Chapter 8 #2
All she could do was nod. She took the two sick calves with her, guiding them both toward the other enclosure.
Cole immediately left, closed the gate, and went to get supplies and tools.
Kat found a mobile vet who saw livestock and called them.
She felt like an idiot talking to the person on the phone with her own inability to answer their initial questions well enough.
It was becoming more and more clear to her that she had purchased these calves without the necessary information.
Part of her wanted to apologize to her Uncle Roy for failing this hard, but wallowing in any kind of self-pity wasn’t a personality trait of hers.
The only right thing to do was to learn from her mistake and keep moving forward.
“You’re gonna be OK, little girl,” she said, patting the head of the nearest sick calf. “The doctor’s coming.”
She spent the rest of the day watching Cole finish the enclosure.
The speed at which he worked was impressive.
He didn’t stop for even a minute. She couldn’t help admiring his resolve and know-how.
His physical strength didn’t hurt either.
He never stopped or slowed down, even when he was sweating.
At one point, she offered to bring him something to drink, but he rejected the offer.
Once the fence was complete, he began building a shelter.
Nothing fancy, but it was enough to shelter the calves from the rain.
She was more than a little impressed with it.
The calves were comfortably resting under their shelter the following morning when the mobile vet arrived. Kat waited patiently while they were examined. Cole answered most of the vet’s questions, which made Kat feel even more useless than she had before.
“It was a good thing you noticed it when you did,” the vet was saying to Cole.
“Isolating these from the others probably saved some lives. They’ll need some time to recover, but with medication and good nutrition going forward, you should avoid seeing this again.
If you want my opinion,” the vet said, “these little ones were weaned a bit too early. Probably contributed to the brDC they came down with. I wouldn’t buy from that seller again. ”
“Oh, we won’t,” Cole said, flashing Kat an I-told-you-so look that she did not appreciate one bit. “I’ve been informed they’re going out of business anyway.”
“Ah.” The vet nodded. “Then I think I know who it was. Well, never mind. What’s done is done. Take good care of these little gals, and they’ll be OK.”
“We will, doctor. Thank you.”
The vet straightened up and started putting his instruments away. “Now, there’s the little matter of the fee.”
“That’ll be her area of expertise,” Cole said, pointing to Kat. As he walked past her to leave the area, he murmured an addendum. “Spending money.”
Kat wanted to smack him, but she couldn’t.
Professionalism was important in front of anyone she might want to work with in the future.
So, she swallowed her pride and paid the vet.
“Thank you for helping us,” she said. Then she owned up.
“The purchase was my decision. I guess I’m still…
learning about these things. I’ve never had a ranch before. ”
The vet looked down at her with sympathetic eyes.
He was an older man, and Kat couldn’t help imagining he had been doing this job for most of his life.
“If it makes you feel any better,” he said, “you may have saved these babies’ lives by buying them.
Might not have been particularly lucrative, but I saw the way you were loving on them earlier.
The chances they would have gone to someone who cared about them that much were slim.
Your ranch hand there saved them from serious illness, and you’ll get more experience over time.
Don’t feel bad about this little incident. ”
“Thanks,” she said, although she couldn’t promise him she wouldn’t let it get to her. Cole had been right, and he’d made her feel stupid and useless. It wasn’t like her to lose confidence this easily, but he had a way of getting under her skin.
On her way back to the trailer to log the cost, Cole confronted her. “That was irresponsible at best, dangerous at worst. You’re lucky it was only shipping fever.”
“Well, I’ll learn from it and move on then,” she said, not even a little willing to admit how bad she felt. That was probably a mistake, though, because it only seemed to make Cole madder.
He narrowed his blue eyes at her. “You’re lucky you haven’t already bought much livestock. If it had been another illness and you hadn’t isolated them, you could have endangered your entire ranch. The cost aside—”
“So I made a mistake,” she interrupted. “I’m still learning. The vet said—”
“The vet probably just wanted to ease your guilt, OK? The truth is harsher, and I guess I’ll have to be the one to break it to you. The way you act without thinking is dangerous. You got lucky this time, but you may not be so lucky again. Be more careful.”
He was right. She knew he was, even though his delivery needed some work.
But she just couldn’t drop her pride long enough to admit it.
“No one asked you to be the great truth-teller here!” she snapped back at him.
“I am the owner and operator of this ranch. When I want your opinion, I’ll ask you for it. ”
She stormed off before he could formulate a response, and that night, he went home without saying goodbye like he usually did.
Kat felt terrible for having exploded the way she did.
A good boss could keep her temper, and she knew it.
She spent the rest of that night lying awake, thinking about him, picturing his blue eyes piercing through her.
The last thing she wanted to think about was him, but her brain had other ideas.
Even after she fell asleep, the only thing she could dream about was him.