Black Angus (2015)

Authors: Newton Thornburg

Genres:

Read ebook

Rating:

9/10 (8 votes)

Your rating:

/10 Rate

9/10
8

/10
Your: Rate

“But nowhere was there peace, not in Tommy’s slack and wounded look and not in Blanchard and especially not in the cattle, which were walleyed with terror, plunging and crowding, fouling their black coats with a founting olive diarrhea. At the headgate, after the younger Parnell would force a clamp into the cow’s flaring nostrils and lash her head to one side, his father would drive a needle into her neck vein and then the beller would come, like a death cry, a feral trumpeting that Blanchard fe...lt in his own bowels, almost as if he were one of the herd.
It was a weakness Clarence did not share. If anything the old man was enjoying himself. Squinting and chawing, he gimped about the corral with his heavy cattleman’s cane, whacking any animal that stalled or turned or threatened escape. Yet he was careful not to stampede them, not to crowd them so tight they would have no choice in their panic except to turn and run, run right over the men. Nevertheless Blanchard was prepared at any moment to dive for the safety of the corral fence—especially because of the bull, the huge young purebred Angus he had bought to upgrade his herd, to give him fine productive females in the years ahead, but which now, irronically and irationally, threatened the herd’s destruction instead.MoreLess Read More Read Less