Don Winslow - Way Down on the High Lonely

The calf wasn’t all that thrilled either. Bawling and trembling, she let loose a stream of urine all over both of Neal’s pant legs. Neal could feel it soaking through and sticking to his legs, but he held on to the calf until the truck took a particularly daredevil bounce and the calf squirmed out of Neal’s hold and attempted to jump over the back end. Neal sprawled on his stomach and managed to get a hold of her left rear leg.

This was a tactical error, because it left her right rear leg free. Not a calf to miss an opportunity, she hauled off and gave him a Bruce Lee to the diaphragm. Neal got a grip on the hoof implanted in his chest and managed to flip the calf over onto his lap, discovering that a baby cow weighs a lot more than the baby person he’d probably never be able to have, judging by the sudden pain in his crotch. But he held on to the calf.

He could hear Steve happily singing along to some tune on the radio about a mother not letting her babies grow up to be cowboys or something, which Neal didn’t think was very funny. But the calf must have liked it, because she let out a big sigh and relaxed in his lap. She felt so relaxed she let loose the contents of her bowels on those parts of his pant legs that she’d missed soaking with urine. Neal kind of wished that Steve had remembered that rope, but he held on to the calf, stroked her neck, and cooed soothing endearments. He hurt like crazy from the earlier beating, but he held on to the calf.

Steve stopped the truck by the back of the Mills’ house, got out, and took a look at Neal and the calf.

“She piss and shit on you?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, they’ll do that. Do you two want to snuggle some more or shall we introduce her to her new mama?”

He dropped the back gate and the calf scrambled out the back end. Steve opened a rickety wood and wire gate and shooed her into the small corral behind the barn.

Neal stepped in behind him. The sun was getting low and the sky was turning a soft salmon pink. The air was crisp and cool. Neal could see how you could fall in love with all of this and never want to leave.

“Now the fun begins,” Steve said.

“I don’t know if I can stand any more fun.”

“See, Eleanor has a calf of her own and she’s too dumb to figure out we’re trying to help her by bringing in this young interloper. So even though she needs another calf to suck on those udders, she’s going to resist. She’ll try to kick that calf, and if I know Eleanor like I do know Eleanor, she’ll try to kick it square in the head.”

No, Neal thought. She’s not going to kill that calf. I have two broken knees, a purple chest, I’m covered with shit and soaked with piss, and I’ve become kind of possessive of that calf.

“So what do we do?” Neal asked.

“Well, we do a number of things. See, these are range cattle. They’re about half-wild anyway, and long about dusk they hide their calves in the brush on the lower slope. So first we have to find Eleanor’s calf before the lions or the coyotes do-”

“Lions?”

“Mountain lions-and then drive the little thing back to the barn. Eleanor’ll follow even though she already suspects an ambush. Then we finagle Eleanor into a stanchion, sneak around her backside, and tie a rope around her hips so it pinches a nerve and hurts if she tries to kick. Then we introduce the new calf to its new lunch counter, which won’t be difficult because a calf will just naturally go for it, if you know what I mean. After the new calf sucks for a while, Eleanor’ll forget it ain’t really hers and then she’ll take care of it.”

“Lions?”

“They’re scared of people.”

Oh, good.

“However,” Steve said, “I’m going to bring the rifle along, just in case.”

“In case of what?”

“In case we run across a psychotic one or some goofball survivalist who figures that taking my calves is cheaper and easier than raising his own. I could use your help. Two is a lot better than one when you’re trying to drive cows on foot, and it would save me the trouble of saddling up a horse. Besides which, the doctor told me I should take a daily constitutional.”

“Sure.” I would never pass up a chance for a sundown confrontation with a lion and/or goofball survivalist rustler, Neal thought.

They walked back to the house and Steve took a 30.06 lever-action rifle off a rack in the kitchen. Then they hiked for about ten minutes down through the sagebrush toward the base of the mountain. They came to the tree line Neal had seen from the window, and sure enough, it screened a shallow creek that ran at the bottom of a deep gully. Sandbars flanked the creek on both sides and it was easy to cross the stream by stepping on rocks and then jumping onto the sand.

They walked a couple more minutes and reached the bottom of the big spur of the mountain.

“The mountains themselves are government land,” Steve said. “The spur here is the southern boundary of my land and Hansen’s.”

At the base of the spur, almost dug into the north slope, was a small log cabin.

“Whose is that?” Neal asked.

“It’s ours,” Steve answered. “It was here before I was. Probably an old miner’s place. You’ll find abandoned shafts all over these hills. Or it was a station for the cowboys to sleep in when they came to get the cattle down from the hills for the winter. We’ve had a couple of hired hands stay in it from time to time.”

They didn ’t run across any mountain lions or beef-crazed survivalists. They did find Eleanor, an enormous black-and-white cow, who promptly led them in the wrong direction.

Or tried to, anyway.

“Eleanor’s getting predictable in her middle years,” Steve said. “If she heads east you can be damn sure that junior’s lying under a bush somewhere to the west.”

He was. A cute, big-eyed little squirt who looked a little grateful to have the game of hide-and-go-seek end so quickly. He got up on shaky legs as Eleanor trotted over protectively. Steve gave her a poke on the flanks with the rifle butt.

“To the barn, dumb ol’ Eleanor.”

It took about forty minutes to drive the cows back and another twenty to lure Eleanor’s head into the stanchion by putting a big handful of aromatic alfalfa into the trough. Eleanor took the bait and Steve slammed the stanchion shut, just getting his hand out of the way before Eleanor swung her head in a violent effort to crush his fingers.

“We’re both getting a little slower, old girl,” Steve said without any bitterness Neal could detect. Then Steve snuck around her backside, dodged her kick, tossed a rope over her hips, grabbed it behind her udder, and pulled it tight. He tied it off on a post and stood back. She started to give a kick, suddenly changed her mind, and gave an aggravated bellow instead. Then she settled down and started chewing on the hay. Her calf instantly slid in and started to suck.

“Go get the new one, will you?” Steve asked. He took a quick look around, reached behind another stanchion, and pulled out a pack of Luckys.

Neal walked out into the corral, found his calf huddled up against the fence, and shooed it into the barn. It took one look at Eleanor’s swollen udder and nuzzled up. She tried another feeble kick, gave up, and apparently decided that she was the mother of twins as the calves happily nudged, pushed, and nuzzled against her.

Steve took a contented drag on his cigarette as he watched the scene.

“I love this country,” he said.

He had loved it from the moment he saw it, he told Neal over dinner, twenty-odd years ago when he and Peggy had given up the ghost trying to grow lettuce in California. They had packed what little they owned into their “Fix or Repair Daily” and headed east to Reno, where Steve drew a ten to a king down. This started a streak that Peggy capped off with a hot hand and three straight dice rolls that each added up to seven.