Whirlwind - Janet Dailey Page 0,54

the busy day. For now, Lexie would savor this peaceful, private time alone.

The eleven mature bulls were pastured closest to the house. As she rode along the fence, Lexie watched them with affection. They appeared to be in good spirits as they shook the wetness from their gleaming hides and nosed the ground for new grass.

Thunderbolt, the oldest, was a direct descendant of the great Oscar. Bert Champion had bought the retired black and tan bull, along with his half brother, to start his own line of buckers. Of the original bulls, Thunderbolt was the last one left alive. Crochety and arthritic, he was almost eighteen years old, ancient for a bull.

Whirlwind and Whiplash were the offspring of his old age. Full brothers, they’d been born a year apart, from a fiery cow that, sadly, had since died. When it came to breeding, it was the bulls that passed on their strength and agility. But the cows gave their sons the fighting spirit to buck. Experiments had proven that a bucking bull bred with a cow that lacked the bucking lineage would not produce bucking offspring. But a cow with the bucking bloodline, even when mated with a non-bucking bull, had a chance of producing a bucker.

Bert had kept immaculate records of which bulls were bred with which cows, doing everything possible to avoid inbreeding. The pedigrees were registered with the ABBI, a national organization that tracked the bloodlines of bucking bulls. Bert had shared his complex methods with Jack, but now that both father and son were gone, the girls were on their own—and it was time to breed the animals again.

Watching the bulls now, and seeing the old bull stumble, Lexie remembered a conversation she needed to have with Tess. Her college courses had taught her about breeding and genetics. She knew that the Alamo Canyon cows and bulls were too closely related to safely breed again. The ranch was in desperate need of new bloodlines.

Unfortunately, to purchase a bucking bull with great lineage, even injured or old, would be expensive—at least $20,000, likely more. So would paying a stud fee for a top bull. Getting the money would mean selling off some of their own stock or getting a bank loan. The cheaper alternative would be to buy semen from quality bulls and inseminate the cows they had now—proven mothers that would be hard to replace.

Tess, like her father, believed that natural breeding was the only way to go. She hated the whole idea of artificial insemination. She was bound to dig in her heels when Lexie suggested it.

And right now, the timing couldn’t be worse. Between the recent deaths in the family, the money problems, and the threats to the ranch, Tess was stressed almost to the breaking point. But given the forty-week gestation period, if calves were to be born in the spring, the cows would need to be bred soon.

Before bringing the matter up, Lexie resolved, she would do some online research—check out available stock for sale and semen prices. If she could come up with a solid plan to take to her sister—and maybe get Ruben on her side—Tess might be willing to listen.

The aromas of coffee and frying bacon drifted to her on the breeze. Back in the house, breakfast would soon be ready. Lexie still needed to check on the cows and calves, the younger bulls, and the beef cattle, but now that she had a plan in mind, she was eager to start her research.

Nudging the mare to a trot, she made a circle around and above the pastures, a route that would give her a view of each group. Everything looked fine. No animals loose, stranded, or down, and no sign that the phantom intruder had been prowling on the property.

Skirting Aaron’s place, she cut back along the narrow road that led to the ranch house. The earth was still muddy from the rain. Water, beginning to dry, glimmered in the hollows of yesterday’s tracks. One distinctive set looked as if it had been made after the rain stopped. Lexie could see where Aaron’s Kubota had come from the direction of his house, turned around and gone back, then done it again a second time. Strange—but not hard to explain. Maybe he’d heard something in the night and gone out to investigate. Or maybe he’d dropped something on the way home and gone back after the rain to look for it.

By the time she’d returned to the yard and