Arthur Morgan did not intend to survive when he gave his hat to John Marston and stayed behind to gain his redemption. As he crawled towards his final resting place, he never intended to wake up again.
But he does wake up. Thanks to time travelers F...
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April, 2022
"Arthur, would you give me a hand with this?" Jackson grunted, shoving his arm even further into a very grumpy cow they'd herded into the chute near the barn. Her calf was stuck inside her, and they'd been forced to pull it for her. It was a tough, dirty job, but it needed to be done.
"What would you have me do?" Arthur asked. He stood outside the chute, watching Jackson with intrigue. He'd never pulled a calf before. There had been a few calves that needed pulling last year just after he'd first come to the ranch from the hospital, but he'd been nowhere near physically strong enough to help at the time. Now, with Tori being pregnant, it wasn't safe for her to come into contact with any kind of animal birth fluids, lest she contract some sort of zoonotic reproductive disease, and assisting Jackson in pulling calves was now Arthur's job.
"Hand him the calf chains!" Tori screeched. She was there to supervise, but she refused to get off her horse, and her main job was to run and get the men whatever they needed from the barn or the house.
A lightbulb went off in Arthur's brain, and he reached down into the five gallon bucket Jackson had placed next to the small, cage-like addition to the portion of the chute with the head catch attached to it. It was called a palpation box, and it was meant to protect the person at the cow's business end from being kicked and injured.
Inside the bucket were a couple of long, silver obstetrical chains. Arthur grabbed them and came up next to Jackson, who grunted and managed to pull one of the calf's feet free of the cow's birth canal and out into the open air. "Gimme a chain," he panted, unable to wipe the sweat from his brow because of the goopy grime on his gloved hands. Arthur complied, and Jackson deftly looped the chain around the calf's pastern with two practiced knots. "Hold this and keep tension on it," he instructed Arthur. "Don't let the foot slip back inside the cow. I think the calf's head is turned sideways. If I can get everything situated right, it should just slide right out."
Arthur gritted his teeth and grabbed the chain, pulling back on it just enough to keep the foot exposed to the air, but too hard to let Jackson manipulate the rest of the calf. The mother cow bellowed in pain.
"You ready to do this in a few months?" he said jokingly, looking over at Tori.
"Fuck off, Arthur," she growled, making a rude gesture at him with her middle finger. But, there was a smile hiding in the corners of her mouth. She wasn't actually offended by their casual banter.
"Do you mind?" Jackson growled. "There's a high likelihood that selling this calf will help keep a roof over my new niece's head. I'd like for it not to die, and I can't concentrate with you two being idiots."
Tori snorted with laughter and gave Arthur a look. In the warm sunlight of this pleasant, spring day, his eyes glittered back at her, although he chose to heed Jackson's order and remain silent.
