Whitehorse (36 page)

She nodded, understanding thoroughly.

Leah stood back, remaining silent as Graham checked the animal's vital signs: respiration, heart rate, gut sounds, the color of its gums, its temperature. He checked the stall: kicked around the shavings, toed a pile of dung, then glanced into the water bucket, hay and feed bin, then told Lorian to move the horse to the clinic to be palpated.

Lorian shook his head. "I'm gonna have to hock my truck to pay this bill, Jake. Shit, man, that Ranitidine alone is costing me two hundred bucks a week. Hell, I could go down to Wal-Mart and buy up a buncha Tums to give this bag of bones."

Jake turned on Lorian so fast that Lorian nearly tripped on himself. "Fine, Lorian, you do that. Go buy you some Tums, and while you're at it a plot to bury the goddamn horse in because that's what's going to happen if you don't start following my directions in the care of this animal. Is that it? You trying to kill the horse? You got plenty of insurance on him or what?"

Lorian's face went beet red. "What the hell are you accusing me of, Graham?"

"I told you not to be giving that horse grain for a week. There's molasses on his breath and oats in his droppings. You've been graining him, you stupid bastard."

"He was losing weight. I can't run no damn horse if he's fifty pounds underweight. He won't make it around the goddamn track."

"He sure as hell isn't going to make it if he's dead, is he?" Jake shouted back, then turned on his heels and stormed from the barn, leaving Leah to take the lead rope from Lorian. He glared at her with sweat running down his temples.

"Who the hell are you?" he said through his tobacco-stained teeth.

"I'll be assisting Doctor Graham for a while. I'm Doctor Starr." She extended her hand and tried to give him a steady smile. "I'm sure your horse will be fine, Mr. Lorian."

"I don't give a shit, lady. He ain't won a goddamn dollar since last year and if you ask me I'd just as soon put the sombitch down. Je—sus. Get the nag outta here, why don't ya?"

Lorian walked off, shouting orders to a pair of Hispanic grooms, who scuttled like crabs out of his way. Leah ran her hand along the horse's withers and down its massive shoulder bone, smiling as Cool Me Down raised his head and turned his big dark eyes, reflecting intense pain, on hers. "No wonder you have ulcers," she said, then headed back to the clinic.

"There is a swelling on the left that might be a gas pocket, but I don't think so." Leah leaned further into the horse, her eyes closed as she visualized the interior walls of the colon and the location of the spleen and kidneys. The pressure and heat around her arm, all the way to her shoulder, felt uncomfortable if not outright crushing. "The gastric ulcerations are probably contributing to his discomfort, but in my opinion I think we're dealing with a nephrosplenic entrapment. The large colon has somehow gotten tossed over the ligament, probably while he was rolling." Leah gently withdrew her arm from the stallion's rectum, peeled the examination sleeve off and tossed it in the trash. Turning to Graham, she said, "You can run another CBC fibrinogen and PCV for total protein but I suspect they're not going to tell you anything you don't already know. He's anemic and dehydrated, which means this has been going on a while. I suggest a good shot of calcium and a thirty-minute turn out on the walker at a trot. The calcium will shrink the colon and the exercise will allow it to shift back into place."

"Unless the entrapped area is distended by the goddamn grain Lorian has been feeding him."

"Then you sedate the horse and manipulate the colon rectally."

Jake reached into his medicine cabinet for a vial of clear liquid and a syringe, then proceeded to ease the needle into the horse's vein, first drawing back blood to check his efficiency. Tossing the syringe into a canister labeled Hazardous Waste, he glanced at Leah.

"You may as well know I think your working here is a bad idea."

"I don't have to be psychic to figure that out."

"It's no reflection on your abilities as a fine veterinarian. I've asked around about you. You've got a decent rep. But it's a tough job. You deal with a lot of assholes that could make Hitler cry. Aside from that, there's no place here for feminine emotionalism."

She gave him a flat smile. "Is that another term for PMS, Doctor Graham?"

"Not at all, Doctor Starr." Jake poured himself a cup of coffee and reached for a stack of files. "We're asked to make some tough decisions, not just occasionally, but every day we come to work. And you'd better believe there is going to be somebody in your face at all times. Take Lorian. He trains his own horses, races them, lives in the feed room because he doesn't have the money for rent. He's got half a dozen kids off in
Oklahoma
or
Arkansas
that may or may not all be his—he doesn't really care, just as long as there's a wife to give him some sense of purpose. Cool Me Down was a stakes winner last year. Lorian's first to win a major purse. The horse showed every promise of becoming a superstar, blew the hell out of the record books in the following several races. Then it was over. He quit running."

"There has to be a reason."

"Aside from the gastric ulcerations, we've found no evidence of anything else. He's just shut down."

Leah moved to the horse's head and allowed him to nuzzle her hand. "Maybe it's time to turn him out to pasture and let him be a horse for a while."

"Try telling that to Randy
Lorian.
Go on. I dare you. That bastard would rather bury the animal than allow it the pleasure of running free in green pastures. After all, what good is having a horse that can't pay for itself."

