Spring Blossom Read Online Free PDF

cleverness.
    “I’ve spent hours with her,” she boasted now
as she led Hunter down the long, dim stable corridor. “And she’s
very clever,” she added as he smiled indulgently.
    Maggie stopped at the last box stall in the
row and reached up to remove a lead rope from a nail beside the
door. She peeked over the top of the closed lower half of the door
before allowing it to swing open. “Hello, Boxcar,” she called,
entering the dusky stall. “I’ll bring her out,” she called.
    Hunter stepped forward, resting his elbows
on top of the gate-like door, knitting his fingers together as he
grinned. “What did you call her?”
    Maggie wrapped her arms around the small
light-brown and white calf’s neck. “Boxcar,” she said, kissing the
calf gently above its left eye.
    He laughed. “Where on earth did you get such
a name?”
    “From trains.” She snapped the lead onto the
calf’s halter. “You’ll see when I bring her out.”
    Hunter could see them in the dimly lit
stall, but Maggie and her calf were not about to make an entrance
into the brighter light of the corridor. The heifer had planted her
forefeet wide and was bawling miserably as Maggie pulled on the
rope, attempting to get the animal to move. “She does walk on
lead,” Maggie insisted. “I just have to get her started.”
    He laughed softly, not wanting to dampen the
girl’s hopes; that calf was not about to budge.
    Looking around, Hunter spied a wide harness
strap hanging from a peg on the wall. When he had it in hand,
testing its length, he entered the stall and stepped to the
animal’s side as he studied the stubborn creature. “I believe she
needs a little nudge,” he said. “Leave the lead draped over her
neck and go around her." As Maggie complied, the calf turned her
head to stare at Hunter. “Boxcar, you are a stubborn girl,” he
said. The calf turned her head back to face the open stall door and
quietly chewed her cud.
    Hunter passed one end of the length of
harness across Boxcar’s back. “Take this,” he directed his
accomplice. “We going to put in around her rump and see if we can
nudge her forward.”
    Maggie nodded and did as he directed. When
the wide leather strap was in place, Hunter and Maggie stood on
opposite sides of the animal’s head. “Hold tight to the strap,” he
said and Maggie, understanding his plan, smiled.
    “It’s like putting her in a sling!” she said
gaily.
    But Boxcar did not care for this treatment
at all. Almost as soon as she felt the pressure on her hind end,
the calf bolted forward and out the open door.
    With immediate loss of tension on the strap,
Maggie stumbled and Hunter laughed as he, too, had to regain his
balance. But he simultaneously managed to reach for Maggie’s upper
arm and saved her from going down in the straw.
    They were both laughing now, and Boxcar was
free.
    As soon as Maggie realized her pet had
bolted far beyond the stall door, she was on the run. “I’ll get
her,” she called.
    Hunter smiled as he gathered the harness
strap and stepped into the corridor. Maggie was racing out of the
stables.
    A moment later he joined her in the noon
sunshine, where she was proudly promenading with the calf on a
lead.
    She smiled as she walked toward him, leading
the now cooperative calf. “I told you she could do it,” she
said.
    Hunter laughed, shaking his head at his own
ineptitude. “I apologize for setting her free. I confess to being
knowledgeable only about horses.”
    Maggie merely smiled up at him; nothing he
could do would be wrong in her eyes.
    “So, tell me,” Hunter questioned as he
placed his hands in the pockets of his breeches. “Why do you call
her Boxcar?”
    The mischievous twinkle in her eyes made him
ways but Hunter complied when she said, “Walk around behind
her.”
    He stood there, feeling a bit foolish as he
stared at the calf’s rump and high, bony hips. He looked at Maggie,
who was laughing, and then he looked again at the high,