Roped (Gail McCarthy Mysteries) (13 page)

Lonny put his arms around me, and we held each other for a moment. I could feel the solid warmth and comfort of his body, so dear and familiar. My life would seem pretty empty without him.

Abruptly I let go and headed for the door. "I'll see you tomorrow," I said. "Down at the clinic. We'll work on Pistol."

I went out before he could answer, got in my truck, started it, and drove out. All the way home there was only one issue on my mind: Lonny and what he wanted of me. Nothing less than giving up my life and my job for him. I wasn't sure I could do it. One thing I was sure of, though; if I'd slept with him tonight, I would have been sorely tempted to say yes.

FOURTEEN

At eight o'clock the next morning I was ready to ditch the job. I stood in the office of Santa Cruz Equine Practice, staring at the note that some kind soul had placed on my desk so I couldn't miss it. I said, "Oh, shit," out loud in a tone meant to carry.

Jim Leonard, my boss, sadistic bastard that he was, grinned at the words. "She asked for you, Gail. Not me. You."

I swiveled my gaze to the receptionist, who had been carefully avoiding my eye. "Is that true?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm afraid so. She said you were real good with Thunder last time. She thinks he likes you better than Jim."

"Great."

Jim's grin grew even wider. We were both quite familiar with Kelly Haynes and Thunder. Kelly wasn't so bad; her main fault was misguided loyalty to Thunder.

Thunder was purely an asshole. I thought myself he was also mentally retarded. Nothing else could entirely explain his colossal uncooperativeness and/or the stupidity expressed in violence that was his trademark. He frequently ended up injuring himself as well as the unfortunate humans who came in contact with him.

Thunder was known to flip over backward at the drop of a hat, both when being ridden and when being handled on the ground. At times it seemed he needed no reason; without the slightest warning he would fly backward, rear straight up, and go over, flattening anything behind him. He also bucked Kelly off whenever he felt like it, spooked violently at anything he didn't care for, was clumsy enough to have fallen with her several times, and bit and kicked when provoked. On top of which, he stood 16.2, weighed fourteen hundred pounds, and was as strong as those facts implied. Thunder had no redeeming qualities. He was one horse that belonged in a dog food can.

Thunder couldn't stand having his feet worked on. Digging a sole abscess out of his hoof was bound to result in at least one back flip.

"I think I'm gonna need help with this." I turned to Jim, but he was already backing up.

"I've got a colic case out in Watsonville, Gail. An emergency. Got to go." A minute later, he was gone.

No help for it. I took my time organizing the things I needed and making sure my truck was well stocked, but eventually I had to head out. Working on difficult horses was part of my job; Jim would not forgive me for pleading cowardice.

The drive out to Kelly's was pleasant enough; I followed San Andreas Road along the cypress-and pine-tree-studded coastline, admiring the deep blue of Monterey Bay on this sunny May morning. Not a trace of fog was visible, and it was already warm at 9:00 A.M.; it was going to be another hot one.

I pulled into the white-board-fenced driveway and looked automatically at the corral next to the barn where Kelly kept Thunder. There he was. He hadn't somehow managed to die before I got there. Damn.

Getting out of the truck reluctantly, I walked in his direction. Not a bad-looking horse, I thought idly. A shame he was so entirely worthless.

Half Quarter Horse, half Thoroughbred, Thunder was as well made as he was big. Many people had probably told Kelly what a good-looking horse he was. Too many. His bright red sorrel color, high white socks, big blaze, and flaxen mane and tail all added to the showy impression.

As I approached him, he pinned his ears and turned away, showing me his ass end and ruining his fancy appearance totally, as far as I was concerned. Such behavior was par for the course with Thunder; it wouldn't take an experienced horseman two minutes to figure out the horse was a bad one.

Kelly came walking out of her bam, carrying a halter. "Hi, Gail," she said. "Thanks for coming out. He's real lame in the left hind."

Shit. A hind foot. That was the kicking end.

"I think it's another abscess," she went on.

This was probably a good guess. In addition to his many other faults, Thunder had terrible feet. They were prone to cracking and chipping, they bruised easily, and they had a tendency to develop abscesses.

