Part 5
Orville called on Thursday with the private offering invitation in front of him.
It had gone to a man he’d known for forty years. Ten buyers were invited to Kincaid’s on Saturday. There would be no catalog. Russell was trying to sell Ash before the questions about him hardened into a written record nobody could remove.
“I can’t buy him,” I said.
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“I couldn’t buy him if I sold this place.”
Orville let me explain the rest anyway. I told him I had no job, no standing with those men, and no reason to think Russell would let me within a hundred feet of the pens. By the time I stopped, I’d made a thorough case for staying home.
“Ash learned to expect trouble from people,” Orville said. “That doesn’t make him the trouble.”
I listened to a chair creak at his end of the line.
“Somebody gets to decide where he goes next,” he said. “You know more than they do. Be there.”
Saturday morning, I pressed my good shirt beneath a towel because the iron had started leaving marks. I cleaned my boots, put Orville’s envelope beside my own records, and laid the whole packet on the passenger seat.
The pickup made its usual complaint starting in the cold. I let it warm while I checked that the photograph was still inside.
Russell saw me before I reached the gate.
“Dean. Keep her away from the stock.”
He said it across the yard, where the buyers could hear. Several turned to look at me. I stood with my envelope against my coat until Dean stopped in front of me.
“I’m here to speak to the veterinarian,” I said.
“You heard him.”
“Who’s examining the offering?”
A woman beside the working alley looked up. She was carrying a small case and wearing clean coveralls over her clothes.
“I am,” she said. “Helen Duarte.”
She practiced out of Lanton and had been hired by two buyers, not by Russell. I didn’t know that until later. At the time, I only knew she had stopped to hear me.
“This concerns the bull’s identification and his handling history.”
I gave her the envelope.
She took the papers out where she stood. The buyers had gone quiet enough that I could hear the edges catching in the breeze. She looked first at the photograph, then compared the numbers on my treatment notes with Orville’s old registration copies. His signed statement was clipped to the veterinary record documenting the injury.
Russell came closer.
“We’ve already discussed her account.”
Helen didn’t look up. “I’m reading the records.”
She took about six minutes. I watched her thumb hold down the photograph while she checked the ear notation again.
Then she opened her case and took out a scanner.
Orville’s papers noted an old subcutaneous management chip implanted during Veylan’s recordkeeping program. It wasn’t something most outfits still used, but the identifier was there, separate from a lost tag or a changed sale name.
Helen went down the alley and scanned Ash from the protected side of the barrier. She checked her screen, returned to us, and laid one finger on the old registration sheet.
“The identifier matches.”
Wade Ellison set his cup down, missed the saucer’s center, and caught it before it tipped. He adjusted it with both hands.
Then he asked Russell why an animal with an established identity and a documented early handling history had reached the production sale under a new name, with years of ownership left unexplained.
Russell said he had bought the papers supplied at the sale.
“Then we need the rest of them,” Wade said.
Helen looked at him, then at Russell.
“My clients were told the recent incident involved unpredictable behavior. You have cameras covering these pens?”
Russell had installed them for liability. He couldn’t reasonably deny they existed with the equipment mounted above the alley in plain sight.
We went to the office to watch the recording.
I stayed near the door while Russell brought it up. The buyers gathered around the screen. Dean stood where he could see over their shoulders.
The footage showed me checking the auxiliary gate. A little later, it showed me speaking to Dean and pointing back toward it. His head never turned far enough to see what I was showing him.
When the morning light reached the latch, the unseated bolt was plain. Nobody had to take my word for how it had been left.
Helen asked Russell to continue.
On the screen, the gate opened under Ash’s shoulder. The two hands climbed out. The truck moved. In a corner of the picture, the red sorting stick rose over the rail four separate times after I had begun shouting for it to be lowered.
Dean stepped back from the desk.
Nobody asked him whether I had arranged the accident. He didn’t offer the suggestion again.
We watched me enter the pen. I had never seen it from outside, and I had to put a hand against the doorframe. There was so little space. I hadn’t remembered how little.
When the recording ended, Russell reached for the mouse, but Wade spoke before he could close it.
“Leave that available for the veterinarian.”
We returned to the yard. The cold felt cleaner after the crowded office. I could hear Ash pulling hay from the rack beyond the alley.
Wade stopped beside the coffee table. He spoke to the other nine buyers as much as to Russell.
“I’m not bidding yet. I don’t think any of us should. Ms. Bennett needs to assess how this animal can be handled, and we need to hear her findings first…”
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