The auctioneer wanted twelve hundred dollars for the entire pen. Walt Harlan counted the bison again, following the fence with one finger so he wouldn’t count the same animal twice. Forty-three. A cow near the loading alley shifted her weight, and the hide along her flank settled into hollows where muscle ought to have been.
“Anybody?” the auctioneer said.
Dale Pritchard laughed behind Walt. The president of Willow County Bank, the county’s largest lender, had come in a clean wool coat, broad shoulders filling the space between two ranchers who stepped aside for him. His bank had foreclosed on the big ranch outside town. Now it wanted the livestock cleared out so the property could go into a development deal.
“Look at their ribs, Walt. You’re spending what you’ve got left on carcasses.”
One of the ranchers said they might last a few weeks. Walt watched the cow turn toward a loose piece of hay blowing along the fence; she followed it with an attention her body barely supported. The animals were breathing without the heaving he’d feared. Even the weakest kept adjusting their feet when the others moved close.
He had spent more than fifty years raising livestock on the South Dakota prairie. He knew how little a man could learn by looking across a pen, and he knew the difference between seeing a thin animal and deciding why it was thin. These looked empty: empty bellies, dry mouths, nothing left to spend on moving. He wanted a veterinarian’s judgment before they traveled.
But the auctioneer was looking toward the next lot.
“Twelve hundred,” Walt said.
There was no second bid. At the folding table, Simon Lee, a bank employee with a bent pen clip, counted the transfer pages before sliding them over. Walt read the herd description, paid the full amount, and waited while Simon fastened his receipt to the completed sale papers.
“Keep those together,” Simon said. “That’s the whole lot.”
Walt put the packet inside his coat and called Dr. Ben Avery from beside the empty sale ring. Ben arrived before loading began and examined the weakest animals in the handling pens. Watching him work, Walt felt the familiar discomfort of having already made a decision whose cost somebody else was about to explain.
“Severely underfed. Dehydrated, too,” Ben told him. “Most have a chance. A chance, Walt. We’ll have to bring them along carefully.”
“How soon can they move?”
Ben worked through that with him, animal by animal. Walt called Earl Mercer, who had a livestock trailer and knew which haulers could manage bison without rushing them. The loads went out in stages. At the gate, Pritchard called after Walt that the first heavy snow would finish the herd, and the feed bills would finish his farm.
Walt looked toward the hills he would be taking the animals home to. His place was small by Willow County standards, with worn equipment and a mortgage still attached to it. He had bought the animals because he believed they could recover. That belief had to become water, feed, and fences before it could become anything worth selling.
He reinforced the holding pens before the first load came home. In the days afterward he repaired the pasture fences, set new troughs, and arranged smaller groups so the stronger animals couldn’t crowd the weakest away from food. Those needing close attention stayed in the sheltered pens beside the barn. Ben left a care plan and came back when Walt called.
The bills went into an old feed envelope on the kitchen table. Hauling took more than Walt expected; medicine and fencing took the money he’d intended to leave untouched. He still had to buy hay. Some nights he ate standing at the counter because sitting down made it harder to get up again.
His wife Ruth’s pickup still stood in the shed with the good tires she’d insisted on buying. He had kept it running in the years since her death, though he drove it less now. When he went out for supplies, the passenger side stayed clear. Back home, he parked it under cover before going straight to the pens.
At first, improvement meant a bison reaching the trough without stopping. Later, it meant an animal finishing its feed and looking for more. Walt learned the older cow by the way she waited at the edge of a group, then approached after the shoulders and horns had cleared a little space. He made certain there was still something for her.
The early snow took the pasture out of sight. More followed before the first fall had settled, and Walt began counting bales every evening. He wrote the remaining number on the barn wall, then did the division again indoors, where his fingers worked better. The answer depended on whether he could get another delivery up the road.
For days, the road nearly disappeared. Snow pressed against old stretches of fence, and he went out after midnight with tools on the tractor to strengthen the places he didn’t trust. He checked the water on his way back. By then the herd knew the tractor’s approach and raised their heavy heads before his light reached them.
One bitter night, the older cow did not raise hers.
She lay beyond the sheltered pen’s windbreak with snow gathering along her back. Walt called Ben before doing anything else, then opened the service side so the veterinarian could reach her without pushing through the herd. When Ben arrived, her eyes followed him weakly. Her head sank down again before he’d finished assessing her.
“I don’t know if she’ll make morning,” he said.
Walt held the light while Ben treated her. They kept the other bison back, made the footing around her less treacherous, and placed water and feed where she could reach them if she became alert enough. Ben showed Walt where to wait behind the protective panel. An animal that couldn’t stand now might move suddenly if she found the strength.
The cold worked through the soles of Walt’s boots. He changed his grip on the light, checked her breathing, and warmed the water again. Once she lifted her muzzle toward it, but the effort stopped there. Ben watched her and said very little.
By the first gray light, Walt could see the hollow above her hip without the lamp. Then her forelegs moved. She gathered them underneath her, pushed, and for an instant her chest cleared the snow. Walt began to straighten with her.
Her front hoof slipped. She fell back onto her side.
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