Third-Time Lucky (6 page)

“Try not to let it get to you,” Sandy told Kirstie, holding her hand hard. “I can see in your face you’re thinking the worst already. But don’t, honey. Think positive for Lucky’s sake!”

Kirstie had walked her palomino out of the meadow to the barn. Cold rain and hot tears had trickled down her face as she led him slowly across the footbridge over Five Mile Creek, and she’d met her mom clearing up the rapidly removed remains of the Sunday evening barbecue. Reluctantly she’d handed Lucky over to Matt, who was bedding him down in a clean stall right this minute.

Sandy made her go into the house to dry off. She gave her a towel for her hair and fresh clothes from the closet. Kirstie went through the motions without saying a word.

“Hey, listen!” her mom insisted gently. “You know what we say when things get a little tough around here?”

She nodded, but the lump in her throat wouldn’t let her speak.

“You gotta cowboy-up!” Sandy chanted the Half Moon Ranch mantra. “When the weather turns real cold and we get snow on the trail three feet deep, we keep right on trucking. A horse loses a shoe at nine thousand feet up on Eagle’s Peak Trail, what do we do?”

“We cowboy-up,” Kirstie answered faintly. For once, she was glad to be treated like a little kid. She liked the comfort of her mom’s arm around her shoulder and the soft look in her kind gray eyes.

“Sure we do. And it’s no different now that Lucky’s sick. Look, you’ve known this guy for how many years?”

“Five.” Sandy, together with Kirstie’s grandpa, had bought the palomino as a one-year-old, soon after Sandy, Kirstie, and Matt had come to live at the ranch. Kirstie had been watching from her bedroom window when they’d brought him over from San Luis Sale Barn and opened up the back of the trailer. The youngster had practically tumbled down the ramp on his skinny legs, looking dazed and confused after the rough journey. He had been real cute as he kicked out and bucked, then took in his new surroundings. And the thing that had hit Kirstie between the eyes, that had set Lucky apart from any other colt she’d ever seen, was his amazing color.

Bright as new gold. They always said that about palominos, but with Lucky it was true. He shone, he glowed, he gleamed. He was like a lucky dollar. Her own lucky charm. Lucky.

“Five years,” Sandy repeated. “And would you say he’s weak or strong?”

“Strong.” There was no trail he couldn’t climb, no river he couldn’t swim. They’d survived floods and landslides, gone everywhere together.

“Yeah. And what about willpower? Would you say he had a little or a lot?” Kirstie’s mom finished drying her hair for her, then put a mug of chocolate in her cold hands.

“A lot.” Kirstie didn’t call it willpower; she called it courage. Lucky was the bravest horse she knew.

“Good. And he’s smart, yeah?”

She nodded. Strong, brave, and clever. It was a great combination. It was what made her love him.

“So, trust him to get through this, whatever it is,” Sandy advised, allowing Kirstie to take just one gulp of her hot drink then head for the door.

Halfway across the porch, Kirstie paused and turned. “Thanks, Mom!” She managed a brave half-smile before she rushed on across the dark, wet yard toward the barn.

“Take a look in his eyes.” Matt showed Kirstie the telltale signs that her horse was sick. “Pull back the lid. You see the lining membrane? It should be a good, deep pink color.”

Lucky’s was pale, almost white. “So?” she asked.

“He’s anemic. His temperature’s over a hundred, and his resting pulse is forty-five.”

“OK, he’s sick,” Kirstie agreed. “But it can’t be equine flu; he had his shots last month.”

“Yeah, that’s what’s so weird.” Matt ran his hands over Lucky, feeling for swellings in the abdomen. “The symptoms are the same as Moonshine’s, but the diagnosis has to be different. I’m thinking along the lines of a fever brought on by poisoning of some kind. Has Lucky been eating anything he shouldn’t?”

“No way!” Kirstie was always on her guard. She never let him near any painted fences that might contain creosote or lead. And Red Fox Meadow was clear of plants that were dangerous to horses.

Matt frowned and stood up. “So maybe it’s a worm infestation. They get parasites in the gut: red worm larvae, lungworm, whatever…”

More long words. She turned sharply and walked up to him, eyeball to eyeball. “How would that happen? Come on, how?”

“Hey!” Matt backed off, hands raised in surrender. “Don’t shoot!”

“Sorry.” Kirstie shook her head. “It bugs me, that’s all, not knowing what’s making him sick.”

