Which one is she? Ike said.
That old tall one, Guthrie said. Without any white on her front legs. See her? With that chewed-off tail.
What’s wrong with her?
She’s gotten spooky. You want to watch her is all.
The boys stayed even with their father. They moved fanwise across the corral. The cattle began to shift and bunch, piling back on one another; they wheeled and massed against the back fence. Behind them a board cracked. Then the cattle began to string out, sliding along the rails, and at the last moment their father rushed forward and yelled at them and lashed out with a thin braided whip and popped an old frosteared cow across the nose and she skidded in the dirt and snorted, then wheeled around. Behind her there was a young white-faced heifer that turned with her.
Guthrie and the boys headed these two across the corral. The boys kept spread out beside him, and the animals trotted ahead kicking up spurts of dirt and dust from the trampled ground, and then at the mouth of the alley the young heifer got frightened and turned back.
Head her, Guthrie shouted. Don’t let her get past. Turn her.
Bobby flapped his arms and hollered, Hey! Hey!
The heifer glared at him, her eyes white-rimmed, and then she whirled around and her tail went up and she bucked once and kicked and then rushed on into the alley, crowding past the old cow that was already there in that narrow space. Raymond jammed the pole through behind them.
All right, their father said. You think you can do that?
What do you mean?
Just do that every time. Bring two in at a time. But be careful.
Where will you be? Ike said.
I need to help up front, Guthrie said. Raymond’s getting tired. It’s too much for one man to do. And that second cow there has a horn that needs to be taken off. He looked at the boys. Here, you can have this.
He handed the thin herding whip to Ike who took it and hefted it and swung it limberly back and forth over his shoulder. He snapped the end of it at a clod of manure. The clod jumped.
What do I get to use? Bobby said. I ought to have something too.
Their father looked around. All right, he said. He called at Raymond: Let me have one of those hot shots out there.
The old man brought one of the cattle prods and handed it over the fence. Guthrie took it and demonstrated it to them, how to rotate the handle and release the little button so it would give a charge. See how you do that? he said. He poked it against his boot toe and it sparked. He handed the cattle prod to Bobby, and Bobby examined it and touched it against his shoe. It sizzled and he jerked his foot back, then he glanced up at them and there was a surprised look on his face.
I get to use it too, Ike said.
Trade off with it, Guthrie said. You can swap the whip with him. But don’t get carried away. It’s just if you need it. And anyway you have to be close enough to even be able to use it.
Does it hurt them? Bobby said.
They don’t like it, Guthrie said. It gets their attention for sure. He put his hands on their shoulders. So. All set?
I guess so.
I’ll be right out here.
He climbed out of the corral and joined the McPheron brothers at the chute. They brought the heifer in and Harold tested her. She was carrying a calf and Raymond shot her twice in the hip and let her out into the holding pen with the others. Then they brought the cow in, and after she was tested and vaccinated Guthrie wrapped his arms around her head and pulled her head violently to one side, her neck stretching tight, her eyes wild and frantic, while Raymond fit the sharp ends of the dehorner over the malformed horn. It was a hard ugly thing, twisting out from where it had been cut off unsuccessfully once before. He clamped down with the dehorner, twisting it, applying pressure on the grips, and finally cut through. The horn dropped off like a piece of sawed wood and left a white dishedout tender-looking place at her skull. Immediately the blood spurted out in a thin spray, making a little puddle in the dirt. Guthrie held on to the cow’s head and she bawled, rolling her eyes in panic, fighting him, while Raymond shook out powdered blood-stop into the cut, and the blood soaked it up and trickled down her face. He shook out more powder and pressed it in, mixing it with his finger, and they released her into the holding pen and she went out tossing her head, with a line of blood still dribbling along her eye.
In the corral the two boys worked hard with the remaining cattle amidst the dirt and swirling dust and they managed to line two more into the alley, and the men began to work on them. But one of the cows turned up open. They released her into the separate loading pen with the old speckle-faced cow, and the two animals nosed one another and stood facing the direction they’d come from.
That’s another one never stuck, Harold said.
Maybe you ought to let old Doc Wycoff breed them, Guthrie said. With his A-I.
Sure. We could do that, Raymond said. Only he’s kind of steep.
That makes me think, Harold said. Didn’t we ever tell you about that time Raymond and me walked in on him?
If you did, Guthrie said, I don’t recall it.
Well, yeah, Harold said. One time me and Raymond went in to see him about something. A cow sick or something. In his clinic there. When we got inside the front door we heard something that sounded kind of like scuffling or thrashing coming from in back of the front counter there. We couldn’t tell what it was. So we looked over the top of the counter and old Doc had this gal on her back on the floor behind the counter, and she had her arms and legs wrapped around him about like he was a fifty-dollar bill. She looked up and seen us staring at them. She wasn’t scared by that, she wasn’t even took by surprise. She just stopped moving and released her clench on him. Then she tapped him on the head, still looking up at us over his shoulder, and stopped moving and working, and pretty soon Doc did too. What’s a matter? he says. We got company, she says. Do we? Doc says. We do for a fact, she says. So he moves his head so he can look up at us. Boys, he says. Is it any emergency? It can wait, we tell him. All right then, he says. I’ll be with you in a minute.
Guthrie laughed. That sounds like him, he said.
Don’t it? Harold said.
It didn’t take him long, Raymond said. I imagine he was about finished anyway.
Her too, I reckon, Harold said.
What was she doing, Guthrie said, paying a bill?
No, Harold said. I don’t guess so. It was more like they both got excited by the same idea all of a sudden and couldn’t help themselves.
That happens, Guthrie said.
Yeah, Harold said. I guess.
I guess it does, Raymond said. He looked out across the flat open treeless country toward the horizon where there were blue mounds of sandhill.
. . .
At last there was only the red-legged cow left to test, the one their father had warned them about. She was worse now. She regarded the two boys steadily with her head lifted as if she were some wild range animal that had never seen a human on foot before. The boys had stayed back from her in the corral. They were afraid of her and didn’t want to be kicked. But now they walked toward her, and she eyed them steadily and began to shift and trot along the fence. They cut her off. She was tall and all four of her legs were red; her eyes were white-rimmed. She dropped her head and whirled around, her stubby tail up, stiffened, and galloped across to the other side. They followed her again and came up behind her once more, where she was trapped in a corner. She faced them, her eyes baleful-looking and her sides heaving, and Ike moved closer and swung the whip and snapped it across her face. This surprised her. She jumped sideways, then she leaped forward. She galloped into Bobby, knocking him back off his feet before he could jump out of the way. He landed on his back and bounced once like a piece of thrown stove wood. She kicked back at him and then leaped and bucked across to the far side of the corral. Bobby lay spilled out on the ground. His stocking cap was at his feet, the electric cattle prod flung out to the side. He lay on the trampled dirt looking up at the empty sky, trying to breathe. But his breath wouldn’t come and he began to gouge his feet in the loose ground, while Ike bent over him in panic, talking to him. Bobby’s eyes looked big and scared. Then all at once his breath came back in a rush and he choked and gave a kind of high sob.