Part 4
Agustín’s recovery did not proceed in the clean upward line Emilio wanted to imagine. On good mornings, the bull finished his feed, walked the length of the quarantine trap, and stood at the fence while caracaras searched the ground around him. On bad mornings, he ate half, lay under the mesquite, and watched the world through dull eyes. His red-cell count rose slowly. Hair began to grow over the rubbed places, but the torn skin beneath his tail took weeks to heal.
Ana came every three days at first, then twice a week. She and Emilio counted ticks on the same marked areas, recorded gum color and appetite, and weighed Agustín on borrowed portable scales. Visits by caracaras became another column beside rainfall, weight, and the marked-area counts.
Some days six birds visited. Some days none did. After rain, they spent more time stalking grasshoppers than sitting on cattle.
The inconsistency bothered Emilio until he found Agustín surrounded by four birds on a morning when their chart showed almost no exposed ticks. The caracaras walked past him and hunted beetles in a mat of hay. They had never signed the agreement Emilio had written for them in his head.
One Sunday, Ana found him at the kitchen table with Agustín’s chart beside a black oilcloth notebook. The older pages held Agustín Garza’s narrow Spanish handwriting: rainfall, pasture moves, cattle lost, calves born, birds seen. Emilio’s grandfather had noted caracaras on particular cows, but he had also written about salt, fever, flies, drought, and the weeks when the birds did not come.
“He counted more than I remembered,” Emilio said.
Ana washed her hands at the sink. “People usually do. Then the story gets shorter every time it’s told.”
He knew she was speaking about more than his grandfather. He closed the notebook without arguing.
By the sixth week, Agustín had gained eighty-seven pounds. His coat lay flatter, and the skin over his ribs no longer looked pulled tight. When Blake Hadley came to retrieve his scales, he stood at the outer fence for a long while.
“That can’t be the same bull.”
“Tag says twenty-three.”
“I can read.” Blake watched a caracara drop into the grass, miss something, and run three comical steps after it. “How much of this was the birds?”
“Less than I wanted. More than Ana expected.”
From behind them, Ana said, “That is not my clinical summary.”
Blake removed his hat. “Doctor.”
“Blake.”
He had known her since she was a child carrying feed buckets at the auction. His teasing ended whenever she wore her clinic shirt. “Is the bull sound?”
“Sound enough to walk, eat, and continue recovering. That isn’t the same as ready to breed.”
Emilio had scheduled the breeding soundness exam for that afternoon. Ana asked her colleague, Dr. Martin Keene, to perform it so that whatever answer they received would not become another quarrel about whether she was protecting an animal or judging her father.
Agustín handled the chute calmly. The examination did not hurt him, but it exhausted him. Afterward, Dr. Keene stood outside the quarantine line and stripped off his gloves.
“I would defer him,” he said. “His condition has improved, but the sample quality is poor. Severe illness can suppress fertility. Give him eight to twelve more weeks and test again.”
“Could he settle cows now?” Emilio asked.
“Possibly. That is not the answer you need.”
“The answer I need is whether he can work.”
Dr. Keene glanced at Ana, then back at Emilio. “The answer you need is whether turning him out now is fair to your cows, your breeding season, or him. I can’t clear him.”
Agustín stood in the catch pen, nosing the last cubes from a tub. He looked stronger than he had at the auction. That made the refusal harder for Emilio to accept, not easier.
Blake waited until Dr. Keene left. “I have a clean two-year-old that passed last month. I can lease him for your turnout. Six weeks, maybe eight.”
Emilio felt the old laughter between them. “I didn’t ask for charity.”
“Good, because I didn’t offer it. You can rebuild the west boundary fence on my leased place this winter. I’ve seen your corners. Mine are embarrassing.”
“I have a bull.”
“You have a patient,” Ana said.
Emilio turned on her. “You think I don’t see that?”
“I think you see whatever lets him become the bargain everybody else missed.” Her face had gone still, which was worse than anger. “You bought him to breed cows. Then you bought him again with treatment, feed, and Mora’s blood. Stop asking his body to make the purchase come out right.”
Blake stared down at his hat. Linda, who had joined them with three glasses of iced tea, set the tray on a fence post without offering any.
“We turn bulls out in twelve days,” she said. “If we miss this cycle, next year’s calves come late and light. The bank will not accept a story about birds in place of a payment.”
Emilio looked across the double fence. Agustín lifted his head at the sound of the herd beyond the rise. He answered a distant cow with a low, resonant call, more strength in it than he had possessed six weeks earlier.
For the first time since the auction, the choice in front of Emilio had nothing to do with whether the bull would live. It was whether Emilio could let him live without demanding repayment…
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