Roped (Gail McCarthy Mysteries) (14 page)

"You're not kidding." Lonny grinned. "Getting old is the pits."

He walked over to Pistol, untied him, and led him toward me. Immediately I could tell that the horse was no better. Dead lame in the right front.

"I took him off bute last night," Lonny said, "so we could see how he's doing."

"He doesn't look too good," I said. "I'm going to shoot some pictures of that ankle right away. I have a hunch there's something going on in there."

I got the X-ray machine and took some shots of Pistol's pastern, the area where I knew he had arthritic changes-ringbone. While Lonny and I waited for them to develop, I got out the two previous sets of X rays I'd taken over the last few years. They showed that the ringbone was getting steadily worse, which was more or less what you would expect.

The new X rays, when we looked at them, proved my hunch correct. It didn't give me much pleasure.

"He's got a bone chip in there," I told Lonny, showing him where to look on the filmy gray print. "I don't know. This might be the end of his career as a rope horse."

"So, what do we do?"

"You've got a couple of choices. You can keep him on bute awhile, see if he'll stabilize and get better, or you can nerve him. There's not much point in taking the chip out, I don't think. It's not doing any harm where it is. But this horse was only borderline sound to begin with. This extra trauma might be the last straw."

"Will nerving him make him sound again?"

"Maybe. But we'd have to sever the nerves from the ankle down, which means his whole foot would be numb. He wouldn't be safe to ride."

"So, either way, he's probably due to be retired."

"Yeah. I'm afraid so."

Both of us stared at the big gelding. He regarded us calmly back, his wise, old eyes patient and unperturbed. Pistol had been hauled all over the western United States in his team roping career; he'd seen it and done it all. Not much upset him.

"He won't like it," Lonny said sadly. "He doesn't want to retire."

"I know."

We both knew the horse loved to go. Living at his ease in a pasture would be pleasant for him, but not the same as being campaigned. Pistol was a trooper. He knew where he belonged-going down the road to another roping.

Lonny sighed. "Well, he deserves as many good years as he has left. He's been a great horse. I'll keep him at home in the corral for a while, until he's moving around OK, and then we'll see where we're at. I'll do what's right for him."

"I know you will." I smiled up at Lonny, thinking that this was one of the nicest things about him-his heart was in the right place. Where many ropers would have chickened the horse once he was no longer useful, Lonny would keep him and care for him. It was one of the reasons we were together. Lonny loved his horses.

I gave Pistol some bute intravenously, just to make him feel better, and Lonny loaded him in the trailer. I was about to suggest lunch when the receptionist dashed out the back door of the office.

"Gail, Lisa Bennett just called and she's got an emergency. She said someone let all the horses out of their corrals. One of them got into the feed room and ate a bunch of grain, she thinks. She says he's colicked-pretty bad."

"Tell her I'm on my way."

FIFTEEN

I drove to the Bennett Ranch as fast as the law allowed; even so, it took me forty-five minutes to get there. Lone Oak was just that far away. I arrived to find a small group of people gathered in the barnyard. Glen, Al Borba, Tim, and Susan Slater stood in a confrontational square. Lisa was leading Chester in circles.

My heart sank. Not Chester. Damn. I observed him closely as Lisa led him in my direction. His expression was alert and he wasn't sweating. Good signs.

"He's better," Lisa announced. "Maybe he didn't get much grain. He couldn't have been in there very long."

"What happened" I asked her as I took the horse's pulse and respiration.

"Someone let all the horses out of their pens this morning. Al said everything was normal when he fed, and sometime between then and ten o'clock, when Dad went down to the barn, someone came along and did this."

Chester's pulse and respiration were only slightly elevated. While I watched, he started pawing the ground and acting like he wanted to roll. Lisa got him moving again. "That's what he's been doing," she said over her shoulder.

"Is he the only sick horse?" I was filling a syringe with banamine.

"Yeah. The others were just milling around. But he's too smart for his own good. He opened the latch and got in the feed room. He knows where we keep the grain. He was eating it when I found him."

Too much grain all at once was a sure recipe for colic, and maybe founder, too. "How much did he get?" I asked.

"It's hard to tell; the grain's in a big barrel. Not a whole lot, though."

"I'm going to give him a shot of painkiller, and we'll pump some mineral oil down him. Hopefully that will do it. He doesn't look too bad."

Chester accepted the injection in his jugular vein and the tube down his nose quietly, and I pumped the mineral oil into his stomach. "You'll need to keep a good eye on him for the next few hours," I told Lisa. "The banamine will wear off slowly, and if he starts to show symptoms of pain, we'll have to get right on it."

She nodded seriously as she stroked the horse's neck. Loud voices from the direction of the group around Glen made us both turn. Susan was declaiming again.

"What you're doing is cruel and inhumane," she announced to Glen. "I hear those poor cattle bawling every night."

"Oh, brother." Lisa rolled her eyes.

"What's going on?" I asked her.

"We're shipping all the steers at the beginning of next week, so we've been gathering the cattle and keeping them in these little holding pastures near the barn. Some of them are being weaned off their mothers, so they're bawling. Susan can hear it from her house. She thinks we're torturing the cattle."

I listened to Glen begin a fairly patient explanation of the logistics of cattle ranching. How the grass was done for the year and the cattle needed to be gathered and moved -otherwise they would starve.

"Do you think she let the horses out of their pens?" I asked Lisa quietly. "Freedom for animals and all that?"

Lisa looked confused. "She could have, I suppose. But would she come right back up here and start yelling at Dad?"

"Who knows?"

Susan's voice was raised again. "You're just shipping these poor little animals off to be slaughtered. It's morally wrong."

Glen's voice was still patient. "So just what do you want me to do with them?"