“OK, me, too. Let’s think this thing through: a horse can ingest—eat—the larvae via grass. They damage the gut lining and cause infection. They can even get into the blood vessels and cut off the blood flow. That gives a horse bad colic. He gets a potbelly, anemia. But that’s not the problem here, I guess …” Matt’s frown deepened, then he dug into his kit for a stethoscope. “Did you notice Lucky coughing at all?”

Kirstie took a sharp breath. “Once or twice maybe.” Why hadn’t she paid any attention at the time, she wondered. Why had she been so busy worrying about Moonshine and neglecting her own horse? She waited while Matt listened to Lucky’s chest.

And as she stood anxiously in the pool of yellow light cast by the overhead bulb, she heard footsteps and saw her mom and Hadley come into the barn. Their wet jackets and hats showed that it was still raining outside, and their quiet voices told Kirstie that they, too, were concerned.

“What’s new?” Hadley asked as he drew near Lucky’s stall.

Matt straightened up and let the stethoscope dangle from his neck. “Lungs don’t sound too good,” he told them. “There’s a mucous discharge from the nose, too.”

The wrangler nodded abruptly, leaning over the stall door for a closer look at the patient. “Listen, I heard Glen Woodford’s out of town for a day or two, so how about you giving him penicillin to clear up the discharge?”

Under the circumstances, Matt agreed to use the ranch’s own antibiotics. “We can give him 30ccs of procaine twice a day to see if it helps. Plus a shot or two of benzathine into the muscle.”

“And how long do we rest him?”

“Seven days minimum.”

Kirstie listened without taking in the details. It bothered her that Hadley, with a lifetime of dealing with horses behind him, had only needed one quick look to decide that the situation was serious.

Perhaps it was Lucky’s body language that sent a strong message. He’d backed off into a dark corner of the stall, head hanging, so unlike his usual inquisitive self that he hardly looked like the same horse.

“Let’s leave him to get some rest,” Sandy suggested after the men had stopped talking and a tense silence had developed. She led the way toward the barn door, while overhead the rain fell steadily on the corrugated tin roof.

For a while, Kirstie held back. She checked the bedding, the water feeder, reluctant to turn off the light and leave Lucky in darkness.

“Kirstie?” Sandy called.

One last look, trying to convince herself that he wasn’t as sick as they were making out, that his coat wasn’t so dull, his eyes not so lifeless as they might think. It was the way the shadows fell, a trick of the light.

From the far corner Lucky stared back at her. His pale mane hung lank over his face; he made no effort to move.

“Kirstie!” A more insistent call from her mom.

“Coming!” Quickly she switched off the light above the stall and plunged the barn into total darkness.

Monday, the first day of June, dawned bright and clear, with little sign of the rain of the night before. When Kirstie looked out of her window, Eagle’s Peak basked in early morning sunlight, and the sky was a delicate bird’s egg blue.

It was a day when she would normally call Lisa and say, “Come ride up to Eden Lake with me. You take Rodeo Rocky. (No need to say that she, Kirstie, would be riding Lucky.) We’ll make a sack lunch, take swimming stuff, and stay out the whole day!”

Lisa would answer in a sleepy voice from her bedroom above the End of Trail Diner in San Luis. “Jeez, Kirstie, do you know what time it is? It’s six thirty, for heaven’s sakes! This is a vacation. Just give me a break!”

But she would put down the phone, pull a comb through her wavy hair, stick on a T-shirt and jeans, then grab a lift from a truck driver friend of her mom’s taking breakfast in the diner. She would show up at Half Moon Ranch still grumbling about a girl needing her beauty sleep. It would be 8 a.m., time for a ranch breakfast of blueberry pancake and maple syrup. “Too many calories!” Lisa would protest, stuffing Hershey bars and marshmallows in with her sack lunch. “Say, these are new jeans. Do they make me look fat?”

Meltwater Trail would beckon: a game of Find the Flag with a new bunch of dude riders. Then on out of the stands of fresh green aspens, between tall lodgepole pines standing sentry along the high tracks leading to the bare ridges of pink granite to Bear Hunt Overlook, Elk Rock, and Dead Man’s Canyon. And beyond that the snow line. The glittering, icebound shores of Eden Lake. The two girls and their horses would enter a silent, shining paradise.

But today was different. No phone calls. No leaving her cares behind. Today Kirstie’s only thought was to get over to the barn to see how Lucky was.

Matt was already out there with Charlie, telling the young wrangler to feed the patient small amounts of molasses and concentrates throughout the day. “No oats,” he reminded him. “Dissolve the procaine tablets in his drinking water. And keep his bedding clean, OK?”

