Читать книгу Committed to the Baby онлайн | страница 50
“What’s that about?” she asked, watching the dogs race each other to the water tank kept as a sort of swimming pool for herd dogs.
“Mike’s got a cow and her calf in there. Probably didn’t want the dogs getting too close,” Justice told her, walking through the barn to the last stall on the right. There he leaned one arm on the top of the wood partition, clearly to take some weight off his leg, and watched as an older man expertly ran his hands up and down a nearly three-month-old calf’s foreleg.
“How’s he doing?”
“Better,” Mike said, without looking up. “Swelling’s down, so he and his mama can go back out to pasture tomorrow.” Then he did lift his gaze and smiled when he spotted Maggie. “Well, now, you’re a sight for sore eyes. Good to see you back home, Maggie.”
“Thanks, Mike.” She’d gotten more of a welcome from the cowboys and hired hands than she had from her own husband, she thought wryly. “So what happened to this little guy?”
Maggie wandered into the stall, keeping one wary eye on the calf’s mother, then sank to one knee beside the smaller animal. He was, like most of Justice’s herd, Black Angus. His black hide was the color of the shadows filling the barn, and his big brown eyes watched her with interest.
“Not sure, really,” Mike said. “One of the boys saw the little guy limping out on the range, so he brought them in. But whatever was wrong, looks like it’s all right now.”
The calf wasn’t small anymore. He was about six months old and wearing the King Ranch brand on his flank. He was well on his way to being the size of his father, which would put him, full grown, at about eleven hundred pounds. But the way he cuddled up to his mother, looking for food and comfort, made him seem like little more than an overlarge puppy.
The mingled aromas of hay and leather and cow mingled together in the vast barn and somehow made a soothing sort of scent. Maggie never would have believed she was capable of thinking that, since before meeting and marrying Justice, she had been a devout city girl. She’d once thought that there was nothing lovelier than a crowded shopping mall with a good-size latte stand. She had never liked the outdoors as a kid and had considered staying in a motel as close to camping as she ever wanted to get.