"Did he get real lame all of a sudden?" I asked Kelly.

"Yeah."

"Probably an abscess, then." Given Thunder's history, I was willing to bet on it, but, of course, I would have to examine him carefully first. Not a fun prospect.

Kelly went into the corral to catch the horse; despite the fact that he was quite dramatically lame in the left hind leg and was virtually hobbling, it took her ten minutes. Thunder was an expert on evasion.

Eventually she got him in a comer and was able to put the halter on him. I approached warily. Being caught, with Thunder, was no guarantee that he would remain caught. He was very good at jerking the lead rope out of Kelly's hands. But tying him up was even more dangerous; it positively seemed to incite him to pull back.

Keeping my body well off to the side, I ran a hand down his left hind leg and picked the foot up. Thunder quivered, but he obliged, for the moment. I could feel no unnatural lumps or swellings on his leg; he had no obvious injuries. Now for the hard part.

Using a hoof knife, I cleaned the foot out and pared it down to clean, white sole. No nails or punctures or wedged pebbles were evident. I got the hoof testers and began the process of squeezing the sole in various spots, trying to find the sore place.

As I had more or less expected, Thunder reacted violently when I found it. Jerking his foot out of my hands, he reared up, dragging Kelly with him. I flung myself clear and waited. Thunder stood on his back legs and waved his front feet in the air for a minute, but eventually he came back down. Kelly managed to hang onto him. Not bad, for the first round.

"He's got an abscess," I told her. "Right in the heel. I'll need to block him and dig it out."

She nodded unhappily. She knew as well as I did what the abscess would entail. First the touchy process of opening it up so it could drain, then a weeklong regime of antibiotics, foot baths, and bandaging. Sole abscesses were a pain in the butt, particularly with an uncooperative horse like Thunder.

Getting some tranquilizer out of the truck, I gave Thunder a quick couple of cc's in the jugular vein, putting the shot in before he could really see what I was doing. Normally I wouldn't tranquilize a horse with a sole abscess-it makes it harder to hold up a foot-but with Thunder, I thought it would improve my odds of getting through doctoring him unscathed.

Once the horse was swaying slightly, I gave him a shot of nerve block in the ankle, to eliminate the pain my hoof knife would otherwise cause. Then I jacked his foot up on my knee, not without some effort, and began digging into him.

Thunder swayed, he leaned on me heavily, and he made several sharp attempts to jerk his foot away, but eventually I managed to cut deep enough to get the pus flowing. A few more good scrapes to make sure the abscess was fully opened and draining, and then I began bandaging the foot. It was when I was wrapping the duct tape over the gauze that I got in trouble.

Without any warning, or any hesitation, he kicked out, hard and fast. His lashing hoof missed my knee by a fraction of an inch, and I stumbled aside, just in time to get out of the way as he fired again. My muscles trembled, tried to their limits by the strain of holding up his leg for long minutes. Sweat soaked my shirt. I stood there, gasping for air, and watched the bastard leap around, destroying his half-finished bandage and filling his open wound with barnyard muck. It took all the self-control I possessed to keep my mouth shut.

I managed. I gave him another couple of cc's of tranquilizer and I cleaned and rewrapped his foot, more or less without incident. I accepted Kelly's thanks, handed her antibiotics, bandaging materials, and instructions, and made a reasonably graceful exit. Very professional. Inwardly, I was seething.

Calling the office from the car phone, with every intention of bawling Jim out and refusing to deal with Thunder ever again, I was slightly mollified by the receptionist's first words. "Gail, Kris Griffith called for you. Dixie has a cut on her poll that needs a couple of stitches."

This was good news. Dixie was a sweet-tempered mare, and Kris Griffith was a friend. "Call and tell her I'll be right there," I said.

Kris lived on Old San Jose Road, in the Soquel Valley, not too far from my little house. I'd boarded Gunner with her the first year I owned him, and I knew her place well. Driving in, I looked with familiar pleasure at the neat, corral-board-fenced pastures, the pretty barn, and the riding arena down by the creek. Kris's place was a horseman's paradise. Unfortunately, she was about to lose it.

