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The lever came down and the headgate took the cow with a bang. He went over the panel into the crowd pen after the calf, got him down in the dirt, tagged the ear, cut him, and had him back on his feet bawling in under a minute.

"Bull calf, tag forty-one. He's a steer now."

"Forty-one." She chalked it. "Let her out?"

"Let her out. Next."

"Next is the roan with the bad bag."

"Bring her anyway. I want to see it."

"I've seen it. It's one quarter and it's hard."

"Then she's a cull."

"Another cull," Olivia groaned, and brought her, caught her, watched him feel the bag and say nothing, and chalked the roan into the cull lot in her daddy's hand without being told.

"Forty-two's a heifer. Tag her and leave her."

"Tagged. Out."

"Out. Where's forty-three's mama?"

"Behind you. The one that's been trying to climb the panel for ten minutes."

"Catch her before she does."

"I've been waiting on you to say so."

"Forty-four. Heifer."

"Tag her. Out."

"Forty-five. You want to look at this one, he's got a bad navel."

"Bring him. Hold his mama."

"I'm holding her. I've been holding her. What's the verdict?"

"He'll live. Dip it and go."

They did nine that way. Every one she caught clean, let out clean, chalked. Every order he gave her she took like it cost her something, and it did, and she gave him nothing else. No calf jokes. No Duke. Not one word past the cattle, and the cattle didn't leave room for much.

The tenth cow turned in the alley.

She was an older cow, a big red one with a set of horns nobody had got around to, and she came up the alley fine, stopped short of the chute, swung her head around to look for her calf. Olivia had stepped down off the catwalk to hustle her. The cow came the rest of the way around with her horns level with Olivia's chest.

Owen had her by the hip before he'd thought about it. One hand, flat on the point of her hip through the denim. He turned her, put her against the panel behind him, stood between her and the cow with the sorting stick up, and the cow looked at the stick and thought about it and went on into the chute, and Olivia dropped the lever on her from where she stood, and he took his hand back, and she didn't say thank you.

"I saw her," she said.

"I know you did."

"Then get your calf."

He got the calf, and late in the afternoon they mouthed the old cows off the trap, one at a time in the headgate, his thumb in the corner of the mouth and the lip peeled back to read the teeth.

"Broken mouth. Cull."