Chapter 1 - The Weight of Wood
The splintering cedar dug into Nora’s shoulder blades as twelve hundred pounds of living muscle pinned her against the barn wall. The Charolais bull, a pale beast known across the valley as Goliath, let out a wet, rattling wheeze that blasted hot vapor and dried hay dust directly across her eyes. One hook-tipped horn had gouged through the outer fabric of her coveralls, missing the soft hollow of her collarbone by inches.
Beside her ear, the barn siding groaned under the strain. She could feel the aged four-by-four timber bending behind her ribs, threatening to snap. Her knuckles were bone-white where she gripped the steel guide rail of the sliding door. Down the corral path, Cal, the senior hand, stood frozen in the barn threshold, holding a cracked oak two-by-four that looked pitiful against the sheer bulk of the animal.
""Don't swing, Cal,"" Nora choked out, her voice barely louder than a rasp. She could feel every pulse of the bull’s heavy heart throbbing against her sternum. ""If you hit him, he’ll twist his head. He twists, I’m gone.""
Cal stopped mid-step, his boots sinking into the dry manure and powder-fine silt. ""Nora, you slide left. The stall gate is three feet behind you.""
May you like
""Can't,"" she breathed. The bull shifted, leaning his broad forehead harder against her chest. The air left her lungs in a sickening rush, black edges dancing at the margins of her vision. Her father had always told her that livestock didn’t bear grudges, but looking into the bull’s cloudy, vein-shot eye, she saw pure territorial malice.
Then came the metallic rattle from the pasture gate—a sound that should not have been there at noon. Cal's eyes darted toward the driveway, his expression suddenly shifting from horror to outright panic as a black pickup truck barreled through the open fence line, its horn blaring with frantic, uneven pulses.
