Free Borderline by Nevada Barr Page B

edge, looking down. If Anna was very quiet she could almost hear the gears turning in his mind as he worked through the logistics, risks and practicalities of lowering a cow down.
    Anna planned to wrap the lines around solid outcrops, shove her gently over the side, and see what happened.
    Steve arrived carrying the oar, Chrissie puffing and panting behind him.
    “Carmen, we’ll need a couple of shorter lengths to tie her ankles. Can we cut this line?” Now that Anna could almost smell Easter’s salvation, her mind had opened sufficiently to encompass civility.
    “In for a penny . . .” Carmen said. “Anybody got a knife?”
    Paul dug a well-worn black-handled jackknife from the pocket of his shorts. Anna measured a rough twelve feet of rope. He cut it. She folded it in half and he cut it again so they would have two six-foot pieces to tie Easter’s ankles together.
    As he made the second cut, the rumble of thunder rolled down the canyon, crashing against the walls like a great ball bowling down ninepins. Drops of rain, spaced far apart but cold and large, were hurled down from a sky that touched the canyon rim.
    “Things are about to get slippery,” Anna said. “Paul, take the back legs.” She handed him one of the short pieces they’d cut. When Easter had decided enough was enough and collapsed she had done it like a lady. Her legs were folded neatly beneath her and her scraggy tail curved around her bony shank.
    “We’re going to roll her so her spine is toward the cliff and her legs are sticking out toward the river,” Anna said. “Carmen, you and me and Paul are going to do it. You guys”—she nodded at the three students hovering too near the edge, too near the cow and too close to her—“step back, give us space. Cyril, be ready with the oar. As soon as we get the legs tied together you’ll thread it through. Steve, were you a Boy Scout?”
    “For a while,” he said.
    “He dropped out in protest when they got all nasty about gay scout leaders.”
    “It was the holidays,” Steve said. “I was working on my gay apparel badge.”
    “Knots,” Anna said.
    “I did knots.”
    “That’s all I need to know. Tie one end of the rest of the rope to the blade end of the paddle. A knot that will hold a cow. Got that?”
    “Do you want me to tie the other end on the other end?”
    “Not yet.” She started to put herself between the cow and the drop, heard Paul’s sudden intake of breath and thought better of it. “Let’s get hold of the horns. Paul will roll her rump. Ready?” Carmen was on the cliff side of her, her hands partially overlapping Anna’s where they held one of Easter’s horns in each hand. Carmen wore fingerless leather gloves to keep days and months of paddling from tearing her hands apart and Anna envied them. Between the rope and the sweat, hers burned. Paul had Easter’s tail in one hand; his other was on her drop-side hip bone. “On three,” Anna said.
    Easter hadn’t the strength to fight them and they turned her onto her side without much effort. She more or less fell over when Anna hit “three.”
    The rain was sporadic and the thunder surrounded them, cracking down from upriver, rolling overhead, drumming up from Lajitas. “I’m getting wet,” Chrissie said peevishly. “I’m going back.” Either it was an idle promise or she realized it would be no drier where she’d come from than where she was. She didn’t move.
    Anna looped her rope around Easter’s leg above her hock so the jutting bone would help keep it from slipping off. Rain made the adventure more dangerous but Anna resisted the impulse to rush. The mental image of the cow’s feet slipping through the ropes, the beast dangling by her hind legs while the half-tethered oar beat at her, then slipping from the other knot and falling to her death, was too grim to allow for hurried work.
    “I want to help,” Chrissie said suddenly.
    Anna ignored her.
    “Stay out of the way, Chrissie,” Steve said,