Page 1 of July’s Cowboy Dallas

CHAPTER 1

DALLAS

The heat came off the arena dirt in waves I could see but not escape.

By ten in the morning, my shirt was stuck to my back, the reins were slick in my hand, and the horses in the far pen had quit pretending they wanted to move. I’d been working the stock pens since six, sweat drying salt-white along my forearms.

Even the animals knew better than to waste energy in this heat.

I was running the chute checks for the team roping practice session including gear, latches, ground condition, and footing around the boxes, when I noticed the steer.

He was a brindle, one of six I'd helped load into the holding pen the day before. There hadn’t been anything unusual about him then. I'd watched all of them come off the trailer and he'd moved fine, a little ornery the way brindles sometimes are, but weight-bearing and even.

Now he was standing at the rear of the pen with his left front dropped just enough that it wasn't how he usually stood. He wasn't non-weight-bearing. He wasn't down. Anyone walking past and checking a clipboard wouldn't have stopped.

But I did.

I watched him for three full minutes, which felt longer than it was with the sun beating down on my shoulders. He shifted once and tried to follow the other steers toward the water trough. The hitch in his step was small, but it was there. Something in the left knee or just below it. He made it to the water and stood still, which was the other tell. Healthy cattle don't stand that still in a pen with five others unless something hurts.

“Get Sadie Hollister on the phone,” I said.

One of the hands was sorting tack on the fence rail behind me. He was nineteen and efficient and hadn't been doing this long enough to argue with me yet, which I appreciated.

“Who?”

“The vet.”

He pulled his phone out, and I went into the pen slow, keeping my body low and loose, not making myself big. The brindle flicked an ear at me but didn't move off. That told me something too. An animal that's only a little bothered will still move away from a human walking toward it. An animal carrying real discomfort starts conserving.

I crouched down near his left shoulder and looked at the leg without touching it yet. No obvious swelling from here, but the skin below the knee had a tightness to it—a slight puffing that could've been missed in the loading bay light or after a long trailer haul. I'd been around stock long enough to know that it wasn't fresh. This hadn't happened this morning.

The hand appeared at the pen rail. “She's on her way. Ten minutes out.”

“Tell her to take the back gate. It’s quicker.”

He texted that, and I stayed where I was, one hand on the steer's neck now, just resting there. Not restraining, not directing. Just letting him know where I was. He exhaled through his nose and didn't move, and I felt that same thing I always felt in moments like this. There’s a certain stillness that settles when an animal finally decides you're not a threat. Some people needed to be told they were trusted. Animals just showed you.

I heard her truck before I saw it.

Sadie drove the way she did everything else, like she'd already assessed the situation and made three decisions before she'd parked. The door swung open and she was out with her kit bag before the dust had settled, her dark hair escaping from a braid at the back of her neck, sunglasses pushed up, already scanning the pen.

“Which one?”

“Brindle at the water.” I stood so she could see the animal clearly. “Left front. Below the knee. I think it's been going on a while.”

She came through the gate I held open for her without looking at me, and I stepped back and closed it behind us. She moved in the same way I had. Her steps were slow, non-threatening, and she held one hand out where the steer could see it. I'd watched her work probably forty times over the last few years and it never got less impressive. She knew what she was doing and she was damn good at it.

She crouched. Ran two fingers along the lower leg. The steer shifted his weight slightly but held.

“How long has he been standing like this?”

“I noticed it about thirty minutes ago. He was fine loading yesterday.”

“Fine or not obviously lame?”

“Both,” I said. “Loading light, he was moving even.”

She glanced up at me then, and I got about a half-second of her full attention before she went back to the leg. That was standard. Sadie didn't waste time or focus.