But several were eating.
She counted.
One.
Two.
Four.
Seven.
At least eleven were actively chewing.
Another drank from the trough.
A third tried to push between two larger calves to reach hay.
The girl narrowed her eyes.
Her father had taught her to look at behavior before appearance.
A dirty animal could be healthy.
A clean animal could be dying.
A loud cough sounded frightening, but appetite, posture, temperature, manure, breathing rate, hydration, and willingness to move told a better story.
The cattle dealer noticed her watching.
“Don’t get ideas.”
She looked at him.
He was in his sixties, heavy through the middle, wearing a black work jacket and a baseball cap stained white along the brim from years of sweat.
“About what?”
“Those.”
He pointed with his coffee cup.
“They came in coughing.”
“I can see.”
“Three buyers already walked.”
She looked at the calves again.
“Where did they come from?”
The dealer shrugged.
“Commercial calf outfit shut down.”
“Where?”
“North side.”
“Which outfit?”
He gave her a look.
“Why?”
“Because I asked.”
He laughed.
“Your dad send you here to investigate cows?”
“My father didn’t send me.”
That was true.
Her father had been home since sunrise trying to repair an old grain auger with one functioning shoulder and the patience of a man who had been forced to ask his teenage daughter for help too many times during the past year.
Six months earlier, a hydraulic hose had burst while he was working beneath a loader attachment.
The attachment had dropped less than a foot.
That was enough.
It crushed part of his right shoulder and damaged nerves through his arm.
Doctors said he had been lucky.
Farmers hated that word when it came from doctors.
Lucky meant alive.
It did not mean whole.
He could drive.
Walk.
Handle paperwork.
Do light chores.
But lifting, wrenching, welding overhead, wrestling calves, repairing heavy equipment—those jobs now belonged to other people.
Mostly his daughter.
Their farm had always depended on three bodies.
Her father.
Her mother.
Her.
Now it depended on two and a half.
Her mother worked three twelve-hour shifts each week as a nurse at a small hospital thirty miles away.
The farm covered land payments and most operating costs.