CHAPTER TWO

      JEWEL TORE OFF her hat and swiped her damp brow. Overhead, the midafternoon sun beat down, unrelenting in a cloudless blue sky. She peered at the calves she and her brothers had isolated from the herd this morning. Panicked bleats filled the dry air and mingled with their mothers’ answering bellows. They hadn’t been separated since calving season three months ago. The sooner she got them through the pen system she’d designed to lessen their stress, the better.

      “Next!” she hollered to her brother Justin. With a clang, he opened the metal latch and released the next calf from the holding pen. It raced forward, encountered a secured gate, and jerked to a stop in the extended neck chute she’d convinced her brother and ranch manager, James, to purchase. The calf tossed its head and rolled its eyes. Air huffed through its flaring nostrils.

      “Easy, girl.” Jewel stroked the little one’s soft gray side. The scent of disinfectant soap stung her nostrils. Earlier, her brother Jared and nephew Javi had cleaned the calves to prevent infection. “Easy now.”

      The calf settled as Jewel grabbed a syringe of Bovi-Shield while murmuring steadily, her tone soothing. She talked plenty tough to her rough-and-tumble older brothers, but when it came to animals, she took extra care to be gentle.

      “Now you won’t get a respiratory infection,” she crooned, pinching the skin on the calf’s neck and pulling it away from the muscle to tent it. She slipped the eighteen-gauge needle into the subcutaneous space to prevent skin lesions.

      “See. Not so bad.” She stroked the calf’s quivering neck after pushing in the vaccine, then hustled to its other side. “Now this booster will keep you from getting blackleg.” She delivered the second neck injection. “You’re doing great.”

      The calf snorted but otherwise remained still in the narrow chute, absorbing Jewel’s voice, her calm as she circled back to the spot where she injected the third vaccine.

      A large Brahman bellowed beyond the fence. Jewel compared the cow’s and the calf’s ear tags, noting their matching numbers.

      “Almost done, Mama,” she called to the pacing cow.

      “Hold up a minute, Jewel.” Her brother James sprayed the calf’s shaved hindquarter with 99 percent alcohol for adhesion, pulled a poker with a brass number three from the cooler and pressed its cold tip to the area, freeze-branding it.

      The calf twitched for a few seconds as Jewel continued petting it, then calmed as the temperature numbed its skin. A couple of years ago, they’d switched to freeze-branding after Jewel attended a cattle conference. It was more time-consuming than regular branding and took practice, but it reduced the calves’ stress.

      “Ready?” Jewel called once James grabbed the second poker.

      “Go ahead.” James pressed the number five into the now-docile calf’s hip. Over the years, she and her brothers developed routines so ingrained they barely had to talk while performing them.

      She tented the loose skin underneath the calf’s shoulder and delivered the last vaccine. “There you go, Sunrise, no BVD for you,” she murmured, low, so James didn’t overhear her ritual of secretly naming the calves. No matter how long they had on this earth, every living thing deserved a name, to have an identity, to be someone, although it made sending them off to the fall beef auctions even harder.

      She grimaced. Jewel Cade, sentimental...no one would believe it. All her life, she’d acted tough, chasing after her father’s affection by trying to prove she was as good as his favored sons. That she could ride, shoot and brawl with the best of them. Yet he rarely paid her much mind except to complain she needed to wear dresses to Sunday services.

      When he’d passed away, she doubled down on proving herself in the male-dominated ranching world, even if she ruffled a few feathers and agitated the status quo to do it. Her thick skin hid her sensitive side, a weakness counter to her goal to be Cade Ranch’s range boss. She wanted to oversee cattle herding and husbandry, calling the shots the way she preferred, a job where she wouldn’t be overruled or overlooked. James had yet to delegate the position, and she intended to convince him this summer to choose her over her brother Justin.

      As for the Sunday dresses, she’d worn one to her father’s funeral, hoping he’d see her from above in a way he’d never noticed her on earth.

      Jewel ignored the painful throb of her heart and cranked down the release lever. Sunrise rushed headlong from the chute. The calf slowed when she spied the barn wall, swerved, then trotted into the final pen where the vaccinated animals awaited Jewel’s final checkup.

      “Good move in facing the exit to the barn.” James added more alcohol solution to the cooler holding the pokers.

      Jewel pressed her lips flat to hide her pleasure at James’s rare praise. He needed to see her as a capable professional, not a little sister chasing her big brother’s approval. “I didn’t want them running for the gate and getting injured like last year. It’s all part of the herd health, value-added market report I gave you last month.”

      James grunted, but otherwise didn’t answer as he checked the cooler’s temperature. For optimal freeze-branding, it had to be at minus 200 degrees.

      Jewel hid her disappointment and grabbed her records book. Her stubby pencil flew as she jotted down the vaccines’ lot numbers, treatment date and withdrawal period, her name as the one who administered them, and the vaccination method used.

      James retrieved a couple of iced teas from another cooler. When she set down her log book, he tossed her one. “The neck extender chute’s working out better, too. No bent needles or trapped fingers.”

      Jewel sipped her tea, then pressed the cool plastic mini jug against her steaming cheeks. Even her freckles would be burned tomorrow. “That’s why you need to make me range boss.”

      “Now’s not the time for that discussion.”

      “Then when is the time?” she demanded.

      Instead of answering, James gulped his drink. When he finished, he mopped his face with a red kerchief. “How come we’re not putting on nose flaps?” he asked, referring to the device used to wean calves.

      She blew out a frustrated breath at his change of subject. Fine...she’d give him a little more rope, but not enough so he slipped away without giving her answers. “Weaning them after branding is stressful.”

      “Corralling them again is more work for us,” he grumbled. “We should go back to separating them from their mothers.”

      Jewel bristled. “The most stressful part of weaning is losing social interaction. The calves were calmer when we started using nose flaps a couple of years ago.”

      James doffed his wide-brimmed rancher’s hat, scooped some ice from the cooler and dumped it over his head. “Should never have sent you to that conference. It gave you too many ideas.”

      “Nothing wrong with new ideas,” she charged. “The herd health program’s been worth about three to six dollars per hundredweight over the past eighteen months. We’ve had less morbidity and behavioral stress—something you’d know if you bothered reading my report.”

      “I’ll get to it. Next!” James called to Justin, and another calf barreled into the chute.

      Jewel bit her lip and got back to work, ignoring the sting of being dismissed again. She had to convince James and wouldn’t quit until she did.

      “How come you look so tired?” James pressed one of the frozen pokers into the calf’s side once it settled in the chute.

      Jewel injected the blackleg booster. “Got in late.” Her cheeks heated as she recalled tall, gorgeous, commanding Heath Loveland performing “Folsom Prison Blues.” When he sang, his powerful voice