Part 2
Ben raised a hand, keeping Walt behind the panel. The cow pulled her forelegs in again, found purchase, and heaved her hindquarters upward. She stood with her legs wide and her head hanging, but she stayed up. Walt lowered the light; in his hands it had begun to shake.
Later, when she drank, he told Ben he was calling her Hope. Ben checked her before leaving and warned him that standing was the beginning of recovery, not the end of it. Walt kept her where he could watch her until she was strong enough to rejoin the grazing group.
She put weight back on slowly. On the better days she moved out ahead of the others, swinging her heavy head through a shallow drift and scraping with her hooves until brown grass showed beneath the broken crust. The herd spread behind her. Walt watched from the fence and began looking differently at the slopes he’d thought were buried for good.
Then his hay supplier called to cancel a delivery.
A company connected to Willow County Bank had bought the available stock. The next large supplier told him the same thing. By afternoon, Walt had worked through his list with a pencil, crossing out names until the few remaining sellers could ask almost whatever they pleased.
The bank’s mortgage notice came in the same week’s mail. He laid it beside the hay figures and moved his pencil from one amount to the other. Paying on the land would take money the herd needed to eat; feeding the herd could put the land itself in danger. He checked the figures again, although no number had changed.
Pritchard drove out before Walt found an answer. He stepped around a frozen rut and carried a folder into the barn, where Walt was cutting twine off a bale. The banker waited until the loose hay stopped falling before setting out his proposal.
“We can buy the place. Clear the mortgage. Take the animals off your hands.”
Walt wiped his fingers before touching the paper. The amount was well below what the property ought to bring, even with its tired fences and machinery. He read to the bottom, looking for something he’d missed.
“You’d want me out.”
“You’d be free of the expense.” Pritchard glanced toward the stack. “You know what another winter like this would cost. So do I.”
Walt did know. Pritchard had the advantage of saying it with a full hay supply somewhere behind him. Walt looked through the barn doorway toward the shared boundary, where the bank’s seized ranch stretched beyond his own.
Separate, his farm was an awkward edge on their project. Joined to the larger property, it would give the development a single unbroken tract. Pritchard hadn’t come to look at the bison. He hadn’t even asked whether the cow from the auction had lived.
“Leave a copy,” Walt said.
“I can have the signatures handled today.”
“I’m not signing.” Walt gave the folder back. Pritchard held it open a moment longer, then closed it against his coat.
After the car left, Walt pulled on his boots and walked the unused pasture. He dug through the snow with his heel, examining the standing native grass he’d left from the previous season. There was forage on the rested sections and on the sheltered slopes. He needed to use it without letting forty-three hungry animals grind one patch down to dirt.
He repaired the dividing fences and moved the groups through short grazing turns. Hope often went first when a gate opened, finding thinner snow and working her muzzle through it; the others followed into the exposed feed and settled into the sheltered draws. Walt watched what they actually ate, then checked the ground after moving them on.
The grass wouldn’t grow back in frozen soil. Leaving enough standing material and protecting the plants mattered for spring, while fresh sections kept the herd from exhausting a single pasture now. Ben helped him judge condition, and Walt kept supplementing where the grazing fell short. Slowly, his hay purchases came down enough to keep the mortgage paid.
He still worked the water and the fences every day. Some neighbors said he was stretching out a failure, but by the end of winter the animals moved with a steadiness missing at the auction. As their condition improved, the hollows filled. One old animal died of natural causes despite their care. Walt marked the loss in his book without changing the original count above it.
Forty-two had made it through.
On Ben’s spring visit, bison that had once struggled along the loading alley broke into a run across the pasture. The veterinarian stood watching longer than usual before they started the examinations. Afterward, he turned the pages of his notes back to check his total.
“At least nineteen pregnant,” he said.
Walt looked out toward the cows. He’d been counting mouths since the day he bought them; now there were mouths he hadn’t yet seen. He needed the pregnancies to go well, and he needed enough feed for what came after them.
As Hope began shedding, he noticed a patch on her hip that didn’t match the surrounding hide. From outside the fence, he waited for her to turn. Three points rose from a curved base, an old brand uncovered beneath the loosening winter coat.
He called Ben over, then spent the rest of the afternoon studying the others as they passed. Another cow carried the same shape. Farther down the fence, he found it again.
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