Part 3
The first reporter stepped over a feed hose and asked Walter to turn toward the light.
He stared at her microphone, then at the bucket in his hand.
“These cows don’t wait for interviews.”
It was Monday, and the visitors had begun arriving before he finished milking. Vehicles lined the gravel approach. Beyond them stood a news van with equipment rising from its roof. Someone near the gate called out the name of a morning television program.
Walter carried his bucket past them. Two people followed until Rachel came out of the house and put herself between them and the barn.
“He said no. Stay outside the gate.”
She had changed her flight. Her laptop now occupied one end of the kitchen table, and the telephone seemed to ring whenever she took her hand off it.
“No reality series,” Walter heard her say later. “No, you may not bring a camera crew into an occupied cattle pasture. I don’t care what release you use.”
Atlas had withdrawn to the far corner of the field. The cows drifted toward the water, but he stayed beside the distant fence, ears turning toward each new engine.
A helicopter passed overhead while Walter was trying to eat lunch. He put down his fork.
Rachel covered the telephone receiver. “This man has called since Friday. He says he’s a cattle investor.”
“What does he want?”
“To tell you himself.”
Victor Danziger spoke with the unhurried assurance of a man whose calls were usually answered. He was in Oklahoma, he said. He had seen the coverage and spoken with people who understood Atlas’s pedigree.
“I can put two million dollars into your account for the bull. We can finish the sale today.”
Walter looked at the worn place on the table where June had rolled pie dough.
Danziger kept talking. The bloodlines were valuable on their own. Combined with the reported abilities, they could anchor a breeding operation worth many times the purchase price.
“Take some time,” he said. “But you won’t find a cleaner offer.”
Walter wrote the figure on the back of a grocery list. When he hung up, Rachel looked at the paper without touching it.
Two million dollars would replace the roof and the tractor and every patched stretch of water line. It would pay for college for the grandchildren. It would leave no reason for his children to wonder whether he could afford help when he needed it.
He folded the list and slipped it into his shirt pocket.
Keene arrived that afternoon with university vehicles behind him. There was a mobile veterinary unit, equipment cases, and graduate students carrying forms and measuring tools. He met Walter at the gate, eager enough to begin that he almost forgot to introduce the purpose of each instrument.
“We can start establishing a cognitive baseline,” he said. “Simple assessments first. Nothing invasive.”
Walter opened the gate, then hesitated as the students gathered their things.
“There are quite a few of you.”
“We’ll keep an appropriate distance.”
But Atlas had already seen the group. He backed along the far fence until he could retreat no farther. His head rose; the loose skin beneath his throat quivered with each breath.
Rachel came up beside Walter.
“Look at his feet,” she said. “He keeps trying to move away.”
Keene stopped speaking. He glanced at the equipment in the students’ hands, then at the bull.
“This may help explain the earlier reports. Unfamiliar people and handling equipment could be associated with—”
Nora slammed her truck door behind them.
“Put the notebooks down and look at him.”
She had come from the rescue barn without changing her muddy clothes. Her voice carried farther than Walter had ever heard it.
“He was eating out of Walter’s hand. Now you’ve got him trapped against a fence.”
Atlas made a long, low call. Walter had heard him rumble to the cows, and heard him answer at feeding time. This was different. He took a step toward the field, then stopped when the bull flinched at a case being set on the ground.
“Pack it up,” Walter said.
Keene turned. “We can reduce the team. The scientific value—”
“You can discuss that somewhere else.”
The students went still.
“Everyone who doesn’t live here needs to leave. The university vehicles, the cameras, all of it.”
Keene’s mouth tightened. For a moment Walter thought he would argue. Then he looked across the field and began directing the students back toward the vehicles.
Clearing the driveway took nearly an hour. Rachel went from car to car, repeating that there would be no interviews. Walter closed the gate behind the last van and fastened the chain himself.
He waited beside the pasture without calling.
At first, Atlas stayed where he was. Then he moved along the fence, stopping whenever a sound came from the road. By the time he reached Walter, the skin along his shoulder was still trembling.
Walter rested his hand on the rail and let the bull approach it.
“I should’ve stopped them sooner.”
Atlas lowered his forehead to Walter’s chest. Walter rubbed the rough hair above his eyes and stood without moving until the trembling eased.
Rachel came out a little later. She waited several feet away.
“Danziger called back.”
Walter looked at her.
“Three million now.”
He felt the folded grocery list in his pocket. He took it out, opened it, and looked at the smaller number he had written there.
Rachel didn’t hurry him. Across the pasture, Mabel had begun walking back toward Atlas, tearing mouthfuls of grass as she came.
Walter folded the paper again.
“Tell him no.”
“Dad.” Rachel pressed her lips together. “I need to know you’ve thought about what that money could do.”
“I have.”
“For all of us.”
“I know.” He looked at the bull beside the fence. “He stays. There’s no price.”
Rachel held his gaze, then nodded. She went back to the house and made the call.
Walter remained by the fence while Atlas moved out to join the cows. When Rachel returned, she brought two chairs and set them near the gate…
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