“Stay here,” he said. “I’m going in.”
Chapter Fifteen
Did Cole really just say that? Just like a fireman. He was going in.
Eva smiled.
Cole disappeared through the reeds. The muscles rippled through his arms as he made his way through the mud. He looked like a knight wearing a tunic with those sleeves ripped off his shirt. It gave her a good view of his strong back and shoulders. Now this was the kind of man who rescued the weak and saved the hurting.
A hero. She couldn’t be prouder of her future family.
The poor calf let out another cry at seeing Cole push through the reeds.
She heard some shouting, then splashing, a bit of coaxing before a large head crashed through the reeds. The rest of its reddish-brown body came charging over the same pathway that Cole had made. Mud ran down the calf’s shoulders and legs as it whipped its head around in an agitated way. The poor thing bawled and cried out like a baby.
The lumbering thingwasa baby! It came straight for the fencing that they’d fixed.
Eva grabbed the side of the barrier that acted like a gate and opened it to let the crying calf barrel its way through.
The calf paced back and forth on the other side until it eventually wandered back to where Eva stood. Its big eyes stared up at her like it wanted something.
“Hey there, little one.” She had no idea if this was a boy or a girl.
Its mouth smacked together like a baby asking for milk, and then the clumsy sweetheart caught a hold of her sleeve and started to chomp at it.
She laughed and screamed and then scrambled away. “Oh no, you poor thing! Are you hungry? We don’t eat clothes.” She peered over the fencing at the reeds. “Cole,” she called out. “You coming out or what?”
“Um… about that…”
“What’s the problem?”
“I lost my overalls somewhere.”
She covered her face, feeling her body ache with the effort of trying to keep her howls of laughter from reaching him. She was doing a poor job of it. Reaching over to pat the squirmy calf on the top of its soft head, she puckered her lips. “Is that your fault… Dopey?” she quickly named the cute thing. He sure liked to eat clothes.
Though she knew who the true culprit was. After all, Cole never would’ve grabbed the overalls if she hadn’t started this little war of fashion with him. She’d make this right. “I’m coming.”
“No!” he tried to shout her back.
“Don’t be a baby.” She wriggled through the fence, making sure that Dopey stayed on the other side of it. “I can help.”
“How?” he asked incredulously. “You’ll make me a pair of pants out of mud?”
She giggled again, searching around for something, anything. She remembered that there was a dirty blanket that they’d wrapped around the bottles. She ran to fetch it, dragging it away from the rest of the target practice equipment. She tried to air it out by whipping it around. It was a little dusty, but it would do the trick. “I think I have something you could use!”
“You really shouldn’t come in here,” he said.
“Now, now, you’re a big strong cowboy.” She followed the trail that Dopey had flattened in his escape from the swamp. “You shouldn’t be afraid of a little missy like me.” She dissolved into giggles again. Their roles were reversed from yesterday.
“No, I mean…”
She cleared her way through the reeds and took one step and dropped through the ground. She shrieked out as she sank up to her thighs in the mud. Oh! Eva finally figured out what Cole meant. She tried to wriggle out and felt her boots wrenched from her feet in one sucking motion. “My boots!” she moaned.
“Don’t move! Don’t move.”
Looking to the side, she saw Cole almost chest deep in the water ahead of her. Lizardman dashed around the edge of the pond, whimpering pathetically.
“Lizardman!” she cried. “Keep away!”