“One thousand. Anybody else?”
Silence.
He slammed the wooden gavel against the rail.
“Sold!”
The laughter began immediately.
Claire lowered her paddle.
She could feel dozens of eyes following her as she stepped away from the railing.
A rancher she recognized from the surrounding county approached her.
He was probably in his sixties, with a sunburned face and a white mustache.
“Claire,” he said.
She turned.
“You know what you just bought?”
“Yes.”
“That thing is covered in ticks.”
“I noticed.”
The rancher stared at her.
“You paid a thousand dollars for him.”
“I did.”
He shook his head.
“Girl, that's not a bargain.”
Claire looked toward the bull.
“No,” she said quietly.
“It isn't.”
Then she smiled faintly.
“But maybe it isn't what you think it is either.”
The bull was loaded into Claire's trailer just after sunset.
It took three handlers and nearly twenty minutes.
Not because the bull was violent.
Because he was exhausted.
Every movement seemed to irritate his skin.
He would take two steps, stop, lower his head, and rub against whatever solid surface he could find.
Claire watched from outside the trailer.
She noticed something that bothered her.
The bull didn't resist people.
He simply seemed to have no energy left for resistance.
When the trailer door finally closed, one of the handlers wiped sweat from his forehead.
“Good luck,” he said.
Claire nodded.
A second man laughed.
“You're going to need it.”
She ignored him.
The drive home took nearly an hour.
The sun disappeared behind the flat horizon, leaving the South Texas sky purple and orange.
Inside the trailer, the bull shifted occasionally.
Claire could hear his hooves against the metal floor.
She slowed down whenever the road became rough.
At one point, she pulled onto the shoulder and turned off the engine.
For several seconds, there was complete silence.
Then she heard the bull breathe.
A deep, heavy exhale.
Claire rested both hands on the steering wheel.
“You're going to be okay,” she whispered.
She wasn't sure whether she was talking to him or herself.
Her ranch was small compared with the huge cattle operations surrounding it.
Three hundred acres of mesquite, dry grass, scrub brush, and fenced pasture stretched around an old farmhouse that had belonged to her grandfather.
There were newer ranches in the county.
Bigger ranches.
Richer ranches.
Ranches with modern barns, automated feeders, expensive equipment, and cattle worth more than Claire's entire property.
But this place had something money couldn't buy.
It had history.
Her grandfather had built the original cattle pens himself.
The fence posts near the farmhouse still carried his initials.
Even the old windmill in the western pasture was something he had repaired with his own hands decades earlier.
Claire had inherited the property after his death.
She had also inherited his stubbornness.
Some people called that a problem.
Claire considered it useful.
She unloaded the bull into a separate pasture.
The animal stepped onto the dirt.
He stopped.
For the first time, Claire saw his entire body under the moonlight.
He was magnificent.
Even in terrible condition.
His shoulders were massive.
His legs were thick and powerful.
His neck was enormous.
The Beefmaster genetics were obvious.
But the ticks were worse than Claire had realized.
Thousands.
Maybe tens of thousands.
They moved across his hide in dense clusters.
Claire swallowed.
For the first time since the auction, doubt entered her mind.
She had bought him because she believed there was something worth saving.
But believing something and being able to save it were two different things.
She stood beside the fence for a long time.
The bull lowered his head.