Part 3
“Just under six hundred gallons,” Nora said. “I’ll check both gauges again. We’ll need a delivery tonight.”
Eli wrote the number down. Nora turned off the struggling pump and called the well contractor, who told her to leave it off until he could come. Then she phoned Mae and asked about hauling water.
Eli stood beside her through two refusals and an offer of a small trailer tank that would help but would not be enough. When Mae said Grant had the equipment they needed, Nora asked for his number even though it was already in her phone.
He answered from a machinery shed. She could hear someone trying an engine behind him.
“The well quit,” she said. “I’ve called around. Can you haul water tonight?”
“How much room in your storage?”
She told him. He asked about the access lane and said he could arrive before supper.
“I need to know the charge.”
“Fuel and my time. We’ll work it out.”
Her throat tightened at the words she used on Eli. Grant waited while she calculated what she could afford this week, then agreed to that amount without asking her to explain it.
At the viewing gate, Eli had started dividing the remaining water by the number of animals. Ruth stood well back from the fence, watching Sixteen turn in the hollow. Nora put a hand on her son’s shoulder.
“You can watch with Ruth for a while. I’m handling the water.”
“I can keep checking.”
“I know. You’ve checked it enough for today.”
He hesitated, then passed her the notebook. She tucked it into the truck instead of carrying it down to the tank.
Grant backed the tanker into the service lane before dusk. Nora guided him toward the storage inlet, staying in his mirror, and helped connect the hose after he parked. When water began moving, she put both hands on the ladder and rested her forehead against a rung.
He pretended to examine a fitting until she stepped back. Then he asked where the cow was.
Sixteen had settled in the hollow. From the outer lane, with binoculars, they could see pieces of the birth between her body and the grass. Ruth watched without entering the enclosure, and Nora answered Eli’s occasional questions with what she could actually see.
The calf arrived in a wet copper-colored heap. Sixteen turned at once and began licking it, her broad tongue lifting its head sideways. Eli leaned forward, then caught himself and stayed behind the marked viewing line.
“Is it supposed to be that small?”
“For a calf, that’s a fair size,” Ruth said.
“Compared to her.”
“Most things look small next to her.”
The calf tried to gather its legs and rolled against its mother’s muzzle. Nora watched it attempt the same impossible arrangement again. Behind her, the meter on the tanker clicked while water ran into the storage tank.
When the calf finally stood, Eli reached for a pencil that was no longer in his hand. He patted his pockets, looked toward the truck, and then let his arms fall. Sixteen shifted to let the calf search beneath her belly.
Grant watched it begin nursing. He took off his cap, smoothed the flattened hair beneath it, and put it on again. Nora had seen him do that at Ben’s graveside when he could not manage the sentence he had come to say.
“Thank you for coming,” she told him.
“Keep the lane open. You’ll need more before this is fixed.”
The contractor found that the well’s yield had dropped beyond what the repaired system could reliably supply. Temporary changes restored a limited flow, but hauling would have to continue while Nora arranged a better source. She entered the recurring cost beside the estimate she had carried since the auction.
More calves arrived over the following weeks. Most thrived; one was stillborn. Nora watched a cow remain near that small body long after the others moved toward water, and waited for Ruth’s guidance before approaching with the handling crew. Later, she wrote the loss in the herd record without finding a gentler name for it.
Maren brought the completed report in June. Several older bison matched individuals sampled during the Broken Diamond project, and many younger animals were their descendants. The group retained family lines poorly represented in the partnership’s herds, although some animals had different ancestry.
At the kitchen table, Maren laid a placement sheet beside the genetic chart. Two established herds could take small groups of selected calves after weaning, with complete records and plans for later breeding exchanges. Nora followed the lines from familiar tag numbers to ranch names she had never heard.
“Their mothers stay?”
“We’ll keep the cow groups as steady as we can. You’ll need exchanges here, too. A herd this small can’t stay closed forever.”
Nora turned back to the chart. “Does any of this explain how they got through the winter?”
“The test can’t tell us that. I’d need your grazing notes and feed records before I even started asking.”
The partnership could arrange advance deposits on the calves and pay a modest amount for maintaining a documented breeding group. Both depended on inspection and a reliable water supply. Maren put Nora’s hauling bill beside the proposal.
“I can help with placements,” she said. “I can’t pay for a ranch that needs a tanker every week.”
Through July, Nora fitted survey work around the water deliveries. She came home with seeds in her socks and enough pay to cover another load. The conservation district wanted her for two days a week through the coming year, including winter mapping, if she could commit to the schedule.
She told Eli when she would be late. Sometimes he was angry anyway, especially when a promised supper became reheated food at nine.
In August, Grant brought a written offer. He would buy most of the deeded ranch and the entire herd, leaving Nora the house and a smaller home parcel without a mortgage. There would be a salary for her to manage the bison and enough money to put the water system right.
She read the pages at the kitchen table while he waited. When she reached the provision covering future offspring, she took Maren’s placement sheet from the drawer.
“Could these still go ahead? The two groups this fall?”
Grant read the sheet. “I’d keep this year’s calves. Probably next year’s, too. Build the numbers before we start selling breeding stock.”
“We could put those first placements in your agreement.”
“Then we’d be changing what I’m buying.” He set the sheet down. “You’d have a say in the work, Nora. But I won’t pay for the herd and let a committee commit the offspring.”
“Even with all the records going with them?”
“Of course I’d send records when I sold animals.” He leaned forward. “I watched this fall apart once. My father kept making promises because he liked the people asking. Then he couldn’t pay for the hay.”
“You think I’d do the same.”
Grant glanced at the water invoices beneath her elbow. He did not need to answer.
There were things in the offer she wanted badly enough to feel ashamed of wanting them: a paycheck, a tank she could stop checking, the possibility of replacing Eli’s winter coat before his wrists showed. Grant had priced the herd generously. He would keep the animals together, and his facilities were better than hers.
Nora looked at the tag numbers on Maren’s sheet. All winter she had wanted every animal where she could count it. Now she pictured one of the copper calves lifting its head from the grass on a ranch she had never seen.
She asked for time. He gave her until the end of the month, when he needed to finalize his own winter arrangements.
That evening, she spread his offer beside Maren’s proposal and her estimate of survey income. Eli came to the table carrying a permission form for the robotics team’s fall trip. Nora moved a bill to make room for it.
“We might have a way to keep things running ourselves,” she said. “It would still take a lot of work.”
He looked at the columns. “More than now?”
“Different work. Some of it. I don’t know.” She tapped the page where she had calculated what selling calves might bring. “Your dad always thought this place could—”
Eli put the permission form down. His finger stayed on its corner, flattening a crease. “If I say keep the ranch,” he asked, “is it my fault if we run out of money?”
To read the rest of the story – CLICK the NEXT button 👇👇👇