Project Hannibal Kathryn Hoff (best free e book reader TXT) 📖

The warm, wet fur tangled under Estelle’s fingers, but the chest didn’t move. She pushed harder, a human-to-mammoth CPR. “Breathe, damn it. Breathe.”

The mother squealed angrily, poking her trunk past Cortez.

“Leave it,” he said. “Move away now!”

A squeak, and the calf wriggled like a fish.

“It’s alive!” Sera crowed, thrusting her phone forward.

Cortez grabbed Sera’s arm, pulling her to her feet and away from the calf. Estelle backed off, too—none too soon. With great, indignant huffs, the mother and auntie swooped in to sniff at the baby.

The calf rolled onto its belly, head up, legs splayed. Eyes opened wide. Baa, it bleated like a sheep.

Estelle let out a long breath. “Thank you, Lord.”

Cortez pulled the women farther back as other mammoth aunties rushed to see. They stretched out their trunks, crowding so close that Estelle couldn’t see the baby.

The calf bleated. The mother rumbled ominously, standing over the calf, swinging her tusks to warn the aunties away. They got the message and backed off.

Estelle grinned at Sera. “Your mom did the same. Snarled at her own mother when Gran tried to handle you the day you were born.”

Cortez gave Estelle a grin—the first true smile she’d seen on him since he’d arrived. “Congratulations,” he said. “You’re godmothers.”

Estelle grinned back. “Just doing my job.”

“Thank you both. That was very brave. A little, um, impetuous, putting yourself between a mother and calf like that, but very brave.”

Idiotic, he means. And he was right. But jumping in to save a patient was what Estelle was trained to do.

Sera hugged herself ecstatically. “He’s so cute. I love him!”

“Her,” Cortez said. “Her name is Jade.”

Jade’s hair was long and stringy. She panted, her eye rolling toward them far enough to show the whites. When she turned her head, her ridiculously flimsy trunk flopped uselessly.

Sera nodded. “Jade, that’s nice. Will she be all right now?”

“We’ll know better when she gets to her feet and starts to nurse.” Gazing off to the north, Cortez sighed. “I guess I’m not taking them anywhere for a while.”

“I’m sorry we upset your plans,” Estelle said, “taking you out of your way and all.”

He waved it away. “Consider the favor repaid in full. You helped Jade survive.”

Estelle smiled. “I guess every baby mammoth is precious.”

Cortez nodded. “Jade is special. She’s designed to become the next matriarch. The first generation of mammoths were genetically engineered to be small and docile so we could manage them. Jade’s the first female created to be larger and more aggressive, the way the original woolly mammoths were. In a few years she’ll lead the herd, and she’ll choose the biggest and strongest mates to breed mammoths more like her wild ancestors.”

Entranced, Sera couldn’t take her eyes from the infant. “I think she’s wonderful. Can I pet her?”

“Better stay away. The mother’s likely to be protective.”

The baby—Jade—got her front feet under her, though her hind feet still splayed on the ground. She raised her head and gazed wide-eyed at her surroundings.

Opal nudged the calf until she got to her feet. Twice, Jade wobbled and went down, crying like a lamb, but she struggled up again and nosed her mother’s belly till she found a teat. Her little trunk was comically useless. Eventually it would become a powerhouse of muscle, but at the moment, it was just something in the way when she tried to nurse.

Ignoring his own advice, Cortez worked his way over to where the infant was nuzzling for milk. The mother mammoth welcomed him with a gentle caress of her trunk, making no objection as he ran his hands over the calf.

When he returned to Estelle’s side, he said, “She seems fine. A hundred pounds, more or less. No structural abnormalities. Taller than average—she might be wobbly for a day or two.”

“She’s still wet,” Sera said. “Will she be warm enough?”

“It’ll dry in an hour. Right now she just has the fuzzy undercoat. Until the guard hairs grow out, that’ll keep her warm like a baby bird’s down.”

One of the mammoths at the edge of the group squealed.

Cortez raised his head, coming to alert. “Oh, hell.”

The mammoths around them stirred restlessly, rumbling to one another like a chorus of earth-bound thunderclouds.

“What is it?” Estelle asked. It occurred to her that they were very small humans among nervous, stampede-prone giants.

Cortez nodded toward a group of tall rocks at the edge of the meadow. “Over there—there are wolves hiding in the grass.”

Sera shrugged. “We’ve been hearing them for days. They won’t bother the mammoths, though, will they?”

A chill froze Estelle’s spine. “They know there’s a baby,” she said. Nothing would attract a predator faster than the scent of blood, and there was Jade’s bloody afterbirth, littering the ground. “Cortez? We need to get out of here.”

But all around, nervous mammoths pushed and stamped. A smallish mammoth, the size of a cow, bumped into Sera, knocking her into Estelle’s arms. Anywhere they moved, they were likely to be trampled.

In the center of the melee, Opal trumpeted loud enough to hurt Estelle’s ears. Legs too weak to stand for long, the tiny infant had collapsed on the ground under her mother’s belly.

Sera clung to Estelle. “What do we do?”

“Go up,” Cortez said. “Topaz! Hey-up!” One of the restless mammoths turned, sidling closer. “Kneel!”

As the mammoth lowered herself, Cortez grabbed Estelle by armpit and hip and heaved her onto the animal’s back. “Excuse me, miss,” he said. With a hand on Sera’s butt, he boosted her onto the mammoth behind Estelle. “Just hang on!” he shouted.

Hang on to what? The mammoth rose, tilting left, then right. With a scream, Sera clutched Estelle’s waist hard enough to squeeze her breath away.

Estelle had nothing to grab but the mammoth’s stringy hair. She