“So now what?”

“You find any other ones?”

“No. But I only looked from the outside.”

“Let’s wander through the ladies and see what’s shaking. They’re all cold, so they probably ain’t gonna move a whole lot. And it’ll get them used to us, because we’re gonna be messing with their babies over the next few months. If they see us outside the tractor delivering feed, hopefully they’ll be less likely to charge us.”

Kyle followed Celia’s lead. She rarely approached a cow from the rear, always from the side or head-on. She touched them. Talked to them. Getting close enough to check udders and the back end, without spooking a single cow.

When she’d finished her check, she glanced up at the sky. “Damn low-pressure system. We’ll have another surprise birth before the night is over.” Celia nudged him with her shoulder. “Congrats, cattleman. We’re officially in calving season.”

“And you sound giddy about that.”

“I am. It’s a lot of work. A lot of fretting. A lot of lost sleep. But seeing those sweet baby faces? Seeing the mamas so protective of those babies? This is what ranchers live for. Defying the odds and delivering healthy calves.” She grinned at him. “We’ll stock up on strong coffee. And notebooks. Just because Marshall knew the ins and outs of his herd and didn’t feel the need to write anything down, doesn’t mean I’m gonna let you get away with that from the start.”

“Do Abe and Hank keep notebooks?”

“They keep records, but a lot of the info is in their heads, which didn’t help me when I was trying to sort through problems.”

Fascinated by his wife’s take on things, Kyle asked, “What kind of problems?”

Celia flipped her braid behind her back. “Not necessarily problems with the calves, but issues with the dam—otherwise known as the mama. Sometimes they’re just so mean after giving birth until the calf is weaned that it’s best to get rid of them. Summer stuff on the ranch means you get so busy that you’ll forget unless you can go back and look through the notes. It’ll especially become important if you increase the size of your herd.”

“What did you want to change at the Lawson ranch?”

“I wanted to keep a better eye on the sires, instead of just turning the bulls loose in the pasture and trying to figure out after the fact which bull sired which calf. They always said recording birth weights when we weren’t running purebreds was a waste of time, especially when they said they could see whether a calf was gaining weight. But I at least wanted to try it with a couple of the heifers and see if their calf weights went up every year.”

“What would it take to do that here?”

Her eyes turned shrewd. “You’re serious? So you’re really gonna listen to my ideas? And not just discount them?”

“Yep. I wanna start everything out right.”

“You’d need a portable scale.”

“The thing with the sling in the barn is the regular scale, right?”

“Yep.” She glanced at the sky again. “Let’s get the feed and then spread the straw. It’ll be damn close to dark by the time we get back here to spread it out.”

Kyle rubbed his chin with a gloved finger. “Remind me again why we’re spreading out two bales?”

“One to feed their bellies. The old, crappy stuff we’ll use to cover the ground. It’ll give ’em some warmth, especially important if we have any more surprise births tonight. And if they get really hungry, they’ll eat the crappy stuff. It’s hard to chew, and chewing and digesting is part of what keeps them warm.”

He couldn’t help but kiss her. “I had no idea about any of this stuff. Every day you blow my mind with something new. You are so damn smart.”

“It’s pretty much common knowledge.”

“Not for me. You’ve done way more of this cattle-raising stuff than even I realized. You know what works and what doesn’t. I won’t argue with you just to argue.”

“Oh.” She nearly blinded him with her beautiful smile. Then she nearly knocked him on his ass when she threw her arms around his neck. “Thank you for listening to me. It means more than you’ll ever know.”

Kyle slapped her butt and kissed her again. “You’re welcome. But, kitten, I get to drive the tractor.”

Over the next twenty-four hours, Kyle didn’t have a chance to talk to Celia about anything that didn’t concern calving. He helped her pull a calf. Leading the distressed mama into the birthing equipment and hobbling her legs. Talk about a new experience. As was donning a long obstetrical glove and inserting his arm up to his shoulder in a birth canal to reposition the large calf. Then watching as Celia expertly used the OB chains to pull and tug the calf a little at a time until it slid free.

Even after ripping the amniotic sac away from the mouth, the calf still wasn’t breathing. Celia jerked it by the hind legs, hanging it upside down until fluid cleared the lungs in a wet gush and it breathed on its own. They placed the pair in one of the empty stalls in the cow barn and watched as mama and baby got acquainted.

The next two days a blizzard raged. Kyle spent his time on the tractor, clearing pathways in the pasture. Clearing a path to the creek for the part of the herd that’d taken shelter from the storm in a low-lying copse of trees. Clearing a path from the cow barn to the house. Clearing a path from the house to the old barn where they’d brought the horses. After he’d spread feed and straw to the three separate sections of the herd, he plowed the road down to Josh’s place, in case an emergency arose and they needed Fletch’s veterinary assistance.