Six
“Still think it’s unnecessary for me to stay up here?” Jeremiah asked, gesturing to the dead calf.
Aaron leaned over his saddle horn to peer at the unfortunate animal, frowning. The calf hadn’t been dead more than a day or two—Austin had marked the number on the ear tag as accounted for on his check the day before yesterday—but a bear or mountain lion or wolves or coyotes or who knew what else had chewed it up pretty good.
“There’s no way I can see to tell what killed it,” Aaron said at last.
“Dead’s dead. And that makes two Lazy H cows in two weeks. We need someone up here to keep an eye on the herd. I should’ve come up here right after the first.”
“We were all hoping it would turn out you wouldn’t need to come up at all. Two weeks without a single problem… and now this. Even if