“I’ll do it,” Kirstie volunteered, going into the stall. She could see that Lucky was no better, and that this time she couldn’t blame the artificial light for the dull look of his lovely golden coat. “Is it OK if I groom him?”

“Sure.” Matt was moving off with Charlie. “But don’t handle him too much. He most likely wants some peace.”

Like a person with flu, she guessed. A horse’s bones would ache; he’d be feeling stiff in his joints and tired to death. So she took a soft brush and worked him over from head to foot, talking to him soothingly as she covered him with a light blanket and reached under his belly to fasten the straps. He stood patiently, taking little interest in what she did.

“OK, I’m done,” she assured him. “Now you get some rest. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

Leaving him in the cramped stall, head hanging, looking tired and sad, she went off to help Charlie saddle up the horses for the day’s trail rides. She bridled them up, checked cinches, divided riders into beginners, intermediates, and advanced, and saw them on their way.

“How come you’re not riding today?” Hadley called as he headed the intermediates out across Five Mile Creek.

Kirstie shrugged. “I need to take care of Lucky.”

“You sure, honey?” Sandy checked, looking down from the saddle, the low sun behind her making her fair hair shine like a halo. Her ride was with the beginners, up Apache Hill and along Coyote Trail.

“Yeah. I want to be here for him.”

“OK. Charlie’s gonna be in the maintenance area this morning, servicing the truck and trying to get in touch with Glen Woodford to check if he’s on his way. Ask him for help if you need it.”

Listless and heavyhearted, Kirstie saw off the group of excited, nervous riders. Even before they’d reached the top of Apache Hill, she was already wanting to run back and check on Lucky, having to tell herself firmly that the poor guy needed to sleep. So she wandered aimlessly into the tack room instead and began shooing cats and sweeping the floor just to keep herself occupied. The one black and two gray kittens kept on coming back and pouncing on the broom, tumbling out of the way, then scooting in and out of the door.

“Hey, kitties!” a light, cheerful voice said.

“Lisa!” Kirstie put down the broom and went outside. Her best friend was picking up the black kitten and tickling him under his chin. “How come?”

“What do you mean, ‘How come?’ It’s our vacation, isn’t it? It’s me who should be asking ‘How come?’ How come you didn’t call me at some dreadful time this morning?”

Kirstie blushed, then frowned. “Lucky’s sick.”

“Yeah. Charlie just told me.” Lisa put down the kitten and gave her a long, hard look. “So? How come you didn’t call?”

“I should’ve, I guess. Sorry.”

Lisa stepped out into the corral, put her hands on her hips, and went on with her lecture. “Let me guess. You feel bad because you rescued the appie and the appie gave Moonshine and Lucky the flu …”

“Lucky didn’t catch the bug!” Kirstie cut in quickly. “We can’t get hold of Glen and we don’t know what his problem is!”

Lisa nodded. “OK. It’s not the flu, but somehow you still feel it’s your fault.” She put up her hand to ward off another interruption. “Yeah, you do. I know you, Kirstie. Guilt, guilt, guilt. It’s written all over your face. And look at you; you didn’t even comb your hair this morning!”

“Lisa, give me a break.” This wasn’t what Kirstie needed. She turned away, planning to retreat into the tack room.

“But where did guilt ever get you?” Lisa insisted. She leaped ahead of Kirstie, barring her way. “You gotta get it into your skull that horses get sick without it being your fault. Think about it a different way.”

“Like what?” Kirstie couldn’t take much more of this. She could feel the stupid tears welling up again.

“Like, what can we do now? What’s gonna be the best thing to help Lucky get better?”

“You mean, cowboy-up?” Kirstie’s voice was low and scornful. “Spare me, Lisa. I already had that from Mom.”

“Yeah, cowboy-up!” Lisa’s green eyes sparked. She refused to back off. “Think. Make plans. If Matt’s stymied and can’t work out what’s wrong with Lucky, and you’re really afraid it’s something serious, then get a move on!”

“And do what?” Gosh, if she could think of something useful to do, instead of feeling totally helpless every time she so much as looked at Lucky, didn’t Lisa think she would do it?

“Get a second opinion!” her friend insisted. “Don’t hang around. Call Glen Woodford again!”

* * *

“Lucky’s running a high fever, that’s for sure.”

Kirstie and Lisa stayed in the background with Tommy Woodford as Glen talked Lucky’s case through with Matt. The vet had finally been contacted shortly after Sandy Scott had returned from her morning ride.