Like everybody else, it seemed, Kris was in the process of a messy and unpleasant divorce, one that she'd put off for years, she told me, for financial reasons and out of fear of a custody battle. But things had eventually gotten bad enough she'd embarked on the struggle. Now her pretty ranch was up for sale and her daughter divided her time between mother and father. Why would anybody take the risk of getting married, I asked myself, not for the first time.

Pulling up to the barn, I looked automatically at Rebby's pen. There he was, an eleven-year-old dark brown gelding, a horse Kris had campaigned for many seasons at the top levels of endurance racing. A horse who had won the legendary Tevis Cup. And one of my worst veterinary failures. Rebby was crippled for life.

I got out of the truck and went over to pet him. Rubbing his forehead with its white star, I asked him, "So, how's Rebel Cause today?"

"The same," Kris said from behind me.

I turned to face her. Her tone was rueful but accepting; both she and I had had to come to terms with the fact that Rebby would never be sound again.

He had contracted EPM, a neurological condition that had left him with some permanent incoordination in his hind legs. I had treated him with the appropriate medication, but he had failed to make a complete recovery, whether because we hadn't started the treatment soon enough or just bad luck I didn't know. He wasn't in any pain, but he walked clumsily and occasionally fell when he tried to gallop. Kris had made the decision to keep him as a pet, and Rebby lived in a corral that was just big enough that he could move around and get some exercise and not so big he could run at breakneck speeds and kill himself.

It was difficult for everybody, not least of all for Reb. A strong-minded, athletic horse of mostly Thoroughbred descent, Rebby had tons of go. Standing around in a pen was not his idea of a good time; traveling fifty miles on an outing was. But Kris had decided, wisely I thought, that it was too much of a risk to ride him; the potential for him to fall and kill them both was too great. So she took him for walks; she brushed him and petted him and cared for him and loved him. It was the best she could do. It was like having your child confined to a wheelchair for life: you cope.

Kris had never considered putting Rebby down. "This horse has done everything for me," she told me. "As long as he's not in pain, I'm not going to quit him."

And he wasn't. I looked into his dark, intelligent eyes as he bumped me with his nose, asking for more rubbing. The eyes were steady and kind and quiet; they sparkled with mischief at times. They were not the eyes of a horse in distress. I had always been quite sure that Reb's condition wasn't painful. Merely frustrating, as far as he was concerned.

"So, what happened to Dixie?" I asked Kris.

"She's got a cut on her poll. I think it needs a few stitches." Kris caught Dixie and led her out.

The little dun mare stood reasonably still as I scrutinized the wound between her ears but jerked her head up when I attempted to probe it. I didn't blame her. It probably hurt like hell.

"She must have thrown her head up and hit it on something sharp," I told Kris. "It might be deep. I'll have to tranquilize her so I can clean it. You might look around her corral for nails sticking out of boards and sharp branches."

"I'll do that." Kris watched me get the tranquilizer and inject it; in a minute the mare was swaying on her feet.

I cleaned and stitched Dixie's cut without incident; Kris gave me the particulars of her latest court battle with Rick while I worked. I didn't really want to hear it; I was reminded too much of what Lonny was dreading with Sara. But Kris was my friend, and I knew she needed to talk.

When the war stories and the stitching were both done, I asked her, "So what are you doing with this little horse?"

"Oh, I bought Dixie mostly for Jo." Kris's daughter had recently grown more interested in horses. "I take her on a trail ride once in a while; that's it."

"You don't plan to compete anymore?"

"No. Between working full-time and taking care of Jo and this damn divorce, I just don't have the energy; not to mention I'm mostly broke."

The horrors of the marital split. Lonny's fears were far from exaggerated. I wished Kris good luck, gave her antibiotics for Dixie, and told her to call me if she wanted to have lunch. Then I headed back to the clinic.

As I expected, Lonny was waiting for me. Pistol stood tied to the trailer, and Lonny sat in the patch of shade under the one tree in the office parking lot. When he saw me he got to his feet, a little haltingly, moving in that stiff way that let me know his arthritic hip was bothering him.

"Looks like I ought to give you some bute," I told him.