big Mike, head groom, leaned his three hundred pounds against Marko's shoulder in an attempt to keep him on his feet. Another groom played a stream of cold water from the wash rack hose over the colt's body.

  Ignoring the water that soaked me too as I leaned against the colt, I pulled back his lips. "God, Patsy," I said. "How long has this been going on? His gums are nearly white." That meant shock, poor blood circulation, and agonizing pain in his gut. This was not like a normal colic. It definitely wasn't founder. The stud colt was putting weight on all four of his feet. The illness had come on too quic
kly and too severely. Besides, most cases of colic were individual. A whole barn of colicky horses argued some kind of poison.

  Paul Nelson, Patsy's partner in the training operation, came up at that moment. "We noticed it about six-thirty this morning. We've got five others sick, but they're all adult horses. He's the youngest and by far the worst."

  "Paul, why d you wait so long to call me?" I -asked.

  "We thought we were looking at some kind of herb poisoning from the pasture, although Mike and I couldn't find anything except clover. That might make them salivate, but not this." He ran a wet hand over his thick gray hair. "We tubed them with mineral oil, washed them down with cold water, and kept them walking. They've had as much Banamine as we dared give them. None of them has an elevated pulse in the ankle, no temperature either. We thought we could handle it. Obviously we can't. What the hell is it?"

  "For a while we thought we had it licked," Patsy said. "The others seem to be getting better." She leaned her forehead against the colt's shoulder. He shuddered. "Maggie, for the love of God, do something!"

  I caught Paul's eye over Patsy's head. He shook his head. Even Patsy must know in her heart that there was nothing to be done except to put the colt down. Big as he was, he was still a baby without the physical or psychological resistance the mature horses had developed.

  He was in agony. It was unconscionable to let that agony continue.

  "Patsy, honey," I said. "Look at me."

  Patsy took a deep breath and raised her eyes to my face.

  "You know what I have to do."

  Patsy dropped her face in her hands. "Do it, Maggie, do it quick." Her voice rose, "I can't stand to see him this way."

  At that moment Eli raced in. She took one look at the stud colt and put her arm around Patsy's shoulder. "Come on, Patsy, you don't want to watch."

  Patsy jerked away. "Yes, I do. I must. I brought him into the world, Eli, I have to see him out of it."

  More death. I couldn't get away from it.