As Leah frowned, Jake laughed and shook his head. "Get used to it. This isn't the world of women infatuated with pet horses or some good old boy named Bubba who likes to rope off his favorite quarter on the weekends. Those animals could hop around on three legs and as long as they eat carrots and apples and molasses cookies out of hand and halfway tolerate their owners they'll live out their lives in comfort until they die of old age.

"Not here. Not these machines. If they don't pay for themselves, they're useless. The owners can sell them to Alpo for ninety cents a pound and get a small return on their investment. Or if the horse is lucky he gets put in an auction and maybe someone other than Alpo will find him interesting enough to take a chance on him. That is if he's not already lame or his brains aren't fried by steroids and stress."

Jake shouted to an assistant to put Cool Me Down on the walker for fifteen minutes. "Coming?" he asked Leah, then walked out the door.

With the radio on low and the deejay suggesting that thanks to
El Niño
the area was in for the hottest summer on record, Johnny pulled the dually up to the curb outside Bernice Rainwater's house and, reaching across the passenger seat, shoved open the door, allowing the June heat to wash through the cab in a simmering wave. He glanced up at the temp gauge on the rearview mirror, not surprised to see it registering ninety-two degrees—damn hot for so early in the season. He made a mental note to run the truck by the auto shop to make certain there was plenty of coolant in the engine, and also to check out the air-conditioning system at Leah's house. He knew from experience that the small house baked like an oven in this sort of heat.

Savanah Rainwater, shielding her eyes from the sun, looked up and down the quiet narrow street before slinging her suitcase into the truck bed, then more gently laying the collection of cameras she had hanging from each shoulder onto the backseat. She climbed up into the truck and slammed and locked the door before reaching for the seatbelt.

In the light of day there was something about her appearance that affected Johnny. Not in the way she was dressed, certainly, in faded jeans and a turquoise cotton blouse, but in her energy and will that seemed to both absorb and reflect the light around her. Her skin was dusky with the slightest hint of copper and her huge, almond-shaped eyes were the darkest plum purple, which she accentuated with the merest touch of purple shadow on her lids. Her hair had been feathered around her face, the cut drawing the observer's eye to the high cheekbones and a nose so perfectly formed that, had he not known her better, might have been the result of a very fine plastic surgeon.

"I could have rented a car," she told him, grinning. "Driving me to
Albuquerque
seems excessive, even if we are old friends."

He shrugged and turned off the radio. "You said we needed to talk. So I'm here to talk."

"Good ol' Johnny on the spot. Mr. Reliable." She laughed and adjusted her seat back, stretched out her long, denim-clad legs and released a weary sigh. "I should never have come home. It was a mistake. Seeing Billy and Mother accomplished nothing more than making me feel guilty again for walking away, especially now that
Dee
is gone."

They drove for a while without talking, until Ruidoso was behind them and the highway stretched like a silver ribbon before them, waves of heat rising from the asphalt, making the oncoming cars resemble mirages. Johnny glanced at Savanah occasionally, thinking to himself that if he had bumped into her on the street he would not have known her. The ugly ducking had certainly turned into a swan, yet there was still that edge of tomboyishness that made him think that she could hold her own against any man who thought he could best her physically in a wrestling match—not to mention romance. This one would not fall in love easily. There was a chip on her shoulder the size of the Sierra Blanca, and he wondered to himself what sort of relationship she had experienced that had stamped wariness and distrust so indelibly over her features.

"Ever thought of modeling?" he asked, drawing her attention from the scenery back to him.

She shook her head. "Been there and done that. Unlike Dolores, I prefer to be in back of the camera, thank you."

"You're into photography, I take it."

"Dabble in it a bit." She grinned. "Next time you want a partially nude shot of you taken on
Fifth Avenue
, give me a call. I do my best work photographing wild animals."

"Does it pay the bills?"

"Hardly. I work at a casino outside of
Toronto
. I'm a dealer sometimes. A waitress sometimes. And occasionally I'm one of those annoying photographers who skulk about dark romantic corners of the hotel and snap cozy couples in the throes of hormonal upheavals. The old geezers with young girls are the best. It's fun watching them squirm when they think the wives back home might somehow get their hands on the pictures."

Johnny laughed. "So, you're into blackmail."

Savanah wiggled her eyebrows. "The philandering old coots pay handsomely for any snapshot that could be used as evidence against them."

"You and Dolores have more in common than you think."

"Had."
She looked out the window. "So tell me. You and Leah getting married? Or is that a stupid question?"

"I haven't thought that far ahead."

"What about her father? If you go fooling around with Daddy's little girl he's liable to get angry. He's a lot more powerful now than he was when you were eighteen. Not to mention corrupt." Shifting in the seat, Savanah looked at Johnny directly. "I mean it,
Whitehorse
. Senator Foster isn't someone to take lightly. He isn't going to stand still for long while you brutalize his reputation. And now Leah's back in the picture. What, exactly, will that do to your fight with him regarding the Formation issue?"

"I won't back down, Vanah."

"Then I assume you'll be forced to make a choice. The love of your life, or your people. The question is, who needs you more? Just how much is Johnny Whitehorse willing to sacrifice?"