Part 2
Emilio called the veterinarian.
Rosa arrived before sunset, after the clinic took over her earlier emergency. By then the bull had regained his feet, but his gums were nearly white, and his breathing remained shallow.
“This isn’t a load we ask birds to handle,” Rosa said after examining him. “He’s anemic, dehydrated, and weaker than he looked at the barn.”
She administered an approved treatment, drew blood, collected additional tick samples, and gave Emilio strict isolation instructions until the species identification and laboratory results came back. The bull would need monitoring through the night, supportive care, and another examination in the morning.
Rosa closed her medical case. “Caracaras are opportunists. One may take ticks when it finds them. That doesn’t make a flock a treatment plan.”
Emilio looked toward the mesquite. The bird was gone.
Linda set up a chair outside the pen and brought him a thermos. He sat through the night beneath the yellow barn light, recording the bull’s breathing, water intake, and attempts to eat. David took the hours between midnight and three without being asked.
Shortly before dawn, Emilio found him checking the water tub.
“You were right,” Emilio said.
David kept his attention on the bull. “About which part?”
“Calling Rosa.”
“That’s not the part we keep fighting about.”
Emilio waited.
David set down the bucket. “I have a job offer in Corpus Christi. Maintenance supervisor at a shipping yard. Benefits, steady hours, and nobody gets to spend my paycheck before asking me.”
The bull shifted in the hay.
“When do they need an answer?” Emilio asked.
“Friday.”
“You were going to tell us when?”
“When you were ready to hear something you hadn’t already decided.”
David went inside, leaving Emilio beside the pen.
At breakfast, Linda placed three plates on the table, though David had not returned from the shower. She sat across from Emilio and folded her hands over the old ranch ledger.
“You taught him to pull a calf, rebuild a pump, judge a pasture, and stretch feed through a dry summer,” she said. “Then you treat him like hired help whenever he disagrees with you.”
“He’s my son.”
“He’s a grown man who has worked here six years for less than that shipping yard is offering.”
“The ranch can’t pay him more.”
“He isn’t asking only for money.”
Emilio stared at Agustín’s ledger. His grandfather’s writing filled the pages in a cramped mixture of Spanish and English: rainfall, mineral purchases, calves lost, fences repaired. Nothing important had been trusted to memory alone.
Linda opened to a page from 1978. Beside the date was a charge from a veterinarian in Beeville.
“He called for help too,” she said.
Emilio remembered more of that long-ago summer. He remembered following Agustín into a squeeze chute while a veterinarian treated a pale heifer. His grandfather had held the halter steady and kept his eyes on the cow until she was safe.
The birds had been one part of the work. They had never been all of it.
By late morning, the bull was eating. Rosa returned after lunch and found him stronger. The preliminary blood work showed severe anemia but no evidence of an active tick-borne infection.
Two days later, the state identification confirmed that none of the submitted specimens were cattle fever ticks. The isolation restrictions could eventually be eased, but only after Rosa was satisfied that treatment had worked and no fresh infestation threatened the herd.
She helped David design a practical monitoring plan: regular inspections, treatment thresholds, pasture rotation where useful, and targeted veterinary care rather than automatic treatment or stubborn refusal. Wildlife could assist around the edges. It could not carry responsibility for eighty cows.
Emilio listened without correcting either of them.
That afternoon, he took the ranch account binder from the desk and placed it in front of David.
“What is this?” David asked.
“What should’ve existed before I brought that bull home.”
Inside was a written division of responsibilities. David would control herd-health decisions and routine livestock purchases. Larger expenses would require two signatures. Linda would continue managing the books, but neither man could move money from an agreed project without consulting the other two.
At the back was the date of an appointment with the family’s attorney to discuss transferring a share of the operation to David.
David read the pages twice. “You put this together today?”
“Rosa made me sit still long enough to use the phone.”
“This doesn’t fix six years.”
“No.”
“And I haven’t turned down the job.”
“I know.”
Emilio resisted the urge to explain further. David had asked for authority, not another apology.
On Friday afternoon, David found him repairing a float valve beside the holding pen.
“I called Corpus,” he said. “I turned them down.”
Emilio set the wrench on the rail.
“I’m giving this one season,” David continued. “I’m not promising the rest of my life.”
“All right.”
“And the next time you spend pump money on a bull, I get to sell your truck.”
Emilio looked at him, uncertain whether he was allowed to smile yet. David picked up the wrench and handed it back.
Over the next six weeks, the bull’s coat regained its shine. He filled out across his hips and began striking the gate with one horn whenever the feed bucket appeared. Rosa cleared him from isolation after follow-up examinations showed that the infestation was controlled and his blood values were improving.
The caracaras returned too, although never in the army Emilio had imagined. Sometimes one walked behind the bull, hunting insects disturbed by his hooves. Twice Emilio saw a bird pull a remaining tick from his neck. More often, they simply watched from the fence posts.
On a September morning, Blake Hadley stopped his truck beside the south pasture.
The bull stood among the grass with three caracaras spaced along the fence behind him. Most of the visible ticks were gone.
Blake stared for a while, then turned to Emilio.
“Tell me those birds cured him…”
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