Part 4
Frost had soaked Caleb’s socks by the time there was enough light to leave the porch.
He went down with the hook, counted the ewes, then started over because he didn’t trust the first total. He checked the lambs separately.
All there.
At the mouth of the draw, hooves had broken the frost across a broad patch of ground. The split-pad tracks led away in bounds so long Caleb couldn’t match them with his stride. Gray hair clung to the lowest fence wire.
Mamama stood facing the draw. Between her and the sheep, June waited without moving, the bell quiet against her halter.
Caleb stopped when he saw the scrape along the gray jenny’s shoulder. Blood had dried in her coat, but the wound was shallow.
He laid his palm below it and felt along the edges.
“You had quite a night.”
Mamama turned an ear back toward him. When he bent closer, she breathed into the opening of his coat.
June finally moved. The bell gave a low knock, and Mamama left Caleb’s hand to follow it.
The lamb trucks arrived the next Monday. Caleb shipped twenty-four fewer head than he should have, but the check paid the fall installment and left enough for hay and propane.
He put the bank receipt in the kitchen drawer and went out to feed.
By Thanksgiving, the flock moved with the bell. By Christmas, the sheep lay around the donkeys at night, close enough that Caleb sometimes had trouble picking out the gray jenny among their pale backs.
Mamama rested on her feet in the middle of them. Her ears kept moving.
Twice in January, new snow showed Caleb the notched coyote track descending the draw. Both sets turned away before reaching the flock.
On quiet afternoons, he began walking the fence with his eyes closed. He kept a glove against the top wire and counted posts from the yard gate to the creek crossing.
Two hundred twelve.
He practiced until he could tell where the ground dipped before his foot reached it. At the creek, he listened for water running beneath the ice. One old ewe had a cough he could recognize from the house.
June’s bell taught him other things. A scattered knock meant grazing. A regular beat meant she was walking. When she stood still, he waited for the small sound of her lowering or lifting her head.
Sometimes he caught himself looking at the pasture after he had already located her by ear.
Edith came in the middle of January to work on Mamama’s teeth. Caleb was coming up the fence when her truck arrived, counting under his breath, eyes shut.
He opened them at the gate. She stood beside the cab with her equipment.
“Barn?” she asked.
He nodded and went to bring in the jennies.
Afterward, Edith rested her arms on the corral rail. Out in the snow, the sheep had begun gathering around June again.
“Russell’s trapper has killed nine coyotes up there since Christmas,” she said.
“He’ll be pleased.”
“For now. Those resident coyotes had a territory. Remove them and you leave room for young ones that haven’t learned where not to hunt. He’ll have twice as many trying him by lambing.”
Caleb watched Mamama turn toward a ewe moving past her.
“That bad-footed one of yours knows the cost of coming down here,” Edith added. “I’d rather have that lesson holding a boundary than nine carcasses.”
The gray jenny settled beside June. A lamb from the previous season nosed at her leg, and she shifted to let it pass.
“I haven’t seen a better guard,” Edith said. “And I doubt she can see the ground she’s standing on.”
“She knows where to put her feet.”
Edith turned toward him. Caleb kept his face up.
“How long are you going to keep this from people?”
“Until winter’s over.”
She picked up her equipment and carried it to the truck.
In February, wind drove loose snow off the high country for two days. At noon, Caleb could barely make out his own boots. Fence and sky disappeared into the same moving whiteness.
He stood at the yard gate and waited until he heard the bell.
Following it, he found the flock tucked into the willows beneath the creek bank. He worked through them, counting by touch where he needed to, until he had accounted for every ewe.
In March, the bank called.
The young loan officer explained that renewal in May would depend on Caleb’s lambing figures. Then he paused long enough for Caleb to hear papers being moved.
“Russell Danner came in. There may be an opportunity to reduce your debt through a sale of the creek parcel.”
“There won’t be a sale.”
“We have to consider whether you’ve addressed the losses. Two donkeys don’t constitute a predator-control plan.”
“You’ll have the lambing figures in May.”
Caleb hung up before the man could return to the creek ground.
A week later, Russell’s pickup idled by the mailbox when Caleb came down for the mail.
“Bank get hold of you?” Russell asked.
“You made sure they did.”
Russell looked directly at him. “Somebody has to take an interest in Basilio’s place.”
“His name isn’t on the deed anymore.”
“Then give me a reason to believe yours belongs there.”
Russell drove off. Caleb took the envelopes from the box and shut its little metal door.
The first lamb arrived April fifteenth.
Caleb used the creek pasture, as Basilio had. He checked the ewes from the first light he could work in until the sun slipped away. After dark, he left the bedroom window cracked and listened.
The ewes began choosing places close to Mamama to give birth. She stood near the wet newborns while they gathered their legs beneath them. June moved among the flock, the bell knocking softly as she grazed.
Each morning, Caleb counted. Each morning, the figures agreed with his book.
By April twenty-third, he had two hundred six live lambs and no losses.
Edith had warned him that the coyotes would have pups now. They would need food. Some nights he heard rifle shots from Russell’s place, two or three close together. Once, he counted seven.
There was no moon that night. Caleb had been asleep for hours when Mamama’s voice brought him upright in bed a little after two.
She kept braying. June’s bell hammered beneath the sound.
Then a ewe began calling from the creek…
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