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wasn’t wasting any time. He also didn’t seem to notice all of the eyes following him and judging whether he seemed sick or not.
    “You all set here?” I asked Howie.
    “Just about. You can go on out with them. I got the formula bottles ready for the other calves if you want to take them out.”
    “Maybe I will. When the Grangers are gone, you want to go over to the Derstines’?”
    “Once I clean up. Don’t want to go in these pants.”
    “No problem. I should change, too.”
    I was halfway out the door when I heard Howie ask who the guy in the Ranger had been. I pretended not to hear. I knew he wasn’t going to be happy I’d hired Nick the Barn Painter.
    Gus was outside of his hutch when I got there, reveling in the pats and strokes of the admiring bunch. Queenie thrust her nose into my hand and I rubbed it.
    “Yes, girl, you’re still the best,” I whispered to her. She rolled her eyes up at me and panted happily.
    Marianne stood a little to the side, looking anywhere but at Gus, and I walked up beside her.
    “Cute little guy, huh?” I said.
    “I guess. If you like that sort of thing.”
    I looked at her. Who didn’t like that sort of thing?
    “Seems kind of cruel to take them from their mothers,” she said.
    “It’s the best thing for them. They’re bound to get trampled or kicked if they’re in with the big cows. And their mothers forget about them real quick once they’re out of sight.”
    “Still seems mean.”
    I shrugged. “Part of farming. You get some good snapshots of him?” I called to Zach.
    He nodded. “One of each side, just like the heifers. He’s got great markings, don’t you think?”
    I smiled. Gus looked like most of the other calves to me, but Zach saw him with a different eye. I was suddenly very glad stupid Wendy had had a bull. Even if it did cost me big bucks for the C-section.
    “Jude’s fields are looking healthy again this year,” I said, trying to find something Marianne would talk about.
    She gave me a bored look. “I guess. He thinks he’s the ultimate farmer, since everybody else is hurting from the lack of rain.”
    I was surprised at her sneering tone. “Could be his touch.”
    “I’m the one who buys the seed.”
    “Not much to that, is there?”
    She turned on me. “What would you know? You haven’t planted crops in years.”
    “What’s there to know?”
    “Haven’t you kept up at all?
    I wanted to hit her, but I restrained myself.
    “There’s all kinds of seed to buy anymore,” she said. “They’re finding ways to modify it so it will resist bugs, RoundUp, pretty much anything you want to throw at it.”
    “So you’re into that stuff?”
    “It’s working, isn’t it? Our crops look better than anybody else’s. I guess no one else thought to buy drought-resistant seed.” She snorted. “I’ve got more brains than any of the dimwit farmers around here. You’d think they never passed the Stone Age.”
    Now I really wanted to hit her. Instead, I hooked the bottles of formula onto the girl calves’ fences. They slurped at them hungrily. Their hutches looked a little messy, so I grabbed a nearby pitchfork and cleaned them up while I ignored Marianne and waited for Gus’ love fest to end.
    Jude’s crops were looking healthy. Last year, too, he’d had good luck, while some of the other farmers around had been plagued with drought and bugs. He liked to think it was his tender care, but it sounded like Marianne’s choice of genetically modified seed had something to do with it. I wondered how they could afford the seed, but figured it wasn’t my place to ask.
    Genetically modified crops are quite the rage, but some folks won’t touch them. Some places, especially in Europe and California, have banned GM products from being sold in their supermarkets or served in schools for fear of what the altered genes could do to the human body. They quote studies where unsuspecting ladybugs and monarch butterflies have died from eating the