"Keep them and take care of them, of course."

There was a brief silence. Glen looked steadily at Susan, then at the pastureful of cattle behind them. "How about I give you one?" he said at last. He pointed at a big black baldy steer with black freckles on his pink nose. "That one right there. He's a real gentle steer. We call him Freckles. He'll let you pet him."

And Glen stepped up to the fence and stretched his hand slowly out to the steer, who did, indeed, allow his forehead to be rubbed. "What do you say?" Glen asked her. "I'll give him to you, and you give him a good home."

Susan sputtered. There was no other word for it. "Uh. Well. Where would I put him?"

"I don't know," Glen said evenly. "But if you want him to be happy, a pen in your backyard wouldn't be big enough. He'd need at least a quarter-acre. You'd have to feed him, of course."

Susan stared at the steer. There he was, a living, breathing animal whose life she could save. "I can't," she said miserably.

"I know you can't." Glen's voice was quiet. "I can't keep all these steers, either. I can't afford to, just like you can't afford this one."

"Then why do you buy them in the first place?"

"Would you rather they didn't exist? If people like me didn't raise beef cattle for other people to eat, they'd disappear forever. They'd be rarities in zoos. Is that what you want?"

Susan didn't say a word.

"What's wrong with the life I'm giving them? Sure, they're going to be butchered, but they ran around on the green grass all year, and I have every expectation they'll be killed humanely. Everyone has to die sometime."

Good point, Glen. Susan appeared worn down. Al and Tim were both staring at her with ill-concealed animosity. She glanced at Lisa and me, standing with Chester, and could see we weren't going to jump in.

"Well, some animal rights protesters have done things like that. I want to be sure you understand that you wouldn't be doing the horses a favor."

"I'm not
that
dumb," Susan snapped. She looked the group of us over with disdainful eyes. "I'm not giving up," she said clearly. "I'll be watching you." She marched off toward the road, the hem of her long skirt dragging in the dusty grass.

"How's Chester?" Glen asked me.

"We'll know in about four hours," I told him. "I just loaded him up on painkiller and mineral oil. So, how do you think this happened?"

"I don't know." Glen spoke reluctantly. "They were all out when I got down to the bam. Al says everything was normal at feeding time."

"Any of you see any strangers around the place?"

Lisa and Glen shook their heads negatively; Tim said, "Only that goddamn Susan."

Al's heavy voice broke in: "Anybody could have done it. I was out with the cattle. You can't see the barn from the big house. Any stranger could have driven in here and out again." Al's tone was defensively belligerent. Of course, this was his usual tone. But I wondered. Was Al anxious to prove the culprit wasn't necessarily someone who lived on the ranch?

"I think you should take this seriously," I said to Glen. "It wasn't an accident. Someone does seem to be," I searched for a better word and gave up, "stalking you. If I were you, I'd call the sheriff's department."

Glen's negative head shake was instantaneous. "I don't want to do that," he said firmly.

Our eyes met. Glen's were clear blue, with every one of his fifty-something years showing clearly in the lines around them. "I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't mention this to anybody."

"All right," I said slowly. "But if something else happens, I am going to feel free to report it, okay?"

He gave the slightest of nods. I could feel Al's and Tim's eyes drilling into me with separate intensity. I would have given a lot to be able to read their thoughts.

Glen turned to Lisa. "Put Chester in the front corral where we can keep an eye on him."

Lisa led the horse off; he looked bright and happy, for the moment anyway. The next few hours would show what the prognosis was.

"Don't feed him any hay for a while," I told Al and Glen. "If he seems okay by dinnertime, you can give him half an ordinary feeding. And if he's passed that oil by tomorrow morning, you can treat him normally again."

Two minutes later, we walked into the Saddlerack. As always, the cool air was refreshing in contrast to the heat of midday. Lisa took her usual table in the corner. Janey was behind the bar today. I could see Susan at the far end of the room, sitting with the bespectacled man she'd been with at the roping, talking animatedly.

It seemed sort of funny. Here we were, Lisa, Susan, Janey, and I, all in the same bar, seventeen years after we'd graduated from high school. We were quite a study in types. I suppose that in our high school years I was the smart one, Lisa the pretty one, Janey the sexy one, and Susan the hippie. As adults, we were not quite so typecast, but the cliches might still apply.

I stared at the four of us in turn. Lisa and I were reflected in the mirror behind the bar; we both looked a bit battered, I thought. My veterinary degree probably justified my high school label as "smart," and Lisa, despite the signs of stress, was still and probably always would be a very attractive woman. It was there in the bones of her face.

Glancing surreptitiously at Susan, I decided she looked much younger than Lisa and me; her fair skin was relatively unlined, as her hippie-esque attire was unchanged. Susan was quite recognizably the Susan of our high school years.

It was Janey who was the enigma. There she stood behind the bar-quiet, watchful, unreadable. She wore another tight T-shirt-this one white and sheer enough to reveal the black lace bra beneath it. As always, I had no idea what mysterious alchemy in her nature had produced the combination of overt sexiness blended with hostility. What in the world made Janey tick?

Her belligerent expression seemed more or less habitual, as did her father's, but whether it was the outward sign of deep resentment or merely a superficial facade I couldn't tell. Could Janey, or Al, possibly hate Glen enough to be Lisa's stalker? Sort of a have-nots hating the haves, Russian Revolution motivation? It seemed pretty far-fetched.

Still, I asked Lisa, "What time does this place open?"

"Eleven o'clock," she said promptly. "They don't do breakfast. And yeah, I've thought about that, too. But why would she?"

"Revolt of the downtrodden?" I shrugged my shoulders. "I don't know. There could be lots going on neither of us knows about. Maybe she had an affair with your dad and he dumped her."