Gideon’s weathered face changed.
“How fast?”
“Fine yesterday. Dead now.”
“Bloat?”
“No.”
“Foam?”
“One sick steer was drooling.”
“Water?”
“Looks normal.”
“Feed?”
“Alfalfa.”
Gideon spat into the dust.
“Fresh?”
“Field.”
“You spray?”
Tomás stared.
“With what money?”
“Fair.”
“Clara found weeds.”
Gideon looked up.
“Clara?”
Tomás realized how absurd the sentence sounded.
“My—”
He stopped.
Bride?
Fiancée?
Mail-order wife?
Stranger?
“Woman who arrived today.”
Gideon’s eyebrows lifted.
“The Chicago one?”
Dry Creek knew too much.
“Yes.”
Gideon smiled.
“Big woman?”
Tomás’s face tightened.
Gideon noticed.
“I asked description, not insult.”
Tomás relaxed slightly.
“Yes.”
“She know cattle?”
“She says.”
“Then bring me the weed.”
“I left it.”
Gideon sighed.
“Of course you did.”
He stood with visible effort.
“I’ll come.”
“You’re not a doctor.”
“No.”
Gideon took his hat from the post.
“But unlike the doctor, I’m here.”
They rode back under a darkening sky.
Tomás spent the entire journey imagining more dead cattle.
Ten.
Twenty.
All of them.
He imagined Clara standing beside her trunk when he returned, asking for the next train east.
He could not blame her.
The rational thing would be to leave.
The rational thing would have been not to come at all.
When Dry Creek Ranch appeared beyond the hill, Tomás saw lantern light near the barn.
Then movement.
Clara.
She was carrying buckets.
“What is she doing?”
Gideon squinted.
“Looks like work.”
Tomás urged the horse faster.
Clara had moved every animal she could into the dry corral.
The sick steer lay under shade near the barn.
Two more cattle stood separated from the herd.
“What happened?”
Clara turned.
Sweat had darkened the collar of her brown dress.
Loose strands of hair stuck to her face.
“I watched the herd after you left.”
She pointed toward the two separated cattle.
“Those started staggering.”
“Three sick now?”
“Three that I saw.”
Gideon dismounted.
“Show me the dead ones.”
Clara looked at him.
“Who are you?”
“Gideon Pike.”
“That tells me nothing.”
He smiled.
“I like her.”
Tomás sighed.
“He’s worked cattle longer than either of us has been alive.”
“Better.”
She led him.
Gideon examined the weed.
His smile disappeared.
“Hell.”
Tomás’s stomach tightened.
“You know it?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
Gideon rubbed one leaf between his fingers.
“Looks like death camas.”
Clara frowned.
“What?”
“Poison plant.”
Tomás stared at the field.
“No.”
Gideon looked at him.
“You ever had it here?”
“No.”
“Could have seeded during drought.”
Clara shook her head.