Page 42 of The Cowboy's Miracle Baby

“You didn’t drag me. And I’m curious to watch you work. I mean, my job isn’t anywhere near as interesting.”

“Jobsplural, you mean,” he said, really clear that she downplayed her never-ending list of commitments.

“Okay, fine,” she said, staring back at the white line in the center of the road. “Still, I’m not out there saving lives like you.”

“Disagree. You’d be surprised the lives teachers save.” He could speak from personal experience on that subject, having had teachers as mentors throughout his life.

He saw her cheeks flush even in the darkened car. “Maybe, in an abstract, long-term kind of way. But your business is immediate gratification. You save a horse or a cow or a dog. You have that to hold.”

“The cow we’re going to see tonight, she wasn’t due yet. She’s giving birth at least a couple of weeks early which complicates things for the calf and for the mother. I’m hoping for some of that immediate gratification you’re talking about tonight. But sometimes, it’s a crapshoot.”

“I have faith in you,” she said, smiling at him. “And whatever happens, you’ll do your best.”

He would. But he didn’t relish the idea of failing in front of her. It wasn’t often he cared what a woman thought about what he did. He wasn’t out to impress anyone. His job was to save lives. But he wanted to impress her. To justify her faith in him.

At the Deaver ranch, they found that the cow had been brought in out of the weather to a birthing stall in the barn. Cami stood outside the stall, watching as Gus assessed the situation with a glance.

“How long has labor been going on?” he asked Matthew Deaver, the cow’s owner, as Gus tugged off his jacket and unbuttoned the cuffs on his shirt. “Any progress since you called?”

“Found ’er out in the upper pasture, struggling about an hour ago. Not sure how long she’d been laboring already, but we made the decision to bring ’er down to the barn. Settle her in where it’s warm. And no. Nothing to speak of in terms of progress.” Deaver was an older man, gray haired and worn with long years of hard, outdoor work. He took in Gus’s clothes and hers. “Dang it, I pulled you two outta somewhere special, didn’t I?”

“No worries.” Gus pulled on a clean pair of coveralls he always kept in his truck up to his waist. It was only slightly less freezing in the barn than in the bitter outside, but he’d warm up soon enough with the work to come. He handed his jacket and shirt to Cami who was on the other side of the stall, but not before he caught her expression as she took in his naked chest.

“Well.Hello,” she said with a teasing grin.

He held out his arms with a shrug. “It’s the down and dirty part of the job.”

She sighed. “And I have zero complaints about it,” she said as she pulled his clothes against her chest. “Good luck,” she whispered.

He laughed, washing his hands under the water spigot. “Thanks.” He turned back to the laboring cow, still feeling Cami’s eyes on him.

A few minutes later, after handily dodging the well-justified kick of the mama cow, he reached inside her up to his shoulder to search for the calf, his arm covered all the way up with a protective sleeve.

“She’s a springing heifer,” Deaver explained. “This’ll be her first calf.”

It was normal for a first-time mama cow to be scared and confused. She was contracting painfully around his arm, but she was not progressing, and she’d been struggling for who knew how long already? What was clear was that the calf seemed stuck and there were lots of possible reasons for that. A breech presentation, the calf’s head turned the wrong way, the calf coming out back legs first… But this one felt… big. Maybe too big for this cow. He found one hoof and hoped he could get hold of that one and the other and try to drag it out.

“It’s dead, isn’t it? The calf.” Deaver was hovering over his shoulder.

“I don’t know yet. It might be at this point. Might be too big for this cow.”

Often these things happened in the field before anyone noticed labor’d been going on too long. And in that case, often both went down for the count. The bad feeling settling in his nearly numb arm told him this might very well be a bad outcome. He spent the better part of the next twenty minutes between contractions trying to loop a chain around the calf’s hoof and still hadn’t found the other one, which he determined was turned the wrong way.

“I, uh, put in a call for Dr. Alden,” Deaver said after a long, twenty-minute struggle.

Gus turned to the man in surprise. “You what?”

“Figured you could use the help. He should be here any minute.”

“Not necessary. But… fine.” Gus grunted with the effort and glanced at Cami, who bit her lip and had a stranglehold on the stall gate.

“Can I be of any help?” she asked.

“Thanks,” he practically grunted. “But I don’t want you near this cow. It can be dangerous.” He felt the same way about Doc Alden.

Alden was on leave and in no shape to fight with a laboring cow. Not to mention the fact that he could do no more than Gus himself had already done. But these ranchers around here were used to Alden, had used him for years. Somehow, they still thought of him as a miracle worker and in an emergency like this one, he’d ride in on some white horse and save both their cow and their calf.

He reached in a little deeper, feeling one small hoof. He hooked the looped chain barely around it, and with his free hand, thrust the other end of the chain at Deaver. “Pull on that. Not too hard yet—just keep the slack off while I find the other hoof.”

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